I don't know who you are, as you read this. I don't even know that you're reading this. But I hope you'll hear me out.

I am not religious, but I have a faith of sorts -- I believe that some day, people like you and like me, and those that live and walk alongside us, will stop listening to old fools like those who've started what looks to be our latest round of wars, and will find a way to come together. It probably won't happen all at once, but once it really starts, it won't be stopped.

We'll realize, as individual societies -- and, eventually, as the whole of humanity at once -- that we're better when we work with each other instead of tearing each other apart. Collaboration instead of competition. No, it won't be a utopia. Those don't exist. But it will be a lot better than what we have here now. We won't need special government programs to support most folks in poverty -- which is not to say poverty will be eliminated. Let's be realistic! But there will be less of it, and where it is, society itself will be the support program. We truly are each others' keepers, after all, and we'll finally be acting like it.

Not to mention that we won't be beholden any more to a few old men with questionable sanity and delusions of adequacy -- or the need, possibly, to compensate for what they otherwise don't have elsewhere...

"Every man for himself" is a phrase that is bad for the individual at many levels and a detriment, if not an outright danger, to a civilized society. Look around you at all the people who suffer because of what they can't get in their own isolation. Do you really think that it's genuinely their fault, across so many demographic categories, when so many struggle in so many ways? No. It is the systemic cost of isolation in a system that benefits from it.

Ours is a society that is designed to isolate for the specific purpose of its greater socioeconomic function: to exploit those who already have too little for the personal and familial gain of those who already have too much.

I have a better idea. It's not my idea, though. I'm just a messenger... a vessel. A mouthpiece. The idea itself is expressed in a phrase far older than any modern civilization still in existence today. This is an idea so old that it not only predates modern civilization, it predates the invention of writing. This is a concept that hails from the era when mankind was still in the Fertile Crescent and taking its first steps into what is now the African Savanna. It could be argued that this is an idea, a concept, a thought so old that its first occurrence was in the mind of an evolutionary precursor to Homo Sapiens.

The phrase, in modern English, that expresses this almost primordial thought is -- "It takes a village..."

Sure, it's just my opinion, but maybe, just maybe, it's time we stopped tearing lives apart and pulling things down, and started building villages together.

She is a very good artist, especially with chakats and taurs. Russian, but works extremely hard to get around the language barrier, and does a remarkable job.

I got my refsheet for Skye from her. She was my first choice -- really my only choice, I would likely have waited and tried again, had I initially been refused, TBH -- and I could not possibly have been more satisfied. She did an absolutely superb job. I was inexperienced (it was my second commission ever, and my first refsheet commission) and we were able to work around a lot of misunderstandings and confusions that arose from that, from the language barrier, and from the fact that -- being an artist in demand -- she has more work than she can fulfill in a day, and my ADD-related memory issues were screwing with me by the time it was my turn.

I could not have asked for a better artist, and although I don't post because my head's kind of screwy -- I'm an artist myself! Take that as you will.

But right now Araivis only does *graphic* art -- computer-based work -- and she's trying to break into traditional. She's got a raffle going for that. You get free art AND free shipping, that's awesome... especially given the cost of international shipping these days >___< le oof.

It's the usual sort of entry rules, for the most part -- +Watch her, +Watch her husband, Allet-Weiss as well, as he's not got many watchers, and throw up a comment with an interesting nugget of info ( in this case, one's favorite hot drink of choice) and a link to a refsheet for a character you'd like depicted. Doing one of these spread-the-word journal entries gets you a second entry ;)

Contest ends 11 Feb 2022 at 10pm Moscow time (GMT+3) -- that's 2pm Eastern / 1pm Central / 12noon Mountain / 11am Pacific for those in and around the USA... ish? I think...?

Winners to be announced on Araivis-Edelveys' Picarto stream at that time and on that date. Subscribing to the stream is suggested but very much optional.

Araivis-Edelveys' profile page -- https://www.furaffinity.net/user/araivis-edelveys/
Allet-Weiss' profile page -- https://www.furaffinity.net/user/alletweiss

Both artists do a mix of SFW and NSFW work; if you need to manually toggle SFW mode here ;) replace 'www' in each of those links with 'sfw' and you should be all right. Better safe than sorry...!

Journal for contest entry -- https://www.furaffinity.net/view/45688807/
Picarto stream (NSFW, with warning; plz don't be stupid) -- https://www.picarto.tv/araivisedelveys

I know the chances of anyone ever seeing this are pretty low, since I keep a pretty low profile... but...

If you are in the Chatham County, NC area, you're local to me, and I'd like to meet up, if we can. I'm interested in making friends, even though I haven't had much practice at it. (If you're in Apex or Chapel Hill, NC, you're about 30min away; Greensboo, 30min Raleigh, 60min or so; Winston Salem, 90min; Charlotte or Fayetteville, ~2+ hours.)

PM me with your address and I'll give you mine and we'll see if we can't work out a way to meet. I should probably mention, though, that I do not drive. Not because of booze, mind you, I just never learned...

So I have no idea if anyone like ever comes to my page (I doubt it!) but if someone should randomly happen across this...

I need help with finding some song lyrics.

The song is called Come Up For Air. That much I'm sure of. Heard it on Pandora recently a couple times. I don't know the artist offhand, but whoever it is, they're waaaaaaaaaaay off the beaten path because I can't drum up lyrics to save my life.

Basic plot as best I can gather from what I heard... guy doesn't "fit in" for some reason and gets thrown into the sea. He lives at the bottom of the ocean for a while then decides to try life topside again. Gets a lousy job, can't pay the rent, gets disgusted and, as the song ends, he heads back to the sea. Last line of the song, repeated several times, is IIRC "he kept on going / to the deep blue sea".

If anyone knows what I'm talking about PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me!

Thanks, folks.

Looks like the new rule has had consequences for one member of this site that I really, really like -- Norithics.

I understand that there is That Rule. The rule which Nori 'violated', regarding apparent underage characters. I don't, in principle, have a problem with a rule like that... it looks good on paper.

The trouble is that there is no objective way to enforce That Rule, and so this means that there is no /fair/ way to enforce That Rule. So what we have here is distinctly /unfair/ (good heavens I sound like I'm still in 4th grade). That's a problem.

That Rule can only be enforced subjectively, mostly because it's being enforced on art. Art is inherently subjective -- you're not filling in dots for a standardized test here; there's way more creativity and originality than that present in the stuff here. That's the root of the problem. Because art itself is not objective, That Rule, which is about certain details of art, cannot be objective.

This is not to say that it's impossible to make objective rules about art that can be enforced fairly. It's to say that it's extraordinarily difficult except in a few narrow cases. For example... this site allows the (for lack of a more comfortable term) genders Male, Female, and Herm (in all their many variations), along with a Group gender for multiple people in one piece of art. If we were (to be totally ridiculous) to narrow that down to just Male and Female, then where would Herm art go, assuming that it wasn't strictly speaking disallowed altogether?

My maternal grandfather (of whom I have nothing but sayings and photos, as he died five years before my birth) had a wonderful phrase that fits here like a glove.

"Anything worth doing, is worth doing well."

FA, you're better than this. Collectively and individually.

Well, the ToS changed, and with it, the attitudes of a lot of people that I trust here. I hear talk of witch hunts, present and future bullying, and fear. Lots of fear. So, they are leaving, or have already left.

And I will leave with them. I have enough to deal with already, and I don't like the disquieting rumbles I'm hearing.

Such is life: when you find something you don't like about where you are, generally speaking, you change where you are somehow.

So it's time to move on.

---

I'm on sheezyart now.

http://starhawk.sheezyart.com/

I know I've never put anything here... but I thought I might start.

I'm pretty poor at drawing people, even with lots of fur, so I won't post those -- especially since they're all at least partially traced from gooooooooooogle photos. Traced pix = no no no, according to the AUP.

So what I was thinking was this.

I've recently discovered that I can paint worth a crap if I use a stencil and keep it simple. I'll post some of my work, and if it's good enough, maybe I can do work for other people for money.

What do you folks think about this?