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Tao-wow-wow
General | Posted 15 years agoAside:
OK guys, let's be clear. I know the name TaoDog starts with a T, but it is not pronounced like a T. It's pronounced like a D.
"Dow", like Dow Jones.
It's alliterative. Dow. Dog.
________________________________________________________
In other news, it's autumn now here in the northern hemisphere! Time for the trees to turn colors so bright as to put the average acid trip to shame. Time for the mass consumption of pumpkin-derived products. Time for squirrels and bears to turn temporarily rabid as they engage in evolution-sanctioned binge eating for the next month or so. Time to patch the holes in your longjohns before it gets *really* cold, and you go to put them on and discover that there's still a big drafty hole in the crotch that you forgot to fix last spring, and your goods are going to freeze all day long so that when you try to have relations with your loved one that night the whole thing ends in humiliation and apologies because your goods are on strike until you take steps to prevent them freezing in the future, all because you were too lazy to do a little sewing. AGAIN.
OK guys, let's be clear. I know the name TaoDog starts with a T, but it is not pronounced like a T. It's pronounced like a D.
"Dow", like Dow Jones.
It's alliterative. Dow. Dog.
________________________________________________________
In other news, it's autumn now here in the northern hemisphere! Time for the trees to turn colors so bright as to put the average acid trip to shame. Time for the mass consumption of pumpkin-derived products. Time for squirrels and bears to turn temporarily rabid as they engage in evolution-sanctioned binge eating for the next month or so. Time to patch the holes in your longjohns before it gets *really* cold, and you go to put them on and discover that there's still a big drafty hole in the crotch that you forgot to fix last spring, and your goods are going to freeze all day long so that when you try to have relations with your loved one that night the whole thing ends in humiliation and apologies because your goods are on strike until you take steps to prevent them freezing in the future, all because you were too lazy to do a little sewing. AGAIN.
The Pet Project (please read)
General | Posted 15 years agoI just learned about The Pet Project, a non-profit, volunteer-run organization that helps people and their pets stay together.
It's geared toward responsible pet owners who have become economically disadvantaged (as so many of us have) and who are having trouble meeting their pets' needs and potentially looking at having to surrender their pets. The Pet Project will provide pet food, some veterinary services, basic care supplies, and resources for pet-friendly housing and the like.
Also, they don't just take care of your pet for you. For vet services, you either have to pay part of the bill or volunteer some amount of time. They really emphasize the responsibility part, which I really respect.
It's geographically specific for Minnesota (USA), which is kind of unfortunate. BUT!
If you know someone in or near Minnesota who could use these services...
If you have any spare pet supplies/food/money you could donate (tax-deductible)...
If you live in the Twin Cities area and have some time to volunteer...
http://thepetprojectmn.org/
It's geared toward responsible pet owners who have become economically disadvantaged (as so many of us have) and who are having trouble meeting their pets' needs and potentially looking at having to surrender their pets. The Pet Project will provide pet food, some veterinary services, basic care supplies, and resources for pet-friendly housing and the like.
Also, they don't just take care of your pet for you. For vet services, you either have to pay part of the bill or volunteer some amount of time. They really emphasize the responsibility part, which I really respect.
It's geographically specific for Minnesota (USA), which is kind of unfortunate. BUT!
If you know someone in or near Minnesota who could use these services...
If you have any spare pet supplies/food/money you could donate (tax-deductible)...
If you live in the Twin Cities area and have some time to volunteer...
http://thepetprojectmn.org/
art blog
General | Posted 15 years ago...Oh yeah, I have an art blog now. It's where all my sketchbook rejects go to die.
http://taodog.dreamwidth.org/
http://taodog.dreamwidth.org/
Back, but not quite in action
General | Posted 15 years agoThat... was one of the weirdest travel experiences I've ever had. Have you ever read "Lord of the Flies"? Yeah. It was kind of like that, except instead of killing wild pigs, people were hoping to kill one particular tow truck driver.
...In other words, it's a long, long, emotionally draining story, and I'm not going to tell it here.
What I really mean to say is: I'm back and can reply to comments and such, but it might be a bit longer before I'm posting new art. See, I accidentally injured my dominant hand, and it may in fact be a minor bone-break. I'm not sure. Either way, I can't use it too intensely or for too long before it starts getting really painful. So drawing is only possible in short bursts, and getting that really precise detail the way I like it is right out.
Anyway. Hi again.
...In other words, it's a long, long, emotionally draining story, and I'm not going to tell it here.
What I really mean to say is: I'm back and can reply to comments and such, but it might be a bit longer before I'm posting new art. See, I accidentally injured my dominant hand, and it may in fact be a minor bone-break. I'm not sure. Either way, I can't use it too intensely or for too long before it starts getting really painful. So drawing is only possible in short bursts, and getting that really precise detail the way I like it is right out.
Anyway. Hi again.
gone for 2 weeks
General | Posted 15 years agoI'm heading out into the Great Unknown this Saturday and won't be back until the 15th or thereabouts. And since I'm going to be sleeping in a tent for most (if not all) of the trip, my dearly devoted laptop will be staying home, where it's insulated and dry and climate-controlled.
So I'll be pretty darn quiet for the next two weeks or so. It's not that I don't love you; it's that I'm very very busy engaging in mortal combat with swarms of northwoods mosquitoes.
The only time I won't be battling skeeters is on Friday the 13th, when I'll be at a wedding instead. Normally I don't care for weddings, but, well. They're getting married on Friday the 13th, and yes, that was most assuredly intentional. They're getting married in the upstairs party room of the bar where they work. There will be lots. And lots. Of booze. And pirates. Yep, the theme is Hawaiian/pirates.
You know you wish you were going. :)
So I'll be pretty darn quiet for the next two weeks or so. It's not that I don't love you; it's that I'm very very busy engaging in mortal combat with swarms of northwoods mosquitoes.
The only time I won't be battling skeeters is on Friday the 13th, when I'll be at a wedding instead. Normally I don't care for weddings, but, well. They're getting married on Friday the 13th, and yes, that was most assuredly intentional. They're getting married in the upstairs party room of the bar where they work. There will be lots. And lots. Of booze. And pirates. Yep, the theme is Hawaiian/pirates.
You know you wish you were going. :)
FREE badges from awesome artist!
General | Posted 15 years ago...No, not from me.
*pulls head out of ass*
From
kamilya.
Whose gorgeous ink work makes me super jealous.
The only requirement is that you have to read this journal: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1569702/
*pulls head out of ass*
From
kamilya.Whose gorgeous ink work makes me super jealous.
The only requirement is that you have to read this journal: http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/1569702/
Justin Bieber jokes
General | Posted 15 years agoNB: People who used to watch me on my old account may remember the rant I made once about rape jokes. This is similar.
______________
OK, look. I love making fun of pop singers as much as the next person. They're pop singers; they deserve it.
But the running Justin-Biebergender joke pisses me off. "Oh, it's a dude and we're calling him 'she'! Uh-hyuk!"
It's not funny. It's unimaginative. You know what? It's juvenile.
Why do people think it's funny? Well, here's this effeminate-looking guy, and we know he's a guy, but because he doesn't live up to our neurotic standards of what a "real" guy is, we'll call him "she" in all references to call attention to his inferior masculinity, thus making us feel better about our own attempts at gender. Ha. Ha ha.
Eat a dick.
When I was about 11, there was this new kid in school who rode on my bus. Zie was very ambiguously gendered. I wasn't sure what zie was, and, being 11, it didn't occur to me that it might be acceptable to just ask hir. I decided that zie must be a girl, because there was a lot of baby blue in that wardrobe.
The other kids on the bus (mostly boys - and mostly the boys who staked out the back of the bus, if that detail means anything to you) liked to throw things at this kid, to try to feel up under this kid's shirt for a bra strap, and to refer to this kid as "it" and "the he-she". I felt like this was bullshit from the start, and one day I'd had enough and verbally ripped those other kids a new one (and I admit that yes, I threatened them with severe physical harm - I was The Tall Kid so this was effective), and concluded with, "Leave her ALONE!"
It actually worked. The harassment petered off over the next week and then they left her alone for the rest of the year. But I shortly found out that she was, in fact, a boy, and liked being a boy, and wanted to keep on being a boy for the rest of his life. And I learned that, despite the fact that I was the only one on that very full bus to stand up for him (including himself), he hated me most of all, because I'd thought he was a girl.
...These kind of jokes are the least harmful part of an insidious branch of intolerance in society (and as someone who's seen a considerable sample of these 'jokes', I promise you that they're far from harmless). The more harmful spectrum of discrimination against the gender-variant includes job discrimination, housing discrimination, and murder.
About once a month, a transgender person is killed just because the status quo's myopic, self-important concept of male/female doesn't fit that person's reality. Once a month. It's like clockwork. You have to dig to find out about it when it happens, because the national and international media just don't give a crap.
OK, yeah. I don't give a flying fuck about Justin Bieber. The people I care about are the ones who deal with this kind of sophomoric, intolerant, transphobic bullshit on a daily basis. So why rant on the Justin Bieber jokes?
Because the easier it is to laugh at those stupid jokes, the easier it is to shrug it off when a hiring manager cracks a similar joke before rejecting a gender-ambiguous applicant (happens all the time, every day), or when all the doctors and nurses go home for the night, leaving a patient abandoned in the hospital because he's a guy who might have ovarian cancer (http://www.mntranshealth.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=1), or when a paramedic at the scene of a car crash makes jokes about a woman's penis instead of stopping her bleeding and, as a result, she dies (http://www.gendercentre.org.au/27article6.htm).
When people die, just because someone can't handle the simple fact of gender ambiguity and have to make jokes about it to make themselves feel better instead being valuable human beings... then, it's not funny.
Canadian pop stars aside, It's not. Fucking. Funny.
______________
OK, look. I love making fun of pop singers as much as the next person. They're pop singers; they deserve it.
But the running Justin-Biebergender joke pisses me off. "Oh, it's a dude and we're calling him 'she'! Uh-hyuk!"
It's not funny. It's unimaginative. You know what? It's juvenile.
Why do people think it's funny? Well, here's this effeminate-looking guy, and we know he's a guy, but because he doesn't live up to our neurotic standards of what a "real" guy is, we'll call him "she" in all references to call attention to his inferior masculinity, thus making us feel better about our own attempts at gender. Ha. Ha ha.
Eat a dick.
When I was about 11, there was this new kid in school who rode on my bus. Zie was very ambiguously gendered. I wasn't sure what zie was, and, being 11, it didn't occur to me that it might be acceptable to just ask hir. I decided that zie must be a girl, because there was a lot of baby blue in that wardrobe.
The other kids on the bus (mostly boys - and mostly the boys who staked out the back of the bus, if that detail means anything to you) liked to throw things at this kid, to try to feel up under this kid's shirt for a bra strap, and to refer to this kid as "it" and "the he-she". I felt like this was bullshit from the start, and one day I'd had enough and verbally ripped those other kids a new one (and I admit that yes, I threatened them with severe physical harm - I was The Tall Kid so this was effective), and concluded with, "Leave her ALONE!"
It actually worked. The harassment petered off over the next week and then they left her alone for the rest of the year. But I shortly found out that she was, in fact, a boy, and liked being a boy, and wanted to keep on being a boy for the rest of his life. And I learned that, despite the fact that I was the only one on that very full bus to stand up for him (including himself), he hated me most of all, because I'd thought he was a girl.
...These kind of jokes are the least harmful part of an insidious branch of intolerance in society (and as someone who's seen a considerable sample of these 'jokes', I promise you that they're far from harmless). The more harmful spectrum of discrimination against the gender-variant includes job discrimination, housing discrimination, and murder.
About once a month, a transgender person is killed just because the status quo's myopic, self-important concept of male/female doesn't fit that person's reality. Once a month. It's like clockwork. You have to dig to find out about it when it happens, because the national and international media just don't give a crap.
OK, yeah. I don't give a flying fuck about Justin Bieber. The people I care about are the ones who deal with this kind of sophomoric, intolerant, transphobic bullshit on a daily basis. So why rant on the Justin Bieber jokes?
Because the easier it is to laugh at those stupid jokes, the easier it is to shrug it off when a hiring manager cracks a similar joke before rejecting a gender-ambiguous applicant (happens all the time, every day), or when all the doctors and nurses go home for the night, leaving a patient abandoned in the hospital because he's a guy who might have ovarian cancer (http://www.mntranshealth.org//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=1), or when a paramedic at the scene of a car crash makes jokes about a woman's penis instead of stopping her bleeding and, as a result, she dies (http://www.gendercentre.org.au/27article6.htm).
When people die, just because someone can't handle the simple fact of gender ambiguity and have to make jokes about it to make themselves feel better instead being valuable human beings... then, it's not funny.
Canadian pop stars aside, It's not. Fucking. Funny.
back to the drawing board
General | Posted 15 years agoGod, this past week sucked. After spending my holiday weekend at a funeral in 104-degree heat (I kid you not), I came back jetlagged for a group interview in which I absolutely kicked ass but which resulted in no job. They decided to hire a pack of high school students instead - y'know, people who don't have a pile of utility bills and student loan debt to pay off. There is no justice.
Well, back to my sketchbook and the help-wanted section.
Well, back to my sketchbook and the help-wanted section.
gone for funeral
General | Posted 15 years agoMy maternal grandfather died, and I'm flying down for the funeral. We weren't really close, but I want to be there for the rest of my family. I'm leaving my computer behind in an effort to streamline the process of getting through airport security on Fourth of July weekend, so I won't be replying to comments and such.
Back by Thursday.
Back by Thursday.
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