April 30th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Pirates, bed bugs, an invasion of pythons, immortal jellyfish spreading across the seas, the economy in turmoil, war in the Middle East, mounting tensions in Russia, political unrest in Pakistan, the threat of nuclear armageddon increasing each day, and now a flu pandemic. Yes, it seems like the world is coming down around us, so in honor of the fast approaching apocalypse I present to you this short list of things to look forward to in the hellscape that is most certainly to become a reality in the not-too-distant future.

1. Goodbye Stress! All right, so everyone you knew and loved has died in the nuclear war/plague/snake invasion. Your home is a radioactive burned out shell, everything that brought you joy or comfort has been destroyed and after years of fateful viewing you’ll never get to see how Lost turned out. As you scour the scarred wasteland that was once a lush, green world, consumed by an unyielding grief and growing desire to end your own life, you suddenly realize that although you now dwell in a horrifying new reality exclusively dominated by the omnipresent specter of death and decay, you suddenly find a glimmer of joy in the happy realization that you’ll never have to stress out about another bill ever again. No more credit cards, no electric bills, and fuck the IRS. Never again will you be an indentured servant, forced to work some menial job you hate in the faint hope that you can retire while you still possess the ability to recollect your own name. And come to think of it, you’ll never again be stuck in rush hour, or deal with those annoying in-laws, no more lines at the DMV and no asshole of a landlord telling you that you’re playing the stereo too loud. But best of all, you’ll never again have to worry about the world coming to an end, because it already has, and guess what, you’ve made it! Congratulations! And you thought it was all bad.

2. Physical Fitness! Back before the apocalypse that gym membership was a constant reminder of just how lazy you were. You constantly told yourself, as you sat on a bar stool or in front of your flat screen TV, that this was going to be the year that you finally took up that yoga class, or started running in the park. You always wanted to get in shape. You always wanted to reach the peak of your endurance. Well guess what? In the charred landscape that is your brave new world there are no cars or trains to ferry you around and whatever few meager possessions you manage to find amid the ruins you have to carry on your back. Maybe you do find a Jeep with a full tank, but good luck getting anymore gas, last time you checked the CEO of Exxon was a radioactive puddle of goo. Whether you like it or not you’re going to have to get off your fat ass and get moving. It’s a long way to that military base you heard about on the radio before the missiles hit, and those pythons have mutated and boy can they move fast. Think of it as finally having a personal trainer, except now instead of a bulky jock in a leotard it’s that rush of heart racing adrenaline you feel whenever something slithers amid the bleached bones just out of the corner of your eye.

3. New Skills! You always regretted not having learned more of the skills so invaluable to life. Expanding your knowledge. Being the kind of person who could fix an engine, or repair a leaky faucet. There was always a shame you felt when you had to ask someone else for help. Well, now that you’re all alone and the name of the game is survival, you’re sure to pick up a plethora of new skills, since your life quite literally depends on it. Ever capture and skin a two-headed rabbit? Ever have to dig a well or search out desert plants for water? Ever master the art of digging through disease-ravaged corpses for valuable loot? Ever have to change the circuit board on a Geiger counter? Ever have to kill a man? These are just some of the many new and exciting talents you’re sure to pick up as you struggle to make it just another day. In the charred remains that was once Earth there are no supermarkets and there is no running water, and the few people you do run into will most likely kill you for that pocket knife you found just after torturing and raping you (everyone has needs you know). If you’re going to make it, on the job training is a must! And to think, before all this you couldn’t even figure out the features on your cell phone.

4. True Love! We are all obsessed with finding that one person with whom we can spend the rest of our days. Most of the world’s greatest art is about this very problem. We waste countless weeks and months and years dating and picking apart one another till we find someone who can compliment our virtues and look beyond our flaws. Wouldn’t it be simpler if finding a mate were as easy as hooking up with the first living, breathing person we just happened to come across? Well now it is! As virtually one of the last remaining people on the planet all those high standards you had have finally bottomed out. After what seems like an endless trek through a barren man-made Hell of radioactive craters and diseased corpses, anyone who doesn’t try to murder you and has a pulse probably looks really good about now. Sure, they may not be the most attractive person you’ve ever laid your eyes on, especially as the poison in the ground has probably caused most of their teeth and hair to fall out, and God only knows how long it’s been since they’ve showered, but hey, you’re hardly one to talk. And you’d be surprised how quickly love can bloom between two people who have to deal with an almost constant barrage of near death experiences and an indescribable loneliness that threatens to destroy what little shred of sanity remains. Who knows, maybe you two will begin the slow process of repopulation, your horribly mutated offspring becoming the vanguard of a new human species that will one day dominate the Earth, assuming of course your reproductive organs haven’t been completely fried by now and that the toothless, hairless freak you’re sleeping with is actually of the opposite sex. Still, beggars can’t be choosers so enjoy it while it lasts.

5. Community Organizing! So, the days have passed and you’ve adjusted well to the post-apocalyptic world. In fact you’ve thrived on the devastation. You’re stronger than you ever were and your stamina is quite impressive. The few wretched skeletons you pass marvel at all the found tins of canned food you’re able to carry as you step over their disfigured bodies. All that killing you’ve done has molded you into an intimidating figure. You’ve also become quite the survivalist. Locating sources of water and avoiding radioactive fallout is nearly second nature now. Those mutated pythons are no match for you anymore and you’ve got a snakeskin jacket to prove it. Maybe you even have a couple of bald, grotesque little rugrats scampering behind you and your significant other, as you make your way through the wastes. You’re really something. It’s not surprising that the local ragtag remnants of humanity have begun to gather around you, looking to you for guidance, leadership, and maybe some of those canned beans you have in your backpack. As your followers grow you realize you can’t just keep wandering forever, it’s time to start organizing a new community. And what’s more fun than rebuilding civilization? Just think of the fun you’ll have laying out the plans for your village, built out of the hulls of crashed airplanes and the blackened frames of half melted pickup trucks. Organizing your weak, hapless underlings into gangs of scavengers, farmers and guards. Leading raiding parties on nearby settlements and asserting your brand of frontier totalitarianism on whoever dares challenge your rule. And to think, just a few short years ago you were practically living in a cubicle, turning grey from all the stress in your life, those few fleeting facebook quizzes being the only thing keeping you from rampaging through your office shooting anyone in sight.

6. You Are Legend! Remember that snot-nosed kid in school who used to beat you up, take your lunch money and tell you that you’d never accomplish anything in life? Well, he probably got incinerated when the bombs hit and you’ve become the undisputed ruler of a post-apocalyptic kingdom raised from out of the ashes. Who has the last laugh now? Yea, okay, maybe your time will be cut short when one of your power hungry children or some drifter with an Australian accent comes along and cuts your throat in a deathmatch to challenge for right of leadership, but there’s no denying that you had a pretty great run. Just think of it. You survived while almost everyone else died. You always knew you were special. You always knew that you were the main character in your own Hollywood blockbuster. And despite the fact that your end won’t come exactly the way you pictured it, you can die happily, as you gasp desperately for breath, secure in the knowledge that you’ve made a real difference. That your name will go down in the new history of what’s left of the world. That you will be remembered as the savior of the human race. In time, humanity will rebound. In time out of the foundations that you’ve laid a new civilization will emerge. New cities will be built and out of them nations. Cars will speed along repaved highways and airplanes will once again soar through the skies. You will pass from fact, to myth, to legend. And millennia from now, when history has come full circle and man once again stands on the precipice of self-destruction, he will pause, remembering your valiant story and forever, and finally, end the cycle of destruction. Nah, who’re we kidding, it’ll all happen again and again till the mutant pythons take over and everything you did will be forever meaningless and futile, but hey, at least you didn’t die of swine flu.

April 30th, 2009 by Hoopleton

For today’s inspiration another preview of an art print soon to be available for purchase through this site.

"Child 5" by KP Dawes, 2009

April 29th, 2009 by Hoopleton

In the beginning, some 150,000 years ago, man appeared. God said it was good, and so it was good. Man, of the species Homo sapien, that the Lord created in his own image, began to spread among the Earth and multiply. Although with some difficulty. As it was for 144,000 years, man struggled. Ice ages came and went. Disease came and went. Tribes attacked and killed other tribes. Natural disasters leveled entire clans. A hostile animal world preyed on these few erect monkeys. With no medicine many millions, maybe billions died in childbirth. Life expectancy for most was probably little better than thirty years. Terrible pain, suffering, struggle and death were a part of life. But God said it was good, and so it was good.

Finally, some 5,000 years ago, after so many tens of thousands of years of utter indifference, the Lord thy God, who loved his children so much, decided that he should go to Earth and guide them. Though not all of them. Specifically he decided that he should go and give his law to his favorite children, since every parent has favorites, a tiny group of dogmatic habitual losers living in the Middle East. And to prove his unlimited power he burned whole bushes, and spoke in a very low voice. And to prove his endless compassion he did destroy entire cities because the inhabitants of these cities enjoyed sex, which he invented, turned women into pillars of salt, because they were curious, which he didn’t like, and tormented his most devout believers, because he was apparently an avid gambler. And so it was that God, the creator of all the world, of the entire universe, who could, one would think, appear to all human beings instantly and at the same moment, decided to intervene in only a small part of the Middle East, because apparently that was the best place from which the message could spread.

And so it was that 3,000 years later, the Lord realized that not everything had gone perfectly according to plan. And so he sent down his own most beloved son to Earth, though again to the same insignificant corner of the planet, so he may again attempt to give the word. To spread wisdom and compassion. To fill the human heart with lessons of love and mercy. To perform second-rate magic tricks eerily similar to those of many other holy beings who came before him. And once all this was accomplished, to be beaten, cut, burned, whipped, stabbed and crucified. But God said it was good, and so it was good.

500 years later things were still not going so great. There was still much suffering on the planet, especially in that part that the Lord had decided to intervene, and so it was that he sent the archangel Gabriel to seek out another desert dweller to spread his sacred word. Because the third time’s the charm. Unfortunately he forgot to inform the other groups he had previously spoken to that he had revised his message yet again, and so it was that man killed man. There was much murder. War. Torture. Genocide. Nations crumbled. Empires fell. Entire populations were enslaved. And the people called for the Lord thy God to intervene. They called on him to choose among the many the one true faith. But as technology moved forward, medicine improved, and anti-psychotic medications became plentiful, God fell mysteriously silent once again, choosing only to reveal himself occasionally, on a half-eaten taco shell or in the religious revelations of some bigoted, usually closeted, multi-millionaire.

God certainly works in mysterious ways.

April 29th, 2009 by Hoopleton

The late, great, George Carlin on religion.

April 28th, 2009 by Hoopleton

We travel. The road opens up. The train tracks widen out and curve into the mountains up ahead. The pillbox tops of buildings swarm and scatter out behind us. And soon all there remains is the faint memory of smog. Four tires and the cracks in the blacktop. The sound of air against the frame where window meets door. We see rolling hills. The uneven walls of farmhouses and the slow turning blades of windmills. Horizon and the falling sun. And then the clouds.  

Thunder cracks. The rain descends in sheets. Lightening sparks across the ceiling of the sky. There’s magic in the rain.

“Rainstorms are best after they stop,” she says, crossing her legs, careful to balance herself on the seat. “The sky opens up. The air rises from the ground.”

The puddles outside are black against the cover of the highway. They ripple with life. There’s light splattered here and there. It looks like the color of sunlight.

She puts her hand against the windshield and smiles as more thunder cracks overhead, shaking the droplets from the glass down to the ground.

Flashes explode in the sky. Waves of current snag the peaks of silos. I see myself dancing outside. Hat in hand. Umbrella tossed aside.

“If we wait a while we can reset time,” she offers. “There’s magic in the rain, you know.”

The tires bounce against the tracks that have woven back to the road from out of the mountains. The standard US railroad gauge is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. More than wide enough for a man to lie down comfortably between the rails. I could make a bed out of leaves there. I could watch the drops of rain plummet down. Until, that is, a train comes to run me down.

Of course that hardly matters. There’s so much goddamn time.

Everything scatters into the seam of the Earth. The ripples wake faster. The road rushes past us at near the speed of light.  And she leans over to kiss me brushing her nails against the side of my brow. There’s a growl to her voice. I want her. She knows it. But she just smiles.

April 28th, 2009 by Hoopleton

A photochrom from the turn of the century. Artist unknown.

April 27th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Smallpox, typhoid, cholera, the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, just like everything else in nature pandemics run in the familiar cycles of up and down, boom and bust. One day humanity is on the fast track to over populating the globe and the next the biosphere releases a check on our growth. The survivors pick up the pieces and start to multiply again until the Earth responds again. Up and down. Boom and bust. The last major viral outbreak, which by some estimates decimated upto a third of the human population, was the 1918 influenza pandemic, more commonly known as the Spanish Flu. The disease was so ferocious that many historians credit it with having ended the First World War. In fact, the pandemic killed double the amount of people that the combined military forces of Europe could after four years of fighting.

Prior to the Spanish Flu most people focus on the Black Death of the fourteenth century, but the reality is that major viral outbreaks of this sort appear every two or three generations. Pandemics are neither rare nor infrequent. No matter our medical advances, our hygiene or base understanding of pathology, pandemics will occur and people will die. It’s as certain as death itself. Up and down. Boom and bust.

At this very moment the World Health Organization is warning that the recent outbreak of Swine Flu, originating in Mexico, but already appearing in several countries including the United States, has the potential of becoming a pandemic. Just as with the Spanish Flu, the disease is most deadly in younger people, men and women between 20 and 50.

Despite the WHO’s warnings, many scientists have every confidence that this particular outbreak will be contained and that there is no reason to panic. In fact, most virologists have begun to theorize that the strain has actually mutated into a less lethal version. Many officials have also rightly warned that much of the hysteria is driven by an irresponsible media that’s been hyping up apocalyptic scenarios for years. It’s also basic human nature. We all have a part of us that would love to see the world burn. I’m not sure if it’s sadism or masochism, but it’s one of the main reasons we grab onto these news stories as soon as they appear.

Will Swine Flu destroy us? Or at the very least will it make dinner reservations easier to come by? I doubt it. But having said that, we have to keep in mind that plague is inevitable. It’s part of our natural cycle. Up and down. Boom and bust. Nature always finds a way to deal with threats. I can’t think of a greater threat to the balance of the biosphere than human beings.

So here we are. On the brink as usual. Awaiting judgment day with an equal mixture of dread and giddy anticipation. As though we didn’t have enough to worry about.

April 27th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Basement Jaxx with Cish Cash.

April 26th, 2009 by Hoopleton

You there?

What interests me is the touch of your skin. Especially that curve of your neck. I want to hold you there. I want to glide my thumb against the side of your jaw as my fingers wrap around the curve of your neck. My face would be close enough that you could feel my breath on yours, but I wouldn’t kiss you. I’d hold my grip.

You’re not going to answer me are you? You’re going to let me sit here and wonder all day. And when and if you finally respond am I supposed to be grateful?

I know for a fact that you’d bite my lower lip if you had the chance. You’d dig your nails into my back. You’d claw and growl. You’d fight me for every single breath of air between us. Your hands greedily trying to push against me, your arms contorted. You wouldn’t know if you should look at me or keep your eyes shut. You’d beg me and curse me in the same word. You’d pull and push in the same twist of your hips.

I guess I’ll keep sitting here. I’ll stay right here until you decide. I may be a lot of things, but I’m certainly not going first. Not that you’ll even let me know if you’re there. Can you at least tell me that? Are you even there? No. No, I see. You really aren’t going to tell me at all, I suppose I can accept that for right now. For right now.

I’d start with your ankles, my palm pressed against your wet skin. I’d slide my hand, fingers extended, but nails slightly grazing against your flesh. I’d slide my hand from your ankle and up your calf and down your thigh. I’d pause at your hips and glide over to your stomach. Your breasts. And I’d hover over you. My eyes on your eyes. Sweat and sex covering us both.

Yes. Yes I’m still waiting. At least it’s comfortable here. The wine isn’t bad. They have board games. A book to read. Hmm, Kafka, always meant to read some of him. Don’t you worry about a thing. Just keep me waiting for as long as you need. I hear they’re getting television here soon. Maybe I’ll watch a movie? Maybe I’ll watch two. Can you even hear me?

As I said, it’s about the touch of your skin, but I’d take every part of you. And that curve of your neck. I may worship that. I may build temples to it.

You there? Because I’m starting to think I’m alone. I’m starting to wonder if I’ve always been alone. You there? I know we haven’t talked. We haven’t discussed anything. We didn’t make plans. You don’t make plans. But is this it? Is this the way things are going to be? I can’t do this forever. I can’t just sit here alone with my book. Can you just please answer me this one time. One time. Are you there?

April 26th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Sticking to the bizarre, we have this animated advert from Mattel. Scrabble never looked so deranged…