So I’m sitting in a airport in Dallas Texas as I right this.

It’s funny, cause at airports no one wants to look at eachother in the eye.  Try it sometime.  Sit in your little metal/plastic chair, smile and look at around.  Instead of shifting your head and looking the other way when someone looks in your direction, keep looking at them and smile, acknowledge their existence.  They hate it.  People will think your crazy, some weird happy go lucky mutant.  Well, at least that’s what happens to me.  

At conventions now I try to set up somewhat of a information table.  I put posters up and have a few pamphlets out.  I’m not one to cram any ideas down anyone’s thought, or tell anyone what to think.  All I would say is that we NEED to THINK.  This is the first convention where I’ve had alot of people ask about it, primarily other artists or vendors, which was awesome.  I love getting to talk to people about positive things.  But usually the conversation became one led by “what if’s” and “when’s”, instead of practical practice.  I think as a people we enjoy challenging our minds with large theories and ideas of “what if the world went such and such way?”, or debating until the cow’s come home.  All of that is well and good, but we are missing out on the key element that needs to happen at this point, and that’s practice.  If we feel the need to label that practice, let’s label it “positivity”.  

A good way to apply that to our everyday life is the airport staring contest.  Take that theory of not backing down and smiling, and spread it further.  First with your food from a restaurant.  My friends back home always get their left overs from a restaurant to give it to the “home bums” that hangout in downtown Mobile.  One simple action can create a large result to someone that is in need of the simple things we can give.  So then we take that to the next step and look at where we are spending our money and what we are contributing to.  We have alot of “ma and pa” stores in Mobile.  You walk in and you know the sweet old lady running the register and the man cooking in the back.  Understanding where our money goes, we see that when we buy food from them, we are helping pay their bills and contributing to helping their lives.  When we go to an obscure corporate chain like McDonalds, we are lining the pockets of someone that has no connection to us and isn’t part of our community.   They serve no contribution to our society.  If everyone in our society became a focus, our vision would change. If we start to look at the large picture, with new eyes, airport staring contest eyes, start to really pay attention, we will see alot more.  If we step back and look globally, we will see thousands of different things that we never heard of or were never told. One good example is something that we never really hear about, the amount of people that are living in political prisons, unfairly imprisoned for what they believe. Here are two examples for you.

Leonard Peltier (born September 12 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement. In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murder of two FBI Agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There is considerable debate over Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial. Some supporters and organizations, including Amnesty International, consider him to be a political prisoner. Amnesty International said, for example, that “Although he has not been adopted as a prisoner of conscience, there is concern about the fairness of the proceedings leading to his conviction and it is believed that political factors may have influenced the way the case was prosecuted.” Numerous lawsuits have been filed on his behalf but none has succeeded. Peltier is currently incarcerated at the United States penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier

Mumia Abu-Jamal (born Wesley Cook on April 24, 1954) is an American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Prior to his arrest he was a Black Panther Party activist, cab driver, and journalist. Since his conviction, his case has received international attention and he has become a controversial cultural icon. Supporters and opponents disagree on the appropriateness of the death penalty, whether he is guilty, or whether he received a fair trial. During his imprisonment he has published several books and other commentaries, notably Live from Death Row. As of 2008, his legal appeals are still unsettled and he is a prisoner at State Correctional Institution Greene near Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Learn more at www.mumia.org

This can be taken to any part of one’s everyday life.  If we were to step back, look at the big picture, and realize that every decision we make can make a positive difference to the world that we are contributing to.  Instead of accepting that “that’s just how it is” we can change it.  Society seems like a scary machine that is much larger than us, but we are every part to that machine, and we can change how it works.  I’ve had a discussion before with someone about the tattoo industry, surprise surprise.  I voiced by opinion on how there are negative elements that we need to take out.  Their reply was, “that’s just the way the industry is, deal with it.”   NO, that is no the way life is.  WE have the power to change that.  Nothing in life is that way, we are at the helms of the big ship, and we can change the course.  The key element is realizing it’s starts with small changes in your everyday life.  If we start by being willing to connect again with human kind, the decisions we need to make will be obvious.  And let’s say everyone is right, and we cant change the world, what’s the harm in trying?

Here’s an interesting video set to godspeedyoublackemperor’s “dead flag blues”

So it’s that time again.  I don’t mean the awesome time where friday the 13th comes on tv everyday, or where ghouls and ghosts wander down your street in search of their sweet fix.  I mean election time.  We are at the final week where it gets ugly.  He said, she said, “I can see Russia from my house” yadda yadda ya.  These are supposed to be the leaders of our “free” world.  Really!?!

According to the Campaign Finance Institute (www.cfinst.org) almost $1.5 billion dollars has been spent on financing this election’s two campaigns, as of Aug. 08.  $1.5 billion!  and we can’t figure out how to feed that starving family in inner city Memphis.  Something is not right.  Sarah Palin’s clothing and maintenance cost $150,000 for just 2 months.  According to feed my starving children.org (www.fmsc.org) it cost only 17 cents to produce one meal for a child in their program.  So if we do the math Sarah Palin’s clothes for only 2 months alone could have produced 882,352 meals, or enough to feed 11 children for the rest of their lives.  But yet we have no solution for the economic “crisis” or how to help the starving and needy.  This just doesn’t make sense.  We are being lied to.  We need to get the facts, not just from fox news or some bobble headed reporter that is trying to help his acting career.  Independent media and open source coding (wikipedia.org, etc) is an amazing key that we have to this.  We have the opportunity to have the information we need at our finger tips (literally) and instead we would rather read blog’s about who is sleeping with who in the celebrity world that isn’t even real.  This is our opportunity to take it back.  

I’ve recently had the following said to me, “Your idealism is a wonderful thing, but it’s much easier said than done.  Radical thought is great in theory, but it can’t really happen”.  This is the problem my friends.  This statement has been said for far too long.   People have seen this problem on the horizon for quite a while.  Check out this exert from Anarchism In America, you can view the whole movie in my interests section. 

We can’t let ourselves be oppressed by mundane thoughts of not being able to change anything.  These thoughts are what is used to hold down change.  The Roman Empire fell, monarchs have fallen, why can’t we make a change?  We can, and we will.  

I was visiting with my mother and step father the other day.  My mother had just had a difficult chemo treatment and was in her bed resting.  My step father and I stayed out in the living room, talking about alot of topics that were frightening to talk about.  Preparing for death was a large part of our conversation.  My step father, Jack, is 85, so this is a real topic for us.  At one point he looked over and said to me, “You know, we take advantage of so much.  We have to be always learning, always looking, always seeking.  Ya gotta learn til ya die son.  I try to walk a different way to the mailbox to see something new, something that was always there, but I didn’t notice it.  A different angle of a tree, a different yard, something new.  That’s what life is about, never taking for granted all that is around you and everything you have.  Always learning, never giving up.”   Jack is a little, classic looking old man.  He’s small, with a slight hunch.  He’s got more hair than most people could dream of, and it’s all bright white.  He’s got the look of the grandfather in every movie you’ve ever seen.  A sweet disposition, but when he speaks with passion, it’s enough to stop you in your tracks and make you pay attention to every word that is coming out.  And I did.

The reason why I tell that story is because those who fear change want us to be like the man taking the same path to the mail box everyday.  Never noticing anything going on around them, and taking every breath for granted.  “Don’t fight the revolution now, for there is nothing to fight.”  “There is nothing you can do, so you might as well not try.”  All of these are lies fed to us by the powers that fear us.  We won’t be those that walk idly by, taking for granted everything that is truly in front of us.  We will be Jack.  Everyday we will learn, and everyday we will say that we lived it to the fullest.  “Everyday is beautiful because we question you”.

So at this election year, the final week drawing to a close, let us truly exercise our rights and stand up and fight back.  We have all the information we need at our finger tips.   There are links in the interest section of this site that can give you ideas on taking action.  Check out democracy now, indymedia.org, and submedia.tv.  Let us emancipate our selves from this state of apathy that we are in and create a new one.  I’m not here to tell you what you should be doing to make this happen, in your heart you know what that is, I’m just telling you that you can do it.  WE can do it.

Here’s more about Emma Goldman for you to watch if your interested my friends.

So I do this alot.  I wrote an entire long blog about the economic crisis and what is really going on.  I researched this great article that noam chomsky wrote regarding the crisis, I researched more and more.  It took forever.  I stood back, read it and hated it.  It was stale, and said nothing.  I did the same thing the other day.  I worked on drawing up a back piece for a guy.  I drew this huge, intricate piece, spent all day on it.  Then I stepped back, took a look at it, and hated it.  Right away I knew what I needed to draw wasn’t the huge piece I was just working on.  I needed to draw something simple and huge.   This blog went the same way.   

“An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide. A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.” 

This was the head line that I read the other morning on the AP website.   So I continued further.

“In Los Angeles last week, a former money manager fatally shot his wife, three sons and his mother-in-law before killing himself. Karthik Rajaram, 45, left a suicide note saying he was in financial trouble and contemplated killing just himself. But he said he decided to kill his entire family because that was more honorable, police said. Rajaram once worked for a major accounting firm and for Sony Pictures, and he had been part-owner of a financial holding company. But he had been out of work for several months, police said.”

and so I continued.

“Pamela Ross, 57, and her husband were fighting foreclosure on their home when sheriff’s deputies in Sevierville came to serve an eviction notice. They were across the street when they heard a gunshot and found Ross dead from a wound to the chest. The case was even more tragic because the couple had recently been granted an extra 10 days to appeal.”

and I continued reading.

“In Ocala, Fla., Roland Gore shot his wife and dog in March and then set fire to the couple’s home, which had been in foreclosure, before killing himself. His case was one of several in which people killed spouses or pets, destroyed property or attacked police before taking their own lives.”

I was honestly in a state of shock.  This made the “economic crisis” that the world is going through much more personal.  All of a sudden it wasn’t just a blurb on CNN while I’m using the coffee shop’s free wireless, it became my neighbor, my family, me.  Something is fundamentally wrong with this situation.  This is not the life that we are supposed to have.  Capitalism is a machine that is falling apart, and it’s throwing pieces at the factory workers, maiming and destroying them.  

State Capitalism is like a machine.  Machines work with tiny parts, cogs that connect perfectly to other cogs as the wheel turns.   Gears grabbing the teeth of other gears.  Every piece has a specific place that it has to be put for it to work properly.  When the teeth of the cog wear, the connections are harder to make, and the cog starts skipping, missing steps and the machine starts to fail.  The way capitalism has been set up is much the same.  With every transaction that is made, the effects of said transaction aren’t considered, and the machine starts to wear.  When you buy a car, your transaction is through, right?  Not at all, because now you have to consider the gas you will buy, the pollution your car creates, the parts you will need, the money your car will now be taking from the economy.  It’s an endless cycle of cause and effects, with the effects never really being considered.  Banks operate in much the same way, giving out loans, and then borrowing against those loans, and then borrowing again and again and again, until finally all of the money out in the world is just imaginary.  You can no longer trace back transaction, or even say how much money your company has because of the fact that it is all imaginary.  It would be like if I borrowed a dollar from you.  But Steve already owed me a dollar, so I just move the transaction to Steve owing you a dollar.  Now Josh owed Steve a dollar, so now Steve moved the transaction to where Josh owes you the dollar.  With every transaction move though, everyone has to pay the other person fifty cents.  So we don’t have any clue how much anyone really has in their pockets.  And so the crisis begins.  How silly is all of this?   

Unfortunately this silly situation leads to every horrible situation you can imagine.  To make it more personal, let me tell you a story.  I’ve mentioned before about working in the inner city of memphis when I was younger.  I worked with some pretty amazing kids in horrible circumstances.  When we’d come by the house to pick them up, you would walk in to a house with dirt floors.  No hard wood, carpet, linoleum, nothing.  Dirt floors.   A family of 6 living on dirt floors, with nothing to eat.  We provided the one meal a day that alot of these kids would eat.  I had one kid I loved named Bam Bam.  The kid was cute, and strong for a 3 year old.  He would run around at lunch time, stealing every kid’s lunch.  It didn’t matter how big they were, the kid was determined.  I watched him go after 10 years olds, making them run and cry.  He was like Indiana Jones trying to get the holy grail.  He couldn’t believe that he would have any other chance to eat because of how rarely he was able to.  Trying to explain to a hungry 3 year old that they don’t need to steal all the food from everyone’s lunches because we will be back tomorrow with more food for them really affects you.  How is this fair?  How is this a working economic structure.  The rich get richer, the poor get poorer and gap between gets larger, but now the gap is swallowing families, children.  Something is wrong.

So this is always where the same question comes up.  “So this situation might be bad, but what’s the other options?  If you can’t present me with something better, then I’m gonna stick with it.”  There is no reason to continue living our lives like this.  If something is destroying our families, our lives, it needs to end.  If you asked anyone in this country they will agree that something needs to change, so why hasn’t it changed?  The power and answer is in  your hands, not mine, not anyone else’s.  It is no one else’s job to present you with an answer, you are the only one with that answer.  Revolution starts with one.  One person who is fed up, sick and tired of watching people dying around them.  Revolution begins with understanding that every action you do will in turn create other reactions.  WE can’t live like the banks, spending imaginary money, living imaginary lives, killing ourselves for imaginary ideas.  Embrace what is real.  Embrace reality.  Next time you walk down the street, smile at every person that walks by.  Next time you go to spend your imaginary monopoly money, think about the effect your purchase will have on the world around you.  The next time you spend a day doing nothing, sitting on a couch watching television personalities talk about imaginary worlds that they have created, go out and do something.  Start a community garden, clean up your local park, volunteer at a nursing home.  Volunteer at a shelter, work at a boys and girls club, hell, spend time with your family, hug your friends.  Do something!  We can’t sit back and be controlled by the imaginary life that has been created for us by the powers that be.  Reality is here and now, and it will never come back.  This is your life, good to the last drop.

The powers that be fear the power WE have.  They have created a world that we are all sucked into.  No longer do we care about what is going on around us, we have to know if brad and angelina’s 15th kid is gonna be as pretty as them.   We have to know if a hollywood starlet gained 5lbs, and judge them for it.  We have to know who is getting divorced or on drugs or going broke.  This isn’t life.  This imaginary world of monopoly money, screens, smoke, and mirrors is not reality!  REALITY is the family that can’t afford to eat that live down the street from where you are throwing away your half eaten burger.  REALITY is the fact that your mom wants you to call her and give her a hug.  REALITY is that the wool is being pulled over your eyes.  REALITY is the fact that you can make a difference on your own.  The revolution begins with ONE.  There was only ONE Martin Luther King Jr., ONE Pancho Villa, ONE Fred Hampton, ONE Emma Goldman, embrace that!  Be that ONE.

WE can change the world, WE can be revolutionaries, WE can make this nightmare end, we just have to do it.  WE have to stand up.  

“If you stand up, and I stand up, and we all stand up, it’ll be anarchy!”

-bender, the breakfast club.

Capitalism Stole My Virginity, The (international) Noise Conspiracy 

I just did an interview with a online magazine from the netherlands that i was pretty excited about how it turned out. Here’s a preview.

Where are you from?

everywhere. I don’t live anywhere at the moment.

What inspires you to create art and how do you keep motivated when things get tough in the studio? (more…)

Here’s a preview for an article International Tattoo is putting out about the art I do next month. (March 2008 issue)

What was your childhood like?

Childhood was defnitely a different experience. I learned my work ethic from growing up without luxury. I have been working two jobs since the age of 14, and realized early that I was the only one who was going to get me anywhere in life. You can’t depend on anyone but yourself to get by. I grew up as an only child. My parents split when I was young, and I took care of my mom growing up. Art was really the onlly outlet I had. We didn’t have much, so I would draw with whatever I could find on whatever I could find. Alot of butcher paper and bic pens were used in the process. Drawing was the only way I could release all the feelings that i had inside about what was going on in my life. Throughout life it became more of an outlet, and less of me trying to produce products. Because of that, I never had any formal art training. I went to college for completely different things (theology, theatre) and ended up an artist in the end. It’s really all I know and all I love. (more…)