First off, my apologies for the radio silence the last couple of weeks. My dog, Hudson, an Old-English Mastiff of 115 pounds, and not even six years old, was diagnosed with bone cancer. We love our dogs. They’re family. This sad news hit me hard, inhibiting my ill-informed, occasionally coherent scribblings here. You can read all about bone cancer on the VetMD site. It’s a real bitch of a disease, akin to brutal punishment or …
I may have written about this before, but I’m old, and I think I’ve earned the right to repeat myself occasionally. When I was a graphic designer, one of my longest clients was the organization behind a local 12k race known around the world (not an exaggeration) as Bloomsday. For twenty-five years I provided advertising and marketing materials for the annual race, held in Spokane on the first Sunday in May (note: the 49th running …
It’s morning. I’m laying in bed. I look at the clock radio and note the hour. It is that groggy time between “Just another ten minutes,” and “Get your butt out of bed, Cupcake!” I turn on the radio to get weather and propaganda updates (because Right-Think is always the Best-Think!). The station is in the middle of an advertisement, of course. This one is for–I kid you not–a divorce support service. Their tagline: “Let …
On the occasion of Hudson’s nineteenth porcupine encounter
In which Owen Benjamin offers up the most Flat Earthiest question of them all.
The political season, having reached the expected crescendo of crazy, The Missus told me she was tired of it all and wanted to talk about something else. Not that I’m constantly going on about it, but even the little I mention is too much, I guess. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s talk about Flat Earthers.” With a sigh, she dropped her head into her hands. “Jehovah’s Witnesses?” Belief has always fascinated me. For one thing, the …
I do a newsletter. It’s not a monthly newsletter. Instead, it’s a “I’ll Get To It When I Feel Like It And Have Something To Say” newsletter. For most people that “Having Something To Say” part is not a big hurdle. One need simply browse social media for a few minutes to find lots of people with something to say, and even more people with nothing to say and a compulsive need to say it …
For the longest time I’ve used Corel Painter for nearly all my portraits. About 2 years ago I – foolishly, in a moment of weakness – opted for a new subscription model for Painter. So instead of evaluating and deciding if new upgrades were worth the cost of upgrading, I would automatically get the new upgrade as part of my yearly $200 subscription fee. Well, it’s been over two years without any upgrades in Painter, …
I’ve been painting pet portraits steadily for the last five years (and as a side-business for the five years prior to that). Most of my work has come to me through word of mouth, and repeat customers. In the last year or so, orders have slowed. I figured it was time to try something new. This past October and November, I purchased a booth in two local craft fairs. My booth consisted of several sample …
Every time I encounter a flat earth believer, it’s like coming across a highway accident. As I slowly inch by the sputtering road flares, I try not to look at the broken inferences, non-sequiturs, and bloody analogies strewn on the road. But look I must. In doing so I feel pity and sadness at the loss of another misled mind that swerved into oncoming science, saying to myself, “if only they had been secured by …
