Pocket-Sized Masterpieces: The Joy of ATCs

There is a quiet magic in creating something beautiful with your own two hands, but there is an even greater joy in sending that piece of your heart out into the world to make a brand-new friend. This is the beautiful essence of Artist Trading Cards. These miniature works of art, affectionately called ATCs, carry a delightful tradition where the only strict rule is their size; every single card must be exactly 2 ½ by 3 ½ inches, which is the precise size of a standard baseball card.

Within those tiny dimensions, the creative possibilities are absolutely endless. You can use any medium your heart desires, whether that means drawing intricate patterns with white gel pens on dark paper, blending watercolors, or layering bits of vintage paper and ephemera for a beautiful collage. Because they are so small, there is no pressure to create a massive masterpiece; instead, you get to experiment with colors and textures, making each little card a unique expression of your imagination.

Finding My Lines: How a Week of Drawing Made Me Feel Alive

The dolphin on left was drawn on my first day, last Monday. The one on right was drawn on my sixth day. Daily practice is wonderful.

It is a weird, awesome feeling when your hands finally start catching up with your brain. At the beginning of the week, every time I put pen to paper, the lines came out looking completely gimpy. I'd have a perfect image in my head, but what actually ended up on the page looked shaky, lopsided, and just totally off. 

As regards Eminem's penis. From Facebook.

Austin Clifton

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I'm curious about Eminem's penis. It may sound weird but hear me out when I say Something just doesn't line up with this man's junk. In 2000 on the Marshall Mathers LP on the track "Bitch Please I!" he opens his verse with "Aww, naww, big Slim Dogg. Eighty pound balls, dick six inch long". So we establish in the year 2000 his dick is six inches and his balls are 80 pounds. In the year 2018 though, on Kamikaze he says "Wait, got the eeriest feelin', somethin' evil is lurkin' I'm no conspiracy theorist but somethin' here is a foot. Oh yeah, it's my dick" so now we know his dick is a foot. So in 18 years his dick has doubled in size. Here's where it gets weird. On his song "Big Weenie" in 2004 off of his album

"Encore" he states "my weenie is much bigger than yours.

Mine is like stickin' a banana between two oranges" the average size of a banana is around 7.5 inches. Meaning yes it grows. Now we've confirmed that it grew gradually and not instantly. What raises my concern about SlimShadys genitals is his balls. The average weight of an apple is.33 pounds. So two balls relative to apples would be .77 pounds. In just 4 years Eminems balls shrunk to about 0.83% of the original weight but in 18 years his penis doubled in size. Growth and loss of weight aside, its so irregular can't help but ask

"what is wrong with Eminems Balls?"

Simon Tonkin said:

Your research is incomplete and therefore your conclusions are in need of adjustment. In the song "as the world turns" in the Marshal Mathers LP he describes his penis as being able to "...hit the ground and ain't no doubt about it. It caused an earthquake and a power outage."

Eminem is around 5'8'' tall. That puts his penis and balls at a height of around 3'5'' ish give it take from the ground. In order for his Penis to cause an Earthquake when flopped from such a height, it would need a staggering mass of around 146,000,000 metric tons in order to generate a noticable earthquake of around 3.0.

Such mass and implied length suggests a gigantic differencen between Eminem's penis in that song compared to those depicted in his later works.

This leads us to only one logical and proper conclusion. Eminem is actually an insect of a family closely related to the Papilionoformes. His schlong has undergone several biological metamorphosis, not unlike that of an actual butterfly as it assumes form after form after form. Every few years his penis retracts into its silky cocoon, emerging in time for the next album release a new vision of itself. Truly one of the wonders of the natural world and a marvel.

RFK Jr's "Weird" relatives

 

“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be.” RFK Jr

Makes you wonder what kind of stuff he considers weird.

I'm thinking it's stuff like: wearing clothes, sleeping in a bed, and eating regular meals, and not cutting cocks off road kill or beheading whales.

My Private Sanctuary of Ink and Paper

When the four walls of my home start to feel less like a shelter and more like a boundary, my creative rituals become my doorway. Being housebound can easily make a person feel adrift, but for me, passing the time isn't about killing hours; it is about reclaiming my soul and keeping my sanity intact.

The Great Migration: A Cycle of Hope, Hardware, and Hoarding

There is no high quite like the "Order Confirmed" screen. In that moment, you aren't just buying a refurbished HP ProDesk with a solid-state heart; you are buying a version of yourself that is organized and efficient. You tell yourself that this machine will be the one. This is the setup where the art flows, the zines practically layout themselves, and the 32GB of RAM acts as a velvet rope to keep the "system lag" riff-raff out of your creative club.

No, Jesse Welles is NOT pro-Charlie fucking Kirk

Yes, Jesse Welles wrote a song about the killing of Charlie Kirk. NO, it was NOT a pro-gung ho-Charlie is a martyr song.

It was a song about gun violence and freedom of speech...

Beyond the Lip Service

 

I remember the first time I saw Boy George. It was 1981 or 82, I honestly forget which. I was in a bar with my guy, Scott, having a beer, and they had MTV on. Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me came on, and I saw Boy George and my jaw hit the fucking floor and I started laughing in hysterics.

I was utterly astounded that this queer looking guy had the sheer guts to be on TV dressed like a woman. I was amazed that MTV allowed it on their programming. I was too caught up in staring at him and being half amazed, half grossed out, to notice that that motherfucker could SING. I think back now to how I felt, how I was kind of horrified and freaked out, and I think...

Jumping the Shark: The Fonz’s Funeral and Henry Winkler’s Last Laugh

It's a classic case of a show becoming a victim of its own success. What started as a grounded, nostalgic look at 1950s Milwaukee - centered on the Cunningham family - eventually morphed into the "The Fonzie Show," and that’s where the wheels started to come off.

The Surrenderist Guide to Optimized Existing

 

Lets be honest, the rise and grind culture is exhausting, and most life hacks are designed for people who actually have goals. If I see one more suggestion about waking up at 4 AM to drink goddam lemon water and manifest productivity, I'm going to fucking scream into a pillow until I pass out for another six hours. We do not need to optimize our workflow or shred for summer; we need strategies for when the mere act of perceiving reality feels like a full time job with no benefits. This isn't about winning at life - it's about negotiating a peaceful surrender with the pile of mail on the counter.

The Holy Trinity: Why I Keep Buying These Same Three Records

 

Most six-year-olds in 1971 were vibrating to "The Wheels on the Bus" or whatever upbeat nonsense was playing on the radio, but not me. No, I was already deep in the trenches of acoustic melancholy. I was sitting there in my kindergarten class, probably staring at a pile of blocks, while the haunting melodies of Joni Mitchell’s Blue, the earthy warmth of Carole King’s Tapestry, and the gentle drawl of James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James played on a loop in my head. 

I’ve owned these albums on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, and every digital format known to man; at this point, the only thing missing is a reel-to-reel copy, and frankly, my wallet is grateful for that one omission. 

And now, the albums.

The Great Kitchen Standoff: A Bubbly Backwash Production

Left to right: Romeo, Connor, Cubby, Rocco. Cats in order: Not Bob, Mary Ann, Ada

I’m currently living in a low-budget nature documentary where the dogs are hairy potatoes and the cats are fuzzy dictators. Between Not Bob’s entitlement and Romeo’s vibrating tail, the kitchen has become a high-stakes war zone. Send help; or bacon.

I now present a world premier: The Great Kitchen Standoff: A Bubbly Backwash Production

Why Celtics Fans Need to Stop Ignoring Kevin McHale

Kevin McHale wasn’t just part of the Big Three. He was the piece that made the whole thing work. Bird was the genius. Parish was the anchor. But McHale was the matchup nightmare that turned Boston’s front line into something the league had never seen before. Without him, the Big Three isn’t the Big Three. It’s just Bird and Parish with a missing limb.

What’s wild is how often he gets ignored now. Modern Celtics fans talk about Bird like he carried the entire decade on his back, and they treat McHale like he was some nice supporting character instead of the guy who put half the league in the torture chamber. He was the one opponents dreaded. He was the one Barkley and Olajuwon openly admitted they couldn’t guard. He was the one who could drop 30 on you without breaking a sweat or saying a word.

The Gormless Quayle

I miss Dan Quayle and his absolutely harmless idiocy. Don't you?...

Creating, Growing, and Returning to Life

For a long time, I thought my creative life had gone quiet. Not dead, just sleeping under a pile of exhaustion, pain, and the everyday grind of being a human with a body that doesn’t always cooperate. But lately something has cracked open again. I’ve been wandering back into the arts like someone returning to a house they used to live in. Everything feels familiar, but also new in ways I didn’t expect..

New Art

 

There's a WHOLE bunch of new art inside...

Who has time to be bored? Not me!

Today was not really an art day. I diddled around with the Gimp for about an hour, then my writing muse slapped me upside my head. I have written six articles for my blog today about all kinds of things:

• Impeaching Trump 
• Chicago and Music being in my bones
• A bit about a portmanteued proverb I love 
• One about nicotine addiction
• One about god, or the idea of god, or whatever
• And this one, which only kind of counts

It was a productive day.

I really am an eclectic freak. Playing uke and recorder, doing digital art and zentangle and making jewelry, and writing from my gut. Between all that, I talk to people, make new friends, share a gazillion memes, play computer games, and more. And when I go to bed, I read for at least an hour before turning out the light.

I don't have time to be bored. Considering that I'm basically housebound and can't really leave my bedroom due to the difficulty involved in hauling my carcass from room to room, my life is incredibly rich and full.

I am a very fortunate old crone.

Chicago: Where the Music Took Hold - TWICE

I am willing to bet good money that the first music I ever heard was my mother singing to me in Chicago, the city where I was born and where I lived for the first three months of my life before we moved to Boston. 

The year I was eleven, life went pretty cattywumpus. I'd been living with my mother for the previous year, and that pretty much imploded due to my special needs as an undiagnosed bipolar person. I returned to my father's home, and since he was in the middle of relocating across town and setting up housekeeping, he asked his mom, my Gramma Mary, if I could come to Chicago and stay with her for a month or two. Gramma said yes...

No Time For Nazi Shit

[Verse 1]

You crawl out of the gutter with your bargain‑bin hate,

Waving plastic flags like it’s 1938.

You scream about “purity,” we scream “get a clue,”

’Cause the future isn’t waiting for a coward like you.

[Pre-Chorus]

You want a world that’s small and petty,

We want a world that’s free

And every time you open your mouth,

It’s fucking blasphemy.

[Chorus]

No room for your shit in the streets we claim,

No throne for your fear, no crown for your shame.

You can march in circles, but you can’t rewrite the past

We’re the generation built to outlast.

[Verse 2]

You hide behind symbols you barely understand,

Pretending you’re a soldier in some holy homeland.

But we’ve read the history, we know how it ends

Your empire of delusion collapses again.

[Bridge]

We’re louder than your slogans,

We’re brighter than your lies.

You can’t drown out a chorus

That refuses to die.

[Chorus]

No room for your shit in the streets that we claim,

No throne for your fear, no crown for your shame.

You can march in circles, but you won’t rewrite the past

We’re the generation built to outlast.

[Outro]

So keep your brittle hatred,

We’ll keep our rebel fire

’Cause every time we shout you down,

The world climbs one rung higher.

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