I had to make one. How can I grow old as an artist and have people ask "What did you do during the Cartoon War?" and have nothing to show for it except a thumb up my ass. How many calls to arms will artists get in a lifetime? Artists should have a duty to make their own personal Muhammad Cartoon! Causing fear is how terror extremist groups gauge if they are winning or not. The world needs to stop being afraid of these idiots and paint them up like clowns with guns. Any group which cannot respect another world view deserves to look stupid. They need to start taking themselves much less seriously. Remember The Guru Maharaj ji ? He ripped off his followers for decades and promised to levitate the Houston Astro Dome with "Green Energy"(where was this bastard during Katrina???). I understand that people like to believe in their magic little spiritual worlds, to get the rush you get when you feel self important for no good reason at all. And everyone should have every right to do so. However, not acknowledging fundamentals of reality makes you look like an idiot to people who see things differently. Do you think some people are stupid? So do I! It's not about morality, right or wrong, or any self-righteous platform... It's about TRUTH. If you want yours to Dominate someone else's, those people are going to look at you either like a big fat DUMMY or a God (as if you have to ask which you might look like!). Getting irate, belligerent, and violent doesn't change the fact that some people are not interested in your Kool-Aid! This goes for you neo-right-wing-jesus juice slurping-fascist-christians as well. If your spirituality is not a PERSONAL experience... There is a large chunk of the world who considers you an ASSHOLE and your way of life ANNOYING! If you don't like having your bible-bubble burst, then SHUT the fuck up and it's a non-issue! When you open the panel for discussion, you will learn that "religion" does not equal "reality" and you will deserve it.

T-Shirts and other merchandise of my cartoon are available HERE. I think that the fact that I made one when there are Fatwas going around prooves that my balls are big enough to warrant your support.

This is by far the best Muhammad cartoon yet.

Muhammad Cartoon for the Cartoon War

John Spencer, who plays Leo McGarry on the West Wing, died today at 58. May this Jersey boy rest in peace.

John Spencer dies at 58

I have come to the conclusion that Seth MacFarlane is a comedic genius. At least, I can assume as much in the absence of something truly definitive. I know almost nothing about the man, besides the fact that everything his name is connected with is serious funny. Family Guy, American Dad, Robot Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory, et cetera.

In order to really make me laugh out loud, you have to appeal to something directly between "sheer stupidity", "retro-pop-culture and/or significant history", "great insight", and "intellectual arguments". Its a hard place to hit. Too close to any one or two of those and it fails, getting filed under "sheer stupidity" by default, or "boring" if it has merit, ironically.

I'm a big fan of animation in general. If there was a visual medium I'd want to write for, animation would be it. Right now, as far as humor goes in that space, the MacFarlane crew is ruling with impunity. There is a philosophy buried within the funny, but its vague in all the right ways. Let there be irreverence, only let it have some clue. Let the message be in the eye of the beholder. Wink, muthafucker, wink.

MacFarlane and crew, kudos.

Seth MacFarlane (Wikipedia)

DougZ has new website up. Don't miss the gallery.

DougZ is also The Golden Dawn's bass player. Check out the demos they have posted. The Golden Dawn is the most true rock n' roll band out of the Jersey Shore.

Doug Z Art & NINK - No Imagination No Kingdom...

Bochco, for one, is not kidding himself about higher purpose: "Our agenda … is simply, and fundamentally, to create a very compelling entertainment," he says in the video press kit FX sent out with the series' first three episodes. Gerolmo is more expansive: "War is a natural subject of television. It's got all the drama of 'Law & Order' and it's got all the action of '24' and, for better or worse, it's got all the gore of 'CSI.' Why not write about war? … We can give you a powerful, visceral gut-wrenching experience that the news can't give you."

The soldiers all have nicknames — "Smoke," "Dim," "Doublewide," "Angel," and so on — and general attitudes, but, with a couple of exceptions, not yet much in the way of personalities. In general ways, they are reminiscent of the sort of characters who populated the war films of old: There is the "smart guy," a kind of slumming intellectual, whose intelligence is signaled, as it has been in a thousand other films, by the fact that he wears glasses; the All-American Kid; the urban cynic; the ethnic guy (here an Arab American from Detroit); the tough sergeant and his clueless superior. And there are the usual Hollywood touches that add excitement not necessarily in the service of truth — the power ballad that ends the episodes, the florid camera moves (though this is less eccentric than some Bochco productions), the smoke and lighting effects. When the stateside husband of a soldier goes to a family support group, all the women are good-looking, as if they'd just stepped over from "Desperate Housewives." One gets a whiff of "Apocalypse Now" here, a taste of spaghetti westerns there.

Enter Taint Ment.

LA Times | Baghdad blues, Over There

For once, a book which really lives up to its title. Hall self-published this massive tome in 1928, consisting of about 200 legal-sized pages in 8 point type; it is literally his magnum opus. Each of the nearly 50 chapters is so dense with information that it is the equivalent of an entire short book. If you read this book in its entirety you will be in a good position to dive into subjects such as the Qabbala, Alchemy, Tarot, Ceremonial Magic, Neo-Platonic Philosophy, Mystery Religions, and the theory of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Although there are some questionable and controversial parts of the book, such as the outdated material on Islam, the portion on the Bacon-Shakespeare hypothesis, and Hall's conspiracy theory of history as driven by an elite cabal of roving immortals, they are far out-weighed by the comprehensive information here on other subjects.

An excellent book, regarded as one of the most comprehensive occult books ever. Now in the public domain, so enjoy!

Secret Teachings of All Ages

Another creepy video by Chris Cummingham with Aphex Twin doing the soundtrack. Check out this longer and higher resolution version of the trailer.

Rubber Johnny

Pretty neat video of performance art using sand to make drawings.

Korean Performance Sand Art

The following poem was written by Karol Wojtyla when he was in his 20's, during the war. It was a time when friends, colleagues, and teachers were being shipped off to concentration camps. His father, who he was extremely close to, had recently passed away. Karol had escaped imprisonment and death at the hands of the Germans several times by this point, and was working in the inhuman conditions of a rock quarry to avoid deportation. This poem recounts when a fellow worker standing next to him was killed. Several miles away, untold numbers of people were being put to death in bulk at Auschwitz. Several years later, he would enter the priesthood.

The Quarry

He wasn't alone.
His muscles grew into the flesh of the crowd, energy their pulse,
As long as they held a hammer, as long as his feet felt the ground.
And a stone smashed his temples and cut through his heart's chamber.
They took his body and walked in a silent line
Toil still lingered about him, a sense of wrong.
They wore gray blouses, boots ankle-deep in mud.
In this, they showed the end.
How violently his time halted: the pointers on the low voltage dials jerked, then dropped to zero again.
White stone now within him, eating into his being, taking over enough of him to turn him into stone.
Who will lift up that stone, unfurl his thoughts again under the cracked temples?
So plaster cracks on the wall.
They laid him down, his back on a sheet of gravel.
His wife came, worn out with worry; his son returned from school
Should his anger now flow into the anger of others?
It was maturing in him through his own truth and love
Should he be used by those who came after, deprived of substance, unique and deeply his own?
The stones on the move again; a wagon bruising the flowers.
Again the electric current cuts deep into the walls.
But the man has taken with him the world's inner structure, where the greater the anger, the higher the explosion of love.

The Quarry, by Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II)

] Bill Hicks was one of four people I had never known
] personally, but seriously mourned their passing upon
] being notified of each of their deaths. The others were
] Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham, and George Harrison. When Bill
] died in February 1994, I felt as if I had lost a kindred
] spirit --- as I believe in truth just as strongly as he
] did. This was the case because Bill and I were both born
] under the sign of Sagittarius. People born under this
] sign are said to be perpetual students, and are very
] serious about honesty and truth. Sagittarians are also
] voracious readers, a subject about which Bill often
] joked.
]
]
] I had never known Bill Hicks, and likewise, I never had
] the chance to see his stand-up act, even though he was a
] friend of Bob Fiorella, a comedian who lives in my own
] city of Buffalo, New York USA. Buffalo is the type of
] city that doesn’t have that big of a night-life, and
] this is because of the perpetually depressed economy in
] our area. Because of  my own life experience, I relate
] to what he discussed in his act on a number of levels.
]
]
] Kevin Booth was Bill’s closest friend, and partner in
] many adventures. Kevin was also Bill’s producer and his
] business partner. Together, they began something called
] Sacred Cow Productions, which today, can be found at the
] website listed immediately below. Unfortunately, Bill
] died before the Internet had become a daily part of many
] of our lives --- and because of this, Bill never had the
] chance to see Sacred Cow become an online force for truth
] in comedy:

MAYBE QUARTERLY - Vol 2 / Issue 1 - Kevin Booth Talks About Bill Hicks