First the unimportant stuff:

(Edit: am maybe 85% recovered now. The big toe is still a bit sensitive, but that's it)

1. Flavor Flav is talking out of school: we have well over 25,000 gun laws on the books right now if you count state & local statutes...quite a few federal laws, some going back to the 1930's. Whether we need more or not, how to make them more effective, etc. can all be debated (I think firearm laws are a part of the solution but not sufficient by themselves), but a lack of laws here is not the problem.
2. Re technology - I have two words for you: 3D printing. ...it's not just little plastic doodads anymore. Get a good 3D printer, the right power tools, a machinist's ruler & a digital caliper & you can build almost anything you want.
3. It was surprising that Flav "liked" my comments...if I hadn't left my rap phase behind in grade school, I would be thrilled about this.

No exceptions.

Didn't repost it here but a response proved my point perfectly...in < 24 hrs.

In further unimportant news, lately I've been scavenging concrete from waste piles at construction jobsites in town...yes, even with a bad foot. It slowed me down a bit but never stopped me entirely. When I wasn't lifting, hauling & throwing rubble in & out of the truck I was resting as much as possible. Thank heavens for good work boots... Snapshots follow:

If you wonder what the point of this is, it's because I will need it all later on for infill. When the foundation for my place is poured the ground has gotta be high enough to be above any flood zone. As it is now, my parcel isn't the worst as far as flooding goes but could still use a bit of improvement. Infill is something you pay for--you buy it by the ton, & a truck brings it in & dumps it wherever you specify. Until then, if I can get it anywhere for free then I certainly shall.

A new (actually the original is not so new) piece will go live here on the 11th. Stay tuned, folks!

...because the left one is a bit messed up.

One night I was doing laundry in town. I needed something in the back of my truck, so I climbed up--& tripped over the side wall & landed in the bed. In the process my foot hit the side wall hard. A few nights after that, I tore open a blister on the middle toe, used rubbing alcohol & tended to it as best I could. In succeeding days it hasn't healed nearly as quickly as it should...also doesn't smell good. The big toe isn't as bruised as it was but is still highly sensitive to the slightest frontal impact.

Finally I went to a hospital in one of the neighboring towns (the main one here doesn't accept my insurance. We need nationalized healthcare!), checked into their walk-in clinic. Turns out the big toe has a hairline fracture & the middle one is infected...the latter I'd already guessed. I've been walking on it when necessary for almost three weeks, scavenged maybe a couple hundred lbs. of concrete rubble & moved stuff in & out of my storage unit with a bone fracture & an infection the whole time. *smh* Jesus on a fucking pogo stick.

Now I'm on an antibiotic to clear up the latter, & am wearing a protective shoe-like thing with a stiff sole to guard the toes. (They didn't have any toe splints. Welcome to the American small-town hospital) Until my foot recovers, I won't be up to anything too physically demanding. Oh well...guess I can draw & paint a bit more, when I'm up to it.

Sometimes life makes me as irritated as a rattlesnake with a toothpick jammed up its rear end.

(Gotta love OP's assumptions that 1] other people have to listen, not himself, because 2] he already knows The Truth.)

Now with that out of the way...

Found Humor

Re the protests & online noise about the strikes on Iran: Those are a textbook example of selective outrage. Someone else said it as well as I ever could:

The same people also didn't have that energy on Oct. 7th, either. In their spaces you could've heard a sewing needle drop. And I know why.

Also - miss me with the "unprovoked attack" nonsense. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows that Iran's government (not the people) is & has been the root cause of MENA regional instability for many years now. It generously funds Hamas & Hezbollah; it also helped the Houthis take over most of Yemen & encouraged them to provoke Saudi Arabia into a regional war. Khamenei & co. have been pulling that 💩 all over the Near East & have sworn to wipe Israel off the map. Repeatedly.

Did the mullahs really believe there wouldn't be consequences? Did they really think they could do it indefinitely?

Our regular programming will resume in a little bit.

The current WIP...please pardon the uneven lighting. Am going with the fast-to-slow-n-detailed method I used for two pieces in the gallery:

Hope I don't mess up her hair...

Am tired today. Someone please send me some extra sleep.

June 20th Edit: Two more phases, to how it looks as of now:

Politically speaking, Bluesky is an echo chamber as far as I can tell. Quite a few leftists of various stripes migrated there after the Muskrat bought Twatter, renamed it X & started messing around & making it even worse than it already was...when you find accounts whose taglines unironically include "woke AF", you know you're in their country. Got a few out-&-out socialists on there...probably an anarchist milieu, too. I'll have to make sure to avoid getting sucked into the stale maelstrom ("stalestrom"?) of online hysteria & vitriol. Gotta remember: I am only there to post my art & updates on my land project.

Speaking of, I recently scavved maybe 300 lbs of rubble. One of the gas stations in town has been getting something installed under it, so it's been a construction jobsite for almost a month now...yesterday a dumpster was brought in to haul it all away, but I picked over the pile a couple times before that. (Would've gotten more but the pile was mostly pinned down by four large pieces of concrete, each one too heavy for one man to move) At some point my property will need some infill so as to bring the ground above any grade of flood zone, so until then if I can get any of it for free, I'll take it.

Haven't done an awful lot besides the above in the last two weeks because my health issues have been getting in the way. Recently I changed my health insurance...now we'll see how useful it is. ',:-/

Aside from that, I've been doing some art here & there. This past weekend I drove into town...painted a little while I was there. Pics will go up once I've processed 'em, etc.

And of course...

In other unimportant news, I've been scribbling here & there...not much, due to being busy (& more recently, being sick. My sinuses were made in a Chinese t-shirt factory). Check this out if you wanna:

First, the somewhat edited screenshots...my replies are on the low end of each:

Now about my time here:

As of today, it has been two years, three months & almost seven days since I opened this account. Overall it hasn't been bad... Some people are funny as hell in the forums. (Others are just weird to me, but then zoomer humor goes its own way) It's always great when people look at my work, & that's certainly happened since I started posting it here...take a look if you wanna. While NG isn't necessarily the best option for exposing one's art to the public, it's a fine one for getting the eyes of other artists on it. Other artists' input on one's work is necessary if you want to grow as an artist, & I still do even now.

There is a problem, however: that very growth & change is what keeps me from fitting in here. Female bodies have started to bore me as of late...when you've studied them for well over two decades in a few different ways, at some point they don't surprise you anymore. These days I'm getting back into lettering & slowly into landscapes. But those are not what most Newgrounders want to see. You & I both know what they prefer, dear reader...I was into that in my late teens through my twenties into my early thirties. But that was then, & this is now. I also mostly stick with traditional media--that's one thing that has not changed about me & probably never will. Meanwhile, almost everyone else here works all-digital.

In short: even with my time on NG, I still don't really fit in here.

It's kinda bothersome every so often.

I don't believe Virginia Giuffre killed herself. No...no more than I believe Jeffrey Epstein hung himself in his cell even though the jail administration had put him on suicide watch.

Just who was behind their deaths, I cannot say because I don't know & likely never will. I do not invent wild conspiracy plots from a few pieces of suspicious info; too many people do that already. But Epstein's island was a destination for wealthy people he knew. His circle included socialites from the US & Europe....if he was known to certain oil sheikhs in the Gulf states I wouldn't be surprised. Bill Clinton took the "Lolita Express" flight to Epstein's place some 26 times. The point is there are plenty of people who would have a motive to take out Giuffre.

Also, at one point she was hit by a bus when she was in the back seat of someone's car. She wound up in an emergency room for that.

I believe Giuffre died because she knew too much. That is all I have to say on the matter.

________________

Also - tonight I've been reminded why NG is a better place to hang out than Bluesky, all things considered. A few weeks ago I opened an account on the former, for the same reason I started up on here: exposure for my works. How good Bluesky is for that I don't yet know...it resembles X/Twatter but with many more leftists, practically no others of a different political persuasion & overall better control over one's feed.

The feed control, I like. Certain other art-themed accounts there I also like, though some make me look second-rate...guess that can't be helped. But the leftist/wokeist accounts... 🤮😤 Their biases aren't even the worst part--I'm rather liberal on certain issues myself. But they show all the traits of their right-wing enemies: confirmation bias, fanaticism, intolerance of any opinion unlike theirs, black-&-white thinking, & an inability to understand why anyone would differ with their stance for any reason besides the stupidity & double-distilled evil they ascribe to all of the enemy tribe. Those people exist inside a bubble...I'm inclined to believe they can't have a conversation with any non-leftist person in real life.

That's what I've noticed for a while now: the differences between online pol-mobs are verbal & surface-level, while what they have in common comes through their actions.

All this, & I'm supposed to believe in a pluralistic democracy... 😒