on the TX board of education

Truth is under siege in this nation, dear friend, and it is being attacked by such loathsome persons as the conservative members of the Texas board of education. Just this week I was reading about the actions of these dangerous individuals, and of their attempt to keep nearly 5 millions of school-children in the dark about one of the most important figures in the history of our American republic, Thomas Jefferson. I did not attend the sittings at which these religious fanatics attempted to spread their hatred, and, thus, I did not personally witness their evil ways, but anyone who tries to keep from the eyes of our young people information about the man who wrote our most important of documents, the Declaration of Independence, should be stripped of his or her power and pilloried.

The actions of these confused, sad little people were likely taken to obscure from view some of Jefferson's other writings, such as his version of the Christian bible, one from which he removed any mention of such foolish nonsense as virgin births, talking snakes, burning and talking bushes, and people flying magically up to or down from the heavens, keeping however the core of its teaching intact, that being the Golden Rule, which states that you should do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. (Christianity is but one of many religions that teaches the Golden Rule, since nearly every other major world religion builds upon this exact same teaching, among them Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Pastafarianism.) Things would not be nearly so bad if the Texans kept things to themselves and taught their children whatever lunacy they decided were best (such as their lionization of McCarthyism and their efforts to replace mentions of democracy and freedom with the word republic), but many other boards of education in our Union follow the Texans' lead, buying such textbooks as they design, preferring to let the Lone Star folks go through the hassle of deciding what should and should not be taught instead of doing their own fucking jobs and figuring things out for themselves. Of course, it is not the Texans' fault that other boards of education copy their efforts, but these their most recent offenses against the standards of historical preservation and common sense highlight the recent efforts by the more fanatical religious organizations in this land to hijack our founding documents and to try and justify their religious zealotry and their plans to overthrow our secular government on grounds that ours was somehow founded as a Christian nation.

In the words of George Washington and John Adams, writing as they did to those present at the signing of the Treaty of Tripoli, words ratified unanimously by the contemporary Congress: “the Government of the United States was not, in any sense, founded upon the Christian religion.” There we have it, plain as day, simple and unequivocal, that the persons who risked Life, Liberty, and sacred Honor to found this nation did not do so in order to create upon these lands some sort of shining New Jerusalem where everyone would pray at the alter of a white-skinned, straight-haired Jesus. (If he existed at all, Jesus of Nazareth, an Aramaic-speaking Jew, would have stood under five-foot six-inches tall, having a light-brown complexion and nearly black, wiry hair). How do we stop these religious fanatics and their war against everything that America stands for, and how do we protect our history from those who would seek to destroy it, from people such as the conservatives who sit on the Texas state board of education? We start, dear reader, by critically analyzing everything we see and hear, by keeping the head on a swivel, and by fighting the threat of theocracy wherever it should arise. Stay frosty, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on the SDUBS codex

Street artists have a method, yet they have no known method; they follow a code, yet they follow no known code. There is a rule and a measure to the business of graffiti, a codex of unwritten, non-binding, and unspoken rules that are themselves constantly in flux, and always changing. As it would be foolish to attempt to capture these rules or to try to fix them in ink and in time, and as few who dare write about them live to tell the tale (let alone receive any sort of respect from their peers), let us examine a few of the more apparent entries in the SDUBS codex, or the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialist's rulebook.

To celebrate the glories of socialism, the SDUBS applies her artwork primarily to public property such as street signs, USPS mail boxes, pavement, asphalt, utility poles, subway and light-rail cars, city buses, and to any otherwise unadorned surface located in or on local, state, or federal government buildings. (Graffiti will find its way onto privately-owned property, but if it does, it more than likely belongs on whatever boring and otherwise unadorned surface the vandal decided to deface.) Since she cannot hope to please all persons who might cast eyes upon her labors, the SDUBS works to satisfy her own artistic sensitivities and not those of anyone else. As her work is constantly exposed to external and internal criticism, she allows her natural abilities to flourish ceaselessly, and strives to make her artwork more vibrant, more colorful, less oppressive, more daring, less confusing, and more dastardly than all the rest; it is her goal to criticize those things as she sees wrong with the society in which she lives. Driven by a righteous purity that even she cannot quite explain, she is always on the move seeking out virgin surfaces upon which to display her talents. A creature of deep serenity and pervasive inner calm, she goes about the business of graffiti accompanied only by her own steadfast conviction, never hesitating in the application of her work, never fearful of the potential consequences of her actions, never glancing about to see who might be looking at her; she is a seasoned operator who cares about little but the task at hand. She does not linger near the applied work, nor does she deviate from her course any longer than it might take to stick up her dearly departed piece. And, finally, she experiments with any and every conceivable style of artwork creation and application until she has found the mixture that suits her best: Hereby, she avoids frustration, plays to her greatest strengths, and stagnates neither in style nor in daring.

The author hopes that this brief but poorly-worded and insufficiently-researched list might help the uninitiated to gain a better understanding of street art, of the street artist, and of the goals and aspirations of these strange and wonderful persons. To the night-crawling, alley-lurking, pride-swallowing, risk-taking SDUBS of the world: May your pens not leak, your nozzles never clog, and your hearts stay free of pride and malice. Mahalo, friends, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit