Vivian Swift's Blog, page 7

Brand New Day.

Happy 2021 Everyone! 

On final day of the old year, Top Cat and I went to the local stately manor to celebrate our belated Solstice and keep an eye on the incoming New Year.

The stately manor is Cedarmere, the home of William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878), poet, media magnate, namer of our local library and Bryant Park in New York City, founder of the Republican Party in 1860 in order to bankroll his chosen candidate for the presidency Abraham Lincoln, that William Cullen Bryant.

You’ve seen my watercolors of his property in my book Gardens of Awe and Folly:

This is what it looks like as of December 31, 2020 (local time):

Yes, the tree, a magnificent Beech, died about three years ago and was cut down. I got to hug it before it was felled, and say Thank You and Good Bye.

Mr. Bryant dug out the pond to give his front yard some esthetic interest. As you can see, the property is on a cliff above an inlet of the Long Island Sound, which you can see in the distance. 

We snuck in a bottle of champagne and sat on a bench until it got dark, toasting all our hopes for 2021, the Year of the White Ox. 

 

Our other New Year Eve traditions include more champagne at home, making crab cakes for dinner,and watching Casablanca. With help, this year, from our little kitten Kimmy:

And then, not a moment too soon, 2021 arrived here on the north shore of Long Island and we let the relief wash over us.

 

 

Take heart, Dear Ones. This is a map of 2021:

Here in Casa Kimmy, we hoarde all our issues of the New York Times (because we have six cats and four litter boxes) and this past week I happened to notice that we were using some very old stock, from July 10, 2019. Can you guess what we were obsessing about on that Wednesday of July 10, 1019?

Teenage vaping.

It seems like such an innocent time. Is it too much to ask that 2021 be that kind of dull year?

But before we turn all our focus onto ringing in the new, the internet is still wrapping up this past Christmas so here’s what I’ve found for you to remember 2020 by:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is my favorite one of all, tweeted by The Korean of Ask A Korean:

Well, it’s been another week in Crazy Town. . . 

Thanks to Dear Reader Jeanie in Michigan for this card, by Troubled Birds, which sums up Zen in the Time of Trump.

. . . and I think we can all agree that Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, is the biggest piece of shit west of the Mississippi. I mean, he made me cheer for Walmart — WALMART.

After Hawley goaded all his Twitter followers to boycott Walmart, the company had to apologize and take down the Tweet so you’re lucky that I got it for as proof that somebody at Walmart deserves a huge stonking raise.

In case you don’t know Josh Hawley, he was re-elected this past year even though his opponent discovered that Hawley was using a fake Missouri address in order to qualify as a resident. Twitter too k note, and I learned that having a “cussing mama” was a thing:

I don’t have kids, but I’m a cusser, so I called Hawley’s DC phone line and left a message calling him, twice, a piece of shit and sending him my hopes that he will be arrested for sedition. As I did not use threatening language I do not expect a visit from the FBI, but who knows?

Also making headlines was Luke Letlow, age 41, a Republican who, after holding multiple massless campaign rallies in Louisiana and agitating to keep his state “open for business”, came down with COVID and died on December 29, leaving behind a wife and two small children.

From my No. 1 All Time Favorite work of art, the Bayeux Tapestry (you can look it up).

Have I mentioned how I am crushing on the Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman?

 

 

 

 

 

Lt. Gov Fetterman wants the $3million to give to PA food banks. Aren’t Texans supposed to be manly men? Man up, Danny boy.

And the shit show rolls on:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s the kicker: the medal isn’t even the Peace Prize. The morons at the White House PR dept. can’t even steal correctly. The medal pictured is one that is used to award the prize in the Chemistry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great first weekend of 2021, everyone. We made it.

Things.

Will.

Get.

Better.

One way or another, Things Will Get Better.

Bye 2020 Don’t Let the Door Hit You On The Way Out.

The Winter Solstice is usually when I start to celebrate Out With The Old and In With The New, but this year it feels to me that the end of the sad old year and the begging of a sparkling new one full of promise and hope doesn’t take place oh January 1, but on January 20.

Until then, there’s still a lot of 2020 left to endure and mull over.

2020: How It Started:

2020: How It Ended:

This is what happens when you get a kitten in 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m typing this on Friday morning, which is December 25, which is the Chris part of the Winter holiday of ChrisHanuKwanSolstice. Someone once observed that there’s no holiday that extinguishes itself more thoroughly than Christmas, meaning that, on December 26, Christmas is dead, gone, over, raggedy, and out of mind. that’s a shame. I wish there were more than one holiday a year that made such good use of tinsel.

 

 

This one took me a few minutes to get. Then it was funny.

 

 

 

In one day of 53-degre weather, all our snow melted, so today we are very soggy and gray here on the north shore of Long Island.  We got 10.75 inches of snow last week, but Binghampton, in upstate New York near the Pennsylvania border, got 41 inches. This is how that went:

 

 

You know that we have to do a little Trump round up (because until January 20, 2021, we still live in Crazy Town). This is a throw back to Christmas 2018, and it actually made me laugh:

Let’s let Lucy say it, say it one last time:

More proof of Trump assholery:

But wait, there’s more.

Trump’s second round of pardons of 26 crooks, thieves, liars, and seditionists included Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner’s father (and Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law).

What got Charles Kushner in trouble with the Feds was something he did after he discovered his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal authorities. Charles Kushner hatched a scheme for revenge and intimidation.

Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, William Schulder, the husband of his sister, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera. 

The plot succeeded, and Mr. Kushner had a videotape sent to the Schulders. Instead of being intimidated, though, the tape enraged the Schulders and they reported it to the feds, who recruited the prostitute to turn on Kushner.

Kushner later pleaded guilty to three counts of tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations. He was put in prison for 14 months by the ex-governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, who was then a federal prosecutor.

“Mr Kushner pled guilty. He admitted the crimes,” Christie told PBS last year. 

“I mean its one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney. And I was US attorney in New Jersey.”

 

The Republicans have come up with new paradigms to use in their attempts to  overturn the election. You got to have it to them, they do find the best ways to persuade morons:

 

 

 

I’m giving you al this information in case you have to explain this to a Trumper in your life. that is, if you think they can understand the concept of “facts”.

Let’s let Adam Schiff, Democratic representative from California, explain it in is opening arguments for the impeachment of Donald Trump in the Winter of 2019:

File this under “O, The Irony”:

This hot Boomer is Bruce Bartman, age 70, from Delaware County, PA, who registered his dead mother and forged her signature on her mail-in ballot:

I bet he thinks that beard looks good on him, in a Marlboro Man/1970s rocker kind of way.

Two other graciously aging Baby Boomers were also caught casting fraudulent votes in Pennsylvania. One was Robert Lynn, age 67, in Luzerne County, who also voted for his dead mother, and the other is Ralph thurman, age 71, who voted for himself and then put on a cap and sunglasses and tried to vote again in his son’s name. These are the ONLY cases of voter fraud to be substantiated in Pennsylvania.

What the fuck is with these old white guys? 

Oh right. White old guys think they own America:

Really, when do we arrest this piece of shit for sedition?

Well, every now and then, we get a small victory that gives up hope that we are moving, inch by inch, in the right direction: 

It’s true, by the way, what Joe Biden’s incoming deputy chief of staff, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said about Republicans is right. They are fuckers:

In 2021 I resolve to spend less time being angry about America.  

I’m going to spend more time thinking deep thoughts about life and my place in the universe. I’ll be turning 65 in 22 days and I think it’s about time I become mature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But wait, there’s more.

To get in the mood for the wrapping up of our visit this week, a selection of internet news that I call  Getting In The Mood For The Let Down of the Post-Christmas Season, we need the right background music. So give a listen to this new, moody French song about Winter’s melancholy. ***

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*** ***It’s not French, it’s Korean. Sorry for the fib, but people seem more willing to listen to a foreign language if it’s French, so I lured you in with a French fake-out.

Here’s your French content:

Have a great weekend, everyone. The next time we meet it will be 2021 and I hope you all will be massively hungover from the huge party you gave yourself to celebrate the end, at last, of a year we will never forget, and the beginning of a new year you will cherish.

 

 

 

It’s That Time of Year.

Winter Storm Gail was thundering into the northeastern coast of America, with dire predictions of 8 – 14 inches to fall on the  north shore of Long Island. So, you know what that means here at Too Many Cats Manor. . .

. . . time to break out the Champagne-O-Meter! (For new readers, the Champagne-O-Meter is the bottle of champagne that I put out in the backyard to use as my gauge, in order to quantify snowfall, because “inches” are bafflingly quaint for those of us who think in “meters”, and “meters” are a threat to our way of life for those of us who think in “inches”, but everyone can be happy thinking in terms of ice-cold, Mother Nature-chilled bubbly.)

The first snow started to fall at 3:38 PM on Wednesday:

This is the little breakfast table on our back patio, as seen through the picture window in the den.

It was already dark an hour later, at 4:30 PM:

This is what it looked like at 7:30 PM:

Right before I went to bed at 9, the rate of snowfall had definitely increased:

I left the Champagne-O-Meter in the good hands of our crack team of weather analysts:

The cats are allowed to use the couches in the den as their scratching posts because that’s what they are going to do ANYWAY.

Yay, we didn’t lose power all night  so we kept heat on all through the blizzard, it was nice and snugly warm when I got up and waited for sunrise at 7:30 AM to document the overnight accumulation:

The feeder was open for Birdie Breakfast Buffet:

We declared a Snow Day, and Top Cat took a day off from his essential work in Manhattan, I decided to read a book instead of doing a 5-mile run, we both dipped into our stash of hand-made dark chocolates instead of food for lunch, and the cats wondered, “How is a Snow Day different from every other Thursday in Cat Land?”

What I mean is, all they do is sleep and eat any way.

The snow stopped at 11:35 AM.

Official Champagne-O-Meter accumulation: 10.75 inches. (273 millimeters.)

Last night Top Cat and I turned off all the lights and watched the snow fall, he with his bourbon and I with my vodka and cream soda (a drink I call the Philadelphia South Paw because Philadelphians drink more cream soda than anyone else in America and I’m left handed) — is there anything more quietly thrilling than the first big snow of the year?  Top Cat and I keep putting off leaving Long Island for more age-appropriate locales (somewhere warmer, or closer to his grown children), because we would hate to miss this, the blustery and dramatic arrival of the majestic fourth season of the year.

Which makes for the perfect segue to the annual Winter festival that I call

ChrisHanuKwanSolstice!

I haven’t done this in a couple of years, so let’s take a wander through my back pages. He’s a catalogue of the designs of the cards that I send out in honor of this year-end holiday:

I was a brand new author/watercolor-illustrator-in-waiting when I sent out my first Winter Holiday card in 2007. It was very corny and cutest, as is to be expected by a baby watercolor illustrator:

The next year I ditched the cliche Xmas trimmings and made a catalogue of everything that makes a cold Winter day such a delight for body and soul:

In 2009 my theme was “Winter on My Beautiful Long Island Sound”:

I don’t know exactly what year this was (if I still have the original art work I haven’t seen it since The Good Wife was still on TV), but I used an illustration from a children’s book from the 1940s as inspiration in style, and made a portrait of me, watched by my cats, howling at the moon like a pagan, and a bookcase loaded with all my favorite books :

This one, below, that I painted scenes from upstate New York, c. 2011, was the first time I used my own name for the Holiday: ChrisHanuKwanSolstice.  The “Solstice” part of this holiday is the only one that I actually celebrate, so in these vignettes I wanted to show Light in Winter in Oneida County:

In 2014, the year that my one and only dog Boogie Girl died, I made this picture of her and my first best cat, Woody Robinson, together in the light of Heaven:

The more I think about ChrisHanuKwanSolstice, the more I want to show how, through the return of the light on the Winter Solstice, an amazing light, seen or intuited, illuminates the deepest and darkest days of Winter:

In 2017, I had been playing with paper sculptures that year, so I made a 3-D version of that rainbow-in-the-forest idea:

Last year’s card was all about my on-going semi-obsession with cutting up books and making castles out of them. For the lights of Solstice I used real, actual little fairy lights in the background (it took me ages to figure out how to do that in a photograph):

This year I was back to my theme of Light in The Forest. I like to use trees because  Solstice, called Yule by us Northern Hemispheric tree-hugging pagans, is when the evergreens are worshipped for being green in the depths of  our Winter. That’s where the Xmas tree and mistletoe traditions come from, but I’m not going to go on about that because everybody probably already knows about that.

This year I used a new media for my cards. Glitter.

I had envisioned a concept for this year’s card, of a other-worldly-colored CHKS beyond-evegreen tree  shining in the midst of a bluesy Winter forest. I was going to use only the power of watercolor to make my card dazzling, but then I found out that my darling Elmer’s makes glitter glue. 

Glitter Glue.

So, I squeezed a drop of glitter glue onto each leaf and, with a paintbrush, I brushed the glue evenly over each tiny frond. I let dry overnight, and voila:

Not very glittery in photographs.

Happy ChrisHanuKwanSolstice, everyone.

Best Wishes that

2020 ChrisHanuKwanSolstice

brings Joy, Serenity, and Awe

to all you become in 2021.

 

 

There are a few current events on my mind this week, so let’s start with the one that makes me the happiest:

Am I the only one who thinks Hillary would make a great Attorney General? You know, the person in charge of seeking justice for the American people v. Trump and all his cronies?

As you know, the control of Congress, and with that the success of the Biden administration, depends on Democrats winning the two run-off elections for senator in the state of Georgia on January 5. Early voting has already started and citizens are turning out in record numbers — 168,000 on the first day. This has Republicans worried.

And this:

Remember Rand Paul (above), the Republican senator from Kentucky, who is also a “doctor”. We’ll catch up with him again later.

I saw this (below) and I wondered, If these are the guys we’re fighting against, do we need to be afraid?

Or should we be very afraid?

The other dust up this week was over a stupid Op-Ed printed in the Wall Street Journal, written by an 83-year old Republican trying to be relevant, mocking Jill Biden for using the honorific “doctor”. Jill Biden has a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Delaware.

This is the current First Lady:

 

And this is our First-Lady-elect:

 

And here’s the kind of “doctor” that the Republicans don’t have a problem with:

Let’s have a side-by-side comparison:

So, yeah. . . 

And this ends our political portion of today’s post because

Anyway, it’s a special week in the life of the world. It doesn’t matter what you celebrate, Dear Ones, we’re all going to have a celestial Solstice on Monday (Winter Solstice in the Northen Hemisphere, Summer Solstice in the Southern half of the orb, and for you in Kuala Lumpur, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Bogota, Singapore, Cali, Quito; well, it’s just another day in December on the equator).

Have a Happy ChrisHanuKwanSolstice everyone!

Enjoy these photos of Cats Being Jerks and celebrate the light and laughter (oh god, that’s so corny). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

39 Days. Just 39 More Days Of This Shit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh sweet Jesus, it’s been an insane week. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

The big news in here in Casa Kitty  is that I have replaced our 16-year old cheese grater with a spiffy new model from Bed Bath & Beyond. It’s bright and shiny and twice as big as the runty model we’ve been using since we got married, and Top Cat and I are are both very pleased with this upgrade. Top Cat grated some lemon zest on it and pronounced it “really nice!” and I am eagerly awaiting my turn at it when I get to use it to shred mozzarella for our Friday Pizza & Netflix Night.

Sometimes the internet (see above) makes you take a long hard look at yourself. I used to be the girl who hitch hiked across state lines to California on weekends so I could hang out with my high school friend’s sister’s Hells Angel boyfriend in Oakland, who always had access to new and exotic kinds of drugs. Thank you, Lynelle’s’s sister’s boyfriend for that Purple Haze that kept me high for two days when I saw Led Zeppelin at Golden Gate Park in 1973.

Now, 47 years later, I get my thrills from a new cheese grater. I did not see this coming.

The  other exciting thing that happened recently was I crossed a new frontier in Pet Portrait painting. It’s all explained below.

I got a request for a Pet Portrait from someone who is rather special to Top Cat and me, so of course I said, “Sure!”

Then I got the photo:

Oh, shit.  It’s a white dog.

I’m OK doing black dogs:

The darling Sophie!

But a WHITE dog?

How do you paint a WHITE dog? On WHITE paper?

That, Dear Readers, is the question.

I always plot my paintings before I dip a brush into paint, so I studied this image of Piper (the subject)  and, since she doesn’t have any distinguishing markings (she’s ALL WHITE) I decided to start with the black smudges that give her face some personality, and make her nose so boopable. Getting that right was going to be crucial to getting her expression right:

 

 

The shape of her pupils, and the direction of her gaze, was the other key to getting her face right. I re-drew them carefully:

Although Piper is a rather pink little girl (go ahead, you can check the reference photo), I prefer to use blue to make shadows here:

 

Her eyes are very dark brown. . . 

. . . and  her pupils are very large and very black:

I had no choice but to use my white acrylic paint to brush in some furry bits around her eyes and nose:

And I had to pencil in some of her furry texture:

 

Since Piper is a WHITE dog, and I’m not using up a whole lot of paint to do her, I thought I’d step up my game and give her a body for this portrait. I went to my handy Dog Encyclopedia and looked up Bichon Frise, but all the Bichons in there were adorable fluffy, and our Piper is not. 

So I found a French Bulldog whose body looked to be similar, and practiced doing paws. . .

. . .  and drew a behind behind Piper’s punim:

Shading with blue:

Next, I layered on the acrylic paint (because I want it to look like I worked hard on this):

Making little spikes for fur — acrylic paint is fun because you can add texture like this:

 

DONE.

The whole time I painted Piper, I got to concentrate on cute little doggos and shades of blue that weren’t too blue and making sure I cleaned all the acrylic paint our of my favorite brushes…

…I did not give Fuck Face (you know who) a single passing thought. 

But comes a time you have to leave your bubble and cope with the madness that is Donald Trump, so let’s get into it, shall we?

 

 

 

We really should have seen it coming. Trump’s whines about the 2020 election being “rigged” is classic Donald Trump.

In 2012, he whined about Scotland and the Scottish:

In 2015, he whined about the entertainment industry:

In 2016, he whined about the Republican primaries:

Trump’s whines would be amusing if he didn’t have the power of being president. This week, he’s using his power to urge Republicans to commit treason:

 

 

 

The final stop on the Trump Crazy Train has always been the Supreme Court. Trump seems to think that all he has to do is ask SCOTUS, stacked with three on his nominees, to void the election results in states that he lost and bippity-bobbity-boo, he’s president for four ore years.

There are two SCOTUS cases that he’s riled up his wing-nut chicken-shit allies into submitting to the court. The first, filed by a Republican State Senator from Pennsylvania (Mike Kelly) to nullify the election returns in PA. This is how that went:

 

Here is the one-sentence dismissal:

The reason that Justice Alito (who is a prick) wrote the dismissal is because he’s the SCOTUS justice in charge of emergency matters coming from Pennsylvania. 

I KNOW!! Me neither! I did not know that SCOTUS divvies up the United States like that!  If I had gone to law school, maybe I would have understood the inner working of SCOTUS better, but I’m not a lawyer, so I need someone to interpret Alito’s terse dismissal:

Since Trump and his moron followers are whining about Fox TV being too liberal, they now gather around a social network app called Parler to discuss the latest fashions in tin foil hats, and this is how they are reacting to this defeat:

*Sigh*

The second lawsuit before the Supreme Court comes from the attorney general of Texas, a sleaze ball by the name of Ken Paxton:

 

The Supreme Court has not agreed to hear the case; on Dec. 8, the court merely ordered Pennsylvania and the other states named in the Texas suit — Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia — to respond by Dec. 10. As I am typing this on the morning of Dec. 11, there has not been any news regarding how definitively SCOTUS is going to ram this pile of shit up Ken Paxton’s ass.

So now we have Red states (Republican), Blue states (Democratic), and Brown states (Republican and full of shit — BTW, Texas should be Brown on this map, but I guess the intent is to show the Red states that are piling on with Texas in this ludicrous lawsuit. 

Here’s a mother map of America that Canada won’t like (sorry, Canada), but it gives me comfort:

Anyhoo, here is my refund up on the current status of Texas’s act of sedition:

Maryland’s Democratic Attorney General is Brian Frosh, and this is how he told Ken Paxton to fuck off:

This is from the Republican governor and the Republican governor-elect from Arizona:

And from Idaho, the most Republican state in the union (84% of its elected officials are GOP), there’s this:

And then this happened, of course:

Before we leave the Supreme Court today, let’s ponder this:

If you can stand more crazy, stay tuned.

If you are ready to bail, skip down to the Covid section:

 

 

 

Let’s now catch up on how we’re doing, pandemic-wise:

 

 

 

This obituary was written by Marvin J. Farr’s son:

In case you’re wondering about Marvin J. Farr’s home state of Kansas:

Under an executive order issued by Gov. Laura Kelly in July and reissued in November, Kansans over the age of 5 must wear masks in indoor public settings and outdoors when unable to stay 6 feet apart from people from other households. A state law passed in June allows counties to opt out of the mandate.

 

This is so true. I love Mexican food so much that I keep  a photograph of my favorite cheese enchiladas from my favorite Mexican restaurant, Little Mexico, on my desktop so that when I am down in the dumps I call pull it up and think happy thoughts upon it.

 

 

 

Except, by this week there was a new statistic:

To be exact, 3,053 people died of Covid last week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay safe! Next week is my annual ChrisHanuKwanSolstice post, wherein we get all druidical and pagan and ritualistic and dress up in our best witching gear and compare cheese graters. 

You might want to cast a few spells, make some good trouble. You have my permission. 

When They Arrest Donald Trump, Please Let Hillary Be In Charge Of The Handcuffs.

I forgot Friday last week. The whole week was out of whack because of the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, which made me think that Monday was Wednesday and Wednesday was the first day of the weekend and then the real weekend came around and I remembered that Friday was yesterday, and I forgot to launch my blog post.

But by then I was in full magical realism/Northern Exposure mode, exploring the way myth, fantasy, and Alaska inform my daily life as is always the case with me in my post-white-wine blow-out mood, and I said to myself, “Sometimes, Ed, you just gotta do something bad, just to know you’re alive.”

So I apologize for skipping last week’s get-together. That means that this week’s round up of all the horror and whimsy  that is life on this planet (focus on the north shore of Long Island) will be extra long, organized into four parts: Reasons to be Happy, Current Horrendous Events, Life in the Pandemic Surrounded by CovIdiots, and Words to Live By While the Wine Chills.

P.S. to Jeanie, Steve, and Citizen Reader: look for the Easter Eggs just for you.

But first, let’s get in the mood with some 2020 feels:

 

This one is late, but still funny:

 

Last month I packed an overnight bag and ample refreshments and I dialed the phone humber of the “Help” line of the company that “hosts” this blog to discuss an issue that many of you Dear Readers have brought to my attention, namely, that the Comments that you all so kindly write to me don’t show in the public Comments section. After a predictably lengthy wait, and a predictably lengthy chat, along with a predictable fee of $49.99, I was able to secure a technician who updated some widgets and eliminated a few gizmos and added several new doodads and voila: the Comments appeared. 

Supposedly. Let me know if this is true. 

I was also advised that the version of WordPress that I am working on is almost obsolete so, although I have paid for this blog to be continued until 2022, all this might disappear, one day, all on its own unless I get new hardware soon and, well, you might as well shit on a cracker and call it Sharon before I’ll do that. I do not want to even think about getting a new computer because  I just got this one in 2012 and I have more fun things to do than listen to a sales guy tell me about Core i5 chips, hybrid drives, 1920 x 1080 dis, etc. I also dread having to sit down and upload stuff on a new computer; cleaning up my email in-box, which is only a matter of repetitively clicking my mouse, already feels like hard labor and I’m not in the mood. 

Reasons To Be Happy: When I say fun things, I mean I might even head out to Manhattan’s Upper West Side and go owl watching. There’s a big story in New York City about a barred owl that has been spotted in Central Park, and people are going crazy for this bird. Here’s what it looks like when the owl wakes up at dusk and prepares to go hunting:

Photo credit: J. Alex Tarquino.

Photo credit: J. Alex Tarquino.

I think that’s kind of sweet. People come out in real life when they could be watching TV…good for them.

Did you all feel the culture shift last week? Did you feel the shudder of the enormous tilt in civilization as we know it?

Why do I ask? Because at 1:45 PM on November 24, 2020, a group of Korean artists were nominated for a Grammy in Best Pop Duo/Group Category, along with the usual [western,main stream] suspects (Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift):

While this  explosion of the cultural axis might have gone unnoticed in your house (I mean, the Grammies were irrelevant to me, until just this year), it was such a big story in South Korea that it was covered in real time on TV:

But wait, that’s not all. 

The next week, BTS debuted their latest single, Life Goes On, at No. 1 on Billboard, their third No. 1 in three months, and the first No. 1 in the Korean language: 

A Korean language song topping the Billboard Hot 100 might not be earth-shattering news to you, or make you and your friends jump and scream and cry, but it was major news in South Korea:

All the TV channels covered the story:

 

 

 

Over the past three decades South Korea has spent a lot of money promoting their popular culture for export as a “soft power” move to expand its economy and its political influence in the world, so this was by far the biggest coup for the Korean Wave since it began as a ripple in 1992. What France was to the 18th-century, Korea will be to the 21st-century. There might even be a legendary ex-pat “Lost Generation” story about Americans in Korea being lived over there right now; I swear that if I were in my 20s, I’d be lighting out for Seoul tomorrow.

But if BTS isn’t on your radar yet as this generation’s Beatles, then maybe you’ll take the word of an actual Beatle, that these guys are The Real Thing (transcript of an interview on Smartness podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes):

We live in terrible, crazy, awful times here in the U S of A, and it’s these seven Koreans who keep me feeling less suicidal about the future.

And here is where we head into the Current Horrendous Events portion of this blog.

Things are so deranged here that it hardly made a ripple when a recently pardoned general began urging the president to suspend the constitution, declare martial law, and have the military supervise a new election. . . 

. . .  because that president that Flynn was cajoling into sedition was himself busy, entertaining/horrifying us with a 46-minute rambling, bat-shit crazy address to the American people, holding up bits of paper to “prove” the nutty conspiracy theories of a stolen election that have, so far, been shot down in 41 seperate court rulings.

Oh, lord, it’s been one of those weeks, again.

Roll the film, Jimmy:

 

Let’s talk about the hearing that Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliana, held in Michigan re: voter fraud in the 2020 Presidential election. You owe it to yourselves to watch the tape, because the witnesses were truly magnificent.

Magnificent piles of hot, steaming horseshit:

But is it less racist if the witness starts her “testimony” by saying “Some people think all Indian-Americans look alike [the witness is Indian-American], but I think Chinese all look alike.”? The answer is, No, No, Hell no.

When this lady started talking, it instantly became Must See TV:

She was AWESOME!!

And, to follow up on the Mike Flynn controversy:

Raise your hand if you think EVERY person in the Trump administration should be investigated and brought up on charges.

Some people are getting a jump on it:

But let’s not hold our breath:

 

47 more days. That’s all we have to endure: 47 more days.

 

 

 

 

 

These are real, and they are being posted all around Manhattan:

 

 

 

 

This one is for Citizen Reader:

 

 

 

 

As the wing-nuts march around with their “Stop the Steal” signs in support of their crack-pot theories of voter fraud, the resistance is going with “Stop the Stupid”.

 

File this one under: “Yep, this is about what I expect of Trump Christians”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you need another reason to love Scotland? Try this:

The headline: Political campaigners lit up Donald Trump’s Ayrshire golf course with “LOSER” to remind the outgoing president he lost the election.”

And here’s another reason to love Paris:

 

 

 

 

While Fox News was talking about voter fraud in Wisconsin, they did this (for you, Jeanie):

Let us now check out the latest happenings in the CovIdiot Saga:

 

 

 

 

On November 26,  Alice Willow bragged about her love of Jesus on Twitter. . .

. . . but  days later she wasn’t all that “Ride or Die” about it:

People on Twitter, a platform noted for expressing compassion, responded with sympathy. Here’s a sample:

 

 

 

Within a day, Alice Willow closed her Twitter account. I wish her the best, because I’m a “people person”, and I hope that her wish to die for her religion comes true. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Have a great weekend, everyone. Next week I have another Pet Portrait to paint with you, and a photo essay called Cats Being Jerks, and more of the feel-good homey musings and gentle introspections that make this blog (and its author) such a kindly, meditative, and reverential presence on your Friday scrollings.

 

 

 

I don’t really understand this joke, but it still made me laugh.

 

 

 

 

And, lastly, since I don’t say Fuck Trump at the end of this any more because he is not worth the effort except when it comes time to rally for indictments, this is for Steve and Olga in London:

To Catch The Squirrel, You Must Be The Squirrel.

 

All I have to say is, “Amen”.

“There’s No Need to Be Unhappy.”

 

 

Hello Dear Readers! Yes, I still enjoy the “WTF 2020” memes, but today I am not going to load you up with the usual political musings.

Sure, Trump and his spawn are still shitbags, and Rudy Giuliani is, literally, a walking, talking, oozing pustule and crazy as an outhouse rat, and Emily Murphy  should be in prison, and the rest of the Republicans are laying down as many land mines as they can to keep Joe Biden in a tizzy for the next 4 years. . . but I still get up every morning and walk into my kitchen for my morning tea and I see this:  

And, OK, the guys who are planing that march in Atlanta tomorrow to support Trump’s theft of their 16 electoral votes are dangerously delusional, but they made a poster that shows Georgia in blue, and, also, spelled “Georgia” wrong:

So, for today, I’m feeling confident that the people who are in charge of Operation Destroy American Democracy are idiots, and that I can safely take a week off from the unending shit show. 

I’m celebrating this Friday because Steve, the handsome tuxedo Manx who lives on our front stoop, came home today after going on walk-about for five weeks. I’m celebrating this Friday because my Korean husbands (BTS) have a new music video out today and global ARMY are coordinating to get 100 million views in 24 hours (be  dear and click onto this link and be counted and, BTW, how much do you want to be part of that pajama party??). I’m celebrating this Friday because it’s been a gorgeous Fall here on the north shore of Long Island and I want to take the time to savor it. I want to be like Taffy, thinking deep thoughts on sequential mornings, sitting under the Japanese Dogwood tree on the kitchen patio like a cute, fluffy buddha:

 

 

 

 

 

I just did a quick calculation and, during this pandemic, I have run about 765.5 miles, during 225 hours, on the streets in my neighborhood since lockdown in March. I know these roads quite well, and have become quite fond of them. They feel as if they are as much a part of me as my own right hand, which is my second-favorite hand as I am left handed, but we’re still close.

The best times were those early Summer mornings when there were no cars or people about and there was perfume in the air, but Fall has its charms here in Nassau County. This is my starting point on a typical November afternoon:

This is the same starting point a few days later, on a rainy and misty morning:

After learning that Trump played The Village People’s YMCA at the end of his desperate rallies for voters in the swing states, I reclaimed it for the forces of good and added the song to the top of all the playlists I listen to while I run — I have never payed much attention to the lyric before, and it is very WIERD — but this is where I am by the time the People sing “I felt the whole world was so jive”:

Are you old enough to remember when “jive” was a thing?

What a difference a few days make…this is the same road exactly 4 days later:

This (below) was taken on Nov. 8:

All those trees are bare now. Fall really is the most fleeting season, all the more reason to catch it while you can.

 

 

 

Top Cat has hunted and gathered for our two-person Thanksgiving this year, strangely, by getting us  a 22-pound turkey. That’s a lot of turkey for a pandemic holiday, just saying.

The other holiday that is on my mind is ChrisHanuKwanSolstice. I just finished making my holiday card, a special 2020-themed message that will be going out in optimism and celebration of the return of the light in our lives. In more ways than one.

If you would like to be on my mailing list, send me a note with your address to vivianswift at yahoo dot com. (All Stromness Rock hosts are automatically on the list whether they like it or not.)

Did you know that “Good Riddance 2020” cards are a thing this year?

Mine is not like that. I’m never on trend.

Also a “thing” this year. . . 

 

 

You KNOW that I, for one, will be sending Season’s Greetings to President Joe c/o 1600 PA Ave this year.

Have a great weekend, everyone. Try to spend at least one Trump-free day by doing something stupid, like feeling hopeful for the future of our planet and humankind in spite of all the evidence that tells us that we are, in fact, doomed. To be happy, these days, is a very transgressive act, and if I know you, Dear Reader, you like to rock the boat. Go out there and be joyful.

See you next Friday, with the usual outrage.

XXOO

 

So Happy I Don’t Know What To Do With Myself.

Sooooo, how was your week?

After four long, long, years, my bruised and battered soul is feeling euphoric, and it’s got me in an emotional spin cycle. But it’s a good problem to have.

This is how I got my case of The Happies:

I ran out into the street yelling for Top Cat, and shouting JOE BIDEN IS THE 46th PRESIDENT . . . to no one because we live on a very quiet street. I went back into the house looking for  Top Cat and I found him upstairs watching English Premiere League soccer on TV and I said TURN ON CNN!!!!

And we both cried and hugged each other. The relief is something that I’ve never felt before.

(Lifts imaginary glass of champagne to all you Dear Readers): We did it.  Here’s to us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

___________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

 

 

Sorry, I cut off the cartoon. It’s the Statue of Liberty talking to the Donald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

 

 

This  (below) is  the  letter  is addressed  to  the  George  Secretary  of  State, duly signed (but not proof-read) y the genius Members of Congress who allege massive voter fraud:

Ah yes, the GOP Shit-for-Brains syndrome…now I understand how fellow conspiracy theorist Rudy Giuliani ended up holding a press conference in the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping to address voter fraud in Pennsylvania:

 

Giuliani introduced Darryl Brooks as a poll watcher in Philadelphia but, actually…

 

In response to this alleged massive voter fraud, Trump set up a hotline so citizens could call in tips about the massive voter fraud they witnessed in their states. Instantly, it was flooded with prank calls about massive voter fraud. As a result of being flooded with prank calls about massive voter fraud,  Trump’s forces have to get a new phone number and his daughter-in-law Lara tweeted this:

Wait..does she not get how pranks work? The whole point is to harass them so that they have to keep changing the phone number.

Anyway, we accepted her challenge and we kept calling.

Yes, I said “we”. Me, I began calling the first hot line number. Fun fact: the people manning the phones answer your call with “Trump War Room”, which is hilarious and makes it really hard to keep from laughing as soon as you hear that. Who are they going to war against? America?

For my first call, I reported that people were still voting at the rec center in my town of Roslyn NY and  then I whispered “And a lot of those people are Black so you better hurry down here before they steal everything!”

I was pretending to be a typical Trumper, but as soon as I said it, I regretted it. It felt bad even pretending to be a racist.

So, for my follow up calls, I identified the people trying to steal the election as Communists, as Socialists, as my ex-brother-in-law, as supporters of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, and as Vegetarians.

When the Trump War Room changed their phone number, I also called the new number, but all I got was a taped message and an invitation to leave my report of massive voter fraud when I heard the beep.

That’s when I began taking up time and space in the Trump War Room by reading  aloud from the new J. Peterman catalogue I’d gotten in the mail. So now the Trump War Room knows about some nifty pointelle sweaters for $198, pajamas for $128, and a Prince of Wales double-breasted blazer for $498.

Oh, god. It was all such good, clean, innocent fun.

However, some people are getting tired of this game, such as the Montana Secretary of State:

Even the Department of Homeland Security has had enough, and on Thursday, November 12, it did this:

It’s a lovely thing, when the Department of Homeland Security issues a memo from in the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency in a joint statement with the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees orders Donald Trump, ex-president of the United States, to Shut The Fuck Up.

You can read the whole glorious, unequivocal statement for yourself here.

Dear Readers, I’m sure that you all are feeling it. The elation is still there, of course. . .

. . .  but now that the victory is sinking in, we have to reckon with what this country is in the wake of Donald Trump:

 

And let’s not forget the most important thing about who were are as a country:

In Arizona, Navaho Nation showed up at the polls, in total casting 76,000 votes; 97% went to Biden.

Have a great weekend, Dear Ones. I’ve been so busy with post-election pre-hangover jubilation that I haven’t even told you all about the exciting things happening elsewhere in the non-Trump spheres of joy (my Korean husbands BTS are in full Come Back mode, it’s been a spectacular Fall season here on the north shore of Long Island, and I have a new art project to share) so let’s all get back to normal next week.

In the meantime, all I have to say is:

Donald:

You’re Fucked.

 

 

Knee-Deep in the Hoopla.

OK, so it wasn’t the Blue Tsunami we all expected. It seems that there are 69,816,618 Americans who are OK with having a Russian asset in the White House. But we outnumber them just enough to win this.

Let’s take a look at what we’ve been through:

Color Code: Green – without a permit.

Orange – with a permit.

Red – illegal.

(I nearby declare Exotic Pet Freaud because I know of a guy in Westchester County, New York, who has a kangaroo. He keeps it in his orchard.)

Please remember this name, Richard Grenell, because we’ll  hearing  more  from  him:

To be fair, Richard Grinnell (the tweeter above) was only an *acting* Director of National Intelligence, a post he held after he was appointed as Ambassador to Germany, where he alarmed almost every European head of state when, 2 months into his tenure, he broke Article 14 of the Vienna Convention in a interview with Breitbart News saying that he wanted to empower conservatives throughout Europe, thereby taking a political position in hopes of interfering in foreign affairs. He was a very unpopular ambassador.

Speaking of Europe. . . 

And then it was D-Day. November 3, 2020.

First, let’s hear from the Cats of Democracy:

This is Pumpkin, the official Cat of the Athens County, Ohio Board of Elections:

(Athens County is in south-east Ohio, bordering West Virginia. It is home to Ohio University, but also has the lowest median income in Ohio, being the only county in the state with a poverty rate above 30%. Should be Trump country. Here’s the kicker: Athens County went for Biden. Good work, Pumpkin.)

Voter turnout hit historically high numbers. More votes were cast than in any previous American election.  

 

My Twitter feed was full of offers, from our wonderful neighbors to the north, to lend a shoulder to cry on, or a reminder to b r e a t h e,  or some heart felt empathy for the torture awaiting us as we sit out the long and slow counting of the ballots.

 

It became a “thing”:

(Seriously, we hit the jackpot when we got Canada as the country on the other side of the longest international land border in the world.)

Lou Diamond Phillips tweeted a photo of his own emotional support team:

And then came the “controversy” of counting every ballot so they can be turned into something that no other country on Earth has: Electoral Votes.

Some people have a problem with democracy. And by”some people”, I mean “ShitBag Trump” and his Fuck Wad supporters.

This tweet from Trump will go down in history:

We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Michigan if, in fact, there was a large number of secretly dumped ballots as has been widely reported!”

This kind of history:

(The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) (above) is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, promotion of human rights, freedom of the press, and fair elections. It employs around 3,460 people, mostly in its field operations but also in its secretariat in Vienna, Austria. It has its origins in the 1975 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) held in Helsinki, Finland.)

 

Mark R. Levin (above) is a right-wing radio personality. He’s obviously not a constitutional law scholar. You know, when someone types in ALL CAPS like that, he’s YELLING AT YOU:

But all that yelling doesn’t make your case any stronger:

Because of the extraordinary number of voters who used mail-in ballots this year, millions and millions of votes coming in, the counting is going kinda slow. FYI: Being slow, that’s not illegal. 

 

 

But the counting went on,and on,and on…

Pennsylvania  s l o w l y counted all its votes. . . 

 

 

 

Michigan s l o w l y counted its votes, under the supervision of the state’s Attorney General:

Arizona s l o w l y counted its votes:

Nevada s l o w l y counted its votes:

And here’s where we meet up with Richard Grenell again:

As I type this on Friday morning, Biden is still only 6 electoral votes away from 270, with AZ, NV, GA, and PA still undecided.

 

 

 

This would be a good time to remember something important about all those election maps:

Land doesn’t vote. People do.

 

Have a great weekend, everyone. Hang in there. We’ll have a new president soon. 

And, just for old time’s sake:

Fuck Trump.

 

 

 

 

Four More Days. 96 hours. 5760 Minutes.

 

Friends, WE MADE IT. It’s only four days until we turn Trump into history as the most corrupt, criminal, treasonous, bankrupt, half-witted, psycho, mean-spirited, lying piece of shit ever to occupy the White House. We did it. We made it through Trump.

Top Cat and I voted! The line was long, because even in Sure Thing New York State, people want to vote against Trump just for the soul-cleansing experience of adding one more droplet to the Blue Wave.

Usually, voting here in this little town on the north shore of Long Island is a matter of strolling into the gymnasium of the rec center near the train station, letting the elderly poll workers fuddle with the registration logs (for some reason, our address always confuses them), and then marking a ballot for immediate scanning. We’re out in 10 minutes, tops, and there’s no cut thing as a line. This year we were going to bring our folding lawn chairs, a thermos of vodka, umbrellas, and sandwiches. We expected to be on line for at least an hour. It took 20 minutes, because we waited for the worst rainy day all year.

My stomach does a little flip-flop when I think that in just four days this nightmare will be, at least technically, over. I am literally sick with anticipation and fear. Word is that the Republicans can, and probably will, steal a certain percentage of votes, but if the margin of victory is huuuuuge even they can’t steal enough votes to nullify the will of tens of millions of Americans. I have champagne in the fridge and by god, I better be able to uncork it in celebration in 2020.

This time last year I was in Los Angeles, blissfully unaware what was coming down the pike, enjoying my first Dia de los Muertas in downtown L.A.,  shopping in KoreaTown for imported CDs of K-pop, hanging out in our lovely Air BnB where I opened my first bottle of soju. I treasure those memories.

Good times.

I like this time of year.

Illustrations from my book, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, the chapter is called October is the Coyote Month.

 

 

November 1, 2019, All Soul’s Day, is the start date of when I became ARMY, that is, unreasonably obsessed with the Korean band BTS. As of this Sunday I will no longer be a baby ARMY (it’s a thing in this fandom); I will be a veteran. Go ahead, ask me anything about my 7 Korean husbands…what I don’t know about RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook isn’t worth knowing.

The other great thing about being ARMY is that you get to hang out with other wonderful ARMYs. Like Omer:

In case you can’t read her dissertation, it’s called Development of Highly Efficient Bismuth Telluride Based Thermoelectric Materials. I, too voted for BTS @ the American Music Awards.

I am still taking Korean classes because I need a hobby that makes me feel stupid and ineducable. This is my study hall:

I was in my conversation class and the instructor gave us a few minutes to jot down some ideas for a dialogue that we would present to our fellow Zoomers. I am the worst student in that class, but I picked up my pen and wrote this in five minutes:

I know! Right??

Korean is the fifth foreign language that I have learned: French and Spanish in high school, when it was so easy that I never did homework; Hebrew while I was living in Israel for a year so I lived and breathed it; American Sign Language in college night classes with my BFF Renee and we’d do extra homework together and drink wine. Learning Korean is like nothing else I’ve ever learned. It’s not just that Korean is hard, it’s that I am 64 and I can barely remember my own phone number and Renee isn’t taking the class with me and I don’t know any Koreans and jesus, nothing sticks in my brain these days.

So I have to go the extra distance to learn Korean verbs. For example, 찍다 means “to take a photograph” (yeah, that’s one of the aggravating things about Korean — they have a seperate verb for EVERYTHING). “찍” , the first syllable, is pronounced “tcheek“, which reminds me of the sound that a camera shutter makes, so that’s how I remember “찍다“.

I have to do this for almost every verb I memorize. To remember the verb “to be far away“, I have to remember that the country of Malta is far away. To remember the verb “to be near” I have to remember that it sounds like the verb “to be clean” and when something is clean you want to be near it. For the verb “to teach” I have to remember that the last syllable sounds like the “ch” in “teach” and work backwards from there. For the verb “to be different” I have to remember that in written form it’s not different, as it’s a very symmetrical verb — its front end and its back end mirror each other — and bingo: I got it. For the verb “to choose” I say to myself “between a mountain and a molehill” because the Korean word for “mountain” is a homonym for the first syllable of the verb “to choose“.

As far as its being an efficient retrieval system this is not the fastest method to pull information out of  the brain, but it’s the only way I can learn new vocabulary and, if you give me a few seconds, it works every time.

Does anybody else have a tip for memorizing? 

Has anyone else seen the new Borat movie in which the actor Sasha Baron Cohen film Rudy Guiliana in an “interview” with boat’s 15-year old daughter? Top Cat and I watched it last week. It’s hilarious, and contrary to what Rudy claims he was doing in the bedroom with Borat’s 15-year old daughter, he was not “tucking in his shirt”. 

Let’s check in on Rudy’s boss, the leading deplorable, as he holds rallies to try and overcome Joe Biden’s huge lead in the polls:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s take a closer look at what the Trump campaign did to its own supporters there in frigid Nebraska (although, to be honest, if they are dumb enough to support Trump, frostbite is the least of what they deserve):

 

 

 

 

The Lincoln Project, a group of high-profile Republicans who are campaigning against Trump, put up a billboard in Times Square in New York City:

In response to Javanka’s lawyer’s letter threatening to sue, the Lincoln Project sent a one-word message: NUTS!

The Lincoln Project knows history.

Next, let’s check in and see what’s doing over at the Supreme Court:

 

 

 

 

So, yeah, it’s just another week in Trump’s shithole country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right, that lady (above) talking about what a bad example the Democrats are giving to the children is this lady (below):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading, Dear Ones. Have a great weekend and don’t forget to be good to yourself. Whatever happens on November 3, you can take heart: You’ve  gotten through most of 2020, and you’re still here. That’s not nothing. In fact, that’s everything.

ONE

LAST

TIME:

Fuck Trump.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Brooklyn:

 

 

 

Tricks and Treats.

P.S. This is a Star Wars joke. Get it? Let me know in Comments, Jedi Knights.

 

 

But speaking of Halloween, for the record, I do not think this is funny:

Candy corn is my favorite food, ever. I love candy corn. In my opinion, it has the perfect texture and consistency, chewy but not too chewy; sickeningly sweet but not too sickeningly sweet (unlike, for example, sweet potatoes cooked with marshmallows eeewwww), and has a pleasant buttery-plastic aftertaste that I find addictive. (Speaking of industrial revolution flavors, I also used to love the smell of car exhaust in the old days before they removed the lead from gasoline, and I’ve huffed a lot of 1960s internal combustion CO2, so this love of candy corn might be sign of brain damage.)

Candy corn is also just the right size for creative snacking, either by biting it into thirds along the color demarkations or letting one whole piece melt in your mouth (you never eat a handful of candy corn at a time), so it’s “slow cuisine”, junk-food style.

Get the candy corn made with honey, as honey has a biological shut-off switch that prevents you from eating until the point of nausea, whereas pure cane sugar has had that portion-control valve removed and that’s why ou will stuff yourself with Twinkies until you puke.

Candy corn lovers of the world, unite!

Picking up the latest episode of Watching Paint Dry where we left off last week, I didn’t show you all the “finished” portrait of Juno that I painted because I had originally posted it on the blog, but before I hit the “publish” button I removed it because it was off. I futzed with it over and over, and tried to correct it…and in the end it was a hot mess.

Here it is:

There are so many layers of paint on this portrait that it looks as if I was scrubbing it on with my bare hands. This looks finger-painted. Something is off, indeed, something that no amount of rescue can fix. One thing that is “off” is that I had positioned the head inorrectly in relation to the body:

The black lines show where I should have put Juno’s shoulders.

The thing is, Juno’s body is facing one way, but her head is turned to peer at something in the distance over her left shoulder. Without that gesture, the whole pose looks off.

The rest of the crappiness of this portrait is down to bad painting. Oh well. In the watercolor world, you have good days and bad days.

Let’s take another look at the original inspiration:

Time to START OVER from scratch, and let’s hope we’ll have a good day. Please bear with me:

 

What I did this time that was different from last time was that I painted Juno’s entire face with a layer of China White before I added color. I like the way paint reacts to this pigment, and I think it’s the right thing to do for Juno:

Let’s bleed in some black:

 

 

 

 

This is how the paint looks when it is applied directly to the paper (no layer of China White under it):

 

 

I added some pencil lines and I am

DONE:

Thank you for your patience, Dear Readers. And to Carol, Gali, and Leslie, who are waiting to receive their portraits, I will be off to the Post Office to send them all out in one swell foop. Mail! You’re getting mail soon!

In related news, I came across a story about a fellow distinguished Pet Portraitist working in the English town of Worthing, who goes by the name Hercule Van Wolfwinkle:

Hercule had never drawn anything before he started to do pet portraits to raise money for the local animal shelter:

Hercule specializes in pet portraits that are unashamedly off:

So far, he has raised $18,000 to help homeless animals.

He makes off look so on, right?

It’s been another long, strange week in America, my Dear Readers. The Pope says same-sex unions are OK with God, Trump tried to gaslight Lesley Stahl about his “health care plan”, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer and general all-around dickhead, got caught with his hands down his pants, and, oh yeah, we found out that our president as a secret Chinese bank account.

Did I miss anything?

Let’s go to the weekly news round up:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top Cat took this picture in the Village in Manhattan this week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I fact-checked this story. It’s 100% true.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s it for this week, Dear Readers. Have a great weekend, because we deserve it! We’ve put up with the mess that has been made of this planet for a whole week and now it’s time to retreat to the “Happy Place” where everyone gets to be 29 and served with ice-cold martinis by the pool while meeting with a  Jane Austin book club made up entirely of hot K-pop stars. Int he background are the talking pet unicorns, who sound so sweet when they whinney to each other,

“Fuck Trump”.