I Believe in Magic.

It’s been weeks and no one has emailed me about this, so I have to ask: Did one of you Dear Readers send me this cool book for my birthday?

I think the sub-title of the book oversells the contents admirably (great marketing!), because it takes hundreds of hours of Korean lessons just  learn how to say “I’m only happy when it rains” (because Korean is hard) but that’s not to say that you can’t learn good Korean from this lovely little K-Pop book. On page 9 I learned a doozy of a suffix that confers expertise in any given skill that, because it is Korean — the world’s most difficult language,– will take far too long to explain here, but THANK YOU to whoever sent this to me anonymously last month. It’s a pleasure to learn some fun, slangy Korean. 

This month makes it two years that I’ve been taking language classes from the Korean Culture Center of NYC and I’ve come a long way. Just think. Two years ago I didn’t even know the alphabet (14 consonants and 22 vowels), and today I can conjugate    지네가 되다, which means “to become a centipede”. I did not make this up. It’s a real verb that I came across in a children’s book of Korean folk tales that I’m reading.

But let’s take care of business from last week,.Thank you, Dear Readers, for weighing in  on the Pet Portrait of the day. 

When last we saw him, Munch was hanging in mid air:

We all decided that Munch needed to be put in context, that is, on a lawn, where the  laws of physics would apply and make Munch appear more grounded. I hadn’t planned on  doing that, so in order to continue I had to tape off the picture plane (in a standard 5″ x 7″ format):

Thankfully, I had enough paper to allow for the new lay-out.

My plan was to approximate the shallow focus of the photograph by making the background a pale wash of color, and making it more color-maturated and “in focus” in the foreground:

I used my size-00 brush to dab the very wet paint into Munch’s floof :

 

More of the same:

Also, for the foreground, I am using very wet paint, so adding details is  just a matter of sloshing the wet paint into lines that resemble grass:

Taking a step back, I looked at this and I was pleased with the way the patches of wet watercolor dried because I like it when the medium (the watercolor itself) shows up. But I also saw that this foreground area needed more cow bell.

Now, I wasn’t going to actually paint the blades of grass in the foreground to add texture and interest . . . 

. . . so I sloshed another wet layer of paint onto the foreground and used a dry brush to “pick up” pigment, leaving the texture of the paper to show through:

Taking another step back, I didn’t like the  yellow-ness of the background, and it looked to me that Munch needed more shadow as he lay on the grass. So I added a fine layer of green wash to the background and I abbed in some shading under his belly and his chest and then Munch was DONE:

Next week we are painting this lovely girl:

This, Dear Readers, is the lovely Ginger, and we will talk more about this sweet pup then we meet here next Friday. Spoiler: Those eyebrows are going to be challenge.  

In other news, to the surprise of no one, Trump was caught stealing from the American people this past week:

It turns out that the National Archives had been in discussions with Trump’s staff for a year, because Trump advisers lied to the Archives and claimed that Trump only took “mementos” rather than official records. But I guess someone got fed up with the usual Trump bullshit and said, “Fuck it, we’re going in.” So they came, got 15 boxes, and put the orange shit stain on notice that they suspect  that 15 boxes might not be the entire haul.

My favorite part of this story is  that Shit-for-Brains Trump took the infamous map  of Hurricane Dorian from 2019,when he erroneously told reporters that it was headed for Alabama and,  when called  out  on  it,   produced  map  IN THE OVAL  OFFICE from  the  NHC  that had  been  obviously  altered  with  a  Sharpie that miraculously included Alabama (this, below,  is a contemporaneous tweet that shows he didn’t fool anyone with that stupid Sharpie):

 

I love it that future generations will have Trump’s fake hurricane map to “study” when they write history explaining who on earth such a moron got elected to the presidency.

Twitter had some fun about Trump looting the White House, particularly after  it was reported  that he even took furniture):

 

 

 

Of course everyone knows that Trump broke the law by stealing all those official docs and who knows what else he’s got squirreled away?

 

And the breaking news is that Trump regularly flushed documents down the White House toilet.

The law that Trump broke is called the Presidential Records Act, and Trump is the most egregious violator of it in the law’s 44 years of existence, historians say. “Since [Richard] Nixon, there is no example of a president just pretending the law doesn’t exist,” said presidential historian Robert David Johnson.

Ignoring this law is a way to obscure history and make it more difficult for future administrations to govern. But as with so many of the “norms” that Trump steamrolled while president, it’s hard to see how he will be held accountable for doing so, so says the Washington Post.

So, fuck. Chances are good that he’s going to get away with it. FUCK FUCK fuckitty FUCK.

 

 

 

 

But it’s not just Trump who is dragging America into the shitter:

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the blonde on the right (above), the representative from the 14th Congressional District of Georgia:

Twitter had fun with this news:

Also:  “I’ve met the Gazpacho Police and they are consommé professionals.”

“The Gazpacho Police work mostly on cold cases.”

Etc.

 

Lauren Bobert is the representative from Colorado’s Third Congressional District (she’s the idiot in the MAGA hat above) apparently hasn’t noticed that the US Constitution has been amended 27 times:

Louie Gomert, currently the representative from Texas’s First Congressional District, is running for Texas Attorney General against the current Republican Ken Paxton (Paxton isn’t Nazi enough). Gomert is famous for being widely known as the dumbest person in Congress, an institution that is loaded with people who are as stupid as a box of  turds :

Gomert is vehemently anti-gun control (he has said that gun control would weaken ties between fathers and sons) and is jumping on the Book Banning bandwagon to appeal to the typical asshole Texan Republican:

 

 

Hey Texas, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida:

How about we add four seats to the Supreme Court and  make ALL the new justices African Americans???

 

 

 

And here’s my weekly rant about capitalism gone amok:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You all know that I like religion about as much as I like Republicans, so this did not surprise me at all:

And that pretty much covers the news of the week.

So now it’s time for the puppies and butterflies portion of our get-together:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have always thought mushrooms  were creepy and I don’t eat them EVER, and  now I have Science to back me up:

 

 

So all mushrooms are magic, but some are just more magical than others? Did I get that right? 

Have a great weekend, everyone. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we love in a wondrous world, that just being here is in itself a death-defying feat. I hope you all have the chance to make a little magic in your days. And, speaking of everyday wizardry:

And if that’s not enough enchantment for you, here’s a picture of a wombat in a wheelbarrow: