Something...Anything Other Than My Mucus Membranes
A change of local topics so to speak

Course, I don't know what else to talk about right now.

In salute to comics, I ended up doing multiple funny digital drawings of Thanos with a friend of mine last night in an attempt to try out the new hard and software that he recently obtained. I have to admit that you can do some beautiful stuff, and I wouldn't mind leaning more of it myself. However, there's something to doing it with your own hands and physical tools. In fact, nowadays, I like both.

Some people, off the bat, can do amazing things on their computers with digital tools. I know all about this. I'm surrounded by them right now. I appreciate what they do.

For myself though, (and I'm sure it's just a learning process) I just appreciate having the pen, pencil, or paintbrush in my hands. When I'm done with that though, I do like loading them in the computer and messing with them. Nothing to drastic, but of course, you can fix little mistakes, add detail, and/or any myriad of color manipulations. Fantastic stuff.

Thing is, there has to be a separation of church and state. It's a huge leap between pushing paint around on a surface compared to running a cursor over it. In fact, it's similar to the difference between oils and acrylics. You paint with them in a fairly similar ways, but the way they dry and how the end product looks is very different.

Also, it occasionally feels like cheating. Some options, a few buttons, and whatnot and you can achieve some of the effects you COULD do with a brush; however, you couldn't actually do it with your hands because it takes practice and so on. I think it's only fair that you could do it on paper first.

What scares me about it is the loss of skills. After all, doesn't it seem sad to you that something painters could do for centuries is blinked out of existence because no one learned how to do it physically? I would have thought that Y2K would have taught us something about respect for the fact that computers could suddenly blink out of existence. Then what?

I do, on the other hand, understand evolution and development.

I look at it this way: My grandfather could do amazing things with his hands. He knew all kinds of mechanics, metalwork, electrical work, automotive, and so on. If you explained what you needed or what was broken then he could figure out a way to put it together for you. Naturally, my father learned a good amount of this stuff, though I would guess it was more of the practical stuff because he didn't follow the same work as his father. When my grandfather passed away, I had to wonder how much knowledge was lost, in reality to the world? How many people could perform a lot of the tasks that he could without even thinking about it?

Now I'm not claiming he was Einstein, but he was an extremely intelligent man on a wide variety of topics. When he went, I'm willing to bet he took a lot with him. Unless my father, myself or anyone else devoted our whole lives to try to soak up everything my grandfather learned in his, then there was no way that some amount of that knowledge had to be lost.

Furthermore, I acknowledge that other stuff has and will be lost to time simply because it is no longer needed.

The question is: If you survived nuclear war tomorrow Road Warrior style, what would you know how to do? What could you contribute? Could you keep yourself or loved one alive for an extended period of time? Assuming you survived for any extended amount of time, what would you put toward a "better tomorrow"?

Nobody likes to think about that kind of possible future, especially now, post-Cold War. Funny thing is, couldn't you argue that we're closer to someone possible popping off a nuclear weapon now than during the entire Cold War? After all, you have noticed that we're constantly mentioning how we're worried that some terrorists are running around either with one or trying to get their hands on one. Furthermore, there are plenty of willing suicide bombers, what difference do you think it would make to them if they take out one building or a whole city? I would imagine...not much at all.

Course, I've managed to get a long way away from drawing, painting, and computers. Truth is, if the world did explode, I guess i'd be having to figure out how to paint with the poop and piss that I was ranting about a ways back. Tough call: blueberries: food or pigment? You be the judge.

Alright, that's enough of this.

Cheers.