mrmagicmollymoll

[mrmagicmollymoll]

Today was an extremely beautiful day.

This whole weekend has been such heaven.

As Paulie Walnuts says: “A little detour on the way to paradise.”

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More evidence that republican reagonimics is literally killing us.

highlights:

In 2021, 1.1 million deaths would have been averted in the United States if the US had mortality rates similar to other wealthy nations,..

"Think of people you know who have passed away before reaching age 65. Statistically, half of them would still be alive if the US had the mortality rates of our peers. The US is experiencing a crisis of early death that is unique among wealthy nations."...

The US had lower mortality rates than peer countries during World War II and its aftermath. During the 1960's and 1970's, the US had mortality rates similar to other wealthy nations, but the number of Missing Americans began to increase year by year starting in the 1980's, reaching 622,534 annual excess US deaths by 2019. Deaths then spiked to 1,009,467 in 2020 and 1,090,103 in 2021 during the pandemic. From 1980 to 2021, there were a total of 13.1 million Missing Americans.

The researchers emphasize that this mortality crisis is a multiracial phenomenon and is not specific to minoritized groups. Black and Native Americans are overrepresented in these measures... Still, two-thirds of the Missing Americans are White, a result of the larger population of White Americans, their older age distribution, and death rates that are significantly higher than other wealthy nations...

They connect the large excess mortality burden to the failure of US policy to adequately address major public health issues, including the opioid epidemic, gun violence, environmental pollution, economic inequality, food insecurity, and workplace safety. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of these issues, particularly among lower-income and minority groups, and now that most of the safety-net policies created during COVID-19 have expired, vulnerable groups have lost vital support.

"We waste hundreds of billions each year on health insurers' profits and paperwork, while tens of millions can't afford medical care, healthy food, or a decent place to live," says study senior author Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, Distinguished Professor at the School of Urban Public Health at Hunter College, City University of New York. "Americans die younger than their counterparts elsewhere because when corporate profits conflict with health, our politicians side with the corporations."...

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I can’t show her in color yet because the color is all fakakta at the moment, and also she’s only about half finished, but here’s what I’m working on.

If you guessed that this portrait of a woman is also a portrait of what it’s like to recover from alcoholism in a sober living house with the 1982 winner of the Miss Big Bend beauty pageant…you are correct, and you are an artist yourself.

[mrmagicmollymoll]

Ideas For Modern Day Gladiator Games Inspired By Miniature Golf

Was thinking about miniature golf earlier, as I often do, comparing our little games to the blood sport of Ancient Rome, wondering why there aren’t more gladiator contests in our society and lamenting the lack of miniature/gladiator sport in general. Obviously, miniature golf is infinitely better than regular-sized golf. But how much better could an actual sport be, in miniature form? And when I say miniature, in this context, I don’t just mean smaller-sized. I mean vastly improved upon: way more entertaining, way more whimsical, and almost certainly lethal. So. Here are the two sports I’d love to see miniaturized, and how the new games would be played:

1. Soccer, aka “All Ball.” (Sly nod to Dr. Seuss, given the high body count here.) We make the field half the size, add two more raised goals so there’s one at standard basketball height on either side of the field, and change the rules so you can use your hands and bite people. Open brawling is permitted. Goalies may leave their goals for extended periods to engage in hand-to-hand combat and/or psychological manipulation. Also, we add a position: golf cart defender. Each team has one designated defender who just roves around the field like a bat out of hell on a golf cart with a fishing net and a piece of plywood — stealing balls, blocking shots, and generally putting the fear of God into everyone. The game is over when both goals of a team have been destroyed by the other.

2. Baseball, aka “Sky Ball.” We remove the outfield entirely and add two chairs, each elevated 150 feet above the field on a ladder. One ladder goes behind the pitcher’s mound, one goes between third base and home plate. Why? Because that’s where the motherfucking Sky Catchers sit. Their job is to catch anything that flies and to make life hell for the little people down below. Especially the people who try to climb the ladder. (More on that later.) Sky catchers are exempt from all rules — both the rules of baseball and the laws of civilized society — except one: they aren’t allowed to wear regulation athletic gear. They can wear whatever else they want, though, which leads to a lot of medieval armor, astronaut suits, occasional nakedness, etc.

Each team has one starting and one relief sky catcher. No more. If things get ugly up there and you lose a sky catcher, then a fan is chosen “at random,” wink wink, from the stadium crowd to replace them. Sky chair bribery is rampant and encouraged. Big money is made, political careers are launched and ruined. A lot of people die.

Also, any player from the fielding team can steal a sky-base at any time during the inning — and a stolen sky-base is worth TWO home runs.

[mrmagicmollymoll]

As a result of today’s sketch I will now be drawing chickens and chicken adjacent people for the foreseeable future.

[mrmagicmollymoll]

Daily sketches, day 10:

“Bobby Kennedy in a Field of Poppies”

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100 studies, day 7: art nouveau Seinfeld

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100 studies, day 2: egon schiele’s “seated woman with bent knee,” 1917.

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John Singer Sargent didn’t give much advice, but he did say: “Do 100 studies. Draw every day.”

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I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Everyone should read it. It is mind-melting.

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the average human life span is 4,000 weeks.

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Today I learned that cancer cells are an ancient piece of our evolution, so ancient that their age falls right on the cusp between unicellular and multicellular organisms.

Mutations in our DNA cause cancer not because they add more, but because they take away - they strip back billions of years of evolution until there is nothing left in the nucleic acid chain but the oldest and most primitive form of survival, a survival which is blind and knows nothing beyond itself.

Or as the great fraisier crâne once said:

“ontogeny récapitulâtes phylogeny.”

[mrmagicmollymoll]

Sometimes (and not only when I’m sick, but especially when I’m sick) I long to live the rest of my life in the dark.

I dream lovingly of life without any electricity at all.

[mrmagicmollymoll]

Please enjoy this adorable old French lady talking to a penguin. (Reposted from the marvelous Instagram account @dailybirdshow)

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Robots vs. Humankind, or where I stand on AI-generated visual art:

Maybe I’m in denial, but I don’t think the robots will ever beat the artists (even though they can already match us in technical skill) for one reason and one reason only: choice of subject. I think an artist is not just a skilled maker, but a chooser of things, a gifted witness — an interpreter of memory, a hoarder of scenes, a deranged saboteur of ordinary life with a wicked eye for what makes us weep. I doubt a robot could ever discern what it is about being alive that makes us sob in our spines, pick it out on a crowded street, and render it true with just the right amount of deceipt.

I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with dying.

[mrmagicmollymoll]

*felt like writing a fake academic review of a fan theory for Ferris Bueller tonight, please note this miniature essay is entirely tongue-in-cheek*

The beloved “fight club” fan theory of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, while otherwise flawless from a psychoanalytical standpoint, can be disproven by the existence of Garth (played by a young, haggard-but-still-dashing Charlie Sheen) and by Garth’s use of class warfare seduction tactics. We see this, of course, in the police station scene — a scene in which the raccoon-eyed, low-income Garth seduces the overly hydrated, bourgeoisie Jeanie into a state of sexually charged class rebellion. A near stranger, no doubt reeking of marijuana and unwashed leather, Garth nonetheless liberates Jeanie in a matter of minutes using nothing more than Mondale vibes and stoned kisses, igniting within her a brave new worldview built not on Reaganite envy and revenge, but on forgiveness, ego-death, and blue collar lust. This scene, if the entire movie were truly a fantasy in Cameron’s head, would not be possible. It requires a working knowledge of class warfare-as-seduction, a mastery of Jeanie’s inner world, and a seemingly unnecessary departure from the psychic hell of Cameron’s own tortured, moneyed psychodrama. I say all this with something of a heavy heart, as I’ve loved Cameron Frye since I was 14 years old, and would leap like a Doberman pinscher on the chance to place the whole of this brilliant film inside his beautiful, bedridden skull.

I put it to you, dear reader, that the entire film takes place not in Cameron’s head — but in Jeanie’s, where the full power of her transformation, and of her salvation from a life in the Young Republicans club, rings most true.

[mrmagicmollymoll]

Somehow we need a movement of sufficient power and eloquence, akin to the height of the civil rights movement of the 60s, to end this current nightmare of violence in America. We need leaders of formidable courage but also orators who can give voice to our humanity. Speech which can inspire self actualization and relentless action. Messages powerful enough to overcome the fractured, isolated nature of modern media consumption.