A Year in The Bitchin’ Kitsch Thank you everyone who made this year another special one: Submitters
Ken Abraham Gale Acuff Patrick Attaway
John Becker Buzz Burinski Jacob Cardarelli Marc Carver Michael Cluff
Louie Crew Holly Day Colin Dodds Alon Calinao Dy Zachary Frisch Riley Furmanek Sam Gustafson
Tanya Haller Brian Hardie Dawnell Harrison Jan Haskell Dan Hedges Paul Hostovsky L Kinney
Eric Krszjzaniek Alexander Landerman John Lee Robin Lee LM & XY Afzal Moolla
Briana Paquette David E. Patton Rachel Peeters
Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE kaleeM rajA RB and XY Caroline Reynolds Sy Roth
Samantha Russell Anand Salve samuelbeaton Kandra Schefchik
Seymour Maxwell Skyles Robert Lavett Smith douglas somers Kenneth Spalding
Doug Spottiswood Chris Talbot-Heindl Dana Talbot-Heindl To Love Sophia Randy Wagner Amiee Wetmore Mike White
Mike Wilson Wlkn_Fire
Michelle Wojtaszek Jennie Wood
Jacob Zurawski Advertisers
Bitchin’ Kitsch mcfishenburger MREA Progressive Media Second Space Shankland for Assembly The Energy Fair
www.talbot-heindl.com
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louie crew.
Clearing: Sandy Leaves Manhattan in a Huff Louie Crew Photograph
about b’k:
the bitchin’ kitsch is a zine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say. it exists for the purpose of open creativity. if you have something you want to share, please email it to chris@talbot-heindl.com. are you a video or music artist? submit your youtube link or original file to dana@talbot-heindl.com. all submissions are due on the 26th for the following month’s issue.
ideas:
advertising:
have a seriously bitchin’ idea that could make the bitchin’ kitsch that much better? we want to hear from you. email chris@talbot-heindl.com with your ideas.
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community copies:
donation:
sit down and read the bitchin’ kitsch at our community locations: zest, the smith scarabocchio art museum, monkeywrench tattoos, and noel fine arts center. want to house a community copy? email chris@talbot-heindl.com.
we love our donors. If you would like to become a donor, email chris@talbot-heindl.com and make your pledge.
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Stevens Point (and neighbors) Calendar of Events. Art
Through December 2 Metal Inkorporated. Metalsmiths and printmakers respond to each other. Edna Carlsten Gallery, UWSP. Through December 23 Gift Gallery. Riverfront Arts Center. Through January 5 A Gift of Art. Gallery Q. Through January 31 Sara Studinski. Scarabocchio Art Museum. December 9-January 27 UWSP Juried Student Exhibition. Reception: Dec 9, 2:00-4:00 p.m. Edna Carlsten Gallery, UWSP. Comedy Community/Fundraising
December 11 Community Potluck Series: Holiday Favorites. 6:30-8:00 p.m. Greenhouse Project.
Dance
December 6-9 afterimages 2012. Dec 6-8 7:30 p.m.; Dec 9 2:00 p.m. Jenkins Theater, Noel Fine Arts Center, UWSP.
Mondays Sing That Tune Karaoke. 9:30 p.m. Partners Pub. Wednesdays Acoustic Open Mic with the Sloppy Joe Band. 8:00 - 11:00 p.m. Northland Sports Bar and Grill.
December 1 Alice’s Adventured in Wonderland. 2:00 p.m. Pachelli High School.
December 5 Moscow Boys Choir - Christmas Around the World. 7:30 p.m. @1800.
December 1 Cameras & Photo Gear: What to Buy. 10:00-12:00 p.m. Register ahead, 346-3838.
December 8 Trampled by Turtles. 7:30 p.m. DUC, UWSP.
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Theater
December 1-2 Central Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra: Holiday at Home. Dec 1 7:30 p.m.; Dec 2 4:00 p.m. Theater @1800.
December 8 Monteverdi Chorale - Messiah and More. 7:30 p.m. St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.
December 6-8 Aquaponics and Controlled Environment Agriculture Workshop. Dec 6-7 8:00-4:00 p.m.; Dec 8 8:005:00 p.m. Marquette County Service Center, Montello. www.uwsp.edu/ conted.
December 15 Red Panther Classic 2012 Team Figure Skating Competition. KB Willett Arena.
Music
Courses/Workshops
December 1 Feng Shui Workshop. 9:00-12:00 p.m. Register ahead, 346-3838.
December 1 Frostbite Road Race. 9:00 a.m. Stevens Point YMCA.
December 9 Monteverdi Chorale - Messiah and More. 3:00 p.m. St. Peter Church.
Outdoors/Sport
Mondays Moonlight Bike Ride. 9:00 p.m. UWSP sundial.
If you would like to see your event in The Bitchin’ Kitsch next month, please email the details to chris@talbot-heindl.com.
content dec 2012 Shedding Skin - Wlkn_Fire
monthly mission submission - pg. 6
Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE - pg. 23
on the front cover:
Shedding Skin Wlkn_Fire Ink and watercolor on paper
on the inside back cover: love interest
douglas somers Painting
the bitchin’ kitsch video and music issue:
Check out this month’s “issue” link of video and music at www.talbot-heindl.com/bitchin_kitsch.html or www.youtube.comTheBitchinKitsch
cover
A year in The Bitchin’ Kitsch
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Clearing: Sandy Leaves Manhattan in a Huff - Louie Crew
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Calendar of Events
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Monthly Mission Submission
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What I learned after studying economics for 12 years - John Lee
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Church Mouth - Zachary Frisch
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Dear Us - Buzz
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Collaborations - LM & XY
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I hold back - Dawnell Harrison
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Social Security: Water Reserve to Drive a Grain Mill - Louie Crew
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Bicycles - Paul Hostovsky
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I Am So - Brian Hardie
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My Diamond - Jacob Cardarelli
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At the Botanical Gardens Robert Lavette Smith
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Targets - Mike Cluff
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Ophion in the Third Millenium Colin Dodds grape job - douglas somers
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Arrogance - Holly Day
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Crappy Drawing - Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE
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Just Outside the Gates - Seymour
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Just like genghis - Marc Carver
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The Porch - Ken Abraham
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Without You - Alon Calinao Dy
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A Long Winter of the Soul Briana Paquette
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001 - Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE Donors and Index love interest - douglas somers
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26 26 27
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monthly missions submission. monthly mission submission
New to The Bitchin’ Kitsch, “monthly mission submission.” Every month, artists indicate that they would like to submit to The Bitchin’ Kitsch but don’t know what to draw. Now, you don’t have to! Every month, there will be proposed phrase to play around with. This month’s phrase was “four more years” submitted by Jan Haskell. Next month’s phrase will be “hot dog jungle gym” submitted by mcfishenburger. If you would like to suggest a phrase for the month of December, simply submit it on Facebook. The suggestions that receive the most likes will be the phrases for December.
Chris Talbot-Heindl Digital Illustration
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john lee. What I learned after studying economics for 12 years By: John Lee
When I was in middle school, I sat for a placement test and after taking it, when I moved on to highschool, I was placed in the science class. Highschool in Brunei is categorized into three different classes - science, art, and combined, whatever the hell that means. So in highschool, I studied advanced mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, and English Literature. The last one doesn’t seem to fit, does it? That’s because it doesn’t. Whereas I had no choice in regards to the other subjects, I had a choice between studying accounting and literature. Accounting was full of numbers, arbitrary categorization of things into assets and liabilities, and was full of guys. English Literature had Shakespeare, sexual innuendo, and a really hot girl that I was crushing on at the time. The choice was a no-brainer. For those of you who know me, I’m sure that it will come as no surprise when I say that I was miserable in highschool. Who wasn’t, right? But I was miserable specifically because of the curriculum. So when I went to college, I decided to study what I was truly passionate about - political science and economics because there is nothing as wise as investing five years and a shit load of money on majoring in the soft sciences during a worldwide recession. I wonder why I didn’t major in philosophy instead? I heard that there’s quite a buck to make in that racket. So in case some of you decide to go back to college and study economics (my advice, don’t) or you were ever curious about the subject but couldn’t get yourself to stay awake past the first paragraph of your highschool economics text book (not that anyone can blame you, those books are indeed full of gobbledygook) or if you have kids who show signs of being interested in studying economics (then try to veer them toward something more productive like Business Management or Finance and if that doesn’t work, then try lobotomy), then I am now going to offer you a free economics lesson worth five years condensed into one blog post. Let’s get the main themes out of the way. As you probably know, people have needs and they also have desires. And they are near infinite. But the world only has a limited supply of goods to satisfy those wants and needs. Hence, you can’t always get what you want.
Case in point, you want to have kinky sex with as many people as you can but there aren’t a lot of people in the world who are ok with the idea of engaging in kinky sex with broke economics majors. Therefore, fundamentally, economics is the study whose purpose is to find the best way to make finite goods meet infinite wants. Perhaps the desire for kinky sex was not the best example to give here considering the fact that if you act on this desire, in the general market (not niche markets; that would be kinky sex clubs), it won’t take very long for you to realize that you might achieve highly uneconomic results.
I’m told that this is not standard uniform. Photo credit: www.aaymca.com If that last paragraph hasn’t bored you yet, I suggest you get a few drinks in you. For this particular course, I recommend vodka tonic. Or whatever. Just as long as it gives you a strong buzz. And if you have a blunt, feel free to smoke it, too. I’ll wait. Stoned yet? Good. Let’s go. Most economics text books these days borrow extensively from this British gentleman named John Maynard Keynes. The man was mostly a quack but every once in a while, he made some good contributions to the field of economics. For example, there’s his formula for measuring the equilibrium level of GDP. “Equilibrium level of income (Y) equals aggregate
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john lee (con’t). autonomous expenditures [Consumption (C) plus Investment (I) plus Government Expenditure (G) plus the total of Exports (X) minus Imports (M)] times 1 divided by the marginal propensity to save (mps) whereas mps equals 1 minus the marginal propensity to consume (mpc). Thus:
There were other pictures available but they were too... sad and sickening. Photo credit: www.jockweb.com
Photo credit: www.motivatedphotos.com Is this formula really important? Yes, if you’re an economics student because this will be on the test. If you’re a normal human being, no, not really. How many people ever calculate Y for any reason anyway? Aren’t you glad that you smoked that blunt now? Economists claim that they study production, distribution, and consumption. But that’s not really true. Economics professors can’t teach anything about production of anything because that would require an actual skill. So that’s out. And they can’t teach anything about consumption either. Why? Well, think of how personal consumption of goods is - that Hungry Man frozen dinner set you’re going to eat by yourself in front of the TV watching that DVD of Girls Gone Wild that you bought using your credit card at three in the morning after getting blackout drunk because your girlfriend left you when she realized that she could do better, which means that that box of extra large Trojans that you bought, which were too big for you anyway, won’t be getting used any time soon, and this makes you wish you had bought a box of Kleenex instead because you’re probably going to cry yourself to sleep for the rest of your life. Therefore, economists concentrate on the only thing they can concentrate on - distribution.
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And this isn’t “distritbution of wealth from the rich to the poor.” I’m talking about the distribution of EVERYTHING. The distribution of raw materials - the seeds and fertilizers needed to grow that mutant chicken whose breast and leg you’ve got on your Hungry Man dinner plate, the petrochemicals needed to make the plastic required for the Girls Gone Wild DVD box set, the distribution of labor (the bartender who served you that eleventh shot of Wild Turkey). And then there’s also the distribution of space and time, which is what the Internet is. You get to watch all the freaky porn you want while shopping for Ikea furniture and posting wanted ads for “ski trips” on Craig’s List. The Internet truly is a wonderful place. All these goods that get distributed are called “economic goods.” An economic good is any good that is scarce; a concept so broad that anything can be an economic good. Even air. If there is too much pollution, there is less clean air to breathe, which doesn’t change the fact that you still need the same amount of clean air to breathe, and you also have to pay for catalytic converters and unleaded gas to make the air breatheable again. So everything is an economic good. Including your mom. Photo credit: uncyclopedia.wikia.com The last fundamental principle for economics is the distinction - for no good reason that I can figure of the broad subject of economics into two fields
john lee (con’t). - microeconomics and macroeconomics. Micro is the study of individual economic behavior and macro is the study of how economies behave as a whole. In other words, micro is about money that you don’t have and maco is about money the government has run out of. Now that we’re done with the fundamental principles, less move on the less fundamental but more fun principles. Principle #1: The Market is Never Wrong This doesn’t mean that people are never wrong. People are almost always wrong about almost everything almost all the time. But when we say that the market is never wrong, what’s usually meant is the price of goods that are bought and sold at any given time. Let’s say that you have Weird Al Yankovic’s newest album. You think that Weird Al Yankovic is the greatest artist the world ever bared witness to and that Adele is an overrated pom. And it so happens that this album was personally signed by Weird Al Yankovic himself. So you list this album as for sale on eBay and list its selling price at US$1000. You could very well be right that Weird Al Yankovic is the best singer the world has ever seen. “Amish Paradise” and “White and Nerdy” were fucking awesome. And Adele is an overrated pom. But the vast number of people might not want the album for anything more than US$2.39. And the market is right and sadly, you’re not. By the way, everything does indeed have a price. You might be a tree hugging hippie who’d rather chain yourself to a sequoia for years and martyr yourself for Gaia than see that overgrown weed turned into an enormous stack of toothpicks because “the beauty and majesty of a sequoia is ‘priceless.’” But that’s still a price, albeit a high one.
Principle #2: You can’t fix prices for long Even if you’re a born-again Marxist, eyes glazed with diadectic arguments, and you’re oh-so-proud of that Che Guevara t-shirt, which was made by Guatemalan child labor, that you bought at Good Will, even you understand that prices can’t be fixed. I know that you know this because I know that at least once in your life, you have bought and/or sold pot. Yeah, you might think that price is that whole wasting natural resources and pollution thing if you’re into that whole capitalist pig monopoly rip-off, man, but if you’ve ever bought pot, even you understand that things cost what they cost no matter who says so otherwise. Let’s take the War on Drugs for example. The War on Drugs is a particularly brutal and fascist way of raising commodity prices above its market rate (in the form of getting shot in the face by overzealous DEA agents and being sent to prison for having a roach in your incense burner that you’ve also been using as your ashtray). So of course, recreational drugs (HAHAHA! Like as though methadone is not a recreational drug!) was forced to go underground aka the black market, where pot costs what it costs, which was $60 for an eighth the last time I checked (if prices have gone up, then by definition, even if you’re a Marxist, you have a fundamental understanding of inflation, too). But now let’s take a look at this from the opposite perspective. Lets say that the government thinks that the price of beef is too low. After all, those poor farmers at Monsanto have to feed their kids and they’ll never feed their kids the crap from their farms. So the government raises the price of beef. Suddenly, everyone has beef! Old ladies are pulling it out of their purses after they just left the buffet restaurant, your dad has some stashed in the garage; Mama Cow wants to sell her sow beause veal is oh-so-good and even you know it is. The market is flooded with beef and so sellers have to sell beef cheaper than their competitors to make a buck (and yes, people will do this even if price cutting is illegal because, you know, people are greedy like that), which as it turns out, is how much beef actually costs. So one way or another, things will always eventually cost what they cost - no more, no less.
I personally think this looks better than a sequoia. Photo credit: www.meterdown.com 9
john lee (con’t).
Photo credit: current.com Principle #3: There is no free lunch As I said earlier, everything has a price - something which politicians never seem to learn. These days, Republicans like to say that they can up defense spending without having to raise your taxes because they’re going to save money by ceasing to fund Big Bird. Democrats like to say that they can up spending on food stamps, higher education, health care and lawn care without having to raise your taxes because they’re going to take more only from the rich and “close legal loopholes.” Never mind that the math makes no sense. And never mind that the rich have accountants, tax lawyers, and bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and so they end up not paying taxes and even if they do pay taxes, they can just buy Congress and rig the system so that they might pay more in taxes but they get to foreclose everyone else’s homes. The government can try to give peple free stuff by printing more money but that would lead to what we had in Weimar Germany and still have in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, where a loaf of bread costs your mother’s spleen. Or the government can run a deficit, as many countries in the world have been doing for the past few decades. Lemming herd, anyone? Deficits are less painful, less immediate, and less obvious than runaway inflation or higher taxes but it will eventually lead to one or the other or both. And in the meantime, what we’ll get with all that deficit spending is the thirteenth bailout for JP Morgan, which is, as always, money well spent. Principle #4: You can’t have your cake and eat it, too Let’s say you have $50. You can either use that money to buy pot or you can use it to help feed an orphan in Rwanda for a whole month. Get high or feed an orphan. If you choose to get high, then you’re not going to feed 10
that child. And you’d be a horrible person to boot. If you choose to feed the orphan, the kid might live to be seven but in your own little bubble, the world is going to seem like a much less tolerable place to bear. Either way, whatever you choose, you’re going to have to forgo the other. This thing that you forgo is called “opportunity costs” and this is the main cost of all government expenditures; not taxes, inflation, or interest on the national debt. For example, let’s say that the government increases the property tax rate in order to build a new railway line across Central Wisconsin for those modern High Speed trains that are going to create jobs in the manufacturing industry. It’s easy to see the benefits - you can see the people getting new jobs and the opening of restaurants, hotels, malls, liquor stores, schools, houses, hospitals, etc. And so people find it easy to champion such government programs. However, you don’t see the opportunity costs - the new clothes, computers, cars, etc. that people could have bought for themselves had their property taxes not been raised because none of these expenditures and investments were allowed to take place. The benefits are obvious for all to see; the costs are invisible and need a bit of imagination. So the next time you hear someone say “Goverment Progam X is going to help create jobs,” consider what that would mean in terms of opportunity costs. Principle #5: Breaking things don’t create jobs This is an extension of Principle #4. You often hear people say that the massive amounts of government spending during the Second World War helped propel the US get out of the Great Depression like as though this is dogmatic truth. The next time you hear someone say this, ask them if they counted the cost of lives lost in Pearl Harbor, or Normandy, or Iwo Jima. Had there been no war, there would have been no rationing; and instead of tanks, planes and ships, businesses would have made radios, refrigerators, cars, and tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen would not have been killed. John Maynard Keynes, the quack that I mentioned earlier, was a proponent of massive government spending to overcome recessions and depressions. It was reported that when he stayed at a hotel, he once randomly started throwing unused towels all over the floor claiming that the was creating jobs because people would be needed to pick up the towels, clean them, and neatly fold them again. I don’t
john lee (con’t). think he bothered to ask the hotel staff what they thought about his idea. When you go to a china shop, you will most likely see a sign that says “You break it, you bought it.” And all you’ll end up with is broken china and not the ones that you really wanted. People tend to forget this addage. Principle #6: Full Employment is not the ultimate goal This may seem counterintuitive at first glance but not so if you really think about it. When ATMs were first invented, a lot of bank tellers lost their jobs. As auto companies got robots to perform a lot of the actual building of cars, a lot of blue collar union jobs disappeared. Do we really want to go back to a time when there were no ATMS or robots for the sake of having full employment? If that’s what we want, then why stop there? Why not also get rid of the wheel and have the government build pyramids all over the country? That would be back breaking labor but it would also give us full employment in no time. The fact is that society much prefers higher quality and more efficient levels of production and rightfully so. Would minimizing the unemployment rate be swell? You betcha. But always ask yourself - at what price?
Photo credit: globaldomainsnetwork.blogspot.com Principle #7: Don’t cry over spilled milk So you paid $1000 for a signed copy of Weird Al Yankovic’s CD and your girlfriend left you calling you the worst mistake she has ever made. You now have a choice. You can either bitch and moan about it til Judgment Day or you can try to recover your costs by trying to convince some other sucker that this CD’s value has no place to go but up because next year, it will be found that Weird Al Yankovic will tragically commit
suicide by repeatedly hitting himself on the head with a baseball bat, shooting himself in the groin, then drowning himself in the toilet, which he will neglect to have flushed. This $1000 you spent is spent and there’s nothing you can do about that. This is called “sunk costs.” You can invent a time machine and travel back in time to stop your old self from buying the CD but that will mess up the space-time continuum and when you come back to the present, you’ll see that George W. Bush is gearing up to become president for his fourth consecutive term. Could you live with yourself with that on your conscience? I didn’t think so. So man the fuck up and go kill Weird Al. Now using this analogy, this bring me to current state of politics. President Obama is always saying that the economy is in a mess because, well, the white guy before him messed it up. And the Republicans are saying that after four years in the White House, this is now Obama’s economy. This is the same as crying over the $1000 you spent on Weird Al Yankovic’s CD. It doesn’t matter who caused the economic mess (it was actually both parties). The mess is there. Stop pointing fingers at each other and just clean it the fuck up already. Principle #8: Build it and they will come One of the wrong beliefs people hold about economics is that there is only so much wealth to be had. The reasoning goes that if I have a lot of wealth, it means that you have that much less. This is about as true as saying that Nicolas Cage is the best actor of our times. Earlier I said that human wants are unlimited. And it’s true. If you create a shitty techno music jam band in your attic and record stuff, major record label companies might piss all over you while laughing hysterically (assuming that they even get to hear about you at all) but you can bet that there will be some hipsters willing to buy your CDs seeing how no one else has ever heard of you. And when enough people ironically buy your CDs, BAM! Record deal, baby! Sure your original clientele will give you the finger and you will sell out to the Man but you will be making more money. So long as there is even the tiniest bit of human want or need that is not met (and they will never be fully met), there is always an opportunity to create more wealth. More is always better. And there will always be more. You just have to create it.
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john lee (con’t). Principle #9: Everyone gets paid
less than a dollar.
No one ever does anything for nothing. Ever. No matter what we do, we always want to get paid and we do get paid. The thing is, we just don’t always want to be paid with money. If you work for a moving company and helped some guy move his grand piano to his new studio apartment, you’re probably not going to want to get paid in hugs. But if you voluntarily help your new hot neighbor move in to her place with her stuff and she tells you that she’s paying her way through college by working at Hooter’s, you might not want her to pay you for your help with cash but you’d most likely want to add her as friend on Facebook. People get paid everytime, just not with money all the time. Principle #10: Everyone’s an expert at something If you’re Neil Young, you’re an expert at making shitty music that hippies love and will pay for with whatever little money they have left after they buy their pot. If you’re Jimmy Buffett, you’re an expert at making shitty music that frat boys love and will pay for with whatever little money they have left after they buy their beer kegs and roofies. Even you’re an expert at something. You might be an artist and you probably don’t think you’re an expert because you’re no Picasso but compared to a schmuck like me who doesn’t know the business end of a paintbrush, you have the comparitive advantage, meaning that you’re an expert. This means that you can go on painting ponies and I will continue to write notfunny-at-all essays on economics and politics. Everyone’s an expert at something because of a thing called “division of labor” aka specialization. Milton Friedman once used a pencil as an example of specialization. A pencil is a simple object that people take for graned but there’s not a single person in the world who can make one. That one person who can make a pencil all by himself would need to be a miner to get the graphite, a chemical engineer to turn the graphite into a pencil lead, a lumberjack to cut the sequoia, and a carpenter to shape the pencil casing. He’d need to know how to make yellow paint, how to spray it on and how to make a paint sprayer. He’d have to go back to the mines to get the ore to make the metal for the thingy that holds the eraser, then build a smelter, a rolling plant, and a machine-tool factory to produce equipment to crimp the thingy in place. And he’d have to grow a rubber tree in his backyard. All this would take a lot of time and a lot of money. Yet, due to specialization, a pencil sells for 12
Photo credit: www.popfi.com Ok. Now that we’ve gotten all of that down, let’s move on to the one thing that no one really understands money! What the hell is money? The short answer is: Err... well, it’s complicated. When we think of money, we think of overdecorated pieces of paper that have pictures of disreputable presidents on them. But the thing is, money is not a specific thing. It is a symbol of things - a symbol of things that you want and how many of those things you’re going to get. And these things change depending on time, place, and circumstance. If you’re at home alone on a Friday night with nothing to do, you might want pot. If you’re at work on a Monday morning with a pile of work to do on your in-tray, well, you might still want pot but you might need a cup of coffee more. Throughout history, there have been different kinds of money. First, there was barter. But it was difficult to lug around a cow for a wife so people stopped using that. Then people used “commodity money,” that is money that has value itself. For example, the Aztecs used cocoa beans and the North Africans used salt as money. But cocoa beans and salt were susceptible to mold and didn’t keep for long. So eventually, metal was used. For example, X ounces of gold was worth one gold coin. But, you know, people are greedy and no one trusted one another that they weighed out their
john lee (con’t). gold coins honestly. Besides, it was inconvenient to lug around gold for a wife. And so people began to issue paper money implying that X amount of gold was the equivalent of one dollar. This type of money is known as “fiduciary money,” from the Latin word fiducia, trust. But no one actually saw the gold - it was always in a safe. So people printed more money all the while lying about their gold reserves. Eventually, all that paper money became about as valuable as Kleenex. So did politicians pass a law that declares any excess printing of paper money that is not backed up by gold reserves as a crime punishable by death? Of course not. Because politicians are people and, you know, people are greedy like that. So they made new money claiming that one dollar was worth one dollar. This is known as “fiat money” (fiat being the Latin word for “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”), which is money backed by noting but the faith that a government won’t keep printing money until it is as valuable as Kleenex... again. Concerning this faith, the experience we’ve had in the past decade ought to make atheists of us all. Now, fiat money is the only kind of money left in the world.
some places rich and others poor, even within capitalist societies? Is it because some people are smarter than others? I don’t think that’s true. There are way more smart people in Calcutta than there are people in Berkeley and yet Calcuttans are poor and people in Berkley are swimming in gravy. Is it because some places have more natural resources? I don’t think that’s true either. North Korea has diamonds, gold, tungsten, uranium, you name it. But they’re boiling stones for soup. Singapore has to import everything including water and is sweltering hot all year long and yet it’s the “jewel of Southeast Asia.” Is culture the key? I don’t think so. Las Vegas is incredibly wealthy but “culture” is not a word most anyone would ever use to associate with that city. Is civilization the key? Nope. The Arabs invented geometry, algebra, calculus, had mapped the known world, and compiled the world’s first canon of medicine when white people were still sleeping in sties with their livestock. Admittedly, that was last month but it was Homecoming Weekend. At least for now, the West is at the pinnacle of civilization while much of the Arab world is still dressed in their bathrobes herding camels. Is big government the answer? Nope. Iraqis had plenty of government under Saddam Hussein but not much of anything else. Having no government doesn’t work either. Throughout most of human history, there was no government and EVERYONE was sleeping in sties with their livestock. Then is it because of technology? Nope. North Koreans have plenty of complex and upto-date technology in the form of ICBMs and nukes and, like I said, they’re boiling stones for soup. If it’s none of that, then what the hell is the answer? The answer, as it turns out, was never in college classrooms but given to us since we were very young in the our homes when our parents tried to repeatedly drum into our ears the things we need to do to get ahead in life: hard work, education, responsibility, property rights, rule of law, and democratic government.
Photo credit: www.worth1000.com Are we royally fucked? Yes. Yes, we are. Why? Because we’re people and, you know, people are greedy like that. But now we come to a very interesting question. If the market, driven by capitalism, works so well, why are
Ok, most parents probably didn’t talk about the last three directly but they did infer to them. When our parents taught us that stealing is wrong, they were assuming that we’d somehow understand at least the most rudimentary form of private property. When our parents told us “eat your peas because I said so,” they were assuming that the rule of law exists and that it must be obeyed. Parents, however, don’t raise their kids democratically. 13
john lee (con’t). If they did, every meal would be Count Chockula and the only thing ever on TV would be Spongebob Squarepants. Most kids, at least the lucky ones, are raised Marxist. The unlucky ones are raised Darwinian - survival of the fittest. The lucky ones have to share their toys with siblings. They have to eat whatever food they’re given. It doesn’t matter that they are five and can’t get a job at the paper mill to help pay for rent. The rule is: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” If the kids don’t follow the rules, the kids are grounded by dad, which kids often confuse with being exiled to a gulag by Comrade Stalin. No wonder so many young people grow up to become socialists. But then the kids eventually grow up and say to dad “You can’t tell me what to do! I’m not a fucking child!” Forget Aristotle and the Greek City States. This is how democracy came into existence. Democracy is a bulwark against tyranny. Democracy is good. Until it becomes bad. People can vote themselves poor and unfree, as Americans, Europeans, Japanese, and Koreans seem to be determined to do. All those things that I mentioned earlier that don’t affect how rich or poor people come into being are not unimportant. They are all important for a functional society to exist. But what we’ve so far failed to talk about is the rule of law. And that is important. Libertarians like to talk about small government and how the government that governs best is the one that governs least. They don’t seem to have any idea about how much work that needs to go into keeping government small while ensuring liberty and prosperity. That’s because it takes generations to have a whole people learn that in order for society to become free and properous, people must respect the rule of law. If there is anyone who thinks that Afghan women are all going to be driving Priuses while wearing thong bikinis as soon as every Coalition soldier withdraws and the Karzai government gets its act together, they have another thing coming. So we’ve got rule of law pat down and wealth and liberty. Why then are people in wealthy nations all going nuts over socialism like as though they’ve forgotten that socialism of all breeds have been tried and failed throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Besides, capitalism works! The rich are getting richer, 14
and the poor are not getting poorer. Per-capita GDP is up, life expectancy is up and infant mortality rates are down. Yes, the rich are getting richer but the poor aren’t becoming worse off - they’ve living longer and becoming parents - and becoming richer. You probably have a cell phone. Ask yourself if you think you would have been able to afford one if you were your same age as you are now in the 1980s.
This used to cost much more than getting Lasik surgery does today. Photo credit: geek.techweb.com.cn To simply claim that people have a short collective memory is overly simplistic. There is one word that we’ve all been taught since we were little - Fairness. Should we really be concerned with fairness as we seem to be? No, we shouldn’t. Fairness is a good thing at the day care center when you want to make sure that four-year-olds aren’t bawling and pulling each other’s hair over who gets to play with the one Buzz Lightyear model. Fairness is also a good thing in marriage, especially when the divorce lawyers step in to divide up the goodies (do you really want to go to court over the “Army of Darkness” poster?). Fairness is indeed a virtue; a domestic virtue. But as a foundation for a political system, fairness is actually a vice. Just ask the Cubans. Let’s say you had a million dollars. What would you do with it? You might pay off your bills, buy yourself a house, go on vacations, help out your relatives and maybe even a few friends, and you might even donate some of it to the Hefer Foundation. Your life would get better if you got rich. The lives of the people around you would get better. Wealth begets more wealth. Your wealth is good. Wealth is good. So why isn’t someone else’s wealth good? The wealthy don’t eat their money or inject it into
john lee (con’t). their bloodstreams. They spend it and invest it because money is not really wealth, it is a tool used to create wealth. So don’t envy those who have money and try to get your hands on it via taxes. Go get your own. But of course, ‘envy’ is a loaded word, isn’t it? “I don’t envy the rich. I don’t begrudge them at all. I just want them to pay their fair share... so that I can get my hands on some of it.” Realistically speaking, however, even if the rich are taxed more, we’re not going to see any of that money. Not directly anyway. The government is going to get the money and it’s going to spend it the way it thinks best spent, which is why the deficit will only get worse and things will get shittier. That’s because there are, as Milton Friedman pointed out, only four ways to spend money: 1) Spend your money on yourself. 2) Spend your money on other people. 3) Spend other people’s money on yourself. 5) Spend other people’s money on other people. If you spend your money on yourself, you’re going to spend it wisely and you’re going to look for the best deals. “$1000 for a signed copy of Weird Al Yankovic’s CD? Fuck that noise! I won’t pay more than $2.39.” If you spend your money on other people, you’re still going to spend wisely and look for the best deals but you’re not going to really care if the other people are necessarily going to like what they get. That’s why you keep giving those horrible sweaters to your friends and relatives for Christmas every year.
If you spend other people’s money on yourself, who the hell cares what it costs? Screw Weird Al Yankovic’s CD. You’re going to get yourself a Bentley AND have Weird Al Yankovic come over to your house to sing “Amish Paradise” to you in person. He’ll probably do just about anything for a club sandwich these days anyway. And if you spend other people’s money on other people, which is what almost all government spending is, damn what it costs and what it is you’re getting. That’s how the people of New Orleans got their shitty levees. The fact of the matter is that “fairness” is just as much a loaded word as “envy” is. Yes, we need to work hard. Yes, we need education. Yes, we need the rule of law and property rights. And yes, we even need democratic government and also a little bit of luck. But if you think that you need the last two more to get ahead in life than anything else, then you, my friend, have issues. Is economics difficult to understand? It sure is. Especially after you nose dive into econometrics. That shit just makes you want to pull your hair out from the root. Why do you think that I shaved my head while I was in college? Ripping off clutches of your own hair from your scalp hurts like a motherfucker. After a while, the graphs and the formulae you have to memorize and understand are nothing short of vomit-inducing. But that’s not the most difficult part of economics to understand. In fact, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” doesn’t contain a single economic graph or mathematical formula. The most difficult part of economics to understand, especially when it comes to making society prosper (and not purely for academic purposes) is that it doesn’t really need to be understood; at least not expertly. Here are the things we need to know: 1) The market is indeed “heartless.” That’s because the market, like money, is a tool that you use to get what you do want. Yes, we want money but we can’t eat money. You don’t ever hear of anyone complain that a clock is heartless (though a heart-beating clock would be fucking awesome). The same applies to the market. Shut the fuck up and just take my money already! 2) Markets are self-organizing. People always find ways for other people to be useful to them and vice versa.
Photo credit: www.weirdworm.com 15
john lee (con’t).. 3) The concept of the Invisible Hand is difficult to understand precisely because it is invisible; like opportunity costs.
North Korea - Socialist Utopia. Photo credit: www. americanthinker.com The market is indeed a bitch. Photo credit: www. squidoo.com 4) Wealth is not zero-sum. Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is what leads to bad economic thinking. Wealth is based on productivity and productivity is infinitely expandable. If you eat too many slices of pizza, we can order more pizza. I don’t need to eat the box. 5) The rich contribute more to society than idealist tree huggers. Even if a Wall Street executive cheats on his taxes, he still pays more in taxes than the rest of us in the form of income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, capital-gains taxes, estate taxes, import duties, excise duties, etc, which help to fund schools, roads, hospitals, parks, and the US Marines. The tree hugger, who joined Greenpeace and chains himself to a sequoia, admirable as he may be, saves one tree. And that’s assuming that the logging company doesn’t own bolt cutters. Wealth brings great benefits to the world. 6) The alternative to capitalism is not Socialist Utopia. In fact, there are a number of alternatives - crony capitalism, plutocracy, kleptocracy, oligarchy, autarchy, and just plain, ugly socialism. And they’re all very ugly. Socialist Utopia exists only in college classrooms. Capitalism doesn’t work perfectly or even uniformly but it works. But we refuse to let it work because of our love for power and/or foolish idealism.
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7) The free market is moral and the beauty is that we don’t need to be moral ourselves. Adam Smith wrote in ‘Wealth of Nations’ - “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Selfishness for one’s own well being is good. Or as Gordon Gekko put it, greed, for the lack of a better word, is good. 8) Trickle down economics works! People think it doesn’t work because people misunderstand trickle down economics. For example, people these days say “The stock market is doing well but unemployment is still high and average people are still suffering. Trickle down economics has been exposed as a myth.” They fail to mention that the stock market is doing well while everyone else is still suffering because the government injected mega-corporations with hundreds of billions of tax dollars, which in effect is wealth redistribution (from the have-nots to the haves) and NOT wealth creation. People say that tax cuts for the rich didn’t lead to trickle down economics during the Bush-era and that that exposed trickle down economics as a myth. Again, they fail to mention that though taxes were cut, the government engaged in massive spending on war, using money it didn’t have via deficit financing. Almost all government spending, when you consider opportunity costs, is wasteful spending. But among these, war expenditures is the most wasteful kind, not only because of deaths, destruction, and spending $2 billion on uranium-enriched bullets don’t contribute much to farmers in Iowa, but also because wars in general
john lee (con’t). lead to market restlessness and therefore dampen investment. Remember the hypothetical scenario of what you’d do if you had a million dollars that makes your life and your friends’ lives better? THAT is trickle down economics.
But maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to see through politicians’ bullshit a little more clearly.
Economics is known as the dismal science. That’s because it is a study that attempts to nail down our psychoses, principles, desires, phiolosphies, moralities, reasoning, and opinions, all the while trying to fully understand what people at any given time consider as their self-interest. That’s why economists who stray too far from economics’ basic principles tend to be wrong almost all the time about almost everything.
Photo credit: www.mylot.com So yeah. I spent five years and a shit load of money to learn something that has done nothing except to make me a more cynical person (like as though being cynical was ever my problem) and... not much else. Why the fuck didn’t I major in philosophy instead? ... See what I just did there? I just cried over spilled milk, which is one of those things that people shouldn’t do. It’s sunk costs. Even those who have learned economics tend to forget to take their own advice. Oh well. I guess we’ll never learn after all.
Photo credit: weakonomics.com To ensure prosperity, just understand the basic principles and get out of people’s way and let them succeed and/or fail on their own merit. Is capitalism perfect? Hell no. There will always be your Donald Trumps and Warren Buffetts on the one hand and your army of homeless people on the other. The wealth gap is obscene. But capitalism doesn’t stop you from voluntarily forking over some of your cash to feed the homeless. Like I said, it isn’t perfect. But it sure as hell beats anything else anyone else has ever offered.
Photo credit: richardrycroft.net
And there you have it. Now you’ve learned basic economics. It won’t help you get a better job, and it sure as hell won’t get you laid. Believe me, I tried. 17
zachary frisch, buzz. Church Mouth
Dear Us
I am as advantageous as a wishing well, as stoic as a dream in Hell; festered up with love and metal faces, an aspiring child’s hope and silver pieces, but though they bar themselves from speaking secrets I will always let them down.
My Psychology Major, which is really only a few credits away and on paper is a Minor, has its emphasis in Human Services. I entertained being an Alcohol and Drug Abuse counselor and realized addictive people are fatiguing to me and are notorious liars. I have studied addiction including being brave enough to look at my own.
By: Zachary Frisch
My lost affection was chained to an angel disguised; A prophet who fell from an open, hallowed sky remaining upon the beach in throes with the swells, her heart beating in time with those majestic bells, and from out her lips, spinning stories, she tells of Arcadia. Long she stayed on the blazing, sand knolls speaking sometimes in old, stone, cathedral tones, and I asked her on what principle an aerial could decide to fall from the gates; to deviate from the divine. And that fleeting Seraph looked me dead in the eye, Lying - she said she didn’t know. It always smelled of sugar plums, long run-on days; skin cancer from the sun. We spent years inside the ocean’s salty touch, and when the sea became too rough we climbed the shores, covered up, and she sang dirges to the tide. With delicacy those funeral songs were sent and swallowed up; From those many coffin tales blistered growing seeds of love, but when the dam broke on the world, everything succumbed to flood, God’s scorn all impacting, retracting, taking back my Angel from above. So, I am as advantageous as a wishing well, as broken as a stuttered death knell and Dante claims all Poets go to Hell, but I think we all go there, just in different ways just on different days but especially on those summer nights when we bury angels in the rain.
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By: Buzz
There are many types of addictions. Did you know emotions are addictive? Emotions are chemistry. Perpetuating family dysfunctions can be an addiction to an emotional Family pattern. A giant addiction we all see, or not, is the addiction to Fear. A little Fear is ok but unfortunately the Media is constantly selling us Fear and being loyal consumers, we gobble it up. Fear’s chemistry reduces our ability to think past fight or flight, black or white, right or wrong. It forces us to become biased. We become complacent and dulled by our Fear addictions and accept this dichotomous style of thinking. It is impossible to put life into just two categories, right or wrong, good and evil... Also, being conditioned to accept a Fear mentality as being normal just helps to keep us malleable. My guess is that certain institutions gain by this and benefit by our predictable nature when we function in Fear mode. The media is constantly selling us Fear and we gobble it up like greedy little children Insatiable and hungry for more. Our joy in conforming helps us to share this disposition with other Fear addicts. The chemistry of Fear turns us into narrow minded, division insistent beings. What a waste of our unlimited potential. So then, why do we accept Fear as our Emotional drug of choice? How about being courageous enough to replace one Emotional addiction with another Emotional addiction? Let’s pick one that still allows us to think, not just react. Love Buzz
lm & xy, dawnell harrison, louie crew. Collaborations
By: LM & XY *pieces written by LM based on artwork by XY
#3 Twins in The Wind
Blown by the same winds Sown, by this island farmer
#4 Pixie Party in The Woods
step back just one step
and we are gone into the brush
#2 The Butterfly and The Lady
Grown with the same loving care
Is it the same old tune?
We have the same magic power
with your adult blind eyes
A lovely cover, but what’s the story?
Lay down and sleep by the pretty flowers
come closer and you feel me, see me
Well, well, well
Attracted to the package, no way in hell to know the baggage Still sis, or madam better with this preening
Tone, you dark-me fair
like all the other magic you miss
see me and my sisters, no two the same come sit on this rock, and talk to me a while
peacock
than a four legged ham
I hold back
By: Dawnell Harrison I hold back From tenderness Expecting fire To come out instead. When will I lean Towards a lover’s Hand like a peony Grappling for the sun. When will I trust Someone with my Heart steeped In compassion as I reach for innocent Fingertips to meet mine.
Social Security: Water Reserve to Drive a Grain Mill Louie Crew Photograph
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paul hostovsky. Bicycles
By: Paul Hostovsky It’s like we’re all bicycles and we all have these handlebars and some of the handlebars and some of the seats are incredibly beautiful not to mention the way the wheels spin and the bells ring and the reflectors reflect and we can’t look at them and we can’t stop looking at them and all we really want is to get on top of them and ride off into the sunset but they say hey I’m not a bicycle okay I have an eternal soul that you can’t see because you’re so focused on my handlebars look they’re only handlebars okay you’re such a foot all you think about is pedaling all you think about is wind wind wind so then we nod a little guiltily and maybe finger a spoke a little sheepishly and ask for their forgiveness and maybe they feel sorry for us then because our desire feels ugly to us then when really it’s beautiful and they’re beautiful and we’re beautiful and they lean over and offer us their basket which is somehow attached to the place where their handlebars meet and our lunch is in there and their lunch is in there too so we sit together munching our lunches under the big trees all desire gone for the time being the wind playing up in the branches our souls playing near our discarded shoes kickstands gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight
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brian hardie, jacob cardarelli, robert lavette smith. At the Botanical Gardens
I Am So
By: Brian Hardie
By: Robert Lavette Smith
truth useful, voice listening not to leave alone, fury in time the patience calling the voice in minds, breakdown reading the multiple confiding, now the time and the impulse giving in beginning becomes the skimpy device, set alive, exalting the rain and grey with my binge, moreover the bridges burning forever, prescribed holiday terror afright, cracked middle finger in the frost bite, gushing monsters furnishing the artist with feelings of an end. Defining the justified mind gone astray, pain crashes the individual narrating polite, leaving alone laughter alone awake aknowledging the driven point, the authority of potential mental hell, alright, not alright the thrash. The showing of political somethings. Times to have anger appropriated, bearded hangover men not giving a shit about microphones or imagery. Bleeep. Run you elfin hipsters, frolic in my open sores, double bass machine guns would ransom your medication. Sung in the early eclipse of punk vision. Corporate charm without the style finding no order, and experience educates the note to rest. The same always
Denver, Colorado These gardens, late one winter afternoon, Are silvered with a light that clings like frost; The weather’s crisp and cold. So much is lost To time: an ancient willow–felled too soon– Once ruled the Asian garden gone to ruin; Gone, too, its dark reflection in the pool Where twilight dusts the ice. Worn thin, grown cruel, Wind in bare branches lisps a somber tune. Somewhere, a raven answers, bold and coarse; Picking through shriveled grass, some smaller birds Begin their awkward dance. Without remorse, A sullen season stands its ground, and wards Off green and pliant life, whose buried force Dreams summer, a lush language beyond words.
smiling murder in rotten teeth stench, in spite of living lifetimes of death in the pop music, creation warming the dope crave, not fooling my open eyes, controlling useless demands of the poor man seeking, smell crotch by wet noises, cooling the heartaches of reasons being a hollow cost. Not listening to bad moods or cringing guitar typicals, down the hole. Draining me unheard.
My Diamond By: Jacob Cardarelli
Illuminating a most beautiful shine this counterfeit will drive many men blind Possessive, Obsessive, greed will corrupt the mind Not a sign to find my Diamond
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mike cluff, colin dodds, douglas somers. Targets
By: Mike Cluff Dapper enough a Canadian goose stance center of the Milky Way look he stands, then struts in cuffless light tan dress slacks, now oh so the fashion, brown tassled loafers and no tie. It mainly works for him but this time no. He is dead already just doesn’t know it yet but she does or lets him think she is too. Purple and black striped neckwear goes on and she concurs he is a little less dead but not nearly as so as he and she might be sooner than tomorrow.
Ophion in the Third Millennium By: Colin Dodds
“Nature abhors a vacuum. “You should see what it did to the last one.” “Nature abhors a bathroom?” “No, a vacuum.”
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grape job douglas somers Painting
holly day, andrew peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE. Arrogance By: Holly Day
it ought to have altered my existence. I observed him bent above his composition, hours consumed informing minuscule granules of tinted sand of his convoluted plans on the soil, sketching cobalt flowers, scarlet flowers, a single colossal blossom obscuring the dried, packed earth. It was so lovely,
should be adequate for me, too. I sat in my tent for hours, gazing at page after page of hurriedly-scribbled poems, annotations, fictions, tomes almost started and some almost finished and couldn’t do it. I failed. I wanted to. I would like to be released of this baggage of miscellaneous papers, to set fire to all my petty dreams, disperse the pieces of me that are frozen in those notes but I haven’t the power to set them all free.
I would have given everything to be able to roll it up in its entirety and take it back home with me, but the storm stole it minutes after it was finished, spreading fantastic ribbons of contrasting dye against one another until there was nothing left but flawed, vaguely grayer smudges striping the blond sameness of the barren sand. the tiny man rose to his feet, beamed at me as though he had intended on the storm, and walked slowly away. it should have changed my life. I should have taken it away with me his lack of creative arrogance, his readiness to just let his day evaporate in the quest for a small moment of exquisite beauty, and just the beauty of that one small moment. I was wholly determined to go home and expunge the whole of what I had ever composed that day, that week, that whole crazy year of my life, overflowing as I was with the little man’s palpable happiness at the creation of something so temporary. I figured that taking joy in just the act of writing Crappy Drawing Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE Digital illustration
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seymour, marc carver, ken abraham, alon calinao dy. Just Outside the Gates
The Porch
Formidably resting like green vultures, Death envious, At the gates emblazoned with the runic message-Destruction Ironic wrought iron wrapping their souls in iron grip, Of all-Freedom’s anomalies For all-Soulless entities Inside the gates, Just outside the gates Doing as instructed Accepting fate implanted by an angry god. Smell the noxious odors cramming the nostrils Be stung by the falling ashes And be a mouthless fallen statue Dragging through muck and mire To Philadelphia In a row house of brotherly love In a life-denial First monkey—see no evil-Unblemished records Responsibility-less, Abrogated warrants draped listlessly over mortality, While they linger, Sodden dust particles, Fallen tears Of ghosts in the dust of their destruction.
Most houses on my street have a porch, ……….. no, every house!
By: Seymour
Just like genghis By: Marc Carver
As I sat down on my bed watching a film it began to thunder and lightning- so I got up and went outside in the rain thought I would give god his chance I waited for a while but I just got wet and I thought I had given him long enough so I went in and watched the end of the film.
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By: Ken Abraham
An outdoor wooden platform, no windows, no walls, They seem so very antiquated, They are, so often, so very empty, So warm when occupied, So cold when barren, They were meant as a place to relax, to converse with neighbors, But that was when people knew their neighbors, I just think we all would be a little richer, If the porch still served its purpose.
Without You By: Alon Calinao Dy
I love you, I can’t think of a better way To spend my life To be with you everyday. I think about you every minute. I hope you think about me. There’s no other place, I would rather be. Just a glimpse of your face, You make my life complete. You make it simple and easy. I love you, my baby. Don’t ever leave me. I don’t want to be alone. I couldn’t survive without you. I think I’d die out on my own ‘Cause I don’t know what else to do Without you...
briana paquette. A Long Winter of the Soul By: Briana Paquette
Your eyes; dark oceans. They used to bring a sensation of peace. I no longer see them. Avoid contact. Keep my words in. Who I am, you thought you knew. I am no longer. This has changed me. Changed beliefs once held so strong. In this moment, I realize how love has made me unsure. Brought doubts in me, of me. An ache in my chest, like a constant pneumonia of the heart. And to think, I loved you. When I knew I would only ever be an option, not THE choice. When I would go out of my way to see you and a smile on your face, knowing you could care less what appeared on mine. You would never lose sleep over me. Remember those words? Because I remember the agony in hearing them. To think, I loved you. Your laugh. Your soul. Everything you define yourself as, and more. I saw an angel inside that I craved to know. To feel a tiny heart beats worth of love from in return. I would say I lov[ed] you, but I’m probably just trying to convince myself that I don’t. So my cheeks will dry and the restless dreams of you that harbor themselves deep in my heart, will maybe, finally ease away. And I can move on with my life without the pain of you. The pain of knowing I have always truly loved you. All these years and I remember the first moment I laid my eyes onto your brilliance like it was yesterday. I love you still. And probably always will. Tis the season of bittersweet melancholy. Got to learn to hold on to now, today... Move in the moment into tomorrow. And hope this is all worth it in the end. Or return to original creation. Original existence, and find a different sort of peace. A different kind of you.
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andrew peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE, donors, index. advertisers Bitchin’ Kitsch mcfishenburger Second Space
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artists
001 Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE Ink on paper
Abraham, Ken 24 Andrew Peterson of OVER NIGHT EMPIRE 23, 26 Buzz 18 Cardarelli, Jacob 21 Carver, Marc 24 Cluff, Mike 22 Crew, Louie 3, 19 Day, Holly 23 Dodds, Colin 22 Dy, Alon Calinao 24 Frisch, Zachary 18 Hardie, Brian 21 Harrison, Dawnell 19 Hostovsky, Paul 20 Lee, John 7-17 LM & XY 19 Paquette, Briana 25 Seymour 24 Smith, Robert Lavett 21 somers, douglas 22, 27 Wlkn_Fire
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