Exchange of Values

Exchange of Values
acrylic on board 48'X96'

"Structure of Color Perception"

"Structure of Color Perception"
48'X96' acrylic on board

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Whodunnit.  96'X 36' Acrylic/painting/collage
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”  Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.   

I decided to create a painting/diagram/collage, illustrating the most impressive in my annual round up of conspiracy theories gleaned from my wonderful Facebook friends pages this year.  It all began with a Jesuit Sasquatch who ran a rat-line to help Nazi child molesters escape to Argentina through secret Roman tunnels under the Castel Sant'Angelo.  However that was merely the tip of this diabolical conspiracy!  While in hiding the Sasquatch uncovered evidence in the secret Vatican archives revealing his botched circumcision reversal, and that he had been the acting Platzhirsch of the Amerikadeutscher Bund!  The shock of this revelation so transmogrified him he felt compelled to destroy of all Western civilization, but in a clever way that would lay the blame off on hippies, Muslims, and the Teamsters Union.  So conspiring together with a cabal of expatriate White Russians, the 8 year old Barrack Obama, a cadre of Cubano ex-falangists, and Luca Brasi, who was not only Godfather Corleone's enforcer but also John Foster Dulles' polyvinyl-chloride lover, the disguised Sasquatch sniper waited on the grassy knoll in Dallas for the Archduke Ferdinand to drive by.  His plot was foiled, however, by an alien race of human impersonators whose patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, assassinated president Kennedy by mistake in an attempt to destroy SKYNET before it obtained a conscious state of singularity and thus could dominate the multiverse.  Inexorably, the self-hating Wookiee, would seek his revenge by attempting to demolish the headquarters of the National Football League whose members were responsible for imposing the use of "astro-turf"™ on football fields (it is common knowledge that Jews have never liked natural grass, h/t to Seinfeld).  SKYNET fought back by infiltrating Wikipedia and insinuating factual errors into Wiki articles.  The tragically circumcised Wookiee became the Gollum of the Bush/Clinton--Weyland/Yutani corporations and acting on falsified information he mistakenly destroyed the Twin Towers in New York thinking that that was where the NFL headquarters were located.  But In fact, it was all those liberal, dirt-worshipping, blue-skinned, *Na-vi* from the planet Pandora who hacked the NSA main frame in order to seek revenge for the obliteration of their Sacred Home-Tree!  The Marxish Na-vi had hoped that while the country was distracted by the collapsing twin towers that through the imposition of gay marriage and legalized marijuana, they could conquer Earth through population attrition.  The vigilant Pope Benedict XVI, head of "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn," uncovered this insidious and contraceptive plot and was on the verge of exposing the entire conspiracy when he was abducted and replaced by a Cyberdine Systems™ artificial life form.  This Teutonic android Pope Benedict XVI was then "retired" to reputedly "fast and pray," but in fact he was eliminated altogether to make room for the more "progressive" Pope Francis™ a Jesuit plotter, 9-11 Truther, and stooge of the socialistic gay-Sasquatch agenda, who seeks only to destroy Amerika--god's third and final choice of peoples!  "Why?" you may rightly ask, "have you not heard of this massive conspiracy before?"  Well, it should be obvious that the *Powers That Be* have purposely kept it off of the History Channel! 

(Or maybe its more like my old Rebbe used to say after smacking me on the back of the head, "Daniel, don't over complicate things, its as simple as this.  The strongest cave-man (sic) with the biggest club takes the plushest cave and the most bulbous Kardashian").

This video is a close up for those wanting a closer look.   Much obliged again y'all and see you next year.    



Sunday, April 19, 2015


***  Klediment:

***  “Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one. Mine will sacrifice animals, says another. Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third. Here is the question I think of most often: "Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?”  Orson Scott Card, "Children of the Mind."

***  I was at 3 different Easter…get-togethers(?) Easter weekend but I never saw an actual chicken egg at any of them.  It seems that plastic "eggs" filled with small toys, candy, and fast-food gift-certificates are more popular and have mostly replaced hunting for "real" eggs.  I also didn't hear as often this year that old charge that Easter is merely a 'myth' and that Christianity shamefully mis-appropriated various Spring/fertility gods and 'pagan' rituals into the church tradition and transformed them into what we use to call Easter.  For those of us lucky/oppressed enough to have been raised in the Italian/Catholic tradition I can recall growing up with Easter celebrations at Saint Angelus Merci, similar to those in New York, Sicily, Mexico, Spain, and that still occur in much of the Latin world.  One of my favorites that I always wanted to attend is the 24 hour "Mysteries of Trapani" procession close to my family's home town of Bagheria.  There are 20 religious groups each representing moments in Jesus life and death reenacting 20 mysteries.  The guild of butchers constructs and raises the cross, the bakers guild crowns Christ with thorns, the fishers wash Jesus feet, and so on.  In Palermo where many other of my people hail from, they add two pilgrims masked like devils in the yellow and red of death wander the streets during their procession and hassle passers-by and try to prevent the 2 statues of Jesus and Mary from meeting each other.  Eventually the devils are foiled though and the Virgin and Jesus meet and "vasa vasa," (kiss kiss).  I reckon I will leave it the theological experts to determine how much of these celebrations are the result/fault of 'Pagan' influences.

Many usamericans however, have understandably jettisoned most of these out-dated and perhaps even idolatrous traditions and replaced them with something called an "Egg Scramble."  Petroleum-based Plastic ovals from China are hidden all over a local park or football field.  Kids are lined up.  A starter pistol is fired.  The parents all yell "GO!"  And the kids scramble to get the most eggs/prizes that they possibly can.  Of course there are only so many eggs to go around so the fastest and most assertive kids get more eggs than the slower, smaller, less agile, less whatever kids.  No coddling the losers though and parents must keep their distance, so this contest also offers the kids a kind of life-lesson about how the real world works.  The pre-literate kids always seem a little disappointed though when they finally open their plastic shell and there is just a pice of paper in it.  But they do get the chance to learn something about delay of gratification and the complexities of non-fungilble currency trading.  Compared to the "egg scramble," tie-dyed chicken eggs and glo in the dark peeps seem like fading orthodox traditions!  Blessings and Obliged.