Gone (Underwater In 2010): A 3-D Painting

Gone (Underwater In 2010)-A 3-Dimensional Painting

It isn't everyday that an "artist" gets to create a new art form; at least, I think that's what I have done. If someone out there has beaten me to this, my apologies to that person.

The piece above is entitled "Gone (Underwater in 2010)", and I refer to it as a "three-dimensional painting".

Allow me a few moments of your time for an explanation.

I have lived in the same apartment in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles since January 2001; I love my place, can tolerate the Valley and mostly ignore the rest of L.A., as either banal, boring or disgustingly self-indulgent.

Over the years an enclave, as it were, has been established by a number of long-term neighbors staying in the area, and a "community" has taken root. People know each other, wave when we see each other out walking our dogs, or going to our cars on our way to our various pursuits, stop to chat when we encounter each other on the sidewalks and, in general, mostly seem to like each other.

I met Sue and Pete (not their real names) not long after I first moved in; they owned the small place immediately to the west of my building. I saw them outside one afternoon and stopped to introduce myself and inquire about possibly renting their garage to house my car. They said they were glad to meet me, declined to rent me the space and we became, in the purest sense of the word, "neighbors".

Not best of friends necessarily, but neighbors.

To keep this as short as possible, suffice to say that, we did all the "neighborly" things I described above over the passing years; we waved, we stopped to chat when the occasion presented itself (they loved Harley, the OCOTP, and eventually went out and got a dog of their own, so taken by HD that they were. Oh, yeah, I forgot, I am Pope John The Tall of the All John All The Time World Church; read the "disclaimer" at the top of the page for an explanation of that phenomena.)

Anyway, P and S were my neighbors, and the years passed.

Then came the Great Recession of 2010, and my story turns to how "Gone" came to be.

Pete and Sue were both middle-school teachers, employed by private academies here in the Valley. And when the fallout from the recession finally came home to all of us, they both were let go from their positions in the fall of 2010, within a week of each other. To put it mildly, this was a disaster for them.

Unable to find other work, as so many of us were during those dark days, they were barely able to keep afloat financially, and of course, like so many unfortunate victims of Mr. Bush's downturn, made the coin-toss between keeping food on the table or paying the mortgage; the mortgage lost.

A plastic bag, blown into the bushes, an overturned flower pot and uncollected newspapers

They, and their home, were "underwater", and they lost it. I was devastated, for them. Good people, done in by forces well outside their control.

I saw them moving out one day in the late summer of 2011; I knew, from the few brief conversations that we had had previously that things weren't well, but I had no idea how bad they had gotten. On advise from an attorney, they were abandoning their home, to default on the mortgage.

The property sat empty for months; I walked by it every day on my morning walk, and it didn't take long for the neglect to begin to show. There were never the broken windows, the damaged siding and shingles or graffiti that so often plague empty houses; this is still a very nice neighborhood, and the damage was not as overt.

But the front yard became a knee-deep prairie of un-mown grass, weeds sprouted up through the cracks in the driveway, the flowers all died and were left to turn brown and ugly and garbage began to accumulate against the corners of the house, dropped there by uncaring jerks and blown there by the wind. I, and some of the other neighbors, did what we could to keep the handbills and fast food containers picked up, but the house took on that neglected, empty look that houses seem to get after sitting unoccupied for long periods of time.

And it haunted me, both the house, and the situation of it's emptiness.

A discarded cardboard box and a towel draped over the kitchen island, left by their owners

Certainly my feelings were exacerbated by knowing the story of how it came to be abandoned in the first place, but it was still a blemish on my neighborhood, and a constant reminder of how cruelly the greed and indifference of the people who run our country and populate our business sector often effects the average person in America.

I'll skip the sermon; this is meant to be an explanation of how "Gone" came to be, not a lecture on the evil assholes in our government and in so many of our large corporations today. Besides, it's become such a cliche to talk about "them vs. us" and I tire of it.

Since I can barely draw stick figures with any degree of accuracy, much less paint, I needed a medium to express my feelings about "the house next store". I'd like to say that the idea for making "Gone" came to me in a sudden flash of creativity, but the truth is that I just decided to try my hand at building something like a scale model, as much to occupy my leisure time as opposed to being an attempt at a great statement of purpose.

Truth is, I was a month or so into the project before I realized the theme I wanted to convey. (This is not the first time in the history of my "creativity" that I have moved, unconsciously, towards expressing an idea before I knew consciously what that idea was.)

I started on "Gone" (which I plan to be #1 in a series of several similar projects) in mid-March, 2012; I had no prior experience with building scale models, no power tools of any sort and no idea about what materials should be used. Other than a rudimentary knowledge of carpentry, I was clueless.

So I turned my kitchen into a modest wood-working shop, drew up the floor plan with the Paint software on my computer (I had two years of drafting/mechanical drawing in shop in high-school, so that part was relatively easy), and the rest, as they say, is geography.

A broken fence-gate, and weeds growing up through the shrubbery

There are a GAZILLION mistakes in this piece; my inexperience was manifest, and to my eye, it shows. (Yes, the left-hand window of the bay is WAY crooked; don't even ask how that happened. And no, the angles of the chimney are not crooked, it was my intention to offset them slightly, so that wasn't a goof.) But I learned as I went on, and I think I got better at the process.

Eight months later, in mid-November, "Gone (Underwater In 2010)" was complete, the first of a series of scale models I'm planning, each with a different theme. (FYI, the scale was one half inch equals one foot, and just for the record, "Gone" looks nothing like my-ex-neighbors house next door; the design was artistic license on my part.)

I'm sorry I've rambled on so long in giving you this explanation of my "new" art form, three-dimensional painting; thank you for taking the time to read what I've written.

"Gone", like most art, is for sale; you can contact me at krissongs@hotmail.com if you're interested or know someone who might be.

I've also posted a video that shows the step-by-step process of how I created "Gone on YouTube: if you haven't already seen it, the address is:

http://youtu.be/X4IVP92xuhA

I thank God daily for the gift of creativity He has blessed me with, and His blessings be on all of you as well.

Love and Picasso (I wish), yours in Christ,

PJTT

copyright 2012 Krissongs Inc.

 

A Sense Of Betrayal

Sitting here on this morning after the 2012 Presidential election, feeling mostly deflated more than anything else, I would like to extend my congratulations to President Barack Obama, on his reelection. Although I didn't vote for Mr. Obama, either time as a matter of fact (I'll get to that in a moment), I will point out that, as our duly elected President and leader of our nation, he is deserving of our respect and support.

We don't have to agree with him, and certainly it is our right, indeed our duty, to disagree strenuously at times with whatever proposals and agenda he sees fit to put forth before the citizens of our nation.

But always, always, it is incumbent upon us to do so with respect and dignity, for his office, and for ourselves.

The 2012 Presidential race seems like the longest I have ever witnessed, and the most distressing. (The most expensive as well.) While politics, especially Presidential politics, is not for the faint of heart, this election has to have been one of the most gut-wrenching, unpleasant contests in the history of our country.

How long has Mitt Romney been running? It seems like forever.

I first voted for a candidate for President in 1972; I was just 21, and armed with a brand-new voter card from my home state of Illinois. I voted for Richard Nixon, because even at that tender age, being possessed of little political savvy and, like so many then, the "liberalness" of the times, something about George McGovern's candidacy just didn't ring true with me.

Thus started my lengthy history of voting for Republican candidates for the highest office in America.

Nixon in '72, Ford in '76, Reagan both in '80 and '84, Bush I in '88 and '92, Dole in '96, Bush II in 2000 and John McCain in 2008. Yes, I skipped '04, which was the only break in that long history of GOP loyalty; I could not abide with another four years of that horror George W. Bush again, went off into a major revolt and voted for John Kerry.

The above momentary glitch of '04 notwithstanding, I think you could safely say I have been a loyal Republican all my adult life. Even in most local and state races, typically I voted for the GOP candidate as the person who most embodied the principles of small government, fiscal responsibility and a strong military presence in an increasingly unstable world.

These were all things I believed in deeply. And still do.

Several days before this most recent election, one of my Facebook friends posted a wonderful essay written by, interestingly, Charlie Daniels of the rock/country group The Charlie Daniels Band (clever name, what?). In it, Mr. Daniels espoused voting for a candidate that supported all those values I mentioned above, those of keeping government out of our lives, one that spends our tax dollars wisely and not profligately, a government that believes in having the best equipped, best trained and most capable armed services in the world and that believes in a moral fiber that often times seems lacking in our 21st century society. Although Mr. Daniels didn't endorse a specific candidate, it was clear of whom, on both sides, he was speaking.

Right on, Charlie, you nailed it, buddy, and I couldn't agree with you more. America, now more than ever it would seem, needs that kind of leader.

The problem was, for all Americans, that kind of leader wasn't running for President this year, from either party.

I did not vote for Mr. Obama, although I was tempted to do so; I still don't believe he has been an effective President nor that he has kept a number of the promises he made when elected back in '08, and I just could not support the man, although in truth, he should be credited for a number of his accomplishments, certainly in the area of foreign policy, where I believe he has been a creditable leader.

I again broke my long history of GOP fealty, reluctantly, and voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate; Mr. Johnson had a number of views that I agreed with, many of them similar to the positions that Republicans used to take, not the least of which were fiscal responsibility, immigration reform and the legalization of marijuana.

Those were the minor did/did not vote for's for this election; the MAJOR "I did not vote for..." was my non-support of the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney.

I wouldn't have voted for Mitt Romney if you had placed a gun to my head.

I sincerely believe that Mr. Romney is a good and decent man, just a lousy politician.

Mitt is a Mormon, a flip-flopper, unsympathetic to the working-man and, if his lack of ability to articulate his programs was any indication, clueless about Washington, D.C. governance. Further, I suspect, given his toadying to the Tea Party element in his party, he would have been utterly incapable of "reaching across the aisle" to govern from the middle, as is so desperately needed in this country today. This is all redundant and irrelevant now.

But therein lies the betrayal I feel that comes from the Republican Party towards so many of us "moderate Republicans"; sadly, he was the best the GOP had to offer.

The party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan could field no more competent representative than Mitt Romney, who frankly, looked utterly Presidential when compared to his primary opponents.

To wit:

Rick Santorum, who could not understand the separation of church and state; I admire him for his faith, but reject his stiff-necked, unyielding approach to so many of our social issues.

Michelle Bachmann, crazy. Period.

Rick Perry, almost as crazy as Bachmann, and totally clueless, even to being unable to name the several Federal agencies that he wanted to eliminate.

Newt Gingrich, all of the above, with arrogance on the side, which was particularly galling from a man who had been married and divorced what, fifteen or twenty times?

Herman Cain, also crazy.

Jon Huntsman, the only one of the bunch with any good sense and decent credentials, who got buried in the hue and outcry of the Tea Party geniuses.

This, this is the best my party had to offer me as candidates for the leader of the free world? The GOP couldn't come up with ANYONE else with a better pedigree and resume than these clowns?

And you wonder why I feel betrayed by my party? To say I'm disappointed would be the understatement of the decade.

I considered leaving the space for my vote for President blank, and just voting in the various other races and for/against the multitude of Propositions California voters have to wend their way through each election cycle. But I couldn't.

So I gave my vote to a man that, while what I read about Mr. Johnson led me to believe in his basic sincerity and honesty, had about as much chance of winning the election as an ice cube in Hell. Granted, a candidate's chances of winning really shouldn't be a factor in someone supporting them, but come on, we weren't talking Ross Perot or John Anderson here. (Bet you hadn't even heard of Gary Johnson until you read this, had you?)

I make it a point not to write about politics on my blog; it's often too polarizing, and I would rather not offend my readers (all three of them). But I had to talk about this.

Because the betrayal I feel this morning, November 7th, 2012, isn't as much political as it is personal; the Republicans owe me better than this. After all these years of loyalty, yeah, they owe me better.

Okay, I'm done, it's off my chest. I will make one last comment here, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to vent.

If the GOP doesn't find a way to move to more moderate positions over the course of the next few years, without sacrificing their core beliefs, if they can't find a leader to head up a national reevaluation of Party positions, such as Bill Clinton did for the Democrats back in '92, if they can't find a way to reject the ultra-right, over-the-top Tea Partiers, then all loyal Republicans, like myself, can look forward to election after election of under-qualified, conservative wingnuts that have little or no chance of being elected President.

Thanks a lot, GOP, for nothing; Ron Reagan has to be spinning in his grave.

Love and ballots,

PJTT

copyright 2012 Krissongs Inc.

I Just Hope Mine's Bigger Than Yours

Yeah, and you should see the holster you need for that sucker...

Well, your old Pope hasn't written a post in lo, these many months, for various and sundry reasons, some of them dealing with sloth and lack of motivation, but just this evening, predicated on a Facebook post by my friend and ex-brother-in-law, Eric, I now have both determination and motivation. (Although neither in great quantity.)

(FYI, I am Pope John The Tall, leader and CEO of the All John All The Time World Church and Pizza Parlor; an explanation of my meteoric rise to prominence is featured above. See up.)

As I was saying, my friend Eric posted several pictures of himself and his lovely better half, Kim, on FB, showing them at a shooting range firing a weapon that I had never seen the likes of previously. Admittedly, based on my limited knowledge of guns, anything other than a simple shotgun, rifle or basic handgun is outside of my experience.

It was, frankly, an evil-looking thing, in one sense, and yet oddly, in another, quite beautiful. (Kim's a cutie, too.)

Being the type of person that enjoys learning strictly for it's own sake and no other, I queried my ex-BIL as to what type of weapon it was they were shooting.

(Full disclosure here: Eric and I have had some previous discussions on the 2nd Amendment; since he's the shooter and I'm the ignoramus, you can assume who took what side of the debate.)

After replying that the weapon in question was an AR-15, and that it was .223 caliber, I replied back, asking Eric what usage, other than target-shooting, one would have for a weapon of this type. Truly, my intent was merely to obtain information, and nothing else. (Although I have to tell you, to me, this thing looked like something you would use to overrun an enemy position.)

This was my erstwhile friend's reply, verbatim:

"Hopefully that is all I will have to use it for but it makes women hot to! Is this just a precursor to a debate on the second amendment John?"

Now I freely admit, from Eric's point of view, the question was warranted, although I had given him no indication I was looking for such debate. I replied that, no, I had nothing of the sort in mind, that it was merely idle curiosity, and as I said, my penchant for learning.

Shortly thereafter, I logged off and turned to other things, but I couldn't get Eric's question out of mind. (I believe he thinks I'm a closet liberal, which I'm not, but I am quite a good deal more moderate in my politics and ways of thinking than he is; he's also a good deal better looking, and has more money to boot, but I'm smarter. More humble too.)

I kept thinking about the 2nd Amendment and gun-ownership, a subject on which I have done a fairly extensive study. No, for the most part, I don't believe that the Founding Fathers, when writing the Second, had in mind that everyone in America should have the right to arm themselves as if they're going to repel an enemy invasion next week; what they had in mind was to ensure that, since we had no standing armed services at the time the Constitution was written, that all male citizens of that era be free from the various states interference with their responsibility to the Federal government to be members of "a well regulated militia", should the necessity for said militia arise.

In fact, that's how the Amendment is worded: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Given what sounds to our 21st ears as rather archaic English, according to all the legislative history I've been able to find, what the FFs were saying was this: because we have no standing army, and because we might need to kick the snot out of the English or the French at some undetermined time in the future, no state can keep a citizen from having a firearm; in fact, we're going to do all we can to ENSURE EVERYONE has a gun. And knows how to shoot Redcoats with it.

My ex-BIL is not, to my knowledge, a member of "a well regulated militia", hence, other than for his own enjoyment, or to potentially blow the bejesus out of some miscreant who takes it upon him or herself to enter his home some early AM with nefarious deeds in mind, he has no more need for a weapon than a horse has for a can opener.

Yes, children, I would love to see ALL guns outlawed, and not because I'm some bleeding-heart liberal.

Guns, in the wrong hands, kill people, and that's wrong.

Honestly, I don't mind that Eric, or my son-in-law, Dennis, or some of my other friends, own guns; I know they're responsible owners, and that the weapons they have are handled properly and safely. (Okay, I admit I cringe knowing my son-in-law is introducing my grandsons to guns, but if they have to come to have this knowledge, better at the hands of someone who will teach them proper gun etiquette.)

Over the past year or so, however, my position on gun-ownership has evolved; I still don't like the damn things, and I hate their violent potential, but if we're going to have to live with them, and let's face it, with the NRA and the gun manufacturer's lobby and the Supreme Court, etc., like it or not, we're going to have them, then here's my new position:

Ready?

Since I believe it's all or nothing with guns, I think the 2nd Amendment should be rewritten to not only protect the "right of the people to keep and bear arms", but I think it should require EVERYONE to be armed, all the time.

That's right, race fans, just like in the Old West: EVERYBODY should pack.

Because if I have to worry when I'm out for my morning walk at 6:00am, late in October when it's still dark out, that some gang-banger asshole is going to pull up next to me, decide that he doesn't like my face and put a 9mm slug in my fat butt, then screw it, I want a Browning Hi-Power hanging on my hip, just waiting for me to quick-draw his ass into oblivion.

If you can't beat'em, shoot'em.

As a good friend of mine from the Old South would say, I'm as serious as a hog on ice. If we can't outlaw all guns, and good luck with that, then everybody should have a piece.

Think that wouldn't reduce random shootings and violence? Bet your ass. During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States were going about the nuclear arms race, it was called MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction. When both parties have equal firepower, typically it makes both parties stand down just a little quicker.

Hopefully.

So no, Eric, I don't want to debate the Second with you; these days, I'm on your side. I realize the futility in believing that this country will ever outlaw gun ownership, so I want to be protected. Yes, I have seriously considered purchasing a handgun to keep here at home, for protection against invaders.

And I can easily take that consideration the next logical step and say, hey, if I should be able to ensure my safety in my home, I should be able to ensure my safety on the streets as well.

Don't screw with me, pardner, I'm packing heat.

OR NOT. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? (Isn't that the name of my atomic-powered rocketship?)

Love and grenade-launchers,

PJTT

P.S. Oh, that monster up there at the beginning? Here's the link to the article that explains it:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/weapons/1280861 

Go ahead, make my day.

copyright 2012, Krissongs Inc.