The Act of Painting

Art proves to be a bitter-sweet endeavor.  Most of my best pieces originated somewhere between grief and a bottle of bourbon.  My experiences in the world of professional art were disillusioning, at best.  On a more fundamental level, I have certain insecurities and regrets which rein during that period between finishing a painting and moving beyond the act of creation.  I have often wished to burn my paintings.

An old painting is rewarding in that it captures a moment from my life.  After all, regardless of the artistic value contained, at some point in my life I felt something with enough force to devote some hours to capturing the moment in semi-permanent form.  I can look back at any given painting to recall tribulations and moods.  It is like a photo album of my emotional states – my journey.

On the other hand, attempting to place a painting in society is a grueling act of submission further marred by economic serfdom.  All things considered, I have come to equate the act of painting to the wholesale prostitution of my inner child.  I surrender to the act of creation with certainty that I must immediately subject myself to the tribulations of public scrutiny and extend my hand for donations.

Furthermore, each completed painting is a piece of my naked and dead soul on the concrete, staring at me with accusing fish eyes.  Each sits before me as an alien creation, a Frankenstein’s Monster, a freak of nature.  Each painting bears my shortcomings as a painter, my lack of broader perspective, and my naiveté regarding the socio-economic realities of the world.  Each emotion bared is one that shames me, and I am pinned naked against the wall for gawkers and armchair commentators to reject.  A painting is a great humiliation.

I haven’t painted seriously in many months.  This should be no surprise given my comments above.  But I find joy and liberation in the act of painting.  I desperately wish to divorce myself from the future and to paint in the present.  To this end, I have decided to burn the art dealers, literally.  I will burn the art critics.  I will burn the commentators.  I will burn the future owners.   I will burn the paintings.

Paint thinner is very flammable.  If needed, I will pervert my own mixture to make it more so.  I will thin my paints with a time bomb, and I will surrender each experience to eternity.  This solves my painter’s block.  I will be the flaming artist.

Now I don't hardly know her
But I think I could love her
Crimson and clover

Ah
Well if she come walkin' over
Now I been waitin' to show her
Crimson and clover
Over and over

Yeah
My mind's such a sweet thing
I wanna do everything
What a beautiful feeling
Crimson and clover
Over and over

Crimson and clover, over and over

Helen, after a decent pause, continued her account of Stettin. How quickly a situation changes! In June she had been in a crisis; even in November she could blush and be unnatural; now it was January and the whole affair lay forgotten. Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realised the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.

E.M. Forster » Howards End » Chapter 12

This is 36" x 48", so the biggest of these I've done... if I recall correctly.  In the past, I painted that image with black on a white canvas, so this is a bit of a reverse with white paint on a black canvas.  Somewhat like using negative space to form the "lines".

 

 

 

Whew.  I got out last night and painted way into the wee hours.  It felt good.  No commissions, no agenda, and no worries.  Here's one of two I finished last night, called Bailout.  Some of the finer details aren't visible in the photo, most notably where I wrote on it will a ballpoint pen.  It's 24" x 48".

 

 

Fred,

 

I feel bad for all the people losing their homes to foreclosure.  I also feel bad for everyone with a mortgage.  It’s news to most Americans, but you don’t own a house until it is paid for.  If you sign a mortgage, then you own a legal obligation to pay bankers a huge portion of your income for much of your life.

I hear the arguments for investing in a home.  If you don’t buy a home but you piss away that money on other things besides savings, then you are probably better off sinking that money into a house payment.  Sure, I won’t argue with that.  But let’s assume you won’t piss your money away.  Then, you are not better off taking out a housing loan.

If it isn’t paid for, you don’t own your home.  I am not claiming to have all the answers, but Americans need to start considering multifamily and multigenerational living arrangements.  You need to downgrade your home expectations to buy your homes outright.  Save money to buy a home and adjust your expectations accordingly.  Do whatever you have to do to own your property outright if at all possible.  Just as with cars, you can save up additional money to trade up paid in full if you feel you must.

I’m not claiming that everyone can afford to do this, but I am confident that this is the way to financial success.  Mortgages are not.  If you wish to increase your success, don’t take out a loan for your living space.  Own your property instead of allowing a bank to own you.

“Helicopter Ben” Bernanke has been playing superman in the U.S. financial markets.  Of course, Paulson had to surface before it was over, and Cox had to be there for the photo opportunities.  Poor Cox catches the flack from the Republican nominee, but we all know Cox has been asleep at the wheel.  Ben is a smart fellow… perhaps too smart and trigger happy.  He was rearing to go, just looking for an excuse to unleash his defense against the next great depression.  Congress felt compelled to get in on the act.  It wouldn’t do to be absent on the stage for the big show.

We might ask, how dare they rescue Wall Street on the tax payer tab?  Yet the legislators came out of the consultation breathless and panicked.  It begs the question.  What scenario did Paulson and Bernanke present which scared our elected officials so much?

They averted bank runs in our towns and cities.  All the hoopla on Wall Street was aimed at the banks on Main Street.  Happily, people were able to deposit their checks without a scene this Friday.  Business continues as usual.

Bernanke and Paulson should, perhaps, prevail of modern technology.  They could install digital printing presses in each bank in each small town. There can be no runs on an indefinite money supply, and it gets right to the point without all the backroom engineering.  Bernanke said it clearly years ago:   There cannot be another depression so long as the government has the unlimited ability to inflate the fiat money supply.  Cheers.  This $20.00 Coke is for you, the American.

Here’s how inflation works against the average consumer.  Let’s assume our model economy has three players:  Big Business John, Small Business Sarah, and Average Citizen Joe.  Currently, our economy has $300.00 total in money supply, and each of our three citizens has equal portions of this, or $100.00 each.

John -- $100.00

Sarah -- $100.00

Joe -- $100.00

In addition, our economy has 30 units of goods.  Given the money supply, we’ll also assume our goods sell for $10.00 each.  To illustrate the imbalance of inflation, let’s now assume a bank injects a new allotment of $100.00 into the system.  After this works its way through the system, assuming again equal distribution, everyone will have $133.33 and a unit of goods will cost $13.33.  However, initially, before the adjustments, it looks like this:

Bank

John -- $200.00

Sarah -- $100.00

Joe -- $100.00

Goods cost $10.00 each

Everyone starts buying goods at $10.00, as per normal.  But John now wants to buy more, and the price soon starts to rise with the demand.  Eventually, prices rise to $13.30 to compensate for the inflation of the money supply.  This go around, John will purchase half of the 30 unit supply of goods, causing Sarah and Joe to share 15 instead of 20.

If the system is setup so that John buys through Sarah in some fashion, she will get the inflated money before Joe, allowing her to get more benefit or less damage from the inflation than Joe receives.

When this all washes out, of course, each participant will be back to par with $133.33 and the ability to purchase 10 goods.  The point I’m trying to illustrate is that bank or Federal Reserve or government injected inflation works to skew the purchasing power of the economy in favor of the elites at the top of the economic food chain while penalizing those at the bottom.

If 10% inflation manifested by every dollar in our pockets magically giving birth to a dime, then it would be even with equal effect on everyone in the system.  But 10% inflation in our economy actually results in a resource grab by the elite to the detriment to all of us common folk at the bottom.

One thing I leave out of the model above is that the distribution actually happens slowly.  Even as prices are driven up, wages for the average worker take time to adjust up accordingly, thus amplifying the impact.

My employment with an insurance defense law firm has given me insight into the effects of Katrina type events on our coastlines.  People, often rightfully, get emotional about the way the large insurance concerns handle the aftermath of a massive disaster. It’s a numbers game for the insurers, and they are obviously in the business to make a profit. What I’ve found fascinating is the whole Scruggs debacle with severe corruption on the defense side of a large class action legal battle. When people are suffering, everyone wants to see aid (in this case, reconstruction aid) delivered as quickly as possible. However, the Scruggs incident shows exactly what the insurance companies fear and why much of the legal wrangling takes so long. Scruggs represented a large number of innocent clients, and their interests were severely hurt due to bad representation.

The chaos following a major natural disaster is rife for corruption. It attracts unscrupulous elements of all sorts, and we witnessed the misuse and sometimes embezzlement of government funds in the devastation following Katrina. For right or wrong, we will see the process of insurance settlements take a period of years in many cases. The government’s ability to provide large scale infrastructure renewal is very limited in the short term, too.

Many in the nation object to footing the tax bill for bailing out people who intentionally rebuild in disaster-prone areas. Some called for NOLA to be abandoned. If the storms are becoming more frequent, and if our coastal cities are subjected to cycles of destruction more often than every 10 or 20 years; I believe our system will passively cause the abandonment of high risk areas like New Orleans. Congress won’t vote to abandon or relocate NOLA until long after it has been effectively abandoned by our reconstruction processes working on a slower cyclical scale than the storms do. With 20 year (I don’t have exact figures at hand) cycles of destruction on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the system functioned to rebuild the diverse interests. With 10 or even 5 year cycles of destruction, many elements of society won’t have the opportunity to exist in the high risk areas.

I've been enjoying my adventures in gardening.  I cook a few times a week, primarily on the grill; and it is very rewarding to harvest most of my vegetables from my garden as I am ready to cook.  If I decide a dish needs peppers, squash, onion, or what have you, I walk right out the door to grab what I need.  For now, I'm buying roots like potatoes and carrots at the store.  The same goes for lettuce and cabbage, but I've been able to grow most of the rest right here at home.

 

I have a very small row garden at the edge of the yard, but I've mostly converted flower beds and built new beds for my plants.  I'll cover these with straw at the end of the season to keep them growth free for next year, and I'll build more beds each year.  In this way, I hope to keep increasing production in a manageable way.  Building the beds is the hard part, so it makes sense to build a few new ones each year while preserving the existing ones.

 

Despite my grandmother insisting it wouldn't work, I have been avoiding pesticides and artificial fertilizers.  I've built raised beds from purchased bags of compost and potting soil -- it was a necessary shortcut to get started.  In the future, I hope to use compost from a new compost pit I'll be building in a few weeks.  I'm investigating natural methods to provide nutrients, but it hasn't been a huge issue thus far.  I like the idea of using buried fish like I've heard the Native Americans did, but I'll have to figure out how to prevent animals (including our many pet dogs!) from digging those up.

 

At the start of the season, I applied nematodes which I purchased through Amazon.com.  My pest problems have been minor other than with squash bugs.  My first harvest of squash was plentiful, but the bugs eventually swamped the plants.  I read online that there are no good organic measures to fight squash bugs, and the darn things are prolific.  On my second planting of just now blooming plants, I've been picking the bugs and their eggs off by hand.  It seems futile.  Fortunately, I read to today that a bath in a mild solution of phosphate free soap and water is eventually fatal for the bugs.  The trick is that you must wet each bug, as it has no residual effect once the solution dries.  I chose Dawn detergent, and I'll check in a few days to see how it works.

 

I'll try to take some pictures to post at some point.  Allan and I are going to start a blog for our private use to share recipes and information on cooking.  I intend to also catalog what works for me in the garden on that site, so maybe I'll post the pictures there.

Remember the good old days when oil bubbled up out of the ground under its own pressure?  You only had to slap a pipe into the hole and collect that cheap energy.  These days, we’ve already collected all the easily harvested oil.  Now we have to pressurize the wells with CO2, water, or solvents to loosen the crude and force it to the surface.  The energy input required is way up.  Biofuels, solar collection, and other alternative fuels share this same characteristic of being expensive to produce.  No matter how you look at it, we’re beyond the days of cheap energy.

 We have arrived at a time predicted by global Peak Oil theory.  The theory uses output data of oil fields and geological data to predict when half of the oil from a given field has been extracted.  Since the first oil extracted is the easiest to get, additional extraction requires increasing energy inputs for production.  This creates a chart called the Hubbert Curve.  Just as oil extraction increases exponentially as it approaches the half way point, it decreases exponentially on the far side of production.  There’s a gently curving plateau at the summit.  We are on that plateau.  Various sources say we hit peak in 2005, or between then and now.  Others say we will hit peak in 2015 or (according to the oil industry) in 2040.

To be more precise, the theory graphs the total of all oil a source will ever produce.  There will be plenty of fossil resources left in the ground after it becomes energy inefficient to extract more.   There are similar graphs to show peak coal, peak natural gas, peak uranium, and a host of other resources.  The minerals in the earth are finite resources, and we can’t expect to extract them cheaply indefinitely.

Once you ponder this situation, you’ll find it is very serious.  A Google search of “Peak Oil” or “Hubbert Curve” is a good place to start.  We’ve all heard of promising technologies for renewable energy, and these are important.  However, none of these are cheap.  The energy content of cheap oil is unrivaled.  What will it mean for modern civilization to be deprived of cheap energy?  Our society depends on yearly production growth, and our growth is derived from increasing amounts of cheap energy.

The Export Land Model provides additional cause for alarm in Western society.  In short, it predicts that countries exporting oil will also progressively modernize and thus require more of their own oil production for domestic use.  This is what is affecting gas prices now.  Oil production growth has slowed to a near standstill, and the producing nations are developing rapidly.  Even those still increasing production are willing to sell less of it on the global market.  This creates decreasing amounts of oil available on the open market.

Simply put, the current increase in oil prices isn’t due to speculation in the investment markets.  It is natural supply verses demand.  Supply will continue to shrink, so expect energy to be more expensive next year.  It will be even more expensive the year after that, and this is after adjustments for inflation.  It’s a lot to think about, but I encourage you to take the time to research and adjust accordingly.  It’s not the end of the world, but it is the end of the Western boom society created after WWII.  Cheers.

You can watch Peak Oil unfold in the media at www.theoildrum.com.

 

In today’s paper, Dave Ramsey had a column arguing against the purchase of gold for investment purposes.  He shows that gold has a historical return rate of 4%, an obviously lackluster track record as an investment.  Dave says not to buy gold, and my father brought this up to insinuate that my purchase of precious metals may be a bad investment.

Dave endorses a KISS system – keep it simple, stupid – that makes finances easy for the average person.  Largely, I agree with Dave’s teachings.  Debt is bad, investment is good, and income management is the primary mechanism for building wealth.  I can understand why Dave would steer the average person away from investments in metals, but I am certain he is wrong.

Dave wants you to save $1000.00 as the first of his baby steps.  Then you do a debt snowball to eliminate your debts from smallest to largest.  At some point on into the plan, he encourages you to build an emergency fund to cover 3 to 6 months of your expenses.  In some cases where income generation is especially volatile, Dave may suggest an emergency fund of more than 6 months worth of expenses.

This is where Dave makes his mistake regarding investments in precious metals.  Whereas most investments are, to various degrees, illiquid; gold and silver are nearly as liquid as government issued currencies.  In fact, gold and silver should be thought of as currencies, especially when held in standard mint denominations.  After all, there are coin dealers all around the world happy to buy these holdings without notice.  Gold is almost as liquid as the US dollar, and this sets gold (and silver) apart from all other forms of investment.

Assume one of Dave’s followers builds an emergency fund of $20,000.00.  This fund is, in fact, an investment in US dollars for the primary purpose of providing liquid cash relief from the uncertainties of life.  Put into a savings account or money market fund, this money is definitely not going to perform as well as illiquid investments such as equities or even land.  In fact, fiat currencies like the US dollar have a serious weakness:  government issued money is subject to inflation.  With the recent fall of the US dollar on the world market, Dave’s follower is now subject to, perhaps, a 30% loss in the value of the banked emergency fund.

This is where gold fits perfectly into Dave’s plan, and Dave would do well to suffer the slight layer of added complexity to protect those taking his advice.  Hold the initial $1000.00 or maybe $1500.00 in cash savings.  Put the rest of the emergency fund into gold and silver.  You are trading higher returns from illiquid investments for the security of liquidity, just as Dave endorses with cash emergency funds, but you are protecting yourself from the perpetual loss of value which is the nature of government issued currencies.

While I appreciate Dave’s plan and what it can accomplish, he is overlooking the useful and practical role of gold as a liquid emergency store for protection from both life’s unexpected situations and the ongoing devaluation of fiat currencies.  Gold makes a more secure liquid asset to hold for emergencies.

Where was Hillary in 2004?  Surely she and Bill Clinton clearly understood how President Bush was mismanaging our country during his 2001 to 2004 term.  The 2004 elections were, in fact, our darkest hour.  Our national pride, personal liberties, foreign diplomacy, and the value of our currency have been severely degraded since that time.

Hillary Clinton calculated that she could more easily defeat a Republican contender in 2008 after she allowed George W. Bush to further degrade our national interests with his reckless policies.  She put her personal interests ahead of the desperate need of her nation in 2004.  Hillary, that’s when we needed the good fight.   When we needed you most, you were nowhere to be seen.  I have little sympathy for Hillary losing the Democratic primary now.  Her time came and went four years ago, and she let us down.

The seizure of FLDS children by Texas officials really upset me.  I had heated discussions with family and friends about the incident.  It surprised me that the majority of people I talked to agreed with the government actions in this case.  I don’t condone child abuse of any sort.  I’m not an advocate of polygamy, even if I think it is none of my business what consenting adults do with each other.  I support the Constitution and the rights it gives us as citizens.  When we allow the least of our citizens to be stripped of his or her Constitutional rights, then our collective freedom is in grave danger.

The attacks on personal liberty in the United States have become frightening and alarming in our modern era.  Each attack on personal freedom which is tolerated becomes a permanent and irreversible degradation of what it means to be a free citizen, and the slippery slope ultimately leads to subjugation and enslavement of the masses.  We’ve seen the government seize the right by force to enslave U.S. citizens without due process and without charges in the name of anti-terrorism.  Government has forcefully taken our collective right to privacy in order to monitor our communications, reading habits, and associations.  Collectively, we have been lead like lambs to the slaughter, and it is highly improbable that we’ll ever regain these freedoms once lost.

 And now more recently with the FDLS fiasco, the government has claimed the right to use guilt by association to summarily dismiss parental rights by collective targeting.  It is mind boggling that citizens across the land are not outraged and defiant regarding what the government has tried to do.  What if the government determined that your local community has been infiltrated by dangerous thoughts and took your children away as a safety precaution while they sort it out?  I don’t care what this cult believes and does.  These families are American citizens first and foremost, and they have the same rights as the rest of us regardless of their personal beliefs.  If there is child abuse going on, then the government should investigate on a case by case basis as it would do for any other child and family.

Thankfully, the Texas Supreme Court is not blind like the masses.  They correctly said that mass seizure of children, without direct and personal due cause and oversight, is a fascist action and a direct attack on the principals of freedom which we cherish in this country.  I feel great relief that judicial oversight stepped in to protect those citizens and each of us by extension.   Now I wish the U.S. Supreme Court would similarly move to protect us against attacks on our freedom by the federal government.  Freedom and democracy are fragile.  When Constitutional rights are taken from one of us, they are stripped from all of us.

Put us on an island

Wipe our hearts and minds

Each day a new beginning

You the first woman I’ve seen

I a man without history

We’d walk barefoot holding hands

Hours without meaning

Keeping pace by the tide

No references other than lovers

No fears to reconcile

Dancing naked with abandon

The only tears from the sea

Put us new on an island

Where you still belong to me

Oil prices in the U.S. are going up, and environmentalists and the media are promoting a mistaken idea that this benefits the environment.  After all, higher gas means American consumers turn more to efficient and smaller vehicles.  It means we buy and use less oil.  There are scientific studies showing how this will result in 10s of millions less tons of carbon pumped into the atmosphere, and this must be good for reducing our impact on the climate.  Correct?  Yes, but it is a very narrow-minded view.

Global oil production and global oil use hit a plateau a few years ago.  So higher oil prices mean that we in the U.S. will use less oil more efficiently.  And it does mean that this will reduce our direct impact on the environment.  However, this argument misses the big picture.  Globally, oil is being pumped out of the ground at the exact same rate, and oil is being consumed globally at the exact same rate.  These price increases simply shift where the oil is being used.  Whatever oil we don’t burn will be burned by someone else.  Net pollution will not decrease.

Hybrids and other technology promoting energy efficiency are good for your pocket book, but they aren’t good for the environment.  I haven’t seen any studies showing that a gallon of gas used in a hybrid emits less pollution than if it were burned in an SUV.  Sure, the hybrid drives more miles on the same fuel, but that fuel is going to be burned either way.  If you want to save the environment, the only effective course is to ensure that the fuel you burn contributes less pollution per unit.

In fact, if you want to be an environmental hero, build a giant SUV with a very efficient super filter which recaptures polluting particles.  The lower the gas mileage you can get, the more good you will do for the environment.  If your environmentally friendly SUV only gets half a mile to the gallon, and you drive it hundreds of miles a day, then you are preventing all those hundreds of gallons of gas from being burned in less efficient engines elsewhere.

Reducing your use or my use of gas has absolutely zero environmental impact.  Hybrids don’t help the global environment.  Clean use of fuel is all that matters… emissions per gallon.  All the oil pumped from the ground this year will most definitely be used.  It doesn’t matter how much of it you use -- they are going to pump the same amount, and it will be consumed by someone.

Ironically, if we reduce our use of oil, we may be causing worse harm to the planet.  We have modest emissions regulations here, but most developing countries do not.  By us using less of the oil and these developing countries getting a bigger piece of the whole, we are promoting higher emissions and greater damage to the planet.  Go figure.

Before there were tornados for chasing, I had another adventure today.  I drove 45 minutes north to Corinth, MS to meet an Egyptian psychic for advice finding something lost which is valuable to me.  My expectations weren’t great, yet I thought it would provide an interesting experience.  I’ve never been to a psychic.  During my drive there, a car raced past me in heavy traffic and slammed into another car, pushing that one into yet another.  There was much screeching of tires and cursing.  I thought, “Wow, this shit is dangerous!”  I was glad to pull into her driveway.  Okay, psychics are human like the rest of us, but it didn’t build my confidence for her to limp into view wearing a leg cast.  Guess she didn’t see that one coming…

It seems someone hexed me while I was a baby.  Then, to make matters worse, some woman hexed me again more recently.  Worst of all, I need to pay this psychic an ass load of cash to make everything perfect again.  Now that’s bad news.

She wanted research funding to help me find the lost something I seek.  Well, these things take expensive supplies.  Meditation is difficult – in fact, it comes in at $15.00 per hour and is done outside of in-person sessions.  It will also be much more successful if I can be rid of these negative hexes upon me prior to her work.  After all, she will do her searching through me.  She felt negative energy coming from me.  That was perceptive.