Visiopoetics

“Hello, I’m America.”

“As in Captain, or the band, or what?”

“No, just America.”

“Oh. Hi, Just America. I’m someone you tortured.”

“Cool.”

“Right. So listen, I was thinking of limping off into the sunset, watching my back for floaters and talking heads, and then I had this fleeting glimmer of hope in humanity. Or maybe it was a floater - I’m not sure. Anyway, I was wondering: are you going to hold yourself accountable for systematically breaking domestic and international laws?”

“Gee, I don’t know. If I were a lawful society in any meaningful sense beyond luck and path dependency, then I would probably enforce my laws and agreements to the best of my abilities. But if I were a frontier society with some nice bling, a strategically ignorant hegemon, or a shamelessly hubristic empire watching unipolarity slowly collapse as a result of my inability to regulate the fundamentals of the global economic system I dominate, then I would probably say, screw it. Who am I again? Just America, or just America?”

“I’m a little confused myself. Who are you?”

Should we prosecute torture?  I guess that depends on who we are.  (It’s finals week in glorious Cville, or I would sing my own song.)

“Afternoon” is oils on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas, and the cover of the Spring 2009 issue of Amalgam:  The Virginia Interdisciplinary Graduate Review.

There’s also a lovely feature of my art in there, including “Анна Ахматова,” “Coal Tower (Reprise),” “Flowers and Bells of Ireland,” “Nakba’Americana,” and “Obama Embrace” (all oils on canvas).

Amalgam is available wherever fine coffee, student loans, and despair are sold.

BRIGHT

+ BRIGHT

+ BRIGHT

+ BRIGHT

—————

SPRING

Happy Earth Day!  In appreciation of the little blue planet and its tulips’ collective inability to surf, global warming’s cancelled.

(Artwork is oils on 16″ x 20″ stretched canvas.)

What excuse can I come up with to link to this fantastic Foreign Policy feature, “The Next Big Thing:  Why bad times lead to great ideas“?  I suppose I could quote from one of the splendid sections, and tie it into that ongoing housing discrimination business.

According to FP, Winston Churchill once noted:  “The American people always do the right thing, after they’ve tried every other alternative.”  I’m glad to see my people making great headway towards doing the right thing on so many fronts:  enforcing fair housing law, upholding the Constitution in various other ways, not pouring liquidity over banks already drowning in toxic assets…

I can’t wait to see everybody come through and do the right thing, because that is what Americans (eventually) do.

(Artwork is flaming US dollar-house on Made in U.S.A. grill, original photograph.)

(Painting is oils on 12″ x 24″ stretched canvas.)

BERNARD

+ MONEY

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MADEOFF

                                  

Another lovely local business (At Last Hair Color Studio, in Vinegar Hill shopping plaza at Ridge-McIntyre) — another exceptionally attractive art display, updated for spring.

            

Will you look at this lovely local business with the exceptionally attractive art?  Updated for spring, my exhibit of oils continues at Millmont Grille.

Also, cVillain and Cville News covered this housing discrimination business.  My favorite parts so far:  (1) one commenter trying to intimidate me first because I have no proof and then because I have too much, and (2) UVA denying responsibility for helping this individual break federal law.  (”It’s on our servers, but it’s not our problem!”)

Here are the numbers to call to remind people housing discrimination is illegal and wrong, and the community requires that the crime not be enabled by our institutions:   the medical school’s Housestaff Office (Graduate Medical Education, 434-924-2047 — tell them to take this-here ad down), the law school (Office of Student Affairs, 434-924-3737 — tell them it’s their server, so it’s their problem), and the business school (Office of the Dean, 924-7481 — ask them why they aren’t invested in equal opportunity housing).  Discriminatrix:  Virginia McFadden, vamcfadden@earthlink.net, 434-293-2848.

It’s nice that this one case was so easy to prove, and it would be wonderful if we could use it to bring about a change in how UVA responds to the illegal housing discrimination it is enabling on these websites.  If the owner won’t show a property to the whole town, you must take their ad down.  (Otherwise, the law is unenforceable for private owners and may as well not exist.)