In my art (and writing and life in general) I try to represent the randomness and absurdity of existence. (I usually fail at this, but trying is still fun.) Sometimes my attempts are humorous, often they are ugly, and sometimes—out of sheer chance—something NEAT happens. Absurdly NEAT-O!
I’m in my mid-40s now. I’ve lost some people. I’ve seen great human beings, funny and imaginative and warm (and sometimes a bit evil, but I don’t judge) who have lived lives, deeply affected those they were close to, but made no impact on society AT LARGE in any recognizable way—-and then they are GONE. Not superstars, never rich, not great philanthropists, not famous artists or writers or poets, just PEOPLE who came and went. They struggled and laughed. Some died way too early, some lived long enough to see most of their friends go before them. And I’d love to believe that they didn’t just DISAPPEAR. That SOMEHOW those great personalities are still out there in the universe, somewhere…
But I don’t see much evidence that the PERSON, the thoughts and desires and scars and smart-ass remarks and weird quirks that make up the INDIVIDUAL—I don’t see any convincing evidence that THESE THINGS survive the death of the body and brain. (I’m sorry, all you true believers, but the evidence is not compelling…)
However, the fact that life is finite doesn’t mean it can’t be LIVED while we are here and have a chance to live it.
Have you ever wondered whether or not someone LIVED A GOOD LIFE? Have you ever wondered if you are WASTING your time? Now ask yourself this: HOW DOES A CAT KNOW IF IT’S LIVED A GOOD LIFE? Is the life of one deer BETTER than the life of any other deer? What is a fulfilling OCTOPUS existence? Have the blades of grass in the front yard prepared for the REAPER as well as the grasses in the back yard have?
One could argue (pretty easily) that HUMANS have the intellectual capacity to CONSIDER these concepts (WHICH HUMANS MADE UP), whereas other creatures, like octopi and deer and cats and blades of grass, do not have the BRAIN CAPACITY. Whales and dolphins have some big brains, do THEY wonder if they’re wasting their potential?
My mom was killed in a car wreck when I was 14 years old.
She took my brother, one of his friends, and one of our aunts to go strawberry picking on the last day of school my freshman year of high school, and she never came home. Apparently, on the drive to the strawberry field, a man, coming off a double shift and traveling the opposite direction from my mom’s car, fell asleep at the wheel of his vehicle, drifted across the center line of the road, and collided with my mom, head on. She died instantly. My brother and aunt where hospitalized for several months and suffered through numerous surgeries to put them back together, but they survived. (The friend was, somehow, basically uninjured in the crash.) The driver of the other car, who hadn’t been drinking, wasn’t playing on a cell phone, who was just working hard to get enough money for his family to live a good life, broke his wrist in the collision. I don’t blame this guy AT ALL for what happened. It was a million to one shot that he happened to float over the center line just as my mom’s car was passing.
Random. If mom had left five minutes earlier, or later—two minutes even—she wouldn’t have been anywhere near where this hard-working man’s trajectory intersected with her line of travel. My life would have gone in a completely different direction. Her life would have KEPT GOING, for a while anyway.
I’m not trying to be maudlin, this was just one of the moments in my life that sent me in search of some HARD MEANING. Why? How? What’s the point of this? What MADE this happen? Nothing. Physics. Two fast moving, relatively heavy bodies ran into each other, and the soft parts in the middle got broken. No plan. Couldn’t have predicted this would happen. It just DID.
Now, I’ve learned to keep moving. (“Just keep swimming,” the little fish sings.) Bad things happen (often to good people, but also to bad people.) You live with it, or you don’t. I found ways to overcome that tragedy. I found ways to overcome many OTHER tragedies. I read a lot. I WRITE a lot, which helps me THINK THINGS THROUGH. I tried to remember how quickly things can change while I was raising my OWN kids. And I tried to have fun—with my wife, with my kids, with my family and friends—and to live a life that all the other blade of grass, and deer, and octopi (though probably not the cats) would be able to look back on and have a laugh.
HAVE FUN—even when it’s not appropriate.
Some folks have shown us the way: the Dadaists, the Situationists, the punks (early “punk” before it become a specific sound or fashion), Fluxus, the Absurdist playwrights and poets, and the many artists who just GO FOR IT (like Ray Johnson, Basquiat, Joan Miro, Roger Corman, Lloyd Kaufman, Ian Dury, Richard Brautigan…), these are the types of folks who really inspire me. They made shit. Not everyone liked what they made (even I don’t like EVERYTHING), but the point isn’t the individual artifact. Not everyone has the skill, drive, passion, temperament, education, or physical ability to be Michelangelo. FEW PEOPLE ARE PERFECT…
But CHOOSING to create anything in the face of a random, nonsensical, absurd universe, THAT is enough. Money, fame, a place in history—probably all worthwhile pursuits, if those are the goals you have—but if what you want is just to LIVE and have a good time, make some connections, forge a few lasting memories, THEN CREATIVE WORKS ARE A GREAT METHOD for achieving THESE goals. The MAKING part is fun, the satisfaction of FINISHING something (even something short or small or silly or awful—so bad it’s good, maybe?) is also pleasant, and the memories that can come from sharing the created work with others, maybe seeing them laugh or smile, maybe seeing them want to make something of their own… That’s WHERE IT’S AT…
The STRAIGHT CROWD will tell you that there are fighter jets overhead. To keep your balloon on a tether or you’ll drift into RESTRICTED AIRSPACE! And I say, fuck it… Wherever the wind blows…
—Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Grand Hoohaa of The P.E.W.)
https://primitiveentertainment.com/
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://primitiveentertainment.threadless.com/
https://www.redbubble.com/people/richardfyates/shop
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Showing posts with label art theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art theory. Show all posts
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
"The Gesture" by Richard F. Yates
“The Gesture” by Richard F. Yates
All we have is the gesture. As an average citizen, a not-born-rich, not particularly athletic, not super intelligent, not well trained, DEFINITELY NOT LUCKY, average human being, I’ll never have my artwork in the Louvre, and I’ll never be on the NYT Bestseller list, and I’ll never be on the cover of the Rolling Stone, (although I was, once, on the cover of the local paper, back when “blogging” was a new thing for most people. They sent a photographer to the house and took pictures of me in front of my computer, and said “This guy writes funny stuff,” and then said, but for REAL stories that actually matter…)
But I’ve still got the gesture. I can write my funny stories and draw my monsters and make my little books. None of it is “Soup Can” important or “Stephen King” popular or even particularly interesting to most folks. But it’s mine. I made it. And I keep on making those little gestures… And now I have five or six boxes and big old plastic tubes of paintings and drawings sitting in the garage, and I have close to a hundred full journals and notebooks in the closet, and six or seven thousand posts spread across a dozen social media sites (or more---I lost count after “A LOT” because I’m not very good at numbers.) And I have dozens of zines and hundreds of handmade postcards floating around in the postal system, who knows how many items on various PRINT ON DEMAND sites, and seven or eight books available for people to not buy or look at available through various online stores (and there’s SOON TO BE ONE MORE! I’ve finished my first draft of SOMAT(IC) magazine, and will let THE PEOPLE know when it’s ready for consumption…)
I’m just one guy who bothers to make a gesture. Now imagine (it isn’t hard to do) that EVERYONE---or at least the interesting people---turned off their cat videos or put down their game controllers or paused that reality t.v. episode for just a few hours and made a gesture of their own. Wrote a letter (on paper) to someone or drew a picture or wrote a little post about how they are feeling. Not copy and paste, not sharing someone else’s post, but actually made their own gesture and shared it with the world. I honestly think everyone should make things: take photos, write poems, paint postcards, share stories… There are a lot of people, and not very many of them are happy with the way the world turns at the moment. (I’ve been spitting blood lately: mass shootings, places destroyed by natural disasters, rich orange dickheads not caring even a tiny bit, and even U.N. votes to ban the death penalty for blasphemy, adultery, and same sex relations BEING VOTED AGAINST BY THE FUCKING U.S.A.!?!?!? What goddam century is this? Who is the U.S. representative to the U.N., and can we beat the shit out of him if we see him in a parking lot? Don’t get me started.) Where was I??? Right, making a gesture…
We’ve got the gesture, which doesn’t seem like much, but a WHOLE BUNCH of gestures (like a million drops of water) can become a tidal wave. There’s power in the little gesture---and part of that POWER is in the fact that a single gesture doesn’t SEEM like much by itself. BUT IT IS. IT IS MUCH. In the face of the void, it’s quite a lot. Against EMPTINESS, it’s something…which is a whole lot better than NOTHING. (Sorry Ray Johnson, although not really, because I bet your NOTHINGS were really SOMETHINGS…)
We’ve got the gesture, and I suggest we use it.
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Grand Hoohaa of The P.E.W.)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://ilosttheplotafewmilesback.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
All we have is the gesture. As an average citizen, a not-born-rich, not particularly athletic, not super intelligent, not well trained, DEFINITELY NOT LUCKY, average human being, I’ll never have my artwork in the Louvre, and I’ll never be on the NYT Bestseller list, and I’ll never be on the cover of the Rolling Stone, (although I was, once, on the cover of the local paper, back when “blogging” was a new thing for most people. They sent a photographer to the house and took pictures of me in front of my computer, and said “This guy writes funny stuff,” and then said, but for REAL stories that actually matter…)
But I’ve still got the gesture. I can write my funny stories and draw my monsters and make my little books. None of it is “Soup Can” important or “Stephen King” popular or even particularly interesting to most folks. But it’s mine. I made it. And I keep on making those little gestures… And now I have five or six boxes and big old plastic tubes of paintings and drawings sitting in the garage, and I have close to a hundred full journals and notebooks in the closet, and six or seven thousand posts spread across a dozen social media sites (or more---I lost count after “A LOT” because I’m not very good at numbers.) And I have dozens of zines and hundreds of handmade postcards floating around in the postal system, who knows how many items on various PRINT ON DEMAND sites, and seven or eight books available for people to not buy or look at available through various online stores (and there’s SOON TO BE ONE MORE! I’ve finished my first draft of SOMAT(IC) magazine, and will let THE PEOPLE know when it’s ready for consumption…)
I’m just one guy who bothers to make a gesture. Now imagine (it isn’t hard to do) that EVERYONE---or at least the interesting people---turned off their cat videos or put down their game controllers or paused that reality t.v. episode for just a few hours and made a gesture of their own. Wrote a letter (on paper) to someone or drew a picture or wrote a little post about how they are feeling. Not copy and paste, not sharing someone else’s post, but actually made their own gesture and shared it with the world. I honestly think everyone should make things: take photos, write poems, paint postcards, share stories… There are a lot of people, and not very many of them are happy with the way the world turns at the moment. (I’ve been spitting blood lately: mass shootings, places destroyed by natural disasters, rich orange dickheads not caring even a tiny bit, and even U.N. votes to ban the death penalty for blasphemy, adultery, and same sex relations BEING VOTED AGAINST BY THE FUCKING U.S.A.!?!?!? What goddam century is this? Who is the U.S. representative to the U.N., and can we beat the shit out of him if we see him in a parking lot? Don’t get me started.) Where was I??? Right, making a gesture…
We’ve got the gesture, which doesn’t seem like much, but a WHOLE BUNCH of gestures (like a million drops of water) can become a tidal wave. There’s power in the little gesture---and part of that POWER is in the fact that a single gesture doesn’t SEEM like much by itself. BUT IT IS. IT IS MUCH. In the face of the void, it’s quite a lot. Against EMPTINESS, it’s something…which is a whole lot better than NOTHING. (Sorry Ray Johnson, although not really, because I bet your NOTHINGS were really SOMETHINGS…)
We’ve got the gesture, and I suggest we use it.
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Grand Hoohaa of The P.E.W.)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://ilosttheplotafewmilesback.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
Monday, August 28, 2017
“Lest We Forget” by Richard F. Yates
[This bit below is from the introduction to the first Primitive Collection. I’ve always been enchanted by stories of people going to see the Sex Pistols in concert and saying things like, “That was awful! I could do better than that!” and then they go off to start their own band. In the visual and literary arts, there is this mistaken notion that for something to be “GOOD” it has to be slick and commercial and appeal to a broad audience. I, of course, think that’s bullshit. My works appeal to an audience of ME and my family and a few of my friends---and sometimes, I suspect, people in the “REAL WORLD” think, “That’s a terrible drawing! I could do better than that!” and then they go off to draw their own picture or paint their own painting or write their own story. And that’s great! That’s why we’re here… ---RFY]
“The Primitive Entertainment Workshop came into being in 2012 when a handful of students, staff, and a couple of faculty members at Washington State University Vancouver created a mini-zine entitled Lightning Strikes. The project was attributed to a fictitious organization, based on a mutated “Children’s Television Workshop” (the company through which Jim Henson built his Muppets for Sesame Street), which I invented on the spot as a throw away joke while writing the brief introduction to the zine. Unfortunately, I liked the idea of a workshop that created raw, unskilled, even intentionally poor quality artwork and literature that could stand as a statement against the overly produced, focus-grouped to death, creation-by-committee junk that seems to be pervasive with modern works, like movies, pop music, and television. Using this stupid mini-zine as a hopping-off point, I decided to actually create a Primitive Entertainment Workshop, and---because they are cheap, quick, and easy, I decided to use the blog format to make the P.E.W. a reality. In December of 2012, the first posts went up” (p. i, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop – Volume One, 2013).
[Interestingly, I’ve since found a copy of the Lightning Strikes mini-zine, and it doesn’t even HAVE an introduction…so I’m not sure why I thought the P.E.W. name came from there. Maybe I posted the zine online somewhere (in one of my older, forgotten blogs) and wrote an introduction to the zine when it went up there. (???) Who knows? Human brains tend to change memories to match the narrative that the rememberer WANTS to remember (just ask Elizabeth Loftus!), so we may never actually know where or when the name “Primitive Entertainment Workshop” first appeared, but that’s fine. A little mystery never hurts. The POINT of all this is that art shouldn’t be constrained by commercial or societal expectations. I love to scribble and I love to make monsters and draw ghosts and snakes and little bunnies, so that’s what I do. I like to tell stories that don’t HAVE to make sense and write poems that sound like they were put together by a random word generator (like some kind of POETRYBOT or something…) I enjoy doing it, so I’ll keep doing it. If people stop coming by this site and reading or liking or commenting on what I’ve done, that would be a bit of a bummer, but I’d still keep going… It’s what I do… (Camus would be proud! Singing loud and long into the void!!!) Now, I’m going to go have a donut! Cheers!!!]
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Grand Hoohaa of The P.E.W.)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://ilosttheplotafewmilesback.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
“The Primitive Entertainment Workshop came into being in 2012 when a handful of students, staff, and a couple of faculty members at Washington State University Vancouver created a mini-zine entitled Lightning Strikes. The project was attributed to a fictitious organization, based on a mutated “Children’s Television Workshop” (the company through which Jim Henson built his Muppets for Sesame Street), which I invented on the spot as a throw away joke while writing the brief introduction to the zine. Unfortunately, I liked the idea of a workshop that created raw, unskilled, even intentionally poor quality artwork and literature that could stand as a statement against the overly produced, focus-grouped to death, creation-by-committee junk that seems to be pervasive with modern works, like movies, pop music, and television. Using this stupid mini-zine as a hopping-off point, I decided to actually create a Primitive Entertainment Workshop, and---because they are cheap, quick, and easy, I decided to use the blog format to make the P.E.W. a reality. In December of 2012, the first posts went up” (p. i, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop – Volume One, 2013).
[Interestingly, I’ve since found a copy of the Lightning Strikes mini-zine, and it doesn’t even HAVE an introduction…so I’m not sure why I thought the P.E.W. name came from there. Maybe I posted the zine online somewhere (in one of my older, forgotten blogs) and wrote an introduction to the zine when it went up there. (???) Who knows? Human brains tend to change memories to match the narrative that the rememberer WANTS to remember (just ask Elizabeth Loftus!), so we may never actually know where or when the name “Primitive Entertainment Workshop” first appeared, but that’s fine. A little mystery never hurts. The POINT of all this is that art shouldn’t be constrained by commercial or societal expectations. I love to scribble and I love to make monsters and draw ghosts and snakes and little bunnies, so that’s what I do. I like to tell stories that don’t HAVE to make sense and write poems that sound like they were put together by a random word generator (like some kind of POETRYBOT or something…) I enjoy doing it, so I’ll keep doing it. If people stop coming by this site and reading or liking or commenting on what I’ve done, that would be a bit of a bummer, but I’d still keep going… It’s what I do… (Camus would be proud! Singing loud and long into the void!!!) Now, I’m going to go have a donut! Cheers!!!]
---Richard F. Yates
(Primitive Thoughtician and Grand Hoohaa of The P.E.W.)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://ilosttheplotafewmilesback.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
Monday, August 21, 2017
“Primitive Entertainment and YOU: What is Primitive Entertainment?” by Blah-Blah Billingsworth
Mental hygiene is an important issue in the modern age. A city dweller will be, constantly, bombarded by advertisements and slogans, music and voices from cars and phones and televisions, messages, threats, bills, pleas for help, propaganda, warnings, advice—bleeps and clicks and moans and blah blah blah… AND WE ARE MORE OF THAT!
In our favor, we are funny. Doctors agree that we are funnier than the average public service announcement or political campaign poster by at least 74 percent! We are warmer, too, unless it’s too hot, then we are totally cool.
In fact, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop is whatever you want us to be (and whatever that short, fat, old, gray-haired dude who runs the show likes.) In practice, so far, the P.E.W. is poems, pictures of monsters, prank ideas, funny stories, road trip plans, rants, memories, manifestos, fake news stories, and experiments in wasting time AND (simultaneously) an essential archive of throw-away ideas and memories, moments that would have been, without us, lost forever.
We are also CREATING what would not have been (which is pretty fucking scary, if you think about it) and preserving, for as long as THE GRID holds out, a bit of EACH OF THE MOTHERFUCKERS who allow us to put their shit up on the site.
Without exaggerating in the slightest, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop is FUCKING MAGIC!!! It’s fun! It’s candy cigarettes! It’s a mustache on a mannequin! It’s a tape loop of a cat fight! It’s a hermit crab wearing a pop can as a shell! It’s finding twenty bucks in the street just before the ice-cream man pulls up! It’s scoring a free game in pinball! It’s waking up and remembering that it’s your day off! It’s surviving another night and screaming about how happy you are to still be alive!
Fuck the police.
The Primitive Entertainment Workshop is YOU for reading this.
The Primitive Entertainment Workshop is US for making it.
It’s the fart in the elevator! It’s pee in the pool! It’s the muzak rendition of a punk rock song! It’s a cold bowl of sugary cereal on a hot afternoon! It’s the ultimate prank where everyone dies, and dies laughing, at the end! It’s understanding that it’s all worthwhile even though it’s all pointless…
Read Camus. Read Phil Dick. Read Borges. Watch The Twilight Zone. Listen to The Cure. Draw on your clothes. Put a sticker on the back of a street sign. Mail a letter to a random name in the phone book telling them you saw a ghost in a public toilet. Take a picture of a discarded cigarette butt and then give it a name. Pretend you’re Peter Cushing for an entire day, especially if you’re a girl. Play Pong!
Never surrender. Strike first, strike hard, no mercy. Live long and prosper.
Amen!
—Blah-Blah Billingsworth
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.comhttp://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 13 Apr. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop]
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
“W!Z!B!” by Mr. Smog Monster
On this day, 22 March 2013, after several meetings of the Secret Tribunal on Horseshittists’ Ethics, and in light of the murders of long time H.S. members, Grover Von Eyesocker, Jr., and H.S. founder, Dr. Augeas P. Houyhnhnm, the Horseshittists group is hereby dissolved, by unilateral consensus of all dues paying members.
For those members who wish to continue associating for the purpose of artistic and satirical expression, a new group, under the leadership of Houyhnhnm’s second in command, Admiral Thomas J. Haha, is hereby formed and decreed active:
The Wham!ers Zamm!ers and Blamm!ers, aka: The W!Z!B!
This new formation of the H.S. is aimed at being more commercially viable and attractive to the general population than the H.S., allowing W!Z!B! actions to more easily penetrate (WHAM!) into “popular” media and, hence, reach deeper into the social consciousness. This will, in turn, draw in more dues paying members, producing more CASH (ZAMM!), allowing for the production of larger and more spectacular actions (BLAMM!) As the Christian Sects embrace the Old Testament, so shall the W!Z!B! embrace all tenants of H.S. doctrine, and new members to the W!Z!B! shall be expected to learn and understand H.S. concepts and commandments. The works set forth by Dr. Houyhnhnm and Von Eyesocker, Jr., as well as all the other architects of the H.S., are still deemed valuable and shall continue to be utilized in to their full extent in W!Z!B! thought.
The new Chief Officer of the W!Z!B!, Admiral Haha, served for several decades as a member of the H.S. Secret Tribunal, and has also been the author of several media pranks, which for litigation purposes shall remain unnamed, that more than qualify him to head this new incarnation of the group. In addition, Haha is physically fit and all surviving members of the H.S. believe him capable of withstanding an assault by any insane androids that may still be hunting former H.S. members.
Long live Admiral Haha and long live the W!Z!B!
—Mr. Smog Monster, Secretary of the W!Z!B!
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 22 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop]
“Artists are Revolting: The 3rd Horseshittists’ Manifesto” by Richard F. Yates
Part One: Excommunications
Dr. Augeas P. Houyhnhnm and the other members of the Secret Tribunal on Horseshittists’ Ethics, responding to the rogue posting of a 2nd Horseshittists’ Manifesto by recent inductee, Yichard Rates, have declared a state of emergency within the Horseshittists’ ranks. Though rogue actions are generally smiled upon within Horseshittist circles, the blatantly anti-Horseshittist commentary perpetrated by Mr. Rates has lead to the unanimous decision to excommunicate Mr. Rates from the ranks of the Horseshittists from now until the end of time, or until the Big Crunch, whichever shall occur sooner. However, his renegade work, The 2nd Horseshittists’ Manifesto, shall remain in the archives of the Horseshittists, partially because it establishes a series of interesting talking points and partially because we are all too lazy to bother erasing it.
(Sources have recently revealed that Yichard Rates is actually a poorly designed robot created by the big pharmaceutical industry for the sole purpose of destroying the Horseshittists’ Movement, which is, naturally, horseshit.)
In addition to Mr. Rates, two posthumous excommunications have been decreed by the Tribunal at this time, as well:
—Andre Breton, founder and ruler of the Surrealists, is hereby posthumously excommunicated from the Horseshittists for forcing Tristan Tzara out of the circle of the Parisian branch of the Dadaists and for being an egotistical douche-bag, which is horseshit.
—Richard Huelsenbeck, the Dada Drummer in Zurich and participant in the Berlin Dada group, is hereby posthumously excommunicated from the Horseshittists for denying Kurt Schwitters admission into the Dada Club in Berlin and for picking on Tristan Tzara, which is horseshit. Tzara wore a monocle for Bob’s sake. You just don’t pick on a guy who is classy enough to wear a monocle.
Part Two: “A Horseshittist Considers the Purpose and Usefulness of ART”
[This beautiful section was penned by Grover Von Eyesocker, Jr., but is fully endorsed by the Horseshittists’ Movement as a whole.]
Art is not about pretty pictures. Art is not about therapy or “self-expression,” either. Art is about the collapsing of infinite possibilities into a singularity, a moment or object that defies oblivion, however briefly, but is itself composed of said oblivion and is derived out of the deaths of innumerable possible alternate moments or objects. Where this painting now sits, billions upon billions or other, equally probable, paintings will now never come into being. It is possible that in some far flung moment of space-time that we shall never reach, alternate universes exists in which each of these non-paintings has become a reality, but what are such probabilities to us who will never encounter them.
No. Art is not about pretty pictures. Art is about ghosts and phantoms and shadows, the compression of all possibilities into one, less than perfect, momentary, fleeting blip, a point of existence that cries out for a spectator to notice it before it fades back into the nothingness from which it, oh so momentarily, sprang.
Part Three: Posthumous Inductees
Since we’re kicking people out of the ranks of the Horseshittists, it’s only fitting that we grab a few to add to the group, so that we can keep the numbers on an even keel. Here are a few citizens who have been decreed, by the Secret Tribunal, as posthumous inductees into the Horseshittists’ Movement:
—Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, is hereby inducted into the ranks of the Horseshittists. He was full of pranks and gumption, and often managed to entertain and enrage at the same time. Welcome.
—Tristan Tzara, the wandering Dadaist, born in Romania, caused a fuss in Switzerland, and got socked in the face in Paris. His “1918 Dada Manifesto” is one of the most brilliant, but undervalued, pieces of modern literature, which bandies about concepts of absolute import to the Horseshittists’ Code, such as the following: “Every pictorial or three-dimensional work is without purpose; let it be a monster that frightens servile minds, and not something sickly sweet to decorate the refectories of animals in human costumes, illustrations of this fable of humanity.” Is that reason enough to let him in? The Tribunal says yes.
—Erik Weisz, aka Harry Houdini, could smell horseshit from a hundred miles away. In addition to being a master escape artist and illusionist, Houdini dedicated a substantial portion of this life to debunking fake spiritualists and psychics who used trickery to rob unsuspecting and vulnerable citizens of their hard earned dough, which is some serious horseshit. Mr. Weisz, you are one of us!
—Ray Johnson, a collagist and postal artist, was a master of taking horseshit too far. Though he eventually drowned himself, before giving up the ghost, Johnson was the king of the tiny gesture, a true poet of nothingness, whose artwork didn’t stop at the edge of the canvass, but included nearly every aspect of his life. Gooble gobble, gooble gobble, Mr. Johnson. One of us!
—Roy Dean “Rowdy” Yates, my father, who died last summer, was an environment-builder who utilized the most basic, found substances to create his worlds. He had a cherry tree, limbs and all, holding up the ceiling in his living room. The back porch of the house I now live in was built out of wood he scavenged from a toppled down barn (and it kind of looks like it.) And I even heard stories about how he once ate a dead fly off a windowsill at a party on a dare! Shocking. The man lived a frugal but imaginative life, and besides that, look at how great I turned out to be! For that alone, the man certainly deserves to be counted among the Horseshittist elites!
Thanks, and have a good night.
—Richard F. Yates
(Commander in Cheap of The Primitive Entertainment Workshop)
(Commander in Cheap of The Primitive Entertainment Workshop)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 13 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop.]
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 13 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop.]
Sunday, August 13, 2017
“The Horseshittists’ Ten Commandments” by Mr. Smog Monster
1. Thou shalt be greedy.In this world, everyone (especially politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, and other thieves) is trying to steal your horseshit from you. Protect your horseshit. Be ready to sock a motherfucker in the eye if they try to steal your horseshit.
2. Thou shalt be disruptive.Because the way the world runs right now is horseshit, it is the duty of every Horseshittist to disrupt, distort, and disturb the smooth operation of this pathetic planet, especially where business, politics, bureaucracy, and oppressive law enforcement are concerned.
3. Thou shalt be unpredictable.Society fears the unpredictable. Being insane, being bizarre, being non-normal—these are all effective tools for disrupting society, and they can sometimes be utilized to generate cash, which you can then greedily protect! (CASH is not horseshit.)
4. Thou shalt be angry.Horseshittists are angry by nature. Chances are, if you have been drawn to this “philosophy” then you are already angry. If you are not angry at all the horseshit going on around you, then you cannot see. If you are not angry, and you fancy yourself a Horseshittist, fake your anger until you look around enough that you become angry fur real. And it’s important (as you will see in a future Commandment) that you ENJOY being angry, revel in it, be joyously furious!
5. Thou shalt manufacture your own entertainment.The entertainment industry is horseshit, of course, because most objects/experiences that we can BUY are created by a committee for a fictional, statistically imagined, “target market.” HORSE-SHIT! We are individuals with personal histories, personal tastes, personal desires, and other personal horseshit. Therefore, we are uniquely qualified to create our own entertainment objects, which express our own, unique flavor of horseshit. It is also wonderful to take money away from big businesses that try to sell you their generic, mass market, non-specific objects or experiences (horseshits.)
BONUS POINTS if you can get cash from others who want to buy YOUR horseshit stories or horseshit paintings or horseshit movies, etc….
[Doubting Thomas question: Why produce more horseshit when the world is already full of it? Because, by producing YOUR OWN horseshit, which is competing with the corporate horseshit, you are DISRUPTING the normal flow of production and consumption, (which is horseshit,) and you can create your horseshit to be as ANGRY and as UNPREDICTABLE as you want it to be. In addition, you may be able to make some CASH with your horseshit, which is cool, and then you can be GREEDY about protecting the profits from your horseshit project, which will both DISRUPT big business and help you ENJOY your life (see Commandment 10, below.)]
6. Thou shalt be prolific.The goal of every GOOD Horseshittist is to overwhelm the world with as many horseshit gestures as possible: pranks, hoaxes, nonsense, jokes, zines, novels, poems, art objects, blogs, performances, songs, spectacles, showings, “fashion” designs, puppet shows, events, accidents, incidents, and any other horseshit you can imagine. Hundreds, thousands, millions of small gestures. Floods, tidal waves, tsunamis of horseshit should be produced and projected or performed upon the world, for the purpose of drowning the corporate horseshit mechanism and strangling the day-to-day operations of all the societal / religious / bureaucratic / advertising horseshit that is inflicted upon us, all day, every day, AMEN.
7. Thou shalt find inspiration in the work of other Horseshittists and in historical, proto-Horseshittists.*
[*Sophists, punks, Dadas, Fluxurs, Gnostics, alchemists, Absurdists, hippies, Surrealists, Pop Artists, Satanists, Beats, Symbolists, Romantics, New Wavers, late nighters, Fugs, crazies, cross-dressers, kooks, and all the other weirdos, thugs, revolutionaries, and freaks.]
[*Sophists, punks, Dadas, Fluxurs, Gnostics, alchemists, Absurdists, hippies, Surrealists, Pop Artists, Satanists, Beats, Symbolists, Romantics, New Wavers, late nighters, Fugs, crazies, cross-dressers, kooks, and all the other weirdos, thugs, revolutionaries, and freaks.]
Historically, most societies have endured wackos, dissidents, non-conformists, and other disruptors of the societal flow. In some cases, such as shamen or anti-establishment artists who have been absorbed by corporate capitalism, not many, but in some cases the Horseshitters have become important members of their societies: creating art, furthering the sciences, causing spectacles, changing mass public opinions, or even causing or assisting with revolutions. In most cases, however, Horseshittists and proto-Horseshittists die, relatively unknown and poor, only appreciated years or even decades after they went away, which sucks.
In our current, science-fiction world of instant publication and world-wide communication, it should be MUCH easier for Horseshitters to get their particular brands of horseshit in front of humans who will appreciate it—and maybe even give them some CASH for it, which would be F.A.B. In addition, the ACCESS to historical data which the magical (yet truly and completely horseshitty) electronic networks provide makes it ridiculously easy to learn about historical Horseshittists’ and proto-Horseshittists’ activities and personalities, which leads directly into the next Commandment…
8. Thou shalt be knowledgeable, particularly of your own brand of horseshit.If you are a painter, know everything there is to know about that horseshit, from cave paintings to contemporary practitioners. If you are into pranks, find out which neanderthal invented the whoopy-cushion. KNOW YOUR HORSESHIT! The ease of access to information, thanks to the electronic information super-highway, (at least for those Horseshittists in countries where the internet is everywhere,) makes researching nearly any topic so simple, requiring only time and devotion, that IGNORANCE is a Horseshittist SIN! (The idea of “sin” is, of course, complete and utter horseshit. The idea of “original sin,” however, is very appealing, particularly if the sin is SO original and shocking that those who participate in it make the news, get arrested, and then live to write a book about their experiences and get CASH!)
Bottom line: Become an EXPERT at your kind of horseshit, and feel free to share that expertise (perhaps for a small fee) with other Horseshittists to help lift them out of their sinful state of horseshit ignorance!
[Side note: It may be beneficial to the Horseshittist cause to create a catalog or archive list, possibly as an online database, of important and/or amusing Horseshittist or proto-Horseshittist personalities, events, pranks, movements, nonsense, etc., to help inspire new acts of Horshittistry. Who are the Horseshit giants whose shoulders we can straddle in order for us to fling our own horseshit that much further?]
9. Thou shalt be skeptical.One of the downest of down sides of our horseshit digital age is the massive proliferation of ignorant, false, inaccurate, incomplete, and misleading information. If something seems too good to be true, it’s probably horseshit. If something seems too BAD to be true, it’s also probably horseshit. (If something IS true, it is, again, probably horseshit, but that’s a subject for a different discussion.) Do not be fooled, taken in, misled, or robbed of your dignity, or more importantly, of your CASH, because of false information. If ANYONE is going to spread lies, false rumors, half-truths, or misinformation, especially when money can be made by doing it, it should be US raking it in, not them.
Research, check sources, use critical thinking skills, and don’t get suckered! (Again, if you don’t know HOW to do these things then fake it until you learn!)
10. Thou shalt enjoy yourself.By a cosmic fluke, an accident of nature, by a bazillion to one chance, you exist! And you have no idea for how long that will continue to be the case. Do not waste the one, meager, fleeting, unrepeatable chance that you have to exist on horseshit that does not make you happy. Eat the ice-cream. Sing the songs. Enjoy your body, and other people’s bodies (unless they are screaming—that’s a bad thing.) Stay up too late. Take the vacation. Go for the walk…
It’s all horseshit, so you might as well enjoy the horseshit you’ve got for as long as you’ve got it!
Start your engines…
—Mr. Smog Monster
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 7 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop.]
“Executive Decision” by The Primitive Entertainment Workshop
A decision has been made. (Notice the passive voice construction in that statement, which contributes to the suspense: We don’t know WHO made the decision. It might have been made by a crazy person or by a person whose motives are sinister and, possibly, evil!)
Because The Primitive Entertainment Workshop has now reached over 97 percent capacity, while failing to come up with the requisite $100 to pay for a premium site plan, the management has decided to begin to PURGE older posts from the archives to make room for new content. This extremely difficult decision was reached based on four factors:
1 – There are now SO MANY posts on the site that it is nearly impossible for a lone human to go back and read through even just a few weeks’ worth of content---and we have four and a half years’ worth sitting in the archives. We produce A LOT: stories, poems, rants, reviews, and thousands of “works of art,” with over 5,400 posts in total---that’s TOO MUCH content for anyone but the most obsessed graduate student on seriously dangerous amounts of speed to sift through. (We really need to have an intervention for that guy, don’t you think?) In a very real sense, the removal of the earlier work from the site will be invisible to most visitors.
2 – Many of the early graphic elements (about 600 pieces) have been catalogued and reposted on the “Richard F. Yates (Artist)” Faceboot page. (Many, but not all.) If you want to look at them, you can do it there…
3 – Some people may not realize this, but there are actually three BOOKS available that reprint the early days of The P.E.W. (Links here: VOLUME ONE, VOLUME TWO, VOLUME THREE.) These books include every single post that went up for the first three hundred posts (or more. I think the third book has as many as 150 by itself.) As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, I have a desperate fear that the electrical grid will collapse (or that the company currently hosting the site will go under or decide to retool---like what happened with MySpace, where I used to have about five different pages that all WENT AWAY, including several years’ worth of posts, photos, artwork, and other content,) and I have a real fear that all this STUFF floating around in the electrical webs will eventually just disintegrate and disappear. To combat that possibility, I made PAPER versions of the P.E.W. that exist in the real, PHYSICAL world. I still enjoy flipping through those books, even though I know they are too expensive (and too silly) to be commercially successful---that wasn’t the point. The point was ARCHIVING, and in that sense, the books were perfectly adequate.
4 – Dirty Twisted Mirror Project: The P.E.W. will be given a NEW LIFE as the content is reposted on a few different sites… (Dr. Frankenstein would be so proud---although he’d also warn me that creations can sometime come back and kill everyone you care about…) Beyond the artwork archive project on Faceboot, I am also going to be reposting the early works from the Workshop at a couple of different places, including Ello (where I’ve already started posting bits and bobs) and at my “I Lost the Plot” blog---and a few of the more creepy or crazy pieces might end up at a NEW site: SOMAT(IC), The School of Madness as Truth (Inner Circle). This prospect, the idea that some of these older posts will again see the light of day, is actually kind of interesting, bordering on the exciting. Many humans have never seen this content (because we didn’t have very many followers in the beginning AND because it’s been buried under thousands of other posts since then…), and we’re bringing it back into the LIGHT!
So those are the factors that have convinced me that this is the best course of action. We’re too poor to afford the dough it would take to go for the fancy plan, most people won’t MISS the content that’s being removed because it’s buried so deeply under the slush, and most of the good bits will be RESURRECTED and spread beyond the confines of this one, simple, silly site. In addition, I’m going to KEEP some of the old bits that are too precious or too foundational to kill.
The practical effects of this decision should probably be mentioned as well. These purges will take time and will undoubtedly effect my ability to produce NEW content for a bit. I’m usually a three to five posts per day type of guy (except for yesterday. Sorry about that! I had to DJ a company picnic, which had me busy from early in the A.M. until late last night…) But since I’ll be working on behind the scenes stuff for a while, it’s going to cut into the amount of time I have for drawing and writing new bits…
(TIME IS THE ENEMY---TIME AND GRAVITY…)
What else??? Oh yeah, I’m going to kill the Patreon page. Since I’m not getting much interest in that direction anyway, it’s getting the axe. As is the radio station. Forget you ever heard about those things. They’re gone… READ A DAMN BOOK is still alive, and I’ll continue to post new work to the Workshop, from me and from other humans for the foreseeable future. And I’m also going to make sure I finish one of my NEW books VERY soon. It’s time…
---Richard F. Yates
(Commander in Cheap of The Primitive Entertainment Workshop)
P.S. – The Patreon Page has been zapped and is no longer taking money from good people. I’ve also already taken all the songs off the radio station, as well, but I can’t remember my password (somehow) to delete it completely---but it’s basically dead now, too. And I’ve officially started the SOMAT(IC) website, where I will post stuff of a certain slant (including reposts from all of my sites that are the proper shade of strange---but the new site will primarily be original content.) I’m also planning a real world, PAPER product based on the SOMAT(IC) universe, in addition to the two other books I’m working on. I’ve also OFFICIALLY decided to use the “I Lost the Plot a Few Miles Back” blog as the DIRTY TWISTED MIRROR where I’ll be reposting the items that I remove from The P.E.W. Aaaaaaaand, I think that’s all the housekeeping for now… Type at you people again, soon!
Because The Primitive Entertainment Workshop has now reached over 97 percent capacity, while failing to come up with the requisite $100 to pay for a premium site plan, the management has decided to begin to PURGE older posts from the archives to make room for new content. This extremely difficult decision was reached based on four factors:
1 – There are now SO MANY posts on the site that it is nearly impossible for a lone human to go back and read through even just a few weeks’ worth of content---and we have four and a half years’ worth sitting in the archives. We produce A LOT: stories, poems, rants, reviews, and thousands of “works of art,” with over 5,400 posts in total---that’s TOO MUCH content for anyone but the most obsessed graduate student on seriously dangerous amounts of speed to sift through. (We really need to have an intervention for that guy, don’t you think?) In a very real sense, the removal of the earlier work from the site will be invisible to most visitors.
2 – Many of the early graphic elements (about 600 pieces) have been catalogued and reposted on the “Richard F. Yates (Artist)” Faceboot page. (Many, but not all.) If you want to look at them, you can do it there…
3 – Some people may not realize this, but there are actually three BOOKS available that reprint the early days of The P.E.W. (Links here: VOLUME ONE, VOLUME TWO, VOLUME THREE.) These books include every single post that went up for the first three hundred posts (or more. I think the third book has as many as 150 by itself.) As I’ve mentioned on several occasions, I have a desperate fear that the electrical grid will collapse (or that the company currently hosting the site will go under or decide to retool---like what happened with MySpace, where I used to have about five different pages that all WENT AWAY, including several years’ worth of posts, photos, artwork, and other content,) and I have a real fear that all this STUFF floating around in the electrical webs will eventually just disintegrate and disappear. To combat that possibility, I made PAPER versions of the P.E.W. that exist in the real, PHYSICAL world. I still enjoy flipping through those books, even though I know they are too expensive (and too silly) to be commercially successful---that wasn’t the point. The point was ARCHIVING, and in that sense, the books were perfectly adequate.
4 – Dirty Twisted Mirror Project: The P.E.W. will be given a NEW LIFE as the content is reposted on a few different sites… (Dr. Frankenstein would be so proud---although he’d also warn me that creations can sometime come back and kill everyone you care about…) Beyond the artwork archive project on Faceboot, I am also going to be reposting the early works from the Workshop at a couple of different places, including Ello (where I’ve already started posting bits and bobs) and at my “I Lost the Plot” blog---and a few of the more creepy or crazy pieces might end up at a NEW site: SOMAT(IC), The School of Madness as Truth (Inner Circle). This prospect, the idea that some of these older posts will again see the light of day, is actually kind of interesting, bordering on the exciting. Many humans have never seen this content (because we didn’t have very many followers in the beginning AND because it’s been buried under thousands of other posts since then…), and we’re bringing it back into the LIGHT!
So those are the factors that have convinced me that this is the best course of action. We’re too poor to afford the dough it would take to go for the fancy plan, most people won’t MISS the content that’s being removed because it’s buried so deeply under the slush, and most of the good bits will be RESURRECTED and spread beyond the confines of this one, simple, silly site. In addition, I’m going to KEEP some of the old bits that are too precious or too foundational to kill.
The practical effects of this decision should probably be mentioned as well. These purges will take time and will undoubtedly effect my ability to produce NEW content for a bit. I’m usually a three to five posts per day type of guy (except for yesterday. Sorry about that! I had to DJ a company picnic, which had me busy from early in the A.M. until late last night…) But since I’ll be working on behind the scenes stuff for a while, it’s going to cut into the amount of time I have for drawing and writing new bits…
(TIME IS THE ENEMY---TIME AND GRAVITY…)
What else??? Oh yeah, I’m going to kill the Patreon page. Since I’m not getting much interest in that direction anyway, it’s getting the axe. As is the radio station. Forget you ever heard about those things. They’re gone… READ A DAMN BOOK is still alive, and I’ll continue to post new work to the Workshop, from me and from other humans for the foreseeable future. And I’m also going to make sure I finish one of my NEW books VERY soon. It’s time…
---Richard F. Yates
(Commander in Cheap of The Primitive Entertainment Workshop)
P.S. – The Patreon Page has been zapped and is no longer taking money from good people. I’ve also already taken all the songs off the radio station, as well, but I can’t remember my password (somehow) to delete it completely---but it’s basically dead now, too. And I’ve officially started the SOMAT(IC) website, where I will post stuff of a certain slant (including reposts from all of my sites that are the proper shade of strange---but the new site will primarily be original content.) I’m also planning a real world, PAPER product based on the SOMAT(IC) universe, in addition to the two other books I’m working on. I’ve also OFFICIALLY decided to use the “I Lost the Plot a Few Miles Back” blog as the DIRTY TWISTED MIRROR where I’ll be reposting the items that I remove from The P.E.W. Aaaaaaaand, I think that’s all the housekeeping for now… Type at you people again, soon!
“Manifestos are Horseshit: The First Horseshittist Manifesto”
“Manifestos are Horseshit: The First Horseshittist Manifesto”
Part One: Roll Call
We are Poor.
We are Angry.
We (as The Human League once said) “Are much more Clever than You.”
And yet, We will never be Stars or Sex Symbols or Heroes or Millionaires (and that’s a damn shame.)
We will never affect change on a global scale—or save the world.
We will work hard our entire lives and still die poor and powerless—and that is Horseshit.
However, because We are Horseshittists, We reserve the right to ignore your Laws and Values and Aesthetics and tedious Beliefs in your own Self-Worth and Importance, which are all Horseshit.
Part Two: Defining Terms
Politics is Horseshit.
Religion is Horseshit.
War is Horseshit.
Oppression is Horseshit.
Business is Horseshit.
Capitalism is Horseshit.
Communism is Horseshit.
Marxism is Horseshit.
Socialism is Horseshit.
Bureaucracy is Horseshit.
The Five-Day Work Week is Horseshit.
The Cost of Healthcare is Horseshit.
Being Young is Horseshit.
Feeling Young when you are clearly OLD is Horseshit.
Being Old is Horseshit.
The Beauty Industry is Horseshit.
The Entertainment Industry is Horseshit.
The Media is Horseshit.
Censorship is Horseshit.
Racism is Horseshit.
Classism is Horseshit.
Sexism is Horseshit.
Homophobia is Horseshit.
Academia is Horseshit.
Ignorance is Horseshit.
History is Horseshit.
The Future is Horseshit.
Art is Horseshit.
Literature is Horseshit.
Philosophy is Horseshit.
Permanence is Horseshit.
Death is Horseshit.
Folding Laundry is Horseshit.
Being Born Poor is Horseshit.
Being Born Rich and Not Giving Some of Your Money to US is Horseshit.
Boredom is Horseshit.
Not Playing, Not Enjoying Yourself, and Not Having a Good Time: All Horseshit.
Saying Everything is Horseshit is Horseshit.
Part Three: Call to Action
What should YOU do now that you know? Frankly, we don’t care. Chances are, you will continue to live your boring, pointless, distracted lives, doing whatever everyone tells you to do: your governments, your churches, your bosses, your friends, your favorite advertising firms… And that’s all fine with us.
We will continue to watch you doing stupid things, and We will laugh about it and mock you, and We will feel superior to You in every way. And YOU won’t care how We feel because you’ll never know who We are or why we’re really laughing.
For our own parts, We will continue to define our silly terms and think our superior (but pointless) thoughts and create our meaningless stories and poems and dramas and screenplays and articles and comics and paintings and websites and manifestos… And the main difference between US and YOU is that We will know that everything We do is nothing, all pointless, all horseshit—and that will be enough to make US better than YOU (which is also Horseshit.)
And the MOST clever amongst US will be able to trick you into thinking that what We do is valuable and worthwhile and MEANINGFUL, and We might even be able to steal some of your money away from you and convince you to feel good about losing it. THAT is the Horseshittists’ Golden Goose Egg!
Everything is Horseshit, this is the axiom by which We define the world, but being POOR and living in Horseshit sucks. Give Us some of your money, and we can ALL have more fun. Thank you, and have a nice day.
—Dr. Augeas P. Houyhnhnm et al. (30 Feb. 2013)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 1 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop.]
Part One: Roll Call
We are Poor.
We are Angry.
We (as The Human League once said) “Are much more Clever than You.”
And yet, We will never be Stars or Sex Symbols or Heroes or Millionaires (and that’s a damn shame.)
We will never affect change on a global scale—or save the world.
We will work hard our entire lives and still die poor and powerless—and that is Horseshit.
However, because We are Horseshittists, We reserve the right to ignore your Laws and Values and Aesthetics and tedious Beliefs in your own Self-Worth and Importance, which are all Horseshit.
Part Two: Defining Terms
Politics is Horseshit.
Religion is Horseshit.
War is Horseshit.
Oppression is Horseshit.
Business is Horseshit.
Capitalism is Horseshit.
Communism is Horseshit.
Marxism is Horseshit.
Socialism is Horseshit.
Bureaucracy is Horseshit.
The Five-Day Work Week is Horseshit.
The Cost of Healthcare is Horseshit.
Being Young is Horseshit.
Feeling Young when you are clearly OLD is Horseshit.
Being Old is Horseshit.
The Beauty Industry is Horseshit.
The Entertainment Industry is Horseshit.
The Media is Horseshit.
Censorship is Horseshit.
Racism is Horseshit.
Classism is Horseshit.
Sexism is Horseshit.
Homophobia is Horseshit.
Academia is Horseshit.
Ignorance is Horseshit.
History is Horseshit.
The Future is Horseshit.
Art is Horseshit.
Literature is Horseshit.
Philosophy is Horseshit.
Permanence is Horseshit.
Death is Horseshit.
Folding Laundry is Horseshit.
Being Born Poor is Horseshit.
Being Born Rich and Not Giving Some of Your Money to US is Horseshit.
Boredom is Horseshit.
Not Playing, Not Enjoying Yourself, and Not Having a Good Time: All Horseshit.
Saying Everything is Horseshit is Horseshit.
Part Three: Call to Action
What should YOU do now that you know? Frankly, we don’t care. Chances are, you will continue to live your boring, pointless, distracted lives, doing whatever everyone tells you to do: your governments, your churches, your bosses, your friends, your favorite advertising firms… And that’s all fine with us.
We will continue to watch you doing stupid things, and We will laugh about it and mock you, and We will feel superior to You in every way. And YOU won’t care how We feel because you’ll never know who We are or why we’re really laughing.
For our own parts, We will continue to define our silly terms and think our superior (but pointless) thoughts and create our meaningless stories and poems and dramas and screenplays and articles and comics and paintings and websites and manifestos… And the main difference between US and YOU is that We will know that everything We do is nothing, all pointless, all horseshit—and that will be enough to make US better than YOU (which is also Horseshit.)
And the MOST clever amongst US will be able to trick you into thinking that what We do is valuable and worthwhile and MEANINGFUL, and We might even be able to steal some of your money away from you and convince you to feel good about losing it. THAT is the Horseshittists’ Golden Goose Egg!
Everything is Horseshit, this is the axiom by which We define the world, but being POOR and living in Horseshit sucks. Give Us some of your money, and we can ALL have more fun. Thank you, and have a nice day.
—Dr. Augeas P. Houyhnhnm et al. (30 Feb. 2013)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
https://schoolofmadnessastruth.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/richard.f.yates/
[Originally posted 1 Mar. 2013 @ The Primitive Entertainment Workshop.]
Friday, July 14, 2017
“45 and Still Alive” by Richard F. Yates
I turn 45 in a few days---and I still wonder… My dad, when he was in his 50s, said, “I wonder what I’m going to be when I grow up?” I laughed at the time, but I get it now. Time creeps up on you. That---and in our society, you’re kind of defined by your job. “Oh, he’s a banker.” “She’s a senator.” “Yeah, that guy works at the mill.” Income equals identity. I’ve BEEN a lot of things for money: DJ, floor manager of a music store, cashier, pizza delivery guy, teaching assistant, editor, writing consultant… I’ve even made a few dollars from writing and painting (which probably amounted to about 10 or 12 cents per hour, but that’s okay. I can still SAY that I’m a “PROFESSIONAL” artist.)
But what do I WANT to be when I grow up? My wife and I had kids young (probably too young) before we had all those silly, unnecessary things, like security or good jobs or any idea of what we were doing---but the up-shot of starting early is that our kids are mostly grown and doing their own things now, and we’ve still got a little bit of LIFE in us. The older daughter is married, has a good job, several hobbies that she really enjoys, and she seems to be happy and enjoying her life. The younger one is about a year away from finishing her college courses, has a decent job (that works around her school schedule), and is looking at starting her own grand adventure. That leaves the little woman and I (in our 40s) with a mostly empty nest and this weird situation that we haven’t had since we were teenagers: WE’VE GOT OPTIONS.
Mariah (“The Boss”) makes good money at her current job and has a fancy title and everything. She is a “Licensed Dispensing Optician and a Contact Lens Specialist.” It isn’t paradise, but it could be worse. We’ve both worked much, much worse.
I don’t have either of the things that Mariah does (a title or a reliable income…) I just draw pictures and write stories and correct other people’s punctuation and then take credit for their hard work (that’s what editors do.) I often wonder if I should scrap this whole project (the “ARTISTIC LIFE” project) and get a real job loading boxes onto trucks or checking IDs from a little booth before raising the barrier arm and letting whoever drive through. The funny thing is, I’m pretty highly educated, but in the area that I live (and with the social climate in the state that it’s in) being a “smart guy” is at best underwhelming and at worst a sign that I need to be beaten up or chased out of town.
Back when I first started college I quickly became enamored with PHILOSOPHY as a subject, and declared that I was going to be a philosopher---take it all the way to Ph.D. and everything. Luckily, my “Intro to Philosophy” professor (who became a great friend---and who is sadly now deceased) took me aside and said, “Philosophy is great, but you’ll never get a job if you get a degree in philosophy. You need to do something practical.”
So I followed his advice, and I got a degree in HUMANITIES (magna cum laude), with a formal minor in ANTHROPOLOGY, and I went to grad school where I specialized in poetry and literary analysis... A career path GUARANTEED to get me a fat paycheck and fame and a fancy house, right? I’ve written a great deal about Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman and the Dada writers and even some of the more poetic fiction authors, like Mark Twain and Thomas Pynchon. I can go toe to toe with Doctors of Rhetoric on obscure subjects, like Rene Girard’s Memetics Theory or Semiotics in Occult Symbology. I am a published academic who has given guest lectures at universities on topics like the history and development of punk and strategies for writing poetry; I’ve taught writing classes for kids at writing festivals; I’ve presided over workshops at museums on zine making; I have over 40 publication credits (poems, articles, and stories); I’ve been the (paid!) poetry editor of a college literary journal; I’ve been the author or editor (or co-editor) of about 10 books that I’ve self-published (many of them still available on Amazon); and I’ve been on the staff of at least a half-dozen independently published zines and papers…. But I’m still broke and basically unemployable.
So here’s the question: IS IT WORTH IT?
[LONG PAUSE…]
Once you get over the STUPID questions, I’d say YES. It’s worth it. What are the “stupid” questions, I hear you asking (in my head.) Here are a few stupid questions: Will I get rich and famous doing this? How will I be remembered once I’m gone? What if someone doesn’t like what I’ve written/drawn/painted? Is this a masterpiece? These are stupid questions because they take the focus off of the IMPORTANT things about ART:
(1) Having fun making stuff. I love to draw and to paint and to write stories and to make weird, indecipherable poetry. I’ve always done these things, since I was old enough to hold a crayon, and I will continue to do them until I drop over dead (and maybe for a little while after.)
(2) Having fun SHARING what you’ve made with other people. My first audience is my wife, who is supportive and usually laughs at what I’ve done---but not always. Sometimes it’s too weird or too creepy or too absurd, and that’s fine. (She is totally wrong about those pieces, but I forgive her.) I also share my stuff with friends and family, both in real life and through social media. (BIG UP to electronic communication!) Before I found the Faceboot or WeirdPress, I was a postal artist and sent tons of hand-made postcards and weird collages and zines all over the world (no exaggeration.) I loved sending and I loved getting stuff back (and I would STILL be a postal artist if I had the money to cover postage.) So electronic sharing is the focus now. Personal victory moment: I was at one of my younger daughter’s bowling tournaments in Everett, Washington, and a great old guy (everyone calls him “Grandpa”) caught me as we were leaving and said, “I just gotta ask---Where do you come up with that stuff? Every day, I turn on Facebook and laugh my ass off!” He hardly ever clicked the “thumbs up” button and never commented, but this funny little guy who lives about three hours north of my town, who I know mostly through the BOWLING community, had been reading my stories and looking at my cartoons and having a laugh. That felt pretty good.
(3) In an age of horror and political garbage and everybody hating everything, I like to think I’m helping make the world a slightly more enjoyable place. Sure some of what I write has a negative edge (especially the Charlie Centipede pieces), and I deal with lots of horror themes---but like Richard O’Brien said to me years ago after spending a few weeks staring at a bunch of artwork that I had displayed on the walls of the writing center we used to work at: “It’s like you’ve taken all of this horror, monsters and zombies and death, and you’ve defanged it by making it silly. You’re dealing with your anxiety and angst by painting it with candy colors, making it less threatening.” I nodded and winked, making him think that this was my plan all along… And he was right, of course---but it wasn’t a conscious strategy on my part. I was just trying to have fun and make the world a little more pleasant. That’s also why I do the music playlists and book reviews and photos of fun or weird things that I encounter: I’m trying to show people that there are enjoyable and interesting sights out there that they too can encounter, and prove that the world isn’t just terrorists and rich people stealing from poor people and religious extremists. It’s also great books and cool music and fun people and interesting things to see and do. You can’t always wallow in the bad---sometimes you’ve got to wallow in the awesome.
(4) As an editor, I also feel like I’ve given a voice to people who wouldn’t have bothered if I wasn’t there encouraging them and providing a platform. Several of the regulars here at the workshop send me their work hand-written, ink on paper, and I type it for them and then post it. And there are lots of people who have created work based specifically as reactions to the materials I’ve drawn or written or published here, and I’m always happy to post their responses, whatever form those responses may take (remixes, rebuttals, snarky comments…) My original intention for most of my zines (particularly PHANTOM CONVERSATION) was to promote the concept of a community of interacting individuals, but the internet has proven much easier and more effective for LINKING that type of community together. I’m thrilled with the number of contributors that we’ve had on this site and shocked at the wide variety of materials that people send my way. To be fair (open disclosure) MOST of the work I post on here comes from people I know in “REAL LIFE,” but not all of it. And even if that were true, it’s still pretty cool. I always love when people DO stuff and MAKE their own things. I’m all for it and I’m happy to share that stuff with the world (the INTERNET WORLD, anyway.)
HAVING FUN.
SHARING WITH OTHERS.
MAKING THE WORLD A MORE ENJOYABLE PLACE.
PROMOTING COMMMUNITY INTERACTION.
Yeah. It’s worth it.
I still wish I had enough money to buy a coffee, though.
Alive at 45 (if I make it through the weekend.) That wasn’t a given, especially if you knew me from back in the late 80s and early 90s (when I was a purple-haired skater punk, hanging out at rave parties, cavorting with degenerates (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!), sleeping on various people’s floors, and spilling my guts in bathrooms as the party started to wind down... I came close to checking out more than once back then. Kids can be stupid.) Them was some ROUGH years. But I lived through them, and met Mariah, and had two awesome kids, and worked a lot of different jobs, and did that education thing (and have the debt to prove it), and now… Now I’m not sure. What do I want to be when I grow up?
---Richard F. Yates
(Commander in Cheap of The Primitive Entertainment Workshop)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
https://www.patreon.com/primitiveentertainment
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
http://themuseumofwhatilike.blogspot.com/
But what do I WANT to be when I grow up? My wife and I had kids young (probably too young) before we had all those silly, unnecessary things, like security or good jobs or any idea of what we were doing---but the up-shot of starting early is that our kids are mostly grown and doing their own things now, and we’ve still got a little bit of LIFE in us. The older daughter is married, has a good job, several hobbies that she really enjoys, and she seems to be happy and enjoying her life. The younger one is about a year away from finishing her college courses, has a decent job (that works around her school schedule), and is looking at starting her own grand adventure. That leaves the little woman and I (in our 40s) with a mostly empty nest and this weird situation that we haven’t had since we were teenagers: WE’VE GOT OPTIONS.
Mariah (“The Boss”) makes good money at her current job and has a fancy title and everything. She is a “Licensed Dispensing Optician and a Contact Lens Specialist.” It isn’t paradise, but it could be worse. We’ve both worked much, much worse.
I don’t have either of the things that Mariah does (a title or a reliable income…) I just draw pictures and write stories and correct other people’s punctuation and then take credit for their hard work (that’s what editors do.) I often wonder if I should scrap this whole project (the “ARTISTIC LIFE” project) and get a real job loading boxes onto trucks or checking IDs from a little booth before raising the barrier arm and letting whoever drive through. The funny thing is, I’m pretty highly educated, but in the area that I live (and with the social climate in the state that it’s in) being a “smart guy” is at best underwhelming and at worst a sign that I need to be beaten up or chased out of town.
Back when I first started college I quickly became enamored with PHILOSOPHY as a subject, and declared that I was going to be a philosopher---take it all the way to Ph.D. and everything. Luckily, my “Intro to Philosophy” professor (who became a great friend---and who is sadly now deceased) took me aside and said, “Philosophy is great, but you’ll never get a job if you get a degree in philosophy. You need to do something practical.”
So I followed his advice, and I got a degree in HUMANITIES (magna cum laude), with a formal minor in ANTHROPOLOGY, and I went to grad school where I specialized in poetry and literary analysis... A career path GUARANTEED to get me a fat paycheck and fame and a fancy house, right? I’ve written a great deal about Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman and the Dada writers and even some of the more poetic fiction authors, like Mark Twain and Thomas Pynchon. I can go toe to toe with Doctors of Rhetoric on obscure subjects, like Rene Girard’s Memetics Theory or Semiotics in Occult Symbology. I am a published academic who has given guest lectures at universities on topics like the history and development of punk and strategies for writing poetry; I’ve taught writing classes for kids at writing festivals; I’ve presided over workshops at museums on zine making; I have over 40 publication credits (poems, articles, and stories); I’ve been the (paid!) poetry editor of a college literary journal; I’ve been the author or editor (or co-editor) of about 10 books that I’ve self-published (many of them still available on Amazon); and I’ve been on the staff of at least a half-dozen independently published zines and papers…. But I’m still broke and basically unemployable.
So here’s the question: IS IT WORTH IT?
[LONG PAUSE…]
Once you get over the STUPID questions, I’d say YES. It’s worth it. What are the “stupid” questions, I hear you asking (in my head.) Here are a few stupid questions: Will I get rich and famous doing this? How will I be remembered once I’m gone? What if someone doesn’t like what I’ve written/drawn/painted? Is this a masterpiece? These are stupid questions because they take the focus off of the IMPORTANT things about ART:
(1) Having fun making stuff. I love to draw and to paint and to write stories and to make weird, indecipherable poetry. I’ve always done these things, since I was old enough to hold a crayon, and I will continue to do them until I drop over dead (and maybe for a little while after.)
(2) Having fun SHARING what you’ve made with other people. My first audience is my wife, who is supportive and usually laughs at what I’ve done---but not always. Sometimes it’s too weird or too creepy or too absurd, and that’s fine. (She is totally wrong about those pieces, but I forgive her.) I also share my stuff with friends and family, both in real life and through social media. (BIG UP to electronic communication!) Before I found the Faceboot or WeirdPress, I was a postal artist and sent tons of hand-made postcards and weird collages and zines all over the world (no exaggeration.) I loved sending and I loved getting stuff back (and I would STILL be a postal artist if I had the money to cover postage.) So electronic sharing is the focus now. Personal victory moment: I was at one of my younger daughter’s bowling tournaments in Everett, Washington, and a great old guy (everyone calls him “Grandpa”) caught me as we were leaving and said, “I just gotta ask---Where do you come up with that stuff? Every day, I turn on Facebook and laugh my ass off!” He hardly ever clicked the “thumbs up” button and never commented, but this funny little guy who lives about three hours north of my town, who I know mostly through the BOWLING community, had been reading my stories and looking at my cartoons and having a laugh. That felt pretty good.
(3) In an age of horror and political garbage and everybody hating everything, I like to think I’m helping make the world a slightly more enjoyable place. Sure some of what I write has a negative edge (especially the Charlie Centipede pieces), and I deal with lots of horror themes---but like Richard O’Brien said to me years ago after spending a few weeks staring at a bunch of artwork that I had displayed on the walls of the writing center we used to work at: “It’s like you’ve taken all of this horror, monsters and zombies and death, and you’ve defanged it by making it silly. You’re dealing with your anxiety and angst by painting it with candy colors, making it less threatening.” I nodded and winked, making him think that this was my plan all along… And he was right, of course---but it wasn’t a conscious strategy on my part. I was just trying to have fun and make the world a little more pleasant. That’s also why I do the music playlists and book reviews and photos of fun or weird things that I encounter: I’m trying to show people that there are enjoyable and interesting sights out there that they too can encounter, and prove that the world isn’t just terrorists and rich people stealing from poor people and religious extremists. It’s also great books and cool music and fun people and interesting things to see and do. You can’t always wallow in the bad---sometimes you’ve got to wallow in the awesome.
(4) As an editor, I also feel like I’ve given a voice to people who wouldn’t have bothered if I wasn’t there encouraging them and providing a platform. Several of the regulars here at the workshop send me their work hand-written, ink on paper, and I type it for them and then post it. And there are lots of people who have created work based specifically as reactions to the materials I’ve drawn or written or published here, and I’m always happy to post their responses, whatever form those responses may take (remixes, rebuttals, snarky comments…) My original intention for most of my zines (particularly PHANTOM CONVERSATION) was to promote the concept of a community of interacting individuals, but the internet has proven much easier and more effective for LINKING that type of community together. I’m thrilled with the number of contributors that we’ve had on this site and shocked at the wide variety of materials that people send my way. To be fair (open disclosure) MOST of the work I post on here comes from people I know in “REAL LIFE,” but not all of it. And even if that were true, it’s still pretty cool. I always love when people DO stuff and MAKE their own things. I’m all for it and I’m happy to share that stuff with the world (the INTERNET WORLD, anyway.)
HAVING FUN.
SHARING WITH OTHERS.
MAKING THE WORLD A MORE ENJOYABLE PLACE.
PROMOTING COMMMUNITY INTERACTION.
Yeah. It’s worth it.
I still wish I had enough money to buy a coffee, though.
Alive at 45 (if I make it through the weekend.) That wasn’t a given, especially if you knew me from back in the late 80s and early 90s (when I was a purple-haired skater punk, hanging out at rave parties, cavorting with degenerates (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!), sleeping on various people’s floors, and spilling my guts in bathrooms as the party started to wind down... I came close to checking out more than once back then. Kids can be stupid.) Them was some ROUGH years. But I lived through them, and met Mariah, and had two awesome kids, and worked a lot of different jobs, and did that education thing (and have the debt to prove it), and now… Now I’m not sure. What do I want to be when I grow up?
---Richard F. Yates
(Commander in Cheap of The Primitive Entertainment Workshop)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
https://www.patreon.com/primitiveentertainment
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
http://themuseumofwhatilike.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 7, 2017
“Make a Million Things” by Richard F. Yates
My philosophy for art is this: you make a million things. If you make a million things, I guarantee that at least a few of those things will be brilliant---one or two, maybe more. A few will be MASTERPIECES! Even if they happened by accident, you’ll still have created a brilliant masterpiece---and how many people can say that?
Certainly not the people who just stand around and criticize what other people do, but who never make anything themselves out of fear of rejection, or a misguided belief that they CAN’T, or because of some emptiness in themselves---all very sad things---and unfortunately you can’t help everyone, but what you can do is you can make things.
Making things is fun, and I believe that EVERYONE should make stuff. Especially YOU! Make things. Make a million…
---Richard F. Yates
P.S. – This MAKING concept comes from seeing a whole generation of kids who just WATCH things, but don’t participate in CREATING. You gotta create---Camus said so! (Always consider what smart people say. You don’t always have to FOLLOW what they say, but you should definitely listen and then give it proper consideration…)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
https://www.patreon.com/primitiveentertainment
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
Certainly not the people who just stand around and criticize what other people do, but who never make anything themselves out of fear of rejection, or a misguided belief that they CAN’T, or because of some emptiness in themselves---all very sad things---and unfortunately you can’t help everyone, but what you can do is you can make things.
Making things is fun, and I believe that EVERYONE should make stuff. Especially YOU! Make things. Make a million…
---Richard F. Yates
P.S. – This MAKING concept comes from seeing a whole generation of kids who just WATCH things, but don’t participate in CREATING. You gotta create---Camus said so! (Always consider what smart people say. You don’t always have to FOLLOW what they say, but you should definitely listen and then give it proper consideration…)
https://primitiveentertainment.wordpress.com
https://www.patreon.com/primitiveentertainment
http://readadamnbookwithrfy.blogspot.com
Sunday, April 23, 2017
“Jean-Michel Basquiat Makeup?” by Richard F. Yates
Yesterday, my older daughter, Frankie, sent me this photo from a shopping trip:
Apparently, there is now a Jean-Michel Basquiat line of makeup…
I’m not sure how I feel about this. For one thing, I think the advertising and packaging for the products look pretty cool, and I appreciate the fact that everyday consumers who are not Art-Savvy will now be able to see Basquiat inspired images whenever they visit a cosmetics store. However, I do have some reservations:
1. Does using Basquiat’s crown icon to sell cosmetics (or any daily-use product) somehow cheapen or devalue or demystify the original artist's work? (Or, on the contrary, does it promote his visual style and iconography?)
2. Did Basquiat ever have intentions of designing a line of cosmetics? (Does it MATTER whether the artist INTENDED for his art to be used in this way? There is an argument that an artist creates his/her work and then sets it free---what the culture does with it after RELEASE is no longer the artist’s concern.)
3. WHO GETS THE MONEY? As far as I know, Basquiat never had any children who might benefit from the royalties of such a line of products, so who owns the RIGHTS to the imagery? This is a question that sort of haunts / consumes me. It’s like all of those images of Calvin (from Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes comic strip) pissing on various brand logos or praying… Is the USE of an artist’s images and icons, without their permission, inevitable? (Especially once the artist is no longer with us to GIVE permission or lodge a complaint.)
So there it is: Jean-Michel can now LITERALLY be the FOUNDATION of your day… Is this a good thing?
---Richard F. Yates
[Photo by Frankie Yates.]
Apparently, there is now a Jean-Michel Basquiat line of makeup…
I’m not sure how I feel about this. For one thing, I think the advertising and packaging for the products look pretty cool, and I appreciate the fact that everyday consumers who are not Art-Savvy will now be able to see Basquiat inspired images whenever they visit a cosmetics store. However, I do have some reservations:
1. Does using Basquiat’s crown icon to sell cosmetics (or any daily-use product) somehow cheapen or devalue or demystify the original artist's work? (Or, on the contrary, does it promote his visual style and iconography?)
2. Did Basquiat ever have intentions of designing a line of cosmetics? (Does it MATTER whether the artist INTENDED for his art to be used in this way? There is an argument that an artist creates his/her work and then sets it free---what the culture does with it after RELEASE is no longer the artist’s concern.)
3. WHO GETS THE MONEY? As far as I know, Basquiat never had any children who might benefit from the royalties of such a line of products, so who owns the RIGHTS to the imagery? This is a question that sort of haunts / consumes me. It’s like all of those images of Calvin (from Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes comic strip) pissing on various brand logos or praying… Is the USE of an artist’s images and icons, without their permission, inevitable? (Especially once the artist is no longer with us to GIVE permission or lodge a complaint.)
So there it is: Jean-Michel can now LITERALLY be the FOUNDATION of your day… Is this a good thing?
---Richard F. Yates
[Photo by Frankie Yates.]
Thursday, April 13, 2017
“Extrospection (What Kind of Art Guy am I?)” by Richard F. Yates
[Warning*** Whiskey content…]
For the last four years (give or take some off-planet experiences) I've run The Primitive Entertainment Workshop, and I've posted (on average) 3 or 4 posts per day since early 2013. (Sometimes I skip a day or two, sometimes I go crazy and post 20 or 30 things in one day...) The P.E.W. includes drawings, sketches, abstract art, cartoons, digitally manipulated photos, flash fiction, gloomy-slow fiction, poetry, political commentaries, diary entries, quips, non-jokes, art theory, fake news, book reviews, travel posts, guest contributions, rants, homemade religions, satire, serialized stories, mini-dramas, manifestos, postal art, zines, requests for money, LOTS of nonsense, and even some opportunities to purchase SWAG… We’ve produced four books, created stickers and t-shirts based on artwork first published here, and linked to several sites (Zizzle / Redboodle / D.V. Ant Art / Faceboot…) where humans can buy junk with Primitive Artwork plastered all over it---and I’ve produced the majority of this STUFF myself (although I certainly do have a cadre of interesting contributors, to whom I am ETERNALLY grateful.*) [*”eternally” is not a legally binding phrase…] AND, we are fast approaching the 5,000th post.
Sheeeeeit…
That’s a lot of nonsense…
Anyway, I’ve begun to wonder: What Kind of ART GUY am I??? (I made a short video asking that very question…)
Does it matter? Is it important to specialize? Should I be CONCERNED that I don’t have an official title or definition?
I mean, I’ve been drawing and writing and making up stupid songs and poems since I was old enough to hold a crayon… I will undoubtedly keep doing those things until I die (and perhaps for a few more years after that---I haven’t decided for sure.) It’s a compulsion, a NEED. I’m happiest when I’m writing or drawings or painting or eating sugar or making up nonsense songs... I LOVE the nonsense, because I think it BEST relays how I feel about the world. You can laugh or you can cry---or you can draw a snake with a halo above his head and say that he’s worried that his accountant might be an alien…who isn’t very good at doing taxes… I, of course, go with the third option.
Definitions are nice though, especially when people ask you questions like, “So what do you do?” I usually say, “I’m a writer!” or “I’m an artist!” depending on how I feel and whether or not I like the person I’m talking to. (Sometimes I lie, and say things like, “I’m a hypnotist!” or “I can’t tell you---it’s classified…” For about three years, I had my wife convinced that I was a Cult Leader---that’s how I won her heart. From there, it’s just been the hypnosis and help from my government contacts that have KEPT her with me, at least since my cult all committed suicide… But I’ve digressed.)
So I’m thinking about making the leap to Patreon. It doesn’t hurt anything to try it (economically speaking), and I have this idea about running it like a Secret Society or an old-fashioned fan club, with Certificates of Membership, and I.D. cards, and a regular (actually mailed to you) newsletter, and fancy “members only” t-shirts, and secret handshakes, and funny little cars that we drive in parades, and covert meetings where we discuss our plans to take over the world (for the “higher paying” patrons, of course…) Maybe something like the Church of the Subgenius meets the Mickey Mouse Club. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it??? The real point of the Patreon element would be to help pay for online expenses (I’m a little more than 75 percent of the way through my WeirdPress free media allotment, which means we aren’t too far from either having to pay for more space or start dropping old stuff off the site---the latter being a REPELENT concept, in my opinion.) Plus, we could do stuff like print more books and artwork and make new t-shirts and stickers, and I’ve always harbored the desire to have a big ART SHOW, like rent the expo-center here in town and have a bunch of framed artwork and tables where contributors were signing books and giving talks, maybe even have a bunch of KIDS draw stuff and bring it in, and then have a panel of judges award prizes to kids in various age groups---you know, to help encourage the YOUTH to stay creative and make things themselves… I’ve got some ideas...
Anyway, what do you people think? Is it worth going the Patreon route? Do you peeps like the idea of becoming OFFICIAL MEMBERS OF THE PRIMITIVE PANORAMA and getting a bunch of fun stuff mailed directly to your door? Seems like good times to me.
---Richard F. Yates, Hypnotist in Chief of the P.E.W.
For the last four years (give or take some off-planet experiences) I've run The Primitive Entertainment Workshop, and I've posted (on average) 3 or 4 posts per day since early 2013. (Sometimes I skip a day or two, sometimes I go crazy and post 20 or 30 things in one day...) The P.E.W. includes drawings, sketches, abstract art, cartoons, digitally manipulated photos, flash fiction, gloomy-slow fiction, poetry, political commentaries, diary entries, quips, non-jokes, art theory, fake news, book reviews, travel posts, guest contributions, rants, homemade religions, satire, serialized stories, mini-dramas, manifestos, postal art, zines, requests for money, LOTS of nonsense, and even some opportunities to purchase SWAG… We’ve produced four books, created stickers and t-shirts based on artwork first published here, and linked to several sites (Zizzle / Redboodle / D.V. Ant Art / Faceboot…) where humans can buy junk with Primitive Artwork plastered all over it---and I’ve produced the majority of this STUFF myself (although I certainly do have a cadre of interesting contributors, to whom I am ETERNALLY grateful.*) [*”eternally” is not a legally binding phrase…] AND, we are fast approaching the 5,000th post.
Sheeeeeit…
That’s a lot of nonsense…
Anyway, I’ve begun to wonder: What Kind of ART GUY am I??? (I made a short video asking that very question…)
Does it matter? Is it important to specialize? Should I be CONCERNED that I don’t have an official title or definition?
I mean, I’ve been drawing and writing and making up stupid songs and poems since I was old enough to hold a crayon… I will undoubtedly keep doing those things until I die (and perhaps for a few more years after that---I haven’t decided for sure.) It’s a compulsion, a NEED. I’m happiest when I’m writing or drawings or painting or eating sugar or making up nonsense songs... I LOVE the nonsense, because I think it BEST relays how I feel about the world. You can laugh or you can cry---or you can draw a snake with a halo above his head and say that he’s worried that his accountant might be an alien…who isn’t very good at doing taxes… I, of course, go with the third option.
Definitions are nice though, especially when people ask you questions like, “So what do you do?” I usually say, “I’m a writer!” or “I’m an artist!” depending on how I feel and whether or not I like the person I’m talking to. (Sometimes I lie, and say things like, “I’m a hypnotist!” or “I can’t tell you---it’s classified…” For about three years, I had my wife convinced that I was a Cult Leader---that’s how I won her heart. From there, it’s just been the hypnosis and help from my government contacts that have KEPT her with me, at least since my cult all committed suicide… But I’ve digressed.)
So I’m thinking about making the leap to Patreon. It doesn’t hurt anything to try it (economically speaking), and I have this idea about running it like a Secret Society or an old-fashioned fan club, with Certificates of Membership, and I.D. cards, and a regular (actually mailed to you) newsletter, and fancy “members only” t-shirts, and secret handshakes, and funny little cars that we drive in parades, and covert meetings where we discuss our plans to take over the world (for the “higher paying” patrons, of course…) Maybe something like the Church of the Subgenius meets the Mickey Mouse Club. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it??? The real point of the Patreon element would be to help pay for online expenses (I’m a little more than 75 percent of the way through my WeirdPress free media allotment, which means we aren’t too far from either having to pay for more space or start dropping old stuff off the site---the latter being a REPELENT concept, in my opinion.) Plus, we could do stuff like print more books and artwork and make new t-shirts and stickers, and I’ve always harbored the desire to have a big ART SHOW, like rent the expo-center here in town and have a bunch of framed artwork and tables where contributors were signing books and giving talks, maybe even have a bunch of KIDS draw stuff and bring it in, and then have a panel of judges award prizes to kids in various age groups---you know, to help encourage the YOUTH to stay creative and make things themselves… I’ve got some ideas...
Anyway, what do you people think? Is it worth going the Patreon route? Do you peeps like the idea of becoming OFFICIAL MEMBERS OF THE PRIMITIVE PANORAMA and getting a bunch of fun stuff mailed directly to your door? Seems like good times to me.
---Richard F. Yates, Hypnotist in Chief of the P.E.W.
Sunday, April 2, 2017
“Interview with Richard F. Yates” by Spork Ryyder
[WARNING! This is a fake interview that I did with myself back in February of 2014 and published on The Primitive Entertainment Workshop blog! It was written for educational purposes, and I still think it's pretty funny and relatively accurate! ---Richard]
---This interview was originally published in the January 2014 issue of Spork Ryyder’s Poppengluup art journal. Thanks to Ryyder for permission to reprint the interview here!---
Richard F. Yates is an American artist, writer, poet, and editor whose most recent project is The Primitive Entertainment Workshop, a blog that combines art and literature, humor and horror, and which has garnered international attention for its belligerent attitude and quirky sense of humor. This interview was conducted by phone with Richard from his home in Washington State in the U.S.
Spork Ryyder: Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Yates. Let me start with a standard Poppengluup question. What were your major childhood traumas?
Richard Yates: My childhood…oh boy. The earliest that I can remember are getting run over by a car, my dog, Bongo, getting hit by a car, my dog, Shasta, being run over right in front of my eyes, and my mom dying in a car wreck when I was fourteen.
Ryyder: My god! So you’re not a big fan of cars, I take it?
Yates: Not a fan.
Ryyder: That’s understandable!
Yates: And then there were the minor tragedies that probably seemed major at the time—moving around a lot, my parents getting divorced, my mom remarrying and then getting divorced again. Stuff like that. Heartbreaking when you’re a kid, but now, as a grouchy old man, they seem more like normal life stuff.
Ryyder: Do you have any major childhood inspirations?
Yates: Oh, tons! I watched a lot of t.v. as a kid—Godzilla movies, The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Sci-Fi Theater, lots of monster movies and bad, old science fiction. I still love that stuff. And Star Wars! Star Wars was big, but I was also really inspired by video games. I grew up in the Golden Age of arcades. The lights and noise. Watch Tron. The arcade scenes at Flynn’s are a lot like some of my best childhood memories.
Ryyder: I see a lot of Pac-Man in your art.
Yates: Yes! Absolutely. The character and the ghosts are so easy to draw, but really iconic. I love Pac-Man. Then when I got to be around ten or eleven, I really got into music. Devo, Blondie, Pink Floyd—anything with synthesizers or weird noises, I loved it. Still do. I’ve also always been really into comics and books. I read a lot, still, but when I was young, I devoured books and comics. Superheroes, horror stories, ghosts, monsters, any of that stuff that I could get my hands on—and my mom was pretty cool about buying me books, even scary stuff. I remember when I was really young, she came into a comic shop and signed a paper saying they could sell me the “mature” books because I was really into things like 3-D Tales of Terror and other big kid books.
Ryyder: How old were you then?
Yates: I don’t know, maybe eleven or twelve, but we lived in the woods at the time, outside of a little town called Castle Rock in Washington State, and it was too far for me to walk to any of my friends’ houses, so all I had to do was read or listen to records or watch t.v. My brothers both liked to play outside—ride motorcycles, make soapbox racers, go on adventures in the woods, but I didn’t like to get dirty, so I’d stay inside and make masks or record little stories and songs with a tape recorder, or I’d read.
Ryyder: So the move into art and writing wasn’t difficult?
Yates: Nah, I’ve always drawn and written stories as long as I can remember.
Ryyder: Okay, so let’s move up to the present. Your current project is The Primitive Entertainment Workshop. How did that get started, and why did you chose a blog format for the project?
Yates: Because it’s easy. I’ve been published in more straight media, journals and newspapers, and I’ve had artwork in galleries and shows, and frankly, I just don’t work well with others. I’d think a painting was done and perfect, but the gallery owner would say I couldn’t hang a piece of cardboard that I cut from a cereal box on the wall next to something in a nice frame. (Laughs) And with publishing, the lag time between writing a piece and it getting into the hands of readers can be months! I’m not that patient. If I write something, I want people to read it right now, while it’s fresh, not in six weeks.
Ryyder: Yes, but self publishing has a stigma.
Yates: It does. It does. But look at all the really well known authors who’ve started with self publishing. Whitman, Pound, not to mention all the indie music and zines that came out of the punk and post-punk scenes. That’s probably the biggest thing for me. I really identify with that punk / D.I.Y. aesthetic, that Dada / conceptual art “fuck the rules” spirit. I don’t want an editor or gallery owner, or anybody, telling me that what I’ve made or what I’ve written isn’t good enough. Good enough for what? To make money? That’s not why I draw or write. I do it because I love to do it, I’ve always done it, and if I’m being honest, because I like the praise. I’m a solid writer, a good writer, and I should be. I have a grad school education and I’ve been writing for almost 40 years. My artwork, and I’d be the first to admit this, isn’t great. It’s cute, sometimes clever, on occasion interesting or evocative, but it’s not very good. (Laughs) But it serves my purposes.
Ryyder: Which are?
Yates: I don’t know—to make people laugh, I guess. Or scare them. To amuse myself. To make stuff. It may not be much, but I still think it’s important to just make stuff. To play. Too many people grow up and forget how to play. I’m pretty proud of myself for not forgetting how to play.
Ryyder: So you don’t have any commercial aspirations?
Yates: Oh god, yes! I do! I would love to make money as a writer or artist. My wife would love for me to make some money, and of course I’d love to own a nice house and a new car, or at the very least to be able to pay my bills, but I’m horribly lazy. Plus, I’ve somehow fooled myself into believing that I’m a great Artist, capital “A.” That this cerebral, raw, bizarre, elitist, conceptual program that I’ve set myself on is somehow very important, and that spending all of this time and energy documenting my weird thoughts and the stories and poems of all my weird friends and family will someday be worth it. Probably after I’m dead, though. (Laughs)
Ryyder: So the blog format?
Yates: Like I said, it’s easy. I can write something, copy and paste, and publish. I can paint a picture, take a digital pic, and upload it. A friend can email me a poem or story, and bam! Up and readable in seconds. And the blog site I use, Word Press, is really easy and has pretty good search features. It’s a good archive, although I’ve posted over 800* things in the last year, so I do worry that some of the material is getting buried under all the slush. How many people will go back through 800 pictures and articles. Probably not very many.
Ryyder: Well Mr. Yates, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.
Yates: No problem. It’s been fun.
Ryyder: Any last words for the readers?
Yates: Yes! Buy my stuff! Books, shirts, posters, stickers. I really need to start making some money before my wife makes me get a full time job at a supermarket or something! (Laughs)
Ryyder: Okay. Thanks!
—Spork Ryyder
[*At the time of this reprinting, 2 April 2017, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop has 4,792 post up. That's a LOT of slush...---RFY]
---This interview was originally published in the January 2014 issue of Spork Ryyder’s Poppengluup art journal. Thanks to Ryyder for permission to reprint the interview here!---
Richard F. Yates is an American artist, writer, poet, and editor whose most recent project is The Primitive Entertainment Workshop, a blog that combines art and literature, humor and horror, and which has garnered international attention for its belligerent attitude and quirky sense of humor. This interview was conducted by phone with Richard from his home in Washington State in the U.S.
Spork Ryyder: Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Yates. Let me start with a standard Poppengluup question. What were your major childhood traumas?
Richard Yates: My childhood…oh boy. The earliest that I can remember are getting run over by a car, my dog, Bongo, getting hit by a car, my dog, Shasta, being run over right in front of my eyes, and my mom dying in a car wreck when I was fourteen.
Ryyder: My god! So you’re not a big fan of cars, I take it?
Yates: Not a fan.
Ryyder: That’s understandable!
Yates: And then there were the minor tragedies that probably seemed major at the time—moving around a lot, my parents getting divorced, my mom remarrying and then getting divorced again. Stuff like that. Heartbreaking when you’re a kid, but now, as a grouchy old man, they seem more like normal life stuff.
Ryyder: Do you have any major childhood inspirations?
Yates: Oh, tons! I watched a lot of t.v. as a kid—Godzilla movies, The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Sci-Fi Theater, lots of monster movies and bad, old science fiction. I still love that stuff. And Star Wars! Star Wars was big, but I was also really inspired by video games. I grew up in the Golden Age of arcades. The lights and noise. Watch Tron. The arcade scenes at Flynn’s are a lot like some of my best childhood memories.
Ryyder: I see a lot of Pac-Man in your art.
Yates: Yes! Absolutely. The character and the ghosts are so easy to draw, but really iconic. I love Pac-Man. Then when I got to be around ten or eleven, I really got into music. Devo, Blondie, Pink Floyd—anything with synthesizers or weird noises, I loved it. Still do. I’ve also always been really into comics and books. I read a lot, still, but when I was young, I devoured books and comics. Superheroes, horror stories, ghosts, monsters, any of that stuff that I could get my hands on—and my mom was pretty cool about buying me books, even scary stuff. I remember when I was really young, she came into a comic shop and signed a paper saying they could sell me the “mature” books because I was really into things like 3-D Tales of Terror and other big kid books.
Ryyder: How old were you then?
Yates: I don’t know, maybe eleven or twelve, but we lived in the woods at the time, outside of a little town called Castle Rock in Washington State, and it was too far for me to walk to any of my friends’ houses, so all I had to do was read or listen to records or watch t.v. My brothers both liked to play outside—ride motorcycles, make soapbox racers, go on adventures in the woods, but I didn’t like to get dirty, so I’d stay inside and make masks or record little stories and songs with a tape recorder, or I’d read.
Ryyder: So the move into art and writing wasn’t difficult?
Yates: Nah, I’ve always drawn and written stories as long as I can remember.
Ryyder: Okay, so let’s move up to the present. Your current project is The Primitive Entertainment Workshop. How did that get started, and why did you chose a blog format for the project?
Yates: Because it’s easy. I’ve been published in more straight media, journals and newspapers, and I’ve had artwork in galleries and shows, and frankly, I just don’t work well with others. I’d think a painting was done and perfect, but the gallery owner would say I couldn’t hang a piece of cardboard that I cut from a cereal box on the wall next to something in a nice frame. (Laughs) And with publishing, the lag time between writing a piece and it getting into the hands of readers can be months! I’m not that patient. If I write something, I want people to read it right now, while it’s fresh, not in six weeks.
Ryyder: Yes, but self publishing has a stigma.
Yates: It does. It does. But look at all the really well known authors who’ve started with self publishing. Whitman, Pound, not to mention all the indie music and zines that came out of the punk and post-punk scenes. That’s probably the biggest thing for me. I really identify with that punk / D.I.Y. aesthetic, that Dada / conceptual art “fuck the rules” spirit. I don’t want an editor or gallery owner, or anybody, telling me that what I’ve made or what I’ve written isn’t good enough. Good enough for what? To make money? That’s not why I draw or write. I do it because I love to do it, I’ve always done it, and if I’m being honest, because I like the praise. I’m a solid writer, a good writer, and I should be. I have a grad school education and I’ve been writing for almost 40 years. My artwork, and I’d be the first to admit this, isn’t great. It’s cute, sometimes clever, on occasion interesting or evocative, but it’s not very good. (Laughs) But it serves my purposes.
Ryyder: Which are?
Yates: I don’t know—to make people laugh, I guess. Or scare them. To amuse myself. To make stuff. It may not be much, but I still think it’s important to just make stuff. To play. Too many people grow up and forget how to play. I’m pretty proud of myself for not forgetting how to play.
Ryyder: So you don’t have any commercial aspirations?
Yates: Oh god, yes! I do! I would love to make money as a writer or artist. My wife would love for me to make some money, and of course I’d love to own a nice house and a new car, or at the very least to be able to pay my bills, but I’m horribly lazy. Plus, I’ve somehow fooled myself into believing that I’m a great Artist, capital “A.” That this cerebral, raw, bizarre, elitist, conceptual program that I’ve set myself on is somehow very important, and that spending all of this time and energy documenting my weird thoughts and the stories and poems of all my weird friends and family will someday be worth it. Probably after I’m dead, though. (Laughs)
Ryyder: So the blog format?
Yates: Like I said, it’s easy. I can write something, copy and paste, and publish. I can paint a picture, take a digital pic, and upload it. A friend can email me a poem or story, and bam! Up and readable in seconds. And the blog site I use, Word Press, is really easy and has pretty good search features. It’s a good archive, although I’ve posted over 800* things in the last year, so I do worry that some of the material is getting buried under all the slush. How many people will go back through 800 pictures and articles. Probably not very many.
Ryyder: Well Mr. Yates, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.
Yates: No problem. It’s been fun.
Ryyder: Any last words for the readers?
Yates: Yes! Buy my stuff! Books, shirts, posters, stickers. I really need to start making some money before my wife makes me get a full time job at a supermarket or something! (Laughs)
Ryyder: Okay. Thanks!
—Spork Ryyder
[*At the time of this reprinting, 2 April 2017, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop has 4,792 post up. That's a LOT of slush...---RFY]
Monday, March 20, 2017
“Thoughts on the ‘Pain Induced Marathon’: The Morning After (30)” by Richard F. Yates
When one peddles in the absurd, when one deals in banalities and micro-concepts, when one pushes that boulder up the hill only to watch is tumble back down, there will always be a certain element of resistance to the idea that what one is doing has any value. I’m certain that this is true because I live the consequences of working in MUNDANE MAGIC on a daily basis.
I’m economically embarrassed, but psychologically fulfilled.
Even the most die-hard of adherents can only be expected to suffer inanity for so long before becoming bored and moving on to greener pastures. I’m cool with that, and happy with yesterday’s “outcome” (for lack of a better term.) Not counting Scotty Sparks’s two ACTUAL poems, and a single silly drawing of mine posted BEFORE the marathon, I ended the day with TWENTY-NINE pieces of nonsense, in total, in my performance. I consider these marathons (when they occur) to be performances as much as I consider them fiction, poetry, and visual art, because part of the barrage is the simple ACTION of making and posting each BIT. The MASS POSTING is as much a part of the activity as the making of each drawing or written piece.
But consider this: most of the individual pieces in this marathon, taken on their own merits, would be a throw-away---a tiny bit of NOTHING. “2 + 1 = love triangle” or a stick figure surfer with a halo or a nonsense poem about growing up poor and having to take lunch to school in a paper bag (which most people probably didn’t get)---none of these things, presented on their own and considered in isolation, would have made any impact on the world. However!!! When a multitude of tiny pieces (of nothing) begin to swarm, when they appear suddenly all grouped together and descend upon the world in mass, people notice. Each individual element of the swarm may be nothing but wings, some pollen, and a useless stinger, but the mass taken together can inspire fear and panic in the population (not to mention great B-films, like Attack of the Killer Bees!) Or confusion. I’m cool with confusion, too.
It’s not a question of whether or not I’ll keep making my silly drawings or micro-stories or nonsense poems, I’ve created these things since my childhood, and I’ll continue to make them until I keel over and drop. Shit, I’ll probably try to make a drawing with my fingertip in the pool of blood I’m lying in when I’m finally beaten to death by that angry crowd, and I’ll smile just a little bit through crimson teeth as they kick harder than even, confused and infuriated by the snake with the halo that I scrawl as my eyes roll back in my head and the lights go out! And I’ll probably keep having marathons as well, once or twice per year, if for no other reason than sheer perversity.
Push that boulder to the top of the hill, then grin as it rolls back down! Thanks for playing!
---Richard F. Yates
I’m economically embarrassed, but psychologically fulfilled.
Even the most die-hard of adherents can only be expected to suffer inanity for so long before becoming bored and moving on to greener pastures. I’m cool with that, and happy with yesterday’s “outcome” (for lack of a better term.) Not counting Scotty Sparks’s two ACTUAL poems, and a single silly drawing of mine posted BEFORE the marathon, I ended the day with TWENTY-NINE pieces of nonsense, in total, in my performance. I consider these marathons (when they occur) to be performances as much as I consider them fiction, poetry, and visual art, because part of the barrage is the simple ACTION of making and posting each BIT. The MASS POSTING is as much a part of the activity as the making of each drawing or written piece.
But consider this: most of the individual pieces in this marathon, taken on their own merits, would be a throw-away---a tiny bit of NOTHING. “2 + 1 = love triangle” or a stick figure surfer with a halo or a nonsense poem about growing up poor and having to take lunch to school in a paper bag (which most people probably didn’t get)---none of these things, presented on their own and considered in isolation, would have made any impact on the world. However!!! When a multitude of tiny pieces (of nothing) begin to swarm, when they appear suddenly all grouped together and descend upon the world in mass, people notice. Each individual element of the swarm may be nothing but wings, some pollen, and a useless stinger, but the mass taken together can inspire fear and panic in the population (not to mention great B-films, like Attack of the Killer Bees!) Or confusion. I’m cool with confusion, too.
It’s not a question of whether or not I’ll keep making my silly drawings or micro-stories or nonsense poems, I’ve created these things since my childhood, and I’ll continue to make them until I keel over and drop. Shit, I’ll probably try to make a drawing with my fingertip in the pool of blood I’m lying in when I’m finally beaten to death by that angry crowd, and I’ll smile just a little bit through crimson teeth as they kick harder than even, confused and infuriated by the snake with the halo that I scrawl as my eyes roll back in my head and the lights go out! And I’ll probably keep having marathons as well, once or twice per year, if for no other reason than sheer perversity.
Push that boulder to the top of the hill, then grin as it rolls back down! Thanks for playing!
---Richard F. Yates
[To check out the "Pain Induced Mega Nonsense Marathon" and other weirdness, look no further than The Primitive Entertainment Workshop! It's ginchy cool, daddy-o...]
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