Tag: inspiration

Bully, read my lips

The continuing farce that is America prompts this post.

The duds in the Orangehouse are successful in one thing—rallying support against them.

Read my lips AI assisted digital 2025

The bully tactics are typical. But support for the victims (except American ‘victims’ that brought this on themselves) is increasing around the world. Bullies don’t win when sane and strong people stand against them.

I support our Commonwealth cousins, Canada, in this fight. They’re strong and I hope they remain strong.

There’s no point in decrying all the actions causing chaos in America and around the world without doing my bit.

So, I’m doing an audit of my material practice. A boycott is in progress.

Paints

Briefly, the oil paints that I use are from the UK (Winsor & Newton) and Australia (Art Spectrum), so I can continue to use them without concern.

The Acrylic paints I use are American. Boycott! That is, use what I have but don’t buy any more.

The Alkyd paints I use are from an Australian company that appears to source materials globally, notably China.

Yarns and other fibre materials

I have a stash that is equivalent to the size of half a shipping container, so I’m sure I can use up what I have for years to come.

If I need a yarn fix I will go to Bendigo Woollen Mills (Oz) and various favoured suppliers in Europe.

Digital

This is difficult.

I use Apple and Adobe exclusively for creating and manipulating digital works. My initial boycott will be to lavish care on my now elderly computer and downgrade my Adobe all-apps plan when it comes due. I will try to limit my Adobe fix to Photoshop.

The use of Midjourney is also deeply entrenched in my practice. But I have more than 100,000 images so am thinking about how I downgrade to a cheaper plan and maybe wean myself off in the future. I could spend an entire lifetime just working with the images I already have.

Aside from my arts practice—personal choices

I will never buy a swasticar. This choice is not an illegal boycott, buffoon.

I never eat unhappy meals.

I watch Australian television. I have no streaming subscriptions.

Already I have boycotted Twitter and closed my account, haven’t used Microsoft products for years, and limited use of Meta. We watch some Youtube to catch up with the fallout of the shitshow, only because our ABC doesn’t always cover it.

I have made a list of American exports into Australia so that I can check that I am not inadvertently buying American. Not much chance of that because we have so much good stuff here, specifically, made in Australia. I’ll be looking closely at country of origin and company ownership for toiletries, games, vinegar, fruit and nuts, paper and cardboard, books and apparel.

OK, so I’m just one boycotter but I’m looking forward to my part in his (and the knob’s) downfall.

Shark jumping

I’ve watched the US Clownshow since 2016.

I’m not sure when exactly it jumped the shark, but it was a very long time ago. Recent episodes have become so bizarre that the the sharks are doing the jumping.

In fact, so grotesquely weird that I’ve been thinking:

We Australians have to reject any attempts to franchise this s#*tshow here.

The danger for us is that we do have the odd Loomer, some Vances and we did have a Cruz, but we ousted him. We have some elected politicians who you could argue are even weirder than the American cohort, but we’re lucky that our media is not afraid to expose fabulists, extremists and lunatics; and our election system calls on all Australians to make sane choices or live with the consequences.

Compulsory voting and a moderate majority voice protects us to a large extent.

We have to be vigilant to stay that way. What happens in America directly affects us.

If the US 2024 election race wasn’t so serious it would be utterly hilarious. And BTW, candidate Trump, we are laughing at you—every day in fact, louder and louder.

Dahlia sat calmly vigilant, knowing that she would be able to protect her fur baby Blossom from the evil hordes September 2024