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Rougarou

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Posts posted by Rougarou

  1. San Diego is rad. It's hard to live in San Diego proper and I read that SD has the fastest "reverse movement" of the demographic of 21-34, in that the age group is actually moving out of SD at a rapid pace more than any other metro. Something about the cost of living and real estate cost versus jobs. So if that is the case, and it's already a bit red/conservative, and you have older/monied people, you have a recipe for a Mira Lago- West Coast version?

  2. 9 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

    Have you got an old teacher or professor who may be long gone, but they taught you so much that you hear their voice in your memory while you're working today?

    I sure do. Mr. Richard Brough, my Graphic Design instructor back in the 80s.

    Mr. Brough was a throw-back to a Woodie-Guthrie America. Sometimes he'd look around, stop the class, and teach us how to make hand-painted signs, so if we hitched across the country we could start on the Atlantic, never miss a meal, and by the time we hit California we'd have money in our pockets. I am pretty sure that's what he did when he was young. In WW2 he painted murals for the troops, and individual watercolor portraits of recuperating wounded for them to send to their moms.

    "You want to get good at watercolors, RD? It's easy-- paint a thousand of them!"

    He did a stretch at Disney as an animator, never talked about it much.

    At that time, computers were just coming in, and students who'd gone off to work at ad agencies (usually in Atlanta, where they'd dress like Robert Smith of The Cure and tear it up on Apple IIEs) would let us current students know that we were not getting the current know-how. I didn't care. Mr. Brough would show us all kinds of basic techniques with brushes and pens, hand-embossing, silkscreens, stencils, all of it done so old-school punk-rock that we could have figured out how to make a living in between hopping trains. Apple IIEs are a distant memory and I still make sales using old techniques.

    He'd get to know you, and tailor projects to your personality. My friend Tony was patient, so he'd give Tony one thing to work on for a long time. Me, I flitted. "RD, your work is good if you do it in less than 5 minutes. If I give you an hour, you ruin it. So do 10 things, 5 minutes each."

    How should we price our work? "How much do you need?" "Give them a price, and wait. If they say 'OK', say, well for this much more, I can mat it. If they say 'OK', then you say and for this much more, I can frame it. Keep going until they stop saying 'OK.'"

    On job interviews: "Don't show an employer anything you didn't enjoy doing. That'll be the one thing they hire you to do."

    On Art Editors: "An editor is paid to edit. Put one obvious wrong thing that's easy to fix in every illustration. When the editor jumps on it, take it back home, fix it in 15 minutes, wait a couple of days, then take it back."

    If he knew you needed money, jobs would appear. Maybe they'd be art jobs, maybe they'd be wax-on wax-off clean the dojo, I mean studio, jobs.

    Last week I was finishing up a little painting that was OK, but lacked something. I remembered in the 80s turning in an illustration that was the same way, B work. Mr. Brough took a heavy marker and jagged it down one side of the person in my illustration. BOOM it looked like a magazine cover. Back in the present, I took a brush and black paint and added the same savage touch to the painting. BOOM again. It sold that day.

    Thanks Mr. Brough.

    I could listen to RDCaneCutter stories for hours.

    Where was this college? Auburn? 'Bama? UT-Martin?

    • Hook 'Em 1
  3. 35 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    Agree completely. I hope we're not talking past each other due to the nature of Internet debate. 

    I think relying on "hard work" as an important element of this conversation is misguided in the first place, so trust me I don't have any allegiance to the Protestant work ethic being satisfied in relation to poverty policy. I think it's wrong-headed to spend so much effort determining who is worthy based on their "hard work".

    At the end of the day, everyone deserves dignity. That's a moral statement on my part, but it's one I'm happy to be hung for.

    giphy.gif

  4. 2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

    Of course. I love it. I would love nothing more than a life that enriches me endlessly while always protecting me from the consequences of all decisions.

    But it's not about me and my personal luxury, if we're thinking about poverty we're thinking about the ordering and structure of society.

    Also, there is no free lunch. There is a cost for all things, including the life of comfortable luxury you and I enjoy.

    Someone is paying for everything, for sure. That's usually just someone with money thinking about their money/capital, but the social and environmental costs for our lives are very high and also abstracted away from us.

    Not saying YOU don't understand that, it's just commonly misunderstood.

    That's a common generalization, but not accurate. There is no real correlation between "hard work" and "sacrifices" and income. That is, again, a moralistic understanding more than a rational one. In fact, shifting work away from oneself is generally how many wealthy people make money. It is actually a feature of climbing business ladders, finding ways to get paid for someone else's labor. Then we build a moralistic narrative around it to make it seem like it is actually us doing super hard work and not the guy we're paying.

    Not to even mention the ultimate mainstream American wealth dream: Passive income.

    Not saying YOU think this way, but it's a common way of thinking.

    I'd like to talk the politics of it, but that's CR stuff and I don't want to do CR stuff here. Shortcut is to say that there is actually no tension between the business class and the duopoly of political powers. Again, let's do that rabbit hole in CR. I would enjoy a thoughtful conversation there.

    I think it's reasonable to argue that no matter what you are doing, generally speaking, you are working hard and making a sacrifice to be doing it. The exceptions being if you are the company owner's son or something, sure, or on the payroll due to extortion or something. I don't mean this to be relativistic, but in the necessary way that it means to work. 

    You are doing something to a level and ability that is maintaining your employment and the sacrifices you make aren't necessarily always "Oh that poor surgeon never sees his kids." but in the sense of a mandatory sacrifice via opportunity costs which is necessary in a world of scarcity and when trading finite resources, be they BTU's of your brain or horsepower of your brawn.

    Everyone, for the most part, is working hard and making sacrifices. Just because you don't think, for arguments sake, I work hard in relation to yourself or the Howard Roark and his merry band of bricklayers or the McDonald's janitor who walked through cacti then rode under the belly of a donkey in 105 degree heat and then drowned twice in the Rio Grande before being beaten back to life by predator coyotes on the cartel payroll, because I wear a hypothetical Hermes tie for $400/hour to throw coffee and powerpoint decks at peoples heads, doesn't mean there isn't hard work and sacrifice. Hypothetically.

    Joking aside, I think everyone who is working is working hard and making a sacrifice because work is work.

  5. 11 minutes ago, bad_teammate said:

    If poverty wasn't addressable and was merely a fact of the human condition every country would have very similar rates of poverty and levels of poverty within countries would be relatively stable.

    This isn't the case.

    Anti-poverty initiatives can work extremely well, and direct payments are probably the most effective form. Social Security, for instance, almost completely eliminated elderly poverty in the US and is the program that keeps millions and millions of elderly Americans out of poverty. In the 1950s, more than 35% of America's elderly population was living in poverty. Social Security reduced that to below 10%. And that <10% level has held for decades completely independent of national recessions/depressions/booms.

    So sure, if you handed a poor man $1M at once he would become poor once again. But social welfare programs don't work like that, luckily. Provide that man very basic, Soviet-level safe housing if he doesn't have it and a small amount of guaranteed money every two weeks and the return on that money will be tremendous, because a secure life isn't built on a single big payoff, but the security of having housing (meager but sufficient), food (healthful but not exclusive), and an income (very small). And a job guarantee, of course, to allow himself to move beyond that base-subsistence-level of modern existence.

    The objection there is really a moralistic objection held by at least a few (possibly a majority) here: Poverty is a just punishment for morally inferior people.

    Not only is this a mean-spirited and hateful view of the world, it doesn't even make sense or bear scrutiny.

    We could dramatically reduce poverty by simply giving people financial security and, in doing so, dramatically lessen the social burden we carry due to the destructive symptoms of poverty (police, prison costs to say nothing of dozens of other things).

    I agree with this, but I do enjoy getting a pay raise that comes from not paying into SS every time I hit the 137k mark around mid-summer. I assume you enjoy that too, if not earlier in the fiscal year.

    The problem is asking people to pay for this stuff. I think a pretty accurate generalization would be "we all, no matter who we are or what our jobs are, work hard and make sacrifices for our money." If we can paint the picture that giving more of it back to the government would help us make more in the future (CFO's these days want to see $2.50 for every $1 they spend, why are we different?) then why don't we attack that talk track, politically? 

    Or maybe we just don't have the right minds in Washington.

  6. 12 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:


    Naah. I just see that people are dicks, and proud of it. You know, case in point quoted above.

    You are getting what Gartner calls "Social Feedback." You, of course, are free to do with that what you wish, but yea. It's your life though and I'm guessing (really hoping) you aren't such a soggy diaper in real life and this is an exaggeration of your personality (social media/online tends to do) or maybe you are work-shopping some sort of voice or character for an upcoming creative project you are trying to get off the ground.

    Anyways, I think you are wrong. The majority of Americans don't want cops killing black people, directly or indirectly, and there is hope.

    • Hook 'Em 3
  7. 8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I mean, I'm not offering up any particular god-like wisdom here.  Most of the world is made up of selfish, tribal, cruel people.  Why would we be any different?  Maybe my larger point is dismissing the foolish concept of "American Exceptionalism."

    And I don't think that looking at evidence is foolish either.  We have shitty police.  We've had shitty police for a long, long time.  And we've known it.  Shit, for a century-plus, the police were a crucial element of a structure designed to imprison and effectively enslave black people as convict labor, keep black people from voting, allow/assist with lynching, and then use the "war on drugs" as a great proxy for the former Black Codes....and we were good with that.  Those are just some plain facts of the history of American policing.

    I truly don't understand why that take is some "god complex" or somesuch.  It doesn't seem to me to be terribly controversial. 

    Sure, at our worst, individual people are selfish, cruel, tribal, all that you said-- maybe even innately or instinctively, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's the result of the corrupted world around us, i.e. environmental.

    That doesn't mean people aren't capable of banding together for better and for change.

    Ultimately it boils down to this: My position is that I think the majority of Americans are in favor of good and change and the peaceful protests represent that, and that the main problem is the majority don't have any influence or power versus the minority with the resources.

    You think that the majority of Americans are in favor of police killing black people, indirectly or directly, and that there is no hope.

    What I'm curious about is this: Is your thesis of hopelessness informed by your vanity and narcissism and delusions of grandeur as a sociologist and thinker due to messageboard points (my theory) OR is your buy-in of the hopelessness what has created this sort of bloated, bland, middle-class nihlism (which would be interesting and more, dangerous, but also worth investigating)?

  8. 3 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I think that a slim majority are in favor of the IDEA of those things.  But when it gets down to reality....they aren't.  The majority of Americans are just like the majority of all other human beings -- selfish, tribal, and cruel.  We're nothing special.  That's all.

    A bit of coaching for the future and for your life: making a high-level observation, whether made with your trademark "Sound and Fury" or not, is not the same thing as digging in to a problem and mining out deep and insightful nuggets of wisdom.

    • Hook 'Em 2
    • Like 1
  9. 5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    And the thing that baffles me is that you think that those people are actually voting and acting consistent with their interests -- they should absolutely have the biggest problem with authoritarian policing.

    But particularly when you break it down on racial lines, that's just not the case.  Poor white folks LOVE "BLue Lives Matter."  They LOVE badass cops whooping up on bad guys (and, umm, we all know what color most of those "bad guys" are). 

    The fundamental problem here is that you believe that the American people are decent at heart.  You are wrong.  Not just today's history, but 200+ years of history, says "nope."  We have fought with everything we have to maintain systems like slavery, Black Codes, and Jim Crow, and now we fight with everything we have to maintain brutal and lawless policing.  If, as a nation, we had put in half the effort that we put into those things into actually building communities and infrastructure, we'd be a paradise.  We aren't.  We're a banana republic with shinier shopping centers.

    Let me ask you this to just make sure I know what I'm dealing with, are you saying that you think the majority of American's are racist, republicans, trumpkins, pro-police brutality, and the blue line matters or whatever?

    Or do you think the majority of American's are in favor of equality and change and support of peaceful protests?

  10. 8 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    It goes beyond the wealthy and powerful, and you know it.  White folks of every economic class love it - they're the ones flying "Blue Lives Matter" flags and shit.

    And again, even those who SAY "some things should change" really don't mean it.  They might like the cops to use more polite language while they beat the shit out of you, or lie to convict you, but that's about it.  Stop believing that the American people are good and decent.  They're not.  They're cruel cowards.  The cops are us.

    There are more poor and labor/working-class than the upper-middle class and above. That's simply the truth. So no, a majority of Americans are not okay with all this crap. It's the MINORITY who do want to keep the goons and status quo, because "stonks" and "real eztate brrrr'ing" and such.

    The real problem-- the root cause-- it appears, is that a MINORITY of people, a smaller coalition made up of a few different demographics which all have a few similarities, are steering the ship and driving the narrative of what "America" is and means, when the MAJORITY are powerless and  their well-being is left (or at least historically hasbeen) to the minority's graciousness and generosity, which has been historically insufficient/non-existent (R) or insulting and condescending (D) for black people (and also poor white people, but less so)

    Crap, I think I'm a 3rd party/Independent guy now or something.

  11. 5 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Nothing will happen because deep down, a majority of Americans WANT their cops to be brutal, lawless authoritarians.  I think it really is that simple.  Even the people who pay lip-service to the idea of "yeah, there are things the cops should do better" in the end, still want their cops to be HOORAH GIT SOME badasses, whooping all the criminal's asses (and how do we know that the criminals deserve it?  Well, the cops are whooping their asses, and that means they deserve it!)  Don't assume any complexity in American thinking -- there isn't any.  We have the police we have because that's the police we want.

    No, I think the majority of Americans are against this. Which is what we are seeing in the streets.

    But, I think that the majority of Americans with wealth, influence, power, decision-making power, etc. believe what you say in the bold. But that is NOT a majority.

    The majority are us poor (relatively speaking to the rich), laboring, salt of the earth folk who are saying enough is enough.

    But yea, most people with comfort support the status quo and don't want their comforts rocked or taken away; water is wet.

    • Like 1
  12. 19 hours ago, washparkhorn said:

    Rochester police killing was ghastly. This nation is a powder keg ready to go off. Looks like something out of Abu Ghraib.

    image.png.f4197d4221f5ea70f5974b08a1011600.png

    I thought of this and it makes me think, at the macro level, there is a risk that all of this is perhaps heading down the path of "Arab Spring" where you have all this unrest and young people who are marching and protesting and making noise and breaking glass (both figuratively and literally) to be heard by the mainstream and the entire globe...and then, what? Potentially nothing. Fall and Football then Winter and Christmas then vaccine and then it's the Summer of 2021 and...

    I think the Fall/Winter it's up to us to keep the conversation going and keep the pressure on. If you can get out and peacefully protest the next time the wave comes around your side of the stadium, participate.

    Don't let this be for naught.

    Say their names.

    • Hook 'Em 2
  13. I'm a millennial so I don't know how to put a car on cinderblocks or bust my knuckles on engines while drinking pull tab, pearl in a can, but I did grow up learning at least how to change a tire and change a battery, back when they cost $40.

    The first time I tried to change my own battery in a newer car and realized I had to take out half the parts to get the old one out and a new one in so I had to take it in to get done was when I saw the writing on the wall. This is why I now drive a Cadillac despite not being in the Cadillac demographic. The service is phenomenal and up to 50k, bumper to bumper anything you could possibly need, it's free. Up to 80k miles for power train it's free, and up to 90k with emission stuff it's free. I typically keep cars for about 60-80k miles, so it works for me.

    And the service is white glove treatment, you get a nice loaner anytime you need it, and you never have to fret.

  14. 13 hours ago, ztejas said:

    I understand what you're getting at and can probably guess the case you would make. I don't know what my parameters are but Jack Black falls below them. 

    I mean you're comparing him to Jack White who is probably the greatest guitarist of his generation. And I don't think I'd consider Jack White a musical genius, either, although he's a really, really fucking talented guitar player and composer. Actually, he might be one of my last in if I was going to make a list. I think Jack White is similar to someone like Travis Barker.

    My bar is pretty fucking high. Prince is a genius. Jimmy Page is a genius. Brian Wilson is a genius. McCartney, Gilmour and Waters, Lou Reed, Sting, Elton John, Quincy Jones...

    Those people. Not Jack Black.

    We agree to disagree then, is it?

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