Lucianomie

First some business: I now have a Tumblr for my art and random thoughts! Here's the link: Eight Leg Eyes

Now to the notes:
I think people's eyes can be quite stunning after they've cried. There's that slight reddish bruise and the red puckered nose and the lacquered eyelashes.

However, It's hard to look pretty when you're having a proper good wail. If you're trying to look pretty while wailing, you've missed the point.

If I'm talking to someone and their nose hairs stick out of their nose, I will be distracted by my desire to trim these hairs.

I hope you've liked my latest doodles! Soon I'll be uploading quite a few more, as I'll have access to a proper scanner. Woo quality! Also, I'm considering getting a Tumblr for also displaying my art. I think that the plastic quality will be good. Sometimes I get frustrated by this layout.

Anyway, many hugs, and have a good day!

Would you like me to upload works in progress?

I've been hesitant to do so because they're incomplete and I might drop them if I'm already being rewarded by comments and attention. However, DevArt seems to make art more like a conversation. That is, people actually care about what their artists are doing. I feel beholden to you people, it really humbles me that you care so much for my art. In the interest of making this caring worthwhile, I will upload the few things that I've been up to lately, if you like.

Thank you so much for your time and support. I hope to see you again soon with something legitimate!

Where do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed?

This one doesn't even know anymore

So hello again my lovely friends! I feel like I owe you an explanation for my extended absence as of late. I blame it on time. Time is a monster. It can be whatever shape it wants, but for me it's usually too small to even hold or see.

Ok, I'm being melodramatic, but seriously, what I actually should give you is a new piece of art, not this lame explanation!

A new era one day.

<3

So lately, I've been feeling rather passionate about social justice and animal rights; in particular, in the food industry. The things informing this passion include Super Size Me, Sicko, Food Inc., and Menu for the Future. My most extreme influence would have to be a PETA video that showed the treatment of animals on the farms and in the slaughterhouses. It basically turned me vegetarian. I hesitate to mention this influence, because I know that there is this stigma against PETA for being extremist; also, I've heard (haven't personally investigated) of corruption within PETA.

     What i'd like to do is get some things off my chest, and I'd love to hear your opinions on this topic. I'm not an expert in any way on these topics, and I much doubt that I'll ever become one. I'm just curious and frustrated about these things.

     So, I'm vegetarian. I'm not going to say that eating meat is bad. We're omnivores, yes; other animals eat other animals, and we're animals, yes. What I'm opposed to is the mistreatment of animals. If you love dogs, I'd say that the conditions on a contract farm (having a contract with a large company) are equivalent to those of a puppy farm. If you have a pet, whatever it may be, imagine your kitty (for instance) living in a litter box its entire life, crowded and piled upon other kitties also living in litter boxes, stuffed over a thousand into a space the size of your bathroom. They have no access to sunlight. Their bodies grow at such an artificially accelerated rate that the bones in their legs aren't strong enough to support the weight. If you have a loved one, imagine this person living his or her entire life in a small cardboard box, ankle-deep in feces, having the muscles of a world-class body-builder and the brittle skeleton of an elderly person. That's what I think of when I think of poultry... not even to describe the disgusting conditions of slaughterhouses, or the lives of cattle and veal calves.

     Thankfully, there are alternatives to this. Meat is available from farmers who don't mistreat animals. Local farmers seem the most trustworthy in this area. I'm really stoked that where I live, one such farmer is actually going to be selling his beef in a local deli (Irvington Cattle Company). Also, I'd never say that just being vegetarian makes me some kind of saint. Far from it: leafy greens are still covered in pesticides and produce runoff, and people are still exploited in growing and harvesting these vegetables. One positive aspect of being vegetarian is that it takes less "units" of energy to eat lower on the food chain: for example, eating corn involves the energy of growing, harvesting, and shipping the produce, whereas eating corn-fed beef involves growing, harvesting, shipping, and processing the corn into feed, then feeding the cow, then butchering, and shipping the cow.

     Then there are the people who say things like "meat is murder: tasty, tasty murder," and "real men/women eat meat." To me, that reduces the whole issue of meat-eating to juvenile, reactionary catch phrases, rather than an informed decision. I refuse to believe that it is ok to be desensitized to murder, or that it's fine to condone animal abuse. Farm animals may be delicious, but that does not justify a squalid existence.

     Pesticides and industrial waste are my next issue. This is linked to the issue of organics, in my mind, by a recent BBC report saying that "Organics Have No Health Benefits". Ok, so let's say that organics have no health benefits to humans. They're still better for the environment. Every acre of organics is one less acre of the earth devoted to soil-destroying chemical farming. To explain, growing the same crop year after year in the same field depletes the soil of its nutrients. In the past, this knowledge lead to the development of crop rotation , where a grain was alternated with a nitrogen-fixing crop, such as a legume. Now, many farms no longer use this method, instead relying on chemical fertilizers to provide crops with nutrients. What most interests me are reports that nurturing soil allows plants to pull so much carbon dioxide from the air as to potentially reverse global warming. All jokes aside, I, for one, do not want the polar ice caps to melt and inundate various coastal cities, thus causing massive human suffering. If the argument about climate change isn't compelling, what about the national security threat to the United States that is dependence on foreign oil? Fossil fuels are used in abundance on industrial farms, especially in pesticides!

    The food industry causes human suffering currently in various ways. The death of children, for one. Food Inc. acquainted me with Kevin's Law. The back story was that in 2001, two-year-old Kevin Kowalcyk died from E. coli O157:H7, transmitted through a hamburger. In print, that's hardly moving; what got me was the obvious pain that the mother felt from the loss of her child (to compare, imagine the death of your closest friend) and obstacles that she's faced in seeking justice for her child's death. Introduced in 2003, the law would give the FDA the power to establish standards to reduce pathogens in meat and poultry and to close companies that repeatedly produced contaminated products. This seems like a common-sense issue of a consumer's right to hygienic food; it even had bipartisan support. However, it wasn't passed until 2009. Opposition included the American Meat Institute, which stated "the legislation would 'unnecessarily expand USDA's enforcement powers while imposing additional regulatory burdens absent evidence that the measure will reduce foodborne illness'."

     Food Inc. gave other examples of how current farming practices hurt people. A chicken farmer under contract with Perdue (r) shared that she was in debt to the company because its standards of health and safety required that she buy specific products, such as giant chicken coops, and continuously upgrade them. Also, due to the amount of antibiotics in her chickens, she was allergic to antibiotics. When she refused to comply with the company's demands that she buy a coop which kept chickens in total darkness, she was fired. The most blatant disrespect of humans was in the exploitation of illegal immigrants. Do you remember how sometimes American slave owners would hire Irish workers because it was cheaper to replace them if they died than if an actual slave died? That's about the amount of respect that companies show these people: after bringing the immigrants into to the United States, they are used for a few years, and then turned over to the border patrol. What really infuriated me was the arrangement between the company and the patrol: only a few workers would be taken each night, rather than conducting a large-scale raid, so as not to interrupt production.

    The price of organics and eating in an environmentally conscious way is something that I think holds many people back from doing so. Money is a reality, and people with limited incomes must prioritize. I won't vilify them for not buying at a farmer's market: it's not their fault that companies have artificially reduced the price of products by not paying workers a decent wage. Instead, I think it's the responsibility of those who can to pick up the slack. What I mean is that if you can afford to buy organic, please do so. (Oh, and just because this is dear to me, buying second-hand from a local thrift store is also great because that reduces the trash in landfills, reduces consumption of new goods, and is a great opportunity for up-cycling.)

     I think, it all comes down to individual morals. I personally don't want to support big companies that saddle their farmers with debt, making them present-day sharecroppers. I also don't want to support a way of farming that mistreats animals, fails to show a basic level of decency to human beings, and destroys the environment. That's all.

I'd love to know what you think about this.