Xraymike was kind enough to invite me to post on this site as a collaborator, and I don’t want to delay too long before putting something up. Although I have ideas to pursue, my limited time prevents me from collecting my thoughts and publishing blog posts with much frequency. So what I have to offer with this introductory post is short and derivative, fitting perhaps for the weekend funnies.

I was hipped to an animator, Steve Cutts, whose style and content appeals to my way of thinking. In his video animation, he reveals humanity to be pretty hideous in the way we treat the natural world (ours to kill, consume, and trash at will). Yet we remain blithely unperturbed right up to the end, when we get stomped flat like the bug at the beginning:

Cutts has other animations and media at his website with similar themes. The mixture of truly baleful criticism and jokey tone, with mildly to extremely distorted caricatures, makes them entertaining yet simultaneously hard to watch. But we have a vicarious, narcissistic, rubbernecking streak in us, so it’s doubtful anyone will look away to preserve their innocence (if anyone can be said to have any left).

Whereas many websites absorbed by industrial collapse rely on some combination of scientific reports, journalism, argument, and activism as source material, I tend to go instead for arts and letters, which contribute a dimension lacking in less creative endeavors. Indeed, if the arts are in some fashion an ongoing search for ourselves, expressing our innermost natures and dreams, the sad realization that we’re monsters enacting our own worst nightmares is not a perspective available to most types of people, excepting artists and perhaps political and military leaders.