Sloth and Manatee

Neither Sloth nor Manatee have need of shoes, but here’s a drawing from some time ago that involves a good book and some coffee at a diner, where you could wear your favorite shoes if you wanted to..

Now I’m pondering if any character in Sloth and Manatee has literally ever worn shoes, and I think the answer is no.

I recently got new running shoes, and they are quite squishy. I squish around on them. It’s nice.

You can be in the dumpiest smooshiest outfit, but if you put on some kind of badass boots, you become cool. You can make a whole identity with a pair of shoes.

I went to hear Diana Krall play once, and she had on these clear heels filled with liquid and little plastic fishies sloshing around inside when she worked the piano pedals.

Shoes can change your attitude. You can tromp around all mighty in a pair of boots or you can smoosh in the mud in galoshes or you can hang out in your favorite sneakers. Or tennies, if that’s what you call them. Or trainers. I grew up calling them tennies. I wore Keds, which were white with a little blue tab thing on the back of the heel. They had no traction whatsoever. I wore them to my very first soccer tryout, since I didn’t know about cleats yet, and I remember running around some cones with such enthusiasm that I ran my Keds right out from under myself and landed on my butt.

Many things in the world around us can shift our perspective, all sneaky-like. Suggestions in ads, bits of conversation overheard, our general demeanor on waking up, smells, so many things. It can feel like we are flailing around in an ocean of stuff telling us what to feel, or think about, or want, telling us this is the world, this is what is in it. As if we are a crop to harvest, on offer to other people. But that’s not true.

Maybe the thing to do when it feels this way is, to go put on your favorite tennies, or big fuzzy slippers, or badass boots, or go barefoot, and be whoever you want to be.

Sloth and Manatee Page

Brainwaves

Best of Brainwaves Volume One: The Fountain of Stuff

Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat

License Cartoons from CartoonStock

Art!

All this talk of shoes is reminding me of the animals in fabulous footwear of a while back

Print Shop

BunnyFrogCatSnake

Things Of The Week

Shoes and feet also tell such stories, like in these aerial traces of footprints on icy lakes in Lithuania by Mantas Bačiuška

So this is sort of about shoes/feet? How they keep the station in Antarctica from sinking into the ice and snow

One more bit of footwear because why not

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you wear some groovy shoes, may you cruise around barefoot if you want to, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy