Reminder: I am teaching a class in messing about in sketchbooks and telling stories at Richmond Art Center on Thursday nights starting later in March! It will be a space for experiments and friendship and peace.

Also: Please Venmo money to @Kristina-Halvorson so she can get groceries and needs to people who are shut-ins in Minneapolis.

Okay:

Sloth and Manatee

Years ago my parents threw an anniversary party with lots of friends and food and everything and I read them a Seuss-style poem I had written, about how many days they had been married. It was well-received, but as expected, afterward I had someone come up to me and check my math. Specifically they wanted to know if I had included Leap Years in my calculation, which I had, thank you very much.

This was to be expected in the town I grew up in, which is home to a national lab. There are actual rocket scientists walking around, and people who slam particles into each other and do all sorts of other whatnot. These are Scientists.

Which is fine. Do Science. And when you do Science, get stuff right, and check it. That’s just splendid.

I like being wrong. I feel good being wrong. Putting together things that don’t go together, messing things up, starting projects that don’t get finished, making a mess and then cleaning it up and then making another mess.

I do this with kids every week. I have no idea what will happen. This is as designed.

Nothing actually happens if nothing is wrong. Because wrong is change. It’s departure from what is already there. Evolution doesn’t happen without mutations and accidents.

Wrong throws light onto what exactly we consider Right. How do we know something is correct? Is it common knowledge? Where did that come from? How many times a day do we just accept there is a Right Answer? (Yes, there are Right Answers, traffic laws for example.)

But is it Right, or is it just repetitive? Or safe?

We make machines and then we mold ourselves to them (see: cars/highways). Computers and their binary-ness are no exception. I get corrected constantly online, and then I just log off. There’s no room for moosh in binary-land. There’s either a like or there is not. There’s either a share or there is not. Comment sections endlessly scroll with the pronouncements of people who need to be Right on the Internet. Right is something you can put a price tag on or give a trophy to.

But then somebody comes along and does something Wrong and the whole picture changes.

I do not wish always to be right, I do wish always to be real. Sometimes that just means smiling, and then nodding, and then leaving.

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!

Print Shop

BunnyFrogCatSnake

Things Of The Week

The Museum of Obsolete Media is quite a treasure trove, it even has timelines and stuff.

How people even find this stuff is just mind-blowing. Almost as mind-blowing as knowing somebody was in a cave tens of thousands of years ago.

I recommend all the videos in Art21’s “Realms of the Real” but especially this one about artist Tomas Saraceno.

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you get it wrong, may you get it so wrong you laugh out loud, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy