Q: What Do Animals Adore? A: Baby Nightsoil Home Décor

Homes across the the United States have gotten drunk on the high aesthetic that is Baby Nightsoil Home Décor. As the laws of interior design continue to be repealed by terrorists of good taste, more and more people are embracing non-traditional art, adding unique pieces such as Baby Nightsoil throwpillows to tie their home environments together. With the rising popularity of these bold accoutrements, no portion of the population is more thrilled than our friends in the animal kingdom.

In the photograph above, you’ll see a wild yet sharply dressed bear snuggling with a pillow that tells a love story that is open to interpretation. The bear and pillow are in Atlanta, Georgia. Bears have always complimented Baby Nightsoil art and the other way around. The shared worldview of fuzzy peace through loud roars unites them in life and in art.

Even more than bears, Baby Nightsoil has had a long connection to cats- perhaps rivaled only by the connection between Baby Nightsoil and the panda, which is essentially a cross between a cat and a bear. In the picture below, which comes to us from Brooklyn, New York, you’ll see two cats dance the magic dance over a pillow that celebrates centuries of dignified beauty among felines.

Several time zones to the left in Los Angeles, California, we find a cat  warming up next to a pillow portrait of a cat who is a member of at least one Catwoman fan club.

Join these forward-thinkers and stock your home with Baby Nightsoil Home Décor! Your animal friends will thank you, possibly with dead animal friends. Please send pictures of animals enjoying their newly enriched environments and I’ll post them here. The pillows make excellent gifts for cats, bears, dogs, co-workers, ferrets, snails, significant others, birds, planes, speeding bullets, cowboys, aliens, predators, garbage pail kids, alligators, and grandparents. Several other items are available including, but not limited to, duvet covers, shower curtains, mugs, clocks, and tote bags.

Spring Festival Decorations 2015

As mentioned earlier, we celebrated Chinese New Year in my household last week. Unfortunately we had some issues with our induction cooker for the hot pot and ended up cooking all the food on the range, but a good time was still had by all those able to attend and those unable to attend were dearly missed. Anyway, I thought I’d share the decorations from our celebration.

亲爱的 Dracula: Another Time Killed

Still drawing inspiration from parades, appliances, flowers, disease, and mutilation… I don’t think I’m going to color it. You’re welcome to color it if you want. Maybe you could give it to your kids to color. I’d be curious to find out what colors people used for the liquid coming from the organic creatures. The color of leaking fluids could really shake up the narrative of the image. It’s all so infinite right now, but that possum’s eyes could be leaking yellow pus, royally blue blood, serfishly red blood, golden olive oil, watery brown mystery juice, or just enough mercury to fill six old school thermometers. It just takes a dream and the will to dream it.

亲爱的 Dracula: Looking So Paisley Right Now

Both of these images are based on photographs I took at the Gay Pride Parade two weeks ago in Atlanta. The parade was mostly corporate sponsors and churches, but luckily there were a few truly fabulous souls to keep parade attendees from falling asleep like those sexy firemen from Swinging Richard’s. During the parade, I saw a lot of individuals who identified themselves as “bears.” I may need to infiltrate this community for the purposes of finding models for my pictures. Seriously, who makes a better panda than a bear?

Also I can’t take credit for the paisley pattern in the first picture. I just grabbed that the ol’ internet. I probably won’t stick with it as I’m trying to work solely from my own imagination and photographs, but I think it looks good so I thought I’d share it here. I wish somebody would invent a good paisley generator where you contribute a few squiggles and a robot transforms your input into beautifully detailed, yet unassumingly elegant patterns.

Last weekend, I attended the Little 5 Points Halloween Parade. There was an army of David Bowies from various points in his career and a very tall Godzilla that breathed smoke. Perhaps the strangest sight was a van covered in a full graphic wrap featuring premium strands of marijuana and they were distributing medical marijuana lollipops to raise awareness of attempts to decriminalize and legalize marijuana. Other advocates for marijuana’s legalization made their voices heard at the parade, but this van was truly something out of the ordinary. I expected the driver to pull off her mask to reveal McGruff the crime dog, but that didn’t happen. Maybe she took the mask off later.

亲爱的 Dracula: Beyond the Bathtub (8 images)

 

“Young Lady in Winter”

“Femme Merveille”

“O. ‘Rao’ L.”

“Naughty Nurses Cat Fight”

“Love Thugs”

 

 

“Maybe I will live forever, sighed the Cocktail Dress”

“Arts and Crafts of the Strange and Mysterious”

“Young pioneer and the great helmsman seduce the world press”

亲爱的 Dracula: 24-Hour Panda People

I’ve been working on several panda illustration based on photographs- mostly pictures I took, but some pictures my friends have taken. In this first picture, the SNOW beer is pretty east to see. The glasses and bottles may seem disproportionate to your Western eyes, but in China, it is common to drink beer out of small glasses that has been poured from a larger bottle. It facilitates frequent toasts among drinkers, toasts that vary in enthusiasm and glory depending on the spirit of the revelers. Sometimes you drink with your friend. Sometimes you drink with your boss. Sometimes you drink with some creepy government official who won’t stop touching your leg and spits rice when he talks. Sometimes you drink with bored alcoholics that just keep toasting to keep themselves from committing mass murder-suicide. I spent my time there as a diplomat, so I drank with everybody. It’s just one of the way I protected America’s interests abroad. I deserve grant money.

This is based on photograph of myself and a lovely woman I met in Almaty, Kazakhstan (the music capital of Central Asia) at the grocery where she worked. She might still work there. The photo was taken in 2008 right before the Beijing Olympics.

This one is not based on a photograph that I took. It’s from somewhere in the erotic abyss that is the internet.

This one reminds me a bit of Diane Arbus. I only recently learned that she was married to M*A*S*H’s Dr. Freeman in the wake of Allan Arbus’s death. That news really blew my mind. My mind can barely wrap itself around the fact that  M*A*S*H featured an actor named Alan Alda and an actor named Allan Arbus. That must have been confusing. The folks at the 4077 had trouble keeping Asians straight, so they hired the same five Japanese actors to play all the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Asian-American roles. The nurses all had seemed to function normally despite their multiple personality disorders.

This picture speaks to one of my dear friends who is currently help get malaria out of Africa. Her compassion for others is rivaled only by her cat-titude, which is an unstoppable force of sugar and spice.

亲爱的 Dracula: Horrors and Whistles

Some panda trafficking…

Some erotic cannibalism…

Edible evidence…

亲爱的 Dracula: Bleaching The Dust

I should never have expected a mind as simple as yours to understand my complex multi-vitamin.

Bests and Worsts of the New 52 (part 3)

This is the third installment of Bests and Worsts of the New 52, following the first and the second ,where I mostly praised the work being done at DC even when nominating books for Worsts. This entry will continue in that tradition. Also I am describing the first 52 or so collections, not the issues on the stands or titles like Earth-2 or World’s Finest which haven’t been collected yet. A few of the Bests and Worsts here will deal with sexuality in the New 52. It is an undeniable characteristic of this universe, geek culture, and real life. If sexuality makes you uncomfortable, that’s totally normal and you just try to deal with it as best you can. In the collage above, I included elements from panels that celebrate feminine features.

Best and Worst of the Young Justice Family of Titles

Best: Teen Titans Teen Titans is a fun book. The characters are all very distinct. I especially like the new characters. As a gay Mexican immigrant, Bunker is relevant and liberating, yet condescending and slightly offensive- I love it. Bunker might be my favorite new hero of the New 52- not my favorite new character, because that would probably the Court of Owls. Bunker, Kid Flash, and Wonder Girl bring a lot of humor to the book. The Superboy story is reliable Superboy narrative and ties in smoothly with this book. Scott Lobdell also writes Red Hood and the Outlaws, which is also a team book featuring a non-Nightwing former Robin, but wildly different than Teen Titans. Tim Drake has probably lost the most agency in the New 52. In this book, he reminds me a lot of the Robin rip-off in The Uniques, which is a fun independent superhero book about the emotional and physical battles of young white superheroes.

Worst: Legion of Super-Heroes. Brainiac-5’s cheesy hair.

Best and Worst Fishnet Reboot

Best: Zatanna in Justice League Dark. Zatanna has lost the traditional magician (magician’s assistant?) costume and embraced a very goth, very Vertigo Death look. The look changes her dramatically. No longer does she hint of potentially pulled rabbits and endless scarves. She wears her fishnets on her arms now, perhaps to hide the track marks because she’s become just that rock n roll. I’m super-excited about Guillermo del Toro’s alleged movie version of Justice League Dark and anticipate falling in love with the actresses who play Madame Xanadu and Zatanna. Justice League Dark and Hellboy have a lot in common and both Hellboy movies were incredible.

Worst: Black Canary in Birds of Prey. What happened to Dinah Lance? She’s a character in name only on Arrow, never exhibiting metahuman powers or donning fish nets. On Smallville, she did not fall in love with Oliver or stay true to the Black Canary comic couture. On the Birds of Prey television program, she was nigh a child. On the pages of Birds of Prey, she’s wearing the worst rebooted outfit of the New 52. It doesn’t make sense- which has never been a problem for super-ladies before. It’s not fashionable – which has also never been a problem for super-ladies before. It robs Black Canary of her working class roots- this is a problem. Black Canary is supposed to the biker chick badass next door and now she looks like space army Barbie.

Best and Worst News for Fans of Semi-Nude Cosplay

Best: White Rabbit in Batman- The Dark Knight. I think she’s also the most scantily clad new villain of the New 52. I might be wrong about that. If I am, please correct me. The New 52 has no shortage of exposed flesh. It also abounds in varieties of woman’s underthings.

Worst: Poison Ivy in Birds of Prey. As Harley Quinn abandons the bodysuit in favor of less conservative attire, Poison Ivy has chosen a new costume that would deny convention peepers the always popular string of leaves.

Bored Red

boredom

I died from an accelerated fashion sense.

I was a victim.