I mean, none of these are perfect, none meet the threshold of "art", and some I admit aren't even remotely good. That said, if you saw how shit the faces I drew were before this latest foray though (and those were usually drawn with pro tools, not the dollar store kids felts and shit I have now, a collection that includes exactly zero pencils or erasers btw, so no guidelines or re-dos) , you'd be impressed. 

That foreknowledge is the only way one could be impressed by these, I suppose. Unless you'd never seen a woman/never seen a drawing/never seen a drawing of a woman before, maybe. Though even then, probably still not.

Maybe it's silly to share these here, a place where no one knows me and therefore no one can see how much better I'm getting. Or it would have been silly anyway if the goal was validation. Luckily it ain't. It's self-congratulation temporarily taking the place of self-flaggelation, and that's awesome because this never really happens for me.

I never make something and go, "wow, you've really improved, good job" afterwards. Or I didn't, anyway. I hadn't yet.

Maybe it's this 'finding myself completely alone in the world' thing that has me suddenly capable of being on my own side for once. About time, I guess. Hope it lasts.

It's actually something I've thought about a lot recently-low self-esteem versus ego, and the role that plays in one's achievements.

I'm a huge fan of the rapper Prof, and at the end of his song Karma Legend there is a spoken part where he covers exactly this. He talks about how for years he couldn't just give himself "props"; look at himself in the mirror and say a simple, "well done".

If you're familiar at all with Prof you know he has no trouble whatsoever anymore when it comes to talking himself up. It's bent way way far in the other direction, in fact.

When I first started listening to him and heard all that typical-rapper-brag shit like that he's rich, he's the best rapper ever (oh he's Aesop Rock now, is he? Lol.), that he's got a big dick, etc., for some reason it didn't bother me at all coming from him. I thought that was weird though, because it seemed like  it totally should have.

See to me, ego is a wholly disgusting trait. At least beyond whatever the "normal" amount is for a human adult, if ego can even be defined, broken down and quantified by a single relative metric, anyway. I haven't read enough Freud to really work that out for myself yet. I haven't read any Freud, actually. Must have Freudian slipped my mind.

Someone who thinks they're better than other people though, or even just acts like they are in an attempt to inflate their value as perceived through the eyes of nearby observers...yuck. Please no to interact with you, kthxbai. 

I'd much prefer the company of a boring but humble/modest person to a dynamic braggart any day. Well, any day I'm sober anyway. 

I'd have probably volunteered to be the token wild douchebag if there were none available wherever I was drinking when I did that. It's actually one of the major reasons I don't. 

It's also one of the main reasons I chose radical honesty as a life path around the same time I gave up drinking (which I've done mostly successfully- sober for 7 of the last 8 years, radically honest through all 8. Excluding cops, landlords and government bureaucrats, of course- they're fair game for a round of yarn spinning at any time). 

I had learned by the end of one particularly liquor-soaked chapter of my life, aka my relationship with Covey the abusive narcissist/savage alcoholic back in 2015, that I could only wear the self-aggrandizing-exaggerator costume out so many times before the smell it took on began to make me feel sick. 

It's hard to clean that stench off of yourself after a while too, because the more you repeat them, the more you start to believe your own lies, and the longer you store your self-esteem in a bottle, the harder it gets to dig it back out when you're done.

I was problematic. To myself, and in general.

When I had a drink or two I'd often start to exaggerate a little, then probably a little more with every subsequent drink. By the end of the night I'd be 100% wastey-face, telling flat out lies that I wouldn't even remember saying and probably couldn't have kept straight if I'd been sober anyway.

So yeah, that's a whole archetype that, once I thoroughly bleached it out of myself I never wanted to be within staining distance of again. And I've done fairly well.

I avoid douchebags with the voracity of Sgt Everett Machlachlan of the RCMP avoiding mandatory deescalation training (I don't murder young indigenous men in a mental health crisis as a result of my actions though, of course).

I'm getting pulled way off track. No, not getting, got. Damn ADHD! Let me just gently scootch the train back onto the rails again before the metal on metal friction strands us in an even worse trainwreck than this.

Where was I? Yes. So, it wasn't until I'd absorbed most of Prof's discography and pondered on a lot of his lyrics that I realized why his tendency toward braggadocio didn't bother me like it should: he'd had to fight himself tooth and nail to gain the ability to do it honestly, and occasionally overdoing seemed like maybe his way of celebrating that, or making up for lost time. Seemed fair.

Also, at least until the point where I finally gave Aes a listen (only a mere 14 years after I'd been told to, by a brilliant fellow silvicultrix I met on a little hippie island. A place so incredible it's not even ruined for me despite being where my wedding was scheduled to take place but got canceled 4 days before the date, because my meth-head exfiance just had to have another psychotic break exactly then and dump me. Shit, I bring that up too much, don't I? I know. That's super lame, I'm ashamed and I'm sorry. I just still can't fucking believe that it happened. 

Uh, so this turned into a super long parentheses, At. No one's even going to remember the start of the sentence by the time you finally get to the part it connects to, which is:) I actually agreed with Prof's assessment of himself. Er, that he was the best rapper I mean; I couldn't care less about his dick even if he was telling the truth there too and the thing came with free overnight delivery via Prime. 

Hah, I probably should have said 'arrived' or something other than 'came just then, because if it came before it came that would defeat the purpose, no? Who knows...could have a 'quick-refractory money-back guarantee' available as part of the um, package.

I take it back, I probably could care some amount less about this particular political pun-dick (I care enough to mock it, anyway). Still that's probably enough dick-scussion for now, lest I end up having prof-et-dick dreams about it. I should not be prof-it-ding(dong) off a stranger's dangler. And besides, because of my latex allergy I can't use prof-ylac-dicks anyway. 

It would seem  prof-esh-anal conduct is a no go? Prof-fit-'er-'oles, too I bet.

Haha, I had a good one for 'profligately 'but it would have got too  personal.  I'm finding prof-fun-d'tease left and right with these dick jokes, though.

Anyways. I didn't mean to cock this up so bad! Let's get back to the matter in hand. Er, in At's hand. AT HAND I mean, the matter AT HAND.  Sorry...perhaps this would have worked better as an oral account? It's been a lot to swallow, I know.

...Ok, sorry,  I'm done! 

Or I could be anyway, for a mere $19.99 on Amazon. Can someone lend me $20?

Haha ok. I am so, SO sorry to anyone who ever actually reads this. This somehow got so crass so fast. I promise I'm actually done with the dick jokes now. I think my mind's just preoccupied with that particular subject at the moment, which makes it kind of, I guess... insert itself into everything? 😂 Ok, NOW I'm done.

In all seriousness I think I know what's happenjng here. I didn't try to rebound at all after the breakup this time,  and the ex was off in outer space for quite a long time before that, so it's kinda been a while for me at this point. Sometimes when that happens this is just what my brain does to make sure I don't forget about that aspect of my life when the dick supply reaches a critical low. I do sincerely apologize.

So, anyways. What the fuck was I saying again?

Oh right, so: nearly every rapper will refer to themselves as the best at some point, but when Prof did, it didn't feel like the inane, grandiose claim of someone hoping to slap a coat of rapper spackle on their vibe and make it airtight. No, if you'd asked me, he was just stating facts. 

In his words, 'I said I was dope as hell, l never said I was perfect... it was close." And since I'm tired and my brain is stuck on 25 cent peep show box mode,  let's just close out this golden-calf-half-assed-three-way pangyric pyramid with words from one of the two tied for second best rapper after Aes,

"No I'm not the best, but I'm in the top two". Correct. 

Not that the rankings really matter. We're all one big happy pantheon.

PS: quoting Slug, even just thinking the name Slug in my head made me miss my Slug so much. Not having him with me breaks my stupid already broken heart over and over. Slug is (my other cat) Lucy's son, who I sadly had to leave with my parents when I moved back to Vancouver because of oppressive archaic rules of real estate, and yuppie cucks having the most money to vote with. I could have him where I am now, but of course now that I'm estranged from my family (so I'd need to get a hotel if I visited my hometown), and now that the greyhound (and any other coach line that's tried it) no longer offers service to the northern half of the island (Vancouver Island I mean. Which is not to be confused with the portion of Van City with water on three sides), to go to Port Hardy and grab my Sluggy Baby Bubble Dumper (nicknamed as such because my chonky fancy boi, all tuxed up, has a big ol' bit o' rotundness in the trunk. Lucy came out calico coloured, the kid, Callipygian. I miss him.

.

ttfn,
-Gl-atley-ator (Maximum Decibel Evictedness? Reminds me... did you know maximus decismus meridius or whatever it was/however it's spelled, translates to "big ten inch"? I mean, while on the topic of dicks...Russel Crowe is one. )

Not sure how or when this happened, but the faces I always used to draw (horribly) have started to occasionally barely turn out to slightly resemble actual human faces somewhat lately! Thats nuts! (Nope, just faces. There's rules.)