a nifty club

If you're reading this then you, like me, are the sort of person who has the leisure time to sit around looking at a computer screen. You don't work in a dimly-lit factory all day making shoes you'll never afford and you don't rummage through the city dump looking for bottles to sell. You probably have a good education, and have maybe even spent some time considering the source issues behind poverty - but you'll never be poor. You also are unlikely to have anyone in your family man-handled in the next week in a war you didn't start, or by a corrupt government for whom you didn't vote.

Nope, you've got it pretty good. Chances are fairly high that you've never unintentionally gone without a meal and that the only time you've ever run out of money has been when you were in some tourist fantasy world and you left your fat wallet lying in front of somebody whose family had eaten nothing but rice for a month. Just like me. Welcome to the club.

Let's see, every club needs a name, so what shall we call ourselves? Something snappy, something catchy that will really get us out there - something we can use to create some real brand recognition. Hmmm. How about "The McAwesomes"? No, that's not it. How about "The Tech-no-crats"? I think it's been done. "Los Gringos"?

We'll have to think about that - group effort, you know. What matters is that we're a club now, which means that we're exclusive. The only way we can keep our integrity as a club is to keep out the riff-raff. This is going to have to be a group effort but, fortunately for us, it's going to be easy. We're not going to have to do anything. Just keep on going on exactly the way we are. Don't ask any questions and don't try to understand. Don't think about it. And buy lots of stuff. That's important, so don't forget it.

Well, well, I feel just dandy. I'm going to go off and write us up a club song. See ya 'round.

my latest thought

I have decided that the capacity to love is in direct proportion to the capacity to empathise. Some old guy once said that it is impossible to say you love someone until you know what hurts them. I think that fellow knew a thing or two. You cannot love other people until you are able to put yourself in their place. If you can't bring yourself to make the attempt put yourself in someone else's place, then your only alternative is to objectify them - which the special sort of hatred that leads to bigotry, racism, and the fanatical swinging of machetes.

So, if you find that you're filled with rage at someone, put down that machete, my friend, and open up your heart. And that's all the mush I've got for today.

rectification

For everyone anxiously awaiting the day when computers will stop being "the whore of babylon" - that day is not here. I have, however, managed to rearrange things on that ebay sale I'm doing, and theoretically things should be hunkey dorey this very evening.

Also, I will be sending in a picture of my newest painting to Lord Jon of ThisWebsite today, so it should be up in the "new paintings" soon oh so soon. Thank you for your patience and the five dollars you are undoubtedly tossing into an envelope and mailing my way.

kill your computer

If you're here because EBay ate some of my pictures, the ones you're looking for are in the section entitled "pigment" under "paintings". They are the fourth one down on the right-hand row and the seventh one down on the middle row.

I'm not sure exactly how I could do this EBay thing less professionally. Maybe if I got on tv for slashing the tires of EBay's founder (whomever that is). Perhaps it's a sign: Thou Shalt Not EBay!

selling myself

So, I finished planting trees and ended up making enough money to keep eating and even painting. Then my car started to have problems. Ergo, I'm back on EBay, selling some more paintings.

This is sort of a plea, then. I know nobody who reads this site really has any money, but maybe you know someone who knows someone who's dog once dookied on the lawn of someone who had money and maybe that incident sparked a lawsuit and maybe, just maybe, if that someone you know were to mention to that someone who could mention to that rich person about this art sale, maybe they'd be so grateful they'd stop litigation and buy some art. So, spread the word! Search for Joshua Barkey on EBAy and help me fix my tie-rods (or something).

treeplanting is wonderful!

Yesterday, I enjoyed a visit from an African chap named Emmanuel Ali Al-Shariff Abdallah Achmud. Emmanuel and I planted together several years ago, and it has only been through email that we've kept in contact.

Emmanuel is a political refugee in Canada from Sudan. He used to lead the student union in Kartoum, and after being chased around Africa and treated in a way that you and I, I'd venture a guess, have never been treated.

Emmanuel has recently returned from Africa, where he had planned to visit Darfur to serve and help and love. Darfur, as you may or may not know, is the location of yet another horrendous genocide. You may not know, because it's very hush hush here in North America. You see, the Sudanese people have no oil. They are very poor and have almost no impact on the economic stability of our country. To top it all off, they don't even have one single weapon of mass destruction.

So, we're sitting there, Emmanuel and I, talking about how he's not that concerned about whether he dies on the next Darfur trip, because he's already died. Hmmm. Then he asks me... ME! about my life. Um, yeah. So, I've been planting some trees. It's real, um, hard.

It doesn't have quite the same oomph when you think about the fact that I go home at night to a comfy-cozy basement suite, where no one hacks at me with a machete because of my faith. I'm ashamed. I'm a fool. Don't be like me, folks. Don't be complacent, don't be lazy, don't be ungrateful. Care. Do. Act. Change.

i saw a seedling in a crannied wall

For the past week I've been having a go at planting with a different company about fifty minute's drive from my place. What does this have to do with art? Nothing, except that planting is generally what I do so that Anya, the dog and I can keep eating when people don't pay me tens of thousands of dollars to create masterpieces for their homes.

So, if you're wondering why you haven't seen my new brilliant painting against the use of cell phones, it's because it's not done. It has been hanging, incomplete, on the wall of my living room while I've been hanging onto the side of a cliff face with forty pounds of trees strapped to my waist.

You know how you drive through a national park and you see those trees growing amongst the rocks on a mountainside and you think, "man, I wonder how those things grow there?" Well, I have the answer for you. They grow there because poor schmucks like me put them there. In the driving rain. For nineteen and a half cents.

That's right, my friends. Your inability to scrape together a measly twenty thousand dollars has forced me to risk life and limb and brain-pan in order to pander to this slave-driving digestive tract of mine. Are you proud of yourself?

I jest, of course (somewhat). Planting is quite lovely. I found a brown salamander two days ago. The mountains are pretty. I'm building character. Still, if you happen to live on one of those rich-people acreages on the outskirts of Mission below some really nasty-looking cut-blocks, could you please tell your dogs to shut up? They're driving me crazy.