Ceryl The Pretty

Promoting and participating in mutual aid, imparting important teachings, and Bob Flanagan-esque performance art.

I hope not.

Marathon is not available for the Mac. Our civilization is crumbling

Okay I’m adding “100% Expendable [Chilly Gonzalez Remix]” to my list.

Extreme nakedness!

(the pose and perspective's choice, though!)

There's probably a track from Ghosts that'd work but I couldn't name one off the top of my head. "In This Twlight [Fennesz Remix]" maybe? Maaaaybe "The Persistence of Loss" or Still's version of "The Fragile".

Melissa Dunphy's string quartet version of "A Warm Place" if you want a deeper cut.

a paint pen drawing of a flying saucer abducting a cow

acrylic markers are Cool

If now the world of culture bends itself toward giving Negroes and other dark men the largest and broadest opportunity for education and self-development, then this contact and influence is bound to have a beneficial effect upon the world and hasten human progress. But if, by reason of carelessness, prejudice, greed and injustice, the black world is to be exploited and ravished and degraded, the results must be deplorable, if not fatal--not simply to them, but to the high ideals of justice, freedom, and culture which a thousand years of Christian civilization have held before Europe. And now, therefore, to these ideals of civilization, to the broader humanity of the followers of the Prince of Peace, we, the men and women of Africa in world congress assembled, do now solemnly appeal: Let the world take no backward step in that slow but sure progress which has successively refused to let the spirit of class, of caste, of privilege, or of birth, debar from life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness a striving human soul. Let no color or race be a feature of distinction between white and black men, regardless of worth or ability. — W. E. B. Du Bois

Black History Month day 26, W. E. B. Du Bois, is now live on Birzeblog

alyaza.neocities.org/essays/BHM/d...

They just want you to perfume the sewers. They need artists to bring perfume to the terrible stench of their death. It isn’t doing the artist any good. There is no place to go except to the struggle of the people today. — Meridel Le Sueur, “They Want You to Perfume the Sewers” (1988) i have a theorem rotating in my mind; perhaps you will agree with it, perhaps not. this theorem is roughly as follows: that high culture—the world of art mediated by the gallery, the curator, the art dealer, the buyer—is the antithesis, co-optation, and ultimate death of “furry art.” that to ever play on this terrain as a furry is (and would be) definitionally a capitulation to polite society, and an irreversible step toward the further class stratification of furry subculture. it is hard for me to explain why exactly i believe this, but i feel it is necessary to attempt such a thing given that the separation between furry art and my concocted definition of high culture is no longer complete. what i suspect is that the artistic qualia of furry art—its aura (as Walter Benjamin might put it) and the manner in which it acts a reflection of the unique, intrinsic qualities that constitute the furry subculture and our shared understanding of it—is wholly unable to survive contact with the social ideology of high culture. likewise the ‘outsider’ status of those who make such art. in being constituted high culture, furry art is separated and alienated from the very context which made it. the qualia are lost and so is the aura; the artists are brought from the ‘disrepute’ of outsiderness to the ‘respectability’ of the gallery-form. in this respect one might go so far as to say “furry art” elevated by, or created for, high culture is not really furry art at all, nor can it be.

maybe such an assertion is an overstatement. but i am reminded here of the words of László Moholy-Nagy, the ‘relentless experimental,’ that “No society can exist without expressing its ideas, and no culture and no ethics can survive without participation of the artist who cannot be bribed.”[1] in our life these words invite the question: in a subculture congealed through social stigmatization and radical (sexual) inclusion, would the inherent conservatism of high culture not act as the very mechanism of the bribery—the very thing that would rob furry artistry of its ability to authentically reflect the qualia and aura of the subculture? and the (monied) interests of high culture and its agents especially: how could these not politically and ideologically subvert furry artistry—preclude it from achieving a “secured existence” that is “uncompromising and incorruptible” as implored by Moholy-Nagy? indeed, we must recognize that high culture is definitionally the culture of the ruling class—an expression and extension of cultural hegemony. and what this high culture asks of its subjects, consciously or otherwise, is to ‘perfume the sewers’—to cover up each desiccating bit of the old with a gloss of the new.[2] the essence of high culture is amorphous, co-opting as necessary to maintain itself, cherry-picking from even the most culturally-challenging movements external to itself and rendering them agents of the very hegemony they wish to challenge. to be sure, we might concur with Walter Benjamin that “the [already] conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion”—furry is certainly met with recoil by many—but there is no innate quality of furry art, no level of aversion it can inspire, which prevents its co-optation when it and high culture meet.[3] for high culture is the mechanism through which the ‘truly new’ is stripped of its distinguishing qualia and rendered the conventional.

as Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter note, “The value of a good,”—and the degree to which it constitutes high culture—“comes from the sense of superiority associated with membership in the club, along with the recognition accorded by fellow members.” [see: Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't Be Jammed (2004), chapter 4] the question is this: can there be a sort of ‘long march through the institutions’ under which furry art can retain its qualia and aura, by which furry art can challenge the perfuming of the sewers, and through which it can ultimately contest cultural hegemony? i am inclined to think no, certainly not with the absence of politicization and organization that currently characterizes furry subculture. the conundrum of the furry artist and what ought be their relationship with the agents of high culture—gallerist and curator, art dealer and appraiser—is that, in the words of Kyle Chayka, “art becomes retail surprisingly quickly.” [see: Kyle Chayka, The Longing for Less (2020), chapter 2] that which challenges is seldom harder to convert into a commodity; and when art is not merely a product of one's labor but a commodity, class hierarchy and inequality are inexorably bound to follow. but perhaps this is the inevitable course of things in this subculture, so wrought already by the spectre of class division if only you know around which corners to look. [for note [1], see László Moholy-Nagy, Vision in motion (1947); for note [2] see Meridel Le Sueur, “They Want You to Perfume the Sewers” (1988); for note [3] see Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)]

on the tension of furry artistry and high culture; or, the trap of ‘high culture’ and the desert of the future.

alyaza.neocities.org/essays/Furry...

Been dealing with a lot of offline emergencies in addition to it being the anniversary of my father’s death. Spring cleaning today so I can unload some assets. Ended up unearthing this and felt like it could help anyone going through it lately.

Photo of paperback paradise bookmarks

Photo of paperback paradise bookmarks

Photo of paperback paradise bookmarks

Photo of paperback paradise bookmarks

You can enjoy all 40 Paperback Paradise bookmarks for just $25 🐴 here’s half of ‘em 🦕 paperbackparadise.bigcartel.com/product/ever...

the reason i most wanna scream when every publisher tries to make a live service lifestyle product chasing roblox and fortnite money is that fortnite and roblox arent fucking video games. i don't even mean this in (that much of) a snooty Hardcore Gamer way. theyre the mall. theyre the rec center.

So I would provide my OS with my age/birthday (or AFAICT any particular age/date I want), and any app that wants that data *has* to go through the OS and would only get "user is in the X-Y demographic" anyway.

Basically it (ostensibly) functions to avoid data harvesting related to user age.

Quickly googling the law (before OP deleted their post), the reading I see basically means that there has to be a hook at the OS level where the user would input their age (no external verification suggested?), and then app devs have to request that hook, which in turn only gives a broader answer.

Underwear, disposable tupperware, food dye.

So Hideaki Anno said something to the effect of "yeah you gotta make sure you get everything done before you peak at 30, like Miyazaki", people somehow didn't clock that this was a joke, and now we're having serious discourse about age and creative output? Is that a good summary?

Dude clearly wishes he lived on Prince Edward Island, and is jealous of you living on a bigger, better island still.

RP>Thank you so much for purchasing my art book!

Detailed instructions on how to purchase the art book are available here, so please feel free to take a look.
www.furaffinity.net/view/50126318/

From very early on in the history of the epidemic, Aids has been mobilised to a prior agenda of issues concerning the kind of society we wish to inhabit. [...] Aids is effectively being used as a pretext throughout the West to "justify" calls for increasing legislation and regulation of those who are considered to be socially unacceptable. — Simon Watney, Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, and the Media (1987) the thing about acceptable targets is that they reflect the hegemony of the ruling class, and nowhere is this so apparent as applied to the queer community. the queer, writes the Mary Nardini Gang, "[has] always been the other, the alien, the criminal. The story of queers in this civilization has always been the narrative of the sexual deviant, the constitutional psychopathic inferior, the traitor, the freak, the moral imbecile." that being the acceptable target in this manner engenders immense suffering and resentment is obvious; nobody, i presume, takes unconditional joy in being a part of the “resistance to regimes of the normal,” as Michael Warner once put it. there is, within all of us queers, some essence that against our own desire begs to assimilate. to become one with the ruling class. to finally exercise for ourselves the “mechanism of social control” that is inherent to labeling deviancy. [see: Mary McIntosh, “The Homosexual Role” (1968), reprinted in Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy, ed. Edward Stein (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 27.] to—in one punch downward upon another group, particularly one that is ‘immoral’—externalize every second of our suffering and resentment in such a way that someone else can finally understand and feel.

but the assimilationist desire; the attempt to make one's self ‘normal’ and ‘respectable’ in contrast to others; the yearning to use the master's tools ‘for good’—these must always meet the reality of a heteronormative world. deviancy is degeneracy, and degeneracy must be destroyed. we are the subjects, to use a turn of phrase from Simon Watney, of “an imaginary national family unit which is both white and heterosexual” and to whom anything unfamiliar is indecent. [see: Simon Watney, Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, and the Media (1987), p. 43] to this imaginary family—always of the nuclear variety, always the one who holds both discursive and ideological power—nothing besides total renunciation of queer identity, and nothing besides its placing back in the closet, will ever good enough. the only move that can buy them off is collaboration. your polyamorous relationship, your furry identity, your therianthropy, your most deeply stigmatized fetish—these will never be made ‘respectable’ to anybody in any position of power through sacrificing the most “undesirable” faggot to the wolves. to believe otherwise is how heteronormative society co-opts those who want to liberate into those who actually collaborate. when you accept that we must throw away certain “undesirables,” must label them “deviants,” what you are accepting is the very ideological and moral foundation upon which heteronormativity is built: only what does not transgress, what does not challenge the sensibilities of straightness, is permissible.

on the matter of the acceptable target (or, the theoretical basis of a politicized, pluralistic expression of furry sexuality)

alyaza.neocities.org/essays/Furry...

2d pixel art of a cute green elf girl standing next to a giant tomato. text reads "pomodoro"

screencap of the pomodoro program. the mascot girl is dressed in a witch costume and painting. she says, "not bad... not bad at all!" behind her is the interface for the timer, which is set to an aquarium skin.

screencap of the pomodoro program. this time the girl is dressed as a nun and the timer is reskinned as a rose. the mascot is dancing and saying, "hehe... you want to spread your break with me?"

my latest project is out~! pomodoro, a tiny productivity tool/desktop pet. 🍅

chat with a cute mascot, earn points for your hard work, and then spend them to customize her look & attitude.

windows only for now, other OSes tbd.

have fun! pepperbloom.itch.io/pomodoro #pepperbloomart #pepperbloomdev

A Sergal wearing armor kneels in a stream in a grassy area, and holds her hand under water which flows from a bamboo stick.

Momentary Bliss (by @lingrimm.bsky.social )

#Sergal
#Furryart
#FantasyArt

Setay stands by the stream. As part of the Shigu army, she had marched into one of the Eltus biomes of Reono. Now, while helping set up camp, she decided to take a short break to check out the stream near the campsite.

(sorry <3 )

An edit of Ty's picture of roo-ified Suski, but now he's wearing a ushanka.

roosski

people can keep saying "stop being puritanical" to the kind of person that would do this, but outside of the ones that just grow up and grow out of being weird about kinks they don't like what needs to happen here is essentially (as usual) a combination of political education and organization

Wind

Welcome back everyone's talking about pog-based mechanics now.

ジャンケンパー

Dad, 99, and son, 80, hold Wintzell's Oyster House to their promise of free oysters Jimmy Rush has a constant craving... for oysters.Always has, at least for most of his 99 years.

"We have literally been talking about this for decades," says Carl, proudly. "That's why some many people have come down to be a part of it. Some of my friends were glad it happened today, so they could quit hearing about it!"

Gonna either guess Naked Lunch or Crimes of the Future (2022).