Recently, I had the great opportunity to create illustrations for "A Terrifying Look at Our Eventual Trump Presidency" a satirical article written by Bruce Handy mocking the one and only Donald Trump in his bid for the White House. See more images and the original article here. The deadline was pretty tight, but there were minimal revisions and lots of leeway for putting my own spin on the captions. Many thanks to Associate Editor Alexandra Beggs and the team at Vanity Fair for bringing me in on this fun project!
NASA Mars Announcement:
This morning, NASA is scheduled to share a "major scientific finding"about Mars. Here's a quick sneak peek at how I imagine it will look.
Dog Phobias. Case study: Sadie and Ella
Phobias are strange things. Most of us have them to some degree. I myself have a pronounced fear of heights. Some call it a phobia, which implies an irrational fear, but I'd call it common sense fear of bodily injury due to falling from a great distance.
Dogs are similar in this regard. But our two girls, Sadie and Ella, couldn't be more different when it comes to weather conditions for instance. Ella shows a total disregard for thunder and lightning, whereas Sadie goes to her "safe spot" behind our couch and will wait out the duration of the storm, sometimes trembling at an especially loud crack of thunder. She's gotten a bit better as time goes by, but no amount of petting and soothing talk will completely dispel her fear. And according to canine psychologists, by overcoddling her, I may have only been rewarding and reinforcing her fearful behavior. Oops.
After 13 summers of occasional loud & violent storms without incident, any intelligent animal should realize thunder & lightning are a natural occurance and nothing to fear, right? Then again, lightning strikes DO account for around 50 deaths and 300 injuries on average annually in the U.S. alone, so maybe her fears aren't totally irrational. Ella, on the other hand, has no qualms whatsoever about going out in the middle of a loud thunderstorm. So who is the smarter dog? The one who blissfully ignores the forces beyond her control? Or the one who spots potential danger and avoids it at all costs?
Trump!
If the race for the Republican presidential nomination is a circus, Donald Trump is definitely its number one sideshow attraction. Whether repeatedly dropping the f-bomb at a speech in front of potential donors, giving out his opponent's personal phone number, or lobbing cheap insults to anyone who disagrees with him, his campaign so far more closely resembles a Comedy Network roast or a WWE taunting rather than than a presidential run. And so far, the audience seems to be eating it up. As of this moment, he leads among the GOP contenders in the major national polls.
So keep it up, Donald! It should be an entertaining year ahead.
Texas: land of the conspiracy theory
Note: This post was started before this past weekend's disastrous flooding. So far the count stands at 17 dead and 10 missing. I considered holding off on putting it out there, but ultimately decided while we all sympathize with those affected by the deluge, we can still recognize the peculiar character of the state that will still be there long after the water recedes.
The state of Texas has long has a long reputation for marching to its own paranoid beat. So it makes sense that many of the fringiest and most persistent conspiracy theories trace their roots to the Lone Star State. How fitting is it that the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories originated on a Dallas street more than 50 years ago? The brief 8mm footage of the John F. Kennedy assassination taken by Abraham Zapruder has been dissected and analyzed more than any other film in history, healing and the general consensus of the official forensic experts is that Lee Harvey Oswald was the single assassin acting alone. But thanks in large part to Mark Lane's 1966 book "Rush to Judgment" and Oliver Stone's "JFK", terms like "pristine bullet" and "grassy knoll" have become part of everyone's vocabulary, and a large majority of Americans today believe that there was in fact a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Though who exactly was involved is up for debate.
More recently, radio talk show host, blogger, and Texas native Alex Jones has yet to find a conspiracy too outlandish or offensive to broadcast. Some of his greatest hits include theories that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings were faked and the U.S. government was directly tied to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. In a crazy hall-of-mirrors style twist, he himself is the subject of a conspiracy theory now making the rounds which posits that Alex Jones is none other than the alter ego of deceased comedian Bill Hicks (himself a firm believer in the JFK conspiracy theory). It's pretty amusing to watch the video of Alex Jones accusing the "Alex Jones is Bill Hicks" crowd of being conspiracy theory loons.
Since President Obama has been in office, general distrust of the U.S. government has played a huge role in a number of conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to immigration policy. Starting with the general presumption that minorities tend to vote democratic, it wasn't long before right-wing GOP politicians in Texas, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Louie Gohmert, promoted the idea that Democrats were busing young illegal immigrants across the border en masse who would eventually be allowed to vote, thus keeping them in power.
The latest conspiracy theory making the rounds in Texas and throughout the southwest involves the military operation code-named Jade Helm 15 (http://www.businessinsider.com/jade-helm-conspiracy-theory-2015-5). It’s a real Special Ops training exercise set to take place this summer. What really makes this theory stand out is the surprising degree of legitimacy it’s being given by people of influence. Walker:Texas Ranger himself, Chuck Norris was recently reported to have said that he has serious questions about Obama’s "scheming". In addition, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has directed the state guard to monitor the operation. Whether he actually believes that the Jade Helm operation is an effort by the U.S. government to impose martial law or is simply pandering to right wing extremists, it's a pretty defensive reaction to a standard military exercise.