Warning you may be offended if you click the link…

It’s a serious warning, you may be exposed to words and language that may offend your sensibilities, if you still have any. And if you do have some, please let us know how you have managed to preserve them in the face of such offensive journalism that passes for respectability. This is pretty clever stuff, and it illustrates a point found elsewhere. I’m truly encouraged to see this sort of thing going on.

To enjoy being offended click through to this YouTube video.

An idea whose time has come — Engender Truth

Since I was old enough to be aware of language and its meaning I have observed that human relationships are not always what they are made out to be. As I have watched the latter half of the 20th Century unfold, and observed the growth of marketing until it practically influences everything we do I have also watched the rise of the feminist movement and the turmoil this threw society into.

Raised in the country that was the first to give women the right to vote and which has subsequently lead almost every socially progressive movement, I have grown up without the generational baggage or ideas of women being oppressed, and to this day I deplore the continuing iniquities women are subjected to, while maintaining an awareness that women are not beyond the manipulation of facts to suit their own agendas, which do not always favor those of men.

There is an imbalance in society and one of the things the Free Articulator does is look at imbalance and consider ways to redress them. At Engender Truth, you’ll find a couple of articles that address the sort of imbalance that is going on, polarizing society in ways that are not constructive, intelligent or rational and which promote and perpetuate the Gender Wars. Our very own Emmah Williams is one of the smartest women of our times, and she is challenging with gusto and the kind of determination and insight that is so often rare, the issue of the Gender Wars and her most recent articles (Why I blog, and The sexual revolution is still revolting…er…evolving) at Engender Truth are masterful examples of Emmah’s mind at work. Not because I say so, go read for yourself and you’ll see what I mean. Emmah’s writing is insightful, written with a wicked sense of perspicacious humor and wit, that mark her as a writer to watch. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how this develops and also to working with Emm on her novels.

News Flash: New Report on Reading and Literacy in America

…I tell you this report on a recent survey explains a lot about the state of American culture and its role in the world. No wonder it is the way it is! I mean the insight into Republican reading habits…hah! No wonder they’re so hopeless at managing the Duperpower!

How many books did you read so far this year? I’ve finished 4 in the last two months. I still have a stack of 5 I’m getting through. I’m currently close to completing O: the Intimate History of Orgasm by Jonathan Margolis, a simply fasinating look at sexual attitudes that contains some of the initial ideas that promote the gender wars and male-female tensions, and patriarchal hegemony we see around us in society today, but which also looks at how the sexual revolution has been going on (it’s still revolting, but there’s an end in sight); I tell you it didn’t start in the Sixties! As a bonus reading this book is dovetailing very nicely into my university degree where I’m currently studying Gender as a part of a popular culture course, for my communications degree. I read nonfiction (news, information research, and textbooks) during the day and fiction at night (unless I have assignments due) to keep my input balanced and my intellectual perspectives and viewpoints broad. How do you read?

Pain & Suffering: do we need it to create great art? Part 2

This article is part 2 and follows on from Joel Falconer’s original where he finished off with this…

“So long as the traditional industry (and society) can point to the popularly propagated idea that ‘artists must suffer’ they have a reason to keep us in the dark, abuse us, rape us of our rights and suck us dry of every dollar, every word, every melody and every stroke of the brush that lies within us. Stop this myth now. Artists do not need to suffer to produce great work.

If you really believe “Artists need to suffer for their art” is a true and valid concept worthy of merit then next time you’re at the sex shop or visiting the CIA’s secret torture bases, pick up some whips and other instruments of torture, perhaps a waterboard and a set of fingernail pullers and bring them home to work over your local writers group, the garage band down the road who so obviously need help, and the painter whose delicate hands just beg for some knuckle crushing and thumb screwing and make them suffer, because the resultant works they produce will be guaranteed hits, oh, yeah. Success is just a whipping away. And of course, it’s firmly known by women and children everywhere that emotional and intellectual abuse makes them better people. Read more

Changing the World - A Peaceful Evolution - Changing Our Ideas

Since I was 7 years old I have been aware that the world is not a good place. But what is the world? And what is “changing the world”? Why did “changing the world” lose favor? How did it lose favor? Read more

Pain & Suffering: do we need it to create great art?

Why is enduring pain and suffering considered a prerequisite for forming good artists and producing good art? And why, then, is it not important for a businessman to endure the same for the sake of the spreadsheets? For too long, the myth that enduring the worst life can cook up helps artists become great artists has been propagated through society. It’s just another excuse that makes it alright to treat artists, when working professionally, like subhumans while the rest of humanity goes about life comparatively unscathed.

Read more

Ideas and their value - Support the Tuneback

I think there is such a thing as unconscionable commercial exploitation. It comes about when those who have money and power already act to take away from others the opportunity to exploit their own creations without so much as a “by your leave”.

When I heard about what had happened to the concept of the tuneback that was created and invented by my creative collaborator, friend, and colleague Joel Falconer, well I was immediately aware of the immorality of those that decided to capitalize without so much as a courteous well-mannered contact to the creator of the first tunebacks. This is what passes for “good business” today. And as the world has come to know it’s also what largely passes for the style of business a lot of American companies carry out today. Scandal, corruption, cheating, stealing, lying it’s the American Way today. An honorable person will tell you straight what is what, and when you look at it, they will be right. Not just right in a technical sense, but right in a moral sense. Read more

Foundation Principles — The Declaration of Creative Independence and the Code of a Creative Artist

Allforart, the Free Articulator and other companies and entities in the Allforart Network and all who work in that network hold as vital and important the founding documents that govern what we do and how we operate. These founding documents are:

• The Code of a Creative Artist
• The Creative Artists’ Declaration of Creative Independence

…and those applicable principles and concepts stated in A Creative Artist Enhances Society which will be a free download to Free Articulator subscribers and discounted to subscribers when it is published in hard copy.

But why do we need these things? Read more

The Declaration and the Traditional Industry - How Creative Artists want to do business

Some people will be concerned when they read the Creative Artists’ Declaration of Creative Independence that we are ignoring the fact that there are good companies, doing good business and cutting ourselves off from the lucrative market that the traditional industry model appears to have a firm hold on.

Well, that would be an incorrect assumption on their part. We do want to do business, but on our terms and in a fashion that is based on unbreakable trust. That means doing honest business with Creative Artists, because Creative Artists do honest business, and even exceptionally generous business.

Read more

So, who or what is a creative artist?

Well first of all, it’s not “creative artist.” It’s Creative Artist.

Why is it capitalized? Because it’s a profession, and it’s a title, and it’s an important defining characteristic that separates artist from Creative Artist.

Secondly, an artist is not a Creative Artist until they have demonstrated the criteria and behaviour of a Creative Artist. A Creative Artist is deeply committed to the welfare and well-being of humanity on every level, to such a degree that they will suffer any amount of the crap that passes for civilized society on this once beautiful planet we’ve trashed, to get the work out. Creative Artists know that most people in this “civilized society” have a singular lack of respect for and recognition of those who speak the truth to the rest of us.

Read more