ztormbringer

Have not been here in an unbelievable amount of time.  Have not done any work in that same period of time.  One excuse, if there is any, was that for a long time I was taking a medicine that kicked my butt.  So tired I could hardly standup, and forget working.  You see in 1969 I contracted Hepatitis C and have had it since.  There is now a cure. Before I was looking at the only possibility of getting rid of it as a liver transplant at some time (though the reinfection rate within 6 months is near 100%) but there-is medicine to effect a cure in 3 to 6 months.   I am happy to say that I am now cured, 100% virus free.  The drug costs $36,000 per month. I was able to get into an investigational program which paid most or nearly all the cost.  But I , like many others who have taken it, nearly quit.  The fatigue and depression were nearly deadly; but I wanted to be free of the virus, so I gritted my teeth and swallowed my pills.  In time my lab tests showed less and less virus and that encouraged me to finish the trial.  One of the happiest days of my life was the day of a followup checkup when the doctor handed me a report on the last blood test. where she had written "No virus detected.  You are cured!"

     I'm a little disappointed though, I think I had an unrealistic and overoptimistic idea of how it would feel not to have the virus anymore.  Physically I only feel a little better, because, I think, of the extensive liver damage and the long time I had it and the effect it had on other organs, and that I'm 66 not 18 I ike I was when I got it (yes I had it my whole adult life)   Mentally, much improved,  I no longer have to awaken every morning wondering if this is the day it begins the final sequence of events that will culminate in death by massive organ failure.  That certainly changes your outlook!
   My body doesn't ache all the time, a bone deep ache, and though I'm tired, and tire easy, it"s no longer the the kind of tired no amount of sleep ever relives.  Now a nights sleep lets me start off refreshed and with some energy.
   Mentally as I said, much relived; except that while doing ultrasound imaging before I began the drug, to check the size and condition of the liver; they found something else I now have to worry about.
An Abdominal Aortic Anuerism or AAA as we like to call it.  As of right now I'm wait and see status to see if it grows any.  At 8cm I have no option but surgery.  It is scary because I can burst at anytime with no warning and almost no symptoms when it does.  Of those who have a AAA burst 90% die before an ambulance can arrive and of the 10% who survive until an ambulance, 90+% die before they can reach a hospital.  So a burst AAA s 99% fatal.  So I get now to worry about that, but at least it's quick and relatively painless, so I understand.

Since moving to far West Texas, I've had 1 iPhone stolen, 1 laptop stolen, 2 Android tablets stolen, 2 portable hard drives (350 GB and 1TB) stolen and miscellaneous other computer equipment stolen including an Intelos drawing tablet.  I'm reduced to public access internet most of the time.  Forgive me if it takes time to answer your comments, often the public access won't let me view the site or post anything.

For those, if there are any, who might wonder or care that I've added little lately or who might wonder or care what's up in my life, there has been a major change.  I no longer live in the Hill Country, I've relocated to a border town and in time will move on to occupy the acarage I bought in West Texas.  I'll be ten miles from any sort of town, the nearest one has a population of around 400.  My nearest neighbors, not counting the ever friendly rattlesnakes, are about 3 miles away.  In time I will build a house, probably of adobe in keeping with the wisdom of those who came long before me, and in keeping with parsimony (Adobe is after all, really -- dirt cheap  -- sorry about the pun LOL).  Most likely any photos I take are going to be desert related or at least on a West Texas axis.  At the moment my computers are in storage so I don't expect to contribute much in the way of manipulations over the next few months and for some reason I'm not in the writing mood much anymore. I will be back though once I get grounded and settled.

I say this is as good a place as any for it to begin and perhaps better than many.  We are a community of artists. We are a community of artists that have come together under the a banner that proclaims we are deviant-artists.   Deviant, one who deviates from the norm, I think we all understand that the norm from which we deviate is not some artistic one and deviantart is not a school or class or style or movement of art like Impressionism or Cubism or Renisence or Pop Art or Realism.  To deviate, to be a deviant, is to differ usually from the sexual norm.  There are many  different ways to deviate from the norm of sexual behavior, but just about all of them no matter how unlike they may be in other ways are alike in at least one very important respect, that of having been or being illegal or heretical, against civil law or theological law.

     There is a segment of the deviant community at large, indeed a segment that most of the norm think of first when they hear or speak the word deviant, that has been manning the barricades and charging the walls of the en-castled norm, bearing the brunt of the labor to change society to a more open and accepting, mature and responsible and fair society, the LGBT members of that same closed minded, biased, and repressive society.  From the eras of "the love that dares not speak it's name" to the post Stonewall riots era, to the striking down of sodomy laws, to the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and at last the right of gay men and women to openly serve in their countries military as they had served in secret in ever war since it's founding and beyond, to slowly gaining Equal Rights to marry, this segment that once was nearly invisible has  visably and courageously reshaped the landscape of  American and Western society for the better.

      A few days ago in a church in North Carolina a minister took to the pulpit to deliver the Sunday sermon {*see note, bottom of post} (Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C) and from his position as a respected man of God and as head of a church of that God and in that sermon spoke saying that gays should be rounded up and put behind an electrified fence from which they could not escape ( He suggests building a large fence -- 150 or 100 miles long -- and putting all the gays and lesbians inside it.
"And have that fence electrified 'til they can't get out,"

  As we approach a holiday here in America that honors those who have laid down their lives in defense and support of the idea of liberty and justice and in particular those who gave their lives in battle against one of the most insidious evils every to befall humanity in which millions the world over died as victims or combatants am I the only one who feels the ghostly tramp of Jackboots and the spectral shouts of Sieg Hiel and the moaned words of Treblinka and Auschwitz that rise from that pulpit?

      Reverend Worley did betray his Christen leanings though by allowing those so caged to be fed.  In short order he also revealed that he must have attended one of the school systems that was an early abstainer from sex education because he went on to say that those confined humans would die out and when they did that would be the end of the problem "because they an't reproduce (" he says. "Feed 'em. And you know what, in a few years, they'll die out. Do you know why? They can't reproduce.").  Although the word "gay" is applied as a catchall phrase for all Homosexuals of any gender, it is in the public mind much more aligned historically with meaning Male Homosexuals; Lesbians and Trans-gender persons are an afterthought in that mind of the norm almost separate from the "gay" idea. In light of that more widespread connotation of the word "gay" I have to wonder, and would if I could ask, the Reverend Worley when was the last time he saw a pregnant guy?  Reverend Worley is correct, in so far as homosexual males are concerned, as long as they continue to engage exclusively in homosexual activities cannot reproduce; but if every known, every confessed, every closet, every possible, homosexual was caged and did die off the Reverends' problem would still exist and homosexuals would still be born just as they are now from the sexual activity of heterosexual people.  I understand that the Reverend Worley has been married some twenty years and evidently has children, so at least his wife had some understanding of the human reproductive process even if apparantly he did not.

      When hell was in session and evil had a comfortable seat at the table of men, not only were Jews assigned to the slaughter yards of the camps but gays and "other deviants" were as well.  As Jews had to wear a yellow star of David inside and outside the camps so too did homosexual and other deviants have to wear a pink or blue triangle inside and outside the camps.  What I am suggesting is that we, as a community of artists and in particular a community of "deviant" artists, ought to remind the Reverend and his church  that at another time and another place a leader suggested a similar solution to a similar "problem" a solution that shocked and horrified the world and that the idea still has the power to shock and horrify the world that has not forgotten,  and that we do this by each of us (and as many others from anywhere as we can enlist) making a yellow star of David and a pink and a blue triangle of any material or medium the individual chooses and mail our creations addressed toThe Reverend and his church. No words written, no phone calls, no emails,  just the silent, stark, and very telling reminder of that same evil that once was, we hoped, forever silenced and will not be allowed to once more find comfort at the table of mankind.




*Note the video of the sermon can be found here www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2n7vS…

I'm not going to waste time re-typing, retelling the tale of this day, but see the reply to the comment on IMG_5600 ( ztormbringer.deviantart.com/ar… )and you will I trust understand this was one of the worst days in a very long time in a live full of not good days.