Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Friday, December 18, 2015

Meme Catcher (version 1)


Here is the latest continuation on my pisiform design. The previous work, Lucky Trust, had a seven pointed star as the central design around which the fish shapes curled around. This piece has an eight pointed star at around the center. For some time now, I’ve been fascinated with torus knots, so I added extensions of loops from the overlapping bars of the star shape. Basically, the central design is one complicated, but orderly, closed loop. If it were to be seen in a more three dimensional depiction, it would look like a torus, or a doughnut. 

The fact that this design has an eight pointed star around the center, not seven, gives the picture a more orderly and stable sense. The fact that it’s framed in a perfect square shape adds to its stability and confidence. What we have here is a ballet of shapes, forms, and designs. If it were an animated GIF, it would show the pisiforms as uniformly coiling around the star shape. The smaller fish in the loops and rings would be just endlessly circling round and round. 

I had researched some of the designs that are used for decorative iron fence vector, and made some simple designs of my own to add to the details and finer structures supporting the composition. You can see the results of these as the catching the background and space like weathervanes. 

The idea of space in art catches my interest again in my recent work. The space that is shown here has stuff in it however. That is really how I see space anyways. Astrophysicists will tell you that space is actually full of radio and cosmic rays, as well as particles, such as photons, and electrons. Space really is not a vacuum. It has much information, physical and material, passing through it all the time. 

I liken my notion of space to the subconscious mind and information that’s just under the surface of awareness. You can see this expressed by text cut out from old books and prepared for this piece that is showing through a translucent layer of primer. I filled the spaces around the decor vector and bars of the star and rings with some light blue and lavender felt-tip pen. This gave the illustration a sense of collected or bunched up space. 

This drawing, overall, is a collection of charming designs, colors, shapes, and ideas—hence the title Meme Catcher. I hope to make more drawings, paintings, and prints of these types of designs in the future. I have many of my ideas stored away in notebooks and sketchbooks, so when the right times arise, I use those times to work on them and give them more reality with whatever medium I want to create them in. 

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Hidden by Class

The violence
Of refined, smooth classiness.
Jagged edges smoothed over
By sophisticated surreptitiousness,
And clandestine strategy.

Such flip-flops of meaning
Within chaotic iambic pantameters;
Prosaic as mosaics climb as ladders;
As spiders climb
As nocturnal bladders.

We will make it naked
Across the sea,
Where new consciousness resides;
Where Eden abides,
And male/female unity is more realized.

Tempted by greener pastures,
Greener seas, and sunnier days...
They beckon us on
In our unfulfilled states;
Unfulfillment drives cars.

I vacuum change like a politician.
There's a special orifice in my aura
That sucks up meaning,
Midnight searches,
And other purposes.

Yet, I build sky-scrapers in my dreams
Like Rumplestiltskin
And Ronald Crump.
They look at transmutating skies
With their clock faces--

Pointing in degrees
As to the time it takes
To feel from one mood to the next.
In shades of shine, and diffusions of shade--
Let it show, let it shine.

Believers of matter,
Eddies of dust, composers of elements,
Clay constructions of hands,
And potter's wheels
And galactic fish-bowl stands.

Recorded and grooved
Upon disk-disc trays.
Floppy and magnetic,
Digital and encoded;
Encrypted like a monk under a robe.

Enigmatic automatic.
Automated exhaust pipes.
Dreams by cereal boxes
Connected in trebeculations
Across grocery stores.

The heavy lunge
Of shock absorbers,
The engines of intent.
Taken, pushed, pulled, grasped,
Let go of, and flow relentlessly.

eVan--February 8th, 2015

Friday, January 30, 2015

Zeroes, Ones, Rocks and Digits

Ever doth my light
Carve out the definitions of shadows
Before their nonexistence
Is finally revealed.

With the lick of every flame
Morphs the craft of every shadow,
As change is constant
In the furniture of matter.

The waves of heaven and hell,
In the meanwhile,
Lap the shores of our consciousness,
And we must endure till the end.

A man's character is revealed in extremes.
Therefore, a lady must throw
Shit tests at him in order to
Measure the parameters of his demons.

Testing people pulls out
What they'd rather keep hidden.
What are some test you use with people
To determine roles they shall play for you?

Just notice the similarities
Between the word "gravity" & the word "grave."
Doth death pulleth us
Unconsciously towards it?

A person who is confident,
And can hide that confidence
Is equivalent to the fabled "sheathed sword."
And, by association,
The wolf in sheep's clothing.

So many laughable sub-communications.
Are they transparent?
Do their flaws
Make you feel exposed at times?

How many mating cues
Can you pack in a minute?
I'll bet you're unconscious of them all.
After all, it's those evil unnomina
Who perceive them, right?

But isn't fucking a continuous process
That rises and falls in intervals,
Rather than a categorized series of steps?
Isn't it fluid?

Oh, you mean it's a subtle vibe
That you carry around
Like a dainty scarf, Catching the notice of passersby,
Wind, and ether?

Well, we do know that something sells,
Something smells, and something tells.
Between the canyons of perception
They do undress.

eVan--January 30th, 2015

Friday, December 27, 2013

Misleaders Emerge from the Wakes of Failed Misleaders

In the situation concerning Greenwald, and the documents he attained from the National Security Agency through Edward Snowden, an "infrastructure analyst" who worked for the NSA and Booz Allen Hamilton (a military contractor for cyber-space), I remain skeptical. I remain skeptical of Greenwald and Snowden for a few reasons.

What are Greenwald's connections to the Koch Brothers, and the Cato Institute if any? We have a general understanding that Pierre Omidyar, the owner of PayPal, and eBay, is libertarian in his economic and political philosophies. Libertarians generally believe in non-interventionism in the Middle East. Ron Paul, for example, is one of the leading figures advocating this position that the United States should take in regards to Washington's policy with Middle Eastern countries. Libertarians are also proponents of “the free market,” “smaller government,” and “fiscal spending.” Libertarians actually are Republicans, but they supposedly don’t believe in an ever expanding military industrial complex along the lines of what President Eisenhower warned Americans of.

The philosophical ideologies of politics are essential to know about in regard to anyone involved to any degree in politics, as these are the broad swaths that seem to define the general left and the right spectrums of thought, even though both of Washington’s parties engage in outright hypocrisy without a blink on a regular basis. Greenwald has a track record of taking left and right pundits to task on their hypocrisies. For example, when G. W. Bush was in office, almost all Democrats and liberals were crying bloody murder in the streets in reaction to Bush's foreign and domestic policies. From the invasion of Iraq based on fabrications of WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda, to the anti-Constitutional Patriot Act, Democrats and liberals were very vocal about their opposition to Bush and these policies. Several years later, Obama effortlessly exponentiates these policies ranging from draconian laws, such as the National Defense Authorization Act which allows him to peck off any American he deems questionable upon his own whims, to his lawless policy of drones flying freely over supposed allied countries, such as Pakistan, killing innocent women and children. Greenwald commendably commands outrage concerning both parties with the above points.

Greenwald's philosophy of left and right skepticism makes a lot of sense, since it is also very apparent that Washington's brutality, aggressiveness, and terror wrought in the Middle East is essentially designed to cause terrorism, not prevent it. It's common knowledge that if you kill someone’s wife, and children, they will more than likely seek some kind of revenge on you. Many religions teach about the basic principle of doing to others as you would have them do to you. It is apparent that Greenwald agrees with much of this philosophy, considering the numerous articles he's written in criticism of Obama's international and illegal drone policy and its hideous further trashing of the Geneva Conventions initiated by the Bush II regime, not to mention Washington's standard disregard of other treaties implemented to prevent aggression of one country upon another signed right after world war two.

I had read a couple of articles that spurred some thoughts about Greenwald's possible ties to the libertarian network. These ties can be found through the doorway he's been able to miraculously open up to a $250,000,000 deal provided for by his sudden business relationship with the billionaire of PayPal, Pierre Omidyar. One of those articles is written by Yoichi Shimatsu, titled: Saving Agent Snowden From His Handlers Greenwald And Omidyar. I learned in that article that Omidyar, himself, is actually Iranian, thus further strengthening his libertarian philosophy of a Washington/Middle East non-interventionist policy. In his article, Shimatsu writes:

From: Saving Agent Snowden From His Handlers Greenwald And Omidyar, by Yoichi Shimatsu

"In stark contrast to his libertarian posturing, Omidyar is connected at the hip to the very same intelligence nexus that he publicly condemns, particularly Booz Allen Hamilton, the NSA security contractor that employed Snowden in Hawaii and Japan. One of the major investment partners with Omidyar Network, Salvadore ”Sal” Gambianco, sits on the board of directors of Booz Allen Hamilton Holdings.

As head of Omidyar Network’s human capital operations, Giambanco vets trainees and assesses employee performance for promotion or termination. For more than a decade, Omidyar Network has had a revolving door for its employees with Booz Allen, shuttling staffers and interns for intelligence-related postings. Just a few of these individuals who worked for both Omidyar Network and Booz Allen include:

- Dhaya Lakshminarayan who was sent to Cuba to research development programs;
- Pranay Chulet hired to head Omidyar-backed Quikr in India;
- Patricia Sosrodjojo, Indonesian venture capital expert in Jakarta; and
- Michael Kent, a Booz Allen counter-terrorism specialist who served as a research associate at the Omidyar campus in Redwood City, California.

The relationship, simply put, is corporate collusion, and if businesses could be married, Booz Allen and Omidyar Network are husband and wife."


After engaging in a sobering back and forth debate with @danstew13, or Dan Stewart, a derivatives trader on Twitter who joined Twitter four days after the NSA leaks broke the headlines on June 5th, 2013, I found a link on his profile from back in June linking to @shoq, another independent political opinionist who unfortunately defends the trail of tears left by Obama. Though I was irritated by Dan's invasive questions posed to me in regards to my critical questions about Greenwald, I found that his questions were very competently asked. He sounds like he could be a professional lawyer. So instead of trying to block him out, I followed him so that I can see how he neutralizes anyone who is critical of Greenwald. After all, a majority of his profile is dedicated to defending Greenwald.

One point he makes relentlessly is the question of evidence. He wants direct evidence of Greenwald's suspected back-door dealings between Omidyar and Snowden. While it is laughable to try to convince someone in another part of the nation on Twitter of "evidence," it still stands as a challenging wall to be climbed. It is a challenge because I, and probably all of Greenwald's other critics, don't have any direct evidence, like email communications, or video recordings of Greenwald and Snowden interacting with each other and planning a conspiracy. All we have are the inconsistencies in how many documents Greenwald obtained from Snowden, the bizarre lucky twists of fate Greenwald has encountered since leaving the Guardian, and whether if it was Greenwald who received the documents directly to begin with. Greenwald, by the way, has previously stated that he kept on pushing off emails by Snowden to him as disingenuous, so the theory that unidentified flying objects floating around the Guardian and submitting Snowden's NSA documents to them after abducting him for a blacked out period of time is questionable at best... at least for flat earthers.

@Shoq has been a critic of Greenwald and Snowden since their leaked NSA documents story broke. Perhaps @shoq has been a critic of Greenwald even before the hit debut of his NSA story. I have not investigated that however. The article that I found insightful, though still biased, by @shoq, is titled Why Libertarian Organizations Like The Cato Institute Love The NSA Outrage. Remember, the Cato Institute is on record for also supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a partnership negotiated in secrecy, until leaked by Wikileaks, that allows governments to be lobbied by special interests in order to fix prices to those special interest's desires, which would snuff out other generic competitors, of, say, pharmaceuticals in Asian countries for example. @Shoq brings to our attention the superficial beliefs of libertarianism, and some of their promoter's ties to the Koch Brothers who are famous for their right-wing policies as industrialists. The Koch Brothers fund politician's careers that support their every fascist effort, such as Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and his controversial demolishing of unions' rights to collectively bargain. Scott Walker, by the way, may be running for president in 2016.

Please review @shoq's blog Why Libertarian Organizations Like The Cato Institute Love The NSA Outrage here: http://shoqvalue.com/why-libertarian-organizations-like-the-cato-institute-love-the-nsa-outrage/

Because the US government is so hypocritical and criminal in its own policies of domestic and foreign affairs, the fact that Jay Carney, for example, reiterates the White House's steadfast narration, "Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information, and he faces felony charges here in the United States," only makes Washington's hardline stance against Snowden an international joke. It looks to me like charges against Snowden are microscopic insignificances compared to the unquestionable bloodbaths Washington engages in every day. Washington is just a case of an ethics committee so thoroughly corrupt that it needs an ethics committee. That ethics committee cannot be founded in another governmental agency in my opinion, but can only be found in the solidarity of the American people, less Washington DC, and its cesspool of greed, irresponsibility, and corruption.

In the wake of all the disheartenment of Americans being led by liars on both sides of America's traditional two-party system, many younger Americans are looking for some sort of leadership to hold on to. I believe Greenwald, and his "news" venture will attempt to fill some of that void in much the same way the usual "privatized," but really centralized, news organizations attempt to do, e.g., Fox News, and MSNBC. Yet, there are many things that make me question Greenwald's character with respect to his past as a lawyer for one of the most criminal banks ever to exist, Goldman Sachs, as a lawyer for a gay pornography business, and having a tendency to take people to court on the pettiest of claims while using his abilities as a lawyer to screw peoples' financial lives up significantly. I'm not against homosexuality, nor even their right to marry, but I do point out that the pornography business isn't necessarily filled with fine, upstanding citizens. I'm also not against the pornography business per se, as I believe it's anyone's right to engage in any field the want to engage in professionally. I am merely pointing out the inconsistencies of Greenwald's supposed stance of standing up for the weak and the poor, while, at times, fully engaging in risky and purely “profits over people” motivated ventures.

Please read the full article How Glenn Greenwald Became Glenn Greenwald at BuzzFeed Politics, written by Jessica Testa here to get more information on Greenwald's history: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/how-glenn-greenwald-became-glenn-greenwald

Then we encounter the current inconsistencies that come with the walking propaganda machine Greenwald has accumulated thus far, such as: why are there no articles implicating PayPal's devotion to the NSA's unconstitutional invasion of privacy? I'm sure someone can have their own personal beliefs, and superficially report on them with a news organization funded by a company who is against those beliefs, but this only indicates a conflict of interests. Conflicts of interest, nevertheless, can be found throughout politics. The number one interest that most people have, however, can clearly be defined as the obtaining of money in exchange for straight or crooked efforts.

And this common underlying theme found in almost all scandalous activities is unsurprisingly found in Greenwald's coop flying from the Guardian to a new future coop with Omidyar and the $250,000,000 deal he made while, at the same time, hanging on to perhaps ninety to ninety-five percent of the classified NSA documents Edward Snowden "gave" to him. Perhaps Snowden actually sold the documents to Greenwald. Again, none of us have the proof for this. It can only be speculated. I do find it interesting that someone like Julian Assange has been locked down in an Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom for leaking classified United States documents for four Christmases now, but Greenwald is able to fly freely on first class jet planes around the planet with classified information in his possession, with hardly a problem encountered.

Another oddity I encountered with respect to Snowden is recently when he wrote a letter to the government of Brazil--the country where Greenwald coincidently lives--which ostensibly seems to be bargaining his special knowledge gained as an employee of the NSA in exchange for asylum there. So while Greenwald continues to withhold untold amounts of documents Snowden gave him, making lucrative deals writing books, and signing contracts for the creation of 21st century James Bond technocrat movies, Snowden attempts to get closer to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow over off in Brazil. Maybe he can get Omidyar to send a private stealth jet to Russia without rousing the Russian air force out of bed at night, and fly him off to the land of freedom where anti-corruption protests abound in the country of Brazil.

December 24th, 2013



Recent update: Snowden broadcasted his own New Year's message after the Queen of England's message on Britain's Channel 4 station on Wednesday, December 25th, 2013. If Snowden is so accepted by the Western world as to be right next to the Queen of England's slot on TV on Christmas day, then this only adds more to my suspicion of inside corruption not factually seen and documented by anyone. Whistleblowers have been condemned as an expected standard throughout history. I don't personally wish harm upon Snowden in order to rectify this standard, but on the other pinna, I find it a very peculiar twist of events that Snowden gets to deliver a message to the world from the center of the West's propaganda machine. All the sudden, Snowden comes from out of the non-existent shadows of "no such agency" (NSA), and gets to sit next to the Western world's throne to speak about the West's totalitarian tyrranny, invoking the writer George Orwell. Please don't count me on the bandwagon of worshiping this hyped up hero, because, just next door, Assange remains shackled to the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I've entertained the possibility that Assange may by tied into the Greenwald, PayPal, and Snowden conspiracy, but Wikileaks seems to be less focused on Greenwald for the time being as far as I can tell in reviewing the tweets Wikileaks tweets out referencing Greenwald, Snowden, PayPal, or their blockading friend, Omidyar.

Evan Travnicek, 
December 27th, 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013

The World Wants To Be Subjugated

Please note the obvious: if you feel you are not included in my usage of the word "we", then, by all means, don't feel obligated to be included in the majority of the state of humanity.

The world desires to be subjugated. Perhaps not in words, and speech, but in action, and sometimes thought. Just look at everyone around you, and you'll see that the conflict between slavery and freedom is usually won on the side of slavery. We agree to be hypnotized by shitty entertainment. We vote for tyrants who tighten societal nooses around our necks even tighter. We send our children into wars knowing that the wars are based on lies pumped up by narcissistic and substanceless patriotism. We eat the poison of fast food that cause diseases and dysfunctions in our bodies. Then, we have such low self-esteems afterwords, that we dare not speak up for ourselves in relation to our dickhead managers at work.

Why don't we get together, as the oppressed, rise up and change things? After all, it is the masses of oppressed people on all of earth who are the driving forces of everything in the global economy. No way! We need to continue on in our infantile fantasies that the state provides for us, and pass off responsibility on to political psychopaths. That's what we do. We drag ourselves in to voting booths in an unquestioning stupor to vote for evil across the board, left or right, democrat or republican. Then we go to Wal-Mart to buy a few morsels of food with our political campaign Obama food stamps.

Meanwhile, Obama protects his "political adversary" George W. Bush from any kind of war tribunals for lying and murdering millions of people overseas. And he also protects the banks who fund his campaign, such as Goldman Sachs, who continue to gamble the economy of America away and down the drain. No, no, we need to protect Obama from any criticism, and Bush from being accountable for any of his murderous policies.

Let us, as intellectuals, just continue to drive home the acceleration of America's failure so that we can at least fill our own pockets by our own wit, and feed our own children. Who cares about the rest of the world? Just as long as they buy and read our books, and cut us a check for coming to our intellect inspiring speeches. It's okay. The guilt seems to have boundaries for those who love a pretty penny, and those who like to review their speeches over and over in order to correct any "imperfections."

Bloat the ego with dough, crack, and chicks, and the intellect starts to fail. After all, the maintenance of dough, crack, and chicks are high indeed. They require the full attention of a master of whatever trade. When you start to see how certain dynamics work, then you see what really fuels greatness in any field or trade. It often is the suffering and deprivation of resources that drive certain "special" individuals off the ground and high above the rest of humanity. And so the cycle continues on throughout the ages. The gauntlet of human life on earth never changes. Only peoples' first names, and technology to enable bigger disasters change. Do you think human beings, as a whole, are actually capable of evolving past distorted survival drives? Is there even such a thing as "as a whole" and "we" when it comes to the ego? Or is it all just for one, one's family, and fuck the rest?

Perhaps trips of guilt can win you the intellectual lottery, instead of 20th century pop capitalist ideas of "survival of the fittest" promoted by Ayn Rand, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin. Perhaps now the formula is survival of the guiltiest, and survival of who is the biggest martyr. Wasn't the story of Christ bent, perverted, and distorted into a whole bloody martyrdom?

eVan, October 17th, 2013

Monday, July 1, 2013

After the Crash (version A1)

After the Crash (version A1)

I incorporated a road in this drawing because I want to start making these series look more like technologically advanced cities in a child-like cubist style of my own. Many sources have inspired me up to this point, including: Paul Klee, Maria Elena Vieira da Silva, Piet Mondrian, Vincent Van Gogh, Francis Picabia, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Byzantine mosaic art, Islamic art and architecture, and so many more. 

These series are more of a balancing act between the decomposing forces of nature, and the attempt of mankind to eternalize his image and thoughts upon the vast oases of the universe, for which he practically knows almost nothing, even unto this point in humankind's evolution. I suppose it's an elaborate, round-about way of giving a visual catalog of the folly of man. This process is still fascinating to me. You can imagine yourself walking through all the constructs of man as you see through the fallacy of their permanence. In other words, enjoy everything for the experience, but don't hang on to anything, because nothing in the physical world lasts forever.  

It's a process that people have been interested in since they became self aware beings experiencing life inside of the biological unit of the human model. This series, and this image, bring to the viewer's awareness both the fleeting qualities of life, as well as all that seems to last forever. I give the viewer the suggestion, also, that an immaterial mind is what organizes, and re-organizes everything in physical nature. So, in "the end", even the mechanical, scientific, and utilitarian structures of modern humans undergo an organic process of birth, change, deterioration, and death... and then re-birth.

--eVan, July 1st, 2013