I know you don’t want to hear “it depends,” but there is no one rule that would cover all art. Some art is made to communicate specific ideas. Some art is made simply out of self-expression, without intent for any particular audience. Both are valid.

If I doodle in my notebook, it’s for the artist (me.) However, I also draw and paint to communicate specific emotions. I made a painting while listening to “September” by Earth, Wind and Fire, with the intent to capture the energy and joy the song sends through me. I don’t expect anyone to immediately connect the image with the specific song, but since it’s a lively concert scene, my hope is that the emotion that inspired the art comes across to an audience.

Sometimes I’ll make something more abstract, intentionally left open to interpretation. I may have my own thoughts about such pieces, but ultimately I want the viewer to find their own meaning.

In reality, everything is up to the audience. There will always be people who interpret things in their own way, independent of the artist’s intentions. We can’t control what others will think, but learning to tolerate and/or accept people who “don’t get it” is a stage all artists have to go through. I’ve come to accept that there is no one perfect mode of communication, so if I intend to communicate something specific, it’s on me as the artist to put effort into making that message clear.

I just want to say, although I hate how things are going, I like the way you describe them.

Archived link

Ah, I see you’ve met my mom. She’s overly concerned with the opinions of others, to my and my siblings’ detriment. Meanwhile, I have a “I don’t know them, why should I care what they think?” attitude, which made my youth with her so very fun /s.

Her brain is clearly still locked into an old society’s ways. The things she thinks would be humiliating are things that nobody would bat an eye at today, like wearing pajamas outside. She’s got her “hidden” racism too, of course. She’s made comments about my partners “having dark complexions.” I eventually went off on her, calling out her racist thoughts, and she’s shut up about it since. Or at least, she’s shut up about it when I’m around.

The first time I heard of “communists” and “socialists” was back when I was in middle school, when Bush Jr got us into war. All I did was ask why in the world we were invading Iraq, which had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. Sincerely trying to understand the world. That’s when the already-brainwashed kids starting flinging “socialist” and “communist” like they meant the same thing as “idiot.”

So, I decided to read about those concepts to see what all the hubbub was about. Surprise surprise, when I later responded to those same kids by asking what they thought the words meant, they couldn’t answer the question.

Now I’m thinking it’s kind of like the Streisand Effect - 'Muricans don’t want you to know about how other countries run. I didn’t know about systems besides capitalism yet, until the spawn of conservatives decided to use ancient fears from the 1950s as an insult in the year 2003. Surprise surprise, now there’s a swath of Millennials (and other generations, of course) just like me who learned that if conservatives hate something, it’s worth looking into.

Lisa gets it. From “The Italian Bob,” an episode where the family visited Italy:

Ooh nice choice! I’m using a protest wallpaper too. Though mine’s that “accidental Renaissance” shot where someone graffitied “EAT THE RICH” on the Utah capitol building, with three cops standing around while a crowd protests behind them. It’s just too beautiful.

If we sane people ever manage to win the country back, that picture’s totally going into a history textbook.

Time to find some caricaturists to help prepare the next round of protests signs.

UTIs (urinary tract infections) really fuck with people experiencing dementia. Sometimes the way a person acts under a UTI is the first sign of such cognitive decline. They’ll be fine one day, but when infection sets in it’s like they become another person.

However, that’s for people who ordinarily have self-control. For Trump, it’s anyone’s guess.

I wish I could agree, but my schools had two types of teachers: newbies who were desperate to prove themselves, and tenured teachers who gave no fucks. Even the “cool” science teacher couldn’t admit the truth when I came in with three different sources proving he had been spreading a myth to my class. There’s no excuse for teachers who can’t admit they were wrong - they have one job, to educate. Spreading false information is the opposite of what they should be doing, and I cannot forgive that.

Which is why my elementary and middle school teachers hated me. Take a fiercely logical kid who has no qualms about pointing out contradictions, put them up against an authoritarian (who, let’s be honest, probably works with kids because they’re guaranteed to have power over them), and you’re gonna end up with an angry adult and a kid who’s regularly put in detention.

I have zero regrets. Authoritarians can get fucked. The only good thing I can surely say they’d ever done, was that they managed to radicalize me before puberty.

“There will be some comments like, ‘Well, thank God we have abortion services,’ even though what I went through wasn’t an abortion,” she said.

Yes. Yes she is.

Make sure the parade weaves back and forth through some of the gaps in the Texas/Mexico border wall.

Ah, I stand corrected.

That’s even weirder. At least the boys in my middle school had the excuse of being, well, middle-school-aged boys.

Awww, you just made me feel respect toward a gym teacher for the first time in my life.

My middle school held an assembly over a fad of “dick tapping” that had taken over the boys in the school. Apparently it had become “a thing” for them to just reach over and slap their friends’ penises, and it got so bad that we needed a damn assembly.

All us girls were extremely confused. We legit thought most of the boys in our school must have secretly been gay if they wanted to touch each other’s dicks so badly. Even if the boys weren’t gay, we figured they must be pretty frickin’ stupid to play such a dumb “game.” A lot of us had crushes evaporate in an instant, and I for one never looked at the boys in my class the same again.

Nowadays, I know better than to assume one’s sexuality from such things. However, I never stopped being extremely confused about that game.

Wild, I’ve lived in the US my whole life and never heard that. Interesting.

Umm. I’m sorry, but it looks like we’ve got a misunderstanding? I’d simply never heard the word “billion” shortened to “billy” before, and I was asking where you got that term from. (Though now I’m even more curious what you thought I was asking.)