Morning Comrades! It’s been a while since I sat down for some actual illustration work and Felix has, as most of you know, been a steady companion of mine for years. I am not entirely sure what I am going to do with the above but I will do something. The line “Works For Jerks”, as mentioned, comes from my friend Benny Gold who so brilliantly coined and illustrated this for his own brand almost a decade ago. I reached out to him a little while ago asking for his permission to use this and he kindly is letting me play around with this. Stay tuned I guess.
Stop Volunteering to Defend The Castles of Men That Will Never Let You In The Front Gate.
Yesterday I shared the above video from TikTok, by a chap going by the name of ScottieCYR and whilst I am not asking anyone to download Tiktok, do watch this video. You can now do so on your desktop etc - shit, even your TV I believe, but that’s besides the point. In this video, the above person explains the toxicity of the patriarchy for men in one of the most clearest marxist, materialistic approaches without really touching on the bad C word- a feat, in today’s propagandized world. There are so many good takes in this one and if you haven’t seen this on my IG account or our Telegram Group, here is your chance. Do this.
It is no secret that I am a great admirer of David Graeber’s work. His latest, and sadly, last, book that he co-authored with David Wengrow is on its way to not only becoming a huge bestseller but genuinely rewriting history, how we understand human development and our relationship to, ultimately, the destructiveness of capitalism whilst offering massive amounts of examples of how we can escape this death cult. With any such massive and occasionally challenging books, reading them by yourself is never quite as good as doing that in a book club - clearly something that has suffered throughout this pandemic but the above is a brilliant solution to it all. The link leads you to a reader built website and online community where you can discuss and learn in a community involved in this work. It’s absolutely brilliant and I can only recommend this to anyone even remotely interested.
I like the Sleaford Mods, a lot. Whilst Jason’s commentary might sound harsh to anyone not from the UK, his analysis however is something that I agree with more often than not, and in a recent interview with Clash Magazine he raises some really interesting points in regards to streaming / Spotify. Click the picture for the full interview.
A regulated Spotify looks slightly more realistic than it did 3 years ago but if and when that happens how much do you really think you are getting from your shit. I mean, we pull in 300 thousand listeners and we get fuck all. Even on a regulated tip will it improve?
We depend on live gigs for income. Even record sales for us are not something we could fall back on and live comfortably with. We need to gig. The reason why we have been able to survive under a pandemic is savings from gigs and PRS payments. I’m not apologising for that.
Alright, back to the UK and the insane race between them and the US of whom will slide into full blown 4th Reich type of fascism quicker. At this rate, I am placing my bet on the UK to be honest. To at least try and appear semi-impartial, which I am not, I have linked an article from the bloody Financial Times of all publications, a paper that is outrageously conservative and capitalistic that it makes my hairs stand up, however, they themselves are shitting bricks about the latest run of “dismantling democracies”. Aside from the cesspool of corruption by the Tory Party back home, which is nothing but greed, it acts as a brilliant smokescreen for their democracy destruction 3.0 back home. Again, this is from the FT:
"It is surprising that a Conservative government is churning out huge volumes of legislation that enlarge the power of the state. It is appalling that it is so cavalier about democratic freedoms. But it is truly astonishing that it doesn’t seem to wonder how others might use the powers it is busily creating.”
That’s it for now comrades, I’ll be sharing the usual Hot Shots on our other platforms and I will keep you up to date with what’s happening with that Felix graphic as well. Until then, I will remain, yours, without compromise,
V.