Da Public Display of Affection, Up in Ya Social Network

(or..no, nevermind. That title is perfect)

At the risk of coming across as a very cynical person (concerning "love"), I feel the need (how ironic) to expound on a post I made on Facebook this morning. (Accuse me of propagating E-drama, I don't care!) I guess, as a heads up, you could file this under a sort of "rant", although I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to take it yet, so please, read on! This is what my status update was:

"Honestly, everytime that I see one of you make a post directed at your "significant other" (Except you're not. You're posting it for the rest of *us* to see) telling them how much you love them, I can't help but to cringe and feel a bit worried. I cringe, and worry, because you've just made it obvious that things must not be going so well if you feel the need to reassure the rest of us that it is!... STOP IT."

(It was followed by a comment from me saying "Yeah. I said it." and many "Likes" for the status and the comment alike...)

So, if the content of that status post did not make its context obvious, I will proceed to do so. (I say that as if I wasn't. It's the whole reason I started writing this post! Silly me...) To start, I want to give y'all a little backstory, so that I (and my views) may be better understood. (I LOVE backstory time!) Alright, so, there's a certain aspect of my life that I've become painfully and unapologetically honest about to everyone who knows me, and as a result (which still comes as a big surprise to me) the women in my life (friends, lovers, and otherwise) have become incredibly honest, to me, about their behavior while in, out, around, and in-between so-called "exclusive" relationships, and about the men in their lives. I've known several of these girls for years, so I feel totally safe assuming that their brave honesty has everything to do with the shift in my thinking. To summarize, I'll say that it's the sort of stuff the lot of you would consider "scandalous". And that any of you reading this who happen to be conservative, monogamous minded, take-home-to-meet-the-parents type of males should feel very concerned. (Or, conversely, you could read this book!) Anyways, moving on...

After some of these extremely frank conversations, and becoming aware of just how "well" their relationships were going, and of just how "great" they felt about their men, you could probably understand my confusion after I would still see many of these Jane Does posting statuses letting everyone on Facebook know just how "great/amazing/loving/caring/barf!" their boyfriend/husband is.

Really?

Excuse me for being a bit naive (I want to trust people, I really do), but it wasn't until following up with these women, and learning that, no, they still felt the same as they'd told me they did in private, that I realized that it's all just a big, fat FRONT. It's crazy, and a little scary, when I actually start to think about it. To think about how so many people, especially women, hide, or outright lie about, how they actually feel about things. (Sorry, girls, but it's undeniable that the magnitude of your fronting is proportional to the amount of force that our society uses to try and make you conform...and I guess I can't entirely blame you for it.) It makes it rather difficult not being cynical about these things, but I'll say that that little book that I linked above gives me lots of hope for humanity.

Anyhow, now that my sentiments on the subject have been thoroughly expounded, I guess I can move on with the tale at hand. So, these silly little status updates are common enough occurrences/annoyances, and a little "wink-wink" (by way of a "Like" from me) or vague disapproval (By way of leaving a comment that simply reads "Reassurance") is all they usually get. Today though, one of these young women posted "I love you, (John Doe).", and I think my slight fever, combined with the cringing induced by the things I know about this "relationship", caused the explosion of words seen near the beginning of this blog post. You could say that publishing my status post, which is not viewable by her boyfriend, was the more socially acceptable thing to do...

As I mentioned above though (in parenthesis, about the magnitude of the fronting being proportional to society's pressure to conform), I can't place all of the blame on the girls. If some of you guys weren't perceived as being the emotionally fragile, possessive little cry-babies that you are by your women, then they wouldn't feel the need to constantly lie just to spare your feelings. (They'd probably also break up with you sooner, get back with you less and be a lot happier. Hey, I never said *I* cared about your fragile emotions.)

I don't even know where it was that I wanted to go with all this (aside from making my displeasure with it all clearly known), but things would be so much easier if people were just honest about what and how they feel, and accepting of what and how others feel. (After all, we don't choose how we feel. Can we really be faulted for it?!) That's all I had. Y'all get out of here now. Go on, git!

J, out...

On This Blog's Title

(me actually disliking spiders...but letting "this" happen)

I've kinda become known as the "Spider Guy" to some of the kids at my school. It's a very strange thing, though. I mean, I've turned (what I figure is) my arachnophobia into some sort of obsession. I find this as strange as they do...

So, I figured it was time that I went into this, and decided that this would be a good place to go a little more in-depth on this subject, since I'm more concerned with writing about process, and so on, in my TARANTULAS blog.

So, where do I start? I suppose this all started when I was taking Animal Anatomy in the Fall 2008 quarter. Our first assignment was to draw a "small animal portrait". (Not to toot my own horn, since I'm known for being pretty damn good with charcoal, but lemme tell you, that, there is nothing "small" about drawing a fully finished piece on 18x24in paper...) I'm not exactly sure what devil got into me that morning, but when I went looking for reference images I decided to look for spiders; I got a surprise.

I returned to class with some of the other reference images that I had acquired, and stopped by to speak to the instructor briefly. I told him, "Y'know...I think I learned something new about myself during this little search. I went looking for images of spiders, and while going through and looking at all sorts of different close ups, I started feeling a little nauseous, and my palms got a little sweaty. I think I'm arachnophobic..." and with a confused smile and a nod of his head he replied, "Really?...That's interesting."

This "realization" set me on a bit of a journey. I went home that day and found a few hideously close-up shots of spiders of all sorts and began using them as desktop backgrounds. I figured I could conduct some exposure therapy on myself. I'm not sure if this helped any, as I simply got to add spider nightmares to my repertoire of dreams, and gained a sort of obsession with featuring spiders in my art. That art part didn't manifest itself until over a year later, in the Winter of 2010, when I modeled a spider to add to a scene. It's kind of went on from there... (This and that, among others)

It wasn't much longer before I was wearing my own t-shirts (bearing, at the least, one spider on them, by way of my brand), and you could probably say that this was the tipping point to me earning the "spider guy/dude" nickname I've been given by some. (I am sometimes called "spider man", at which time they often go, "You know what I mean!", inferring that they don't mean that Spider Man)

I guess I can't say that I dislike it. If I had a problem with being known as the spider guy, I wouldn't have made one my brand, huh? Speaking of my brand, I will be redesigning it soon. I suppose it was that fact that got me thinking about this. Hm...

Well, that's all I have for that one. A 28 hour train ride back home (in which I got very little rest) killed my immune system, and I'm fighting a flu at the moment, so I think I'll return to resting now. Until next time, carry on!

J, out...