Category: —————–

Human beings exploit the earth and each other. We torture, kill and eat animals. We cut down forests and poison the soil and water. We make war. We drive filthy cars and pave the world. We pollute. We bully and scapegoat. We hold crazy beliefs and belong to irrational cults and religions. We don’t think for ourselves. We long for freedom while enforcing repression. We censor and suppress and police and call out and turn each other in. We rip each other new assholes while covering our own. We all think we’re better than the rest. We are hypocrites who are appalled by hypocrisy.

For meaning in our lives, we may fixate on one human evil and try to rise above it. Pro-Environment. Animal Rights. Freedom of Speech. Christianity. Communism.

The more we embrace these virtues, the more insufferable we become.

It’s human nature to try to rise above human nature.

There is simply no way out of being human. There are billions of us, each individual a node in an incomprehensibly complex network, a brain cell in a Great Brain. Sometimes we convert our neighbors, which gives rise to cults or religions or nations which then butt up against each other and go to war.

We might clean up our own little space: grow our own food, avoid filthy money by bartering, bike instead of drive, don’t eat meat. Little pockets of purity in a polluted world. Somewhere else, something worse is happening to compensate. Thank you for lowering demand of farmed animal products: now the price goes down so more can consume them. Thank you for biking instead of driving: now there’s more room on the road for another car. Thank you for Not Breeding: now someone else can, plus there’s a panic about “population implosion” and the culture is more pro-natalist than before.

While we’re doing all this Good, we try to persuade others. We never think we’re actively proselytizing, just taking opportunities for “teaching moments.” For sooner or later someone will notice our behavior is a little (or a lot) different and ask us about it. Maybe we’ll even convince them! Score! Now our cult is growing, and if it grows enough we’ll be able to clash with competing cults, more repressively enforce the purity of our in-group, and perhaps go to war with an out-group or two.

I call this The Law of Conservation of Evil.

I have clung to many causes: Environmentalism, Anti-Natalism, Vegetarianism/Veganism, Bikes Not Cars, Free Speech. I have been insufferable. Still, I am human, and humans need meaning in our lives, and that which lights us up the most can also make us the most insufferable.

I’m currently interested in how to avoid cults. I fear and condemn cults. If I develop a good theory of cults, and argue persuasively, I might create an anti-cult cult, just as Antifa creates fascism and anti-racism creates racism.

Back away from Identity

“Back away from Identity” advised Third Way Trans, a desister from the transgender cult, before he deleted his wonderful blog. That’s the rare idea that might be cult-proof.

Humans cannot rise above our evil, which is also our humanity. We can shift it around a little from locality to locality, just as we shift our “recyclable” garbage from our local landfill to somewhere in the ocean. The best we can do is back away from identity, from the need to be “good” or better than our fellows, and to acknowledge and accept Reality.

But don’t let me get too attached to convincing you of that! Carry on, world.

My cat, George, destroyed my favorite artwork, “Air,” a white wholecloth art quilt stretched like a canvas to heighten its sculptural qualities, like a frieze. I made it with a domestic sewing machine in New York. It depicts a nude. The model was me.

George has apparently been climbing up this quilt like he climbs up window screens.

I caught him near the top this morning, hanging onto the nude’s face by his claws. He dropped down, leaving a scratch so large some batting came out of it. Claw holes are evident all over the piece.

When I made “Air” in 2011, I partly wanted to preserve an image of my youth. I wasn’t all that young then — 43, actually — but I was aware as ever that I was only going to look worse from there. I often imagined my future self, aged and decrepit, recalling my younger firmer body. Better make a marker in time to facilitate that, I thought. And here I am today, behaving exactly as predicted.

Is my quilt ruined? Or is it still in progress, like my body itself? Perhaps George isn’t its destroyer but a collaborator, adding his own marks to my former image.

George is destructive. Cori calls him “terrorist.” He’s a naughty cat.

Also I love him. Should I waste energy being mad?  George’s arrival after my beloved cat Lola’s departure was the only bright spot in a horrible year, clarifying that love was more important than order, clean rugs, or intact artworks. “Air” might be ripped up, but my heart isn’t…Actually my heart is; Lola and Momo left claw marks all over it. But unlike the quilt, my heart regenerates. Scarred, sure, but it only gets bigger, making ever more room for more cats and their claw holes.

My body, aging and decrepitizing as it is, also regenerates. It’s falling apart faster than it’s rebuilding, but it has a long way to go before it’s ruined beyond repair. Maybe I should let George keep ripping up “Air”. Maybe it can serve as a protective charm, like the Picture of Dorian Gray. Let my image be ruined while my actual body lives.

Coincidentally I just installed another white wholecloth quilt stretched on a frame, “Shiva Natraj,” at a friend’s house (without pets). Shiva represents destruction and creation. George entered my life when Lola left. I would have clung to Lola forever, but cats die, like all living things. Whatever is created is destroyed. Lola is gone; George is here. Someday George will be gone and if I’m still alive and able, another kitten will be coming up right behind him. That’s how life works: not through eternal preservation, but through regeneration.

Yes, I think I’ll leave “Air” where it is, to become a scratching post for George. Whatever is created is destroyed. That goes for me, and George, and every living thing, and every physical thing, and Art.

The first half of 2025 was possibly my Worst Year Ever. It started with a depressive episode. While that was going on, my furnace broke very expensively during a severe cold snap. Despite psychic pain, I managed to make some drawings and produce these pins for my podcast co-host Cori Cohn.

Then I got sick.

I was sick for over a month. Then I got more sick.

Then I had my birthday and got more sick and went to the hospital where they gave me a chest CT scan which came back with a diagnosis of Bronchiectasis.

I accepted my new life as an immunocompromised (thanks to Skyrizi, the treatment I take for Crohn’s Disease) chronically ill (Bronchiectasis is progressive and incurable, as is Crohn’s) gimp and applied for Disability, which introduced me to the SSDI Blue Book, a compendium of maladies that beset the human body.

While I was sick, my cat Lola was sick too. It was a very dark time, trying to clean up her litterbox accidents while barely able to breathe and take care of myself. My other cat Momo wasn’t doing too well either, on Prednisone for his own alleged Crohn’s Disease (which was probably intestinal cancer, it turned out). Lola had some inflammatory bowel disease too. How did my entire household get IBD? Possibly Covid in 2023 ruined all 3 of us.

My friend Danny, who is a doctor, told me nebulizing saline helps with bronchiectasis. Another friend, Martha, contacted me with tips on equipment after I posted about my condition on fecebook. Thanks to the two of them I got myself huffing sodium chloride long before I would have otherwise. None of my own doctors knew about this way of managing bronchiectasis, which is a somewhat rare disease although diagnoses are increasing since Covid.

Managing my health became my full-time job. I made T-shirts. I made a video about how to nebulize saline. And, miraculously, I improved. I gradually returned to bicycling. I thought I’d never ride a century again, but I did on June 9.

So I withdrew my disability application. But I committed to illustrating the SSDI Blue Book, as a way of working through what had happened to me and living with chronic illnesses.

My cats unfortunately fared worse. Lola died in June. Her death was devastating. What an awful year.

After a few weeks of grieving I volunteered to “foster” a kitten, George. Predictably I fell in love and adopted him a few days later. That was about when the year stopped being exclusively horrible. It was still horrible, but some joy had entered.

Momo died in August.

That was the last truly horrible thing that happened in 2025, although I was almost hit by a car as a sort of “parting shot”.

Shortly thereafter I adopted another kitten as a companion for George, and named him Ira, after the brothers Gershwin. Their full names are George Oxytocin Paley and Ira Squigglewhiskers Paley. They continue to fill me with joy.

I pretty much stopped blogging around this time. I have been content to watch and play with my beautiful, affectionate, rapidly-growing kittens (they’re quite big now), ride my bikes, huff saline, and, now that it’s winter, draw those SSDI Blue Book illustrations. I have retreated more from the world. Being immunocompromised, I avoid indoor spaces, which rules out much travel and winter socializing. I wear a mask when grocery shopping and otherwise in indoor public; I’m “one of those people” now. I’m getting used to it. I guess I’ve done most of the hard work of grieving, and am at the “acceptance” stage.

It is a miracle, what we can adapt to. Kittens are a miracle too. It seems crass to “replace” a loved one, but that is how Life works: the old die, and new are born. I know George and Ira will die someday; no matter how many years we get it will be too soon. Death is built into life. But more life is built in too, and that is why we have kittens, always more individuals coming into the world as others exit.

The main thing I learned from the hell of this year is: Love is the only thing that makes life bearable.  Thanks to George and Ira, my life is not just bearable, but joyful. I’m also grateful for my health, which I feared I’d never get back. As long as I huff saline daily and avoid communicable pathogens, I’m quite fit! Maintaining my health has been a huge blow to my lifestyle, but I am adapting, as we all do.

Throughout the year I continued to make the Heterodorx podcast with Cori Cohn. He’s also had a terrible year, and is still struggling through depression. I wish him, and you, and everyone, more joy in 2026!

Photos after the break. Continue reading “My 2025 Year In Review”

Note: I have recently been writing to my 18-year-old self, who wrote crazy journals in 1986. Here’s an excerpt.

March 16 2024 8pm

Young Self, you are oblivious to men’s interest in you. In this respect and a few others, you really are an idiot. Yes, it’s kind of charming: a kind of modesty, not full of yourself like other girls. But if you’re acting that oblivious just to support an idea of yourself as “modest,” an identity, then you are a narcissist. Fortunately that’s not why; you are genuinely, sincerely clueless.

Unrelated: you are also a narcissist. Don’t panic! It’s normal for 18-year-olds. Your depressions, which grow more severe, are abysses of self-loathing, which is self-obsession, which is narcissism. I know you don’t want to be depressed; you are a victim of mental illness. Unfortunately framing yourself as a victim is also narcissism. But don’t panic! You are ill, but you are also robust. You will recover.

It’s not like Future-Me saying this to Then-You would make any difference. It would just make you cringe and despair. There is a chasm between us, of Time, maturity, and recovery. You will cross that chasm but you can never go back. Sick mind doesn’t understand healthy mind.

Is it healthy for me to call you a narcissist? Maybe not. I am grateful every day I am recovering. When I consider how much less narcissistic I am today, I feel relief and peace; I smile. But you are still in the Bad Old Days. Your strong mind attacks itself, and the label “narcissist” is just another cudgel you will beat yourself with. I want to handle you with kid gloves, kid, but that won’t help you either. I want to save you, but only Time can do that.

Instead, let me enlighten you about men: they are horny. They desire women. You are an attractive young woman. Yes, your body alone is enough to attract men. You think men are like you: that they seek understanding, or at least compatibility, or meaningful connection. You think a man’s attraction to you signals he thinks you’re really awesome and special and worth some kind of risk. Actually, men do think that, for seconds or even minutes at a time. But it’s just their hormones talking. Yours do the same, except it takes weeks or months to really sink into your brain and alter your thought patterns even when the object of your infatuation isn’t present.

Men are not like you, no matter how male-identified you are. You think men are so awesome they couldn’t possibly desire awkward nerdy little you. Your mistake is that they do want you, but they’re not awesome. I see these men are giving you ample evidence they are both attracted to you and not awesome, and your oblivious idiot self gets it backward. Which causes you a lot of pain, I’m afraid.

Still, I blame hormones. When they finally release you (yay menopause!) you are no longer attractive to men anyway.

From ages 13 to 50 you will be in a hormone haze, attracted to men despite ever-accumulating evidence this hurts you. Somehow your life contains other items of interest, so it’s not a total waste. Speaking of total waste: your uterus! You have to menstruate for 37 years too, and it’s continually horrible. It never “smooths out” or whatever. Female bodies are made for having children. It infuriates you, having a female body. When you’re finally diagnosed with that giant cervical fibroid at 49, you learn pregnancy and gestation are prophylactics against fibroid development. The female body is like, make those babies or I will punish you myself.

You are at war with your body as well as your mind.

I have no solution for this, Young Self. Being human is hard. Having a body is hard. But this is, literally, Life. Suffering of one kind or another is normal; it’s inevitable. In Time, you will come to love and appreciate your body. At 55 I am much more comfortable in this old body than you are at 18.

You will make peace with your female-ness specifically. Fuck babies, fuck “moon cycles,” that all sucks for you forever. But you are still a woman, and you come to love and respect that. Many women your age today similarly hate their female-ness, and they are not so lucky as you. That’s because if they say they “identify as” boys, doctors will put them on testosterone and cut off their breasts. Yeah, I know you’d love that right now, but you’d still hate yourself and your body. You’d just have some irreversible medical damage and trauma to contend with as well.

9:41pm

I hear you saying,

“Irreversible medical damage and trauma? But it sounds cool! Maybe I want to be trans. No more periods, no babies ever, and I hate my breasts. I like gay men more than straight ones — I could be a GAY MAN! I already say  I’m a gay man trapped inside a woman’s body. Sign me up! What’s the problem??”

Okay Young Self, let’s have The Conversation. The one where I tell you about the transbirds and the transbees.

First, just because some people say you’re a man, and you really want to be a man, and you modify your body to resemble a man (facial hair is especially convincing), you will never actually be a man. No one will know that more acutely than gay men. Gay men like men, not women who look kind of like men. Not mastectomized, hysterctomized women on exogenous testosterone.

You already have delusional expectations of Life. Expecting to become a man, which is physically impossible, will put you on a path of continual, endless frustration and disappointment. It will make you angry and depressed — even more than you are already, although that’s hard to believe!

Don’t give me that look. Are you mad at me, telling you you can’t become a man? Maybe you think I’m the only reason you can’t, that if it weren’t for my negativity and “transphobia” you could be a man why am I saying no why do I hate you???

Young gender-dysphoric Self, Life has limits. Yes, you can overcome some limits, those imposed by human beings and society (called social constructs) if you are brave and believe in yourself. People say you can’t survive as an independent artist and cartoonist, but you will! They say you can’t make an animated feature film all by yourself, but you will! They say you can’t drop out of college and make something of yourself, but you will!

But changing sex is physically impossible. Sex is not a social construct (although claiming sex is a social construct is a social construct). Sex is a true limit.

You say,

“I’m not so delusional I think I can literally change sex. Obviously I won’t be able to father children, but I won’t want to. You’ve already told me how awful menstruating is, why wouldn’t you want to spare me that? And what use are these breasts? I just want to ‘live as a man.’ Looking like a man and being treated like one is enough.”

So, no stable relationships? No gay man will go for you, they require a working penis. And het men are turned off by masculinity.

You’ve already told me we never have a long-term healthy relationship with a man anyway, Old Self! So who cares? At least I won’t have breasts and periods.

Hmm, you make a fair point there, Young Self. Do you know about the myriad health complications of cross-sex hormones? Vaginal atrophy?

I’m not gonna use my vagina anyway, not as a MAN!

You are going to want to be as healthy as possible. Medical transition is unhealthy.

Being FEMALE is unhealthy! I have irregular painful periods. I have painful breasts—

That’s Fibrocystic Breast Disease, by the way. Yeah it’s bad. It goes away after your hysterectomy though. Yay menopause!

You’re saying menopause is so great, wouldn’t medically transitioning me just put me into early menopause? Sounds great to me!

Well, Young Self, medical menopause isn’t like natural menopause, it’s much harsher.

Harsher than 32 more years of this menstruation and hormone haze shit?

Okay Young Self, you are wearing me down. It’s late. Let me try to sleep on it and try to persuade you tomorrow.

*****

March 17, 6am

You are 18. You won’t transition. You’re old enough to comprehend the consequences. Like I said before, a few years ago, when you were 13 or 14, you would have transitioned, had it been an option. But at 18 you’re already having sexual experiences with men. You currently fancy yourself “in love,” albeit with a man who moved to California over a week ago and still hasn’t even called. Meanwhile you’re hanging out with your male friends, soaking up their attention as you convince yourself it’s JUST FINE that R_____ hasn’t contacted you yet with a phone number or address. Your dorm friend Eric calls you a “stupid shit.” He’s calling everyone a that nowadays because he’s “divorcing” his girlfriend and is bitter. You think he’s funny. But here you are, Young Fool, absorbing his attention and that of ____ _____, with whom you will have a fling in just a few weeks or months. You stupid shit.

As painful, delusional, and crazy all this relationship business is, you simply adore men and are hopelessly attracted to them. Transing won’t fix this. In fact, testosterone would almost certainly increase your sex drive. It would likely alleviate your depression temporarily, but in the longer run have a devastating effect on your fragile psychology. Yes, I’ve said you have a strong mind, but it’s also fragile, the “sanity” part. At 18 you know something is wrong, that your mental state is delicate, which is why you don’t use psychoactive drugs despite your fascination (you recently read The Doors of Perception, after all). Testosterone is a psychoactive drug and some women who use it are genuinely psycho, like “The Nashville Shooter” who shoots up her former school and kills 6 people in 2023. You care enough about your mental health to consider that a deterrant.

But the biggest transing-deterrant at 18 is you become aware that your female body is admired by men. You love men; men love your breasts that you hate, your curves that you hate, your femaleness that you hate. Using pure intellectual reasoning alone, you understand more men are het than gay, so if you like men, this female body of yours will help you “get” them. If you transition, gay men won’t be into your body no matter how much you masculinize it. If you transition, het men will be turned off by your masculinization. Your sexual experiences, fraught as they are, will get you more connected with your body and cure you of your adolescent fag-haggery as you discover het men are in fact good for something.

As for your uterus, if I could go back in time and get you a hysterectomy, I would (keeping your ovaries of course, you need gonads for health, as much as you hate your hormones you would have worse problems without them, like brittle bones). But they don’t let teenagers get hysterectomies even today, unless they claim they’re trans. Then it’s a medical free-for-all.

If you medically transitioned, your life would be much different. But it’s moot because in 1986, transitioning children and teenagers isn’t a Thing. For this reason, becoming a “transman” is not your story. It is the story of the similarly confused, depressed, alienated-from-their-bodies young women of today.

It’s Hibernation Season, but my big planned projects have been stymied, so I’m doing Hundred-Fifty Dollar Drawings instead. Here are some new ones:

Plus, this E-Bike Safety Sheet for Bicycle Evolution: