Two of the over 19,000 products I’ve designed on my zazzle store
29 Saturday Dec 2012
29 Saturday Dec 2012
26 Wednesday Dec 2012
Tags
autism, control of guns ammunitions, cricketdiane, gun control, guns, independent living, mentally ill people, weapons
(found here – )
http://www.zazzle.com/engineer_geek_cool_nerd_tshirt_5_by_cricketdiane-235248520098515246
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It is probably a waste of time to be designing any tshirts with anything besides some gun oriented saying or anti-gun oriented saying right now. It is just about ridiculous. Maybe I can think of something to say on a tshirt about such gun things – one way or another, but I don’t have a single thought about it that is worth publishing for polite company to ever read. But, maybe . . .
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I did do some other tshirts today along the same lines of nerd and geek tshirts for engineers, physicists and various designs behind the words. I’ve been twittering a bit and entering the discussion about guns and anti-guns to some extent, but it is really a moot point. My voice is unlikely to mean much considering how stirred up people are listening to right wing radio shows blaring in their ears constantly day and night – in their cars, in their homes and everywhere they go. It seems like both sides of the argument have some good points and both sides are continuing to make the wrong people into the “target” enemy of the masses – which is all completely insane. I’m very tired of that part of the arguments. It has to stop – this is the twenty-first century, not 1919.
What could I say on a tshirt or poster about guns, gun rights or gun control that anyone besides me would even want to say? I can’t even imagine. Personally, I think of things like, never bring a pea-shooter to a laser party and never bring a knife to a party where everyone else brought guns, obviously. However, the ideas that I hear among the press and their repetitions of what people are saying on both sides of the argument – don’t make much sense, if you ask me.
In one sense, people who own guns and ammunition in mass quantities are the most likely to fail to handle difficult and dangerous, life-threatening situations with any of those guns and ammunition for them – and in another sense, they are the most likely to inadvertently shoot themselves in the foot or their own family members in mistaken identity when someone comes in late at night or during the throes of some inane argument when any other method of conflict resolution and anger management should have been used. But, it is also true that to abrogate the laws and rights protecting our freedoms to bear arms is a sure path to destruction in every historic reference that exists.
For the hundreds of thousands of crimes involving guns that happen every single month across the United States, although only the tiniest fraction of one percent of those are perpetrated by anyone with mental illness, mental deficiencies such as head injury or post traumatic stress disorder, with autism or personality disorders, or with developmental disorders – or generally chemically imbalanced – there is the common misconception that those with these types of mental difficulties are the common perpetrators of gun wielding crimes and murders.
It is simply stunning to think of the degree of domestic violence, rape, robbery, murder, assault and violence which are being done by people in America considered to be “normal” as opposed to mentally ill. It happens every single minute of every single day somewhere in America – and yet, the first to be blamed as the target “enemy” of all by the conservatives, the NRA, the press, both the right and left wing opinionators and among many politicians and opinion leaders – is the autistic, the head injured, the PSTD survivors, the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, the different, the unique, the super intelligent, the personality disordered, the right-brain dominant types, the creatives and generally, anyone and everyone who may have ever been considered a member in any respect – of those communities (for any reason, which means every single woman who has ever suffered from PMS, Menopause and/or stress induced depression.) It is obscene considering that these populations rarely are the perpetrators of any of these crimes – and yet these violent crimes continue en masse every single day.
It is extremely rare for a crazy person to choose to murder their wife or husband as a solution to anger, frustration or a desire to simply not deal with divorce – however, among the “normal” people, that has been an extremely common thinking pattern with thousands of murders conceived, concocted and enacted as a result. Why should those jackasses have ever been allowed to have guns or poisons or anything else that could cause harm? Many of them had histories of abuse towards their domestic partners and others – and many of those “normal” people were acting out in violence and anger long before perpetrating the loss of life that their murdering rampage caused – why did they get to buy guns and bullets? Why don’t the pundits denounce those violent people as the ones to likely cause harm to themselves, to others and on our society as a whole? Why aren’t they the known enemy that they have proven themselves to be? Why is that?
And, beyond all that – as much as I believe guns have value in our freedoms and that, to honor our rights to bear arms is critical to our continued success as a nation with those freedoms – I do not know why anyone would need the kinds of assault weapons and huge gun-wielding magazines for them that are more commonly found in war. It is a lot of money to invest in having them for a supposed robber that might at some point come into someone’s house, especially considering that those weapons probably wouldn’t be sitting by the bed to use against the robber anyway. It seems strange and out of scale to what those weapons could ever be used to do that would be handy to be able to do – are they going to try and bring down an entire herd of horses with one magazine with all those bullets and using that one gun to do it?
Do these people who own these weapons even intend to use them for some good purpose when they are choosing to buy them? And, what would that be? Are they expecting to eat elephants when the end of the world comes and believe the need to shoot down those elephants will require guns like this – or do they believe that we will all be zombies and they will therefore have the right and need to shoot all of their neighbors and what had been their friends? What thinking is all that?
If we have all turned into zombies, they are going to have bigger problems to do something about that no gun will solve and no amount of bullets in any magazine will begin to deal with – or do they believe their water supply, food supply, electricity and other public assets are something they can solve by themselves after they’ve shot everybody? See, there is just no sense to it that I can find. It is true that historically – across the world throughout modern and ancient history – that those societies without any way to protect themselves have been annihilated en masse by their own governments to the whim of some group or dictator or party with extreme beliefs. That is true. It is why our rights to bear arms is very important – but why can’t we have both?
We have knives in our kitchens without picking them up for the least provocation and using them to cause harm to someone. Wouldn’t it be possible for it to be trendy and popular to not pick up a gun to solve a problem, to not pick up a gun to deal with frustration or anger, to not use violence including guns in order to solve anything as the first choice or the only choice? Couldn’t that make it less likely for guns to be used to solve problems of any kind within our communities?
I don’t think I’m going to think of any tshirts for this subject – it is too – well, too confusing. It is just confusing.
Oh well.
At least the right wing people in our nation have made it clear that every person in America who does not think, look, act and live in the manner the conservatives do – or is in any way different than they are as a group – is “the enemy” including all Americans with mental disabilities, emotional and mental illnesses, head injury, autism, autistic spectrum disorders, moodiness, agitation, aggravation, PMS, menopause, hormone imbalances, chemical imbalances, diagnosed and undiagnosed mental and personality disorders, intelligence, right brain thinking, creativity, imaginative, innovative, shy, verbally challenged, visual language oriented, victim of strokes and seizures, epileptic, neurologically impaired, and / or victims of the economic downturn who are now or ever have been, homeless or lived in poverty.
Apparently, the only thing both sides of the gun argument believe jointly is that “those” people are the violent enemy of everyone at any given moment – despite the very facts that these are the people dealing successfully with their own anger management and conflict resolution issues in other ways besides violence on a regular basis AND despite the fact, that these are the populations of people in our society who are the least likely in fact to carry out any deadly or violent response toward others.
Personally, I am glad to know that the people speaking on behalf of the masses in America are publicly stating that we are their enemy class in their estimation because they have been acting that way for years, acting out on those beliefs and having their children act out on those beliefs since the Nixon and Goldwater years with their ultra right wing conservatism and neoconservatism running the nation like banshees.
The far-right (also known as the extreme right or radical right) refers to the highest degree of rightism in right-wing politics. Far right politics involves support of strong or complete social hierarchy in society, and supports supremacy of certain individuals or groups deemed to be innately superior who are to be more valued than those deemed to be innately inferior.[1]
(from)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics
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There was the occasion where a news publication listing all the gun owners licensed to have those guns in the last couple days has been subjected to the attacks by the conservatives AND pro-gun people across the country (and although some of those with guns who are pro-gun – also are conservative and ultra right-wing, many are not). There has been an outcry against the public information being made publicly available as if that would make any change in the behavior and choices of those who would do harm – one way or the other. Unfortunately, in our economic reality across the US currently – a map of economic demographics showing where all the rich people live is actually more dangerous than where people do or do not have guns in their home. But, no – since that is not their common belief among the gun toting conservatives speaking out against the public aggregation of gun license data being displayed publicly in a news outlet – the comparison is therefore, a moot point. The fact that their financial information is detailed and displayed for all to see – from realtors to debt collectors to sales people to retailers and just about anybody who would like to buy that information – doesn’t bother these same people. Stupid – it is just stupid.
So faulty info 101 – the people with guns have chosen to brand the wrong people as “the enemy”. And, secondly – aside from being scared for their neighbors to know they have guns and whatever armory of weapons and ammunition they are holding in their homes – these same people with guns believe wrongly that their financial info being publicly available is no big deal but the fact they have weapons in their home should not be public info. And, besides those two things – the real chances of harm coming to them or their family members, their community, their neighbors or their business are coming to them from people they would never expect because the people that are likely to perpetrate such violence are not actually on the list of likely “enemies”. Figures.
http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/right-up-in-arms-on-papers-gun-map-85483.html
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By the way, people in America are more likely to get shot by their neighbor or church going friend over some inane crap like where the fence line should or shouldn’t be – etc. ad nauseum – rather than by some person with any mental or emotional disability.
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15 Saturday Dec 2012
Tags
cricketdiane, cricketdiane art and design, extreme design, extreme skateboards, extreme sports, skateboarding, skateboards
Today, we are designing as a team. 5 year old Jasmine and nearly 3 year-old Allia are helping me to design some skateboards and new tshirts on the zazzle cricketdiane store.
This is the first one we designed so far –
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On the second one that Jasmine and I designed, we put one of my ocean paintings on the design in a way that repeats over itself and created this extreme ocean-theme skateboard deck. Amazing. We like it. This created an overall effect as if it is an entirely new painting of the ocean – very surprising.
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12 Wednesday Dec 2012
Tags
12-12-12 concert, Brooklyn, cricketdiane, hurricane recovery and rebuilding, hurricane sandy, Hurricane Sandy Donations, Madison Square Garden, Manhattan, NJ, NYC, Staten Island, US hurricane recovery New York City, volunteerism
How to Watch the 12/12/12 Concert for Sandy Relief | News & Opinion | PCMag.com.
AMAZING!
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7.30 pm ET Tonight
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11 Tuesday Dec 2012
Tags
cricketdiane, designer skateboard decks, extreme skateboards, extreme sports skateboarding, no words skateboard decks
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– cricketdiane
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11 Tuesday Dec 2012
10 Monday Dec 2012
06 Thursday Dec 2012
Tags
cricketdiane, flooding maps, hurricane preparedness, hurricane recovery and rebuilding, hurricane sandy, national weather service hurricane alerts, storm surge
XXX
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/12/06/natl-hurricane-center-alters-definition-of-hurricane-warning/
The Coral Gables-based weather agency now defines a hurricane warning as:
An announcement that sustained winds of 74 mph or higher are expected somewhere within the specified area in association with a tropical, sub-tropical, or post-tropical cyclone. Because hurricane preparedness activities become difficult once winds reach tropical storm force, the warning is issued 36 hours in advance of the anticipated onset of tropical-storm-force winds. The warning can remain in effect when dangerously high water or a combination of dangerously high water and waves continue, even though winds may be less than hurricane force.
(Etc.)
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http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/12/06/after-sandy-bloomberg-calls-for-redrawn-flood-maps/
Two-thirds of all New York City homes damaged by superstorm Sandy are outside of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s existing 100-year flood zone, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday as he called for an immediate redrawing of the maps to reflect current conditions. [good explanation of what the problem is – worth reading all of it.]
(etc.)
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The Mayor’s Office released these two maps today – by twitter and on their NYC Mayor’s office website –
The first map is of the flood zones that were expected by the current mapping – and the second shows the actual flooding from Hurricane Sandy. – That would be a significant problem – however, it doesn’t describe the fact that geologists, geophysicists, meteorologists and other specialists in urban planning, flooding and natural disasters have been telling them for years that because of the shape of these openings to the sea – there would be significant flooding in the city and every borough from hurricane surges when storms come. Those facts have been presented over and over to the Mayor’s Office and Planning Commissions, Department of Buildings and other NYC Decision-makers every so often since long before Mayor Bloomberg’s administration and certainly for a number of times during his administrative tenure. These maps prove the very things that were being projected from the scientifically derived information that was repeatedly presented to them.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycmayorsoffice/8249076041/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycmayorsoffice/8250142756/in/photostream/
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They are now going to change those maps. (among other things – )
This is an earlier tweet today from the Mayor’s Office –
Mike Bloomberg @MikeBloomberg
We’re going to conduct & release a comprehensive review of our preparedness measures & recovery operations.
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