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\n \u201cI Like Purple\u201d\u009d acrylic on canvas September, 2016, 40\u201d\u009d x 30\u201d\u009d. I made this painting on comission for our friends Susie & Lee Poague. Susie\u2019s only instructions were, \u201cI like purple.\u201d\u009d Looks kind of theatrical. I went to the art store to buy three extra tubes of random purple shades. Click for a larger version of the painting.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
Sylvia and I were at the opera in San Francisco on election night, seeing Aida<\/a>. At intermission I went to the NY Times app on my phone to see how things were going. All week, Hillary\u2019s chances of winning had been around 90%. Now suddenly Trump\u2019s chances of winning were 98% WTF?<\/p>\n I literally couldn\u2019t believe it. I left the web site, looked at some others, same news. I had this horrible wrenching feeling\u2014as if I, and all my friends and loved ones, and everyone else as well\u2014as if all of us were on a nasty low-probability time-branch that had stemmed off from the main line. And there\u2019s no going back.<\/p>\n Like we\u2019ve suffered the hideous attack of the flying saucers. Only\u2014saucers are kind of interesting. Not banal.<\/p>\n Every morning I wake up, feeling reasonably happy\u2014and then it hits me again. I\u2019m trying to dial down on my newspaper and TV and news apps, a media diet, but it\u2019s hard not to creep back for another dose of adrenaline and nausea. It helps if I get deeply into a creative project\u2014like a painting or a story. Or, failing that, into some intricate web-site\/self-publishing hacking.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a painting I did the day after the election. It\u2019s short title is \u201cCalifornians Request Secession,\u201d\u009d and its long title is \u201cNovember 9, 2016: Californians Request Secession from the Trumpic States of America.\u201d\u009d The little saucer guys with cubical heads are Californians, you understand. I made their heads be cubes because (a) cubes are easy to paint, and (b) I feel like I\u2019ve got my head inside a media box these days.<\/p>\n To make the painting, I used a big piece of masonite from a local history museum. They had a historic photo laminated onto the masonite, a scene of a work crew building a road up Mount Hamilton near San Jose, CA. So I thinned down my acrylic paints with medium and with water, and painted right over the photo. And then I did two more layers, making the important parts pop out. By the way, you can always get more info about my paintings at www.rudyrucker.com\/paintings<\/a>.<\/p>\n We had dinner with three younger Silicon Valley couples, all of them engineers, working for Apple and Cisco. And they were all starting to joke about Trump. It felt good to joke. Like the way I used to hear Sylvia\u2019s Hungarian relatives talk about the Russian occupation back in the 70s.<\/p>\n Galileo, in a letter to fellow astronomer Kepler, on the subject of advocating the heliocentric theory to the powers that be. \u201cMy dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the ass, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n I came across an incredible five minute movie, by a Uruguayan director, produced in Mexico, about Trump and El Muro<\/em>…funny, desperate, human, and a bit SF like. Best thing I’ve seen since the election. Bears watching twice. “M.A.M.O.N.” by Ale Damiani. https:\/\/vimeo.com\/190738676<\/p>\n On Supermoon Monday, Sylvia and I went to look at the 4:10pm ultra-low tide at Four Mile Beach north of Santa Cruz on Rt. 1, and walked way out in the late afternoon. So fabulous. An uncovered world, a new kingdom. I made it out to a rocky point that\u2019s usually hard to get to with all the water, and stood up there, in the air so fresh, with about twenty Santa Cruz sea-dog surfers down there doing their thing.<\/p>\n So many good photos to spot. My camera is always good company. Recently, at Eddie Marritz\u2019s urging, I set my trusty Fujifilm X100T to \u201csilent mode,\u201d\u009d do it doesn\u2019t click when I press the button. \u201cWhat will that do for me?\u201d\u009d I asked Eddie. Eddie just smiled in his space-ranger way and gently said, \u201cTry it. See what happens.\u201d\u009d And I do like it without the click. The click was…breaking my merged-in contact with the one true reality.<\/p>\n Dig how that rock looks like a piece of cheese.<\/p>\n Another change in my shooting is that I that I\u2019ve started using manual focus. For one thing it speeds up the shot\u2014I don\u2019t have to wait for the autofocus to figure things out. Also I get to pick what exact part of the scene I want to focus on. Yet another change I that I now allow the auto ISO setting to run all the way up to 32000, insanely high, but that means I\u2019m not going to be getting motion blur as often.<\/p>\n This shot is up on a rocky point at the right end of Four Mile Beach, it’s a little hard to climb up there and, potentially, a wave could sweep over the point. So wild and isolated, I love it. That outcrop on the right looks kind of like a tiki god, doesn’t it? With the two boulder eyes. Great reflection of the sky on that puddle. A launchpad feeling on that point, with the insane untamed energy of the waves right there. Surfers often jump in from here.<\/p>\n We stayed till it was getting dark, around 5, and went another five miles north to the Davenport Bakery, a roadhouse in bucolic hippie tiny town on a monstrously high sea-side bluff cliff. The place is a bar with a about eight tables, plus a baked goods counter. Locals, just folks. They had a country hippie bluegrass band\u2014a pickup group of old hippies\u2014they played “Willin'” by Little Feat, and we in the audience were singing along the choruses. \u201cGive me weed, whites, and wine \/ and I\u2019ll be willin \/ to be movin.\u201d\u009d And the itinerary: \u201cFrom Tucson to Tucumcari, from Tehachapi to Tonopah.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n I said to Sylvia, “No matter what Trump does, this is still going to be here. California is safe. We\u2019re not going to change.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n Meanwhile I\u2019ve republished my classic nonfiction tome The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul<\/em>. You can but it off the book’s home page <\/a>in paperback or ebook. Or you can read the whole damn thing as a free webpage<\/a>, very attractively formatted, complete with about 150 illos (mostly drawn by daughter Isabel), about twenty tables, and some 150 footnotes…it’s one big long page, you scroll down through it, or jump via the Table of Contents links.<\/p>\n The book has a long subtitle that summarizes what\u2019s in it. What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About It\u2019s fun inside the LIFEBOX maze of thought. The logic is correct, and the conclusions are startling. The thing is, thinking very precisely about the nature of computation leads to a cornucopia of philosophical insights.<\/p>\n Simple rules can generate gnarly patterns. Physics obeys laws, but the outcomes aren\u2019t predictable. Free will works because you can\u2019t think fast enough to know what you\u2019ll do. Your jumps of consciousness are like the measurements in quantum mechanics. My books earn so much less than Stephen King\u2019s because of universal scaling laws. It may well be that we live in one of the best realities that can actually exist. It\u2019s all there! Seriously.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images6\/133_ilikepurple_1200.jpg\")
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\n \u201cCalifornians Request Secession\u201d\u009d acrylic on photo on particle board, November, 2016, 30\u201d\u009d x 20\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the painting.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cSaucer Attack\u201d\u009d acrylic on canvas August, 2016, 40\u201d\u009d x 30\u201d\u009d. This is a scene I\u2019ve always wanted to paint. I\u2019ve seen it in Zap comix, and on the cover of a Firesign Theater album. In the Zap version, one of the people is thinking, \u201cI always hoped I wouldn\u2019t be here for this.\u201d\u009d Click for a larger version of the painting.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nUltimate Reality, The Meaning of Life, And How to Be Happy. <\/em> It’s organized into six chapters, a “stairway to heaven” like Isabel drew.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n