There is a growing epidemic causing more suffering with each passing day. As blogging has exploded and, under the stewardship of the veterans the form has matured, more and more bloggers are finding themselves disillusioned, dissatisfied, taking long breaks, and in many cases simply closing up shop. This scourge ebbs and flows but there is hardly a blogger among us who has not felt it’s dark touch. This pamphlet, entitled what everyone should know about blog depression, is an attempt to bring this affliction into the light.
download the pdf to disseminate | or preview it here

I am proud to offer you these 15 pages as a free download, including 5 pages to color, a maze, a rebus story, a mad-lib, a “find the hidden picture,” a word search, and fun do-it-yourself project (answers included for your young ones.) It’s my way of giving back to the community, of doing something for the children, and of bridging the gap between us (the atheists, the agnostics, the nonists) and our righteous brothers and sisters of faith. All content is drawn directly from the old testament so it is safe and educational.
download the full, print ready, pdf | or preview it here

Below you will find a group of desktop wallpapers insipred by the site in general and some of the special projects in particular. Each is available for 3 separate screen resolutions. More will be added periodically so check back. enjoy.

"If i were called upon to choose between Beauty and Truth, i should not hesitate; i should hold to Beauty, being confident that it bears with it a truth both higher and deeper than Truth itself. I will go so far as to say there is nothing true in the world save Beauty." -or so says Anatole France. On the other hand according to George Macdonald- "Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth upon the earth without a meet alloy."
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"Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending oneself to the universal illusion without becoming its dupe." -according to Amiel at least. Thoreau poetically puts it this way- "The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is a clear sky." Emerson offers this bit of tomfoolery in his essay The oOver-soul- "We are wiser than we know."
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Karl Marx famously offered the world this- "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people." Elbert Hubbard put it thus- "Formal religion was organized for slaves: it offered them consolation which earth did not provide." Pascal frowned and with a furrowed brow said- "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
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Man and every single creature ever present upon the face of the earth were created in six days- so says the book of Genesis. The earth is 6,000 years old- so say "young earthers." Ha ha ha- so laughs I, clutching my sides. W.H. Carruth is the most sensible- "A fire-mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell, a jellyfish and a suarian, and caves where the caveman dwell; then a sense of law and beauty, and a face turned from the cold, some call it evolution and others call it God."
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"Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man." or so says R.G. Ingersoll. I tend to agree. But then i'm no expert on dogma so let's see what a Reverand has to say: "God needs your money! -Jim Bakker. Uh, well, ok, that's not fair is it? How about a theologian and Saint?! What's a good ol' fashioned Saint got to say on the subject? "Religion brought forth riches, and the daughter devoured the mother." -St. Bernard. Ouch.
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What of art? Hippocrates said- "Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgement difficult." Sir John Davies similarly said "Skill comes so slow, and life so fast doth fly, we learn so little, and forget so much." Baudelaire was dramatic saying- "The study of the beautiful is a duel in which the artist cries out with terror before he is vanquished." While Quintillian quipped- "The learned understand the theory of art, the unlearned it's pleasure." We'll leave it at that.
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Inspired by the copyleft flag meme from some months ago I whipped up this bit of Soviet constructivist goodness. For those of you who missed it, Bill Gates, of ludicrously rich fame, decided recently it would be a good idea to equate free culture advocates with communists, or to be more specific “new modern-day sort of communists.” How generous of the modern-day sort of robber baron. The image is a rework of an old Soviet poster. Now available for your desktop.
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From Wikipedia: "for many people copyleft is a technique which uses the established framework of intellectual property rights as a means of subverting the restrictions this framework imposes on the dissemination and development of humankind's knowledge. In this approach, which sees copyleft primarily as a tool in a broadly scaled sniggling operation, the intention of copyleft is to permanently minimize the restrictions imposed under intellectual property regimes."
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From Wikipedia: "The works of the Walt Disney Company are not under a de jure statutory perpetual copyright because the united states constitution requires copyrights to last "for limited times." However, the limits have been retroactively extended several times, leading to longer and longer protections. Critics have observed that the extensions have taken place right before noteworthy works from Disney and others were about to expire, concluding that such copyright term extensions add up to de facto perpetual copyright."
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A century and a half after Darwin’s most important work was published people still seem to have a hard time wrapping their minds around it’s implications, or are made nervous and upset by them. We thought it was high time Darwin's image were updated and his ideas put into less technical terms which everyone can understand. With that in mind I modified Bob Peak’s poster for Every Which Way But Loose creating an image better fit to reach the doubtful american public.
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Here is a wallpaper culled from the lower east side sticker collection. Originally screen printed on to a postal sticker here I have simplified it for your desktop's pleasure. I was tempted to offer more wallpapers culled from the collection but since this in the only one explicitly designed by me it seems most honest to just offer her up and leave it at that. As the version in the collection intones: Don't Breed!
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Here is a wallpaper taken from the Blog Depression Pamphlet, which is available above. "Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power." -Jean Baudrillard.
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Some thoughts: "The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape." -Leonard Cohen. "That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward." -Ernest Hemingway. "Whenever anyone feels depressed, he senses the proximity of something 'ugly.' His feeling of power, his will to power, his courage, his pride—they decline with ugliness, they rise with beauty." -Nietzsche.
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