I Need a Shower 2025. Acrylic on cardboard, 11 x 14"
Below is the second chapter of my upcoming book Poor Ronnie’s Anti-Ethnic Cleansing Almanac. I’ve decided to do my final proofread here, in piecemeal, as I explained in a previous post here It’s working very well. I’m catching mistakes I missed in the printed copy.
“Happy New Year! I wish you controllable poverty and access to affordable antibiotics. I am going underground, further below the emperor’s reach. He will hear the muffled howl of an angry spirit, but no longer be able to manipulate the makings of my goodness. As long as I can hold out on rice and beans, and a cheap multi-vitamin chaser, this rogue government cannot force my acquiescence to build another bunker busting bomb, nor contribute toward the salaries of Congressional and corporate stooges and sycophants. As of today, I am born again a citizen of earth, residing on the shore of a Great Lake, married to another unfortunate prisoner of the United States, whom I need now more than ever to help manage our wonderful lives with access to easy money and occasional dollops of innocence.
I have a ledger to keep my accounts, a flask to inspire expensive dreams in public houses, and an aforementioned lenient partner tuned in on another one of my “edge of precipice” experiments, which appears hypocritical, but is really an unavoidable double-bind that all adult consciousnesses (rich or poor) must face while living in a fascist state. Sounds drastic, but I need to find out for myself if this modern living isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be. I believe taxpayers are disenfranchised on a federal level, which figuratively means that by mid-April each year, Uncle Mafioso Sam and gang have made their annual visit to the majority of American households with a baseball bat demanding a 10-37% cut of our labor or knuckles-be-smashed. And, in return, compliant citizens receive more brutes on the street barfing butter steaks and greasy Bolognese. If Uncle Sam’s cut actually went to protect our neighborhoods with, for starters, universal health and elder care, guaranteed housing, education and a living wage, then U.S. Mafia good socialism, and another glass of Sambuca for the house please! I would welcome these tax hoodlums with open arms.
Instead, on any given day, our Mafia boss sends foreign thugs 2000 lb. bombs to drop on starving people while threatening imprisonment for at-home tax dodgers.
I need to be clear. This is not a moral experiment, and I am up to no good. I sit at a needy chair without a say for the future. I know I am a saint, hypocrite, fool, charlatan, creator, strongman, weakling… So are you. We are all part of this universe together. We are billionaire, barking dog, flower garden. I do not write ranting prose, paint provocative pictures, argue anarchist politics because I am a moralist. I react, yes, like a slave slapped across the face for working so damn hard. I approach the table and easel to express rage and anger, seeking a solution to my problem, which could be everyman’s problem, but that is never my concern. I don’t care enough about your choices to criticize them. I need to care for the limited extended family and friends under my influence. To take the slave metaphor further… I just want to be free, now! I don’t participate in the Civil War. I abstain because I am a non-entity in that world of decision-making. I don’t care what the masses do to destroy themselves, but dammit, whoever comes creepin’ aggressively near my wife and kids will get his throat slit first chance I get.
The artist is unhappily supported by a spouse, institution, government or bored millionaire. And perhaps it’s even worse for the canary-in-the-coal-mine type creator who looks like an actual beggar because the culture overwhelmingly rejects disobedience. It allows for dishwashers and doctors to clean up the mess for each newly constructed Smokeybones® franchise. In return for obeyance, the dutiful receive a limited pride from autonomy while another round of artists get shackled in the dark. The trappings of federal capitalism. Low expectations with very low freedom rewards, and an army of consummate drug store pushers for the new diabetics. My hope is that the more artists humiliated, the freer a community shall become. The more broke and outspoken the poets and painters, the better our chances at survival. I will consume less to punish the mafioso killers. Yup, a moral solution for sure! Another double-bind. Always the non-moralist moralizing. I am also very aware of how this “experiment” looks to other human universlings.
“The Christian mind has always been haunted by the feeling that the sins of the saint are worse than the sins of the sinners, that in some mysterious way the one who is struggling for salvation is nearer to hell and to the heart of evil than the unashamed harlot or thief. It has recognized that the Devil is an angel, and as pure spirit is not really interested in the sins of the flesh. The sins after the Devil’s heart are the intricacies of spiritual pride, the mazes of self-deception, and the subtle mockeries of hypocrisy where mask hides behind mask behind mask and reality is lost altogether.”
—Alan Watts from The Wisdom of Insecurity
Hell yeah, I’m the Devil’s advocate. Onward artist soldiers! Let’s make a world where every spoonful of brown rice gives President Genocide another hunger pang.
Here’s how I will proceed:
I plan to keep my expenditures below $15,000 (U.S. poverty level) for one year beginning January 1, 2024. I will pay rent to Rose, my share of utilities, phone, WiFi, car use, garbage removal, water, as well as all expenses related to my painting (supplies and website). Groceries will be accounted for proportionately. That is, I will pay only for what I consume (and half of our cat’s needs too).
Now for the kicker. I will challenge myself to make under $399 profit for the year. Cottage industries making less than $400/year do not need to report income to the IRS. This does not mean you should refrain from purchasing Throop work. Please no! My annual expenditures to income ratio is 100:1 at least. That is, I make a dollar for every $100 worth of labor and material expense accrued while painting and writing. (I won’t even get into the undefinable ratios of homemaking that involve thousands of hours making zero dollars. Modern slavery is very real, and a great story for a future read.)
Wish me luck!”