Long before e-mail, chat and cyberporn, there was paint.
Yes, in the long, gray, 19-year period of my life before I owned a personal computer, the greatest function one of these advanced machines could perform was to run a simple paint program, with “Oregon Trail” coming in as a close second.
Visions of intricate, artistic drawings danced like two prima donna ballerinas in my head. Those dreams would continue right up until I grabbed the mouse, at which point my well-honed hand-eye coordination became analogous to that of the late Harry Caray on dope.
Unless I’ve got about six hours to go pixel-by-pixel, conjuring up the right color for every little square, the bizarre, “edgy” monstrosity I invariably produce makes me sometimes think I’m the unholy love-child of Dali and Picasso.
With all the wondrous graphics arts programs like Freehand out there now, we still have these paint programs on which I can recreate the angular nothingness that has hung from my mother’s refrigerator since I was four.
Today, of course, I’m older and more mature than I was when I first started drawing, so I’ve made the natural progression into making obscene little portrayals demonstrative of all my carnal knowledge.
Since paint programs are visibly pixelated, however, there’s a certain jagged nature to these scenes, which contrast from the usual rounded nature of humanity. So someone in the drawing usually appears to be in a little more pain than they would be if I could produce accurate renderings. For most of my purposes, however, this actually turns out to be a plus.
Of course, there is, no doubt, some annual exhibition of paint-art somewhere in Silicon Valley, wherein the losers all plot revenge on the winner and his or her “Dead Cat On 1974-model Linoleum Floor.”
I wonder what the first prize is. A grant from the NEA? A computer with a hard drive dedicated completely to paint? A birth certificate declaring the winner to indeed be the love child of Dali and Picasso?
Well, I guess I shouldn’t ruminate on such trophies – it can only make me jealous. Maybe I should, in fact, stop thinking of paint altogether, and go outside for a while.
Maybe I’ll even go downtown. Who knows, maybe I’ll meet somebody. She might turn out to be the girl of my dreams, and she may even go so far as to enlighten me.
Then, I’ll be able to use what I learn to go back and make more varied and detailed obscene paint drawings.

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