The Hard Way

I bought a screen printing press about 3 months ago and I've finally had some time to use it recently. Luckily the new apartment has a basement perfect for what I need and I've been able to put together a pretty cool set up. A lot of screen printing is trial and error and I've spent many frustrating afternoons and sleepless nights trying to fix out problems in order to get the shirts printed in time. For the most part I've been printing pretty basic designs. Here are some photos of the more recent shirts.


This is a shirt I printed for my band. It's one of the earlier shirts I printed and is a very simple, straight forward image.




This was a last minute shirt I printed for a friend's band from Richmond, VA. They needed some shirts for a festival they were playing in Philadelphia and although I had to scramble to get these together, I feel like they came out pretty well.






This is a shirt I did for an indie band from Long Island called Weed Hounds. The bassist of this band also plays drums in my band. I really like the hand drawn artwork for these shirts. I was worried the image would not come out great since the lines were so fine, but they actually came out very nicely.

We Gotta Know

We moved into a new apartment about a month ago and I've been working on building my bedroom. I've finally started to make progress and I'm really excited on the way it starting to shape up. Here are some photos of the different stages of the building process.







I'm hoping to get the rest finished before school starts in a week. We'll see if I can pull myself away from the beach for the next few days to actually get some work done.

CIA Hires Private Contractors to Carry Out Assassinations

A recent New York Times article reveals that the CIA hired Blackwater contractors to carry out assassinations. Blackwater is in essence a private mercenary company which the United States government contracts to carry out military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. Blackwater was even called in to restore order in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The problem with the outsourcing of military procedures and more specifically assassinations (besides the immorality of killing individuals without due process) is that there is very little accountability. This particular agreement and many like it are made in secret. It is difficult to prevent them from being carried out and once discovered it is difficult to hold individuals responsible because they are made outside the bounds of the democratic decision making process. Groups such as Blackwater allow the administration to sidestep legal boundaries and carry out illegal activities that violate international and domestic policy.