African Women

I know, she is a black lady - from actual Africa, if I remember well. 

Is it in bad taste, drawing her in bondage regalia? Maybe. 

Then again, I am not American. A lot of what would be uncomfortable sub-text for a U.S. citizen is a lot toned down when seen from my Italian Hikkikomori vantage point.

What I know of African women is from the ones that I met. On average, they are nice people that treated me fairly - which may not actually apply to my mother, I can say after enough therapy - and whose only grating characteristic was, usually, an excessive desire to save my soul from hell - when they discover that I am agnostic.

So, to my eyes they are simply women whose physicality I really like and, me being me - ie screwier than a corkscrew, this is my way of showing it. 

It is not like white women are treated any better, in my drawings. 

Ite, Missa Est

The conquest of Afrika

There are plenty of ways to scam Africans out of their resources, without bother living there more than a week  at each time.

The modern history of Africa, ever since the last colony got independent, clearly shows it.

In some cases, revolutions, counter-revolutions and civil wars only led to a string of cleptocrats - those who rules by thieving -  that managed to bring the living standards, for the general population, well below the colonization period have only contributed to a cheaper access to a region's natural resources.

(Someone would also say that copying the XVI century Spain and exiling almost all of their middle class and professinal figures, being them white imperialist, probably didn't help those countries any more that chasing away their "moriscos" and their Jews helped Spain becoming a modern country...  )




There was really just one giant fringe benefit, in racist colonialism...


You could be a hopeless ass from a middle of nowhere city in Europe, and get away with doing something like that.

(OK, this is a bad, bad, bad, very bad joke, and an even worse truth)

Sportmanship

From an interview with George Sotomanikos(*), 

 <<

See if you will the simple mechanic of the aero-static harness.

As long as the runner is hanging, the burners are kept in idle.

Once she touches ground, and lightens the weight on the sliding support, burners go to full power.

So, on touching ground, a runner must try to walk as hard as she can, to keep traction on the harness, so that the burners stays in idle and she avoids wasting gas, and avoids being lifted up again as a result of the air in the balloon being heated.

Once every year, the girls in our stable that wants to try and shorten their contract are, all, so harnessed and left free to spread.

The one that manages to reach the farthest distance, before the gas canisters run dry, is freed and receive a very substantial amount of money.

The others have to renew their pledges of absolute enslavement for a year, lengthening their stay.

- The locals? No, none of them has ever freed a runner.

We explained the rules to their elders, who concluded that we are - indeed - crazy, but found the whole thing otherwise appropriate.

They like proper sportsmanship, to say the least.

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(*) Of course, the name is invented and no such person exists or, if you prefer, any similarity between elements of this tale an persons, places and objects real, existing or existed is purely coincidental.