From the blog:

This website represents an effort by the friends and family of MAD (ESC KD WH NSF crews; co-founder of the INFAMOUS MAG; respected Philadelphia artist; and all-around good dude) to raise funds to help him support himself and his family during his battle with CANCER.

MAD was rushed to the hospital just after the 2012 new year with severe pain and discovered his spleen had ruptured. During the operation to remove his spleen, Stage 4 cancer was found in a few locations in his body.

MAD had no insurance nor workman’s compensation, and, accordingly, he is in major financial distress. While his medical bills are astronomical, the immediate need os for financial support for his basic costs of living. MAD has two beautiful children to support, his home and family to care for, and with week-to-week inpatient Chemotherapy, can not work a normal job, even IF his weakness and nausea weren’t a factor. SO, he needs HELP.

There are three prongs to our effort to generate support:

ONE – an art auction, where we will need ART donated that can be sold/auctioned with all proceeds going to the charity. The date for this auction is TBD. There will be a Silent Auction held in Philadelphia, and possibly other cities, as we hope to find people willing to help us set that up. There will also be an online portion to the auction, for those who would like to purchase donated art as a donation, but cannot attend the live silent auction. Dates, Times, URLs, and Locations for these events will be updated as they are set.

TWO – we are selling small packs of stickers in a “grab bag” format on this site. There will be printed vinyl stickers, and a mix of some of the best writers in the US and abroad who are donating custom stickers specifically for this cause. Like a public television drive, essentially you will be getting an “incentive gift” for different donation levels. These will be clearly listed as products to purchase on the main page. There is also going to be sketches, a zine, and possibly T-Shirts and some custom “fuck cancer” jewelry for the ladies.

THREE – straight donations. there is a big red DONATE! button on the site here where you can skip the shopping cart and specific amounts and just donate whatever you can afford or manage. This is perfect for smaller donations.

You can help the cause in one (or more) of several ways:

-Donate ART (email madvscancer@gmail.com for details on shipping art)

-Donate STICKERS made by you, your crew that can be added to grab bags

-Donate SKETCHES made by you, your crew that can be added to grab bags

-Donate $$$ directly using the donate button on the website

-Donate SERVICES (currently looking for anyone with a tshirt hookup than can donate the cost of printing up tshirts – if you have a screenprinting connection that might be interested, please hit us up!!)

-SPREAD THE WORD!! This may be the biggest help aside from money, please repost the link to this site on your blogs, your tumblrs, your flickrs, tweet it, text it, email it, hell, post it on your Friendster page if you still roll like that. PLEASE TRY TO MOTIVATE YOUR PEOPLE AND YOUR PEOPLE’S PEOPLE – ITS A GOOD LOOK

THANKS FROM THE MAD vs CANCER TEAM, and from MAD himself

Checkout more here.

I have grown increasingly frustrated by Christians creating art (both visual and auditory) and leaning on the crutch of Christian themes, symbols and words to justify it. I’m absolutely not arguing that all Christian art, movies and music are bad – but it has made me question how we define and enjoy art.

There is incredible beauty in the broken world, and we should delight in it. Humans, I think, are naturally drawn to the idea of creation, and by nature people want to make beautiful creation. No child sits on his floor for hours scribbling away in an attempt to create something ugly – he does it so that his parents will think it is beautiful, delight in it and display it for everyone who visits the house.

Art, songs, movies and books are wonderful mediums for that, and Christians should take joy in and engage in that just as Athiests do. What a horrible message it would actually be for Christians to produce half-hearted kitsch media under the guise of making “Christian art”. The only thing worse would be for Christians to embrace it and excuse the lack of actual depth, meaning and substance.

Every Monday morning, a friend and I meet before work to discuss life, women, friends, theology, music, art and whatever else emerges. The last two weeks of meals have been almost solely devoted to defining “good art”. Does “good art” simply tell “the truth”? If so, define “the truth” in terms of visual arts – is that dictated by line, shape and color, or is it something deeper? If it’s something deeper, does that mean a 5 year old’s erratic but labored and genuine superhero sketch is “good art”, and the art students’ weekly assignment is not? Can typography alone tell the truth? Where do personal tastes and ability come in to play?

It’s likely all of the above questions will stay on my mind for the coming weeks, although most probably won’t ever get answered to complete satisfaction. One thing is for certain, though – it gives meaning and provokes lots of thought when I attempt to create.

“Broken Splendor” – Makoto Fujimura

I’ve seen something of this unifying power even in my own church services. Because I minister
in new York city, our congregation contains some of the best musicians in the
world. The music in our services is always excellent, but occasionally we have a
musical offering that is so superb and affecting that everyone listening is stunned
into silence and moved to tears. And guess what? It is not members rather than
visitors, or christians rather than non-christians, who are touched. everyone is
brought together; everyone is included. Interestingly, this happens only when the
art is skillful and well-done. When the music is mediocre or bad, my members
may be edified a bit if they know and love the musician personally, but visitors and
strangers are bored and excluded by the experience.

Back in the days when I was a teenager
Before I had status and before I had a pager
You could find the Abstract listening to hip hop
My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop
I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles
The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin like Michael
Its all expected, things are for the lookin
If you got the money, Quest is for the bookin
Come on everybody, let’s get with the fly modes
Still got room on the truck, load the back boom
Listen to the rhyme, to get a mental picture
of this black man, through black woman victim
Why do I say that, cuz I gotta speak the truth man
Doing what we feel for the music is the proof and
Planted on the ground, the act is so together
Bonafied strong, you need leverage to sever
The unit, yes, the unit, yes, the unit called the jazz is
deliberatley cheered LP filled with streeet goods
You can find it on the rack in your record store (store)
If you get the record, then your thoughts are adored
and appreciated, cause we’re ever so glad we made it
We work hard, so we gotta thank God
Dishin out the plastic, do the dance till you spastic
If you dis… it gets drastic
Listen to the rhymes, cuz its time to make gravy
If it moves your booty, then shake, shake it baby
All the way to Africa a.k.a. The Motherland (uh)
Stick out the left, then I’ll ask for the other hand
That’s the right hand, Black Man (man)
Only if you was noted as my man (man)
If I get the credit, then I’ll think I deserve it
If you fake moves, don’t fix your mouth to word it
Get in the zone of positivity, not negativity
Cuz we gotta strive for longevity
If you botch up, what’s in that (what?)
A pair of Nikes, size ten-and-a-half (come on, come on)

Got the chance to do more painting today at Habitat. I have so far to go, my 3D, can control and fills need so much work. Still, super fun and looking forward to going back. Got to put up a quick throwie and rep AB/SEVS/UNTK.

First, the HTML. Since I’m working in a framework that declares the body tag for each page statically, I added a unique div ID to each of my main pages to identify it, and then gave each div the same class. Then assigned the same ID to the navigation links that correspond to the pages.

Now that we’ve got the HTML, we need to set the styles for the selected page. For my project, I just wanted a simple grey background behind the selected page. I decided to make the selected style the exact same for the navigation hover.

Finally, we just need to grab that ID on every page load, and tack on the styling class. I added this JQuery function to the default layout page so that it’s included in every page request.

Good night, and good luck.

Mr. Sinners first states that Republican candidates “reject exploring scientific principles and demonize any sense of progress” by their views on climate change, same-sex marriage and evolution. This seems to suggest that a disbelief in his own views is a staunch rejection of truth – that there are not two sides to any of these issues. What evidence, you may ask, does Mr. Sinners have concerning climate change? This is answered (I think) when he urges all those who don’t believe to “inhale exhaust fumes, and report back to me on their findings”. What’s your point, Mr. Sinners? There may be a logical connection, but if you’re going to write an open letter to students at such a large university, please expound.

Playing devil’s advocate, I would also argue that a removal of constraints and clarifications from a right qualifies more people for that right. In the case he presents, marriage. Will a redefinition of the word “marriage” open the door for a horse-man union? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, it affects our day to day life as American citizens, and must be discussed. Mr. Sinners, I think, is absolutely wrong in calling this a threat to progress. For starters, belief in progress itself is ridiculous (like, let’s say, progressing towards the edge of a cliff). If our end goal is a safe and prosperous nation, then an in depth, transparent discussion of controversial topics among our nations leaders is the type of progress we should crave as American citizens.

Lastly, we arrive at what I believe to be the most glaring issue with this article – his claims about evolution. Sinners claims that creationism is actually not contradictory to evolution at all! In fact, it…wait – in fact what? This shocking statement is followed by no explanation, other than saying that humans are evolving all the time – a statement that has absolutely no bearing on the topic at hand, at least without context. Is Mr. Sinners suggesting that humans are evolving, but were also created by an intelligent designer? That’s a debate worth having.

The fundamental problem with Sinners article is that he fails to see the correlation between beliefs and his political views. Sinners actually states that he believes candidates should have both faith and a scientific understanding – but should still think a certain way. So are faith and science mutually exclusive? What, I might ask, would you say to a person whose faith and scientific observations and research have persuaded him to believe in creationism and against evolution? What about someone who aligns their views with the many climate change scientists who disagree with global warming? Is it possible that there might actually be candidates, with different views than yours, who back their beliefs with both faith and science?

All of these are currently looking for a good home. They actually look a lot nicer in person than they do in these terrible quality cell phone pictures. If you think you have that home, or know someone who does, please contact me.