11 drawings of Jessica Alba from the www

What is this squiggle? wwwdo . . . ?
What are these? Are they drawings?
Why ask? It's voyeuristic soft porn, drawn by a typical mid-life crisis,
pre-menopausal, lechy old man.
Dirty sod.
Mysogynist.
Wanker.
Yuk!

What's it about?
It's about grubby men who can't get it up, gawping and salivating at a young girl.
Sexist Pigs.
Dinosaurs.
Nerds.

Yeah. I heard that, and I used to hear, 'Don't bother with the web, there's nothing up but porn.' I repeated and believed it and the belief made me slow to look . . . well, the web may have been new but there's nothing new in porn and truly, there is plenty of it on the web. Check any fact, set any search engine any search you care to and by screen 10 or sooner, porn will postulate an option.
We're up there too, on the web or nowhere and I had to hit a steep learning curve late and in a hurry. None of us are off the grid or escape the net. It doesn't matter if Olejack 'x', or Mrs stuck-in-last-century 'y' can't text and doesn't want to, or that they don't know what a browser is; on the web they are like us. We're all on it; our records, our money and taxes, movements, housing, voting and medicals. Wino Stumblebum 'z' is logged online by the cops every time they see him on the street.
It's those that aren't seen, it's those who starve and die who aren't up there. Their numbers are guessed, some of their faces can be found online but the web doesn't know who they are so we'll never know, and we most definitely don't want to be like them.
To be at all, we have to be a feature fact in the virtual world.
This web is ubiquitous. If ever it was nerdy it has made nerds of us all.
The use we make of the web, the reliance we have on it elevates us out of nerdery, but makes us party to 'nerdism'. We are obsessed with our virtual man-made environment. It has become essential and inconceivable that our lives can carry on without it. So what is a 'nerd' if not us?
Computer games are nerdy. We have designed everything in the mini-environment of 'GTA'; sooner rather than later the player gets to the edge of the map and the limit of the system. A player is surprised and delighted, sometime scared and manipulated, but it's all in the compass of 'us'.
Global and cosmic is different. If we believe in God, God must have been everywhere before we and us aren't in control while in the virtual, like God we make and play. Flickeringly real on our screens, there is nothing factual and reliable about virtual for where do the images come from? Us of course.
Are search engine postulations any different, are they any more 'real', or 'factual'? Facts we know to be facts are confirmed to be facts, and that gives us confidence in the factuality of all the information we call up.
Something is said to be so, 'and that's a fact'. We know no differently and understand less, so what is said to be so will do and becomes 'fact'.
Is that photograph really of that person or has it been idealised and virtualised? Does that person actually exist?
Facts have never been very reliable, we get them wrong, use the wrong one and fail to understand them; and from the web we have more facts at our fingertips than we've ever had before, many more than we ever thought we needed.

'Mom. How do you spell 'annunciation'?'
Once she replied, 'Look it up in the dictionary.'
Now Mother answers, 'Google it.'

Are these facts any more reliable than were those lodged in the human memory and isn't memory the best guardian of liberty? What is it with facts: . . . what that is, when that thing happened, how many of them are there, who did it, how this is done and how long does it take to, what it looks like - top, bottom, side, its profiles, dimensions, weight and specs . . . what is it with facts now we don't need to know them anymore? Why memorise anything when any fact you need is a mouseclick away? How are facts checked for factuality? How have they ever been? Once, the 'sage knew stuff'. The rest of us had to labour in ignorance, make an appointment with a teacher or go on pilgrimage to a source, now we key prod our fingers and see random facts slewed in pretty colours, with pictures, clips and sound.
We need skills, but memorising facts is not a skill we need anymore.
Generations of school kids learnt multiplication tables and the knowledge is still useful, but when students were allowed to take calculators into maths examinations for the first time, the furore can hardly be described. It took some time for the realisation to dawn that knowing when to multiply is more useful than knowing what 9 times 7 actually is. Interpretation of facts to a conclusion is what we do. With so many facts at our beck and call, faced by such plethora, our tenacity to retain focus and concentrate on our question in hand has made filtration into the key skill.
I was astonished by computer games and loved them. I saw the web and internet coming and thought them no more than passing techs in vogue. I heard, and can still hear myself saying, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, the web, bloody clever, but it'll never be clever enough. It's geeky, a waste of time, and there's nothing on it but porn. Nerdy and safe. Bury yourself in that and you'll be safe with your nerdy mates, secured with your private lingo and mystery that excludes the rest of us, me for instance - parents - and really clever people at school and work you can't compete with. Yes, you'll be safe enough, thrive in there and be a star in that small private virtual world you've not invented.' Wagging my finger, on and on I droned, 'Really very clever people have invented it for you, and now equally clever ones are intent on exploiting you for gain.' I saw the point of the games, the games are great, but the web though great of itself was nothing to do with me or with my world. I don't believe I'm a Luddite but it took a while to see that my life, complete before the web, was no longer complete without it. The web wasn't 'Games Workshop', 'Dungeons and Dragons', conkers, or Lego. It didn't turn out to be like the academic circle of Wittgenstein experts or a sporting elite, neither of which many (of us) can join.

I started with NERDISM.
No, this started as I zero in on my menopausal years. I wanted to look at pretty girls and this brought me to Jessica Alba. I found her because she's a 'girl on a beach' and searching for that will find her there. Most searches on any topic find her sooner or later. I'd seen 'Dark Angel' so I knew who she was although I didn't know then that she ranked so high on Search Engine hit lists. I didn't know that she is deemed one of the most beautiful women on the planet, and I agree: she is beautiful. Alba is no actor Dame, not a Streep, Dench or Binoche, but she's well advised and like Arnie did, she chooses her roles with care, and does what she can very well looking gorgeous in the doing. Naturally I wanted to see her naked and naturally, I thought the web would provide. Jessica has been determined in this regard. Sorry Girl, sorry girls, but I've tried pretty hard and can find not a bare breast of Ms Alba anywhere. Sorry boys, and I was sorry too. What I found was porn, tagged Jessica A, skin plucked, implanted and photoshopped with Alba's head grafted on. Some of it is grotesque, some funny, some done with care and skill, but pornography isn't designed to be looked at for that long . . .

I'm trying to construe the process that brought me to the drawing.
I'm trying to face down the criticism that I'm a dirty old man leching over a pretty girl . . . it's a factor and I don't know what else a man of my age should be looking at that's half as interesting - women are the most beautiful sight in the world to me.

wwwdotgirlsonabeach came from the web, fast flickering images for men to flicker past.

Fake or real, virtually real; who knows, who cares if 'real' at all?

We do care that facts are real.

I'm struggling with the fear that nothing on the web is real.

11 drawings of Jessica Alba inspired by the www.

The web's not bad and wwwdotgirlsonabeach are pixillations in pencil - graphic nerdism in graphite.



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