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Black Lives Matter, Silence Is Unacceptable

Black Lives Matter
Photo and art courtesy of Sarah Dudek Design (http://sarahdudek.com/)

It’s over two months since police murdered George Floyd, nearly 65 years since racists murdered Emmett Till. Breonna Taylor continues to not receive justice. Extrajudicial murders of Black people continue to happen in the United States. It wasn’t acceptable 65 years ago, it isn’t acceptable now. We stand with the Black community in demanding justice, accountability, and reform of the racist systems that allow murders to keep happening.

Say it once: Black Lives Matter. Say it again: Black Lives Matter.

During the initial wave of protests, companies put out statements supporting the truth, and movement, of Black Lives Matter. These posts varied in tone from inspirational entreaties to somewhat bland corporate chum. What was noticeable were the companies and individuals who said nothing. We don’t know their reasons for silence. But we noticed.

Then we noticed we were doing the same thing. Saying nothing.

The Problem

We, as white people, were being part of the problem. While leaving room for others to speak about their experiences with racism and the American caste system, we were contributing to the silence that turns into violence against the Black, Indigenous, and POC communities we support. We apologize for failing at one of the key tasks in being an ally.

We may be white, but we can be white without ignorantly or indifferently enabling the persecution of our BIPOC neighbors. The recognition of a privilege that’s been afforded to us merely as a condition of our skin color when born is one of the first steps to take. Speaking up, and taking action, in support of Black, Indigenous, and POC communities is the next.

No Joy Without Justice

Fabrication Fabrication’s goal is to spread a type of joy. A society where violence and injustice is perpetrated on others in the name of racism is not joyous. It is unjust. It is wrong. It needs to be confronted and corrected. There’s no joy if you’re not physically and mentally free.

Conditions that prevent people from being able to live better lives, freely, are an injustice. The use of racist policies to disenfranchise Black communities are part of the history of America. That is a fact. It is a fact that America refuses to keep in the past, a legacy that is re-enacted in our present, echoing in actions small and large through the lives of BIPOC communities. Each echo from these policies further corrode the foundations of joy for our neighbors. We must work together to end these policies.

What We Can Do

In addition to our ongoing support for the ACLU, NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, bail funds, prison reform initiatives, and other creator/community initiatives, we will do more to help Black creators in our community.

Taking action is important, but it’s vital to keep speaking out. One voice may not be the loudest. But one voice can inspire other to join in with their own voices, creating a chorus that can’t be silenced. For that reason, we post.

Now it’s your turn.

What’s Good, My Dudes?

An undisclosed snake-monster-being saying "What's good, my dudes?", in the way that such a being would say such a thing

What’s good can be very good, but it can also be something a little bit bad. However, if we make all the bad things good things, and all the good things bad things, then every thing will be nothing, and we’d have nothing to talk about.

Horus’ House of Vegan Ham and Tutankhamen’s Lost T-Shirt

People don’t believe us when we tell them the Egyptian God Horus created vegan ham over 4000 years ago. “Vegan ham?”, they say, “it can’t be done!”. Of course it can, and Horus is the one who did it.

Some of you may roll your eyes at the idea of vegan ham—and for that, Horus will deal with you later. For the rest of you, Horus has a restaurant that has sold vegan ham for roughly four millennia. It’s called Horus’ House of Vegan Ham. You probably haven’t seen it. It’s one of those places that if you go looking for it you won’t find, but when wandering aimlessly you’ll discover without effort. This explains its absence from popular travel guidebooks, such as Rick Steves’.

A view of Cairo, Egypt, showing possible locations of Horus' House of Vegan Ham. They are all wrong.
No-one is certain exactly where Horus’ House of Vegan Ham is located. / Image credit: Fabrication Fabrication

We also don’t know where Horus’ restaurant is, exactly, but he hired us anyway. Our job was to recreate one of his early promotional t-shirt designs. We worked on it like 10 to 30,000 slaves until we got it just right. Here is our authentic original reproduction, the Horus’ House of Vegan Ham shirt.

Tell Me About This Shirt

On the front is Horus in full-on man-falcon-god mode. In his left hand is his hamulet scepter, in his right a delicious vegan ham. Horus welcomes you to be a vegyptian along with him. Horus’ vegan ham is as popular as he is. It’s a perennial winner of the Cairo Courier’s “Best in the Delta” award for every year that has an archaeological record. Lastly, it has his famous ad catchphrase: soooooo good you’ll say ra-Ra-RA!

The front of our Horus' House of Vegan Ham Shirt. The design is centered on front of the shirt.
Horus’ House of Vegan Ham t-shirt in yellow

Ra-Ra-Ra! It’s true about his ham, and it’s true about the shirt. A favorite of ancient Egyptian nobility. King Tut wasn’t the only royalty to wear one! He’s just the only one at this time for which archaeological research shows a record of the t-shirt being in his possession as part of his funerary collection.

The Horus’ House of Vegan Ham shirt is available in our store today as both a t-shirt and a zip-up hoodie. Get one for you, one for the one you love (which can also be yourself, again), and one as an offering for your local Horus shrine. 

Horus will really appreciate it.

A Preemptive Apology for the Calamity, Mischance, and Extinction Event Caused by Our Website Launch

We preemptively regret writing this post and its role in ending life on Earth. 

To clarify, we don’t mean all life on earth will die. There are hearty microbes, swanky niche biomes, and ocean vents a-plenty to which the last, feisty survivors can cling to for life. For most of us, however, life as we know it will probably cease. For that we are deeply, truly sorry.

Our forecast for the cessation of earthly life as we know it, circa 2020, is based on recent experiences. Each time Fabrication Fabrication attempts to launch something new, terrible things happen. Make a button, a belovéd celebrity dies. Launch a new project, populism surges and threatens the foundations of society. Making a sticker? Here’s your locust swarm.

It gave us a lot to think about.

Upon reflection, though, we’ve decided that despite our wretched world we’re launching our website.

For, if you think back on history, is it not beauty that helps humanity survive? In times of upheaval, is it not the very definition of humanity to want a weird monster sticker to scream ¡No Moleste! on your behalf? What else can soothe the itchy thigh of aestheticism other than a scratch from a reflective, food-themed button? And does not the honeyed voice of art emit a plaintive yearning that can only be satisfied by band-related fan art? The answer to these timeless questions can only be…yes.

Let’s also be clear about one thing: whatever butterfly wing we bat in the world is far less likely to cause a hurricane than a butterfly wing ruffled by MobilExxon as it drills for oil.

Therefore, we say…
stock up on tinned goods!
Create a cashless bartering economy with your neighbors!
Top off your potable water supplies!
And secure those boobytraps around your solar panels!

Fabrication Fabrication has a new site today, and the universe is hungry for vengeance.

Enjoy!

P.s.: sorry about the bad news tomorrow at work ;__;