Everyone deserves a little time off...

Here is an offering from one of our favorite FORCES artists, Alana Ponui. She said that this is going to be a dust jacket cover for a cyberpunk noir novel, but it is never clear whether she is speaking in truths or fictions.

Unfinished Business

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All Alone in a Cedar Room

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Mtv

Scott Rideout's band, The Yoots, have a music video.  It is directed by Monica Raden.
Go here to see what all the fuss is about.

You Don't Even Deserve To Be Here If You Have To Ask

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Fabric of Reality See, Fabric of Reality Do

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A Ruined Meal And All Because You Just Couldn't Be Nice

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Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones! You are invited!

the Yoots: yoots.bandcamp.com
Cop Circles: copcircles.bandcamp.com

A Bad Date, But Overall An Okay Night

Photon

Science has never proved that this is what a photon looks like. In fact, it is safe to say that they have proved that without a doubt a photon does not look like this.  But what if they are lying to us?  That is a question that Scott Rideout is without a doubt not asking. Take a look.

Renegade

Shitty Feng Shui: A buoy in dark waters

Another old sketch from Millie Cindzer.  She said that she drew this a couple weeks after she gave birth to her first daughter.

Backdrop

Alana Ponui brings us this nightmarish vision.  A vacant place, seemingly harmless, but if this place were a person it would be committing unspeakable, violent acts on its lunch break.  At night when everyone is sleeping it would be bathing puppies in vitriol.  At the break of day it would be uttering words that curdle milk and set the drapes on fire.  You don't even want to know what its doing on its lunch break.  If while dreaming you find yourself in this place, wake up as fast as you can or you may never wake up at all.

Dr. Detective: Private Practice

He was a dark, lean man, who never knew when to quit.  He had the kind of face that haunted you until your eighteenth birthday.  The kind of face that seemed to not even exist the more you stared at it.  He was the kind of guy that would throw you from the roof of a twenty-three story building right onto a pretzel stand and then say, "That pretzel needs salt."  His gloves are clean, but his record is dirty.

Boondoggle

We've all seen them. We all know it's just people scratching backs and money changing hands. Here is a sketch from Millie Cindzer, 1989.

Dried Sponge: Familiar Faces V.II

What started out as innocent fun with no expectation of any serious consequences ended in a terrible quietness.

The Transmogrification of Mickey B. Hughmen: Familiar Faces V. I

Here is another group of drawings from Scott Rideout's series, "The Trap." The winding path, the twisting and turning route that ends in ultimate change. What might start in the impeccable tracts of the suburbs and end in the halls of ultimate psychic rebirth could leave its footprint on any number of surfaces. To fill in some of the blanks click here.

Joey, Chandler, Ross, A Monkey

This is what happens when people stop being nice and start getting real weird. Knowing someone well is no guarantee that they will be the same person after living in close quarters with them. But how far is too far? What happens when the scab collection comes out at parties? What happens when you find a nanny-cam in your shampoo bottle? What happens when you wake up and your fingernails have been switched with your toenails in your sleep? When is the last straw? Sure, you can jam out and chew the fat just fine during the normal hours of the day, discussing books and magazines, the weather, golf statistics, but during the twilight hours a sick feeling begins to fill your guts. Your brain begins to swell under your skull, you just can't take it anymore!

During The Fight

Before the fight no one knew what would happen. After the fight no one knew what happened.

Theatah!

Entertainment! Distraction! Auto-Pilot! If the world is a stage and we are merely players, where are our royalties, where is our trailer, and where is our caramel macchiato?

But does it grow on trees?

In a time of diminishing resources, when the sun is blotted out by an evil conglomerate, and the ocean is being turned into chicken soup, when the only prayer that will save you is no prayer, and there is no where left for humans to run except out of time, Thoroughbred Publishing brings us the tale of one human who will risk it all to save the only other human who is worth a damn. A story of hope in a hopeless time, a time of corruption and singing chowderheads, in which everything will be consumed or we wont get any dessert.
 

A Room, A Trap

Two interiors from FORCES, Unltd. artist Scott Rideout. These come from his series of drawings that he has been calling "The Trap." What's that supposed to mean? Click on image to gain a better view.

The Powerful Male

The Powerful Male is constantly in motion, always dominating one sphere or another. He doesn't have time to sit down and eat. He doesn't have time to cut his food up into pieces small enough to fit into his mouth. He doesn't have time to chew. He has time for one thing and one thing only: dominating one sphere or another. That is why somebody somewhere is creating a fountain drink that looks, tastes, smells, and feels like Coca-cola. It even comes out of a fountain drink dispensary at a McDonalds! But this "Coke" is actually a highly concentrated food supplement that maintains the virility, strength, and swagger of any Powerful Male. The Powerful Male pictured here has just guzzled the stuffin's out of his food-drink.

Happiness Is A Warm Sun

Millie Cindzer has donned many hats in her life. She was a park ranger, a copy editor, a hot dog hawker, and a professional hat donner. She is a mother of two, a child of two, and worked on the set of Look Who's Talking Too. Likewise, her artwork has taken many turns. It is here. It is there. Sometimes it looks like it should be up on somebody's refrigerator and sometimes it looks like it should be up on the wall of some stuffy, overgroomed Houston art collector's living room. Cheap and fancy. Fancy and cheap. Chancey? We'd like to think maybe?

All Hail the Brain God, Hated by Many

Made for a very special man, Mr. Shmakob Shmattingherd, this period piece will never be seen in any book or magazine, oh no, this can only be seen right here and at a very secret, a very secluded private residence, buried deep, deep in the shadows of the forest glade of your hometown, unless it isn't your hometown, in any event you can't see it IRL, whether you want to or not.

Bad Art

By Millie Cindzer

22 B.A.E.

A soldier from some long forgotten war, or some war that has a long time yet to be forgotten, making his long way back home before he is forgotten...yet.

Livin' in the Sub-Blurbs

An early work by Scott Rideout, this mix of watercolor and collage was fairly typical of the artist's collegiate efforts. In an interview with the Smith-Greggor Junction Herald he was quoted as saying, "I have always been uncomfortable with the overt machismo that permeates our culture. Everywhere you go it seems to hover thick in the air, like you are constantly re-entering the same hellish sauna. It's built into the structures we inhabit and move through. Every second that tics by there is some sick individual out there perverting human sexuality, turning it into an oppressive form. I know it might sound neurotic, but you can't walk outside, turn on the TV, or shop in a store without getting whacked in both your retinas by aggressive masculine forms. It's tiresome at best." This piece is owned by the G.S. Hoss Gallery.

Impasse

So a newlywed couple is walking through a treacherous mountain pass and they come across a dragon, okay? And the dragon says, "alright you two nutballs, I am going to eat one of you, so quit your sniveling and just relax because that isn't going to change. But you're lucky, see, because I am going to let the two of you lamebrains decide which one of you is going to take the scenic route through my digestive tract, okay?" Well, the newlywed couple didn't like this too much, right, because they had just gotten married and they had made one or two long term plans as a result of that. So one of them gets up real close to the dragon's earhole and says "Hey, buster, you don't want to eat my mate, because he snores and his breath smells like a dying turd, and I'm pretty sure he's got worms." The dragon turns this around in his dragonbrain for a while and then looks at the newlywed and says, "Well, that decides that. Do you need to use the restroom before I gobble you up, because to be honest, it's just going to be better for the both of us if you take care of that right now." And before the dragon can slap its gabbers on that newlywed the other newlywed jumps up to the dragon's other earhole and says, "Wait a minute, jack, you sure as a sump-pump don't want to eat my mate. She soaks her face and toes in brine, and I think she eats her own hair, and she twitches whenever somebody says forklift." The dragon loses his appetite in a hurry and he says, "Wow, you two beetlebutts have some real problems, you know? Makes me think fondly of my failed marriage. Might I suggest a visit to divorce court? It's right through this treacherous mountain pass." The newlywed couple stares at each other and their eyes get real narrow-like, the type of angry glare that could cut a diamond, and they say, "I think that's a great idea!" And they walk right past that dragon with its earholes and dragonbrain, mumbling and grumbling the whole time. In fact, they fight most of the way to divorce court and then they make up and live a fairly happy life as shrimp farmers, and that's the fake story.

Be Very, Very Quiet

Two travelers from a distant land running for their lives. When one finds oneself in a hostile environment alone it can be very difficult to pull oneself together, and these two adventurers are lucky enough to have each other to rely upon. If the lumbering sentinel should happen to spot the two rats-out-of-their-hole then it could be curtains for the both of them, but at least they would both go down knowing that their buddy was right by their side. Then again, what if they get plucked up, dragged back to N.S.C.C. and separated, tortured, and interrogated. Would their loyalty remain steadfast? I'd like to think that it would, but don't ask me, I don't know the answer.