Ha! So there!

Personally I love the public indoor smoking ban that Ohio passed in 2006, but I can see how it was a concern for bar and restaurant owners. Good news is that plenty of people still go out to eat and drink, including smokers! Surprise! Oh, oh now wait, I probably could have guessed that... An article published by Cincinnati.com talks about how there are just as many establishments with liquor licences, and that actually about a 100 more have opened statewide just since this past December. Ha, so there- quit yer bitching, bar owners!

I don't want your lovin', your money will do

Currently reading The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison. No review thus far since I'm only on page 18, but I found a particular line to be interesting on page 7. "Her mother hadn't said the right things; or was dead; or had never existed, so that Ruben had to be made by committee from glossy scraps of magazine ads." It struck me because it's a colorful analogy so I lingered on it for a moment. But I'm also reading this book called The Overspent American by Juliet B. Schor mentions a study that was done that shows that parents who spend less time with their children will buy them more gifts, compared to parents who are with their children more often, who spend less money on them. It's got like a billion other interesting stories and facts in it about how Westerners have enslaved themselves to money and material goods, I highly recommend it.

Anyways, back to the committee of magazines ads forming a person. Imagine the message that spending money instead of time must send a child. Consider where their primary education is coming from if not parents. In all cases, children {and adults alike} learn from a variety of resources. But what if a parent/loving guardian isn't around or doesn't care to combat all the misinformation? Kids end up learning all sorts of nastiness, and maybe someone else like a teacher, pastor, or friend might clue them in, maybe they figure it out on their own the hard way, or maybe they don't. Maybe the child grows up equating love with money spent! Later, various media outlets teaches them that sex also equals love, that nothing is good enough and next thing you know you've got a generation of perpetually-unsatisfied, materialistic whores! So spend your time loving and teaching your children before they turn into degenerate patchwork quilts of debt-ridden STD's!

Did I forget to take my Effexor today?

Starsucks

Been away for a bit, sorry to my loyal readers. Teehee, I think I have about 3 friends and 2 relatives who read my blog, but I appreciate you 5 people. Anyways, so you've probably heard Starbucks is planning to close about 600 of their 16000 stores. Thank God, maybe now there will only be 2 on every major city block, shopping mall and airport, huh? Whatever. Obviously they oversaturated the market, charge stupid-high prices for mediocre-at-best product, and shamelessly misuse the Italian language in attempt to lend their products false credibility. It's good to see that the Starbucks obsession is slowing.

I must imagine that coffee is a bit of a tricky business. On one hand, the profit margin for a product that is 98% water seems like it would be huge. Aaand it doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to impress a customer-base used to Maxwell House and Folgers, but on the other hand, in order to serve quality product the beans must be both fresh and imported from 1/2 way around the world. Yeah that might cut into profits a bit. Ugh... and as much as I hate to mention it, this is especially true considering the increasing price of petro based fuel.

But anyways, if I could teach the world 3 things, it would be to always look in the mirror before you leave your house in the morning, God is great, and don't keep good coffee in the freezer! I don't care where you keep the Folgers, it's going to taste like Guatemalan dirt wherever you put it, but good coffee goes in a cool, dry, dark, airtight place. Amen and pass the Raw Sugar.

I'm so there

I'm totally doing it. I wonder what weapons I should take...?

How We Read Online

Randomly came across this article on Slate.com about how we read information online...

It talks about how we're more likely to read short, listed items and will skip longer paragraphs or pages where we have to scroll. It also mentions how in the early days of internet when pages took a long time to load, we were more likely to stick to a fewer number of pages and hunt around for whatever information we were seeking- but now that we've gone high speed, we skip around quickly seeking out the "right" site. And apparently, we like pages that have lots of links because it seems authoritative. Hmmm. I'll keep that in mind.

Anyways, just thought I would share. Check out the article to read more.

high tech treasure hunting

Treasure hunting seems like something you give up on at about the same time you let go of your imaginary friend, but geocaching is an outdoor game that lets us adults back in on the fun. It's sounds pretty simple, which is oftentimes the key to a good time {ahem, cornhole anyone?} Basically you use a GPS system to help you hide or seek "caches," usually a small waterproof container holding a logbook and a "treasure" of some sort. The hider puts the cache's coordinates online for others to find, and all the seeker is asked to do is leave another prize behind of similar or higher value for the next person to find. Caches can be hidden anywhere and have been known to have been stashed on the side of rocky cliffs and even underwater- part of the fun! Treasures can be anything from money, to a book, jewelry, antiques, maps, cds, pictures, tools, a game, etc. Geocaching sounds like it could be very entertaining, a good way to get out and about, and I imagine has developed quite a community about it. I want to try!


An Introduction to Geocaching by Team Tiki

Now you see me...

While doing some research for a sculpture project, I came across a new-to-me 44 yr old Dutch artist named Desiree Palmen. Her art involves a sort of urban camouflage and is a commentary on the increasing amount of public surveillance supposedly done for safety/security purposes. She paints handmade cotton suits with incredible detail that allow the wearer {either herself, or a model} to blend in with their surroundings when viewed from the perspective of the nearest surveillance camera. The scene is then photographed and filmed, then put on display. She said "I'd like people to consider what it means to let the government control our daily lives... When we are controlled we hand over our individual responsibilities to the state. I wanted to make a suit for the non-criminal citizen whose house is being watched 24 hours by street surveillance cameras. I'm also responding to a wish to disappear." I can't begin to imagine how painstaking her work must be!

interior camouflage - for artist in studio during open house, 135 x 100cm, ed 5, 2004

What keeps Graceland in business?

When I was in high school, I worked at McDonald's for a number of years. I assure you, that job was misery incarnate. Hey hey though nothing provides motivation to move on like misery, though. And I've got some great memories. One of my favorites was the time an entire tour bus of Elvis impersonators from Canada stopped in for lunch on their way to Graceland. Most of them appeared but a comedic charicature of Elvis at best, but they were having a great time and were a fun bunch of people.
I just finished Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live, a delightfully postmodern book who's thesis asks why "the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing." Through the course of the book, he tells his story of experiences visiting various musicians' places of untimely demise. His work is peppered with interesting pop culture factoids, anecdotes, and queries. One that stuck out to me:
"the main thing I dislike about Elvis Presley is the idea of Elvis Presley, and that idea is what keeps Graceland in business. Its the religiosity of garbage culture; it validates the import of tabloid aesthetics, and it makes our society look stupid... For some reason, there is a stunning number of Americans who desperately want celebrity royalty and cultural dogma, and that's all Graceland is. Oh... and karaoke. There was also some karaoke."

Well, evidently it's not just Americans, but Canadians, too. I'm pretty sure the British are the same as well- perhaps it's Western culture as a whole.

Na na na na na na na na BAT BOY!

I remember when I was young, my grandparents used to always have several of the little tabloid newpapers like Weekly World News (self proclaimed as "The World's Only Reliable Newspaper") sitting around their house. Even though I knew their stories were fake, I loved to read them and if you think about it, it makes sense that the fantastical nature of such publications would appeal to a child.

Anyhow, I saw a picture of the legendary Batboy today and was wondering how such an image would have been generated back at the time his "story" was published. Consider how long ago that was (I looked it up, he 1st appeared in '92)- did they have Photoshop back then? I imagine they might have something somewhat more rudimentary that probably cost tons of money. Isn't it funny/scary that even in a modern day society people purchase and sometimes actually believe what was written in these types of newspapers?!?

The rich get richer and the poor get- children!*

I still haven't decided who I want to vote for yet, I wanted to wait until the Democratic candidate was decided before I paid much attention. Now that we're down to Obama and McCain, I'm ready to get down to brass tacks and check out the candidates positions on the major issues- and as much as we're all complaining about gas prices, I'm pretty sure there's more important things we as voters should be checking into.

According to Michael Scherer, Washington correspondent on the election for Time Magazine, the reputable and non-partisan Tax Policy Center has done a preliminary evaluation of the Obama and McCain tax plans. What struck me most interesting about their report was the difference in who the candidates proposed plans would benefit.

"The two candidates' plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain's tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. . . In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise."

Hmm, should the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? I'm pretty sure this has been the way things always have been between Republicans and Democrats- but it still smacks to read it in print. It's pretty clear who's going to get my support on this issue- and I'd like to think it's not just because Obama's plan would be advantageous for me. *from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Image source: New York Times

WWTWD?

She's got a slamming body, and she's a decent actress, but what's up with Scarlett Johannson's most recent career move? {an album of Tom Waits covers} I've only heard the song from the above video, called Falling Down. It's not altogether unpleasing, but it's not exactly impressive either. Okay, okay- it's mediocre at best. Doesn't she make enough money acting? Perhaps interesting, but certainly not memorable. Why do celebrities insist on messing with their good thing? Jared Leto is the only celebrity I can recall in recent memory who actually pulled it off.

Jordan Catalano is so dreamy!

This just in- while looking for a pic of Leto from the My So Called Life days, I found a recent one of he and Johannson together- according to People magazine they've been "spending a lot of time together, and kissing a lot." Perhaps he is her inspiration/to blame?

*Image source: People.com

Girls rule, boys drool

Okay, haven't posted any "frustrated with life" entries in a while so I guess it's about that time...

Most everyone knows how that biologically speaking, girls begin to mature before boys. The other day I was lamenting about how most men my age still seem immature- not in the biological sense, but in regards to how they view themselves in sight of the rest of their lives. It seems to me that every guy I date my age is just clueless as to where they are in their life and where they might want to go- hey yo, the almighty quarter-life crisis. We women experience it, too, but it seems to me that yall boys struggle with it a bit more- or maybe it's not even a struggle for you, it's just the way it is, plain and simple. Anywho, my {female} friend tells me that the gap from us beginning to mature earlier actually still hasn't closed, and that at this point of our life, sometimes it actually gets bigger! Could this be true?! Is there logic in this universe that might explain why still the only two men I feel I can trust in this life are my fathers, heavenly and earthly?

*Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

In your face! Now consider this

Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du Monde, 1866, Musee d'Orsay*

Tanja Ostojic, L'origine du monde, 2002

Courbet's work was part of the Realist movement and questions society's moral values. What do you think Ms. Ostojic could be getting at? (It may {or may not} be helpful to know that she is Serbian, and the circle of stars is the emblem for the European Union)

Read more at the Musee d'Orsay and/or ARTMargins.

Self-Extinguishing Cigarettes

Life is Beautiful, Peter Max, 1971

poster issued by the American Cancer Society

Alright so undoubtedly I'm behind the times, but while watching a newstory about a housefire the other day, I learned that there is such thing as a self-extinguishing cigarette that puts itself if not actively puffed on. Hello- genius! Apparently falling asleep while smoking is the top cause of fire deaths in the US. But the reduced ignition propensity (RIP) cigarettes are only available in some states such as New York, where the RIP version of cigarettes are actually the only kind sold now. The Harvard School of Public Health did a study comparing physical properties of these cigarettes with normal ones and found that on average, only about 10% of them completed a full burn, compared to 99.8% of the normal ones. Also, the introduction of the new RIP cigarettes appeared to have no effect on sales over a six month period. So the question is- why aren't more states following suit with the mandated switch to the safer cigarette design? And if the industry isn't going to suffer a loss of sales, why aren't these products being made more widely available?!? And so what if sales are reduced- the tobacco industry knowingly sells a product that kills people!

"Water Walk" by John Cage

I first heard of musician John Cage in a class about art and music since 1945, he was introduced at nearly the beginning of the class right along with visual artist Marcel Duchamp- if that might give you any sort of idea what type of musician he is. I dont really remember much about the 1st piece I heard other than it sounded like a bunch of random sounds, not even "music." But I guess that was Cage's point- pushing the envelope of what was considered music just like ol' Duchamp sticking that urinal in an art museum and forcing people to consider visual art differently. The 2nd Cage piece was called 4'33". The instructor started the recording and we heard nothing. We waited and waited, assuming there was something wrong with the sound equipment. Eventually people started quietly chatting and moving about, and by the end of the song, most everyone was doing something else than listening entirely, and the class was all out loud. Hey, what do you know- all of our sounds were actually what Cage intended to be the song. Yeah, okay- hold the phone: that's pretty lame. I get it- he did it first, but really is that art? People love to judge art based on things such as this, whether it's original, pleasant to take in, understandable, etc.

Here's an original recording of him performing on a 1960's game show called "I've Got a Secret." It's funny that this sort of performance must have been considered complete quackery at the time, but the host is genuinely cordial towards Cage, although acknowledging that the audience is probably going to laugh- which they do. The audience must be wondering, "Is this guy for real?" Even though they laughed, I think they were much more polite than what today's tv audience might be.

Guillame Apollinaire (1880-1918) "On the Subject in Modern Painting"

Apollinaire was a French poet, writer, and one of a few art critics credited with coining the word "surrealism." In this essay, he describes cubism as a pure art free from the distractions of subject, a step on the way to complete abstraction. Cubists like Pablo Picasso and George Braque, primary artists of the movement, liked to break up, analyze, and reassemble objects in their work. Personally, I've always thought it was kind of lame, but at the time it was innovative. Kind of how we feel about impressionism now, whoopee- you painted what you SAW, good job- no small potatoes back in the day. Anyways, I like how Apollinaire describes cubism, this one sentence really does a good job of describing it for me: "A Picasso studies an object the way a surgeon disects a corpse."

Violin and Checkerboard, Juan Gris, 1913, oil on canvas

Memorial Day

"These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. They are at rest. They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest. Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead."

~Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)


I'm not the most patriotic person. I have to question a lot of things our country does, both internally and internationally- but I do enjoy the freedoms it has allowed me and I must say that I dearly appreciate those in the armed forces who serve and protect, especially those who end up giving their lives to do so. May God bless our soldiers worldwide and deliver them home safely.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Guess I'm running the blog a little lite due to the wonderful weather accompanying the holiday weekend. You should be outside too, so I'll keep my post short so as not to distract you from natural glory going on outside. Here's a video by SuperDeluxe Comedy with an interesting take on the Sodom and Gomorrah story from Genesis 18 & 19, and although perhaps a bit blasphemous, not altogether inaccurate. Enjoy, then go outside!

Repenting Made Easy

Okay, so I got this off a classmate's blog, but I had to share it. Try chatting with God, it comes up with some pretty witty responses sometimes.

an interesting one:
"Me: what do you like to do for fun?
God:I like Random natural disasters..."

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1934) Programme of Die Brucke

Die Brucke, or "The Bridge," is a faction of avant-garde German Expressionists founded in 1905. They printed a sort of manifesto on a program that accompanied their exhibition the following year. I couldn't help but notice how the sentiments in their programme seemed to ring true to youthful revolutionaries throughout history, and even today.

Blick auf Davos, 1925

"With faith in progress and in a new generation of creators and spectators we call together all youth. As youth, we carry the future and want to create for ourselves freedom of life and of movement against the long established order forces. Everyone who reproduces that which drives him to creation with directness and authenticity belongs to us."

Doesn't it just sing of youthful optimism? It kind of reminds me of an arts-specialty high school graduation speech. And although a bit of a stretch, it also reminds me of a passage from David Bowie's Changes off of Hunky Dory, 1971:
"And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through"

Maybe that's moreso disaffected youth, actually...