Art Part
I'm a halfwit hair model, who in their right mind would part on the left
it was a dark and stormy duckstack
A friend had a dream recently where one of the guys in her class got randomly eaten by alligators. I have a dream that one day everybody will dream of one of the guys in their class getting randomly eaten by Duckstacks. Towering stacks of ducks, cruising along the water, just the top few ducks sticking out, cruising towards you, death (by pecking) from below. That’s my goal.
What are some of your goals? I have compiled a list of suggestions, just in case you do not have any:
Not get eaten by Duckstacks
Complete your duties as a wildlife surveyor without incident
Be calm, cool, and collected in the face of danger
Resist fear using the mantra of Dune: I will not fear, fear is the mind killer.
Do not think about lethal Duckstacks.
I think everybody is happier when they have a solid list of goals to shoot for.
Sharks: A review
Its time for a reckoning
Lets state just the facts. Sharks eat people. Therefore, they are a threat and must be eliminated.
2 stars, cool fins
ART???
The question isn't “is modern art really art?” its “why does it suck”?
Many of you have not asked how I define art, despite the fact that I talk about it incessantly. I would like to put the matter to rest: Art is any deliberate human creation1 which has either a initiatory or reactive values component. This expansive definition lets, yes, the big red dot museum piece, be art. I don’t feel a need to gatekeep the definition at this level because I think it enables more potent criticism. Some signed urinal sold for millions of dollars because “is this art” was controversial, but if everyone was just like “yeah its art but its trash” everyone could have just moved on.
So what does art “do”?
It makes a space more interesting. So in the case of this basketball-ball it makes an otherwise boring dead area have some character.
Ahhh its so symbolic it conveys values. In the case of Greek sculptures, the values of heroism and of valuing the human form. In the case of renaissance sculptures, the values of asceticism and drudgery. I am wildly generalizing but I feel that is okay with art.
It provides novel experience. Like this exhibit I took a picture of at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary art in Paris, the exhibit was viewed through multiple colored slats which dramatically changed the rendering. Even though each rendering was still nonsense (it wasn’t like a hidden picture or something) it was a fun little experience that someone put a lot of effort into crafting.
Assists in experiencing and processing emotions, scenarios, and systems. A lot of music is this kind of art, but also movies and books. No matter the medium, art lets you vicariously experience, project, and deal with a wide spectrum of emotions and experiences.
When someone contends that XYZ is “not art”, I think its on them to provide a better definition, and also give a word for all these things that “aren’t art” but they’re not exactly something else either, are they?
HISTORY
The toddler has taken to calling us by our first names, which is very silly.
“Mama, how many legs do clowns have?” Uhhh why do you ask
Jethro loves Halloween, scary things, and violence. He told us “I had a bad dream last night when I was sleeping with papa… but it was a little great. we were shooting zombies.”
Jethro wanted to go to a carnival. We told him “I don't know if we will find parking, let alone be able to get in.” He told us “We won’t have to park alone, there are lots of people here.”
The toddler spilled some yogurt on his knee and without pausing sat down and threw his foot behind his head and just started eating his knee. He didn’t even have to do stretches first.
The Parable of the Shark and the Hair
I don’t know why all these parables have hairs rather than just rabbits or turtles or whatever, but who am I to question tradition
Once upon a time there was a sea shark who was bald. Like everyone underwater. But he dreamed of somethin more. For this shark had seen humans ashore, and one time, in scaring them off for fun with his cool fins and underwater backflip routine, he found that one of the humans was wearing a toupée. Swimming. But the shark was overjoyed, he took it home with him to his sharky-home and styled it like Elvis. Using his illicit hair, he quickly took the shark world by storm and for a time seemed well on his way to becoming a rock star.
Such things were not to last, however. For the shark had not earned his hair with righteousness and good works, but instead he had bullied someone into handing it over, much the same way he had bullied all the clown fish kids out of their lunch money when they were children. But karma always comes around to pay, and when karma (for the purposes of this story, karma is not only a real force but is also embodied, we will say as a swordfish because its underwater) anyway karma came and found the shark reveling in its wickedness, and karma (who is a metaphor for God, but also God himself exists in this story world, he just isn’t a fish because I feel that would be blasphemous) Karma got mad and said:
“Shark, you are trying to become a rock star, but I’ll see you become a pop star! The kind of star that explodes! Which was not a very nice thing of Karma to say. So Karma’s twin brother, also Karma, came and whacked karma on the nose and said “No, the shark’s wish must be granted because of the unrighteousness of your curse, but instead I will corrupt his wish.”
So instead of becoming a rock star, the shark with Elvis hair became a sea star. He lost his fins, he lost his underwater backflip routine, and grew five stubby legs. Wearing only his toupée, he sat on a rock and bemoaned his fate the rest of his life, except that he still had his Elvis toupée and everyone still thought he was pretty cool. But he did have to give up eating other fishes and humans and become a vegetarian or rock-eater or whatever starfish consume for nutrients. Maybe germs? I don’t know.
The End.
“but what if my cat has a paintbrush and I get it to put it on a paper” then that’s “cat art”, that’s a different thing.