I Think I Only Have A Pair

(Ed note, I think I only have run-on sentences).

I have always loved the anonymous painting, Dogs Playing Poker and so I especially love Silas Kopf’s take on  it in the below masterpiece, “I Think I Only Have A Pair”.

After an exhaustive and exclusive interview with Silas – spanning days, weeks, decades perhaps, in which I followed him around everywhere he went (at times with leaves taped to my turtleneck, jeans, and  wooden platform shoes, [in keeping with the elements of his work], in an attempt to get some candid anecdotalities), even going so far as to hire muscle to forcibly hook him up to various thought-stealing apparatus’, lie detectors, intravenous truth-serum drips, and the like – I managed a rare act of brevity, summarizing all of my notes into the following quote  from Silas regarding his work and the insinuations in this article:

“Perhaps Mr. Munger sees more than I do, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t subliminal perspective.”

It is yet too soon soon to tell if he will succumb to suggestive thought suggestion tactics administered by said muscle and present this piece to Gnome de Pluehm for his birthday bash tomorrow- which I am overseeing in this blog – but we can all only hold our breath and hop (typo, but I’m keeping it).

From the on-line journal Art In Conflict

By Mr. Selwyn Munger

It is a fine line between Pop Art and kitsch. When Pop first made its way into the art world in the late 1950’s many regarded the movement as kitsch, basically mundane without any real artistic content. What are we to think of an artist who reverses the order, taking kitsch and trying to make it Pop? This is the direction of Silas Kopf’s entry, I Think I Only Have A Pair, in the recent Salon de la Marqueterie Biennial in Marseilles.
Kopf played off the famous painting by C. M. Coolidge of Dogs Playing Poker (1904) (sometimes called “The Bold Bluff”) and turned it on its head by using popular figures apparently involved in a game of cards. I say apparently because there is much more behind the imagery than a simple bit of gambling. At the table are the cartoon figures; Betty Boop, Mr. Peanut, and Daffy Duck. Seated between Duck and Peanut is the pop icon Marilyn Monroe. And does that shock of white hair at the bottom of the picture belong to

A Tale of Two Locks

An old story, this, which I just found in my drafts folder;  the story of a housesitting adventure from July, gone awry, which I meant to post after I had a chance to tell the owner of the house as I figured she should be the first to hear it. And it’s much funnier as a verbal tale, but gosh, aren’t we all so busy? So this is how she will find out, rather than over drinks. ;-) And so it is written in present tense because I don’t have the energy, in the midst of my second move in one month (yet another drama), to change all the tenses. This is a tale of two locks. The tale of the two moves is for another day.

I am housesitting for a friend, a relatively benign thing, and yet things can so quickly change from the benign to the traumatic, to the hilarious, in the click of a lock.

I have housesat here before. I housesit a lot. I am in demand and it is high season. I am in demand because I don’t snoop, a common complaint about housesitters, so I am told. I must be told this because I’d otherwise not know it. I don’t need housesitters myself, as I have no house. And no longer have a pet.

I am super-obsessive about keys (and most things) when I am housesitting (and even when I am not) and if I go out for even a minute, I bring my keys. If I go out on the deck for even a piece of a minute, I unlock the door AND I bring my keys. But this morning was different somehow. Maybe I was not me this morning. Maybe my OCD let up for a minute. There are too many maybes to even ponder.

So, on this morning I let Girlie Girl (not her real cat name), the 18 year old cat who I am watching, out on the second floor deck for a minute and she immediately threw up all over it.  So I ran in and got water and soap and paper towels in order to clean it up, and a sudden gust of wind blew the door shut and locked behind me.I was stunned and unrealistically kept turning the knob, as though it would turn out to be somehow not true that I was on the wrong side of the door and that it was actually locked. But nothing changed.

This is not such a great ‘hood to be out in while wearing a skimpy and tattered t-shirt with no products from Victoria’s Secret or any other such purveyor of such things underneath, but then what ‘hood is? But this ‘hood does have some interesting characters running about in all manner of dress and with all manner of urgencies, running about at all hours, so perhaps it was the best ‘hood for such a spectacle.

Thankfully I had taken off the tattered shorts and thrown on a pair of jeans before that lock and that wind conspired to create this drama for me, but I had no shoes or sunglasses or keys or cell phone.

So I thought to run barefoot to my studio 6 blocks away where at the least  I have a spare car key and people to help me, and so I ran (ish), in my wobbly, disjointed manner, due to all those herniated disks and bone spurs and ever-spasming muscles, with eyes squinting against the very bright sun, arms crossed to cover the tatters and lack of said purveyed underthings, and as I ran, I realized that I much resembled a sort of not-so-uncommon local person of a certain type, and who might be perhaps experiencing some sort of drama due to some sort of deal, perhaps gone bad, or in desperate anticipation of some sort of deal which would very shortly go very well, if you know what I mean. I had been woken up at midnight-thirty the night before by someone yelling, “Hey! HEY! I don’t care what you do in your own home but I am NOT going to watch you beat up on a woman.” I had then looked out the window to see a bunch of of guys in a car below, passing some sort of illuminated thing, while the driver stood outside and beside his car yelling, and had heard one of the guys inside the car say, “She probably tried to rip him or or sell him some bad shit.”

When I got to my studio, with wild, unbrushed hair and unbrushed teeth, I had no key and so I banged on a window with a stray brick till the building manager let me in, and into my studio, for my spare car key. That was a start. Yet everything in my studio is in garbage bags for the ongoing and massive extermination (another traumatic story) but I dug around and found a tank top with built in sports bra, and the only shoes I could find; a pair of high heeled clogs. All in all a lovely ensemble, yet definitely some sort of upgrade. And it’s not like I care much about my appearance but I do generally cover myself and make attempts at cleanliness. I was somewhat horrified to be out and about in this condition.

The only person around at the building with a truck was presently underneath it in the parking lot gluing his muffler back in, so I ran next door to where my new stepfather works (husband of the biological mother I just met in the last year or so) and borrowed his mini van so we could load a 20 foot ladder and go climb in the one second floor window which I had just shut that morning, but not yet locked, thankfully.

So we – me and the building manager and his son – set the ladder against the wall. Yet the ladder stopped 4 feet shy of the window and we were all afraid of it and we were just standing there, staring at it for a moment, waiting for it to grow, and  just then, out of my peripheral vision, I saw a local sort of guy come along and next thing we know, he is climbing up our ladder and saying over his shoulder, “I am really good at this”.

Get The Kinks out (of scatter/splitdom)

One man is trying to complete a Kinks documentary and also get The kinks together. See that one man’s youtube video of work done on the film to date. Help that film. Read on…

Geoff Edgers, in his Kinkumentary

“Do you believe in helping in my bizarre but hopefully entertaining quest to reunite the Kinks – and to capture it on film? Or do you simply want to get your name on the thank you section as the credits of a film scroll down the screen? Here’s your chance. We’ve been filming my quest for almost year. We’ve filmed Sting, Zooey Deschanel, Brian Wilson, Paul Weller, Robyn Hitchcock, among others. But we need about $5,000 to finish filming and editing in the next few weeks. Anything helps! $2, $5, anything. And for $200, you’ll be listed in the credits.

Here’s a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mosQ3dp0pUY

You can paypal me at: gedgers@mac.com And thanks!”

The day The Economy failed to forward the Lotus Totus email.

I have no idea why this image is here. None.

UPDATE: In an effort to uncover the author of the Touts I have sent the following appeal: “Dear Geraldo Rivera, Can you please do an expose on the Lotus Totus, like you did with the ‘wrestling’ industry? That was awesome! Thanks, Mo”

What really happened to The Economy?

It just hit me today.

I think someone emailed the “Lotus ‘Touts” chain email to The Economy and it failed to forward it to all of its friends and then this “very unpleasant surprise” happened.

Maybe Bernie Madoff emailed the Lotus Touts to each of his clients and none of them forwarded it. If so, his actions are clearly justified as it was meant to be, per the negative magical power that is the Lotus Touts.

Astrologists the world over are trying to figure out why all horoscopes have suddenly turned dire.

The Lotus Touts must leave your hands in 6 MINUTES. Otherwise you will get a very unpleasant surprise.

It’s plausible. I mean, everyone - regardless of their faith, should believe in the true brilliance of the Lotus Totus/Touts, right? “This is true, even if you are not superstitious, agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired.”

Shit.

That sentence confuses me, grammatically. Doesn’t the ‘not’ refer to everything that follows? So this would read, “This is true, even if you are not superstitious, not agnostic, or not otherwise faith impaired.” <–I like this version of that sentence not less, but many a lot more.

I failed to forward my Lotus Touts email and within hours I received a delinquent tax notice and one of my pirated software applications broke. <–True story. Who do I see about that? The sender (who, according to my logic, now owes me a paid, legitimate version of photoshop)? What risks do we take by forwarding this potentially dangerous bit of magic to our friends and family? Like, what if something REALLY awful happened? What if you found out that 10 minutes after receiving this email (and a subsequent investigation showed NO outgoing forwards of the Lotus Touts/Totus magical email on their computer) something really horrible had happened to your mother-in-law/neighbor/co-worker/partner? I think magical chain emails with potentially harmful consequences should be outlawed. Look what it did to The Economy.

AND HERE’S THE BEST PART-

According to breakthechain.org it was originally called Lotus Totus and apparently someone typoed it along the way.  And now it keeps coming back and around as Lotus Touts.

That’s fucking hilarious! A chain letter with a typo in the very name of it, going around the world with said typo ten times. Brilliant.

For those of you who have not yet been blessed with this magical email I give you THE FULL BRILLIANCE THAT IS THE ORIGINAL LOTUS TOUTS EMAIL: (additional grammaticalities and typos below were included free of charge with the original email. I make more interesting typos, IMHO)

Lotus Touts means Good Luck which is a phrase use by the British!

The Lotus Touts must leave your hands in 6 MINUTES. Otherwise you will get a very unpleasant surprise. This is true, even if you are not superstitious, agnostic, or otherwise faith impaired.

HOPE IT BRINGS ALL OF YOU GOOD LUCK!!!! (but of course – the author has inserted 4 exclamation points!!!!)

(SNEAK PEEK: After the jump …”TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone Anthony Robbins. The caller Anthony Robbins will hear it in your voice…”)

Click here for Obama sushi rolls

Click here

Then you will have the magic permission to click here…

A Random Roundup

The Boob Scarf

Telephonic Sheep — by Jean-Luc Cornec, Frankfurt Museum of Communications in 2004.

Mobile Sound

That Wasn't Chicken

If Michelangelo's David lived in America

Artist : Horacio Salinas

You can shave the baby

I received an email from a non-related, doppelganger-like acquaintance in California the other day about supporting (which I did) a benefit for cancer in which she will shave her head. So I thought I’d post the link here in case that might serve to help her cause. I’d say that’s an impressively bold and brave move for a boldly destructive disease.

And, (according to grammarphobia it is ok to start sentences with “and”, Gnomus, but I do blindly [blithely?] break all the rules here) speaking of shaving, later that day I saw an intriguing image of a doll covered with patches of red hair called, “You can shave the baby” which at first I thought to be a real toy. So I fact-checked it at engrish.com (Our human technology meets your biggest organ! Even no concept but still good sense!), home of the bengigngirl phone and other lovelies.

As it turns out, it is a 1994 piece by Polish artist Zbigniew Libera, whose 1996 Llego Concentration Camp Set caused… well, read about that here.

Libera - you can shave the baby

You Can Shave The Baby, 1995
10 dolls in cardboard boxes, [10x] 55,9 x 20,3 x 25,4 cm

Another Libera piece I find hilariously frighteningly hilarious is Ken’s Aunt.

Libera - Ken's Aunt

Ken’s Aunt, 1994
24 dolls in cardboard boxes, [24x] 32 x 8 x 5 cm

I googled ‘Ken’s Aunt’ in hopes of finding more information about this piece and found, “He knew the only place for Ken was behind bars. He persuaded Ken’s other relatives to tell the police everything they knew. On Paul’s advice, Ken’s Aunt …” from, The Coed Call Girl Murder. I am not sure if this work has any relation to that book but I like to think it does. [LINK]

Gay Penguins Become Surrogate Parents in China

I found this story today at The Daily Mail.

Fences make good neighbors; "The segregated penguin couple, right, are seen here in their own enclosure quarrelling with another male over stolen eggs"

It seems Zoo keepers have determined that these two penguins are gay. They were thrown out of their colony for stealing eggs. The crafty little guys would go up to parents and lay stones at their feet and then run off with their eggs.

“Wildlife experts at the park explain that despite being gay the three-year-old male birds are still driven by an urge to be fathers.’

‘One of the responsibilities of being a male adult is looking after the eggs. Despite the fact that they can’t have eggs naturally, it does not take away their biological drive to be a parent,’ said one.

So the zookeepers took two eggs from “an inexperienced first-time mother” and are letting them raise the eggs themselves, a task at which they reportedly excel.

they have been separated from the rest of the colony “not because of discrimination, but so as not to disturb the colony during hatching time.”

This all came about because animal rights groups protested complaining that “it wasn’t fair to stop the couple from becoming surrogate fathers and urged zoo bosses to give them a chance.”

According to www.4clubbers.net (which I found while searching for wedding pictures and not because I am a clubber), “A Pair of Gay penguins are so loved-up they have been given a Wedding service.
The besotted male birds turned out to be such a great parenting pair their keepers thought they deserved a reward and let them marry.

They were once given the cold shoulder at the wildlife park in China for stealing heterosexual couples’ eggs to nest as their own.

But after being allowed to try out with eggs rejected by their mothers the couple have become the zoo’s best penguin parents.

Now keepers at Polarland Zoo in Harbin, north east China, have rewarded their devotion with a wedding day.

One wore a tie and the other was dressed in a red blouse – a traditional Chinese bridal colour – as they stepped into their icy wedding room to the music of the Wedding March.

Keepers then served them their favourite dish for the occasion – spring fish.

“They have been a good couple and deserved their reward,” said one keeper”

Fabulous Art Finds, with Essence of Existentialist Apropos(ities)

I found these FAFs over at BestWeekEver and I am just speechless. So I borrowed other bits of speech that seemed to best explain the existence of these… these inexplicabilities. In awe, your pal Mo.

THE TOP 50 CRAZIEST PAINTINGS OF ANIMALS.  See all 50 here…. [source]

“Obviously, all religions fall far short of their own ideals…” ~ Ernest Becker, 1973, The Denial of Death

"Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being." ~ Rollo May, 1958, "Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy" in Existence

"One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1894/1990, The Anti-Christ

"The man of knowledge must not only love his enemies, he must also be able to hate his friends." ~ Nietzsche, 1892/1966, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Science. Nietzsche had warned, is becoming a factory, and the result will be ethical nihilism.” ~ Rollo May, 1958, “The Origins of the Existential Movement in Psychology” in Existence

"...man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity." ~ Paul Tillich, 1957, Systematic Theology

"Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions." ~ Paul Tillich, 1961, "Existentialism and Psychotherapy, in Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry, Volume 1

"if we possess our why of life we can put up with almost any how. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889/1990, Twilight of the Idols

"It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths." ~ Rollo May, 1991, The Cry for Myth

POSSIBLY RELATED POSTS, MOICALLY GENERATED….

• Uninspirational words in perhaps uninspirational times

• Donkey Kong and The Decline of Western Civilization

• They all look the same, don’t they?

People Got a Lotta Nerve

Ms. Martha

Meet Ms. Martha. She is my new dog. I got her for a holiday gift from my friend Maureen in Salem. We’ve not yet met, but Ms. M and I have bonded psychically. We talk about philosophy and aged gouda, snips and snails and sushi caterpillar rolls, oh!, how we luagh. Ms. Martha does a really adorable trick which I call the Step, kick, twirl, curtsy. Ms. Martha is smart and coordinated.She likes bedtime stories and pedicures, but does not like parades.

Neko Case, with her very cool name and some very cute dogs.

Ms. Martha lives at Best Friends (.org) in Utah and I am going to send her a care package with toys, and treats, and a cat to chase. I am her sponsor, thanks to Maureen.

So this places me on their mailing list and today I got one about how Neko Case will make a donation to BFs for every blog that posts her new song, People Got a Lotta Nerve. So here it is–>people_got_a_lotta_nerve

Of course the last time I offered up songs for free here and here it was a non-rousing success which I don’t get because I am always into free songs to download from safe places but.. whatever.

Some of the dogs up for adoption were rescued from that nasty, nasty man, Michael Vick, who I vaguely recall that I once compared to that irresponsible mining guy and Paris Hilton.  <–Clearly I don’t get a lot of things. It’s a way of life. Or maybe it’s a life choice.

Ms. Martha said the day that Neko came to visit BFs in Utah she was very nice and smelled good.  That could mean she had just rolled in roadkill or had just showered, because with Ms. Martha you just don’t know.

Speaking of animals, the stray cat that lives in the hallway outside my door is no longer an orange blur; now I sometimes get to view her and we talk. She knows there is a male cat across the hall and she sits on the welcome mat (taking it literally I think) and cries for him. His name, according to me, is Poopie Jones. He is flattered. At this rate, in another 6 months I might get to pet her. And I still brave this painful weather to trudge out to the garden every morning to put out food in my makeshift feeding stations for the 5 strays in the garden and the Opossum. but Opossum dude needs to go on a diet because his caboose is about to derail the whole train, hence the capital O. Just an update.