May 26th, 2010
Throughout the history of art there have been certain advances in technique, and marvelous discoveries leading to new modes of expression, particularly in the last century, when technology furnished the arts with powerful tools once unimaginable, leading to the birth of many new and exciting mediums.
The great artists of the twentieth century took up these new tools in earnest, and forged great works that forever deepened the consciousness of the human race. Another class of artists found empowerment as well: the duds, those talentless frauds who in the past would have been discouraged and humiliated until they quit. Where ‘those who can’t do’ were once relegated to teaching, they now face a rainbow of career options.
Still photography, for example, can be a beautiful, moving, and incisive medium, but let’s be honest, compared to the traditional arts, photography is the work of weaklings. There are certainly master photographers, and their work is to be admired, yet for every one of these there are a hundred thousand dry technicians who select an image that pleases them, and decide what they meant by it after. And let us not exhaust ourselves by counting the still millions more that lack even the technical proficiency, yet still fancy themselves exceptional artistes.
The medium is hardly the message. What a ridiculous notion? Some capable artists chose to make it their message for a while, and there was some interest in what they dug up, but the moment is well passed, and there are better claims to mine. Bad art has become exponentially easier to produce, and conversely more difficult to judge; but art is communication, and those mediums that fail to communicate with vigor are dead or near dead, and should be left by the wayside, to be picked over by hobbyists and the quixotic.
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May 19th, 2010
Sinister Mr. Sneed would fleece a dollar from a leper. What would become of said leper is small matter, but if you must know he broke his collar in the larder. You see, Sinister Mr. Sneed was a card sharpe and when he worked his art it was a lark.
He kept his marks quite in the dark as he so deftly played the shark. He often showed his cards (all three) in his three-card Monte – so that those lingering about might see where indeed was their lost lady? They were hooked upon on the first hand – pockets empty by the last hand, but afterward would stay to watch as others were unmanned.
But, oft he’d meet a gentleman who saw right through his ploy. And, in such a situation Sneed would not suffer to be coy. He might stare at them and say, “Dear fellow, I entreat you stay, and play my card game anyway. No money will you wager, we will simply see if the choice you made was safer.”
And, the gentleman might partake, and no money would he stake. But, money was not all the rake! Sinister Mr. Sneed you see, was a paragon of infamy, for of his cards, all three bore the taint of leprosy!
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May 12th, 2010
Charles looked up at me from his glass prison, pitiable and confused. As I slid the newspaper underneath and hoisted him up he struggled against the slippery walls. Grimly, I escorted him out into the hallway and turned Charles out – quickly, as I didn’t want any of the other tenets in my building to witness my abetting of vermin.
Now I only needed to suss out Diana so that I might expel her from the Garden as well. I made several incursions on the bathroom but no sightings – no sign of her the following day either and I began to worry. I would have liked to put them both out at the same time. Now Charles was out in the desolation of the hall, lost and alone, and Diana was trapped in my apartment and forced to assume the worst. I learned how to make a non-lethal trap from a water bottle: grease the sides with olive oil and bait it with damp sugar. But, I fretted that there would be no practical way to dust the sugar off before I put her out. Would I be damning her to a cruel death – eaten alive by a starved and sugar-crazed Charles who would then go mad with the horror of his own beastly actions? No, better I catch her clean and simple, the way I did Charles.
Days passed and I grew more anxious. I regularly ambushed the bathroom, flicking the lights on but seeing neither hide nor hair of Diana. I began to wonder if she had died of grief. Then one night I awoke to a tickle on my face and let out a squeal unbecoming of my years. I leaped out of bed and flipped on the light, and immediately noticed something twitching on the bed. But, then I saw another thing twitching on the carpet – tiny cockroach nymphs! Here was one scaling my favorite book, and another perched on my favorite pen! They were everywhere! Oh, dirty Diana, let me be! What is it in nature that abhors charity toward cockroaches?
We were past alternatives. I grimly reached for a blunt instrument: the newspaper – but in that moment one of the articles caught my eye: a feature about a Persian newspaper cartoon that had stirred up a controversy in Azerbaijan. The illustration depicted a Persian boy trying to reason with a cockroach rather than resort to violence. The Azerbaijani think they are being called cockroaches. Riots ensued. Mass arrests and four dead.
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May 4th, 2010
I refuse to kill insects if I can help it. I don’t mean just ladybugs and dragonflies either. If a furious hornet is trapped in my car I take a minute to shoo it out, having no intention of depriving the colony of its steadfast worker. If a mosquito lands on my arm I gently blow on it until it flies away. You think me crazy, or some kind of zealot of eastern religion. I’ll admit there are consequences.
There was last year in the indoor butterfly garden. With all the wild children and their careless parents running through there the place is a slaughterhouse for butterflies. I caught a young girl about to stomp a lovely Blue Mormon into oblivion, but hoisted the little witch up before she could do it. Her father mistook me for a kidnapper and punched me in the eye.
More recently, I noticed two baby cockroaches that had taken up residence in my apartment. When I turned on the bathroom light my new roommates bolted for cover. I certainly wasn’t excited to have cockroaches in my domicile, but they seemed harmless enough, and there were only two of them as far as I could tell. I named them Charles and Diana. We lived in peace. I hardly noticed them. Then one day I opened the silverware drawer, and there was one staring up at me, Charles I think, fully grown and looking quite shamefaced among the forks. “Charles, you’ve crossed the line!” I shouted.
Charles made a break for it across the counter. I lunged with a glass and almost clipped his poor head off! And what if I had? Cockroaches can survive decapitation for weeks, and I imagined him wandering aimlessly, without the brain to contemplate his own doom – and poor Diana leaving the porch light on.
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