First thunderstorm of the season is here, RIGHT NOW!!!
I love thunderstorms, although I’m feeling pretty good about my decision not to ride my bicycle to work today. In the last few minutes it has become pitch black outside, and it sounds like artillery practice moving up the river. I’m filled with energy and bouncy joy that it’s finally not winter anymore.
(Pause to check the UPS / surge protector between my laptop and the big scary electrical grid)
Okay, good to go. Bring on the rain!
This is funny.
I particularly like the
“Push to test”
“Release to detonate”
Well clearly no, I’m not a plant. They have cool superpowers like being able to clone themselves by breaking off a chunk (a “stem” cell, so to speak).
However the sunshine does make me really happy. It’s late March and we’re finally rid of most of the snow. The awesome snowpiles in the mall parking lots and the vacant lots downtown will be there until April. With the exception of some small snow-curbs left on the northern sides of buildings, we’re into the season of mud. It’s also rapidly becoming the season of exposed flesh around the University. Distracting, after an eight month period where the goal was to cover all exposed flesh. Hello? I’d like my brain back, please…
In any event, it’s bicycle season.
I love to bike to work. For one thing, it helps to average out my karma from the whole SUV-driving issue. For another thing, I get a buffer of physical exercise on either side of my sometimes stressful job. It also helps to isolate home-life from work-life, which is much needed, especially with the laptop and the wireless at home. It’s become far too easy to burn a couple of hours in the evening working on things I could do better, faster, and more profitably at work.
For the record, screaming “faggot” out the rolled down window of your car as you buzz me is not going to change the way I live my life one damn bit. I realize that this gives a lot of credit to the faggot-screamer. I assume that they are trying to communicate, which is probably not the case. They probably just want to scream “faggot” for whatever reason. Cool for them, weird for me. On the off chance that one of those people can read (big assumption), and that they choose to read my livejournal (bigger assumption), here’s your clue: I hope it makes you happy, because it affects me not at all.
It seems to me that art has two fundamental components:
– A level of technical skill required to create the artifact or artistic experience
– Communication or evocation of some aspect of the human experience, for the observer.
The superstructure of analysis and self reference built by the community of academic artists is useful mostly in the fact that we are able to better understand the creation and experience of art, and to better understand ourselves as a result. In answer to the perennial question: No, it’s not art just because you say it’s art.