Today I was discussing the American educational system with Someone Wise.

While it annoys me when people go on about how the American educational system is messed up, nevertheless they do have a point.

A transcript:

Me: It* reinforces my theory that the world is full of crazies.
Someone Wise: That’s hardly a theory. It’s completely true.
The world is overrun by 1) crazies; 2) stupid people; and 3) stupid crazies.
Me: (laughter)
SW: Sometimes laughter is the best way to deal with terror.

* educational system mishap

Last night we watched Like Water For Chocolate, which was insane and enjoyable. Magical realism, baby.

Her flatulence eventually killed her.

I have an overwhelming urge to drizzle very wet paint- well very thin paint- on burlap.

So I bought some burlap today. I had to exercise extreme self-restraint not to also purchase metallic gold paint at Lowes. I don’t want the burlap paintings to be quite that garish and déclassé.

That you really DO live in Southwest Virginia.

It might be the obsession with trucks. Or it might be the woman smoking at the gas station.

Do you ever feel like shouting, “Unsafe! UNSAFE!”

Cos I do.

Today I purchased art supplies for next semester, including, as you can see, 10 200 ml tubes of Titanium White.

You can never have too much Titanium White, is my motto.

Team Titanium lives on!

In addition to burning your field, you could either:

1. plant rye without clearing the dead corn
2. let cattle graze on the dead corn

So I’m expecting startling and great things from this field. Maybe a housing development?

Good deed for the day: none
Bad deed for the day: also none so I guess that evens out
Internships applied for: 1 (National Gallery of Art)
Internships not applied for: 1 (1 specifically, also surely thousands that I did not research. Metropolitan Museum of Art too complicated, too much stuff to send)
Thank you notes sent: 5
Thank you notes not sent: 5
Christmas cards still not sent: 5 (!)
Trucks too expensive to fix: 1 (probably)
Trucks too expensive to purchase: all other trucks (evidently but I do not allow myself to be deterred by economic realities)
Truck search: ongoing
Truck mourning: wretched
Weirdest truck fact: 4 runners are no longer made with stick shift (why? stupid lazy country should demand stick)
Obvious truck fact: 4 runners are most beautiful trucks
Another truck fact: Jeeps are cheaper but have been hit with the ugly stick in recent years and are therefore not buyable despite affordability
A third truck fact: Toyota Highlander gets excellent gas mileage but like jeeps is hideous… er this is actually the 4th truck fact

I have made this plan before and never followed through.

But let me expand my resolution to stop living in filth.

Not only will I no longer live in filth, I will ‘purge apartment of all extraneous matter*’ as well as hideous furniture and inhabit a beautiful Zen apartment. A Zen apartment like… a Japanese hotel corridor. White. Simple. Empty except for beautiful yet durable furniture which cannot be harmed by cat claws, cat urine, dog slobber, dog diahrrea, etc.

If I cannot find Zen furniture I will do without.

*you know where this is from

This year’s motto is SIP.

Stop Inhabiting Pigsty

We went to see Gerald Ford today, well we saw his casket and the changing of the guard outside it.

Why did we go? Well we went because I dragged the little lady. Why I wanted to go, I am not quite sure. But I was glad we did, because it was pretty cool.

It was strange going up on the Capitol steps because I remember a few years ago before this whole terrorism mess began, normal people could just walk up there without going through security. And maybe some of the security is just there for the funeral. But I bet a lot of it is now permanent. And that is sad. Because really that way of life is just gone.

But. Moving on.

What I would like to say about the changing of the guard is the uniform of the Merchant Marine is ridiculous. Moccasins- ridiculous. Giant scarf thing- ridiculous. At least I assume it was the Merchant Marine uniform.

And what I would like to say about the line is that it was long and we kept running into the entertaining people pictured below:

This woman got separated from her husband when she went to pee. Finding her husband was a major production as he had left the line looking for her and he had her cell phone. OK.

Quite a few people became involved in the search, from the police to the earnest tourists. Not us. We stared at her cynically. We gave her the look of death. We wondered if it was all a ploy to cut in front of us in line or what. We wondered how anybody could possibly have to pee that bad and if so why they wouldn’t just go in the street. We muttered skeptically to each other.

We lost track of them for a while, then as we hunted for the car- on the wrong street- we found them.

As you can see, he was holding both their umbrellas and her purse.

I had a teacher once whose husband carried her purse. She was named Mrs Sherwood. This could even have been her.

Holla, Mrs Sherwood.

Time: 12:10 AM

Her: Are the upstairs neighbors… vacuuming?
Me: Yes. Maybe new people have moved in. People who shower and vacuum*.

*Previously, the only sounds that came from upstairs have been Celine Dion and loud pissing (presumably male)

I went to an art show.

“Yes, but what of it?” you ask.

Well, it is the topic of today’s vocabulary lesson. In other words, a collision of computer programming and art terms. An unholy alliance. A trainwreck.

First, let’s have some vocabulary review:

Object-oriented: a system is modeled as a set of objects that can be controlled in a modular manner

Gestalt: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

So if we have the following sentence in an artistic statement: “Unlike most artists who strive for object-oriented realism, I work in abstract forms…”, we know this statement is BS.

When we talk of “composition” in a work of art, we talk about how the piece is structured. That is, how the whole is greater than a sum of its parts.

Realistic art is not modular. It is not object-oriented. It is gestalt.

“Yes, but who cares?” you ask.

“Me!” I howl in reply.

Or are they brilliant and understated? That’s the problem with modern art. You really can’t tell.

Tragically, the letter “E” was missing from the box of letter marker stamp things. I was not to be deterred.

Dear Self,

Don’t forget, wearing boxers on a 12 mile bike ride will inevitably lead to chafing.

Remember that bike ride yesterday? That might be the pain you feel this morning.

Sincerely,

Self

I read cnn.com because sometimes I want my brain to rot out for the fake news and cutesy headlines, yet have no idea at all what is happening in the world.

Today CNN wants to know how racist we are. Well? Paula Zahn wants to know. We must oblige her.

Insuperable technical difficulties, or to be more precise, the way I kept hitting the wrong key, resulted in a response of “Too may errors to score.”

I don’t understand what these people are trying to measure or how this test works: they say that they are trying to measure cultural associations, yet each question has only one right answer- you can’t proceed unless you choose the ‘correct’ association whether or not you agree with that association. The test really seems to be measuring how quickly you learn to recognize patterns and select the ‘correct’ answer.

My guess is that this is either A. a badly designed study that is effectively measuring nothing but is quite revealing about the prejudices of its designers B. a study designed to shock people by giving a predetermined result or C. a study that was fine under controlled conditions but has been implemented on the internet in such a way as to return useless results.

It is a shame because it would be nice to be able to gauge people’s actual degree of comfort with people of various races, backgrounds, sexual orientations, etc. But this study doesn’t seem to be doing that.