Opinion Confirmed

My long standing opinion that the majority of contemporary art is meaningless rubbish has been 100% confirmed.

First I'll explain why I've always believed this:

1. Great music is appreciated by non-musicians. Great feats of engineering are appreciated by non-engineers. Great sports accomplishments are appreciated by non-atheletes. Great software is appreciated by non-programmers. Great movies are appreciated by non-actors. Great art is appreciated by non-artists; otherwise it's not that great! The contemporary art culture should not presume to be above this simple law of perception.
2. Art must be representational. The creator of the work must be attempting to communicate through the media; therefore it cannot be random (unless randomness is the subject but that of course would be unoriginal, right?). This doesn't mean the artist does not intend for there to be multiple interpretations. In fact, I believe great art should do exactly that.
   
3. Good art's core meaning need not be bluntly obvious but it should be clear following a brief study. There are fine lines between clarity, hidden meaning, cryptic meaning, and no discernible meaning at all. An artist should feel free to create something that hardly anybody understands, but they shouldn't expect it to be appreciated.

A national art contest in New Zealand had a late entry. Someone called the facilities department and kindly asked them to collect the packing materials from the other entries and pile them up. That was some guy's submission in the contest, and he won.

Like I said...meaningless rubbish...


I'm not making this up:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/arts/news/article.cfm?c_id=544&objectid=10596167
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=162862
http://www.wanganuichronicle.co.nz/local/news/editorial-art-is-in-the-eye-of-the-cash-holder/3904001/

Professional Journalism is Dead

I saw the William Jefferson (not Clinton!) bribery scheme go across the news wire and I thought I'd test a theory: NY Times vs. FoxNews. Who is the most biased?

So I used Democrat Jefferson (corruption) and Republican Mark Sanford (gubernatorial unfaithfulness) to see which news source most defamed the name of their presumed opposition party via negative association. I just randomly picked articles that I thought discussed the main issue based on their titles (maybe not the best process). I didn't hand pick to support my theory.

NY Times:

• The word 'Democrat' appears once in this article on Jefferson.
• The word 'Republican appears 5 times in this article on Sanford.

FoxNews:

• The word 'Democrat' appears 9 times in this article on Jefferson.
• The word 'Republican appears 3 times in this article on Sanford.

NYT has a higher bias ratio of 5:1. FoxNews has a higher difference (6) when the incidents are subtracted. Whether we want to count the difference or look at the ratio, it's biased either way.

It's all silly though........

Oh! On a non-biased note, I was glad to see William Jefferson (Clinton this time) bring those reporters back from North Korea. Maybe they were getting into stuff they shouldn't but if so, they're real sorry and won't do it again. Just glad they're back with their families.

Turtles and Bears

My two year old daughter sometimes watches a show about a turtle named Franklin. This Franklin hangs out with his family and friends. He learns all sorts of lessons about getting along with others and basic academics.

She also has a book called Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? Jesse and his parents decide what he's going to wear throughout different times, seasons, and scenarios.

What is our world coming to? What are we teaching our kids?

When I was a kid, turtles were mutant ninjas who fought armies of criminal robots. Bears drank performance enhancing elixirs that enabled them to smash ogres. That's how it's supposed to be.

Society is going downhill in a hurry.

Bippety Boppity Boo!

I'd like to put emphasis on "Boo" because she turns a pumpkin into an elegant coach, she turns a horse and a dog into vocationally trained humans, and she turns mice into horses, but she either carelessly neglected to think out her usage instructions, or worse she didn't have any confidence in her goddaughter.

She pretty much said, "If you're still at the party when the spell's time limit is exceeded, it's going to be a mess." We have to assume that the fairy godmother (henceforth abbreviated FGM) understood the nature of this ball. It wasn't simply a party where the prince was going to be in attendance. No, it was a party advertised as a one night, full season of "The Bachelor" where the winner potentially would marry the prince. That was the game and FGM was certainly aware of it.

Because of her past Cinderella had become conditioned to unquestioningly following orders; she had to or else she usually received more orders as punishment. So I don't think we can fairly blame her for not thinking through the possible contingencies, right? When the chimes started a'chime'n, Cindy's pre-programmed nature to obey kicked in and off she went. Most people will stop if a palace guard orders them to. She ignored a directive straight from royalty. This chick was a zombie.

Anyway, what FGM should have said was...

"If things aren't going so well, hit the trail before midnight because the spell will break, BUT if you're sure you're getting the final rose, just stay with the prince. When your dress reverts to rags and he asks, "What happened?!", simply say that the clerk must have forgotten to remove the ink tag. Then he'll take care of everything."

But since FGM didn't think this thing through, even if Cindy won the final rose, her frantic departure jeopardized everything. Toward the end of the film we see just how fragile these glass slippers are but you know what's even more fragile? - the FGM's witts! I mean come on! Look at all the possible points of failure here! What if she had smashed her remaining slipper on the cobblestones? What if the stepmother had successfully kept her in her room? What if another pretty girl had the same size feet?

Had it not been for several things coming together for her in the end, Cindy would have lived the rest of her life in servitude to some real jerks. It turns out that a higher power than a fairy godmother had a hand in this story.