and who decides? this is the underlying topic of this pretty crazy NYTimes article i read
in which the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art goes ahead and displays this behemoth exhibit against the artist's wishes. It isn't finished and gives an inaccurate impression of the artist and his work, but the museum is way overbudget and overdeadline and has to cough up some "product."

morally reprehensible, for sure, and sure to damage both the museum and the artist since what ended up getting displayed sounds like pure crap compared to the artist's conception of it. however, he did request a fuselage...and the museum is footing some exponential bills on this guy's list....so.......

the article takes the side of the artist, and gets a little preachy with this quote: "Never underestimate the amount of resentment and hostility we harbor toward artists. It springs largely from envy. They can behave quite badly, but mainly they operate with a kind of freedom and courage that other people don't risk or enjoy. And it can lead to wondrous things." but ultimately, i agree. and i had definitely been doing some eye rolling for the "vision" of the artist in requesting these outlandish things, and having someone else have to deliver, so it is a valid point to make.

in the end, the writer opines that it is the artist who gets to say, "this is not a work of art unless i say so' .....now this is so tricky. can i put olives on toothpicks and glue them around my toilet seat, and call it art? then a gallery or museum i am trying to get into can call it 'not art', but it actually IS art because i made it and i say so? how sassy. so all it comes down to is confidence and an all-powerful creative gavel?

i have to agree with leo tolstoy, who wrote that the intention of the artist has to be properly received and felt by the observer in order for it to be art which sounds simple and rule-ish but deals with the emotion and communication that must be present for art to be art.

and unfortunately, Buchel loses all around here, as his intentions are muddled in the unfinished work and so certainly cannot be conveyed. all this is going to trial, some interesting debates should be generated by who has what rights in that realm, and who decides the laws of art...... poor Mass MoCA sounds pretty fucked......

why am i so fascinated by substances that have many many uses. each new use is like lifting a little flap, and there is a surprise underneath is why. i guess.

so because i'm one of the great dorks of the world, and because i love this mysterious and precious liquid so, in every one of its many incantations, i will share with you the things i know vinegar can do.

1. if you put a tablespoonful in your dog's water 2-3 times a week, your dog's peepee will not burn unsightly patches in your beauteous suburban lawn. or urban. or rural.

2. rub it straight on your ripening pumpkin or watermelon. it will discourage any rotting as well as insects as your produce comes to its fullest potential

3. speaking of insect critters, putting a line of it outside your doorway(s) (or cracks, crevices, wherever they come from) will keep the ants away.

4. hot vinegar poured over a stain will remove it lickety split

5. 1 part white vinegar + 3 parts water= streak free windowy shine, plus a great all purpose (and all natural) cleaning product

6. kicks the rear of bleach for whitening your laundry. add 1 cup

7. sounds gross, but a shot of apple cider vinegar will do wonders for your hangover. keeping it down may be difficult, tho. worth it?

8. a splash or two in the water you use to boil or baste a ham with will keep the ham nice n sweet n juicy. though i never made a ham, ever.

welllll, that is it for now. not the most impressive list, but i know i have much more to learn about this special acid. maybe someday i will brew my own, and begin the vinegar farm of my dreams.......

michael stipe and his fine band were on sesame street last week, bringing a little tear to my emotional eye. the song was "shiny happy monsters" alternated with "sad and sobbing monsters" to showcase to kids the wide range of emotions, and the fact that they can so rapidly flip, i suppose. it was amusing also cause this bunch of serious nerd-rockers sort of had to *force* looking like they were having fun, especially m.s. sheesh. you're playing your guitar with honkers. lighten up, buddies.

anyway rem is great, and always goes with fall for me for some reason, and i don't really know where that came from...... i am trying to interest myself in music made more recently, i am sick of just about every cd we have and would like to branch out a bit. then, it requires some degree of motivation and hobby-like time commitment, which turns me off these days. mostly i sit around and wait to hatch.

it is odd, when you go to move, and take everything down, and realize just how much *stuff* you have here and there, useful or not, and how that stuff defines you in a way. so far there are 7 full boxes of books and more to come. so that suggests that that is the most important aspect of our lives. i will most definitely not have that many boxes of clothes, or sex toys. so. it's just odd, looking around at this gorgeous apartment, and how it will once again be a blank slate for the next folks, and i'll have a blank slate in the new house, which will be my slate and no one else's, and no stomps from my ceiling or ll's telling me not to pull out the jimny weeds that are so precious somehow. that part will be awesome. but moving is sort of intense, especially right now... but then, so is everything, right now.

but you have to know how (so states the Cat, somewhat ominously--he IS quite the trickster). i USED to know how, or so i thought, and then for a while i learned how in a totally different way, now i am not sure i know how at all, or even if i really knew how then either. here is a seussian verse about it:

it was fun long ago but rather confusing
to think of amusements as so very amusing
now there is too much and too little to do
minding thing 1 and brewing thing 2

hahahaha.......terrible.

naturally i wait and wait for a computer, which finally arrives and is glorious, and all i can think to do with it is fiddle around on the internet. i feel so full of lazy interest in so many things, it is a shame that i choose to passively write about them rather than go do research as my pricy liberal education taught. wellllll. sort of.

so since i am so very fond of making lists lately, i shall make one that i can constantly flagellate myself with should more fiddlings lead me here. by this time next year i will be:

1. a beekeeper
2. also a grocer
3. perhaps with a few fingers in catering as well
4. deimpregnated, nursing (most likely), mom of *2*!
5. a better knitter
6. gaining knowledge of essential home improvement techniques, like perhaps tiling, drywall arts, and hole digging

it is a lot for a year. get going, self. the time for lethargy is drawing to a close. either enjoy it while it lasts, or cut it loose and.......well, read about it while you're waiting. tee hee.

cry

-stories on npr, like the teacher in afghanistan, who, despite death threats to her sons by the taliban, refuses to stop teaching because her students are "all our children, our people."

-snow in april

-everything left unsaid with rachel

-songs with too many memories attached, remnants of past lives

laugh

-wikipedia's entry on "Mr. Roboto"

-bugley

-alex trebek and paul together in the same room

-obvious overstated factoids, such as "Humans are the only species to develop bunions, as no other species wears shoes." uh, what about horses? har har

well, not *guzzling* per se.....but certainly cushy in my american clothes, coat, vehicle, headed to a cozy home without 28 inhabitants to share the 7 rooms and with drinking water that isn't sewage.

so went the story the other day of an iraqi family, who can't afford propane to boil the impurities out of the water, since no one can work, since they are basically in hiding and/or their workplaces have been bombed the living shit out of. so they just let the water sit for a day, and the big stuff settles but the water still tastes like shit.

only read this if you want to become angry, depressed, and/or hopeless about not only US involvement in this 'war', but the state of the world and the fucked up nature of war in the first placenpr

lives are lives and not numbers, but 3,166 american lives vs. a possible 650,000 iraqi? and WTF with the bush administration's "guesstimate" of 30,000. i'm not surprised, but i'm goddamned pissed, and i don't know what to do about it.

i read a political comic the other day satirizing the complete blithe unwillingness of americans to let the war affect their daily lives in any way. i will admit, ok, yes, i am part of that problem. but other than an occasional bawl in the car, other than a many-times removed committal to keep myself informed, and other than flare ups of righteous indignation, is there anything that really *CAN* be done. i can't leave my job or family to hold a sign in NY or DC. or at least i'm not willing to. i admire the women in black organization, but feel slightly hypocritical about doing that, since i'm not willing to give up a lot of my time or energy, since honestly, i'm not ALL that into it.

i don't know. why did i even bother writing this on a public forum, if i really believe there is nothing to be done?

hmm. city or rural. the difficulty becomes land. while a city garden can be lush and wonderful, in the end it is a rectangle where the kids like fishies will bang into the sides of the tank eventually. however they and i and we have the advantage of lots of types of food and arts to feed us, and more than one option of transportation.

muy muy importante.

city schools. blech.
but ugly rural houses. blech.

and...would country living bore the hell out of us? certainly! we would have to find or make fun in the gardens and the woods, or bust. what of the winter? when even the free library is miles away.... and always drive drive drive everywhere, every day most likely. ew.

then naturally there is the option of leaving buffalo altogether, worried threadbare like the corner of an old afghan by now, should we stay or should we go...... february is a bitch of a month, in't it.

and i sort of like the nub under that left pinky, and that i have to pay extra attention to the fact that my 'a' is being typed properly. 'a's are everywhere, a lot. heh heh would always have to be heh heh, and never ha ha without it. everyone's laugh would be much more sarcastic, and the vaguely german spelling of 'lugh' to boot. srcstic lughing germns.

enough of that. i will get it fixed, then i will not remember what it was like, the feel under my pinky of this tiny green dot that resembles an upturned breast. oh, all the things we don't see that govern our lives so. how quickly our focus shifts to survive a simple 24.

enough of that as well, miss wax fantastic. i like southern yankee's 'i despise' list. it is so much more honest to do this in january than resolution-ing. i despise getting older, when there is no one to tell you you're doing just fine anymore. when you have to convince yourself you are, and of many other things. i despise thinking of it as 'getting older,' which only makes me feel it more precisely.

on my languorous drive to work, i began to think about some well spent times of yore, and to sort of feel as though they were colors of a sort, vibrant or shady, and then almost taking on a texture as well, like tattered or shiny or, oh, waffle weave, say. it makes me think i should make something out of fabric, but then also i got to thinking of a (particularly female) preoccupation with redecorating rooms, and almost wondered if my 'colors of my youth' meanderings tie into that. that if the 'colors' and 'textures' aren't happening to you (or if you aren't making them happen) as experience, you will then try to impose it physically (change of scenery/brighten a room/liven things up are commonly used phrases for the phenomenon) upon your world.

but when you are done, then what?

you might just need to rework your sentence so it does not possess one ' '.

well, in comparison at least.

3 year disintegration, during which either 1) families and/or individuals dissolve, the effervescence of which bubbles constantly against my skin, up and around my breathing apparati, so that i can only get sips of air in the constant onslaught. or 2) there is no dissolution, simply an ever present parental/familial lack unnoticed due to a heretofore preoccupation with self, i.e. immaturity; which made life seem as grand as most dub their childhood. was the childhood grand, or simply the perception of it? perhaps this is only my adult self learning to breathe.

Mother: who will i give my love to?

Father: i give it to God, who will solve everything.

Mother: did you say something?

Father: who are you? well, how bout i'll come over, but not to find out. (next day) i'm sick. i can't come over. (repeat)

Mother: will anyone love me, ever again?

Father: if there's no pain, praise God. if there's pain, praise God anyway. You can read the book of Job about that.

Mother: i spent much more than i meant to this weekend. (repeat)

Grandmother: let's see.....knight, bishop, pawn, qu--oh, okay, queen (phew).....now where did that other knight get off to?

uncle: when do we eat?

stepmother: i'm not fine, and i want everyone to know it.

stepfather: i'm fine, and i want no one to know it.



me: