Whats with Adbusters these days?

This "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization" Adbusters 79 article is a joke, right? Am I too de-caffeinated and cranky this morning to realize that it's a giant farce (it is Adbusters after all) or does this publication suck so much as to have this as its foremost topic of conversation:

Not only is hipsterdom "unsustainable, its suicidal" (!)

Can we have some more I hate Dick Cheney and how many trillions of dollar$ we spend on Oil War action and less of this nonsense--I can write a better parody of Lets All Hate the Hipsters article than this. Boooooooorrrring.

Remember when everyone looked really Great?

Squareamerica's photobooth collection made my day. 'S like Found Magazine without the love notes.

Boustre(o)phedon

or "Ox-Ploughing"--the direction of language/thought
or, what I don't know about yet in this world

So apparently the ancient Greeks read not left to right, or right to left, but in a zigzag (like a turn of the ox plough, or an old space heater) wherein the words on the alternate right to left line read backwards in mirror letters. What a mind fuck, right, but think about how much time this will save. Think about the balance of brain power, the swivel from left brain to right as we attempt to negotiate symbols vs. meaning. Come on, English, shape up! You could have read this in 30 seconds less than it already took you, which leaves a whole lot more time to look at what's going on at Go Fug Yourself.

Todays revelation comes from none other than Carl Sagan, one of my favorite guys.

Art of the Day: Bea

Super Men

So I decided to forgo the scubway yesterday and take the bus, making friends with an episode of Studio 360 (Hi, I’m Kurt Anderson) for the hour trip home from one part of north Brooklyn to a next door other part of north Brooklyn. It was the episode about Superman, who, according to the erudite S’Man guest experts, was really an immigrant Super Jew fighting Fascists in a wrestling unitard. Which makes total sense, you know?

thank you CORBIS for this

Which really resonated with me as the bus lumbered through South Williamsburg---it was like a slow motion window into the implacable Fortresses of Solitudes. Costumed babies, wigs, shtetl iron window bars, steely-eyed rabbis. Run away mini-vans. Turbans.

Conquering America is no laughing matter, friends, and it takes someone with balls of steel to keep up the righteous path, the mystical old world chutzpah to battle the forces of evil.

Yes…

William Christenberry

This print is up at the New Museum in the current After Nature show. Haven't gathered up time to go, but I love William Christenberry's work, as everyone who loves the ruinous magical south should. This photograph reminds me of Max Ernst's Europe After the Rain-

It's a fairyland of weird.

Of Jewfros and Getty's

Bless....

Image of the Day

Harold Arts

Summertime 2008 for me at Harold Arts residency in Southeastern Ohio. I'm back in Brooklyn but my head and heart and my chigger bitten legs are still there.

Here's Amos laying it down and more pics:

Some images of work I did there and do now and done done are coming soon. I <3 Harold!

Art of the Day: Klee

Paul Klee's Southern Gardens

Codex Seraphinianus

I'm in the process of working on my thesis relating the Voynich Manuscript with the Italian graphic designer and architect Luigi Seraphini's Codex Seraphinianus. The obvious commonality--the uncodable script and the bizarre illustrations, functions for me as a stepping point to my understanding of the relationship between word + image. For anyone interested, the most recent published discussion of the Codex to my knowledge is the Believer article by Justin Taylor.

Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript has awed us with its indecipherable language, elusive author, and an odd grouping of illustrations of foliage, astrological charts, and naked women bathing. Whether its an elaborate 15th century hoax, the strange work of the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (1214-1292) or the ravings of a madman, as a work of art, it's wonderfully intriguing and elegant. Check out the fully digitized manuscript at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (type in Voynich Manuscript).