Art History 401

   Maybe I’m nuts but…I could spend, and have spent, hours gazing in wonder at various great and historical works of art. For me, it’s not so much about the artist, it more about what may have been going on…behind the scenes when those pieces were created.

   I believe, to fully appreciate art, one must go back to the beginning. Cave art, while lacking perspective and sophistication does tell the viewer a great deal about life at that time. For instance; humor had yet to be invented. Clearly (Even to the most ardent art snob) this is the case as not once have I seen a rock wall masterpiece where one caveman is making bunny ears behind the other.

Perhaps it’s easier for a caveman to buy insurance that to grasp the silliness of bunny ears.

   Ancient Egyptians added a great deal to the world of art. For one thing, they invented the human profile. Until the ancient Egyptians, only animals stood sideways to the artist. These same Egyptians also are to be given full credit for artistic license. They took the liberty to save space by combining the visual aspects of people and animals and created the Sphinx (not to be confused with the Spinks boxing brothers) and presto, a person AND a lion all in one leaving enough room for three pyramids instead of just two. 

Pepper...Not Just for Eggs Anymore

Maybe I’m nuts but…have we been spending too much time and effort paying attention to what we have to go through to get ON an airplane while ignoring what they’re finding on people who get OFF of them?

   There has been a considerable amount of teeth gnashing lately regarding the new TSA porno x-ray/ getting felt up debacle. And other than the odd pair of scissors and a bottle or two of shampoo big enough to actually wash ones hair what have they found? About 59 thousand hernias and three natural blondes, that’s what.

   There WAS a loose cannon at O’Hare who tried to board with a spork in his carry-on but (thanks to a VERY determined agent of justice) he was relieved of the potentially LETHAL weapon and is expected to make a full recovery. 

Imagine, had someone, in mid flight, actually RECOGNIZED the half spoon half fork plastic eating utensil as the weapon of mass destruction it is widely know (in international anti terrorism circles) to be…the mayhem which would have undoubtedly ensued. Oh the humanity.

   It is NOT however those getting ON the plane here in the U.S that are the loonies…it’s the ones getting OFF after arriving from other countries that seem far more…whack-jobish. No…I’m NOT talking about the fruit of the boom guy…I’m talking about…genuine lost marbles, belfry full of moonbats MENTAL cases.

A Pint at Peggy Kinnane's Irish Pub

Maybe I’m Nuts…But…every time I visit a new city, I like to find a local pub just to get a taste of the local flavor (and of course the local brew) as I find those small out of the way places to be a running tap of information. You also get a great feel for the people in the area as usually, only locals populate the place.

Go ahead and play the music...it'll put you in the mood while you read on.

So…There I was, for the first time on the outskirts of Chicago when I happened upon Peggy Kinnane's Irish Pub. Being as it was late in the afternoon, I strode in and took up a seat at the bar. Irish music was playing and I ordered a pint and started to pepper the Barkeep (His name was Tommy) with questions regarding the best things to see…OFF the beaten track..as I was to be in the area for just a day. Well, Tommy started in on the local night scene (while washing what looked like perfectly clean glasses) and telling me about places in the city that were not to be missed.

See Step 4 in Section 5a Diagrams 3b,4c and 11a

   Maybe I’m nuts but…I rarely, if ever, read the user’s manual on small appliances. Oh…I know I SHOULD…but WHY? We’re NOT talking about rocket science with these things and it SHOULDN’T take a brain surgeon…SHOULD IT?

   We recently came to the conclusion that we needed a space heater at our home. We concluded this because we were…cold…and we would rather have not been. Off we went to the space heater store where (Much to my surprise) they had more different kinds, sizes, brands and decor styles of space heaters than I could shake a stick at. Forced air, ceramic, ultra sonic, radiant…the list went on and on.

I settled on the one that looks like a radiator.

Stark Raving Sane

Maybe I’m Nuts…But…I’m just NOT getting the whole Charlie Sheen “Winning” thing. What exactly is this guy…”Winning?” Did I miss the contest announcement? After 8 rounds with Ali in Ziare…Forman looked closer to “winning” than Sheen does NOW!

CBS just announced that they have FIRED (after the same sort of careful consideration and consultation Obama adheres to with the UN I’m sure) Charlie Harper…I mean Sheen (for the life of me I don’t know HOW I confused the actor with the character he plays) for his off screen antics. Makes me wonder what precisely was the last straw.

Beyond Belief

Maybe I’m Nuts…but…there are several things I simply do NOT believe in. I’m not talking about the Easter Bunny or unicorns that fart rainbows…I’m talking about (as hard as it is to believe) REASONABLE stuff here.

I do NOT believe (by and large) in warning labels. If you’re not smart enough to NOT stand on the very top of a step ladder…then you should expect to fall down go boom. Warning labels are aimed at those who occupy the shallow end of the gene pool. If a person (on a light bulb wattage scale) is struggling to achieve the luminescence of a birthday cake candle in a drafty blimp hangar, by all means, take the toaster into the bath tub. 

I don’t believe in parallel parking. It’s not only stupid but I suspect it violates the laws of the universe. Have you ever entered a parking garage and discovered…parallel parking? Of course not. People who back into diagonal parking places should not be allowed to drive a motor vehicle because what exactly have they achieved? When they go to leave, they’re aimed in the wrong direction and the one way sign (another warning label of sorts) goes unheeded and disaster is a certainty. I say, give those people a toaster and some bubble bath.

I don’t believe that elves bake cookies in hollow trees. It’s not that I don’t believe in elves (maybe I do and maybe I don’t) it’s just that common sense (something I obviously have in abundance) tells me that baking cookies inside a hollow tree would eventually burn down the tree. However, having actually seen burned down hollow trees, I may need to reconsider this one.

Do They Make One With a Rotary Dial?

Maybe I’m nuts...but…I just don’t get the unbridled excitement over the release of the newest cell phone which seems to occur every 3 months or so. “Tech Junkies” actually start to vibrate at the mere MENTION of an updated device.

The last time I went to the cell phone store had NOTHING to do with a “new and improved” model. I HAD to get a new phone because the battery on my OLD phone wouldn’t charge anymore and those far sighted nerds who MAKE such things as batteries had decided NOT to.

The 12 year old salesgirl (She may have been older than that but as I KNOW I’m not getting older, the only other option is that tech salespeople are getting younger) came at me as though I had “dead battery that’s no longer in production” written all over my face. She asked what phone I was currently using. I told her I wasn’t currently using ANY cell phone and explained why. I handed her my 18 month old antique and the little snot (with great disdain) informed me that it was obsolete.

Didn’t she have something better to do with her time (like selling cookies) than being annoying to ME?

   Maybe I'm nuts...but...After seeing this clip of Barak Obama, describing how his father (who would have been 5 years old at the time) served in WWII, I felt obliged to share with you a brief summary of my rather mundane story.

   Ahhh…I remember well the year of my birth, 1960, as I was 13 at the time. It seems like yesterday.

   Little did I know (5 years later) when I voted for Nixon what would transpire in the world of politics just a few years earlier. It didn’t seem that long ago that I was on the front lines in Korea wondering why I had ever voted for Taft in the first place. Nixon (of course) was forced to resign over an affair that was caught on tape in a hotel. We would have known nothing of it were it not for Julian Assange.

   I recall to this day how my father, a WWI veteran, watched as HIS father (who went down on the Titanic) ventured off to Vietnam to fight the Germans in WWII. It made ME wonder if I would someday have to take up arms and fight in the war of 1812. Thankfully, President Kennedy put a stop to that before he was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth.

Fireworks Schmireworks

   Maybe I’m nuts but…I’m a bit concerned about this whole birds-dropping-out-of-the-sky phenomenon we’ve been hearing about lately. Not that it’s keeping me awake at night but…it IS keeping me from napping during the day.

   It all started on New Year’s Eve, 2010, in Arkansas. That’s when more than 3000 red winged blackbirds just…fell from the sky pelting down upon cars, roads, rooftops and anything which may have been handy like feathered beanbags on the town of  Bebee. But…WHY?

   Government officials (I refer to these officials as government because all officials seem to be somehow connected to government) said it could have been high altitude hail…or…lightning…but it was most probably…fireworks. REALLY? Not that they were hit by flak but that fireworks just…scared them to death. I have several problems with this theory not the least of which would be…why don’t we see red winged blackbirds doing the dirt-dive on the 4^th of July? Or…why JUST red winged blackbirds? Do they have such a fragile constitution that the report of your average bottle rocket is enough to cause mass apoplexy? And, weren’t “government” officials involved in trying to convince the general (not a military general…just a general…general) public that it was a weather balloon that caused a UFO to dirt-dive in Roswell?

   Maybe I’m Nuts but..I think our court system could use a little tweaking…especially when it comes to picking juries. It seems to me that the process for picking 12 people to listen to and decide upon the merits of a case has gotten a little lax over the last several years.

   As one who has been tapped for but never actually had to report to jury duty, I can’t help but wonder about the process. The accused has the right to a trial by a jury of his or her peers…right? So…how do they decide what constitutes a pier? I can tell you this much…if Hannibal Lecter had peers I certainly wouldn’t want 12 of them in one room!

   In Boston, some cat named Sal Esposito recently got called for jury duty. Sal Esposito is an actual cat (You thought I was just being hip) and his owner tried to convince the court that Sal was ineligible to serve…to no avail. Cats make lousy jurors, I think, because they spend a lot of time sleeping during the presentation of evidence and (Though it’s generally frowned upon) they always want to sit in the attorney’s brief cases. If I were a judge, I’d probably cite a juror like Sal with contempt for harfing up a hairball during closing arguments.

Maybe I’m Nuts but…I just don’t know what to think about the state of fans (mostly football fans) at sporting events sometimes. Oh, I understand getting behind your team but, really, sometimes I just scratch my head in shear wonderment.

   The Packers are really to blame for the whole headgear thing. Cheese heads. They’re all adorning themselves with a wedge of cheese. Okay…but…doesn’t ANYBODY in Greenbay like Gouda? What exactly IS that cheese they wear? It looks like Cheddar but it has holes like Swiss. SURELY there must be 1 nacho fan there SOMEWHERE. Of course (while you never see it on TV) I do understand those in the pricey skybox suites ARE capping themselves with Brie.
    This spectacle no doubt led to Nebraska fans to concoct over-sized foam rubber ears of corn (Thankfully, the Huskers changed their name to Cornhuskers from Bug Eaters back in the late 1800’s) as THEIR fashion statement on game days.  At least they wear them horizontally.  

Go Kiss a Tree (why don't ya?)

Maybe I’m nuts but…I’ve doing some thinking recently regarding Druids. Yeah, I know, but really, I think they deserve at least SOME thought and I’ve never actually come across anyone who brings them up in conversation or polite company so…

 

I was prompted into this line of thought while hiding in the dark waiting for a couple of door to door Jesus salesmen to saunter on over to my neighbor’s house. I would have let them in but, I already had plenty of Jesus and couldn’t see the need to resupply at that moment. I ran out of Fuller Brushes YEARS ago but Fuller Brush salesmen NEVER come by (at dinner time or any other for that matter) but if they DID…I would let them in.

Anyway, from my secreted position (behind the side of the fridge) while I swear I could actually HEAR my dinner getting cold, I wondered…Did Druids ever say grace before they ate? (I’ll wonder what I want…YOU wonder what YOU want) It quickly became apparent that this deep topic was much more beer worthy than dinner worthy and since the beer was as cold as my dinner, I made an executive decision, and began to do a little research.

When Animals...Spy

  Maybe I’m nuts but…can anybody tell me what the hell is wrong with a vast majority of the Middle East? I’m not asking in a general or somewhat rhetorical sense…I mean…WHAT THE HELL???

   From time to time, we are  subjected to “news” stories regarding either Israel, or, “the west” spying on Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. No, don’t get me wrong, I think we SHOULD be spying on them, every day. We have satellites that can take pictures of a gnat sitting on the wing of a fly resting on a lump of goat poo from geosynchronous orbit. We, and when I say “we” I mean “the west” and our friends in Israel, we have microphones that can distinguish between a mouse fart and sand being sat on at a distance of 23.659 miles. And GOD knows we (see above) have weapons which can, with surgical precision, eliminate whoever just sat in the sand without disturbing either the poo OR the fly (gnats are notoriously skittish) after being launched from an altogether different hemisphere.

   Soooo…in Egypt, a while back, they decided that a couple of shark attacks were certainly the work of…wait for it…Israel. Yep, those diabolical Israel shark trainers must CERTAINLY have trained a white tipped shark to wreak havoc in one of Egypt’s most traveled too resorts. What the hell???

   Okay… recently, the world was enlightened once again, this time, by Saudi Arabia. It seems the avian division of Mossad ( if you don’t know Mossad, watch NCIS…David, pronounced DaVeed is Mossad…and she’s hot) anyway, the avian division of Mossad has sent in their TOP field agent to do a little high level spying from the sky. That agent, according to Saudi officials who must surely be smarter than Mossad (though nowhere near as hot if DaVeed is any indication) captured and arrested…yep…a VULTURE.