nice read

http://artforum.com/inprint/id=27399

Beautiful piece of writing in form and content; and apparently timely.  On the afternoon of the morning I read it, NPR aired a report on cassette tape culture that I heard emanating from the radio that is attached to my cassette deck in the car.

Thanks for the read,

Katya Cohen

brought tears to my eyes

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=134034859&m=134034820

UPS sux

Since they are still in business, it is obvious that UPS can deliver most things unscathed. They just don’t seem to be able to consistently deliver anything fragile that is mildly awkward in size, shape or weight without reshaping it.  No matter how well packaged said item might be, somebody at UPS, at some point, will drop the thing on its corner and permanently damage it.  The latest such item permanently reshaped by them “at no cost” to me has been a 20x24 inches 16 gauge 63 dollar zinc plate beautifully wrapped in 12 layers of corrugated cardboard.  Not that big an item, and not that heavy.  But at some point some troglodyte decided he, ok I won’t be sexist, or she just had to fling the thing and drop it on its corner in one of their nifty brown trucks, thus permanently bending it.  

This is not the first corner they have destroyed for me.  It has happened with one of a pair of Vanderstein Speakers, a small box of 100 sheets of 8"x10" Ilford photo paper (not even awkward in size shape or weight!), and a bigger box of 100 sheets of 22"x30" Rives BFK printmaking paper.  It seems to be a natural law that if I order something for which the integrity of a corner is crucial, chances are UPS will ensure that the corner gets destroyed.

Pay Off

Morning.  Waking up to news.  First words out of my husband's mouth: Gaddafi is a monster.  That he is; and that he has been for years.  We've been supporting these mother fuckers for decades.  Short-sighted bad investment... What a bloody mess.

quote of the day

by the long gone David Wojnarowicz

"You can never depend on mass media to reflect us or our needs or our states of mind"

Wojarowicz died in 1992, but he has been back in the media a lot these days since, even after death, his work continues to irk the meddlesome mental health deprived contingent of Catholics Without A Life, which when irked, appeal to the mentally deficient wing of the congress, whom they have in their pockets, "to do something".  At which point, The Mentally Deficient Wing of the Congress always acts in knee-jerk fashion in the direction of censorship.  When it comes to works by gay men who believe in god and have, in my view, "true religion", this happens over and over and over again.  And when this happens, the art in question gets way more play than it would have otherwise.  In this instance, museums all over the country have gotten on the bandwagon and dusted off their Wojnarowicz's for display...

I read the above quote this morning in the February issue of Art in America.  It spoke to me and I decided to transcribe it here. I then went in search of an image of Wojnarowicz to include in what has turned out to be one more rant.  I chose the picture at the top because even in this media and image saturated world we live in and in which pictures rarely affect me very much anymore, this one is still horrific.  But this picture is not how I first came into contact with Wojnarowicz's work, I did so through his amazing painted work. ... I guess the fight goes on.