compare and contrast

i was listening to the Mount Eerie cd Wind Poems yesterday and i noticed a similarity between the opening melody of the third track and Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill (although the sound is more similar to Placebo's version.

compare for yourself!



and

dusty blog.

i haven't been so much about blogging lately.
here's a brief recap:
recently i-
gave my cat a bath
curated a public art project
dyed my hair red
moved into my boyfriend's house
displayed photographs at a local restaurant
bought some new clothes
discovered the best brownie recipe
and wrapped a bunch of christmas presents

not much has happened since july.

moses in bed

moses in bed
Originally uploaded by katymatic

lines

lines
Originally uploaded by katymatic

a photo for thursday.

why not?

so far away.

lately i have been having lots of dreams where i'm running from something. i'm on the run.

i'm in a constant state of upheaval.

i don't really know what to make of this except that i think my sleep is suffering. doing that much running is exhausting.

chive flowers

chive flowers
Originally uploaded by katymatic

a photo for thursday.

BURGER. GREASE. ART.

this guy is amazing:


so is this:


too bad it's an ad for arby's:
www.burgergreaseart.com

knife demo

knife demo
Originally uploaded by katymatic

a picture for thursday.

notorious grand am

notorious grand am
Originally uploaded by katymatic

a photo for friday.

next step.

what do you do with an art history degree?

more specifically, what the hell should i do with myself with an art history degree?

i am at a loss. i need outside interference in my life to guide me somewhere. how do people find jobs? how do they figure out what to do with themselves? i just don't seem to know how these things work.

i feel like i need a drastic change in my life, but i can't seem to figure out how to go about that. the world is not my oyster.

art history. i'm stuck.

flop.

for the most part, i just don't understand men in flip-flops. it just never looks quite right.

captain america in the window.

every day on my drive home from work i pass a house that has a life-sized paper cutout of Captain America on the front door.

i have driven past this sight hundreds, if not thousands of times. and still i have absolutely no idea why or how this came to be. because the house doesn't really seem to have any other distinguishing characteristics.

i don't think this mystery will ever be solved for me. i have no intention of bothering the people who live there just to ask for an explanation for Captain America. but every day that i see this i can't help but wondering about the reasons that this house is using Captain America as its mascot. i'm sure the explanations i can come up with myself are much more entertaining than the actual reasons anyway.

how about:
a family full of comic book junkies had a patriotic theme party...
you can fill in the rest.

customer service.

everyone has days here and there where they hate everyone else. i have those days a lot. my job has made me misanthropic. i would like to believe that this isn't entirely my own fault. i might be negative, but i'd like to think that i'm also polite. so why is dealing with the public so difficult so much of the time? i have worked in customer service in several jobs, but my current position has had more of a negative impact on how i perceive the human race than any of my other jobs. (i will admit that cashiering at a health food store comes close.) so many of the people i deal with on a daily basis are condescending at best and angry at worst. people seem so inclined to pick fights about such silly things. and that kind of behavior ruins it for everyone else. i come into contact with so many assholes that now i just assume everyone is going to be an asshole.

it's a vicious cycle.

but i'm wondering, is this country just getting meaner? there has to be a reason why people are like this. a friend of mine has said that as we move away from a manufacturing based society and toward a more thinking based society, people have all this extra energy and they don't know what to do. so they get angry. and take it out on all of us whose jobs are to deal with their mood swings. i'm not sure if that totally explains it, but maybe it has something to do with it.

regardless, the one thing i'm sure of is that in my future i need to have a job where dealing with the public is someone else's problem.

beefscape: river

just because i feel like posting something, but i can't think of anything to talk about.

white castle commercial

i found it!
the picture quality is not great, but you get the gist.

produce more. conserve more.

yesterday, on my drive home from work, i switched my radio to NPR to catch Marketplace. typically, i'm not really into economics or business, but i do enjoy Kai Ryssdal. also they play great music in between segments.

anyway, the introductory ad into the show was from Monsanto. as in: "Marketplace is brought to you by Monsanto." which struck my as odd because i just never associated the two things before, but also because apparently Monsanto is committed to "sustainable agriculture" which didn't seem quite right either.

from Monsanto's website:
Monsanto is an agricultural company. We apply innovation and technology to help farmers around the world produce more while conserving more. We help farmers grow yield sustainably so they can be successful, produce healthier foods, better animal feeds and more fiber, while also reducing agriculture's impact on our environment.

that's more or less what the ad before Marketplace said too.

the thing is, as far as i know, that's total bullshit.

Monsanto, before it was all about sustainable agriculture, was better known for producing things like agent orange, polyurethane, and DDT.
and still today they are a major producer of herbicides, the most popular, of course, being roundup.
but to make an even neater package of the whole organization they started bioengineering seeds to be "roundup resistant." meaning, you can buy their seeds and spray the hell out of them with roundup, killing all the weeds, without harming your crops! it's inspired, really.

and so Monsanto produces genetically modified seeds, which turn into genetically modified food. and they love their seeds. they feel a strong attachment to them. so much so that they can claim rights to crops that were not intentionally grown with their seeds. (nature has wind. wind carries seeds.) take, for example, this article from Vanity Fair. this also requires that farmers who do use monsanto seeds need to buy new ones every year. constant profit!

a bigger problem though, as far as i'm concerned, is that, politics aside, we don't really know what eating genetically modified food is going to do to us.


more on that later i guess. i only have so much internet time to devote to random rants.

meatsex

so, it's not really news that often in advertising meat gets associated with sex in one way or another. for example:
how about the mcdonald's ad with the ambiguous man who seems to want to fuck their hamburger?

or the carl's jr ad with paris hilton in a bathing suit washing a car/eating a burger?

or, more recently, the arby's commercial with the man getting a special arby's birthday treat? (doesn't that arby's symbol look like a penis to you?)


all of these (and so many more) are wonderful and disgusting examples of meatsex in advertising. however, i think that white castle has outdone them all.

picture this:
a person is dressed up in a pig costume. she is dancing on stage at a strip club to the delight of the men in attendance. then, channeling flashdance, she sits down in a chair and soaks herself, not in water, but in barbecue sauce. the crowd goes wild. some lick the sauce.

as i was watching this i couldn't help questioning the state of advertising today. because someone out there came up with this idea. and other people thought this idea was good. this does not make me want to try their new pulled pork sandwich. if anything i want white castle less than i did before seeing this ad.

unfortunately i can't seem to find a video of this commercial anywhere online. i guess it's too new. but keep your eyes peeled. it's pretty ridiculous.

mastercard with mascots.

i realize this has been out for a while, but i still have some gripes about it.

1. i feel bad for the man playing to Gorton's Fisherman. he's the only real person there. it must have been so awkward.

2. Charlie the tuna is serving tuna. that's a little bit cannibalistic.

3. if they were going to invite the Jolly Green Giant, couldn't they have planned for a picnic? it's rude to invite someone to a party and then make him watch the festivities from outside.

4. i understand that Mr. Clean really is the man for the job as far as dishwashing is concerned, but why couldn't he have been included in the dinner as well?

priceless.

beefscape: mountain

in honor of earth day, here's another beefscape:

humument.

i recently read A Humument. although i think read may not really be the best word to use. reading this book is as much a visual experience as looking at a painting. because you are looking at paintings. and words.

i think visual art and literature are often thought of too separately. written language is visual. in principle, any story that is written down becomes a visual experience just by default. this book seems to break down the boundaries that have been imposed between literature and visual art. the author has taken a victorian novel and created a story within the story. most of the original words have been covered up by paint and what's left exposed creates a brand new narrative. it's not exactly linear, but it is interesting.

i would recommend this book to anyone who is both interested in visual art and literature. particularly if you happen to think that those two things aren't really that different. and even if you do think they are that different, this book might just make you question that distinction.

beefscape: canyon

over the last several months i worked on a collage project based on a beef ad campaign called Powerful Beefscapes. i call it Where Would Cows Live in the Land of Beef.
i'm finally finished with them (mostly), so i thought it might be time to share them with the world. or at least the internet. or at least the small part of the internet that this blog happens to reach.
anyway, here is the first installment:

hamburgers & roker.

a few nights ago i had a dream that al roker left a bag of hamburgers in front of my door. i'm not sure how i came to be so close with al roker that he would drop off lunch for me.

regardless, those hamburgers were delicious.

short shorts.

dear men,

above-the-knee shorts worn with loafers and no socks is never a good look. never.

love,
katy

pirates.

I am so sick of pirates.

listening to NPR this morning, I knew before they even asked what the poll question on the Roundtable would be. pirates. i quickly changed the station.

pirates are not the housing market. pirates are an excuse to talk about something else.

i'm so sick of pirates.

theater as hitler.

from this week's New York magazine:

"ASTOR PLACE
A woman at a community-board meeting said the Public Theater's request for permission to build a larger staircase outside its main entrance reminded her of Hitler invading Austria."

ridiculous.

outsider art.

there is currently an exhibit up at The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College titled Faith and Fantasy in Outsider Art from the Permanent Collection. I haven't seen it yet, but i would like to. this got me thinking about Outsider art in general. I usually like that type of art, but I really don't like the term. i feel like there is something misleading or at least lacking in the terminology. it seems like this art is embraced (mostly after the artists' deaths) as a sort of novelty. a fascination turned appreciation that seems to me to be a little bit condescending.

i understand that there is a need in the art world to label everything, but why must art made by outsiders be labeled as such? there is no such thing as "insider art." if an "outsider" is making art that is then displayed and commodified by art institutions, doesn't that automatically make them an insider? i mean, isn't everyone an outsider in the art world until they do something that gets them attention from the powers that be? and if the person getting that attention happens to be a reclusive zealot, or a mental patient, isn't their acceptance the same as that of an artist with an MFA?

creative people create, regardless of background or inspiration. art is art. am i wrong?

indian thriller.

enjoy.

mini backpacks.

there is something i just do not understand about women's fashion.

mini backpacks.


can someone explain this phenomenon to me? i remember that they were thecoolestthingever when i was about 8 years old, but that does not explain how they have regained such a popularity 15 years later. it seems to mostly have hit the middle aged ladies. maybe they think it makes them look young. i don't know.

my favorite part about the whole thing though, is that when you refer to a lady's mini backpack as a backpack, she looks at you disgusted and says with great indignation, "but it's my purse!" yes lady, that might be true, but a bag on your back is a backpack even if it does hold your lipstick.

anyway, if anyone has some insight into why so many women these days are bringing back the mini backpack, please let me know. i'm kind of fascinated by it.

sham-what?

today i learned something terrible. Vince, possibly the best as-seen-on-tv pitchman ever to grace an infomercial, was arrested for beating up a hooker. now, really, this is not that surprising. we should have seen it coming from the way he slapped and chopped.

more can be read about the whole sordid ordeal here.

fillet-o-fish vs cheese

ordinarily i do not approve of mcdonalds. i do, however, approve of this commercial.




it was pointed out to me that the song from the mcdonalds ad is similar to this song by ween. i think this was originally written for pizza hut. enjoy!

Religulous

last night, after being led astray by rather positive reviews, i watched Bill Maher's Religulous. and let me just say that it was indeed pretty religulous. personally, i'm all for critical explorations of religion, but this documentary was at least borderline irresponsible in its presentation of the subject. Bill Maher presented a pretty interesting question to start the film off (Why do people believe what they believe?), but then went nowhere to answer it. He mostly spent the entire movie talking over people and shooting down everything they had to say. tactlessly. there were only a couple of interviews that had any merit (notably his interview with a priest who worked in the vatican observatory) and the rest just felt like an excuse for Bill Maher to make fun of people. there was only one person who refused to let Bill Maher talk over him, and when that happened, Mr. Maher decided the interview was over. instead of making Maher's point that this person is talking crazy, it just made Maher seem unprofessional.

if Bill Maher was really looking for answers and took this subject seriously, this documentary could have been really great. but it was fairly obvious from early in that he was not really interested in having a conversation or a debate. that's pretty unfortunate as far as i'm concerned. i think a legitimate exploration of these ideas could have created a great documentary. oh well, maybe next time.

pet fox.

last night matthew broderick bought a fox for bart simpson. it was a bad move. everything went down hill from there.

i wonder what this unconscious narrative says about me as a person.

top chef finale

dear Top Chef judges,

what were you thinking??

so disappointing. hosea? really?

you got it all wrong this season.

the oscars.

last night, like every other year, i watched the oscars. from start to finish.
i'm not sure why i choose to subject myself to the show year after year. it's never that entertaining. nothing that ridiculous ever happens.

i don't quite understand if there was a strategy to either make the show shorter or more enjoyable to watch, but i think is there was it failed on both counts. it still ran longer, and the changes that were made really just made things seem more awkward than anything. and not funny awkward, just slightly uncomfortable. i think they should take a tip from the golden globes and serve booze so that as the night goes on everyone is sloshed. that's guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser.

but really, who thought it was a good idea to show and decribe each nominee and then announce them? every time it happened i got a little angrier. i already knew who the nominees were. because you just told me. i don't need to be told again. that's not how to make the show go faster.

i did feel like it somehow managed to get better the longer it went on. that might have just been because the sleepier i get the funnier everything seems. the comedy montage was pretty good though. james franco watching james franco. thumbs up.

jon hamm

in honor of jon hamm's guest spot on 30 Rock i thought i'd post his interview with zach galifianakis on Between Two Ferns. hilarity will ensue.

dog show.

last night i experienced the excitement of the westminster kennel club dog show. seriously.

i've always been turned off by the idea of animal competitions, but for some reason last night watching a big group of dogs running around in circles seemed extremely appealing.

the dog that won was the best. his name is Stump. he is 10 years old and almost died and he still took it all home. cinderella story. seriously though, i don't understand how these dogs are judged, but i don't care. this dog was the cutest.

more can be read about Stump here

grammys

i love M.I.A. she does not give a fuck. not many people can get away with a mesh bodysuit with a pattern like a ladybug. at nine months pregnant. but M.I.A., i don't know, i feel like she can do whatever the fuck she wants and it will seem cool. neon jeans? lame. neon jeans on M.I.A.? cool.

also: why did sir paul mccartney have a stuffed animal hanging out on stage for his performance? i need answers.

you're gonna love his nuts.

i realize that everyone is all about the shamwow recently, but i think the slapchop tops it. this man's brilliant insanity obviously needed something with blades to reach its full potential.

enjoy!

blog introduction.

last night i had a crazy dream involving snow, a dentist, a girl being possessed by the devil, trouble with 911, being unable to figure out where i was, and cops hiding their hats in corn meal.

later cloris leachman and richard gere were making out in a stairwell and ed harris came through as a masked robber and pushed them both down the stairs. then we ran away from ed harris.

the superbowl episode of The Office had jim, pam, and andy watching a bootleg movie with jack black and cloris leachman. i'm pretty sure that's how she made her appearance in my subconscious.

i don't know about the rest of it, but i woke up feeling extremely uncomfortable. so of course the appropriate reaction is to write about it on the interweb. i feel much better now.

it's so easy to join!