1. "Baboon Fart Story" by Phronk (who carried out a hypothesis blogged by author Chuck Wendig's idea). I noticed this story on twitter and got all excited, thinking 'oh, awesome someone else has taken to writing Monkey Stories'. Haha! Sort of but not quite.
Baboon Fart Story is a commentary on how easy it is to self-publish. It is the work 'Fart' copied 100,000 times, with a picture of a baboon drinking urine on the cover. Amazon actually sold 21 copies before it was taken down. Reminds me a bit of Art School somehow. I think the book is now available on Lulu and while I wouldn't actually want to own a copy, the story made my list this week because I think it's a nice example of creative collaboration and idea-testing made possible by twitter and blogging. And of course I like the story because of my own recent obsession with writing Monkey Stories.
2. This CBC National Story about an art exhibit about Canada's oilsands. The exhibit "An Unkindness" is by a Winnipeg artist Mia Feuer and on display in Washington. I'm not a big follower of contemporary installation art, but I found this woman's work very compelling! The oily raven wings are what got to me. And I love the fact that at the same time that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to be muzzling scientists and slashing research budgets, this young artist slipped through the cracks and gets to draw attention to our big dirty money making environmental catastrophe, inviting Washingtonians to literally skate around on oil. Nice. But the story makes me wonder if Harper will start slashing arts funding next, and if Canada ironically funded this installation. I can't find out who paid the budget for this project, but find it interesting that is on display in Washington and not Ottawa, so maybe it was American money? And in any case, does it make a difference?
Aha, since googling about this I discovered that despite getting her BFA in Winnipeg, Mia actually lives and works in Washington DC and earned her MFA in Virginia. More information including funding can be found here.
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| "An Unkindness" by Mia Feurer, photo by Kate Warren copied here from the Tyee... it bugs anyone that I'm using this let me know and I'll delete it |
Here is a Tyee article about the exhibit with pics
This 'favourite thing' also made me think about Art School and how we seemed to be pushed a lot to come up with conceptual art that 'meant' something. It was annoying at the time but in this case I like it. This story makes me realize that art (sculpture, music, writing, dance, etc) really can move people more than a report full of facts and numbers.
3. This poem, called "Our Generation" written by a 14 year old boy in Grade 8 and tweeted by his brother. I saw the poem on Facebook via a San Fransisco Times article, so that is the link I'll use. The poem can be read both forwards and backwards. Cool. And, poetry! It was interesting to see this because suddenly I'm interested in writing poetry again, I used to write quite a bit and just wrote a rather dark poem this week. There is something about poetry, like the 140 character limit in twitter, that appeals. I think it is because it is a concise way to write and deliver messages for folks (both writers and readers) with short attention spans.
4. Finally I watched this high energy youtube video last night and really liked it! A cheerful video about impending economic collapse by Fabian Calvo, aka Fabian4Liberty. Having grown up hearing all about how WWII affected my Polish family I'm for anyone who advocates for growing their own healthy, organic food. I checked out some of this guy's Real Estate Investing advice and I don't think it is suitable to Nova Scotia's sluggish market (wholesaling 'deals') but I do want to check out some of this guy's other videos.
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