Antwerp Station Magic

It's funny, we were just talking about intervention in class, when my ma sent me this.

Except for the techno remix part, I was pretty blown away. what a cute thing to find.

TACO HELL

As a regular MTG player and therefore person who is looking for food at 1-2 AM periodically, I can't help but sometimes visit the ol' Taco bell. I can remember as a kid, when fast food was an acceptable place to eat, oh, once a month, taco bell was like, a rung up on the ladder of shitty food. Like, I'd eat at jack in the box, and the taco bell across the street would be leering at me like the forbidden cheap Americanized Mexican food that it is.

Of course, now I KNOW better. And living in the city means that if I want real mexican food at 2 AM, I can take a nite owl over to the mission and Feast like a monkey god in India for under 10$.

Still. there is no such luxury where I play MTG. So, once or twice a year, I find myself gobbling down tacos from the 10 tacos for 7$ steal. If i'm feeling feisty, I get 20 and see how far I can go.

And one thing never fails. The next day, I always pay more. Taco Bell for me has become synonymous with "gastro-intestinal hell".

Here's a skip thru history from the good ol' wikipedia:



^The original Logo, once taco bell branched out to the chains of history. Circa 1985.




^I guess the original location was called "Belle's" in California. This is the first to be called "taco Bell, in Wausau, Wisconsin. I mean, look at it. I'D eat there RIGHT now, and I just had breakfast.



^ And here we see the modernized, hermetically sealed looking allure of corporate sponsorship. There's no contraversy there. No humor. A shameless display of processed mediocrity. This is the version of the latter 1980s. And below the version we are used to, circa 2005:












And so, as part of this assignment, I decided to illustrate the legendary gastrointestinal travesty of taco bell with my own twist. Here is a version I live traced, and opposite it the drawing I turned into a more accurate representation of what I think when I see that sickly colored bell.



STUNG, BUGGERS. Stung.
~Bee

Future Thoughts and counting sheep

When I'm 90, there will be no more printed newspapers. The internet will have stolen all of the advertising dollars. For news, people will have the internet and the self updating DVR feature on their televisions for local and world news from a variety of different sources. Television advertising will be based on product placement, and on some stations it will also appear as a crawl on the bottom of the screen all the time, to combat this new DVR function. Advanced DVR systems will be able to zoom into the program, cropping the crawl away. The crawl will likely not just happen through the bottom of the screen.
When I'm 90, we will know as much about the human brain as we do the heart. Replacement limbs and other brain controlled functions will be connected to the nerves in the brain, negating complete disability. This will change the way we view disability and the concept of handicapped.
When I'm 90, the typewriter and keyboard will be considered old fassioned. There will be two primary methods of inputting information we used to type- using a lingual interperiting machine, and using a synapse interperiting machine. The lingual interperiter will record clearly dictated words and have a number of shift keys for special commands (a shift key for letter/number mode and others for more advanced parameters). The synapse interperiting machine will attach to the head and recognise intentions based on brain waves. This will primarily be used to spell (letters will be thought), but some more advanced machines will be in development that can recognise most words of a language.

I'd like to share something very interesting now. You simply need to see this.

The Scores! :p

To begin, here is Patricia and my correspondence:
RE: The Chance Project‏

From Me
To Patricia
That's great! Here's my recipe:

1. Write the first 10 kinds of restaurant (Chinese, Italian, Mexican, you get the idea)that come to mind on piece of paper, numbered 0 to 9.
2. Open a phone book and note the first number that you see.
3. Look up the names and numbers of 12 different restaurants of that type.
4. Call each restaurant and ask the first person you speak to for a letter out of A, B, C, D, E, F, or G.
5. Write all the letters on the paper. If the person is more than friendly, write "major". If the person is mean, write "minor." If the person does not give you an answer (or there is no answer), write nothing, but circle it.
6. Cut each letter/circle out along with whatever notes there are on the answer.
7. Choose 4 without looking and arrange them in a straight line. Write this down and underline this part, "1".
8. Choose another 4 without looking and arrange them as "2". Arrange and label the last as "3".
9. Now write a song by copying the 4 note sequences, "1-1-2-1 2-2-1-1 3-3-2-2 1-1-2-1"
10. Title it, "____ Food Shuffle" and leave it on or near the next piano you see.

> From: patriciatorres47@gmail.com
> To: rednecter@hotmail.com
> Subject: The Chance Project
> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:25:38 -0700
> CC: patriciatorres47@hotmail.com
>
> Dear Brenden,
>
> I am sending you the recipe for the chance project. Please let me
> know if this is clear for you. I thought about creating music because
> I'm pretty sure you are going to enjoy it! Anything related to music
> seems enjoyable for you.
>
> Thanks,
> Patricia
>
>
>
> The Grant Project

1. Using the White Pages (phonebook), look for the last name of Grant in the area code (415).
2. Find a row with the last name of Grant.
3. Select 10 people, at random, with the name Grant. Avoid businesses.
4. Call these 10 people on the telephone and ask them for their favorite. Write down their responses.
5. Search the songs for the music (score) and write down the first measure or phrase of each song.
6. Then, using Audacity (- download it for free @ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/mac), record into the program each (first) measure/phrase of each song, either by humming or by playing an instrument.
7. Edit these first measures/phrases, using filters, and create a piece of music.

Naturally, After completing Patricia's task to the best of my ability, most Chinese places were closed. I have class for 10 hours on Wednesdays :(, so for the meantime, no chinese food shuffle for you.

However!

The Grant Project was successful! Of the ten people I randomly selected, 5 answered and 4 gave songs.

1. Laura's Theme, from Dr. Zhivago
2. Fast Car, by Tracey Chapman
3. Rhapsody in Blue, by Gershwin
4. Glass, Concrete and Stone by David Byrne

After tooling around on Audacity for what seemed like forever, I ended up with something that would probably be best served as the soundtrack for "SAW VI" or perhaps an interpretative dance by midgets for the torment of an un-anesthetized root canal. This is mostly thanks to the reverse and pitch change tools :)

I can get it out of my safe if people want to visit me at 31st and Taraval!

Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think"

Please read the article here.

And the second page, after detailing the advents to the camera and then the voice recorder, the author alludes to a machine that can transcribe language by intention. He then writes, "For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute."

I can't help but wonder if he only says this to dispel the rising suspicion from his colleges that this is where he's heading. Of course this is what he's thinking- that mature thought will eventually be simulated. And that's the end of humanity as we know it... Strange he would straight deny something so plainly obvious.

End of page 2, "One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes." NERD PORN ALERT!!

I mean, heh. jeez. I guess this is where we can tell that this was written by a guy.

Page 4, section 6: "Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. "

God this guy called it. in 1945. Jeeeeez.

The Horned Wyvwern

"I twas on the thirde night we sawe it;
lurking in the first chambere all ripled and blacke
It's eyes were as deep as pittes,
it's fangs stained and silente
Uncoiled it did, from the wall
where it had perched most like a stalactite,
and milled through the pile of corpses
we had left of the kobolds.
Every so often we could hear it's mighty antlers
click wetly against the roof
The bravest of us dare not move
before it's grim noises had long since passed."
~Craig Islin, The Northwatch

Chimeric properties-

1. Eyes of a spider.
2. Maw of a Leapord.
3. Antlers of an Elk.
4. Wings of a bat.
5. Body of a Caiman.

SYSTEMATIC PROCESS:

1. Used clone tool to erase bat's body
2. Used reshape tool to double the size of the spectacled caiman's legs
3. Layered the caiman over the wings
4. Layered the antlers over the caiman's head
   
5. layered the spider's eyes over the top of the caiman/antlers
6. layered the maw over the head
7. used opaque erase tool to clean up the edges
8. fooled with saturation and hue to match the peices
   
9. flattened image
10. used smudge tool to blend.
11. added flying squirrels!!
    

FINAL PRODUCT:

Conceptual art for teachers (and why they call me killer bee)

In "art for children" today, the topic of conceptual art came up when a classmate asked me what classes I have and then what conceptual art was.

I repeated what I said in class last thursday, "trying to describe conceptual art as an artist is like a chef trying to describe the flavor of water." I mean, it merely is.

Here is what I said;

"Conceptual art is all about the process. I like to think of it like, all art was at one point conceptual, painting, drawing, sculpture.
For example, somewhere out there, at some point a very long time ago, someone thought to themselves, "This mud has a very thick consistency and dries hard. I wonder what would happen if I made a shape with it to hold water (a cup or bowl as the objects name would come much later). I like to think that it was so sloppy at first that each attempt was quite varied/different. Somewhere along the line, whether it was noticing the different shapes possible or perhaps the different properties/colors of mud and eventually glazes that lead to "customizations"... someone had the idea to try representational art. could have been a stick figure on the side of a bowl, maybe it was a stack of rocks that looked like a figure...
The same goes for any other art form. Painting and printmaking followed drawing and sculpture, but they both involved similar innovations, I'm sure. They went from the idea, "I wonder what would happen if I were to spread this darker substance over this lighter plane," to an entire branch of collegiate studies (a building of which I spend my Tuesdays and Thursdays at the top floor of). This illustrates the importance of ancient art history- piecing together art as a concept."

At this point, I had the class's attention. Someone asked, "I still don't get it though, what is an example of modern conceptual art?"

"There aren't any that can be used to define the term as a whole, unfortunately. Like I said, it's all about the process."

"What do you mean?"

"For instance, there was this one dude who's piece was posted instructions to follow someone until they entered a private space like a home or bathroom. The point was what you get out of it as a participating viewer of the piece."

"But that's not art."

"Loosely defined, then what is art? When we look at a painting do we not participate mentally much in the same way that one would participate in that one dude's idea? Wouldn't it engage us even more? affect us just as much? I must admit that I think his project was a little creepy, but that's what I got from it. Someone else might take on the role and emerge a changed person from the experience. Someone might be arrested. It's all very much about the process, where the process is the art, not necessarily the result."

"But what can you take from that? It doesn't sound like art, it sounds like a creepy game."

"Perhaps I gave a bad example," I explained, "Here's a better one of 'participatory art'. Yoko Ono did a piece where the orders were to go to the nearest window the next morning right after waking up and look out it for five minutes. The view from the window would become the piece. perhaps you might see something you wouldn't see normally, perhaps not. It's a weird way of pointing out the relationship the viewer has to the piece. The experience could be breathtaking, or totally boring. But as long as the process is carried out, it's an experience."

At this point, class started, but the woman was starting to nod her head in appreciation, if not understanding.

In retrospect, I may or may not have been participating in a for of conceptual art all of last year, starting new years.

You see, every friday, I would put on a bumblebee suit and go to work. for all of 2008. didn't miss a friday.

here's a speech I wrote about it:

Intro to Public Speaking- an object that represents me

Well Good Morning Class!

Today I brought my draft suit as my object. I actually would have brought a charcoal pencil, but we all heard what kind of grade that would get us on Tuesday, especially considering how convenient it would appear that I had an entire art portfolio with me, so… so much for complex inner layer metaphors about strips of paper and application. My draft suit, in case you haven't guessed, is a bee suit; and I chose it because like the bee suit, I try to stand out on the coat hanger of life as a happy entity.

Yes, when I don this ridiculous carapace and register for a draft tournament, most people have to suppress a smile. And when I start playing air guitar to the techno remix of the go-go's "we got the beat," in front of the new San Rafael candy store, most people have to suppress hysterical laughter (unless the music is making them suppress hysterical vomit). The suit acts as a vehicle for me to stand out and brighten people's days, without having to struggle past awkward social introductions that get undermined by differing religions or political persuasions. I affect the lives of more people faster through the use of global non-sequitar.

This doesn't represent me as much as it represents what I hope to be- a positive factor to everyone. To make everyone in the world smile at least once would be impossible, but that doesn't mean I can't at least get it done where I live. This suit, when applied to everyday social interactions like getting coffee, visiting the bank, waiting on tables, and playing in high stakes magic tournaments, is like a magnifying glass.

I look at it this way- each person who sees has to wonder at some point why there's a dude dressed as a bee hogging all the honey at the aroma café. It may not seem so funny now, but I can assure you it's pretty funny when it's thrust upon you when you least expect it. You walk in to get a cup of Jo, and BLAM! It's something fun and hard to explain. This causes people to have better days. I don't believe in heaven, so spreading smiles indiscriminately eases me with the assurance that when I die, my life will have spread a little happiness in its wake.

In summary, the suit and I are alike because we don't discriminate. If we can't make people laugh, we make them smile out of confusion. We both stand for the kind of humor that everyone can enjoy, all age groups, all lifestyles. And we both conveniently go by B.

Thank you.

Alternatively, I wrote this Thursday, January 17, 2008

Beeman and other shenanigans Simply put, it's like having a superhero costume that no one can take seriously. I'd imagine it puts me in the perfect place to empathize with the ensemble cast of "the tick" (still an awesome show), but then again I can't fly. the current only photo of he that is known as... well, the jacket obscures those nigh pathetic wings. they're truly miserable. almost as bad as the felt stinger. teehee. so anyway- It's last Saturday, and my phone's alarm clock wakes my up from a night nearly devoted to bee-drafting. 10:50. enough time to get coffee before I wake up. it's Bee time. So the costume goes on. As I stagger over to the door, I realize that I've not enough time or energy to make it to Aroma on time, so I plan on royal ground. Crazy Calvin and friends are a bit astonished to see me there- Calvin had to stop his rand just to mumble "what the fuck" at me... but I was on a mission. no time for bee related puns. I tell this story over because I was pointed out my a little boy, and his words were funnier and perhaps more true than any other bee jokes tossed my way the rest of the day. I get the coffee and head for the concessions. there he is, about 7 yrs old, and standing in front of his mother. She's smiling, but he's clearly perplexed. his mouth is hanging open like when you turn around in a movie theater and look at all the faces watching the big screen. I have sun glasses on, of course, so I'm keeping a strait face. I locate the honey bear, and start squeezing. I usually don't use honey in coffee, but there I am, preparing a Turkish cup of jo as I reach for the cinnamon, when I catch out of the corner of my eye, the tike putting a hand to the side of his mouth to begin a whisper. What does he say? I'll get to that. Suspense is healthy, anyway. Unless you're in a John carpenter movie. To grasp the stupidity of them, one has to first grasp the wit and guts it takes to come up with a bee pun that's actually clever. The guts are what it takes to actually talk to a bee. not about a bee to someone else, but actually say something. the wit is what it takes to say something that doesn't make you sound like a jackass. this combination is kind of like people with o negative blood type- rare and needed in life. the most common blunder of wit- the group mentality blunder. this is where someone, while traveling with a large group (4 or more) of close friends, only has the guts because their security is unusually high. their wit is likely not even close to their guts, else they would simply have the wit to let someone else in their group make an ass of themselves. the most common quote? "bzzz." seriously. If you're walking across a crosswalk, and suddenly you see a giant bee approaching, is it really all that funny or necessary to say "bzz?" why do that when you could start screaming and run around going "God I'm Allergic! God I'm Alergic! Get it away! Getit awayhayhay...!" and then break down in tears. 'twould be much more funny. the next most common blunder is to call me a yellowjacket. uh, hello? do you call a Kiwi an Aussie? Do you call a rooster a chicken? do you call a penguin a fish? a spaniard a mexican? a frenchman canadian? seriously. "watch out, it's a yellowjacket," people are seriously ill. yellowjackets don't grow facial hair. Here's a laundry list of other stupid things I heard that day: "why aren't you back at the hive?" "where's the hive?" "how's the hive" "how's the queen?" "is this your queen?" "can I bee your queen?" "how do you bee?" (shudder) "I think we've been here long enough." "Must bee keeping to yourself." (wtf?) "you must be a really busy bee?" "can you give me some honey?" "djou lose a bet?" there were others, in more minute variations. This is a group of people with the guts to say something, the wit to tie "bee" or "honey" or "hive" or whatever in with some relevant (except the "bee keeping to yourself" guy, what a douche), but not the wit to see the futility of saying something if that something is unoriginal and stupid. The best move is to smile and except that someone is out there trying to point out that life's pretty much a joke anyway, in the cosmic sense, and we all might as well have fun. Rather than toss out one of the insipid quotes my ridiculous costume seems to routinely attract, one ought to keep their mouth shut. which brings me back to what the boy whispered: "He always gets the honey." Bam! right there. Subtle, yet bold. Straight faced, yet masking some humor. knowledgeable, yet clearly un-informed. What we have here, ladies and gentleman, is the next generation of stand up. little fucker might as well dropped out before he got to high school and moved to Vegas. but don't get me started on Vegas. Greatest geological disaster since Pompeii. anyhoo. If you see me, and feel compelled to respond with some remark that is bee-related, please, bee original.

And here is that shocking photo: