Nomination: A.T. Work of Art
Syd Midnight
nominate the 9/11 attack on the US. There were far more tasteless poster
children, and we never got a good real-life story from it, but in my thinking,
no sculpture, song, or .jpeg created in 2001 can out-tasteless the destruction
of the World Trade Center's twin towers, with an added "fuck you" smiting of the
Pentagon.
Remember watching it happen? Think of it as Performance Art. Just because you
may not approve doesn't make it a masterpiece, as acts of war occasionally are.
The famous steel beams rising out of the wreckage, like a smouldering "t" for
"Taliban" was a nice touch.
ObT: If people turn chickenshit and are afraid to vote for it, a distant,
distant second would be the Exploding Cow Art, as described so eloquently by
Seanbaby and quoted by moi. (Not nominating my post, just offering Flatz's art
for people afraid to nominate 9/11).
Subject: Seanbaby on the art of Wolfgang Flatz
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 09:35:55 -0400
From: Syd Midnight <s...@nls.net>
I missed the thread about the "performance artist" (synonym for "I
wasted the past few years on a worthless arts degree, but maybe I can
make money by grossing people out and pulling the kind of stunts you
propose while talking drunk but never actually do because you'd get
arrested") who dropped the cow out of the helicopter, but Seanbaby
provided some insights.
I feel his commentary is both on-topic and worthy of public attention.
Extremely insightful, from the point of view of a young American male.
Slightly edited.
********
"Chopper One, this is Ground Control. Ah, it looks like there's a
wounded man on your six waving a bloody flag with his right foot. He's
naked, over."
"Ground control, this is Chopper One. What? Over."
"Chopper One, holy shit. He's just dropped an exploding cow. Repeat:
holy shit. Over."
Man Drops Cow, Explodes It
Human society invented art so there would still be pictures of breasts
in case all the women got eaten by dinosaurs. It evolved into
transcendent expressions of man's quest for meaning, then finally into
depressed fruitcakes rubbing their feces on pictures of Jesus. But now
everyone can stop. Last Thursday, an Austrian man, Wolfgang Flatz, set
the limit of what art can achieve.
First, he covered himself in blood and hung naked from a helicopter. I
agree with you that at this point he should have been been beaten by the
pilot until he wiped himself off, put on some pants, and promised not to
be such a queer anymore. But instead, and lucky for us, Wolfgang
dropped an entire skinned cow 130 feet down into an abandoned building,
which then exploded. The Mona Lisa might be worth 50 billion dollars,
but name one part of her that's better than a skinless dynamite-filled
cow dropped from a helicopter.
PUBLIC OUTRAGE:
It's impossible to do something cool without outraging someone. In
fact, I usually judge how cool I'm being by how many angry people are
following me with signs. And while Wolfgang was redefining our
definition of rad, a group of animal rights protestors dramatically
turned their backs on his performance and passed out protest leaflets to
the crowd. Their pamphlets might as well have said, "Please grab a
shovel to help us dig several non-ass-compatible devices out of our
asses," because no one read them. Because no one is ever going to pay
attention to anyone stupid enough to intentionally turn their back on
half a ton of exploding animal. Whether you like it or not, at least
look at a god damn thing when it has a good chance of killing you. With
preservation skills like that, I'm surprised they lived long enough to
finish their pansy flyers. "Oh, a vehicle is driving out of control
into this Kinkos? That's not quite for me; I'm strongly against
vehicular disaster. I will protest this barbarism by looking away
fromAAIIEEEEEEEEE!"
I honestly have never heard of an animal constitution, so I don't know
what rights animal rights people talk about while they're crying and
spray painting people's clothes. As far as I know, animals have the
right to chew regurgitated weeds while they wait for someone to ram a
steel rod through their brain and cover them in ketchup. Are these the
rights the animal rights protestors cited when they tried to get
Wolfgang's kickass cow bomb declared illegal, or did they make some up?
"Your honor! According to section 18A of My Secret Diary, helicopter
cows are to be given a full military funeral, not blown up in a totally
totally sweet manner."
City officials actually had to come in and tell these people that the
dead cow had the legal status of "food," and that "throwing food around
is not illegal." That's humilating. You need to get out of the angry
parade and go back to school if the government has to come in to help
you figure out what food is. It was a dead and skinned cow, what more
of a hint did you need, a pile of fries and a pickle? And besides, who
should care if it was still alive? It's not like the thing was an
ambassador before they tore its skin off and filled it with dynamite.
Fuck animal rights activists-- the second a cow comes within sight of a
human it should be considered walking food wrapped in shoes.
Claudia Pfister, a spokeswoman for a Berlin animal rights group, said
that she feared the event would lead to copycat art, such as, get ready
for this: "people throwing their pet dogs out of windows." Now this
crazy bitch is just trying to get offended. She thinks that people will
see a pile of beef fall from a helicopter, and she's worried they're
going to drop their dog out of a window? For that to happen people not
only have to watch Austrian performance art, but they'd have to think
their window was a helicopter, and then forget that dogs are not cows.
You might as well worry that they're going to shave their balls and
learn to fly.
After almost every event, people say insane things like that. Someone
tells a news reporter their grim view of the near future where everyone
is an uncontrollable madman hoping their TV will teach them new and
interesting ways to murder. We should call these nonsense sound bytes
Crybaby Madlibs.
After the performance, it really is possible that impressionable kids
will want to detonate their own cows. Good. Encourage them. If every
kid in the world exploded a cow, we'd be so busy cheering we wouldn't
have time to starve or start wars. I know we don't have the budget for
something like that, but we could at least take all the bullshit
National Endowment for the Arts money away from the women painting with
their maxi pads and give it to traveling theatre groups for explosives
and beef.
You should assume that everyone against something this cool has
problems, but one 13 year old girl went out of her way to prove it.
Patrizia Strunz went in front of a Berlin court to say that seeing the
burger grenade could "trigger spiritual shock." The court, like me,
probably didn't know what the hell that meant, and they told her that
she didn't have to watch it if she thought it would prove there was no
God, or do whatever a spiritual shock does to you. And their verdict of
"quit looking at stuff that bothers you" is a pretty progressive outlook
to come from the same country that brought us genocide and tried to kill
Indiana Jones.
Besides worrying about how Wolfgang might affect idiot humans, I think
we should focus on how it might affect idiot cows. An easily influenced
cow could see Wolfgang's stunt, eat a barrel of gunpowder, skin itself,
and start jumping out of aircraft. That means we need to always wear
hard hats even when we're not fucking, or else construct floating cities
that would bustle in the sky high above the exploding animals. It's a
small trade off for all the positive aspects of cows wanting to blow up.
THE MEANING OF ART:
It's a common misconception that art has meaning. I've been to enough
gallery critiques to know that after 8 years of art school, a person can
trick themselves into thinking some ass-colored paint splat is telling
them something about how smart they are. Don't fall for this. Any
painting that has a secret meaning is just an artist sucking his own
dick about how some people can't unriddle their profound wisdom. And
their profound wisdom is usually that yellow looks pretty next to
purple, they don't like television, or how the government should fill
their asshole with sexy miniature firemen.
This is a true story: when I was in art school I had a dipshit in my
painting class that painted a guitar on fire. He stood in front of the
class and actually said, "I painted this to show my burning desire... to
write songs for the guitar." I still hadn't stopped laughing by the
time another girl showed her swirls of nonsense colors and said, "I was
trying to show the emotion... of anger." It was about there where the
professor asked me to laugh the tears out of my eyes somewhere else.
That is exactly what's wrong with artists. In the 10 or 12 hours you
spent on a painting that someone might interpret to mean that you love
the guitar, you could have knocked on 800 people's random doors and told
them all, with no misunderstanding, that you're one hundred percent
behind the success of the guitar. Or better yet, if it's really that
important that everyone knows you enjoy the guitar, FUCK YOU.
Art would like to think that it's some sort of secret communication
device between the intellectual elite, but all it's doing is circling a
message through the same group of fags that they're all pissed off.
It's a waste of time; you can tell someone you're pissed off with a
simple karate chop. Karate attacks or just words about karate attacks
are a cleaner and faster means of communication than painting floating
eyeballs with your body fluids ever will be. That's what makes this
exploding cow so special. It wasn't a visual interpretation of some
profound statement. It needed to happen because there are no words that
will ever be as rad as filling a cow with dynamite and dropping it from
the sky. Unless you're a hypnotist and you say the words, "Take off the
Wonder Woman outfit and make out with your twin sister."
*****
I didn't think anyone would bother simply following a link, which is
why I cut-and-pasted it like a fucking moron.
http://www.seanbaby.com
Delightfully immature, plenty to keep me entertained.
ObT: I'm about to puke into a garbage can. My stomach is lurching, my
eyes are watering, and my mouth is filled with that thin cheek drool
that gushes out before a vomit like Glub's own precum.
Whew, false alarm. Good thing too, if I'd vomited, I'd have vomited up
the thing that made me feel like vomiting. Brain says yes, stomach says
no. Brain wins. This time.
--
Rev. Syd Midnight - Remove TREET from tree...@treet.nls.net
"So, Darth Ted, your journey to the Dark Side is complete."
-- The Asshole
--
Rev. Syd Midnight - Remove TREET from TREE...@TREETnls.net
"We all hope that care and medication will lead to whatever improvements are
possible."
crato
news:3C179D1A...@nls.net:
> Since it probably won't make it anywhere else in the nominations, I'd
> like to
> nominate the 9/11 attack on the US. There were far more tasteless
> poster children, and we never got a good real-life story from it, but
> in my thinking, no sculpture, song, or .jpeg created in 2001 can
> out-tasteless the destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers,
> with an added "fuck you" smiting of the Pentagon.
>
> Remember watching it happen? Think of it as Performance Art. Just
> because you
> may not approve doesn't make it a masterpiece, as acts of war
> occasionally are.
After sitting here scratching my pimple infested ass and indulging in
intense concentration, I guess I've got to agree with Syd that this one
does fit under the heading of long running performance art. My favorite
part of the show were the black box recordings showing that some of the
hijackkers were as surprised as the rest of the passengers when they
discovered their final destination.
Seconded.
Crato (politically correct my ass)
Obt: Still enjoying the show... I'd love to hear the transcripts of the
flurry of radio and sattelite phone calls that were made when the first
daisy cutter was dropped into the area that 'Osama's Kids' are dug into at
this moment. I can't for the life of me imagine why they suddenly decided
that, just maybe, surrender is okay...
Lorri
>
> Since it probably won't make it anywhere else in the nominations, I'd like to
> nominate the 9/11 attack on the US.
If it hadn't already been seconded by Brave Cavefrog Crato, I'd have
seconded it.
See kids, this is the kind of tastelessness that made this ng GREAT.
Lorri
Moving the ClueBat a few inches away from Syd...for the moment
JustmeŽ
and like, I thoughtthat, you know, I had to say something back:
>
>daisy cutter was dropped into the area that 'Osama's Kids' are dug into at
>this moment. I can't for the life of me imagine why they suddenly decided
>that, just maybe, surrender is okay...
Why I'll never be elected President of the US:
We found where Osama's kids are? All 40+, hopefully?
I say, march them out, no matter how tiny they are, and line `em up against a
wall.
Get the cameras running. Fire up the satelite link.
Shoot each one by firing squad, straight in the goddamned heart, one at a time
on live worldwide TV, one an hour, until Osama shows up to turn himself in.
Shoot him next.
Continuing shooting his kids. Finish off with his wives.
Then find his siblings, nieces, nephews, cousins, neighbors, and anyone who've
ever so much as shaken his fucking had.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Does this concept make me a bad person?
--Ginny
http://www.insurgent.org/~ginny
If you REALLY loved me, you'd give me money.
https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=glubdamn%40optonline.net&item_name=Just+Because+You+Love+Me&no_shipping=1
If you don't love me, the Terrorists win!
Semolina Pilchard
(Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor) wrote:
>But it's really amazing that the US, in the space of only two months,
>has managed to blow away the government of *Afganistan*, a place so
>barbaric that banning knives in the national game is only a century
>old.
Attempt to be fair, Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor, Ginny, and
whoeverthefuckelse contibuted to this thread. The U.S., as usual,
blew away no-one. Overseas, the U.S. has a habit of coming in on
serious wars (not like this little nonsense above Pakistan) when the
fighting's been done, or losing. Stop believing in John Wayne, Arnie
and Rambo. If your combatants had dropped a mile or so to the ground,
the Afghans (remember the spelling) would have kicked their arses
royally, as they have done with everyone else in the past.
The Northern Alliance, as big a bunch of beasts as ever the Taliban
were, did your work for you. Live with it. Your boasting makes me
puke, and other than that, lacks any smidgin of tastelessness. Post
quality, not crap.
Be aware that this is not a message of support for Osama bin Ladin,
the Quaida, the Taliban, or whoever the fuck else you might wish to
assign it to. It is merely a strong objection to the pollution of
this noble newsgroup with your foolish jingoism.
I'm sure you won't be offended by that.
--
Kindest Regards,
Semolina Pilchard
John Gilmer
"Semolina Pilchard" <scar...@clara.co.uk> wrote in message
news:dlei1ucf3dd92fiua...@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2001 05:40:45 GMT, wor...@dworley.ne.mediaone.net
> (Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor) wrote:
>
> >But it's really amazing that the US, in the space of only two months,
> >has managed to blow away the government of *Afganistan*, a place so
> >barbaric that banning knives in the national game is only a century
> >old.
>
> Attempt to be fair, Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor, Ginny, and
> whoeverthefuckelse contibuted to this thread. The U.S., as usual,
> blew away no-one. Overseas, the U.S. has a habit of coming in on
> serious wars (not like this little nonsense above Pakistan) when the
> fighting's been done, or losing. Stop believing in John Wayne, Arnie
> and Rambo. If your combatants had dropped a mile or so to the ground,
> the Afghans (remember the spelling) would have kicked their arses
> royally, as they have done with everyone else in the past.
Actually, our "combatants" (namely the USMC) are on the ground as are the US
Army Special Forces and the US Army Rangers.
The Afghans haven't kicked any US Ass. Perhaps you have the US military
confused with the Russian or the British.
JustmeŽ
and like, I thoughtthat, you know, I had to say something back:
>
>whoeverthefuckelse contibuted to this thread. The U.S., as usual,
>blew away no-one. Overseas, the U.S. has a habit of coming in on
>serious wars (not like this little nonsense above Pakistan) when the
>fighting's been done, or losing. Stop believing in John Wayne, Arnie
>and Rambo. If your combatants had dropped a mile or so to the ground,
>the Afghans (remember the spelling) would have kicked their arses
>royally, as they have done with everyone else in the past.
My dear, you mistake me for someone who has a political agenda.
I haven none. I just want Osama bin Laden, his family, supporters, neighbors
and their dogs & cats, dead.
Dead.
and, dead.
I, for one, believe that we need to stop butting in on world affairs--the world
hates us for it. I'm for pulling out of the United Nations, ending all forms of
assistance because charity begins at home Goddammit, and let `em all fend for
themselves. If they kill each other off, starve or die from disease--the Earth
is forgiving. Give it 20 years, and we can build a golf course there for our
fat executives.
I'd pay far less in taxes that way.
I'm also for, when finding people who work toward harming Americans, swift and
sure death at all costs.
....as for going under ground and fighting Afghanistans on their turf: Why do
what scores of others have failed to do, when we have nifty bombs that can smoke
out & kill off those human roaches before sending in our ground troops?
Who the fuck cares about fair? I just want dead.
Considering running for office,
Geoffrey Gies
Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor <wor...@dworley.ne.mediaone.net> wrote:
>
>I'm not plumping that the USMC has oversized choads or anything like
>that. I'm just impressed that we managed to do a very difficult job,
>one that I would have bet long odds against success just a few months
>ago.
Yep. It was tough work putting the appropriate spin on the
press so the reddish-brown smear of former wimmen and chillun was
equated with transmission droppings in any good ol' YouEss suburban
driveway. Marginalising the fringies including the UN (who haven't
paid their property taxes you know) and the Red Cross who kept trying to
remind us that wasn't Dexron II became child's play.
>Yes, we did it by handing all the heavy lifting over to savage,
>poverty-stricken locals. But isn't that an act of wisdom?
>
The art is in making them want to do the dirty work. That a
spook should be the first official combat casualty (wtf is a cia goof
doing wandering around inside a prison camp other than inciting a riot
anyway) adds to the addage the proof is in the pudding (which he became
- not some hallowed god damned doodah doofus hero).
>The *last* time someone tried to take over Afghanistan, they did it
>*right*, with a proper invasion using their own troops, etc. It was
>as fine a display of manly virtue as the current US war is a display
>of, uh, that kind of valor which consists mainly of discretion. But
>then, the English lost 99% of their invasion force.
>
Uh, weel ..
discounting those pesky Rooskies of course. Americon foreign
policy is hosed and the gibberish spouted in defense of this "action"
guarantees the entrenchment of the "defense" industry as a ward of the
state.
Fuck the poor, the sickly who contributed their working lives
for the middle class wankfest. Ahmerricah wants more nukes and a bomb
blistering blanket to snuggle in at night.
--
Mr. Giuliani urged for calm and called for a complete evacuation
of lower Manhattan. -Globe and Mail, Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001
Kevin
As I've said before, I disagree with a lot of what the US has done that's
resulted in a lot of the hatred directed at us. I don't disagree with it
because of that outcome, but because I don't consider lots of what makes up
our foreign policy to be our business, or anything I think I should be
forced to pay for.
But that's not a reason not to respond any less forcefully or brutally.
When in history has an attack ever occurred that _wasn't_ considered to be
justified by those waging it?
As for the CIA guy not being a hero - he knowingly put himself in a
dangerous place to try to protect others (and not just Americans) from
future attacks, and died doing that. Sounds pretty heroic to me.
> Fuck the poor, the sickly who contributed their working lives
> for the middle class wankfest. Ahmerricah wants more nukes and a bomb
> blistering blanket to snuggle in at night.
The 'poor' here in the US have a much better shot at eventually beoming
un-poor than most other places. They're not working _for_ the middle
class, they're working to become the middle class - into which, it comes to
mind, you've seemed to have inserted yourself.
I assume you weren't forced to locate here - you seem happy to question the
morality of US society while simultaneously enjoying its bounty.
ObT: Me sounding like one of those "US: Love it or Leave it" jackasses.
Juan Rico
(Geoffrey Gies) wrote:
> Fuck the poor, the sickly who contributed their working lives
>for the middle class wankfest. Ahmerricah wants more nukes and a bomb
>blistering blanket to snuggle in at night.
Goddamn right, and more Dexron II on the teevee nooz.
---
wereradio*at*charter.net * webpages.charter.net/wereradio
"That's the problem with plutonium, Craven; it's
limited in its application. It's not user
friendly, but as a vehicle for regaining one's
self-respect, it's got a lot going for it."
--Darius Jedburgh (Joe Don Baker),
_Edge of Darkness_
Semolina Pilchard
<gi...@takethisout.insurgent.org> wrote:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah, that's better! If you did run for office, and if I
were within several thousand miles of the right country, not only
would I vote for you, I'd pound the doorsteps for you, and thrust your
apolitical a.t leaflets into the hands of innocent passers-by.
Semolina Pilchard
(Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor) wrote:
>I'm not plumping that the USMC has oversized choads or anything like
>that. I'm just impressed that we managed to do a very difficult job,
>one that I would have bet long odds against success just a few months
>ago. Yes, we did it by handing all the heavy lifting over to savage,
>poverty-stricken locals. But isn't that an act of wisdom?
Up to a point, in a short-sighted way... But the "mine enemy's enemy
is my friend" policy has, quite rapidly, proved misguided exactly as
many times as it's been used. Learning difficulty, anyone? The list
of temporary friends turned enemy is extensive, over the last thirty
years, and the U.S. has usually ended up having chunks of its own
metal hurled back it at. Osama himself is reportedly in this
category, though I can't pretend to know the truth of that.
>The *last* time someone tried to take over Afghanistan, they did it
>*right*, with a proper invasion using their own troops, etc. It was
>as fine a display of manly virtue as the current US war is a display
>of, uh, that kind of valor which consists mainly of discretion. But
>then, the English lost 99% of their invasion force.
British, Dale, British. If it had been only English, what would it
have mattered? And we did it time and time again. Which only goes to
show that the aggregate IQ of any government is at the mouthbreather
level, never mind how many bright sparks may have accidentally been
elected.
However, I am now guilty, sober, of what I objected to, drunk:
discussing matters of a tedious geopolitical nature on a.t.
ObT. One's certainly required, but I can't think of any... Oh yes, I
get my bit & brace, drill a large hole in my forehead, and fuck my own
brains out in penance for the lapse from tastelessness. But I doubt
if I will; I can stand anything except pain.