Andrew Bird
Fake Palindromes

My dewy-eyed Disney bride
What has tried
Swapping her blood with formaldehyde
Monsters

Whiskey plied voices cried fratricide
Jesus don't you know that you could have died you should have died
What with monsters what talk
Monsters what walk the earth

And shes got red lipstick and bright pair of shoes
And shes got knee high socks what to cover a bruise
She's got an old death kit shes been meaning to use
She's got blood in her eyes in her eyes for you
She's got blood in her eyes for you

Certain fad
Stripes and plaids
Singles adds
they run you hot and cold like a rheostat
I mean a thermostat
So you bite on a towel hope it wont hurt to bad

My dewy-eyed Disney bride
What has tried
Swapping your blood with formaldehyde
What monsters who talk
Monsters who walk the earth

And she says i like long walks and sci-fi movies
If your six foot tall and east coast bred
Some lonely night we can get together
And I wanna tie your ywrists with leather
And I wanna drill a tin hole in to your head
And I wanna drill a tiny hole into your


I chose Andrew Bird's song specifically because, without music, it sounds very sing-songy when you read it to yourself. In the third and sixth stanzas, Bird repeats the words and, she's, got, and wanna, unifying the sound of the lyrics. The repetition gives it the lyrical tone, contrasting with the words, which are extremely dark, creating an effect of all over dark humor.

Also, there is great use of the poetic device of hyperbolic statements. Bird overexaggerates many things in his song (swapping your blood with formaldehyde, drill a tiny hole into your head, etc.) giveing the lyrics a mysterious air. He uses many metaphors, which, in this case, are pretty synonomous with the hyperbolic statements.

Laughing and Crying: Short Stories

I don't really like any of these stories. Some have boring ideas, some have good ones, but aren't well though out, and some are just plain awful. I guess the one I hold in the least amount of contempt is "Fingerpaints":

That wasn't how the story went. She had, in fact, made a chocolate torte. That much was true, but Mr. Piedmont had never stopped by, and certainly hadn't eaten any of the cake. Nor had anyone written to the local newspaper to share the recipe.

But she held her tongue, silently scrubbing at the rings that she could never quite fully make disappear from the inside of their coffee mugs, while he generated crumbs at the kitchen table.

It hadn't always been like this. Charles was a born storyteller. A virtuoso raconteur. True, he exaggerated, but it was always for the betterment of the tale. The facts were always there, a pallet of colors with which he began, but it was in his brush strokes that his genius took form. He was now working with primary colors and finger paints.

She set the sponge on the edge of the sink and glanced back at him. His eyes were set on the newspaper in front of him, which he had marked with extended and nonsensical footnotes and heavily scrawled punctuations of either enthusiastic agreement or wild dismay. All caps.

"Charles?"

"Mmmm," he intoned, rattling the paper closed.

"Has anyone ever told you that you look like George Clooney?"

"What did you say, Fiona? George Clooney? Fi, Fi, Fi," he wagged his finger. "You're just trying to get me into bed with you, aren't you? You just finish the dishes and well see if you play your cards right."

There was a woman once, eons ago, who had stopped Charles in a department store to tell him he looked like George Clooney. Without hesitation, he had responded, "You mean George Clooney looks like me."

It was, of course untrue, which was why it was funny, and why it had become a running inside joke between Fiona and her husband. She would always begin with this question, and he would respond in the same way he had the first time. Next to the perfume counter. To that woman with smudged lipstick and poor vision.

Explaining the importance of the joke would be as pointless as trying to understand what had gone wrong or why. It was silly, but not inconsequential. It had become a sort of talisman to be invoked in times of uncertainty and doubt. An anchor. Something to slice through the knotted tendrils of oblivion that had grown around him, revealing, if only for a second, what had been lost.

But, for the first time, he missed his cue. He dropped his line, and in its place, had substituted this foreign and repulsive rejoinder.

"Fiona." He paused and wiped his mouth. Bits of lemon scone only nested themselves further in his beard.

He couldn't hear her crying over the steady hushing of water from the faucet and the slow percussion of stained dishware.

I guess I like this one because it only hints at a marriage that, in reality, has been falling apart for years. The epiphany, where Fiona realizes she no longer loves Henry is short and simple, but it is also remorseful, which makes it slightly different than other stories with falling apart relationships.

Kehinde Wiley: Juxtaposition beats Aestheticsim

I truly love Kehinde Wiley. He has an amazing talent and his social commentary is different. Kehinde Wiley's art makes me laugh. It is poignant and the juxtaposition is wonderful. When one sees the men Wiley paints in the real world, one never imagines them riding ponies, or being showered with flowers while laying on a couch.




In general, the men Wiley chooses to paint are not necessarily viewed as terribly well off, and in the past when French Baroque and Rococo where common in paintings, the people who requisitioned them were rich. Having a portrait of oneself or one's family was a general sign of wealth. These young, urban men do not connote the idea of wealth. Wiley is trying to beak barriers of racism and class by creating such juxtapositions.
He also is mocking the idea the men should be masculine by putting extremely tough looking guys on litters on ponies, and lying on couches. It shows Wiley's sense of humor.

Banksy is Boring as Hell

Personally, I do not like Banksy, nor do I like the majority of graffiti. It's crude and dull. Banksy has made a name for himself by putting his ideas into graffiti form, but the themes to his paintings are hackneyed and boring. We've seen these themes too often, and combined with the fact that it is graffiti, makes it trite, irritating, and extremely juvenile. In the majority of his work, he trying to display instances of hypocrisy and contradictions (such as the dove with the target on its chest).



It's overdone. He is trying to shock the world with something old. In each painting, he is trying to say something different, but his paintings are all very controversial and political, so it differs to whether I agree on it with each work.

Graffiti is art, in most people's opinions, including mine. I do not like it, but then, I also don't like minimalism or formalism. Tagging a building, I guess could be considered art, but it's more like say "I was Here". I think artists and authors use pen names to gather true criticism. People tend to be more truthful if the author is someone they do not know. The author is also able to take part in conversations about it, being able to hear criticism truly.

I think putting work out in public is different for everyone. Some people love criticism, love praise, but others need to keep it to themselves.

6 Word Biographies

I like summer camp friends better.



Moved, Home and Heart left behind.



Terrified of responsibility, longing for adulthood.

Lui Bolin

Recently, I have been obsessed with Stumbleupon.com. I have frequented the site much more than usual lately as it is such a great time waster,and I have so much time on my hands theses days. Stumble, however, has been showing me these pictures of a Chinese man, like every day for a long time now. His name is Lui Bolin and he's super cool. Most wouldn't really consider it art, but I absolutely love it. He paints himself and other people to blend into the background:










Some of his images are just plain cool, but it is also social commentary. Bolin is trying to show, literally, how people don't notice things. They take everything for granted, even if there is something wrong with it.