Thing-a-day.com

My final Thing is a celebration of completing Thing-a-Day:

Hooray! What a fun, inspiring and altogether awesome experience. I cannot wait to do this again!

At my office there is 500 or so blank floppy disks that no one has any use for. I was going to make floppy disk beaded curtains to divide between my office and the onw next door, but I started to make it and realized it was stupid. So, this is one strand of an aborted attempt.

It is a speaker. It acts as a microphone. It goes to an amplifier. It plays through another speaker. It hangs from the ceiling. Sometimes it makes wicked feedback.

If only I had thought of stacking big awkward things 27 days ago…. Oh well… Live and learn.

Today I made a tower of empty water jugs.

Yesterday I posterized some friends for some laser cutting fun-times in the near future. Yay!

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Well, little vibrating bots sure are popular. Look at all of them go, go, go, go!

Tonight I figured I would throw my little vibrating bot into the ring. Mine is better than yours because it uses a pull-string instead of toxic batteries. Neener neener.

A while ago I was in a mediocre burger restaurant and I noticed they had mediocre abstract paintings on their walls. The paintings were roughly 12″ x 5″ and completely unremarkable. The price tag underneath read $150. This got me curious as to who purchased these paintings and why? They clearly were not being purchased by any serious collectors. For one, there was nothing unique about them. Secondly, they were unsigned as far as I could tell. Yup… pretty much worthless as a serious investment.

The more I thought about it, the more frustrated I grew. To whom were they going to sell this tiny, worthless painting for $150? Who in their right mind would buy such a thing? Finally, after much pondering, it struck me like a golfer teeing off during a thunderstorm; I resolved that the ideal patron for a work like this is someone with too much pecuniary income and no taste. In short, they were selling it to some sucker with tacky taste to put over their couch or to match their color scheme in their bathroom (or something like that). Whoever made this painting and set that price had figured something out that I had not. They must have realized that whomever was buying this type of art didn’t know any better and was vainly trying to buy social status (Or at least, I hope they figured that out. It would be sad if they felt their painting was worth that much).

Any which way, I thought about it some more. Hanging art on the wall is one way to let people know, “Hey, I have money!” Unfortunately, when you’re hanging a crappy painting in the crapper, most people don’t say “Hey, that tiny thing is artwork. I bet they spent, so, like, $150 on that!” No, they probably are thinking to themselves, “I shouldn’t have ordered that strange Lebanese lamb meatloaf.”

Here is my point: People are spending obscene amounts on these works of art to pretend like they have status and taste only for it to be lost on their audience. It is lost on their audience because if they need to reinforce their rising social status through the acquisition of bad art, their audience is either individuals of an inferior social status that could care less, or, worse, of a superior social status and think that people who purchase such works are buffoons. I feel that rarely will they be entertaining social climbers that are on the same rung of the social ladder and able to grasp the significance of such a statement. This means that, as a functional object, the painting is very weak since it does not explicitly convey the information that the patrons would like to express; namely, “I spent a lot of money on a small work of art to match my couch! Look at me! I have money! Look at me!”

My solution: Paint the price-tag over the crappy abstract painting. This way it is explicitly clear to all of each and every individual that subsequently glances upon this work just how much the patron spent in its acquisition. In addition, their painting will be signed in a unique handwriting and part of a series done by a serious conceptual artist (myself). As such, not only should they reinforce a person’s need to express their social status through consumption, but they should also increase in value over time.

How I determined the price: Judging by the prices on the paintings in the mediocre burger joint, a painting is worth the square of its width. This seems reasonable to me. I like making money on art and people like spending money on art. It all works out.

Would you like to purchase a painting? Leave me a comment.

Well, I have finally gotten around to decorating my laptop. I like this. It was relaxing to do and less committal than tattooing it with the laser cutter (like my coworkers keep urging of me).

Today I answered a really important question posited on a work-related mailing list. You can see all of my letters here!

To Whom it May Concern:

It was recently asked of me, and, for that matter, everyone else on this list, “who the hell uses aol?” I have given this much thought. Aside from myself, I couldn’t immediately think of anyone. Then I remembered, back when Paris Hilton’s address book was leaked all over the internet, I recall taking notice that Conrad Hilton was, in fact, an AOL subscriber. Not only was he on AOL, but his username was, of all things, C-Rad. At the time I considered adding him to my buddy list, but then I realized that I had very little to talk about with Mr. C-Rad Hilton. And for that matter, I really did not know much about him other than he has a badass screen name, more money than anyone I will ever know and is somehow related to Paris Hilton. Come to think of it, I don’t even know how he is related to Paris Hilton. Is he Paris’ father? Grandfather? Second cousin? I clearly don’t know the man. Therefore, there really isn’t even much of a reason for me to contact him. What hope is there for us engaging in mutually pertinent conversation geared towards the reciprocal enrichment of our respective characters? So, instead I tried to call Eminem or someone with a similar enough haircut (Fred Durst, maybe?). It’s hard to tell boring haircuts apart. Any which way, his number was turned off. I guess too many other people already had too little to say to him. Or maybe, he had too little to say to them. Speaking from experience, it’s hard to tell with celebrities. None I have ever contacted have thus written me back. I have no shortage of things to say. It must, therefore, be that they don’t have anything worthwhile to respond with. Anyway, I digress. I’m supposed to be answering a simple question… or something. Alright, so the question is, “who the hell uses aol?” To reiterate, I was curious myself. Thus far I have only established that I use it, Conrad Hilton uses it and there is very little common ground between Conrad Hilton and myself. In fact, I usually go through my existence giving little thought to the fact Conrad Hilton even exists. And I can say with a fair amount of certainty that Conrad Hilton probably doesn’t even know I exist at all; but there I go getting sidetrack again. Answering questions… Answering questions… Let me answer the stupid question. And make no mistake about it, the question that I am answering is a stupid question. Who still really cares who uses what email provider anymore? Does it really matter? Maybe it does. I don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t know. I have better things to do than think about the social significance of my email service. Truthfully, the problem of selecting an email service consistent with my lifestyle choices doesn’t keep me up at night. No, much like how my thoughts never turn to Conrad Hilton, I don’t give the matter of my email address much thought. However, when it was suddenly brought to my attention today, I started to give it some consideration. Who in the hell does use AOL? I investigated the matter. Apparently, Dr. John Russ uses AOL. He provides “image analysis consulting & training.” Some bed and breakfast in the UK has an AOL email address. I don’t even understand that. What is America doing online in the UK? Or rather what is the UK doing on America Online? And does Conrad Hilton know about this? I mean, does anyone know of this? I know the person who posited this quandary clearly is unaware or they wouldn’t be asking. I also know I didn’t subsequently know because I wouldn’t be investigating this if I had. I am willing to wager that Fernando Cerejo doesn’t know about this either. He’s on AOL too, but he’s too busy posting to message boards about how much he loves Liv Tyler. And for that matter, does Liv Tyler have an AOL account? She is, after all, an American and I bet she has been online at one point or another. So, I wonder, has she been American Online? Thinking about this makes my head hurt. So far I have established that only myself, Conrad Hilton, John Russ, and Fernando Cerejo are American Online. The UK bed and breakfast doesn’t count; not being American and all. I only found four people. I guess this doesn’t really answer the question. There must be more than four people using AOL. Anyway, this is where I give up and if you were wise, you would too. I suppose you can continue to sit around wondering who the hell else uses AOL, but why would you want to? Why would you even dwell upon such thoughts to begin with? Why would you even posit such thoughts to other living human beings that have better think about than AOL users such as Conrad Hilton, some medical imaging technician named John, Fernando and myself? Oh yeah, come to think of it, why would you even ask who the hell uses AOL when I clearly do? The answer was in front of you all this time. I use AOL. And, do you know what? I could care less. Come to think of it, I’m tired. I don’t want to think about this anymore. Thanks for wasting my time pondering over your aimless question. Please, should you have any more uncertainty in your life or as I suspect, simply need to vent pent up aggression, let me know. I am just as happy to reciprocate pseudo-anonymously through the electronic interweb.

Sincerely,
Randy

On Tuesday I unionized my workplace.

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Today I made a song and then subsequently a video based on my long-standing idea of buying my own island in the South Pacific, electing myself president for life and using sand dollars as currency. If you haven’t already guessed, this utopia shall be called Randyland.

 Ok, so I really did do this yesterday, I just didn’t get a chance to photograph etc.  So I took this ultra huge sweatshirt and cut it and sewed it and cut it and sewed it and un-sewed it and re-sewed it…and it still looks really lame.  Any suggestions?  I like the graphic, so I want to make it cool…but I’m struggling.  Enjoy anyways.