the nonist

I was recently made a gift of a valise which belonged to a great-great-uncle whom I’d never known nor indeed ever heard of. Inside his valise, which must have been close to a century old, were some personal effects, nothing of great interest, but among them I found a small bundle of printed matter, folded into a yellowing envelope and tied with a bit of unravelling string. Upon opening the envelope I was surprised to find that they were keepsakes from a circus of some kind called “Dr. Peppy’s Superb Symmetrical Circus.” There was an advertisement (pictured above) as well as some promotional cards, highlighting what I have to assume were star attractions of the circus. Each had handwritten notes on the back. I’ve scanned the cards and transcribed the notes below for your wonder and amusement.

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From the back of the Advertisement originally written in a fine hand:

“What’s most intriguing about “The Doctor’s” Circus is the compounding of the unlikely. Not only does he bring to us the oddities of form and function, which though unusual, we’ve come none the less to expect from our visiting circuses, but he combines these with an even more spectacularly unlikely sight - Each of his performers is very nearly perfectly symmetrical in the physical aspect! As though the likelihood of finding sorcerers and giants and bearded women were not miniscule enough Peppy has managed to gather a group of misfits displaying the least common human trait of all, perfect symmetry. Everywhere you look within the tents you feel a though you were seeing performers split by a looking glass. Truly it is a wonder.”

“We were welcomed at the edge of the fair-grounds by a peculiar little man who called himself “Fu Qiang.” He bid us to step lightly and follow him. With two canes and three legs he galloped as though he were a tiny bulbous equine. Albeit a five legged one of course.”

“The Oracular Man was a shock to behold. Many of the faint at heart and slow of mind, could not at first bare the sight of him. Some swooned, others whimpered, but he quickly won them over with flattering prophesies and comforting tales of a future paradise. While the educated and rational moved on after a short viewing to see more of what the circus had to offer, The Oracular Man none the less had a huge crowd hanging on his every pronouncement for the remainder.”

“This man did not seem to have a name, at least not that I can remember. He was large as a bear and ate raw fish whole. grabbing them with one massive hand from a tin bucket. I assume he was the “Strong Man” of the show but we never saw him do anything but eat and defecate explosively against the side of the tent. perhaps it was his day off?”

“It seemed to me that the contortionist did no much contort himself into impossible shapes using muscle and concentration and practiced skill but was rather an impossible shape to begin with. He seemed to me to simply stand there, occasionally bending over to flick a bit of hey from his shoe, or lifting his seemingly backward arm to doff his hat to a lady.”

“Animus was a strange sort of animal handler. He mostly barked commands at small rodents and once convinced an old mangy dog to jump into a barrel. He was billed as “Lord of the Cockatiels” and in as much every trick was performed with a small flock of the birds perched on his arms and shoulders. I couldn’t help but feel that his greatest trick was not being covered in bird droppings. I didn’t witness even a single bird relieve him or herself for the entire show.”

“The bearded lady was somewhat dull. ‘When you’ve seen one…’ as they say. It seemed Dr. Peppy must have been aware of this because the ringmaster barely mentioned her facial hair at all, focussing instead on a constant stream of barely concealed innuendoes surrounding her “Twin Husbands,” octogenarians who stood by her side the whole time, inexplicably wearing nothing but their underclothes, and making lewd faces.”

“Zin, the so-called Morticant, was a sorcerer of some sort. Mostly he stood upon a small box or tub draped in black cloth, growling out incantations in what seemed a mixture of Pig-Latin and Yiddish. At one point he produced a string of words which to the children looking on sounded remarkably like “fresh doo-doo loaf!” They snickered and howled and fell over clutching their sides as children will do. Needless to say The Morticant was not amused. Shortly there after he disappeared in puff of noxious smoke.”

“The boxing match featuring Jabbin’ Joe Vs. Jabbin’ Jim was one of the strangest sights I may ever see. The bout went six rounds, filled with, as their nicknames foretold, an endless string of jabs, before Jim, evidently forgetting he shared his lower half with Joe, hauled off with a vicious shot below the belt. Both were helped from the ring and the match was called a draw. Evidently the 36th consecutive draw in a row I might add.”

“Evidently the Baron was a distinguished German soldier who laid claim in his youth to the title of Europe’s Greatest Marksman. During some battle or another he lost both hands with the exception of one finger on each. Wanting to maintain his Title he had a rifle surgically attached to each wrist, his two remaining fingers sewn to their triggers. Though he continues to be an amazing marksman it was whispered at the back of the tent that the very day of his amazing surgery he went to the water closet to relieve himself and became a eunuch as well.”

Strangely all my searching for further information on “Dr. Peppy’s Symmetrical Circus” have come up empty. None of the old timers on my uncles side of the family remembers anything about the circus and none of his children’s children remember ever hearing it spoken of. It’s almost as though the Circus never existed! lucky we have this record otherwise it might have been forgotten forever ay?

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I came across a few photos of a lowland gorilla in a book about the history of the circus which piqued my interest. I’m a big fan of the primate you see (some being dearer to my heart than others) and I went searching the web to find out more. The Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus billed him as “Gargantua The Great, the world’s most terrifying creature” but as it turns out a previous owner had dubbed him Buddy, short for Buddha, and he had a very sad past. Not only that but he was scared of lighting. What follows are a few brief notes on Buddy’s story and some related images.

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This is Buddy or Gargantua the Great as the world would come to know him.

Essentially the story of Buddy goes like this: In the Mid-30’s a baby gorilla was offered to a freighter captain as a gift from some friends who were African missionaries. The Captain accepted and brought the gorilla aboard his ship, naming him Buddy. He was adopted by the crew and became the darling of the ship being given specially prepared foods, taught to preform seaman duties, and otherwise adored.

A sailor aboard the ship took exception to the discipline doled out by the Captain and knowing how fond the captain was of the baby gorilla threw nitric acid in Buddy’s face as a means of vengeance. Buddy was nearly blinded and forever disfigured. Buddy hid himself refusing food, shrieking, and attacking anyone who came near. The sailors, at a loss for what to do, urged the captain the euthanize Buddy, but the captain knew a wealthy woman in Brooklyn who cared for sick animals and decided instead to bring Buddy to her.

Her name was Mrs. Gertrude Lintz and she was a bit of an eccentric.

She had won national attention by proposing to the scientific community that apes, specifically chimpanzees, needed proper mothering to survive and thrive. She dressed the chimps in human attire, taught them to eat at table, and allowed them to live as children might under similar circumstances. Her most famous protégé, Captain Jiggs, a highland chimpanzee of unusual intelligence and patience, became a well known national figure. Mrs. Lintz divided chimpanzees into three classes, depending on eye brightness, and anthropomorphized the animals to such a degree that she blurred the line between animal and human. She particularly enjoyed posing the animals in the car seat beside her, driving her roadster with an immaculately dressed chimp navigating from the passenger side.

Under Mrs. Lintz care Buddy grew to a huge 600 lbs. A plastic surgeon attempted to repair his disfigured face but left him with a permanent terrifying sneer otherwise out of character with his gentle nature.

Evidently one night it was stormy out. Buddy was frightened by the thunder and lighting and broke out of his cage. He crawled like a frightened child into bed with Mrs. Lintz. She decided then and there to give the 600 lb. eight year old lowland gorilla to the circus. She contacted John Ringling in 1937 who came to Brooklyn to see Buddy. He was later quoted as saying:

“From behind the bars glowered the most fearful face I have ever looked upon,” said Ringling. “A tremendous hairy head, great dripping fangs, and the horrible sinister leer of the acid-twisted mouth.”

Top image caption: So much like the horrifying nightmare of what man might have been, Gargantua The Great offers the most pernicious portrait study ever recorded by a camera lens. Bottom image caption: The massive hand of Gargantua The Great and that of a normal sized man, emphasize the almost unbelievable concentrated power behind the giant gorilla’s which point to his approximate place of origin in the dim forests of western equatorial Africa.

Ringling bought Buddy on the spot, and renaming him (at his wife’s suggestion) Gargantua, after Rabelais’ giant king of Gargantua and Pantagruel, launched an advertising campaign centered around the gorilla which hailed him as “the largest gorilla ever exhibited” and “the most terrifying living creature.” Millions flocked to see Gargantua. He was a huge success as an attraction which single handedly helped rebound Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey from the ruinous period of the Great depression.

The circus built Gargantua his own special air-conditioned cage on wheels and toured him successfully for years.

From Time magazine, 1938-

Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus’ gorilla Gargantua the Great, wrote Gargantuan Columnist Heywood Broun three weeks ago, “is the fiercest looking thing I have ever seen on two legs. And probably his power and truculence were all the more impressive because he did look a good deal like a distant relative. No one was allowed to go close to his cage, because Gargantua can reach about five feet through the bars and get a toe hold on a visitor whom he dislikes.” Gargantua may not be the world’s biggest captive gorilla—since the death of Berlin Zoo’s monster, many zoos have claimed that honor for their gorillas—but he is one of the most vindictive.

June of 1938 saw one of the few comical aspects of the gargantua story when former heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunny revived the age old Ape vs. Man argument with an article in the Connecticut Nutmeg in which he wrote the following:

It is my firm conviction that any fairly good heavyweight boxer could put the great Gargantua to sleep or to rout within two minutes. You must remember that a boxer stepping into the ring to defend or seek a championship is, muscularly speaking, quite a different person than is the spectator who watches him. Years of specialized calisthenics have put a tough layer of hard muscle over the boxer’s stomach and solar plexus. Punches that would knock the ordinary man out instantly or injure him internally, bounce off the hardened body of a well conditioned boxer without making him gasp. That protective layer of muscle absorbs punches just as shock absorbers on your car assimilate the bumps… Gargantua is a big boy but a Dempsey left hook landing on his stomach might figuratively tear the poor animal in two and leave him paralyzed on the canvas or jungle.

In 1941 as a publicity stunt a “marriage ceremony” took place as Gargantua took a female gorilla named Mitoto as his wife. Called “Toto” for short. (Toto had also been property of an affluent woman who during tea with the gorilla had her both her wrists snapped.) Mitoto, Swahili for “Little One,” became known as simply “Mrs. Gargantua.” Ringling had hoped to mate the gorillas. Their first meeting was romanticized in a time Magazine article in March of 41-

M’Toto (a she-gorilla) met Gargantua (a he-gorilla) last week. Their cautious introduction took place out behind the machine shop at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s winter quarters in Sarasota, Fla. The two giant gorillas whom John Ringling North hopes to mate were wheeled up face to face in their separate cages. Attendants and newsmen watched. Scarfaced, 550-lb. Gargantua turned a curious look upon the first gorilla he had seen since he left Africa. Apparently he liked what he saw. He threw her a bouquet of celery tops. Uppishly, 438-lb. M’Toto tossed it back. He tried a head of lettuce. M’Toto shuffled coyly across her cage and played with her black & white kitten Principe. Gargantua sulked. To Circusman North so far was so good. Said he: “Gargantua is infatuated. Naturally M’Toto was modest and bashful.” When he is reasonably sure that they will not tear each other apart, he will let the couple share the same cage.

In point of fact all that really happened was Gargantua threw some rotten vegetables at his intended mate. Though they toured together for many years they never mated or had offspring.

When in 1949 it became obvious that he was not well, no one dared approach him to find out what the trouble was. He died that November of double pneumonia. Gorillas in captivity often live for 40 years or more, Gargantua, however, was only 20. Newspapers announced his passing with prominent headlines and in 1950 Gargantua’s skeleton was donated to the Peabody Museum where it is still on display.

Buddy’s actual skull.

A sad story if you ask me, one which was later desecrated further in the 1997 flick Buddy. Poor ol’ Buddy.

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• Giants and Girls: Dedicated to all those prehistoric giants, pinhead mutants, bug-eyed aliens, and other monsters always chasing (and sometimes catching) beautiful girls. How do you ask “where the white women at?” in martian?

• Rolling Stone piece asks: Is a frog’s ass water-tight? Or might as well.

• Is it possible to prove that all humans see the same colors? Or is color subjective?

• Our galaxy, bent like a vinyl record in the sun, is a much wilder looking tentacled beast than suspected.

• Small gallery of vintage horror and spacecraft Top Trump cards.

• 9 Theories of Extraterrestrial Contact an inventory of the “leading paradigms.”

• Beyond the grandfather paradox: Heinlein’s paradox from All You zombies.

• An airforce captain’s concept for parasitic space weapons and here’s another airforce officer’s argument for “orbital strike constellations.”

• Assistive Media offers audio versions of magazine content from Wired, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthy, Sci-Am, and many more.

All of the following engravings and accompanying texts are from a book called Views in New York and its Environs, subtitled: From accurate, characteristic, & picturesque drawings taken on the spot, expressly for this work. It was put out in 1831 when the population of Manhattan Island was about 203,000 and horse-drawn stages were still the dominant form of mass transit. Hope you enjoy.

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Continuing in my series of searches. Tonight I search for bread and what do I find?

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Consider bread. Even a cursory survey yields an enormous range of meanings. Bread is the stuff of life. Failing that, it is at least a starch staple for the western world. It is the minimum daily requirement for which Christians praise the Lord and to which prisoners are reduced for punishment. Bread is the hip term for money and the symbol both of Christ’s Body and the Jew’s escape from Egypt.

Bread is filler, like the lighter part of the seven o’clock news. It is stuffing both for turkeys and for us. Although both the Old Testament and the New are replete with grainy allusions, contemporary bread serves as the universal symbol of spiritual impoverishment. My father liked to take a piece of American white factory-sliced bread, roll it in the palm of his hands and hurl it at the wall. It would bounce listlessly back like a dead tennis ball. Sometimes, instead of throwing it he simply pressed it against the wall, where it would stick like rubber cement. While that seems, out of context, like wildly aberrant behavior, my father was really just expressing his amusement and amazement at finding himself in a culture that ate this stuff.

Bread itself is a designer of possibilities. Freed of responsibility for nutrition or flavor, it is not only filler but format, lending coherence to sandwiches and dictating the size of bologna, the shape of toasters, the dimensions of picnic boxes.
-Ralph Caplan.

The Story Behind a Loaf of Bread. A Short History of Bread. A Treatise on Bread and Bread-Making. Breaducation: A Brief History of Bread. Museum of Bread Culture in Ulm Germany. The Museum Of Bread in St. Petersburg. Wiki Bread. The History of bread Yeast. How did early man first come-up with the idea of bread? Breads and Other Cultures.

The idea of harvesting grain and sowing seeds for cereal crops seems to have first occurred to an early race of people called the Natufians, who lived in the Middle East about 8,500 years ago. They hacked at the arid soil with digging sticks, broadcast their seed—and waited.. .They threshed the grain by driving animals over it, by pounding it with their feet, or with sticks. They winnowed it by throwing handfuls in the air, so the chaff would be blown away by the wind…. Most prehistoric breads were made of simple crushed grains, mixed to a crude dough with water and cooked on a hot stone… The first leavened bread is usually credited to the Egyptians, and the most popular theory is that fermented bread was the spontaneous discovery of an Egyptian housewife, who left her ball of dough too long in the sun, and wild yeast spores started the bread working… The bread of the Egyptians was pretty awful… .the grain contained parlicles of sand from the desert, and flecks of mica and limestone from the grinding stones and sickles. Recent examination of ancient Egyptian skulls reveals considerable wear on the teeth…. They greatly enjoyed their bread nevertheless… The Greeks called them artophagoitlie bread eaters.
-The Blessings of Bread, Adrian Bailey.

History of White Bread. The History of a Mouthful of Bread by Jean Macé. The Science of Bread. Ingredients. The cyber toaster museum. Not by bread alone. The greatest thing since sliced bread. “It’s the best thing since sliced bread!” Okay, then, when was that? Sliced bread illegal? What was the best thing before sliced bread? The Symbolism of Bread. Liturgical use of bread. Bread from heaven. Miracle of the Bread and Fish.

What makes bread? An elastic material (the gluten in wheat flour) expanded to a spongy mass. What makes the holes in the spongy mass? Gas expanding inside it. And what makes the gas? Yeast, a microscopic plant, Saccharomyces cerivisae, about 1/4000 as long as its name which takes apart sugars and starches to make carbon dioxide gas. The gas makes bubbles in the dough, which expand during baking to make the holes.

You could get a good loaf of bread in Rome. Around 2,000 years ago Romans had bread of every kind (the city itself used 14,000,000 bushels of wheat every year): light bread, dark bread, sweet bread, salty bread, rolls, flatbreads, square breads, all kinds. Bakers ground wheat shipped from Egypt and North Africa, baked it, and sold the loaves to be eaten dry or dipped in water, wine or goat’s milk.

In the Middle Ages bread was most of the meal, and it was the dish too: folks ate on pieces of stalish, unleavened bread called trenchers, about six inches by four inches, which sopped up the juices. After the meal the trenchers were given to the servants or the poor.

Millers and bakers -and later engineers and chemists- pursued whiteness in bread, assuming that whiter bread was purer. Without the wheat germ and its bit of oil, the flour would not spoil and could be kept for a long time, an advantage for the miller only. They milled their flour, sieved it, bleached it with harsh and dangerous chemicals, and added ridiculous white powders to make it bright—ash, alum, chalk, yech! The whiter it got, the less nutritious it became.
-The Bakers, Jan Adkins.

The Conquest of Bread by P. Krapotkin. Labor is Bread -Who doesn’t work doesn’t eat. A bread line. Crankshafts or bread. The bread and roses strike of 1912. Song Sheet: A Loaf of Bread. Song sheet: Bread and cheese and kisses. Song sheet: Will friendship buy us bread? Bread and circuses. Wiki bread and circuses. Prosphora. Bread stamps. More bread stamps. Anthroporphic bread. Bread Sculpture. The story of bread with Ms. Sunbeam. The dangers of bread. Signing: bread.

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• Gratuitously illustrated short history of early 20th century Russian theater from symbolism to The Bedbug.

• Justin Smith @ 3 Quarks Daily: Why We Do Not Eat Our Dead. Bonus link: Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice By: Dr. Sam Vaknin.

• Deep in the Amazon jungle, writer Kira Salak tests ayahuasca, a shamanistic medicinal ritual, and finds a terrifying—but enlightening—world within. Peru: Hell and Back.

• Serving the guest: food for remembrance. A cookbook with essays and anecdotes on the historic and contemporary role of food, meals and hospitality in Sufism. Also features a gallery of Islamic art.

• Responsible metal detecting in England and Whales. Features some history on archaeology from both England and Scotland and a gallery of over 7,000 related images.

• Nonhuman work. A Forbes piece written by none other than the lovable old coot PZ myers on the subject of whether animals do “work.”

Picked up a slim little volume, which accompanied a recent show at the Marlborough gallery here in New York, of drawings by one Stephen Talasnik. To me his work looks like drawings of impossible architectural projects, each laying out a particular expanse of the Tower of babel let’s say. Stylistically they might fall into the same category as recent works by Matthew Ritchie or Julie Mehretu. Thought I’d share some of it with you.

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The book has nothing to say by way of introduction unfortunately so the following is from Talasnik’s own site:

Stephen Talasnik was born in Philadelphia, where he developed an interest in engineering nurtured by that city’s newly developing urban infrastructure of the late 50’s and early 60’s. Of particular appeal were bridges and highways in addition to the architecture of sport and recreation. He was also intrigued by NASA telecasts of the early space program as well as black and white documentary photos available in weekly periodicals such as Life and Look magazines. He was always attracted to the aesthetics of invention whether the mind wanderings of fantasy architecture, futuristic product design, or unrealized visions for transportation.

Automata 2006, graphite, 26 x 20 in.

Rococo Dream 2006, graphite, 26 x 20 in.

Talasnik’s images of visionary architectural typologies are potential constructions and latent destructions. Using a combination of traditional drawing techniques, frottage (rubbing from woodblocks the artist has cut), erasure, and abrasion, Talasnik’s surfaces are built up and torn down—violently attacked in one moment and gently coaxed into existence the next—creating a dense palimpsest of imagery drawn from such varied sources as: Asian and Baroque art, futurist architecture, black-and-white photography, the natural sciences and structural engineering. The resulting collage of fractured, skeletal forms is, as Talasnik states, “forever unfinished, but always complete.” -From Davidson Gallery.

Wind Tunnel 2005, graphite, 30 x 24 in.

Talasnik’s drawings are metaphysical constructions—visionary artifacts and structures inspired by imagined grand places and, more specifically, the intricate interstices of scaffolding around buildings. His process, though, is anything but ephemeral: “When it comes to the surface of the paper, anything goes.” He prefers heavyweight papers intended for watercolor or printmaking, because papers made for drawing cannot stand up to his strongly physical treatment of the surface. By erasing the graphite marks and abrading the paper with such tools as a power sander, an electric eraser, and steel-brush file cleaners—even wood-carving tools and distilled alcohol—Talasnik achieves a surface rich with the history of its making. -From Sculpture magazine.

Intuitive Gravity 2006, graphite, 26 x 20 in.

Dwelling 2006, graphite, 26 x 20 in.

Hope you enjoyed. If you did you might want to check out Talasnik’s sculpture as well.

For some more “Paper Architecture” see this previous post on the duo of Brodsky and Utkin.

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• Enjoy the online version of William Timlin’s The Ship That Sailed to Mars originally published in 1923. Via. Related bonus link: George Meiles’ 1902 classic Le voyage dans la lune ~~in full~~

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• In 1822 De Quincey published The Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The nature of addiction to opiates has been misunderstood ever since.

• How vinyl records are made: Part 1 and Part 2. Groovy (pun intended). Via.

• An old octopus with a tree on his back? Yes. Enjoy The black heart gang’s beautifully done Tale of How. Via.

• What Mind–Body Problem? Could understanding consciousness turn out to be easier than we thought? Via. I doubt it.

An innocent enough question I suppose, but coming as it did from one of a pair of squeaky-clean teenagers wearing bright pastel-orange polo shirts (complete with matching, embroidered, institutional logos) and holding tell-tale clipboards, well it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it’d just been the long week I’d only moments before began trying to put behind me.

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“Do I support the Arts” you gleaming-toothed little twit of a solicitor? What exactly is it you want? To pry some of my hard-earned lucre from my wallet? What are you trying to get at with your seemingly guileless but culturally loaded opening salvo? It’s money right? Why not just get yourself a tin-can and a cardboard sign like any respectable beggar? Do a little dance at least. Sing for your non-profit’s supper.

Course, I didn’t say any of that. I like to at least pretend at civility when it comes to my fellow humans. Don’t want to rend the social fabric after all and send us tumbling backward into public defecation and cannibalism. What I said was simply:

“Yes.”

And it was true. I do.

“Wow, that’s great. May I ask how?” the twit responded in his carefully rehearsed solicitor’s version of familiar speech, betrayed, as it often is, by the inclusion of the the overly polite, or overly formal. These guys just can’t seem to nail realistic dialogue.

“Well, actually, it’s funny that you ask…” I began.

I often like to stop cold after a statement like “it’s funny that you ask.” The person your speaking with knows full well that something is to follow, that’s the whole point of an old chestnut like “it’s funny that you ask,” and they’ll generally wait patiently for the punch-line, allowing an unnaturally long pause in conversation. Seeing how long is the fun part. With solicitors an awkward pause in conversation is like a glimpse into the slavering maw of Death. In this case I managed a full 6 seconds before sensing an interjection, and continued.

“It’s funny that you ask because I only just left a doctor’s office who gave me some test results. Coincidentally they answer your question better than I ever could. I’ve got some pictures here taken with an electron microscope. Would you like to see them?”

Before letting him answer I produced the images and brandished them right up in front his oxy-cleaned pores.

They looked like this:

I saw a mixture of confusion and revulsion in his eyes. He looked instinctually to his identically dressed cohort who was, unfortunately for him, busy accosting someone else, and unable to offer cover fire.

“I’m not sure I understand. What are they?” he bleated.

“They are Art of course! Art seen at 1,000,000 times magnification. You asked whether I supported the Arts and as you can see clearly from these I do. Art is a parasite and we are embraced in a mutualist waltz of sorts.

Art has lodged itself in places throughout my body. Since childhood, when I was initially infected, it has spread everywhere. It’s in my bowels, my heart, and my brain. It nourishes itself on my insides and It floods me with chemicals. Had it not been for this infestation I might have gone into the sciences! But Art wouldn’t allow it. It influences my decisions. It’s disgusting little flagellum run over every inch of my guts. It’s eggs are buried in me. It takes everything it needs to survive from me.

In return it offers me occasional delusions of grandeur. It tricks my mind into perceiving some kind of purpose. It keeps me from putting a rifle in my mouth or in yours. It keeps me from building bombs in my basement. It keeps me from disemboweling people on the street. It offers me some kind of hope. You see? Art and I are engaged in a symbiotic relationship. I keep it alive, it keeps me relatively sane. Get it?”

“...”

“So yes, I support the Arts, bodily, as a host.”

“Well that’s not really what I was asking Sir.”

“I know. You want money. ‘Can ya’ spare a dime for a cultural institution that’s down on it’s luck?’ I understand. Well how about this, I’ll just keep the money and cut out the middle man. How’s that? Easier, don’t you think?”

I walked away from the shiny-toothed little shit-head then, happy to have given him a small taste straight from the teat which he harassed people on behalf of, and I could swear, as I eased on down the road, I heard him say to his coconspirator:

“God! I hate Artists.”

Note: The original microscopy images used to make up the “Art parasites” above were taken from here and here. Both very nice resources.

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Gargantua the Great

Or: Buddy, the gorilla who was scared of lightning.

as she was in the year eighteen hundred and thirty one.

In Search Of: Bread.

The Aesthetics of Invention

Stephen Talasnik

There are one hundred billion stars in the Milky Way
and not one is star-shaped. -Hans Hollein.

“Excuse me Sir. Do you support the Arts?”

Gargantua the Great

Or: Buddy, the gorilla who was scared of lightning.

as she was in the year eighteen hundred and thirty one.

In Search Of: Bread.

The Aesthetics of Invention

Stephen Talasnik

There are one hundred billion stars in the Milky Way and not one is star-shaped. -Hans Hollein.

“Excuse me Sir. Do you support the Arts?”

There are one hundred billion stars in the Milky Way
and not one is star-shaped. -Hans Hollein.