SpiralTruth
Just another post-modern quest for meaning.
Browsing the archives for the images category.
I was noticing a lot of images floating around the web that shared a common theme. They either were or looked like a post card, and they had some sort of secret hope or fear or memory written on them. A couple of days ago, I finally decided to track down the source. Of course, in the age of Google, tracking down the source hardly ever amounts to more than an hour of dedicated searching. The only difficulty with these images was that they didn’t contain any sort of brand logo… only a certain style. In addition, the images I had been looking at had no sort of attribution made by the person who had uploaded them (tsk, tsk!) After typing in a few of the secrets, I eventually found a link to one of the images, which mentioned “Post Secret” and voila! I had found the source. Kind of.
Frank Warren had the idea back in 2003 to ask a bunch of strangers to send him their deepest, darkest secrets. Turns out, a lot of people have some pretty interesting secrets. Enough for Frank to be swamped with postcards and have enough material to pump out five books (that I know of) to date. I now have four of them on order. Here’s a sample of what I’m talking about:
One of my first memories of computers had to do with my parents meticulously entering a program into a Franklin 2000 that did an ASCII representation of the guy from MAD Magazine. Since then, graphics have gotten a lot better, and you’d be considered a lunatic for spending so much time trying to reproduce a single image, but ASCII art itself still holds its primitive yet inventive charm. Check out Smashing Magazine’s retrospective on ASCII art here. My favorite is the 1964 ASCII version of the Mona Lisa. Far more interesting than seeing the actual – incredibly small – painting.
Check out this awesome post from rtcrooks on sloshspot.com. With motivational posters like the following, how can you go wrong? 
You might not think it’s possible to make a comedy act out of stuff you’d find in a modern art gallery, but Ursus Wehrli does just that in this video by giving his version of “tidied up” paintings. My favorite is his attempt to tidy up one of Pollock’s paintings: “Jackson Pollock, for example… yeah, that’s a really hard one… but after a while, I just decided here to go all the way and just put the paint back into the cans.”
Presidential debates would certainly be more entertaining if they followed this format, though I have my doubts that John McCain or Sarah Palin have anything close to these moves…
Imagine my surprise today on my lunch break as I spotted two storm troopers walking down the streets of downtown Edmonton with prisoner in tow! I knew that stuff like this would start happening after we re-elected Slick Steve Harper and his minority of scoundrels! I didn’t want to get too close (after all, I value my freedom), but I believe that these two are part of the proposed DMCA legislation that the Conservatives plan on going ahead with after the initial backlash against Bill C-61 (you can read about some of the wonderful things this bill would do for Canadians here) and that the peaceful looking lady they are escorting may have illegally downloaded some Michael Bolton tracks.
The great Canadian election of 2008 saw Slick Steve Harper slide into another Conservative minority. To be honest, Layton’s a bit of a loudmouth and Stéphane Dion reminds you of that kid at school who used to get his head dunked in the toilet every lunch hour. If the left had anything to offer, it was Elizabeth May from the Green Party – refreshing in her intelligence and her tact. Just remember while you’re busy gloating, you wicked bunch of stuffy punk conquistadors, 62.37% of us voted for the left wingers – don’t piss us off too much and we’ll be too lazy to organize and yank your asses out of office. Every once in a while, we do organize, you see. And when we do, it will be talked about for decades. That’s just how we roll. When we finally get around to it, we can put on a pretty good show.
And so, as the majority of Canada retreats to lick it’s wounds and find someone (anyone!) on the left with the ambition (that’s what we’re lacking, make no mistake) to make it to the top, we can now do what we’ve all been secretly itching to do – focus our full attention on our neighbors to the south.
If videos like this are any indication, this election promises to be a spectacle the likes of which we have never seen – and may never see again for many years to come. Hold onto your seats, ladies and gentlemen, because with only two weeks left in this race, the great American political carnival has only just begun.
Click here to see JibJab’s “Time for Some Campaignin’” e-card, featuring all your favorites, minus the VP candidates.
I happened to be in the Tin Box on Edmonton’s wonderfully eclectic Whyte Avenue this weekend and was introduced to a pretty cool decorating concept: sticking quotations on your wall so that they look like they were painted on. They were a bit pricey and I couldn’t find any quotes that didn’t seem way too flowery and overused. As I left the store, I figured there had to be something online that was cheaper and, more importantly, customizable. I’m looking forward to trying out Written Decor, which I found in a few minutes of exercising my google-fu. You can order stick on words that say whatever you want in any size and color you want. And they’re not too big a hit to your pocketbook. Whenever I get around to actually doing it, I’ll be sure take some pictures and post them.