iverson park

"When you have a ball
you have the world's greatest
toy of all."

- Barney, the Dinosaur
 

some company out of illinois hauled over 60 pallets of obsolete electronics out of our school. six. zero. most of the skids had 30 computer towers on them, shrink-wrapped. there were hundreds of monitors. old digital cameras. $1,500 cameras that stored the pictures on 3.5" floppy discs that were good for *maybe* 25 pictures or 30 seconds of video. big honkin' things. bigscreen projector type televisions. video cameras you'd sling over your shoulder. cassette tape-players. all that was, at one time, modern technology.

the school was paid 2¢ per pound and, even at that mere pittance, they made a few hundred bucks when you consider all that weight. makes me wonder what we'll be loading onto semi-trucks 10 years from now. currently we're working hard to put a smartboard and ceiling mounted projector in every classroom at around 4K per pop. at least when we junk those, they'll stand upright and not take up too much space.

i'm looking at a 12-pack of pepsi and one of mountain dew. they're touting the fact that they're using pure cane sugar in their soda this summer. that it's not corn syrup and therefore, it's a more natural product. whatever.

especially here in the midwest, a whole bunch of corn is going into the production of ethanol fuel. me thinks that cane sugar is cheaper right now than corn syrup. that's what me thinks.

i keep forgetting this, but artist cy twombly passed away back on july 5th of this year.

he was one of those cats that got people waggin' their tongues. "this is rubbish my own kid could've done," etc.

i just went to a site where hundreds of comments  have been posted about twombly and his art (he was 83 at the time of his death). stating the obvious here, but there are people that can express cogent thoughts and then there are people that are idiots. one comment i read in particular was a good one. he started by saying that some of the comments he had read reminded him of a comedy sketch he had seen.

- I hate cod
- Why?
- Because it's crap!

If I eat something millions of other people like, and I don't like it, I don't say 'it's crap'; I either say 'I don't like it' and leave it at that, or I try it again a bit later in case it's an acquired taste.

Same with contemporary art: you're allowed not to like it, but please don't say it's rubbish.