The surreal thread

Words paint a picture. This thread is for those of us whose pictures painted are of the Salvador Dali kind… You know who you are. You are the one who every now and then people will just look at with that “huh?” look. They don’t know whether you are being funny or serious. No smilies are allowed in this thread so that the reader can develop their own interpretation on your masterpiece.

I find most everything funny. I had a preteen recently tell me that sometimes life is serious. Of course I didn’t believe her. I am the kind of person who jokes even at funerals. (The dead are hilarious) But then again I don’t believe you go to heaven immediately but instead are kinda like sleeping. It isn’t like I go into a funeral to look at the dead person, I would rather not look at them.

One of my favorite sayings is “put a smile on your face and a song in your hearts, and fake it is you have to”

A couple of days ago I saw an SUV on the freeway that was white with a few black spots on it. It had the word “eat mor chikin” on the back. As I came along side of it there was a picture of a cow in the back window so that it looked like it was sitting in the back seat. It was advertising some restaurant, I think, but the actual name of the place was too small to read.

I don’t know if the above story qualifies as surreal or just funny. Maybe I will just move this post into that imaginary “funny stuff you saw recently” thread that I pretended to create right after I posted this post.

deb places a $200 price tag on this post

That’s Chik-Fil-A’s ad campaign, with the cows and their poorly-spelled signs urging you to eat chicken rather than them.

These three stories I wrote a few years ago. I know that the antagonist of the first story passed on earlier this year, but I well frankly I like and it is my work picture, so there, pffth.

My Dog the Hero story 1

I let my dog Sassy out to go potty the other night.

While outside, Sassy heard a distress signal coming from the Capitol. Someone was in trouble. She rushed to her doghouse and retrieved her cape. She velcroed it on and with a running jump took to the skies.

She knew that the sound was far away, but she had to do something. She flew fast and made it to Washington DC in a half hour and even had time during the flight to chase a flock of geese. The signal was coming from the Lincoln memorial. Sassy flew into the building.

What she found was that once again that evil Storm Thurmond had knocked the statue of Lincoln over onto our meek and humble president. The fire and police department knew the president was somewhere under this bulky marble. When they saw Sassy a loud cheer arose from the workers. They knew she would be able to save the day.

Sassy was able to find a tunnel under the armpit and crawled under the belly of this icon of Americana. She found the President Bush trapped but alive. With President Bush at her mercy, Sassy proceeded to French kiss him.

Sassy gathered her strength and pushing with all of her doggie might and up righted Lincoln back to his original location. Bush was pulled out happy as a clam and kissed Sassy back.

Kennedy had Marilyn, Clinton had Monica, Bush has Sassy. The newspapers ate this scandal up. The National Enquirer reported Mrs. Bush’s response to the Sassy affair as “That, that Bitch”.

After rescuing the President, getting a metal of honor, and causing a national scandal, Sassy flew home.

I heard Sassy bark so let her back in. I told her she was outside an awful long time and was she chasing cats and she better not be doing that or she would get a scolding. Sassy just laid down on her cushion and went to sleep.

My Dog the Hero story 2

Sassy was asleep when her ultrasonic pager went off. She went to the door like she needed to go outside, so I opened the door and she went to do her bizness.

She rushed to her doghouse for her cape, not wasting any moves cause they only beep her in a dire emergency. Sassy velcroed on her cape and took to the sky. She quickly landed at the secret headquarter for the SQUAT (Society of Quiet Undercover Associated Technicians) organization. You have all heard of the CIA, FBI, and even a few “secret” organizations, but this is so secret their funding comes from Congressional bills for “elimination of the bollworm in non-cotton fields”.

Director Hush met Sassy as she landed on her special doggie port in a cotton field in the Central Valley of California and led her to the special cloaked conference room. The overhead projector was already on with a map of Colorado.

Hush started to speak, “Sassy we have a national emergency that only one of your expertise and training can handle. There is a genius three year old living in the snobby part of Aspen who has been surfing the internet and found the way to make a nuclear bomb. His name is Johnny “BooBoo” Cracker. He used his parents’ credit card to order all of the necessary ingredients and as of this time is threatening to detonate it if his demands are not met. We cannot meet his demands His Parents have set bedtime at 8pm and staying up until 11:30 to watch South Park is not going to happen. We cannot let every small child get his way, if we did pretty soon the world would be full of two year olds throwing temper tantrums.”

Sassy barked her reply and headed to Colorado, with only one stop in Zion National Park to use a tree. With the sophisticated tracking equipment that SQUAT gave her, she quickly found BooBoo’s main domicile. The Parents met her at the door where she French Kissed them a welcome (details of this kiss to come later in the next issue of the National Enquirer). They led her to the room of the villain where she found BooBoo clutching a spherical object and a garage door opener. BooBoo was creating quite a racket while in the midst of his tantrum. Sassy barked and sat down giving BooBoo her cute look. It was not possible for BooBoo to resist that look and thus he gave her the bomb and garage door opener.

Sassy left the house and once again took to the sky carrying the bomb in her paws and the garage door opener in her mouth. She was making good time when suddenly a pissed off flock of geese surrounded her somewhere over Arizona. They seem to be all quacked up. They gummed her in the paws and flapped her ass. It was too much for our heroine, she dropped the bomb. The garage door opener fell out of her mouth but she was able to catch it with her now empty paws. But her dewclaw hit the button that unfortunately turned out to be detonator. The bomb exploded and left a huge crater.

Sassy continued back to the SQUAT headquarters where she barked the story of the fate of the bomb. Fortunately it exploded in a desert that was fairly unpopulated. Sassy had a great idea. She had recently seen the Fox networks show on the Moon Hoax, why not do the same sort of thing with this large hole. Why not name this crater “The Grand Canyon” and convince the world that it had always been there and was really caused by erosion. Pictures were created and circulated of the history of the canyon and memories of trips to it were created in many people’s minds.

Sassy then flew home

I heard Sassy bark so let her back in. I told her she was outside an awful long time and was she chasing cats and she better not be doing that or she would get a scolding. Sassy just laid down on her cushion and went to sleep.

My Dog the Hero story 2

Sassy was restless and kept going to the door but not wanting to go out. Finally I shoved her out and told her to just go.

The sky was overcast but unusually cold for the L.A. area. Sassy didn’t understand what that could possibly mean. She suddenly saw a flake float down from the sky. It looked like the stuff found in the freezer of the refrigerator. She had heard of this phenomena but had never seen it. What to do.

Sassy quickly went to her doghouse and retrieved her cape. She flew to the SQUAT (Society of Quiet Undercover Associated Technicians) organization headquarter. She was met by Administrative Assistant Asswad. AA Asswad informed Sassy that the weather in L.A. was predicting snow, a lot of it, probably as much as 2 or 3 inches. This would shut L.A. down for weeks, traffic accidents would be in record numbers, the movie industry would never be able to finish all of those Christmas shows on time. It would be a disaster of untold magnitude. “Sassy you must save the economy of the movie industry”.

While Sassy flew back to L.A., she pondered the problem, what she needed to do was create enough heat to warm the air above snow temperature. That is when she thought of all of the cats in L.A. No not the cool people, but the little pussy gatos.

Sassy quit barking at me. What do you mean there are no cats in your adventures. Hey all I am doing to translating your journal, so if you have cats in an adventure, don’t blame me. Ok, I will tell the readers of your grand tales that any mention of cats are pure fiction and that the only true parts are when you are in it with NO cats.

Uhm, where was I, oh yes cats. Sassy pulled out her special animal communicator from the bottom pocket of her cape. She sent a message to all of the cats that said “Cats. Come outside. Purr or it will be really cold.”

(note: Sassy is prejudice about the intelligence of the cats)

Sassy quit biting me, I am not going to delete that last part cause you know it’s true.

Amazing as it may seem. all of the L.A. cats removed themselves from the warmth of the fire and went outside. They all purred at the same time. This created a vibration that heated the air up enough so that it didn’t snow.

This made all of the producers very happy, but the children of L.A. were very upset at the kitties so they went to the Animal Shelter and adopted dogs. I heard Sassy bark so let her back in. I told her she was outside an awful long time and was she chasing cats and she better not be doing that or she would get a scolding. Sassy just laid down on her cushion next to her own kitty and went to sleep.

I am very tempted to point out the sequential threads, but I’m sure I don’t have to.

eat mor chikin? Does the name “nordock” have any meaning to you? As for the whole people look at you and go huh, I get that all the time, even more so when I haven’t said anything.

Bleeding hammers limn the minty sound of the sky,

Gunslinger thank you for contributing to this humble gallery. Based on the small picture you provided, I think I will place your artwork amoung the realists for now. I would enjoy another contribution from you especially like – did you actually get to see this “cow” vehicle? Or is your knowledge from book learnin’ only? My sighting was on the norrthbound 405 in Redondo Beach or is that Torrance or was I still in Gardena–the cities change so quickly in the Southbay I am usually confused as to what city I am in–it was by the Redondo Beach Blvd offramp. Ah you say, that should show what city I was in, but not so fast my artistic friend, they just do that to fool the naive traveler.

Joe K, I like it, very cryptic. Why don’t we store, oops I mean hang, your art work in with the Picasso’s.

Verick, no. But I am sure someone will be along shortly to participate in the secret handshake over that word. mumble I need to get out more.

I see your loves in cloves.

… taken from The Surrealist Compliment Generator

F_X

Only the circles are on the ceiling. They come down like antique glass Sprite bottles in the morning dew. Coasting as they slowly green and fill themselves with jelly, the circles are the last resort. Light reflects off of their every swirl in the eyes of the cold dirt. Lurching along, he slowly decays the gentle green.

A busstop is where it does. How awesome is that?

Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. HONK!!

Run run run run run run

Sits down triumphantly

.

nought

.

We have finally caught up with the word artist of the above post to be able to get their thoughts as they were creating this wonderful masterpiece

I call the piece “Random Order”. I wanted to create a feeling of space surrounding intellectualism. But the intellectualism must be random. So I systematically selected a word from Webster’s. First I triangulated the tome. Then allowed the fates to open it to the page I was meant to be at. An exact tool was used as the focal point for the choice. I have created a work that the viewer can get both a sense of peace and excitement plus harmony with simplicity. The use of color is to represent how we are just a small part of the world.

This is not a post.

Moderation is fine, as long as you don’t overdo it.

Did I have a dream? Yes. Are you sure? No.

Go into art with three weapons – sword, chalice and golden orb and bring them into specific relation with telos, a view on our human future. Art is both a small and large enough subject to spend a lifetime on, and the forums – what is said and how it is said – are the official point on motives for art. Now it is clear that art, which is at the heart of shared wisdom, increasingly fails as a means of binding us to life. The structure of values cannot do this because the view of life those values frame is no longer believable. To put the same point another way, the theory of life implied by so much of what you find drawn herein does not fit the form of how we actually live.

What you must do is to tune yourself to what is useful, what seems to serve a human future and what enables critical resistance. Produce art with a humanism that encourages the usurpation of take-away thoughts, sodden cliches and the eternal sugary agreements. A mildly theoretic criticality, of a sort sometimes more evident in the exigencies of meandering through the forums makes immediate discrepancy between what is said and life-in-earnest. There is no necessary salvation in criticality; it may be blandly philistine or mostly self-referring. But there will be little hope in your future without criticality.

Amen.