Subverse Aphrodesia

Eric Toffey's Sauce is the cool site of the day, today -- March 31, 2004

At the time of our visit he had been scored a whopping 4.25 on the coolness scale from one to ten (the coolest)!

Her very existance rattled my illusion of security
It was only 9 a.m. for chrissake.
But not too early for a fix, eh?
Was she the one who tried to steel my car stereo on Tuesday?
What did she do with my parking garage pass, anyway?

I didn't think, "Oh, poor thing."
or "Can't someone, shouldn't someone help her."

I noticed our matched pace.
as we walked in parallel likeness
She on her side of the Ave and me across the street
Well, freak me the fuck out!
I had to cross to reach my destination
I was afraid of crossing paths
Determined not to get to close
not close enough to see in her eyes
Because I knew
If I were that close
I would not be able to look the other way
and I did not know
still do not want to know
what it feels like to walk
where people are crossing to go to work
with such a singularly selfish notion hogging my attention
enough that forsight is a joke
tomorrow is not allowed to exist

I walked more quickly and even more quickly
And almost ran across the street
I did not look to see how close we had come

It's not that I had lost my compassion
It hadn't vanished
My mind was absent for that moment
But it has let her reality haunt me all day
Lunch has passed and now in that late afternoon slump
I wonder if she's scored yet.

Features include:

40 MRS. SATURDAY NIGHT Tina Fey never spends Saturday night alone. By Emily Rems
48 SPRAY IT, DON'T SAY IT Grrrl graffiti bombers are takin' it to the street. By Adelia Harrison
54 BEAUTIES AND THE FREAKS The women of the early circus had more going on than just big tops. By Laurel Snyder
60 REALITY CHECK Learn to be a reality TV star from America's third-to-next top model. By Elyse Sewell
64 KNIGHT MOVES Think chess is only for dorks? Then you haven't met Jennifer Shahade. By Carly Jacobs
69 TRASHY WOMEN Enter the pulpy paradise of Agnes Nixon, Doris Wishman, and V.C. Andrews. By Lulu Montrose, Kat Long, and Tracie Egan
76 REVENGE OF THE LIBRARIANS Modern librarians are giving stereotypes about their profession the (shushing) finger. By Kat Long
82 DIGGIN' IT Spring fashions for girls who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty. Photos by Karen Pearson, Fashion Editor Cristina Martinez, Styling by Jennilee

As reported in CBC News Online

COPENHAGEN - A controversial Danish artist has put his vibrant red mark on Mother Nature by painting an iceberg with the same dye used to "highlight meat."

Chilean-born artist Marco Evaristti mixed 3,000 litres of the red dye with sea water and used three firehoses, two icebreakers and a 20-person crew to spray a floating, 900-metre-square chunk of ice, located off the coast of western Greenland.

"We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all," the 40-year-old Evaristti told The Associated Press in a Thursday interview from Ilullissat, Greenland.

"This is my iceberg, it belongs to me."

Ilullissat, or "iceberg" in Greenlandic, is a tourist destination because of its scenery, but there was no immediate reaction from locals -- generally quite protective of their surroundings -- about the blood-red work.

Evaristti sailed for about 30 minutes with his crew before finding the right canvas in a fjord filled with hundreds of icebergs. He spent about two hours in - 23 C weather painting the iceberg's exposed tip.

The visual and performance artist, whose website calls him "preoccupied with blood," drew both attention and disdain in 2000 with a gallery exhibit featuring 10 working blenders filled with goldfish. A patron took up Evaristti's invitation to turn the devices on and ground up a pair of fish. The gallery's director was charged with animal cruelty but was later acquitted.

“Thematically Marco Evaristti has continually placed his audience in mental dillemmas, such as placing loose parts for lethal bombs -inoccently presented as single components in a travelbag. When he let the quality of sports shoes be evaluated by the marks they made on a prostitutes behind. Or when he let decorative goldfish peacefully swim behind the protective aquarium glasswall of a blender bowl.

What´s next?

Now that the artist has decided to loosen the laces of his wornout military boots and on his barefeet move into areas of Non penetration. Will we choose to raise our voices and shout somebodys head off? Or will we watch in amazement as we encounter the beauty that can be added to beauty - if we dare.
-- Lars-Ole Hedegaard Art Attack ApS on Marco Evaristti’s website.

Sign up (women only, please) now for:

See more of my pictures in the UPJ March volume of the Sultry One's on-line photo album.

You wouldn't know it by digesting mainstream media, but according to march organizers United for Peace and Justice, more than 2 million people protested in the streets of 60 countries throughout the world on March 20.

As reported in Alternet...
"(New York) City officials estimated the crowd at 30,000 to 40,000, but organizers said the number was closer to 100,000, considering that the march at one point spanned more than 40 blocks as it snaked through midtown. The New York demonstrations coincided with peace vigils and protests in more than 300 cities across the US and 60 countries – including an estimated 1 million who swamped the streets of Rome and approximately 25,000 who marched in London..."

Here's the story I missed in this weekend's The New York Times...

Will it always be like this until I am dead,
  Every spring must I bear it all again
With the first red haze of the budding maple boughs,
  And the first sweet-smelling rain?

Oh I am like a rock in the rising river
  Where the flooded water breaks with a low call --
Like a rock that knows the cry of the waters
  And cannot answer at all.

--Sara Teasdale

for the love of TiVo

It's gonna move so check the archives. Thursday, March 18, 2004

By KATE McCLARE
STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In fact, those dopes can kill you!
Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center. The author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly blamed for heart attacks. "Then we questioned them about lifestyle habits, and almost all of these low-risk patients told us they worked with people so stupid they can barely find their way from the parking lot to their office. And their heart attack came less than 12 hours after having a major confrontation with one of these oafs.
"One woman had to be rushed to the hospital after her assistant shredded important company tax documents instead of copying them. A man told us he collapsed right at his desk because the woman at the next cubicle kept asking him for correction fluid -- for her computer monitor.
"You can cut back on smoking or improve your diet," Dr. Andersson says, "but most people have very poor coping skills when it comes to stupidity -- they feel there's nothing they can do about it, so they just internalize their frustration until they finally explode."
Stupid co-workers can also double or triple someone's work load, she explains. "Many of our subjects feel sorry for the drooling idiots they work with, so they try to cover for them by fixing their mistakes. One poor woman spent a week rebuilding client records because a clerk put them all in the 'recycle bin' of her computer and then emptied it -- she thought it meant the records would be recycled and used again."

Lora and George, Parade Day 2004

See more in the Sultry One's family photo albums.

Wait a minute... WHO????!!!!

Shields & Yarnell Artist Biography

Shield & Yarnell, the famous team of T.V. fame and international stardom, have reunited after an absence of seven years. These two vibrant performers, whose bodies shout acrobat, dancer, and gymnast are best remembered for their highly successful CBS TV "SHIELDS & YARNELL SHOW."

The Shields & Yarnell team was born on the streets of San Francisco where Shields was plying his craft as a mime, getting slugged, hassled and arrested four times while showing people themselves - a clearly dangerous act but one which made him the top tourist attraction after the cable cars. Lorene Yarnell, already a veteran dancer/actress from numerous television shows and off-Broadway musicals, gave up her successful career to join this funny man/clown. What followed was an entertainment phenomenon.

Their dancing and flawless mime brought them instant fame and subsequent appearances on and over 400 national TV shows, including the "MUPPET SHOW" and the "TONIGHT SHOW." Highlights of their meteoric career include their own Broadway show, performing for two Presidents, a command performance for the Queen of England, and a tour of China with Bob Hope. They have performed in concert halls throughout the world.

Their performance in a TV special written by Shields, "TOYS ON THE TOWN," earned them an Emmy award. Other awards garnered by this dynamic couple include the Las Vegas "Entertainer of the Year," dual Georgies for "Rising Stars of the Year" and "Special Attraction of the Year" from the American Guild of Variety Artists.

Today the SHIELDS and YARNELL SHOW is still an outrageous kind of side-splitting controlled insanity, incorporating all the artistry from the past along with newer concepts - the use of voice-overs, soundtracks and sound effects, all produced by Shields. With elasticity, unlimited invention and boundless energy they enter into a fantasy world, sweeping you along with them. Their gift is magic!

Robert Shields, labeled "the greatest mime in America" by Marcel Marceau, has been performing his one-man show in concert halls throughout the United States, Canada, South America, Europe and Asia. Last year he had the honor of giving a command performance for the Queen of Denmark.

Cheers to Tim Kreider, Baltimore illustrator responsible for "The Pain -- When Will It End?" for making me laugh today.

weird night
tuesday night
longed for a brand new cloak of anonymity
and any way to get comfortable in the upsidedownpineapple atmosphere

It can be cool to go where everbody knows your name but not if they're all talkative strangers OK to buddy right up along side you
despite the drifting crankiness you can't seem to shake
and your desire to dissolve in a magical cloud of sparkling absence.

"I must have spoke to ever red head here," sighed the guy who had been looking for me.
He seemed only to want the right face to put to the name someone had mistakenly given him when he asked who the girl was reading poetry.
He stood and gazed at me and smiled blankly, as if I was supposed to do the talking.
And either expose myself as a match for the "Kittybelle" that had taken shape in his mind as he embarassed himself in front of this informal collection of red heads
or bore or impress or offend or tickle him in an altogether unexpected sort of way.

It wasn't long after that I went home.

Here's a great collection of garage sale vacation slides.

That's only the found art. If you have time, start at the beginning of this interesting Rochester-based artist's website and find words and music as well as visual stimuli.

Get lost in a sea of weird web art.