Why We Are in the Arts

I guess I am simple minded when it comes to the inspiration for why I am in the arts. I have had several conversations with various people in the recent past where they told me the deep seated motivation behind their work in the arts. Concepts from educating the public on social issues to, shocking people into the reality of the state of our world; and many other noble concepts.

Shallow as it may seem – it is entertainment to me. The arts are a way for us to transcend every day living and go somewhere else for a while. A place to be happier, darker, lighter, heavier than we could ever be in the real world. I used to have a t-shirt that said “Art is more important than life.” It certainly is better than everyday life.

I’m proud to be part of that, but have no grand social statement to make through art.

Why am I so superficial about my life’s work? Because it happens on it’s own. In the cracks and crevices of what we attempt to create; things are created that acheive their own social statements without our help.

If you call me up to go to a show and say “This is a social commentary on the state of our world”, I’ll only go begrudgingly. I would much rather see Mary Poppins. I am part of the general audience too. That general audience sometimes referred to as “the masses”, “the uneducated”, “the stupid”. And I want to feel something that moves me.

My experience has been when we try to steer with grand things to say – we fall flat of our intentions. But when we just let art flow and do our thing – a great many people are moved in ways we could never have anticipated.

That is the reward. And one we do not control.

Simpsonize – How To Save as JPG Format

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Well, like everyone else I had to try it. Go to SimpsonizeMe.com to upload a photo of yourself and “Simpsonize” it into a character like you would see in the Simpsons cartoon show. The website is pretty fun with entertaining animations as you work on it. They will step you through the process in a fun, non-technical way.

They show your photo as a flash animation which is a headache (read: impossible for most) to convert to .jpg or .gif. If you just want a .jpg format that you can post on the web or MySpace (like I did here) – then use your “Print Screen” key and crop the sc Ieenshot down in your favorite image editing program. If you don’t have PhotoShop you can download PhotoPlus for free from download.com to perform all your image editing, optimization and formatting of images.

Many of the backgrounds you can add to the photo have the Burger King logos. It was a good move by Burger King to NOT include their logo on the main solo pic. That does a lot for public goodwill and keeps the whole Simpsonize experience fun and fairly non-commercial.

Hey, it worked. I kind of feel like going to Burger King now…..

Richard Dawkins Joke

I like Richard Dawkins and think he has some great things to say. He challenges faith, and in my book that’s a healthy thing to do.

But here’s a Richard Dawkins joke I heard and I wanted to share it with you:

Richard Dawkins was having an argument with God, and said: “With the state of knowledge today, I can make man from dust too.”

“OK,” said God, “go ahead.”

So Dawkins starts.

God then says: “No, no, you don’t understand. Go get your own dust.”

🙂

Forum Stats

  1. All forums now up and running. If you had a favorite forum from years ago that wasn’t brought back last year, well, it’s running now.
  2. All forums updated with additional anti-spam features on all servers. This will be the final setting for all forums until we do massive overhauls, sometime after 2008.
  3. WordPress on all sites updated to 2.2.2
  4. Traffic currently around 30,000 per day – or 900,000 per month.

Happy Bunny Graphics

These bunnies make me so happy. I started seeing them on my forums several months ago and now it seems like they are everywhere. And for good reason – these are dang funny! The Happy Bunny joke pictures are used a lot on myspace pages too.

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Japanese Spam

The Japanese have taken spam to new heights and made it into an art forum. We’re all tired of the same old spam emails, but take a look at how beautiful this spam from Japan is:

“#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#”#
â– Â â– â– â– Â â– â– â– â– â–
■■■■■■■■■■■■■   â– â– â– â– â–
■■■■■■■■■■■■■   ■■■■â–
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
■■┏━━┳┓ ┏┓  ┏━━┳━━┓┏━━┳━━┳━━┳━━┓ â– â–
■■┃┏┓┃┃ ┃┃  ┗┓┏┫┏┓┃┃━━┫┏┓┃━━┫━━┫ â– â–
■■┃┏┓┃┗━┫┗━┓┏┛┗┫┗┛┃┃┏━┫┏┓┫━━┫━━┫ â– â–
■■┗┛┗┻━━┻━━┛┗━━┻━━┛┗┛ ┗┛┗┻━━┻━━┛ â– â–
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
■ ┏┓  ┏━━━┓┏┓ ┏┓┏┓┏━┓  ┏━━┓┏━━━━━━┓
■┏┛┗━━┓━━┓┃┃┃ ┃┃┃┃┗━┛┏┓┃┏┓┃┃┏━━━━┓┃
■┗┓┏━┓┃  ┃┃┃┃ ┃┃┃┃   ┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┏━━┓┃┃
■ ┃┃┏┛┃  ┃┃┃┃ ┃┃┃┃   ┃┃┗┛┃┃┃┃┃┏┓┃┃┃
■ ┃┃┗━┛  ┃┃┃┃ ┗┛┃┃   ┃┃  ┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┃┃
■ ┃┗━━┓ ┏┛┃┃┗━┓┏┛┃┏━━┛┃ ┏┛┃┃┃┃┗┃┃┃┃
■ ┗━━━┛ ┗━┛┗━━┛┗━┛┗━━━┛ ┗━┛┃┃┗━┗┛┃┃
■      ┃┗━━━━┛┃
■ ・・・………━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┗━━━━━━┛
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
■■■■                           ■■■â–
■■■■          â– â– â– â–
■■■■                           ■■■â–
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
■                              ■■■â–
■┌───────────┐                  ■■â–
■│     │┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
■││┃                   ┃
■└───┐┌──────┘┃ ┃
■    ││       ┃       ┃
■    ││   │\  ┃                   ┃
■    ││   │ \ ┃ ┃
■    │└───┘  \┃       ┃
■    └────┐  /┃                   ┃
■         │ / ┃ ┃
■■        │/  ┃            ┃
■■■           ┃                   ┃
■■■■          ┃  ┃
■■■■■         ┃             ┃
■■■■■■        ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–

┏━━┓                ┃┃┃┃┃┃
┃\/┃       ━┛━┛━┛━┛━┛━┛
┗━━┛━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━………・・・
┏━┫   ┏━━┳━┳┓┏┳┓
┃□┃━━┓┃┏┓┃┃┃┃┃┃┃
┃==┃\/┃┃┗┛┃┃┃┃┣╋┫
┗━┛━━┛┗━━┻┻━┛┗┻┛

┏━━┓    ┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┏┛ ━┻━━┓ ┃            ┃
┛  ━┳━━┛ ┃                     ┃
━┫    ┃    ┃
━┓ ━┫    ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
┗━━┛
・・・………━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

┃┃?┃S┃T┃E┃P┃
━┛━┛━┛━┛━┛━┛━┛────────────────────
▼▲▼▲▼▲▼
▼▲▼▲▼
▼▲▼
â–¼

┏━┓
┏━━┳━━┳━━┳━━┓┗┓┃
┃┏━┻┓┏┫━━┫ □┃ ┃┃     ┗━━┃┃┃┃━━┫┏━┛┏┛┗┓┏┓      ┗━━┛┗┛┗━━┻┛  ┗━━┛┗┛
 ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄
┌┐      ┌┐      ┌/      ┌┐
└┘

┌/      ┌┐      ┌┐      ┌┐
┘

┏━━┓
┏━━┳━━┳━━┳━━┓┗━┓┃
┃┏━┻┓┏┫━━┫ □┃┏━┛┃    ┗━━┃┃┃┃━━┫┏━┛┃━━┓┏┓
┗━━┛┗┛┗━━┻┛  ┗━━┛┗┛
 ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄

───────────────
│\               │\
┌┘ \     ┌┘ \  └┐ / ┌───────┐   └┐ /  ┌──┐
│/  │       │  │/   │  │ └───────┘         └──┘

────
│\               │\
┌┘ \        ┌┘ \  └┐ / ┌───────┐   └┐ /  ┌───┐
│/  │       │    │/   │   │
└───────┘         └───┘

┏━━┓
┗━┓┃
┏━━┳━━┳━━┳━━┓┏━┛┃
┃┏━┻┓┏┫━━┫ □┃┗━┓┃
┗━━┃┃┃┃━━┫┏━┛┏━┛┃┏┓  ┗━━┛┗┛┗━━┻┛  ┗━━┛┗┛
 ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄
┏━━━━
┃┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃┃                         ┃
┃┃    ┃
┃┃                         ┃
┃       ┃
┃          ┏┓             ┃┃
┃          ┃┃             ┃┃
┃         ┏┫┣┳┳┓          ┃┃
┗━━━━━━━  ┃┫┃┃┃┃ ━━━━━━━━━┛┃
┃    ┃        ━━━━┛
┗┓  ┏┛

The Best Singles Ad Ever

This has got to be one of the best “singles ads” ever.

SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I’m a very good looking girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I’ll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me.

Kiss me and I’m yours. Call *phone number edited* and ask for Daisy.

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Continue……..

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Over 15,000 men found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane Society
about an 8-week old black Labrador retriever.

Niche Theology Forums

I have a couple forums that are gathering dust so I thought I’d tell you about them. They are niche discussion forums in my network that have never quite taken off.

Lutheran-Talk.com

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A discussion forum on topics relating to the Lutheran Church (including Missouri Synod) and to the works of Martin Luther. People critical of Martin Luther’s work (Pre-Vatican II hardcore Catholics, for example) are also welcome to post. Martin Luther is a fascinating subject to me, but judging from the web traffic on this site not too many other people feel so inclined.

ChristianDiscussion.com

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I have forums for general public debate of scriptures that is open to all faiths including atheists. Many members requested a gentler setting where they could discuss their faith with fellow Christians. ChristianDiscussion.com is for professed Christians to discuss and study. Of course there are debates from time to time, but usually not head-to-head with Atheists or other faiths. Members have honored this setup and I think it’s reasonable to give niche groups an environment they are comfortable with, provided we still have our open public platforms.