Not the most complex art around town… and not the most accomplished either, but definitely some creative recontextualizatons of an everyday item, juxtaposed with appropriated imagery from popular culture. (Wow, that to be the twonkiest art wanker sentence ever! 😀
I think my favourites are Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction…
The artist is called Bunch of 5s and you can Google up his work on tumbler etc, if you want.
Lately there seems to be a veritable plethora of numbered lists going around the internet. They’re taking over Twitter and Facebook and even LinkedIn (how bizarre!). They are wide and varied in topic and content, but mostly tend towards the complete banal…
24 Signs You Are A Writer – buzzfeed
10 Things You Need To Know About Losing Weight – SMH
45 All Time Best Wedding PhotoBombs – HuffPost
18 Things You Need To Know About California’s Worst Drought In History -BF
28 Things You Didn’t Know About Google – news.com.au syndicated version* of:
29 Awesome Things You Didn’t Know About Google (But Should) – HuffPost
11 Times When Retail Therapy Was A Completely Valid Choice – Mamamia
8 Reasons Why You Are Wrong About Not Vaccinating Your Daughter – blogger
10 Influential People Who Never Lived – Listverse
Well, here is a list of 10 Reasons To Avoid Reading Numbered Lists on the Internet! (Oh, the irony?!)
1. Most of these lists are ‘click bait’ designed to sucker you into clicking through to particular websites to boost their view numbers, so that they can then use your ‘clicks’ to sucker in potential advertisers. End result – everyone is a sucker.
2. Many of these lists are written by wanna be journo/writers at the bottom of the food chain. 99% of it is fluff and/or complete shite. If it wasn’t, it would be written into a decent article, by a credentialed journo with (god forbid!) references, that might be actually worth reading!
3. Many of these lists are the equivalent of a Grade 2 Reader – complete with pretty pictures to attract and keep your attention (beware the animated .gif list!) … Do you want to continue being treated like a seven year old? If so, keep on clicking through!
4. A good deal of the content in these lists is either appropriated, recontextualized or just plain stolen from other websites, by people either too lazy, too stupid or completely incapable of writing their own original content.
5. These lists are literally designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator – ie: the least educated and least savvy of internet consumers. The level of banality becomes apparent with you see lists like, ‘The 20 Sexiest Ugly People‘… seriously?
6. The recent proliferation and obvious predilection towards numbered list making, and numbered list sharing, is an unnecessary and unwanted distraction from the True and Proper Purposes of The Internets – stalking your ex, sharing LOLCats and searching for pornography.
7. Not one of these lists, including the ‘Top 10 Celebrity Side-Boob, Cleavage and Near Misses‘, are in any way conducive to bringing world about peace, ending poverty, saving the planet/whales/white spotted owls… nor can they even help find a decent cup of coffee. This last criteria alone renders them completely without purpose.
8. <this space intentionally left blank… but that’s okay, none of you will notice>
9. A growing body of research suggests that the superficial engagement and distraction of constant internet overstimulation is actually making people dumber. Lists like these are de-evolving our brain’s innate abilities for higher functions like analytical thought and reasoning.
10. But most importantly, striking up a conversation with a desirable member of the opposite sex that starts with ‘I read a list the other day of ‘10 Reasons the Moon Landings Could Be A Hoax‘… is just about a guaranteed to stop you from getting laid.
Okay, so maybe there are only 2 potentially valid reasons to avoid reading numbered lists on the internet… but my list, just like everyone else’s, is one or two valid or interesting points, fleshed out with crap.
Either way, the current propensity for inconsequential information being regurgitated into pithy little easily digestible lists that are then spoon fed to the masses is having an alarming effect on the delivery of more important information. Mentioned above were ‘8 Reasons You Were Wrong Not To Vaccinate Your Daughter’ and ’18 Things You Need To Know About California’s Worst Drought In Centuries’…
These are serious topics requiring deep engagement and serious cogitation and hopefully lively and enlightened debate. But what’s going on? In order to get anyone to share a serious awareness raising campaign on topics such as the ramifications of global climate change, and the tragic consequences of choosing not to vaccinate children in the 21st C, these complex and sensitive issues are being distilled into stupid dot point lists! Or else the masses won’t fucking read it!
*Your writing staff are getting pretty fucking lazy if they can’t even be bothered coming up with their own stupid lists anymore – and for anyone who was paying attention, you’ll notice the missing ‘Awesome Thing’ on the news.com.au version, was a tip on how to get around paywalls on news websites… huge surprise that the Murdoch press would cut that out of their syndicated list of Google Awesomeness!
I don’t really like the Stars stuff… Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargates, and all the rest of that crap. Too many aliens. My favourite show set in space is Firefly – no aliens! – and that’s mostly because of Malcolm Reynolds… the guy everyone man wants to be and every woman wants to shag.
Anyway, there’s a stilly Star Wars Personality Quiz floating around Facebook this morning and I’m just bored enough to do it and here is my result: 
And I’m reading that and thinking ‘Yeah, sounds about right’. But which one do I believe because the Harry Potter Personality Quiz in the side bar says I’m Professor Snape!
And no I am so confused because the internet has never let me down before!
And they keep on coming – Which X-Man am I? Storm apparently
Which sits weirdly with ‘Which Downton Abbey Character Am I?’ Lady Mary…?
And as we all know, Lady Mary is very similar in character as The Black Widow from the ‘Which Avenger Am I’ quiz? I am starting to have a sneaking suspicion that these quizzes are not very scientific… little bit of consistency wouldn’t go astray though.
Which goes straight to ‘Which Disney Side Kick Am I’ and ends up with this:
Yeah, I can’t make head nor hide of it either. But there is something about surveys and quizzes that makes people keep on clicking through!
It’s not me… it’s you!
I write crap here all the time, mostly because I enjoy writing it, and less so because I think people enjoy reading it… because well, let’s face it, most of what ends up here is drivel. Behind the scenes, the handy dandy little widgety thingamebob on the stats page tells me if people actually read the complete and utter nonsense that I am spewing forth with alarming regularity on an unsuspecting public… and it is telling me that you people are weird bastards! I may have written it, but look how many of you clicked through to read about recontextualized sex toys, of all things!
Seriously? What is wrong with you people? 🙂
A few years ago, no need to dwell on how many exactly, a girlfriend and I were in an adult store shopping (as you do) and wandering among the shelves we saw this monstrosity:
It was a genuine Doc Johnson (no idea who he is), Red Boy Extra Large Butt Plug aka ‘The Challenge’ – a challenge the likes of which I hope I never encounter! Naturally, we tittered like school girls and wondered who on earth would want to attempt to use such a thing, and at 4.5″ in diameter, who on earth would actually be able to?!? Talk about abhorrent phenomena! OMG!
Anyway, I picked it up off the shelve and damn near put my shoulder out, it was so heavy. I laughingly said “That’s not a butt plug, it’s a fricken door stop!” and momentarily toyed with the idea of buying one for the house, and putting it to just such a purpose. I snapped a photo on my phone, to show the boys, and we continued on our shopping. I got home and told Mr K that I’ve found a doorstop I wanted to buy for the foyer and he looked at it, laughed at me and said, “Ahuh, yeah right!”
And so I forgot about it… for a little while. But several weeks later, I found myself in a bit of a weird mood and convinced my friend Yale into taking me shopping to go buy a door stop. Now, Yale is 6’9″ tall and as such probably fits the ‘big boy’ stereotype better than most, so when we walked into the adult store and picked up the dirty big butt plug and thumped it down on the counter the chickie at the register actually looked up at HIM, with slightly widened eyes and very professionally said, “Do you need any lube with that, sir?”
Well, we just lost then and there… and emphatically, and laughingly, yelled out “NO!”. “We’re not going to use it!” I said, and I explained to the chickie that it was destined to spend it’s life as a door stop at which point she kinda breathed out and said “OMG, we have never sold one of these and it was everything I could do to keep a straight face!” LOL.
We took it home and encountered a disturbing and unexpected side effect of bringing such a thing into the house to be used an everyday object – The Small Child found it ‘interesting’ and played with the packaging for hours! Vastly amusing at the time, though now he is turning into a typical preteen, he may not agree with me when he eventually finds out what this thing is!
It has become a bit of an odd fixture around here. We once discovered The Small Child attempting to sit on the doorstop (very disconcerting) and upon enquiry, discovered he was “laying eggs… you know, like a chicken, Mom”. On another occasion, we found my Mum dusting it, and asking bemusedly “What is this thing anyway?”… and subsequently dropping it like a tonne of bricks on being told it’s intended purpose (luckily it didn’t land on her foot or it might have been off to the ER for x-rays!)
The unusual doorstop has been quite a conversation piece around our place for years now… on the odd occasion it has even made it’s way to the dinner table when people who’ve walked right past it ask, “What door stop?” Though how you miss it, I don’t know! It’s enormous!
Now, because I am in the habit of posting about retail experiences, and I know that sooo many of you are going to want to rush out and buy your own Dr Johnson Red Boy Extra Large Doorstop, I thought I’d better find out if they are still available – and you’re in luck! Amazon.com has them in stock, so you can order one here… and to be extra helpful to all you consumer types, I added a handy ‘Butt Plug As A Doorstop’ product review.
My first ever Amazon product review… :