My Wife Makes Me Clean AND Pay Rent…

… and I have to put out!

“free room, and board, for house and personal duties. Female only Yes room and board for sex and light office duty “

Atlanta Craigslist – Free Room In New House

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First read about it here – WFMY News 2 – Watercooler Section: Sex In Lieu Of Rent Gaining Popularity

A Dog Named Sideways: A Bit of Georgia Tech History

“Sideways the dog came into Tech hearts through a tragic case of abuse.

In March of 1945, a small black and white dog was thrown from a moving car near where the Varsity stands today. Tech students, rescuing the dog, brought her back to campus and nursed her back to health.

She recovered, but was left by the accident with a walk in which her head was permanently at an angle from her tail. This odd, off-centered gait gave her a name: Sideways.

Sideways would often accompany students to and from their classes, displaying a preference for certain professors’ lectures. It was said that she would sit up and listen raptly to interesting lecturers, while she would curl up and sleep for a less engaging speaker.

Sideways would spend every night in a different dorm room, and would always get her meals at Brittain Dining Hall.
Sideways often had run-ins with the law and was frequently caught by the dog catcher, but was always bailed out of “prison” by her loyal student benefactors.

Her life came to an abrupt end when she ate some rat poison. She was buried on the northwest corner of Tech Tower, where her grave marker still stands today. From that vantage point on The Hill, she continues to watch over her benefactors in the student body.”

From Ramblins – Stumpy’s bear, Sideways the dog remembered in Tech history

The End of Work For Now

After a long week including a 15.5 hour day on Friday, Sunday started a few days without any work scheduled. The freetime meant a walk in the Piedmont Park with my wife. We saw lots of cute dogs, kids using cardboard as slides on the grassy hills and heard one of them taunt another with a “nanny-nanny poo-poo”. Italian sodas were bought at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse. And then home, dinner and some Adult Swim.

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“Beauty rules here. It cured my wounds from the war.”

Art handler Vadim from the series Hermitage-Niks. This 5-part series is on those people who work at The State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), and I caught a bit of it on Sundance. Valdin (who like like any art handler I could have met with edgy facial hair and a pierced eyebrow) served as a solder during a conflict with Azerbagan. He saw many war atrocities and now find refuge amongst the museum’s beauty, as do many of the employees there.

Carl Jung once said something to the effect that art exists to heal the human psyche. It made me think there may be less of an appreciation for the arts in part because most of us in the west are happier and healthier then a battle-affected russian solder or a Hermitage curator who talked about how her male family members were all killed during Stalin’s reign. I live in a time and country of unparalleled excess. Just thinking about this.

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More good work news. I’m working on cultivating a relationship with a local architecture firm. A chance conversation with the company’s president may be the beginning of something new. The firm has a had some museum-related projects and proposals.

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Reprinted. Purchased today. Rarely am I one for spontaneous shopping. but Threadless T-Shirts brings that out in me. Hmm, wonder what Valdim would think of this.

Conspiratorial Fashionware: The Revolution Will Be Overpriced

2006 is the New 1984. Big Brother has arrived, just a little late. Love the shirt, hate the price… $23. Too much, even if a buck goes to the ACLU.

Other shirts that for the fashionably paranoid…

This one posits the believe that black helocopters are actual creatures, menacing the psyches and bodies of people in the mid-west and occasionally Canada. I like this one. It sets the bar high for delusional creativity.

High-Lighting The Sexy Mind: Folk Art In Atlanta and Modern Elsewhere

The nude and the erotic have been subjects of artist since the dawn of time. And while recent times have most thinking that sensual and sexual is mainly the topic of modern/urban artists working in the accepted styles of mainstream art, outsider and self-taught artists have been touching the topic as well.

(Image from Orange Hill Folk Art)

Just such artists are being shown at the Orange Hill Folk Art Gallery and Outsider Art Gallery (Google Map), on the southern tip of Freedom Parkway. We attempted to visit the gallery Tuesday, but it was not meant to be.

1) The website was broken, just kept showing server gibberish.
2) The phone number listed was the fax machine, squealed in my ear.
3) The gallery was closed despite arriving during the hours listed as open, lights off.

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Smutty folk art reminded me of the first show I worked when hired by the New Orleans Museum of Art. Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present was a huge folk/outsider art show, and most of the pieces warranted nothing but appreciation. But one work really bothered a security guard. “Adam and Eve” was a graphic sculpture of what they learned once eating the apple, with Adam behind Eve and his “snake” in between. Strangely, based on the complaint from the guard the museum changed the location of the piece from a pedestal to wall-mounted shelf above a door-way.

Our lighting-guy Greg got the last laugh and lit the piece with a very-narrow spotlight that made the Adam’s johnson the brightest thing on the wall. Nothing like a bunch of smart-assed art installers.

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(Image from Sperone Westwater Gallery)

I love this piece of Wim Delvoye’s (and this one) would look to buy them if it didn’t clash so much with what my wife likes (and doesn’t like). Search the site for more sexual x-ray images. On a much more mild style, his gothic construction equipment pieces (Dump Truck Scale Model, Cement Truck Scale Model, and Caterpillar Fullsize)

One of the best sites for historical erotica is the NSFW Rare Erotica. It covers a huge range of time, and the works are often striking for their graphic nature and very contemporary appearance. I make it a frequent visit.

The Weekend in Review: Clothes and Kangaroos

Over the weekend, there was the plan to visit;

The Georgia Premium Outlet Mall
Helen, GA
The Kangaroo Conservation Center
and the Georgia Guidestones.

3 out of 4 wasn’t bad.

First, the mall. After moaning about not having nice clothes, I finally got to buy some decent dress shirts and socks. Total cost for 3 shirts and 4 pairs of socks… less then $90. Nice.

After that, Helen, where we planned on staying the night. Funny thing, I forgot the suitcase. So, after a short debate we drove back to Atlanta, grabbed the suitcase, headed back, stopped at Steak and Shake, arrived at Helen and all was well. With meal it was a 4 hour roundtrip and actually a fun one, so mark one up to an awesome wife and patience.

Helen, GA decided to adopt a Bavarian/Alpine appearance for itself in 1969. Yup, it did that. Wouldn’t say it’s worth visiting for that sole reason alone, but now we can say we did. An hour driving in the morning around town was all the time we needed to spend to soak up the “atmosphere”. I did miss an opportunity to take a picture of a restaurant named “Cannibal”.

The last day was spent at the Kangaroo Conservation Center and Dahlonega, Georgia. The conservation center was great and Dahlonega was a cute little community that we had lunch in. After that it was an end to our roadtrip.

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Before the trip, I was trolling the Internet looking for a map to the The Georgia Guidestones, I found that Amber had not only gone but taken pictures.

Which led me to tell my wife and without any input from Amber, “You know if things were different, Amber could be my girlfriend.” I think Rusty would disagree and the point is moot, but I like the way she thinks about places worth visiting. I’ve been compiling a list of Georgia roadside attractions, oddities and places of interest. Of the few that I have located on the map, Amber has been to two. The following pictures come from her site.

The guidestones are in Elberton, Georgia (Google Local Map). Georgia is also home to the now-closed United Nuwaubian Nation Of Moors. Can you be ununited if there is only a single nation? Hmmm.


Amber Rhea’s Gallery :: Georgia Guidestones, etc. – 12.30.03
Amber Rhea’s Gallery :: Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, etc. – 01.08.05

Flickr Pix: See Kangaroos & Many Other Photogenic Things

Because a well-placed google search can answer any question, I finally found out how to put my Flickr pix into my blog. Controls at the top and bottom of the Flickr frame allow for navagation.

I had hoped to showcase just shots taken at the Kangaroo Conservation Center this weekend, but the sideshow will go on with all my pix. An hour and 15 minutes north of Atlanta, the center is the only one of its kind. Good fun, and I will post more about this trip, including the forgetting THE thing you never forget to bring on a trip.

Let’s say its good that my wife is so forgiving.

Socks, Shoes, Shirts: Fashionably Frugal While Staying Put

Being cheap is good.
Spending less then you earn is better.
Debt is bad.

It’s within those three comments that my wife and I live, and thank god for that. The income of a former-art major and a college professor isn’t all that. But not only have we managed to make a decent living, we do make the occasional splurges now and again. And while we haven’t managed any international travel recently, we are always looking for that cheap flight that cries out, “Why not Iceland?” Or some other locale that we wouldn’t have thought of going to. Before 9-11, we were seriously thinking about a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco. We gave that up, despite that country being a moderate Islamic country. Maybe we will reconsider.

For now, it’s cheap clothes and a roadtrip starting tomorrow. At Threadless T-Shirts, a $10 t-shirt sale combined with a reissue of a favorite design meant buying this t-shirt…


The Loch Ness Impostor. Sweet.

Now if they would only reissue the Communist Party one…

Just today I was reading Cool Hunting when they featured Stroke Socks, makers of striped socks ( I like the Greyscale, Mud Stream, and Saville Reds). In my search for good socks I have bought women’s socks because they were more interesting then anything else in the men’s section. I’m loath to spend $10 bucks on socks, but the way I buy things a small splurge means not buying additional ones for ages. I still wear the 3 pairs of shoes I spent $360 7 years ago.

While the available online, the sock site says that Young Blood Gallery and Boutique carries their products, so I may shop locally instead.

Hopefully, I will get out of jury duty in April so I can bust my ass working and not feel guilty for upgrading the wardrobe. Keeping the fingers crossed.

Roadtrip! North Georgia Here We Come…

… in a couple days.

In celebration of my sweetie not getting jury duty on Thursday, we’re planning a roadtrip.

The sights to be seen include:

The Georgia Guidestones, America’s Stonehenge

Either a new-age celebration of man’s better angels or a monument to the soul-crushing goals of the new world order. Either way I want a picture of myself next to it.

Bavarian Helen, GA

Take a normal little town. Now add a Baravian facade to every building you can get your hands on. Helen did, and we’re hoping to see for ourselves.

Kangaroo Conservation Center

And now, I must surf some more in hopes of finding even more strange places to visit.

Music that Lives on My Computer: Last.fm

After seeing that Mr. P’body posted some of his musical tastes using his account at Last.fm and some of their tools, I had to do the same.

Artists most played overall:

Click the chart to see the remaining 40 bands that made the top 50.

Songs most recently played this week:

I find that I like Radiohead songs when performed by other groups. The Mark Ronson song is a great cover of their song “Just”. The funk-filled song has loads of horn section, great beat and a sweet video (Quicktime Video).

For another great Radiohead cover check out the 2003 MP3 of “Paranoid Android” played by the UMass Front Percussion Ensemble.

For those looking to get exposed to lots of great music, I would highly recommend the Not Your Usual Bollocks podcast.

“NYUB was created to provide on-demand refuge from main-stream radio. NYUB harnesses podcasting technology to bring direct to you, the best independent and unsigned artists from the rock and electronic music genres. It’s not your usual bollocks…..because mainstream radio is shit.”

Check his site for podcasts, playlists, and band links.

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Related Posts:

Neon Poisoning: Back in the Day: Junior High DJ
UMass Drumline 2005
stereogum: Mark’s Ronson’s “Just”: The Bootleg Video