Does somebody have a screwdriver? Anybody? Buehler?

Somebody—and I don’t want to look at anybody here—thought I would have massaged a photo with a Photoshop watercolour-filter and sold it as if I did it myself, manually, with a brush. I did not know what to make out of it: feel insulted or flattered? I did not use a Photoshop-filter, for I do not have Photoshop in the first place. On the other side: my watercolours are bad, some are even really bad, I’m pretty sure the Photoshop filter would have done a better job.

So what shall I do about it? Do it again, this time with a camera running along? The only one with a HD camera is my sister and it’s not really a camera just a cell phone which you can’t screw on a tripod for lack of a screw hole in the camera. I could improvise something with some wires, rubber bands, and tape. Nuh, way too much work. A couple of stills will do, too. And the very same thing again? Nuh, boring!

The original was a screenshot from Google Earth, so I “traveled” a bit around the world and found another nice place, this time in Greece. So let’s do it. Well, actually: I’ll do it and all you can do is to helplessly watch the catastrophe building up 😉

Why you should check first if you can still comment on a threat

I wanted to revive an old threat elsewhere but did miss the fact that the ability to comment has already expired. I blame the bad UX, they really could have printed somewhere in big bold letters that you cannot comment anymore! 😉

I had it already written at that time and, although it looses a bit without the context of the aforementioned threat, I have put too much work into it to simply send it to /dev/null, so here it is:

The Disadvantages of a Good Reception

Two elderly people in very old-fashioned tracking gear together with large wooden walking sticks, walking along a marble quarry.
In view but still in a distance of about 2km are some earth-coloured houses huddled in a dense, autumnal broad-leaf forest.

“Looks a bit, how shall I put it stale, hu?”
“What?”
“This thread here.”
“Oh, that thread, yeah, okay. Good reception here, I s’pose? And what do you want me to do about it?”
“CPR?”
“How do you applicate CPR to a threat that is not only purely virtual but seems to be quite dead, too, since last summer?”
“Dunno, it’s something about art, so do something artsy.”
“And how am I supposed to do that?”
“You are the artist! Scratch your head, stroke your beard, get heavily drunk, or whatever artists do to get an idea and do something…”
“…artsy, got it. Any wishes?”
“Dunno, paint something?”
“I’m a sculptor and really bad at painting.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Hey!”
“Ow, c’mon, I saw what you did to the walls of your kitchen! Is it so difficult to paint something white? Just plain white?”
“Seems so…”
“So what do you need for that sculpting thingy?”
“A mallet, a set of chisels, and…do you want it quickly?”
“Yepp.”
“So something softer, sandstone? No, don’t like the color, it’s always so beige! Marble maybe? Yeah, marble. I’ll take that block over there.”
“Isn’t it nice that we stand, just by chance, near a marble quarry—although not that unlikely, as close to Casette as we are—but the block you are pointing to is a bit large, don’t you think?”
“Nuh, medium sized. At most. I would say about 1m x 1.5m x 2m. At least that’s what’s written on it.”
“I’d call that big! And how much does that stump tip the scales?”
“Density about 2.7 tons per cubic meter according to Google, so…uhm… a tad bit more than eight tons.”
“At least it’s not an eight ton stork.”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. And it costs a fortune, doesn’t it?”
“Not really, in that quality about $250 per ton, if not less.”
“Still two grands! What’s about something cheaper, like, dunno, watercolor?”
“Like we did in kindergarten?”
“Yeah.”
“But I never got better at it since then!”
“But it’s cheap?”
“Yepp.”
“So be it.”
“Where do I send the bill?”
“Whut?”
“Just kidding, just kidding. I think in this time of these so called listicles I’ll make one myself and it will be about:”

Things ending [cue drumroll] badly

• me, doing nudes in watercolour
• me, wishing I could be elsewhere
• me:”Oh, Galegas for 50 cents a kilo? That’s cheap!“
• me, extracting 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine. At least it didn’t explode this time
• replacing politicians with other ones by way of democratic elections

“Does politics belong in art?”
“That’s discussable.”
“Yeah. And now?”
“There is no bar in Casette, as far as I know, but a small supermarket.”
“How do you…? Oh, forget it, it’ll do.”