All roads lead to me

Periodically, especially when some helium-handed moron is trying to sound smart in class and I decide to ignore him, I find it interesting to browse the search terms that people have entered to get to my blog. Here is a random sampling of the latest ones.

• "bear bating"
• "nautical themes tmbg"
• "what are interesting things about windmills?"
• "disney movie enchanted purple dress at ball"
• "dairy store, kirkland"
• "he lays in the reins" "into the wild"
• "stackable milk jug"
• "costco milk"
• "non canonized scripture"
• "mormon apostles paintings"
• "Cormack MCarthy"
• "amy adams, costume design, purple dress"
• "spiritual blacksmith"

It's funny that some of my most read posts are the ones I put very little effort into. Like, for example, that half-facetious rant about the stupid costco milk jug. It also looks like several people had some kind of interest in what I had to say about the costume design in "Enchanted."

I have no idea what a spiritual blacksmith is, but it sounds kind of cool. It kind of reminds me of Joseph Smith's "welding link" image from the letter he wrote to the church in 1842, out of hiding, about baptism for the dead (parts of which are reflected in Doctrine and Covenants 128). But I don't think I've ever blogged about that (until now).

I love this painting.

It is called "Doubting Thomas," and was painted by a young artist named Ben Steele. I found it on Anneke Majors' latest post on AMV. It captures my attitude toward Thomas Kinkade perfectly. I used to be ambivalent about Thomas Kinkade. He was just something that I would walk past in the mall. He was the Sunglass Hut of the trailer park art world---Obnoxious, overpriced, and of poor quality, but easily ignored. But then this painting of the Twin Towers changed my mind.


Now I really dislike him. What is this flagpole actually affixed to, anyway? A bouy? And thanks for reminding us that the New York Skyline has an empty space now, because that wasn't obvious or repeated ad nauseum for several years after 9/11. To be fair, Kinkade is hardly the only one, but he's a representative of that element of our society that plays off of tragedy and loss to sell it's low-brow kitsch. And in the process of profiteering from tragedy, it encourages pride rather than patriotism---a clannish, self-righteous, priestly sort of pride.

But his art itself, regardless of his profiteering, reminds me also of Greg Olsen. I dislike Olsen's painting a fair bit less than Kinkade's---perhaps because Olsen seems, for some reason, to be more sincere. His art is kitschy and artificial, and he uses religious channels to market it (which annoys me, but is probably a subject for another post), but at least he doesn't have an army of minions who churn it out to give it the false appearance of hand-painted-ness, and another army of minions who market it in those mall kiosks. And at least he hasn't given himself such a presumptuous moniker as the self-dubbed "painter of light."

But back to Steele's visual indictment of Kinkade. I love the way the figure in the painting is extending his finger, like the ancient apostle. But instead of a confirmation of faith, this one is a confirmation that his doubts are justified. I also love the way the other guy is pulling his hand away, as if to say, "just let it go." I'm not sure if these guys are supposed to be renaissance masters or apostles, but the aura of authority and ancient wisdom is there either way. I also love the way the background is drab and dour, but more complex and interesting than the storybook land of artificial light inside the frame. Your eye goes not to the horrifically glowing cottage, but to the triumvirate of ancient heads. Very cool.

Microsoft Vista

I got a new computer for the first time in almost 6 years. I got Microsoft Vista as it was the only option (I’m not a Mac guy). I was looking forward to it because I assumed my days of a frozen/crashed computer were behind me. Little did I know, that that is Vista’s specialty. Explorer frequently likes to randomly close. All internet windows will suddenly disappear, if I’m lucky. Sometimes the computer simply freezes and I have to reboot. That wouldn’t be so bad, but it takes forever for Vista to boot up. It seems like it takes even longer for it to close down, although I haven’t timed it yet. My USB drive won’t show up a lot of times, which means I have to reboot my computer to get files off of my thumb drive. It’s annoying, but made worse by the shut down and boot up times.

I also have the new office. The most annoying thing about that is the default in Word is Calibri size 11. What happened to Times New Roman 12? I’m learning where everything is in Office 2007, and I think I like it better, but just need a little more practice with it.

All in all I like Vista better than XP when it is fully functional. But the daily crashing of the internet, occasional crashing of the computer, and ridiculously long boot up and shut down times makes it not worth it to upgrade. When Microsoft can afford to hire programmers to make the internet work on their own software, then I think you should consider the upgrade.

Who's the one?

Look at this picture. I can't get the image, so you'll just have to click the link.

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to mean, but here are a few possibilities:
1. Mitt Romney is creating a clone army of himself, resistance is useless.
2. Some kind of weird Romney triumvirate is running for president.
3. The three identical Romneys juxtaposed with the phrase "he's the one" (emphasis added) is a kind of subliminal reference to the trinity, to make evangelicals feel better about voting for a Mormon.

But whatever it means, Romney is most definitely not "the one." As we all know, Nixon's the one.