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February 19th 2003 - Wow, I can only hope that Eric's rant seemed like a direct hit to me because he's feeling under the weather and took my quote personal. Sure, I said that to him, but maybe in a sense it's all in the interpretation of whomever reads my quote that they'll get something different out of it. ;] heh, anyhow. He also pointed out that he thinks because I said you can throw anything together and call it art that I would think the art made by the artists he mentioned are NOT art works at all. BUT Eric, you contradict yourself (and lets not forget that I can change my mind about tons of things all the time), when you say that some of Rauschenberg's works were intricately coded messages to his lover. Well, that doesn't exactly seem like "throwing things together and calling it art" now does it? =] I'm completely cave in and say that your stuff was artistic, even though you yourself said that there was no real meaning behind most of them. Now, lets comment on the some other things, such as good and bad art. Eric has a concept of good and bad art. He has said many times to me whom he thinks does really bad art. But lets say that those simplistic "squiggles" of one person may seem "thrown together" and not exactly mean anything, but maybe they mean a whole lot to that person. Also, maybe those squiggles mean something completely different through the interpretation of someone else and they find some kind of higher spiritual meaning in them. So, through that, can't we say that all art is good art if there's even one person in the world who can identify with said art piece enough to think the art had a good message even if it had no specific purpose at all? I don't blame Eric for being defensive of his art. I'm defensive about a lot of things. :] But should you fault me if I can't grasp the bigger picture of everything? I sincerely hope not. Anyhow, hope you get to feeling better soon Eric! =] ps. And I can't even BELIEVE you said that crap about what good is a book if you already know the ending cuz how many times have you asked me about Harry Potter?? YEeeaaaaaaahh... ;D - chris

"yep that's right, I'm relieving myself into a white porcelain bowl connected through a series of pipes to a sewage system that eventually comes back through your kitchen faucet. Cheers! :]"

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February 19th 2003- Oh BITCH i know you didnt!! Okay, you see, if you scroll downwards and read chris' last rant, and then look at his little quote you might then wonder "hmm, i wonder why he wrote that" and i am here to tell you!! I showed Chris some new art of mine, thinking that he might enjoy seeing it, and it was just some collage things that i assembled, sort of threw together, as means to excercise my sense of design and just to make art. Some of them didnt really have meanings, some pieces had little concepts to go with them, and others had only a title to give you any sense of what they were about, and even then, though small, they were like little puns, or witty remarks. I started off making them to put into the silent auction, and since it was collage (mostly) and i had quite a bit of materials i just started putting things together, kind of like an artistic jam session, just kind of seeing what goes. And that is pretty much what they are. Chris responded with "so what your really saying is that you can throw anything together and call it art" and going on to say that art for him should have a solid meaning, and it should be up front (at least that is what i am gathering from what he said) so by those judgements, the works of Robert Rauschenberg and Joesph Cornell are not art works at all, just stuff thrown together and called art, when that couldn't be farther from the truth. Some of Rauschenberg's works were intricately coded messages of adoration to his lover, others, have meanings perhaps only to him. The same with Cornell's work. I dont think that you should completely explain art down to its bare bones meanings because then that leaves the viewer nothing to do, it gives them nothing to invest it. It then relegates the viewer to be nothing more than that, perhaps like a zombie sitting in front of a television with drool dribbling down their chin. What good is a movie if you already know the end, and what good is a book if you already know everything there is to know about it? once you find those things out for yourself, you can then go deeper into it, while you are discovering these things, through reading and through seeing, you begin to put your self into it, you become part of what you are experiencing. If everything is known to you, what do you have to learn? And as counter point to chris' thoughts, let me put up these comparisons: Is free form improvisational jazz worse than the most structured symphony? In the structured symphony, everything is there for a reason, put there with knowledge ahead of time, in improvisation, you go on what you already know and work from there. The pieces i was making were improvisations, using my sense of design and visual metaphor as instruments in these improvisations. If you play a musical instrument, do you practice? do these practices have no meaning? Again, is a jam session, completely unplanned, completely useless because it has no apparent meaning, other than to those who were part of it? Apparently, chris believes that these things don't make good art. He said they were cool, but didnt think they had any meaning, which meant that they weren't as good as my other art, such as the ink and paint pieces, he mentioned, which, i did not bring up to him, have absolutely NO meaning to them, and are completely abstract pieces. Yes, there is quite alot of bullshit involved in art, but some of it isnt, Matthew Barney's work could be seen as just a bunch of crap thrown together to look odd, but it is deeply rooted in countless subjects, with countless metaphors and analogies being presented in very creative ways. He knows this, he documents this. Yes, i said that the pieces i was working on didn't really have any great meaning, because much of my work is very conceptual and has to do with alot of things, these pieces were quick assemblages, improvisations that then took on meanings. One piece is a series of identical stamps of who i think is the queen of england, in various colors, in rows of threes. On top, in the middle, is a red transparancy detail of a fra fillipo lippi painting of the virgin mary, showing only her face. In the lower right corner is a small piece of metal, carved in the shape of a coat of arms. Design led this piece, and i improvised as i went along, and then when through, i thought of the line "my fair lady" and thought it fit. Mostly it is about design, the colors, the construction. The faces on the stamps are all in profile, and facing directly forward, while the face of mary is facing left, but downwards, creating a tension, a sort of widining of their gazes. And several others, a very informative piece i called "for J. Robert Oppenheimer", who was the man who created the atomic bomb. There is a piece off an old motorcycle mud flap that has a large open circle and wings surrounding it. Inside the open circle are parts of the reflector plastic, shaped to look like a mushroom cloud. Inside of this is a picture of a bomber pilot. Above him are a series of stamps depicting planes, and below the wings is a stamp of a little boy playing with a plane (the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was nick named "little boy" and then a stamp of the flag of japan, and a stamp of a hot air baloon, with a plane flying behind and away from it. The hot air baloon reminded me of a mush room cloud. And the very right bottom is a piece of a computer, with six little switches, all numbered 1 through 6, all are pushed down except for 6. The bomb was dropped on august 6th, and this little piece suggests a count down to the 6. There are more but i wont go on because you cant see them. But maybe someday you will, ah yes. so, thats my rant. So yea, i can throw anything together and call it art, because im an artist, and its what i do. And throwing things together is a euphimisim for busting my ass. If you ask me how i did it, i'll tell you "i just put it together". The things were there before i started, and i took them, i put them together, and made something new. I'll paraphrase Picasso, about when someone was viewing a painting of his, which looked like it had been painted over lunch, asked him "how long did it take you to paint this" He responded, "seventy two years" which was how old he was at the time. Sometimes art doesn't have to have a meaning to anyone but to the person who made it, and since that person took their time to make something, it's important.

"BOOYA!!"

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February 16th 2003 - Geez, well thankfully that horrid holiday is no more and I'm completely fine! But, I've honestly just seen the oddest movie .. it's called Wet Hot American Summer, and well.. damn it's just WEIRD!! Funny, but weird. I'm also pissed off that I have school tomorrow. Okay, .. and is this just freaky tv day?? Gotta love the Cartoon Network, .. cuz they're strange! Whatever this show The Venture Bros is all about, it sure is crazy. The good kind of crazy, not the "my dad is insane" kind of crazy. DAMN is he crazy. He's all trying to be Nostradamus and saying that someone WILL steal my car (FOR ME no less) because I'm leaving it unlocked while warming it up. Really now, I'm sure if anyone actually wanted to steal my car, they could do it even if I had my doors locked. Okay, nothing out of the ordinary to actually write about. Sure I can inexplicably write unknown foreign languages with my toes all of a sudden, but other than that. - chris

"So what you're really saying is that you can throw anything together and call it art."

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February 14th 2003 - Happy .. er... yeah, whatever. It's not happy. It's crummy! Plus, who got a 39% on his accounting test? Yeah, Chris did. Not only is Chris alone, but he's STUPID! Weeee, what a combination. And I think my mom is getting me sick because she's a tar-tar and has been sick for the past week and doesn't cover her damned mouth when she coughs every other 30 seconds!! It's like she has anthrax or something. Can't wait to get sick because, gee, not like I've skipped ENOUGH school as it is. :] Okay, that's my "bummer" rant. I wonder if never having had a relationship is actually better on Valentine's Day than if I'd had one and thus know what I'm missing. Um.. okay, and at the moment, there's this scary ass popup add talking about Yahoo hosting web addresses and it's about this guy walking dogs and I'm assuming he has a leash in his mouth next to this dog, but it looks like he's a freaking vampire and he has all this scary blood dripping from his mouth, and sitting next to a dog (whom he will eventually turn into one of his vampire minons of the undead). Yahoo is so diverse in that respect. :] - chris

"Why do protein bars have to taste like coffee and ass?"

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February 12th 2003 - It's okay that Eric doesn't know that February has two r's in it, because his art is cool. And when your art is cool, you don't have to know how to spell, or do math! =] All right, so I'm finally going to start going to class again... gasp.. yeah I can't believe it myself. Luckily (though I can't say for my Macroecon class) since I finally came back to my accounting class, we had our test TODAY! Luckily in the sense that it wasn't Monday because at least this way, even though I didn't study, since it was a multiple choice test there's a slim chance that I actually got more than 0 points! And I definitely got more than 0 points because the last question was "What does the initial of our school stand for?" I mean, come on! Either way, my mom was pissed because I'd been skipping so much, but like she can talk because 1) she's not paying for it, and b) she never went to college!! Anyhow, so after finishing the test, the teacher asked to see my school id!! Is that 'common' practice for people who take tests?? Or is it just because I hadn't been seen in two weeks and he wanted to make sure I belonged in the class along with the rest of the do-gooders who felt like coming to class regularly (which, mind you, that I overheard a lot of the students saying that they probably wouldn't be doing well on the test so it's not like I really missed much!!). Soo, yeah, that's what my day has been like thus far. In work news, remember that girl I talked about in November who was sexually harrassed by one of my managers? Yeah, well he did it again!! This time thankfully she's doing something about it, and hopefully the SOB will get fired. The neat thing about said girl is that she thinks our website is hilarious. =] yay! The not so neat thing about said girl is that she ate my left arm so it takes a while to type stuff now. Well, now since I'm starving and I have other things to work on (like MAYBE school but more likely trying to make that comic about my insane dad), I'm gonna go. Take it easy website. - chris

"They'll never catch the killer, NEVER! Know why? Because the 8 week fetus doesn't have fingers... no fingerprints! muwhahaha..."

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Febuary 8th 2003-Hello ladies and gentlemen!! Its a www.geocities.com/chrisericus/indexmain.html FIRST!! Thats right, the very first COLLABORATIVE rant, with both Chris AND Eric making a rant, together, for the first time, AND THE LAST! So come one, come two or three to witness the greatest rant this website has seen in three days, and what is the cause of this great event? Is it the planets coming into line? Is it Atlantis coming up from eons below the ocean? Or is it something more, something bigger, something CRAZIER!? IT IS!! It's about Chris dad! BECAUSE HE'S CRAZY!! And you might be wondering why it must involve the both of us, its because it involves the both of us! ROBBLE ROBBLE!!! (thats the sound Chris' dad makes when he goes crazy, because he is really the Hamburgaler. Or the Punisher.) Either way, let us now go back to the conversation held this morning at Chris' house, with a bit of commentary thrown in for good measure. LET US AWAY!

Chris’s Dad: Okay, Chris I need to have a talk to you about something… First off..