Why You Never Wear A Red Shirt And Khaki Pants At Target.
I am now really tempted to walk into Kmart with a red shirt. Do you think they’d hire me?
I went to Target once right after work and while I as standing outside I got asked if I worked there. …I was wearing a blue shirt.
I am going to hi jack a Target.
I was wearing my beautiful black tshirt that says “come a little closer and I’ll teach you about rabies” in a target and someone asked me if I worked there
look…………….. write as much shitty fic as you want. nobody can stop you. you’re learning constantly and it’s better to write hackneyed implausible ridiculousness than it is to not write at all out of fear of fucking up. you’re good
There was an experiment a professor did. I think it was pottery students. He did an experiment of “quality” vs “quantity”. One half of the class he told; you have to make as many pots as possible. Good pots, bad pots, shitty pots, whatever. The more pots you make, the higher your grade.
The other half of the class were told, “you can make only one pot”. But that pot had to be perfect. The quality had to be high; the highest quality pot would get the best mark.
But when it came to the grading, they noticed something weird.
All the best quality pots were in the ‘quantity’ group.
The guys who were literally churning out pots, trying to make as many as possible, not concentrating on the quality. But every pot they made, made them better at making pots. By the end of the month (I think it was a month) – they had some pretty awesome pots coming out, because they enjoying finding all the ways and all the things they could do to make all their pots. Where as the ‘quality’ guys had spent their time reading up on pots, and technique, and researching and planning; which was all great but they’d had no further practice at actually making pots.
The best way to get really good at something, the only way to be really good at something, is to make lots of shitty attempts at that thing several of which will fail. If all you create are perfect things then you won’t improve, because how can you improve on perfect?
tl:dr MAKE YOUR SHITTY POTS.
As someone who has actually made a fuckton of shitty pots, I can confirm this is true.
However, I just want to make an addendum to this story that creativity is hard. It’s very easy to say “just make tons of attempts and (eventually) you’ll get better!” It’s very difficult to live this, especially because improvement is very difficult to see when you’re in the middle of it.
AND it is not this smooth curve of Pot 36 being better than Pot 35. Sometimes Pot 35 is a drastic leap forward and Pot 36 is so misshapen that it doesn’t make it off the wheel.
This is okay.
There is this cultural push that improvement is only a linear process and if you fail in any way you’re not worthy to continue on and should give up (or some shit like that).
How do you get around this? You separate quality from what you’re trying to make.
I bet you that most successful creators, if you actually dug down into their process, were not aiming for perfection or even something they considered “finished.” They were aiming for the truest implementation of their idea they could make, and a product that most closely achieved what they wanted to achieve. Which isn’t perfection, it’s success.
my new roommate’s best friend literally says “we’ll just go out for one drink” on a weeknight, goes to a club, has ONE drink while everyone else is getting to it, and then tells everyone when it’s time to go home so they can actually make it to class in the morning and I’m genuinely terrified by the amount of self control she has
saying you’ll just have one drink at the club on a school night and then following through and getting up for class the next day demonstrates the exact level of resolve it took to amputate your own arm on an 18th century battlefield
Art forgery is the best crime tbh. It requires absolutely incredible artistic talent, technical skill, and attention to detail to make convincing fakes. Does anyone get hurt from it? No! The only people who suffer for it are the extremely wealthy who want the prestige of having original paintings in their own homes. It’s full of international intrigue and mystery. Perfect.
Also… art forgers like van Meegeren sometimes become a kind of folk hero. A swindler, sure, but a gentleman’s swindler.
I liked this guy’s story, Mark Landis, who conned several dozen museums into displaying his forgeries, but when the FBI came after him they couldn’t do anything because he had always given them away as donations. They said if they could have found that he’d ever taken anything in exchange they would have prosecuted him, but all he wanted was get to out of the house and meet people.
“The first painting Landis “donated” was a copy of a work by Maynard Dixon, an artist well-known for his paintings of cowboys and Indians. It started as impulse, Landis says, but then “everybody was just so nice and treated me with respect and deference and friendship, things I was very unused to — I mean, actually not used to at all. And I got addicted to it.””
And it looks like all his forgeries are done with cheap materials, like markers and Hobby Lobby frames.
Ok, but Wolfgang Beltracchi is probably one of the best Fraud Artists in the world.
His career brought him millions upon millions of dollars and lasted almost 40 years. He finally admitted to painting fraudulent art after the white paint he used came under scrutiny.
“ Bob Simon: What do you think this Max Ernst would be worth? Wolfgang Beltracchi: This one? Simon: Yeah. Beltracchi: $5 million, I think. Simon: $5 million. And you can do it in three days? Beltracchi: Yeah, oh yes, yes, sure, or quicker”
-From a 60 minutes interview with Bob Simon
In The interview with Beltracchi, he said that none of his forgeries are copies, they’re all original works that the famous artists could have painted.
His wife was also in on the scam, she would dress up in old clothing and take pictures holding the paintings with old cameras to fake proof of the paintings’ ages.
At the end of the interview with Wolfgang Beltracchi he was asked if he felt he had done anything wrong, his answer was “ Yeah, I used the wrong kind of paint”
Just … the levels of con there, the fake photos and … wow. That’s incredible.
Heroes
Also fun fact we learned in class today: Michelangelo carved a sculpture of a Roman god, broke off the arm, and then buried it. The sculpture was dug up and was considered to be an authentic Roman artefact, until Michelangelo came along with the missing arm and called shenanigans on himself, just to prove he was as skilled a sculptor as the ancient Romans.
Reminder not to support the Salvation Army who are a bunch of bigots
It’s ironic that they think being pro LGBTQIA is a “Threat to their fundraising efforts” when the fact is I would NEVER donate a single penny of my money to any group, person or organisation that wasn’t 100% pro LGBTQIA and supportive of the rights and freedoms of LGBTQIA people
The Salvation Army’s bullshit makes certain that I will NEVER waste my money donating to their shitty little organisation because I am not going to give my money to worthless filth like them
Also sick, Apparently the Valparaiso, IN Salvation Army had Aryan Brotherhood members (in full attire) bellringing for them on Black Friday.
Here’s your annual reminder not to give to the Salvation Army, and before a single one of you says “but they do good work” here is ALSO your reminder that THOUSANDS OF OTHER CHARITIES THAT DON’T THINK GAY PEOPLE SHOULD DIE would also gladly accept your donations, often dozens or hundreds in your local region alone. Your options are never “bigots or nothing”.
Rook's Writing 