August 14, 2007
I received an email from a Mr. Evergreen LaPlant who tells me he is a 36 year old artist living in England “with my two kids, one dog and the love of my life”. Alas, all is not hunky dory for Evergreen who has been receiving US money orders, cheques, and VISA card payments for his wonderful artwork (done in either pencil or airbrush mixed with color pencils […] and creating artwork on the computer) but is having trouble cashing the aforementioned in England. Would I be interested in helping him facilitate these transactions? Would I!
“Holy Macaroni! Do we have a lot in common! I’m an artist as well although, unlike you and your work with pencils, airbrush, and computer design, I dabble in oils (linseed and canola mostly) and the varied sensory potential of salad dressing. When I fashion a sculpture out of congealed Thousand Island or festoon a canvas with the pyrotechnic fusion of a Caesar, Ranch, and Creamy Italian, I invite my audience to engage his/her senses in an optical, olfactory, flavorful and textural experience that, like beauty itself, attracts, amuses, confuses, and offends in its progression from sublime perfection to the nauseating spoiled mayonnaise-scented rubbish my building’s strata council sent me a warning letter about the other day. I follow in the footsteps of the many unappreciated artists of their time – Amedeo Modigliani, Vincent Van Gogh, Tom Arnold – men who suffered at the hands of an ignorant and uncaring public. Who are they to ignore the inventive brilliance of a Still Life with Absinthe or a McHale’s Navy? Who are they to tell me that they won’t pay fifty cents a piece for my Blue Cheese face sculpts of the entire cast of Eight is Enough because they “stink on so many levels”?
Well, I’m sure you can empathize. As I can empathize with you and your inability to cash in on your peripheral dibble-dabbling. We are both trying to make ends meet. You, for your “two kids, one dog, and the love of” your life. Me for my five illegitimate children, three guppies, two crazy uncle Rufus’s, and the love of my life = an incontinent platypus named Swanson.
So, please, tell me how I can help.
Sincerely,
Fortescu Strickland Van Letterdam Junior”
Spambait 