BÔRDUM - $8.99

Flat packed, plywood composite joy.
One great thing about the suburbs is that there is nothing to do and a lot of ways to do it. You can drive somewhere, go shopping, have a soul splitting existential crisis and then hop in your car, drive somewhere and repeat the process. It ends when you spend all your money and the winner is the retailer who whores you the most. This is a system we call "free market capitalism" and it works!

Today I ended my shopping ritual with Paul at a Swedish furniture store where I bought a nice shelf to hang next to my bed. I think it looks pretty good.

Listening tonight to the BBC World Service with a piece about the legal battle in Dover, Pennsylvania over the mandate to teach "Intelligent Design" in schools as an alternative to Darwinism. I'm all for a plurality of theories being taught, however there's a problem with veiled creationism: it's not a theory, it's a faith driven postulation. An assumption that cannot be observed and measured empirically. You cannot observe a cell dividing and mutating and further your understanding of that cell by explaining the process as an incomprehensible design by a higher being.

It certainly is some kind of deviousness coming from the religious right these days. But we have to hard-line and call a spade a spade. Is Creationism a scientific theory? Are the Fundamentalists finally giving us Science believing Liberals our just desserts by using our own game against us? Sorta. It all becomes a big stupid game of semantics. Ok, Creationism is a theory of evolution? Certainly. Is is a good theory? Fuck no. Even something so simple as mitosis proves that this so called "Intelligent Design" is actually pretty decipherable.

Although I don't really fear this movement has much future. The whole premise of Creationism, in whatever clothing, is anti-intellectual. Don't ask questions, just have faith in God! Well, unfortunately I think God wants us to use our heads and think about the world around us.

From there I think we meet the logical and emotional crux of the situation: Fundamentalists Christians see the world around us as corrupt and falling away from "values". Some of their values are quite honourable, many ancient and dubious. They hope that by subverting something modern that people have faith in, something that provides us with results like science that they'll gain moral foot-hold. That they'll somehow reclaim the country from the clutches of secularism.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of early American history will find the irony of that notion rather biting.

Yikes, what a departure from a post about cheap home wares.

Installation Art

Banksy hits NYC's four biggest museums and installs his work himself:

"This historic occasion has less to do with finally being embraced by the fine art establishment and is more about the judicious use of a fake beard and some high strength glue." Banksy continues -"They're good enough to be in there, so I don't see why I should wait"

This sort of art pranksterism is nothing new. But I think it's fun and exciting.

Two of the four installed pieces remain in their original position.