A little known fact* about me: for the past 4 years, every now and again, I volunteer for the circus. Specifically, the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus.  Specifically-pt-2, I help them sell merchandise, hand out programs, setup/breakdown and what not.  I volunteer for them because:

1. Sword-swallowing, juggling, burlesque, aerialists, wire-walking, vaudeville, fire-eating, general bizzarities and bawdiness etc are Where-Its-At.
2. They are a non-profit organization (mission statement: Bindlestiff Family Variety Arts, Inc. is a non-profit performing arts organization dedicated to increasing the knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the history of circus, sideshow, vaudeville, and related arts through activities including performances, lectures, print media, and workshops for the general public as well as creating opportunities for cultural exchange and fostering a sense of community.)
3. I get to wear striped tights.

And ANYWAY.

Their current show “Kinko (the clown) for President” was at the Zipper Factory this month and the last show (and subsequently my volunteer gig this season) is TOMORROW on Oct 1st at 7:30: http://www.thezipperfactory.com/shows.html and you know what? I’ll tell you what. You should come. for the reasons above.

*by “little known”, I mean that I talk about it all the time because I think it makes me hip-and-now.

I found these delightful and morbidly absurd images on rebel:art (another non-english image-heavy blog that i rss-ify daily) and I thought, “whoa awesome, I wonder if there are more of these? who is the artist?” But to my infinite dismay, I found no link to the origin of this work, and the only text on the site is in German.

According to the babelfish online translater (which is clearly entirely accurate), here is the translation for the text that accompanies these images:

I get such mails: two pictures, the reference “death bird” – and nothing else. Thank you, Tom! I do not understand completely, what you would like to say me thereby – now is a threat or rather a radix complement? – however in any case: Has which! In this sense: Meal and I are pleased again and again about mysterious post office.

Thank you to Erica, captain of the dearlings brigade, for sharing with me this article (translated from swedish for you).

I invite you to enjoy with me: the Manual for Postmodern Child-Rearing (by Athena Farrokhzad & Tova Gerge) because it tickles my snobby-liberal-arts-education’s theoretical funny bone.

Below are some of my favorites (but read the whole thing, hilarity):

• Rub your child on some carbon paper. Then cut up the paper and stick the pieces to the child’s body. Question the child as an original. Question the child as a copy. Question the carbon paper as a construction.
• If the child claims to be hungry, accuse it of indulging in being-based oppression.
• If your child accuses you of incomprehensibility, then accuse it of logical positivism.
• Lecture your child on the decentralisation of power, on the crumbling of the centre into a domain of autonomous, cross-fertilising peripheries. Talk continuously for several years at a stretch. Punish all forms of interruption and intervention.
• Render the child immune to the fetishisations of visual culture by dysfunctionalising its left eye.