Title: A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter Year: 2009 Artist: Caleb Larsen Dimensions: 8"x8"x8" Medium: Acrylic, custom electronics, programming, internet connection, online auction. Description: This object perpetually attempts to sell itself on eBay. NB: Before bidding you must agree to the below terms.

[ thx @jm3, @jeffheuer ]

photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolionsinengland/4199803487/

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And this is precisely the most fascinating point, this revisiting of a piece that stood in a position of relative inertia (disregarding the countless tags that tarnished its former glory). This is the conflict of the contemporaneity of street art and the rigidity of graffiti. Banksy, by daring to perpetrate the ultimate taboo, basically capping a piece of history, has problematized the structure of how work on the street functions. He has epitomized this dichotomy between of the amorphous, forgiving nature of Street Art, and the unbending, intensely hierarchical and historically obsessed operations of graffiti. He has taken the prohibited, under the looming risk of serious punishment, and made it his own. Ultimately, Banksy has disputed the static hierarchy of graffiti that is founded upon an insecurity of the ephemeral with a brave, new gesture that is unafraid of ramification or change. While I am saddened by the loss of such a remarkably old artifact, I am simultaneously encouraged by the confrontation that has awoken this sleeping relic from its slumber.

But then again, I am a street artist, so what is my opinion really worth.

Jay had a lotta big hair. Once Jay bought some black hair dye that was on sale. He went in the bathroom to use it an came out screaming that his hair had melted. It sure had, we tried over an over to wash the waxyness out and get down to his hair again but he resigned himself finally to cutting off his hair. He was freaking out for like 30 minutes yelling "My hair, MY SIGNIATURE HAIR!" I always teased him about that phrase in the future. But after I saw the box in the trash can I was like, Jay, this dye is for black people hair and he was like I didn't know, and he pointed to the part of the box that said "pour hommes" in french and said that he thought it was for POOR HOMIES. Totally ridiculous.

So great.

Writer recalls the smell of cigarette smoke and the parties his parents threw when he was a child. Describes how he recently changed deodorant and began using Old Spice, which was the kind his father used. Smelling the Classic Original Scent Old Spice for the first time, he was almost knocked over by the physical memory of his father. The writer must now decide whether to stay with this deodorant, which would cause his brain to overwrite its evocative power, or save it for special occasions.

Ettinger has already frozen his mother and his two wives, along with ninety-two other people who await resurrection inside giant freezers in a building just a few blocks from his house, in Clinton Township, Michigan. The Cryonics Institute occupies a seven-thousand-square-foot warehouse in an industrial park. Past a shabby waiting room is the small office of Andy Zawacki, who constitutes half of C.I.’s full-time staff. He is also one of C.I.’s more than eight hundred members, which means that he plans to be frozen when he dies. The writer visited the freezer storage area. There were fourteen cylindrical freezers. Each held six patients, and all but four were filled. There were also three older, rectangular freezers. The writer asked if the corpses were put in canisters within the cylinders. “No, in sleeping bags,”

Today our lifes are surrounded by incredibly flat, compact, multifunctional and boring machines. There is a basic human need for real, analog and touchable things…