Fine Japanese Cookies

Fine Japanese Cookies5141
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Delicate double
Chocolate cookies enveloped elegantly
No Latex inside.

Kitsch or Cliché?

Kitsch: n. Postmodern kitsch is bad taste masquerading as irony.
I think kitsch is fun and funny. For that reason, I have several pictures tagged as kitsch at Flickr. When I did a search among other Flickr members for pictures tagged as kitsch, some nature shots showed up--sunsets and seascapes--and one picture of a pony being fed something by a small girl reaching up.
These pictures, however, the nature shots, are not kitsch. They may well be visual / artistic clichés, but given that they are more or less naturally colored and that the subject matter itself was natural not manufactured or created by some man-made act of industry, they cannot be kitsch.

I offer here these two pictures of similar subject matter: Above, the painting of a seaside scene found in a pasty shop in a landlocked English town. And off to our right, a seaside scene taken in actual Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast. While the subject matter is superficially the same, the painting is in bright, garish colours and adds the "ificial" to artificial (as opposed to adding the "art" to artificial, which is arguable at best). I found it fun to look at on my eyes when I was there and amusing on a couple levels, but I don't mistake my admiration of the painting or its placement for good taste.
The idyllic scene at right with its shades of blue, tile roofs and lighthouse has all the elements of a typical sea view. Despite its being really like that, invoking fond memories of a better day in February than had any right to be expected, and not obviously ugly in its composition, it may be (probably is, but it's my baby and how can I say things against it?) guilty of cliché. It is, after all, the very type-ical-ness of the picture that makes it cliché.

But not kitsch.

I suppose kitsch that's repeated to the point of being a cliché would be a kitsché

A Different Harry Chapin Song.

A while back I mentioned Harry Chapin on the radio singing his song "Taxi". This picture reminded me of another of his songs, "The Rock."
"The rock is gonna fall on us," he stood and told the class.
The professor put his chalk down and peered out through his glasses
But he went on and said; "I've seen it, high up on the hill
If it doesn't fall this year then very soon it will!"
--Harry Chapin, "The Rock" on the albums Portrait Gallery and Harry Chapin: Story of a Life [BOX SET]

At long last, Trading Card from flckrtoys

I was finally able to make a trading card on the flickr toys thingy. It seems that way back before when I was having the trouble--I couldn't get the flickrtoys to see my Flickr account and load an image--it was because my computer/browser wasn't accepting cookies from the flickrtoys site. It didn't know that I had signed in and given it permission to see and use my photos.

But I solved that problem by telling the browser I trust flickrtoys. This has transferrable concept skills, because when a patron is having trouble using the licensed databases from home, or having trouble downloading audiobooks, one problem may be their level of security protection/sheilding. It could be their browser isn't accepting cookies from the library webpage or from the licensed content provider.

Some problems are harder than others to guess and solve over the phone.

Waiting for the Light

100_Waiting for the Light
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Art seems to frolick in the spirit of pretension.
In that spirit, and having to do with spirit and art,
I offer this picture:
stacked chairs in the modern cathedral in Coventry.

They are empty, except for other (chairs) like them, and yet...
Three points of light shine, suggesting more light to come.

Speaking of more light to come, I'm hoping the 27things beyond FlickrMashups are better. I played with the Montag, and it was kinda fun, but my mugshots didn't show up in the mosaic I made, so I left it.

Then I tried the Make a Trading Card Mashup, but for some reason, even when I gave the program/system/mashup permission to go to my flickr account (because I didn't want to upload more pictures from my computer), it wouldn't actually open a photo chooser for me to pick from my Flickr account. So I think I would have liked this one best if it had worked for me as I was hoping/expecting.