I'm drunk and this is called "Every Photoshop Brush I Have". This took, eh? 15 minutes? Time well spent. Soon I'll be exhibiting at the Hirshorn but I won't let anyone in because I'll have already given out all the tickets to Gallery owners, their friends and their friends. Deal with it.

I guess we're getting closer to Spring because in DC that signals the beginning of Kick Ball registration - for the hardcore players, that is. I've been playing for around 3 years and each season I'm impressed by my experience. For a little insight into what it is, I have compilled some trash talk from previous seasons when I played with The Beatdown - bear in mind, the teams have odd names and the locations may not be familiar to you. Anyways, these were featured in "Ghost Man on Third", the weekly WAKA Kick Ball newsletter:

8/4/05 (After our game at Nolan's Bar in Adam's Morgan)
"...I have to point out the creativity of Nolan's bar staff, who used mostly found objects and raw material to build flip cup areas - several times, you guys came dangerously close to an actual table. When I first arrived, I didn't know whether to play or build a shelving unit, but thankfully Kickballers like to drink heavily and irresponsibly, and I soon got over the awkwardness of the new venue. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship..."

8/14/05 (At Adams Mill in Adams Morgan, "Off in Public" is this Cobra-kai-like team and everyone hates them)
"...Amanda, our charming, even-tempered second baseman, at some point during the night transformed into a one-woman wrecking crew, dealing out flip-cup justice to any and all who foolishly engaged her at the table. Fade in, back of the bar, 7 "Off in Public" flippers and one Amanda. What happened next is the stuff of legends: Amanda quickly downed and flipped two beers while "Off in Public" denied some 300,000 years of evolutionary intelligence by forgetting how to drink. Amanda dispatched another 3 beers while OIP busied themselves transitioning from a hunter-gatherer society into one based on agriculture and trade. The last of Amanda's cups hit the table and a roar went up from the Beatdown. "I've never really been good at anything my entire life, but I seem to have found my calling", says Amanda..."

8/29/06 (The team "Real Men Wear Green" hating on our drinking skills)
"...Real Men, I just saw your review of the last minutes of our so-called "game". I don't claim to be a crisis counselor, nor do I play one on TV, but here's what I gather from your unnecessary blow-by-blow description of what MAY have happened: as desperate as that story sounds (and we're talking 37-year-old-fiance-left-at-the-altar-desparation here), Real Men are even more frantic to cling to any morsel of glory from having stood at the same table as the Beatdown. We were open all night, and all you could bring were two players. You whine like some grade-school kid, freshly beat up by a fifth grader, sitting in the principal's office on the phone to your mommy. Let's match up again, and this time, we'll have a proper game with witnesses instead of an imaginary tea party in happy-fairy land..."

What's a quick way to turn someone off? For one, tell a racist joke. It's foolproof, especially if that person is a perfect stranger. The reason this works so well is because a) you have to be really sure of yourself and b) assume the position your taking is immediately understood and accepted. The old punch-in-the-arm "am-I-right?" routine. There's a word for this: ignorance. Ignorance to a point of view not held by yourself. And if you think it's awkward by the water cooler, imagine what happens when a corporation makes the same faux pax in plain view of millions of citizens.

In March's issue of Wired Magazine, I ran into a full page Chevron Ad entitled "There are 193 countries in the world. None of them are energy Independent" which features (we're supposed to believe) the cluttered desk of a well-meaning Chevron employee whose concern with the environment has led him or her to leave their hastily compiled notebook open for a picture-perfect snapshot. It couldn't be any more contrived, but that's the visual language corporations are using to speak to us lately. What I was drawn to was the incredibly disappointing and frank message in the notebook, pictured below:


I don't really know where to start with this but I'll mention a few things that really tick me off. For starters, way to really abstract the entire energy debate. According to Chevron, just because Saudi Arabia imports refined petroleum it means that "energy independence is an unrealistic goal". Well, that's great to know, let's just throw in the towel. If I sometimes come up with a demonstrably bad idea, I should just stop thinking altogether. Obviously I should leave that to someone else more capable, someone with delicious Kool-Aid. The advances we've made in clean energy are scaring the crap out of currently entrenched energy companies. So they disparage and brow-beat instead of admit they are behind. Hey, you're invited to the party, Chevron - don't hate, participate.

And also, what is this unapologetic suggestion that energy security (what the hell?) will be "a result of... engagement"? Like the kind of engagement that silenced Ken Saro-Wiwa? Or the kind of engagement that involves Nigerian soldiers using a Chevron helicopter and Chevron boats attacking villagers in two small communities in Delta State, Opia and Ikenyan, killing at least four people and burning most of the villages to the ground? Because it sounds like that. And even if that's not what was meant, the implication is creepy.

Finally, that line about flowing "freely across borders"; this is the final straw in my opinion. Corporations are not accustomed to dealing with the traditional idea of "countries" and "geography" being that they often are able to import and enforce their own rules rather than those already in place. Saying this outright in the ad means they really don't give a damn about Human Rights regulations in developing nations or ecological concerns at all - after all, who can bother with these things while they're flowing lugubriously from place to place? And how about that metaphor - "flow freely", like oil itself. I kinda want to puke its so blatant.

I for one am pretty impressed by the climate we live in that would inspire any company to write such a bold-faced confession of one's ideals so plainly and so candidly. At least they aren't hiding anymore. Maybe we should be opening up more notebooks over there at Chevron.