Four letter words

Hot damn, a four-letter word tops Webster's list of words of the year and it's one I can pronounce, use in a sentence and say around children.

Blog. B-L-O-G. As in, I would write a novel, but I'm too busy updating this darned blog each week.

Country of orgin: USA.
Prefix: Web.
Suffix: Log
Makes: Blog.
Get it: Web Log. Weblog. We, blog!

This is confusing if you're my mom, who the other night actually said, "I read your blob today."

Wait! There's more!

It's a cracker jack day, people. Also in the news, a porcelain urinal was named the most infulential piece of modern art. No, I'm not kidding.

"Fountain" - an ordinary white, porcelain urinal - was more influential than anything else created by artist's hands in modern times.

Than ANY ART MADE in modern times. We're not talking invention or functionality here. We're talking art, like paints and clay and stuff.

Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso. Prints of the gorgeous Ms. Monroe, stary nights, the devistation of war. Eh, eh.

"Fountain" made something of a critical splash (oh, i'm busting at the seams with puns) when Marcel Duchamp introduced it in 1917. Had I been alive then, I'm pretty sure I would have thought he'd lost his mind.

Even for a moment today I thought maybe the person who chose this piece got swirlied too many times in middle school.

I had to think for a minute when I read about this story. (And by think I of course mean I had to do a Google search). What in the world is special about a tub a man pee's in?

Nothing! (sorry, fellas). And that's just it. Duchamp planted the seeds of what would become a grand avant-garde movement. In English, that means he started thinking in ways that no one had before.

An everyday object as art? Now that you mention it, that's not a bad idea.

Before that, art was kinda pretentious. Full-figured ladies lying on couches and lots of big, beautiful nature. The urinal (do I have to say it?) pisses on aesthetic beauty. So, yeah, there's nothing exceptional really about a urinal or a sink or a comb for that matter (Duchamp made both of those things in a similar fashion) but that's the point.

And so it is with the blog. Once upon a time, Web posting was tough. It was complicated, like math.

Then a few smart people got together and figured out a way to make it easy for everyone. And poof -- We blog!

It's nothing really. A few pages and a few thoughts among millions and millions. But anyone can do it. And anyone can read it. And anyone can get it.

Like Duchamp's urinal, it's the commonality in something once so complicated that makes it beautiful.