Monday, August 28, 2006

Modern Times, Modern Timidity w/out the Toilet Titians

In times of economic instability, cultural stupidity, spiritual rigidity, artistic redundancy, political tomfoolery, psychological conformity, sexual morbidity, bellicose cruelty, and social futility-- these times, in fact--bathroom graffiti in NYC grows ponderously vacuous. Once the domain of primitivist grandeur and deft poetic sloganeering, lunatic pornographic come-ons, and other voices of the void, the toilet museuems have been transformed into cauldrons of banality without the redemption of cliche, irony without the restraint of paradox, School of Visual Arts noodlings instead of amatuer scrawlings, political manifestos so appallingly centrist and rife with newspeak they seem to have been borrowed by CNN. In short, the city bathroom gallery has been converted into a message board for stockbrokers and repressed Upper West Siders. Alas: the bathroom bards have flushed themselves down the toilet or vacated their former dwelling spaces. Beware: let none of your intelligence or orifices touch anything in here. A quarantine is in order.
--Martin Scriblerus