Last time, I was talking about ‘rare’ Mr. Strauss recordings and my enjoyment of finding and listening to them. So instead for this, the second part of a very special top 10, I’m going to concentrate on the other stuff, the stories pictures and other text. If Justin Turner were writing this he’d call it the non-dynamaic-media.

Eyes up front please - Eyes up front…

5. The Mr Strauss Bespoke Essay Writing service.

A seemingly innocent page so easy to dismiss that I ignored it for a good while until I came across other text that reminded me of its existance.

Put simply we are talking the prostitution of writers, and this is the glass window in which Strauss is bent over with a large dildo in hand to demonstrate that he can accept pretty much anything into his well worn writer’s rectum.

Now based upon the system of morals that I subscribe to I’m left thinking, after reading this advert, that this alone is enough to guarantee him a place in hell. Not art hell (which as you know is bad joke version of a cross between Disneyland and Dante’s Inferno) but actual hell. The hell that’s pretty difficult to believe in because it includes the notion of infinity which our brains aren’t big enough to properly process.

Cost varies by assignment. But to give you a sense of approximate range, a five page English paper on a given short story would cost around 40 dollars. The factors involved include how much reading/research I have to do, how much time before the due date I am given the assignment, and how much custom “shaping” is required. By this I mean imitation of voice,etc

For a good while I refused to accept this at face value. It was a joke, the low cost of the service alone proved to me that this was in some way an exercise in situationalism. That he would somehow encode into a rich kid’s essay good reason for that student to be expelled or perhaps even sectioned. (The work as he puts it, of a meaningsmith) A real life excercise in the power of langauage which apart from testing out his subtextual sword (rather than his pork one) on a live subject, would also be cathartic because had he ever employed the services of a writer in this way his own life may have taken a different path.

Getting Paid to Write puts the whole issue into perspective. That rather than being a ’stunt’ it is in fact a living. And that somehow - in my own head at least, getting paid well and regularly to write people’s homework for them is in fact sad a truth of modern life rather than a crime. And I think it’s this that has shaken me the most - that because it goes on rather a lot - and is well paid that makes it ok. That I’m cast as being rather naive (all too common) and should calm myslef down with some hot and sexy hard class A drugs - which as we know everyone takes these days.

6. An image folder that goes on forever

I’ve only managed to skim the surface of this one. But there is enough here to keep anyone busy. A lot of it seems to be the component parts of html home pages experiments gone by, but seen here - bit by bit, is all rather rewarding. 5 minutes worth of clicking to see bits of corners of web pages and suddenly one comes across this.

Perhaps this entire “website being free for all to see” incident is in fact an artistic retrospective. There is also a hell of a lot of rubbish though.

7. Worm Story

Those of you enjoyed my story about podcasting Speakers Corner will probably enjoy this even more because it’s written by someone who, as we’ve established, is a fair bit more talented in the field of writing than I am.

Just read it.

8. I believe that certain authority-type figures want to kill me.

A truly amazing document that serves to effectivly demostrate a damaged sense of reason brought about by drug use but with a clever twist - it’s not he drugs that bring about the paranoia but those that police them. What’s super clever here is it reads like an anti-suicide note.

I am not now nor have I ever been suicidal.

I am extremely cautious in my driving and as a pedestrian.

“So, if I die mysteriously, call bullshit, alright?”

And much like the bespoke homework writing service we are left wondering how true this is document is. Hardly any examples of dishonesty are evident anywhere else on the site (that I could find) so once again I’m left shocked into believing that this is as is.

And then, in a final stamp of ’sample’ it ends “God Bless America, Daniel Cohron Osborne.” A reassurance that all is well and it’s all been a work of fiction, if not a fiction on page then at the very least a fiction in the head of it’s author.

I sounds all very cliché, I know, but it succeeds for me as a piece of art because the only way to prove if it actually art of not is by the death of its author. It’s also quicker to get through than the film ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and seems far less compromised or contrived.

9. I need to be jailed

In a similar vein to 8 - but reworked for audio, this recording plays like a confessional diary piece that mutates into a political school lecture. It’s a compelling piece of media because it’s truthful to the subject matter, analytical and but yet it successfully invites the listener to come to their own conclusions and think things through for themselves.

When dealing with the subjects of drugs and civil liberties it’s far too easy to be either preachy or allow personal experience to contaminate rather than inform an argument. This piece only just gets a way with it…

” When I look at the that constitution I don’t see anything in there that suggests that it’s ok for the government to be telling me what plants I can and can’t grow in my garden”

Most importantly, and to place it back into the context of where it came from (i.e. - this audio recording was probably recorded as material for the pop goes lethal podcast and was not recorded in order that it be hung in a gallery.) this effectively demonstrates what media, or podcasts, or art could and should be about if they taught integrity in schools rather than whatever the fuck it is they teach in schools - especially poignant given that the kids homework is being written by Strauss himself. Do they even read what it is they are handing in and their rich daddy paid for?

10. A Web page From Hell

Have you seen this? It’s fucking ‘orrid.

Now as you know I love the music Mr. Strauss and Komputadora but not all at once!

This webpage is so bad it deserve commendation. I don’t understand what’s going on here at all. I can’t believe this was ever a properly functioning webpage so full that it is of html nonsense it really is something of a miracle that it loads anything at all.

It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m looking at it in safari and if you take a look at it in firefox it’s not quite as bad as all that but it’s still demostrates some of the most evil things (including FRAMES) that I thought had been outlawed after the 2.0 purge of bad internet practice.

So this page reminds us that stuff like this still goes on and you don’t need to look to geocities to find it.

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It doesn’t seem right to leave it at that. Website Nazi-ism is very unbecoming so let’s cleanse our palettes with a far nicer page.

Here’s a page my dad would like.

And so as I carry the beach goods and the postcard stand back inside the shop before closing let’s go over what we’ve just experienced and try to understand why it’s news worthy in my little world.

I’ve now spent more time writing this now any other blog post and have enjoyed every minute because it has allowed me to, or rather necessitated me to dwell on a ton of media created by a fellow artist.

I’d argue - I think it’s a very srong argument, that one of the criteria of good art is that it encourages the beholder to make art for themselves. I didn’t sit down to this blog 24 hours ago in order to create some art but rather just to write about something which I thought was important. (I think we’ve already established the relationship that I have with you the reader - that I’d much rather be writing about what I want to say rather than what you want to hear, so I won’t go over all that again). Important to me and therefore important to you if you are anything like me, or interested in the same things that I am into.

And that simple premise of intent to just do something that needs to be done because it feels right or may be good fun is exactly what I’ve been consuming on the pop goes lethal website. It’s the same reason why they build cameras into mobile phones - not for the owners to become a professional photographer or great artists through the medium of digital photography but because it’s fun to take to take some ’snaps’.

So I have written about something with as much depth as I am currently capable of and I have made excuses to myslef as to why I am researching something with far more vigour than anything I were writing for someone else. (Even if paid) . In short this text as not an attempt to create some art, though that may be at some point a by-product of what is instead demonstration of some kind of addiction.

It’s not something I’m worried about because it’s the kind of addiction that promotes that creation of art, or at the very least more blog pages that no one actually reads because they’re reading blogs about the new iphone.

All hyperlinks to work on Pop Goes Lethal is copyright 2004 popgoeslethal.com, Eric Strauss and/or Straussoholics Anonymous.