This Belongs in a Museum

Before I publish my next post, may I express my complete hatred for the new format. I got it on Sunday and I’ve had a headache ever since. I have wasted many hours (and time is precious to me) trying to figure out this shit. Not only figuring out how photos work, which makes me want to scream, because it seems only desktop pics work at the moment (what? no urls?) or if you post only one photo the entire text turns into one huge link. But also figuring out to correctly link with twitter, which doesn’t seem to work if you have something in the queue and then need to change something. Poof! There goes the tweety bird. Gone forever! Making me take the extra step to add the link by signing on to twitter. Then the text posts were giving me trouble as uploaded or copied pictures just seemed to disappear. I am not trying to be difficult or dramatic, but the easiness of the old format is sorely missed and if my problems continue I might have to abandon this blog or just post annoying cat gifs. I don’t fucking know. Uh.

This just wouldn’t be my tumblr If I didn’t offend a reader (or two) on a daily basis. I know my humour is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I see things a bit differently, so I wish people would get used to it. Yet they can’t. I don’t want this to be another boring museum blog. I want some personality thrown in for good measure. But over the last few months the number of offended replies, reblogs and private messages have far outnumbered the compliments, so as much as I would like to stand my ground and say “if you don’t like it, move on”, for some reason I find myself giving up. Maybe I should just become another boring museum blog. Or maybe I’m one of those “you can dish it out, but can’t take it” types. I don’t know. Even though I know most of my 55,000 followers are spambots, I’d still like to think I have a large audience and I want to take their thoughts into consideration while writing this blog. This started out as something personal, for me to discover some cool and interesting places to visit one day, then it turned into sharing all these discoveries with other people. So here’s the dilemma, should I continue to be myself or become more professional in my writing? I am serious and open to suggestions.

One last comment on that controversial post - I think we can all agree it was thought-provoking, and that’s a good thing. Especially on a day like Columbus Day that has so many meanings. It’s not my fault whites have dominated history. That’s a fact. It is interesting to think of an alternate history of a North America full of Vikings, instead of Brits, Frenchies and Spaniards. The Vikings were never able to get hold of any indigenous land and colonize it, but what if they had? Also, the introduction of new diseases was just as devastating to the native populations of North America as any of the genocides, wars and massacres, and displacements. History isn’t all black and white. There are lots of cause-and-effects in most episodes of our past. But diversity is becoming more socially acceptable in our everyday lives in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia…all over the world. Everything is changing. 

Anyway, I actually have enjoyed reading the private messages, replys and reblogs. Even the ones who called me racist. I apologize if anyone took it the wrong way. If anything, this last post made me think twice about some of the things I write and I will keep that in mind for the future. Also, this proves without a shadow of doubt that people do read what I write on tumblr! Later, guys.

Why do I continue writing about museums when I’m barely dipping my toe into the shallow end of the museological pool? Well, this blog is for fun, yes, but sometimes I get easily frustrated in the lack of success I have in this particular field. For the last seven years I should’ve been working as a curator or museum educator, but instead I sit here writing this blog. I mean I’ve had my share of museum-related jobs over the years, but what do I really have to show for it? Hmmm….I guess it’s all my fault because I didn’t kiss ass to the right person. Remember that kids. Success isn’t defined by what you know, but who know. And if you look good wearing a suit while doing it. As seen in the excellent television show The Wire, life is just a game and I’ve finished dead last. While I cry in my soup and start writing a proposal for an Unfairness Museum (shit needs to happen) I just wanted to remind all the children of tumblr of that very fact. Enjoy your youth and be happy if you have a trust fund. Some of us aren’t so lucky.

monkeywithadildo: polish museum? does poland even deserve a museum? they aren’t really a country a begin with they’ve been concurred more times than the french.

First of all, I believe the word is “conquered” not “concurred”. Second, Poland is a real country the last time I looked at a map. Third, you obviously have never been to Chicago. Either you’re of Polish descent or your best friend is Polish. The Poles were one of the largest immigrant groups to enter the U.S. and today that total number is somewhere around 10 million. So I think Poles deserve a museum, even a small one, in a place like Chicago where their culture is more than evident. And lastly, have you heard any good Polish jokes lately? There’s this one about a Polish admiral and a monkey with a dildo…

At the mere mention of the names Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno my body starts to do odd things, like shake into uncontrollable spasms, brain tissue oozes out of my ears and foam develops at the edges of my mouth. I won’t bore you with the details of my painful history with these Sociologists, but there is nothing that pisses me off more than to see gullible youngsters pay lots of money to read and write about bullshit cultural theories. I spent about a year doing just that instead of, I don’t know, doing more practical things in the museum world. If you haven’t figured out the reason behind a lot of my bitterness (something to do with being screwed by the business otherwise known as the education system), then you must be part of the 1% (kidding about that last one). But that’s not the point of why I am writing this. I came across this dude’s blog (Logen’s Cool Stuff) and all these horrible repressed memories came pouring out of me. Nothing personal against Logen but I would like to pick apart his not-so-cool stuff.

According to Logen, his childhood “memory boxes” are comparable to the books of a famous German philosopher. In “Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting” Walter Benjamin lingers over the act of unpacking his book collection. At the conclusion of his essay he’s working past midnight going through box after box. Each book reminds him of the place in which he bought it, his entire life laid out before him, from a childhood in Berlin to his final home in Paris. Of course there is an intellectual curiosity to reading books, but the impression one gets from Benjamin is that buying and collecting hardcovers is only for stroking the ego and nothing else.  That’s all fine and dandy when you’re a German intellectual associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and not some schlump with a bunch of crap bordering on a hoarding problem. Sorry Logen! 

Besides its overall pretentiousness, Logen’s theory that his “memory boxes” are worthy of evaluation, addition and modification, just like a real museum collection, does not hold up. He thinks he is documenting the past while also “engaging in a project of self-narrative and self-discovery”. No, it’s just a bunch of crap you refuse to throw out…why do I have to keep saying this? Hoarder denial! I’m sorry but the objects shouldn’t own you. An identity exists in living and breathing and learning and remembering (but those memories do not need to be tangible). I could go on but I tend to not finish arguments. Looking through the rest of Logen’s blog I see posts of colorful cutouts of construction paper from his childhood and boxes of Matchbox® toys that were bought from his weekly allowance. Who gives a flying fuck? Blame Facebook and the Me Generation for people thinking they are more important than they really are. No, the world does not revolve around you. It’s been spinning for billions of years and will continue to do so long after your cool stuff has disintegrated.

If I were to take a guess, something tells me Logen once wrote about Walter Benjamin’s Library in grad school in which he received a useless degree proving he knows how to write overanalytical bullshit no one will read. Congratulations! Actually the same can be said for the shit I just wrote. Someone should give me another degree - Master of Tumblr.