Thomas Arthur Schaefer
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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

15 Pounds — 2 Months

I can't fit into my cloths anymore. I'm to damn skinny. They fall off my body. Is this a bad thing? I don't know...

The average weight for men aged 20-74 years rose dramatically from 166.3 pounds in 1960 to 191 pounds in 2002. Though the average weight for men aged 20-39 years increased by nearly 20 pounds over the last four decades, the increase was greater among older men:

- Men between the ages of 40 and 49 were nearly 27 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared to 1960.

- Men between the ages of 50 and 59 were nearly 28 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared to 1960.

- Men between the ages of 60 and 74 were almost 33 pounds heavier on average in 2002 compared to 1960.

So what do I account this all to? Is it a change in habits.. absolutly. Starting January 1st - I quit drinking soda pop - I quit eating fast food. It's interseting the side-effects of sugar (or more appropriatly frutose) has on the human body.


A University of Cincinnati (UC) study provides new evidence that drinking large amounts of beverages containing fructose adds body fat, and might explain why sweetening with fructose could be even worse than using other sweeteners.

Researchers allowed mice to freely consume either water, fructose sweetened water or soft drinks. They found increased body fat in the mice that drank the fructose-sweetened water and soft drinks--despite that fact that these animals decreased the amount of calories they consumed from solid food. All the mice began the study at an average weight of 39 grams. Those consuming the fructose-sweetened water showed significant weight gain over the course of the study, with an average final weight of 48 grams--compared with averages below 44 grams for the other groups--and had about 90 percent more body fat than the mice that consumed water only.

Total caloric intake was lower in the mice that consumed the fructose-sweetened water than in the other groups, except for the control animals provided with water only. "We were surprised to see that mice actually ate less when exposed to fructose-sweetened beverages, and therefore didn't consume more overall calories," said Dr. Tschöp. "Nevertheless, they gained significantly more body fat within a few weeks."

Based on that study and their new data, the researchers now also believe that another factor contributing to the increased fat storage is that the liver metabolizes fructose differently than it does other carbohydrates. "Similar to dietary fat, fructose doesn't appear to fully trigger the hormonal systems involved in the long-term control of food intake and energy metabolism,"


Water... hmmm. But whats so new about this... everyone knows water is good for you. After drinking approximately 17 ounces of water (slightly more than 2 glasses), the metabolic rate increases by 30% for both men and women. The increase occurres within 10 minutes of water consumption and reached a maximum after about 30 to 40 minutes.

But why do the fast food chains always or better yet the soft drink manufactures always hide the water button on their dispensing machines. Ohh yeah... I forgot... they are just like the cigarette companies. They want to kill everyone of us.... but slowly... so we can still consume and breed. Gotta love that Capitalism.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Picture Book Of Sexual Love

Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, he deliberately decieves himself that little precious fragment as well. A portion of him turns against him and acts like another person, defeating him from inside. A man inside a man. Which is no man at all.
— PKD

Friday, February 24, 2006

All Things Are Wrapped In Appearances

Little of what Heraclitus wrote has survived, and what we do have is obscure, but Fragment 54 is lucid and important: "Latent structure is master of obvious structure." This means that Heraclitus believed that a veil lay over the true landscape. He also may have suspected that time was somehow not what it seemed, because in Fragment 52 he said: "Time is a child at play, playing draughts; a child's is the kingdom." This is indeed cryptic. But he also said, in Fragment 18: "If one does not expect it, one will not find out the unexpected; it is not to be tracked down and no path leads us to it.
— PKD

Thursday, February 23, 2006

My Boss Is Plotting Against Me

What could a man living in 1750 have learned about himself by observing the behavior of a donkey steam engine? Could he have watched it huffing and puffing and then extrapolated from its labor an insight into why he himself continutally fell in love with one certain type of pretty young girl? This would not have been primitive thinking on his part; it would have been pathological. But now we find ourselves immersed in a world of our own making so intricate, so mysterious, that as Stanislaw Lem, the eminent Polish science fiction writer, theorizes, the time may come when, for example, a man may have to be restrained from attempting to rape a sewing machine.
— PKD

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Flow My Tears

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to control the minds of people is to control their perceptions. If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do. Comprehension follows perception. How do you get them to see the reality you see? After all, it is only one reality out of many. Images are a basic constituent: pictures. This is why the power of TV to influence young minds is so staggeringly vast. Words and pictures are synchronized. The possibility of total control of the viewer exists, especially the young viewer. TV viewing is a kind of sleep-learning. An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion. In addition, much of the information is graphic and therefore passes into the right hemisphere of the brain, rather than being processed by the left, where the conscious personality is located. Recent experiments indicate that much of what we see on the TV screen is received on a subliminal basis. We only imagine that we consciously see what is there. The bulk of the messages elude our attention; literally, after a few hours of TV watching, we do not know what we have seen. Our memories are spurious, like our memories of dreams; the blank are filled in retrospectively. And falsified. We have participated unknowingly in the creation of a spurious reality, and then we have obligingly fed it to ourselves. We have colluded in our own doom.
— PKD

Thursday, February 16, 2006

A Fractured Appetite Has Led To A Malnourished Positioning Of My Assets Management And Execution

It's time to get things in order and get back to the business of production. Here is the plan for this year broken into 4 quarters — in simple terms.

2006 Execution Plan

1st Quarter
Retroconsumerism: Flouride Show
- 2 monochrome oil paintings (execution)
- 'Artifacts' vitrines (general construction)
- 'Flourides' (framing/glass etching)
- 5 large drawings (execution)

2nd Quarter
Retroconsumerism: Flouride Show
- large mirror (acquisition and execution)
- show (coordination)
- show invite (acquisition of materials & vendor)
- show give-away (acquisition of materials & vendor)
Happenings
'one.hundred.twenty' — Atlanta, GA
'Hot Young and Eager On 25¢ A Day' — Las Vegas, NV

3rd Quarter
Retroconsumerism: Donuts Show
- develop business relationship with local vendor
- 50 panel works (execution)
- 12 drawings (execution)
- show (coordination)
- show invite (acquisition of materials & vendor)
- show give-away (acquisition of materials & vendor)
100 Small Works
- 'Celebrity Contra' (autograph acquisition)
- 'I Have One' (motion sensor/audio constuction)
- 'I Have One' (silk screened text panels)
- 'Hot, Young & Eager' (execution)

4th Quarter
100 Small Works
- 'NYC Barstool Baptisms' (framing)
- 'NYC Barstool Baptisms' (true blessing & baptism of work)
- 'Sand Dollars' (pump mechanism construction)
- 'Sand Dollars' (acquisition of materials - sand & unrefined crude oil from Iraq)
- 'Sand Dollars' (execution)

Sunday, February 12, 2006

You've Got To Face The Truth

Blah Blah Blah... Sunday. What the hell is happening today.... not a damn thing... not a damn thing. I guess I'm going to do some painting or something. I don't know.

Friday, February 10, 2006

You Know… You Had The Artist Who Wanted To Eat Your Butthole For Dinner — BH

Ahh good ol' Bill Hicks... poor bastard... I wish he had never left us. Lines like this just crack me up!! I've been listening to him again all week... he's the only reason I made it through this past week.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Jenny Craig Is Actually Fat

I just don't know what to write today.... seems to be the same situation I've been dealing with since the start of this year. Things just don't feel right... and ohh yeah... I'm still sick. Definitly staying home tomorrow... sleep and more sleep.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

I'm Crazy About Plastic

Ahhh damn... I'm really sick today... again!! I guess I'm going to have to sit around, sleep and in my waking states watch the boob-tube. Blllaghhh and hack!!

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Chaos In Your Frontyard

The New Studio... sans 1 work table.

There it is... it came about faster than I thought... now I just need IKEA to get another damn table top for me to finish building the second work platform.
It's a really large space... large than the photo would reveal. Kanka says the problem with the space is that the work that I'll produce in it will just get bigger and bigger... where will you put it all? He's probably correct... but again thats the point of having a space to work in.

Friday, February 03, 2006

100% Organic

Divided Like A Saint's presents
SUPER! Bright Lightbulb



This has to be one of my favorite theatre productions I've seen in my years here in the ATL and outside... and yes 'I have' gotten out to many shows in my limited time.
So what did I think of it from an artistic perspective.... It was visually stunning. The entire production was grounded in the performers and their use of the stage. There were no eloboate sets, no elaborate lighting... just pure wonderful simplicity, something I really appreciate when it's done correctly and in this production it definitly was.
The show — I felt, a perfect mix of minimalism and narrative exploration. A cross between a Merce Cunningham production and an intimate White Stripes concert.
I became a fan of Merce when I began my studies into Robert Rausenberg some years ago. The striking simplicity of the production and the brilliant costumes reminded me of things Merce had done. The entire production was a real suprise to me and a real treat. It really turned my day around.