As was the case when a video of a US Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff in Iraq sparked widespread outrage, death threats and maudlin displays of outrage across the internet, the news that Costa Rican artist Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas had starved a dog named Nativity to death as part of an art exhibit has been making the rounds on Myspace bulletins and well over a million people have signed internet petitions calling for his banishment to the Chateau D’iff of the art world. First off, the story is almost certainly just another performance art hoax, like the recent Yale abortion art. But even if it were real, the whole point of Vargas’ as he himself explained was to “illustrate the point that…in my home city of San Jose, Costa Rica, tens of thousands of stray dogs starve and die of illness each year in the streets and no one pays them a second thought. Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us. Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway.”  If illustrating the lazy hypocrisy of so-called “animal lovers” was the goal of the installation, I’d say Vargas succeeded in spades. All the people signing these petitions and expending their energy making Guillermo “Habacuc” Vargas a famous performance artist in the name of “animal welfare” should take a good long look in the mirror and realize that millions of cats and dogs are euthanized in this country each year for no other reason than people don’t care enough about them to pay for them to live. Likewise, many millions more are tortured to death every single day to provide our cheap, overly meat-laden diets and yet most people do nothing. I guess its a lot easier to sign some fucking stupid petition than to actually do anything real to back up your supposed convictions. Great job everyone! Way to make a difference. OBAMA ‘08!

While yesterday’s death-related art story, the Yale student who purposely impregnated herself and aborted the fetuses as often as possible turned out to be something of a hoax (or performance art, if you will), photographer Walter Schels’ new exhibit in London featuring before and after shots of terminally ill patients is all too real. Fuck it.

And you call this art? I would have used the skeletons!!11:

Art major Aliza Shvarts ’08 wants to make a statement. Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

I think “sure, some people will be upset” is a lock for Understatement of the Year 2008.

UPDATE:  So the veracity of the original reporting on this story is being called into question:

What was her “process”? How did she create these so-called miscarriages? She asked boys she knew to donate sperm (she claims she also asked them to have tests for sexually transmitted diseases), she supposedly implanted that sperm into herself, and then she took these claimed herbal concoctions misleadingly called “abortifacient drugs” to end the pregnancy with forced miscarriage.

The main question is, was she ever pregnant? I have to say most likely no. The “turkey baster” method of implanting semen for impregnation is very ineffective, though known to be successful. Sperm does not live for too long once it hits the open air, so implantation would had to have occurred quickly after the issuing of the fluids. So, to assume that this girl had actually impregnated herself is not a good bet. There is no indication that there was any sort of “controls” placed on her efforts at implantation and, since there was never once any medical care, there is no proof that she ever was pregnant at all.

Secondly, the so-called “drugs” she used to induce the “miscarriages” are not real drugs. To even call them drugs is misleading. The so-called drugs, the abortifacient drugs, are herbal concoctions that have no medicinal value. The makers of these drugs make unsubstantiated claims that their mixtures cause miscarriage but there are no scientific studies of these claims and the FDA does not regulate these fake drugs under law — meaning the claims are not accepted as scientific fact. So, Shvarts’ claim that she took “drugs” to induce miscarriage is built on the false claims of fake these “drugs.”

Then we have the blood. Nine months gives us at the very least 27 days of menstruation. There is little indication that the blood used in this “art” project is anything other than normal flow.

So, what do we really have here? No proof of any real impregnation, no proof that the “drugs” taken could really induce miscarriage, and no medical tests to buttress any claims. In other words, we have a hoax. If not a hoax, we have a girl who has no idea what she is talking about and too many willing accomplices in the school and the media to just accept her claims as truth without any logic or science to put such claims to the test.

Ah, Spring! Blossoms! Bikinis! AND BLOCK PARTIES!!! Here is the lineup for Seattle’s Capitol Hill Block Party 2008:

Friday July 25
Vampire Weekend
Les Savy Fav
Girl Talk
USE
The Dodos
Jay Reatard
Akimbo
Pwrfl Power
Past Lives
Black Eyes And Neckties
Champagne Champagne
Plus many more!!!

Saturday July 26
Surprise Guest!!
The Hold Steady
Chromeo
Kimya Dawson
Darker My Love
The Builders & The Butchers
The Hands
Velella Velella
The Physics
Man Plus
Little Party And Bad Business
Plus many more!!!

Special presale tickets went on sale yesterday (sorry we’re late!) and the password is BLOCKPARTY. Get a 2-day discounted pass here.

But seriously Leo, not a day over 530…

Born April 15th, 1452 in theregion of Florence, Italy, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, or Leo as his close friends called him, grew from the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant into a legitimate baller. Apart from his famous paintings, he was the epitome of the Renaissance Man: inventor, engineer, sculptor, military architect, code-breaker, buggerer of boys, philosopher, master of topographical anatomy and internationally recognized genius. I could make a list of his radical inventions and plans, notes and journals that are still used today, but that’s why we have wikipedia.

And by the way, happy Pesach er’rybody.

Bob Dylan took home rock ‘n’ roll’s first Pulitzer Prize thanks to a special award presented to the iconic songwriter for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” Dylan, humbled by the announcement, said he was in “disbelief.”

Another Pulitzer first occurred when two awards were handed out for poetry. Philip Schultz’s Failure and Robert Hass’ Time and Materials both received honors for distinguished volumes of original verse by an American author. You can read the title poem from Schultz’s collection, as well as hear the poet read it here.

The Washington Post emerged with six Pulitzers, including “Jo Becker and Barton Gellman, who won the national reporting award for documenting the power and secrecy wielded by Vice President Dick Cheney, and to Steve Fainaru, who won the international reporting prize for his examination of private security contractors in Iraq.”

A full list of winners can be found here and here.