Metafilter: zimzim urallala zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam

February 28, 2006 12:12 PM

Whereas: Dada is a virgin microbe which penetrates with the insistence of air into all those spaces that reason has failed to fill with words and conventions. .

The mayor of Lawrence, Kansas proclaims February 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, August 2, August 7, August 16, August 26, September 18, September 22, October 1, October 17, and October 26, 2006 as International Dadaism Month.
posted by billysumday (58 comments total)

Really, really wonderful. I like stories about politicians who have a sense of humor. Unfortunately the gene for politics and the gene for humor seem to exist simultaneously all too rarely.
posted by weirdoactor at 12:17 PM on February 28, 2006

For one single, shining instant, I approve of something in Kansas.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:19 PM on February 28, 2006

genius!
posted by sexyrobot at 12:19 PM on February 28, 2006

I refuse to accept this as ART as is makes sense and therefore is suspect.
posted by Elim at 12:21 PM on February 28, 2006

Absurdly cool!

You ain't so elephants after all, Kansas.
posted by Drexen at 12:22 PM on February 28, 2006

What's the matter with Kansas? Not this.
posted by justkevin at 12:24 PM on February 28, 2006

Boog for Prez
posted by pwedza at 12:25 PM on February 28, 2006

Awesome :)
posted by -harlequin- at 12:25 PM on February 28, 2006

Having found an image of "Boog" I am a bit less surprised. But it's still pretty cool.
posted by Fenriss at 12:26 PM on February 28, 2006

fish
posted by milquetoast at 12:27 PM on February 28, 2006

batman
posted by sexyrobot at 12:30 PM on February 28, 2006

Being a proud resident of Lawrence (the only part of Kansas that does not suck, except for maybe Big Brutus), I must say that Boog is a badass.
posted by hototogisu at 12:34 PM on February 28, 2006

Nice. Reminiscent of Bolinas's Measure G, which passed with 67.9% of the vote back in 2003.
posted by whir at 12:35 PM on February 28, 2006

A series of stories on the dada movement in Lawrence.

Life can be fun here in Kansas. Thanks Boog!
posted by tublecain at 12:36 PM on February 28, 2006

Philosophy is the question: from which side shall we look at life, God, the idea or other phenomena. Everything one looks at is false. I do not consider the relative result more important than the choice between cake and cherries after dinner. The system of quickly looking at the other side of a thing in order to impose your opinion indirectly is called dialectics, in other words, haggling over the spirit of fried potatoes while dancing method around it.
posted by eddydamascene at 12:38 PM on February 28, 2006

I do like the quotes from the "people on the street":

“It sounds like a waste of time to me,” said Joe Hutchens, a Lawrence construction worker who said the issue would provide another reason for other Kansas communities to laugh at Lawrence. “It seems like the City Commission would have something better to do than that.”

Some people, though, took a live-and-let-live approach.

“I think it is probably higher education,” said Michael Levy, a rural Lawrence resident. “My daughter is an English major, and I think she would probably say something like, ‘This is expanding our mind.’”
posted by hototogisu at 12:39 PM on February 28, 2006

Lawrence , KS is reason for hope, deep in the heart of Scarlet America.
posted by deCadmus at 12:40 PM on February 28, 2006

Good one Jayhawks.
posted by bardic at 12:43 PM on February 28, 2006

There are only 13 days in teh month, it seems. Is that dada?

"Virgin microbe"?
posted by lodurr at 12:48 PM on February 28, 2006

Scarlet pants hoodoo dynamo-forged expletives explode in Kansas! News at 2:35!
posted by kozad at 12:48 PM on February 28, 2006

So the Brotherhood of Dada has finally triumphed....
posted by COBRA! at 12:51 PM on February 28, 2006

Is Lawrence, KS really really cool for some reason? My favorite web framework started there, and my interest in that has me poking around their local news sites and such. My current theory is that an alien spacecraft crashlanded there, and is secretly building up their culture and technology to a level where they can rebuild their warp engines, or at least have a nice night out on the town.
posted by freebird at 12:54 PM on February 28, 2006

Is Lawrence, KS really really cool for some reason?
KU
posted by Thorzdad at 12:58 PM on February 28, 2006

"Virgin microbe"?

"Perhaps you will understand me better when I tell you that Dada is a virgin microbe that penetrates with the insistence of air into all the spaces that reason has not been able to fill with words or conventions." -- Tristan Tzara
posted by eddydamascene at 12:59 PM on February 28, 2006

Yay! fucking awesome and a half!
posted by shmegegge at 1:01 PM on February 28, 2006

A: Four. One to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub with colourful power tools.
posted by Meatbomb at 1:03 PM on February 28, 2006

I reject your dadaism!
posted by nofundy at 1:03 PM on February 28, 2006

Who's your dada?
posted by freebird at 1:04 PM on February 28, 2006

I am offended and wish to pelt the mayor with rotten fruit.
posted by quadog at 1:06 PM on February 28, 2006

"Much like finding the last memeber of a species attempting to sodomize its own hermpahroditic organs with various objects in the hopes that it will give birth, FYAD is the closest thing to actual living dadaism that has been encountered in the last 800 years."
posted by keswick at 1:09 PM on February 28, 2006

This was in Harper's, right?
posted by emflr at 1:09 PM on February 28, 2006

I consider this Highberger fellow rather likable.
posted by S.C. at 1:13 PM on February 28, 2006

Is Lawrence, KS really really cool for some reason?

Yep. A little island of sanity in a vast sea of ... well, wheat, mostly.
posted by gleuschk at 1:20 PM on February 28, 2006

The mayor seems like an interesting guy. He's helped get a resolution condemning the PATRIOT ACT, is trying to block a Wal-Mart superstore, experimented with creating a local currency (with former Lawrence resident William S. Burroughs on the $3 bill), apparently wrote for an anarchist zine in the mid-80s, and opened a post-election online chat with the words "Greetings, citizens! Let the wild rumpus begin!"

I kind of want to live there now.
posted by the_bone at 1:33 PM on February 28, 2006

I would be living there if my family didn't.
posted by sighmoan at 1:37 PM on February 28, 2006

Dada is dead; watch your overcoat.

--R.A.W.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 1:38 PM on February 28, 2006

fish
posted by MotherTucker at 1:41 PM on February 28, 2006

Art goes to sleep for the birth of a new world
"ART" - a parrot word - replaced by DADA
PLESIASAURUS, or handkerchief
The talent WHICH YOU CAN LEARN makes the poet a
druggist
TODAY criticism balances no longer launches resemblances
Hypertrophic painters hyperestheticized and hypnotized by
the
hyacinths of muezzins of hypocritical appearance
CONSOLIDATE THE EXACT HARVEST OF
CALCULATIONS
HYPERDROME OF IMMORTAL GUARANTEES: There is no importance
there
is no transparency or apparency
Art needs an operation
Art is a PRETENTION heated in the TIMIDITY of the urinary
basin, Hysteria born in the Studio
We are seeking upright pure sober unique strength we are
seeking NOTHING we affirm the VITALITY of
each instant
the anti-philosophy of Spontaneous acrobatics
IF EVERYBODY SAYS THE OPPOSITE IT IS BECAUSE THEY ARE RIGHT.
Prepare the geyser actions of our blood - submarine formation
of transchromatic airplanes, cellular metals numbered in the
leap of images
above the regulations of the
BEAUTIFUL and its control

...i love dada
posted by raevyne at 1:43 PM on February 28, 2006

If you are in the DC area or will be at any time between now and May or will be in NYC in June or after, you should check out the DADA exhibit currently at the National Gallery and moving to the MoMa in June. Good stuff!

"Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is DADA, and will not tolerate a rival", but apparently Lawrence, KS is fair game.
posted by shoepal at 1:46 PM on February 28, 2006

Billysumday gets two stacks.
posted by user92371 at 1:49 PM on February 28, 2006

Lawrence is the Austin, Texas or Madison, Wisconsin of the middle of the midwest. This statement can mean whatever you wish it to mean.
posted by hototogisu at 2:23 PM on February 28, 2006

possion!
posted by Football Bat at 2:31 PM on February 28, 2006

that's so awesome.
posted by blacklite at 2:44 PM on February 28, 2006

It is NOT dada on February the 4th. That is boooooring bourgeois rationalism.

It is dada on February the 31st, January the 3.14157296, December the i and Tammuz the umpteenth.

Poooof!
posted by lalochezia at 3:25 PM on February 28, 2006

Frying an incandescent bulb in sealing-wax.
posted by the sobsister at 3:38 PM on February 28, 2006

Five tons of flax.
posted by Foosnark at 4:20 PM on February 28, 2006

A deleted double-post of this would make for an exquisite corpse.
posted by cortex at 4:49 PM on February 28, 2006

holy crap. riced out yugo has to start celebrating this month. though perhaps on February 26, April 17, March 1, July 22, August 2, August 18, August 16, August 26, September 11, September 15, October 28, October 1, and October 4 instead. and not just in 2006, but all even years.
posted by RTQP at 5:22 PM on February 28, 2006

But chickens don't have three breasts! Do they?
posted by loquacious at 6:01 PM on February 28, 2006

Huh, I read this in the paper back in December and never thought it would make it to the blue. Hooray Lawrence.

Boog is cool as mayors go, but you still can't smoke in bars/restaurants and we weren't allowed to vote on it...* and for absurdism, you should know that the only recycling center in town is behind the "green" Wal Mart (and I'm not talking about the color--the store is complete with a recycling "museum" or whatever they call it; and it's a supercenter now). And outside of a small area near downtown, it's still pretty much Kansas. Oh, and the west side looks like this.

So don't move here, shit's crowded enough as is, but please come and visit any time.

*although, as a smoker, it's nice to be able to see when you're in a bar.
posted by sleepy pete at 7:34 PM on February 28, 2006

oh, and it's not KU that makes this place cool, it's because we're near a gateway to hell.
posted by sleepy pete at 7:38 PM on February 28, 2006

Sure, we couldn't vote on the smoking thing, but meh. It also seems like chiefs increasingly cowed by the snotty whining of old people annoyed by college students--as if this town would be anything other than Topeka mk. II without KU.

Hey--the Wal-Mart may be a supercenter now (or on its way), but at least we don't have two of them.
posted by hototogisu at 7:46 PM on February 28, 2006

It also seems like chiefs increasingly cowed by the snotty whining of old people annoyed by college students--as if this town would be anything other than Topeka mk. II without KU.

Whatever, student. Actually, I thought you were going to say that all the Chiefs fans make it hard to get to the college anyway...

I agree, two of them would have been horrible, although I wonder if it would have had some sort of museum dedicated to tract housing or something.
posted by sleepy pete at 8:15 PM on February 28, 2006

COBRA!, you totally beat me to a mention of the Brotherhood.

Nobody for President!
posted by terpsichoria at 3:12 AM on March 1, 2006

Nifty.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:08 AM on March 1, 2006

this is completely wonderful : >

If that DADA show in DC and soon NY is the one i saw in Paris, everyone is in for a real treat--simply excellent, and incredibly thorough--and it's hard stuff to show and explain.
posted by amberglow at 11:13 AM on March 1, 2006

This is not a comment.
posted by darkstar at 1:30 PM on March 1, 2006

this is a reply to a comment.
posted by RTQP at 5:53 PM on March 1, 2006