Artsy Fartsy

I spend a lot of time in trendy Somerville coffee shops, the kind where everybody's glasses are square and they charge you extra if you don't have a tattoo or some sort of brown cardigan. I was unable to fool the clever waitress with a set of temporary red-and-black stars on my neck, but they can't argue with the brown cardigan I found in the dumpster out back even though it smells like overcooked hobo in melted cheddar cheese with a side of An Tain.

Said coffee shops tend to feature paintings from local artists. Some of these are nice, normal, pretty things, like houses or seascapes or ponies. Most look like someone shoved a few different colors of paint up their rear end and farted in the general direction of a canvas. Many of them are on sale - for six hundred dollars.

Originally, this was going to be a rant about how no one in Somerville would pay six hundred dollars for a piece of fartwork by some dude no one's ever heard of. But then I realized that's not true; my time on Winter Hill has blinded me to Somerville's seething subculture of hippies, yuppies, hipsters, yippies, huppies, puppies, and whatever else they call themselves these days that percolates beneath Somerville's working class majority like a steaming miasma of irony and PBR. They would pay their entire barista/bike mechanic paycheck for an inkblot on a canvas. They'd also pay six hundred dollars for:

• Square things
  
• Organic fish chow
• Particle board furniture from Scandinavia
  
• Swoopy haircuts
• Used bicycles
  
• Tattoos: aforementioned red and black stars, random crap from the fifties, talking chair from Pee Wee's Playhouse, string of cool looking Japanese characters advertised as an ancient proverb that actually translates roughly to "mama soap swine licker"
  
• Ganja

Meanwhile, the list of things on which the locals, the Real Somervillains, would be willing to spend six hundred smackers is quite a bit different:

• Used Honda
• Thumpin' sound system for used Honda
• Ground effect lights for used Honda
• Bail
• Tattoos, male: tribal triangles, flames, used Honda, Pat the Patriot
• Tatoos, female: fairy wings, "Princess," unintelligible tramp stamp with some sort of heart
  
• Tab at On the Hill Tavern to impress that one girl that's uglier and skinnier and has more teeth than all her friends and is in good standing with her parole officer
• Operation performed behind On the Hill Tavern by One Eyed Dr. Sully and his trusty coat hanger
• If unable to convince above girl that One Eyed Dr. Sully is a legit medical professional, game-worn Patriots jersey to wear at shotgun wedding
• Ganja

This concludes today's examination of the geosociopoliticaleconomic climate of Somerville.

Also, my campaign Dream Team has imploded. Chief Political Strategist Levi Johnson and his hockey stick dueled with Special Enforcer Jose Offerman and his baseball bat over a supposedly stolen bottle of tequila. Both are in intensive care. Economic Advisor Bernie Madoff took off with the ten bucks I loaned him. And the girl at the bus stop hasn't been at the bus stop for a few days. Things are looking grim for my Supreme Court Challenge.