I had a dream last night that I was partnered with Macgyver, attending a Texas Rangers baseball practice. We were investigating reports of drunkenness at practice.

Yep, the Texas Rangers were drunk. One of them, who looked especially like Biff from Back to the Future, was so drunk - he left his car keys in the dirt next to second base!

Becky and Mandy are visiting this weekend, I forsee a guaranteed goodtime. Becky will be joining us for rockclimbing and regular entertainment, Mandy for rock climbing, entertainment, and running. This is good for a number of reasons.

1) rockclimbing is always good, I challenge you to prove otherwise
2) Becky’s fun to have around
3) Mandy’s a much better runner than I, and I hope she’ll destroy me.

Number three has the comment about destruction because I need more motivation to run. Perhaps having my legs physically wasted by Mandy’s pace will spark my running bug back to life. Saturday night may involve Jesse’s dad’s show in Winstead. Sunday will be Thermodynamics homework, some work on the car, and a ton of guitar practicing.

I think this very well might be the perfect weekend schedule.

While there were only a few entries into this week’s MSPaint challenge, I think everyone would agree that they are excellent.

The challenge was to draw a ninja fighting an impressionist painter. A bonus point is given to each entry that does not use Monet. Because this was as much an academic challenge as a drawing contest, I’m going to use the opportunity to also talk a little Art History.

Ninja 1!

The Artist titled Ninja 1: Degas vs. Pierre the Ninja.
I believe the text translates to something like:
“I have put you in Bronze, you foolish ninja. You will torment me no longer.”
“French school for stupid ninjas, what was I thinking?”

Edgar Degas was born in 1834 in Paris and is famous for his depictions of movement. Much of his famous work depicts either horses or dancers. What makes this MSPainting unique is that it subtley brings together the ninja and the painter in multiple ways. Not only does the artist have both characters speaking french, but he/she has also made an allusion to one of Degas few bronze sculptures: Little Dancer of Fourteen. Degas started working with sculpture and pastels later in life because his eyesight was failing. At the age of 74 he had to give up art altogether.

Well done Artist number 1!

Ninja 2!

Artist’s Title: Few people know that German impressionist painter Max Liebermann was assassinated by ninjas in 1935.

In addition to providing the correct year of death of Max Liebermann, the artist shows Liebermann drawing pictures of trees. Liebermann, while famous for scenes of people in his early years, spent more time drawing nature and garden scenes as he grew older. This particular painting would have been banned however, because Liebermann was Jewish and the Nazi’s were being dicks by not allowing him to paint. Although it’s not suggested by the artist, I think this ninja might be a Nazi.

Great job artist 2!

Ninja 3!

Simple and effective, Artist 3 makes a reference to Van Gogh’s ear.

Van Gogh suffered through many mental issues. Born in 1853, Vincent Van Gogh did much of his work from his surroundings in France. In late 2004 I had the opportunity to take a Van Gogh tour through southern france to see the locations of inspiration for a number of his paintings. It was fun, but also kind of creepy. Especially seeing the mental institute where he was submitted.

Anyway, the historic story behind the ear is that Van Gogh cut it off himself, went to a brothel, and handed it to a prostitute named Rachel asking her to keep this object carefully. Apparently the REAL story is that it was cut off in an epic battle with a ninja. But how do you tell that to the press? No wonder everyone thought he was nuts.

Excellent and Simple! well done Artist 3!

Ninja 4!

Artist 4’s title: An attacking ninja was caught off guard by Georges Seurat’s pointillism attack

Artist four also brings some hisotry into his/her MSPainting. Seurat was born in france in 1859, and experimented with using contrasting colors and tiny different colored dots in order to give an impression of color and form from a distance. This developed into Pointillism. Perhaps the most well known example of Seurat’s pointillism is his work ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’

Seurat tried to go about his art in a scientfic way. He used color tones and light effects in order to depict different emotions and feelings within his art. It also seems that he developed a way to turn a paintbrush into a brutal pointillism weapon of destruction.

Great job Artist #4!

So there you have it. Use the comments to vote for the ‘most awesome’ and ‘most inane.’