Sack And Stick The Ministry of Reshelving
These are the rules for Sack and Stick The Ministry of Reshelving:
1.) Get a large sack, such as a burlap laundry bag or a potato sack. Then get a small stick, certainly smaller than a baseball bat. A broom handle sawed in half should do nicely.
2.) Go to your local bookstore.
3.) Go to the fiction section, and look for 1984 by George Orwell. Bookstores are often arranged alphabetically by the author's last name. Keep all copies of 1984 under discreet surveillance.
4.) When a member of The Ministry of Reshelving goes to misplace these copies, for some sad and trite artistic statement that a junior in high school might make, take this miscreant, this vagabond in hand and escort him or her outside. Remember, we don't want to get our friends at the bookstore in trouble.
5.) Proceed to place the sack around the head of the prankster, pull it down as far as it will go, leaving them in total darkness. Then proceed to beat them about the body, randomly, with the stick, taking care to avoid the head. Care must be taken. The blows must not seriously hurt the prankster. Rather, they must be a learning experience. A rapid strike with a forceful hand, but without too much force behind the blow should be enough.
6.) When you are done delivering the artistic statement, take the sack off of the miscreant, and then stuff the cards that they would use for their 'art project' in their mouth. Hopefully, they'll have learned their lesson.
(This is obviously a parody and satiric commentary on the Ministry of Reshelving. I don't want anyone actually hurting anyone else. Except maybe with their mind rays.)
These are the rules for Sack and Stick The Ministry of Reshelving:
1.) Get a large sack, such as a burlap laundry bag or a potato sack. Then get a small stick, certainly smaller than a baseball bat. A broom handle sawed in half should do nicely.
2.) Go to your local bookstore.
3.) Go to the fiction section, and look for 1984 by George Orwell. Bookstores are often arranged alphabetically by the author's last name. Keep all copies of 1984 under discreet surveillance.
4.) When a member of The Ministry of Reshelving goes to misplace these copies, for some sad and trite artistic statement that a junior in high school might make, take this miscreant, this vagabond in hand and escort him or her outside. Remember, we don't want to get our friends at the bookstore in trouble.
5.) Proceed to place the sack around the head of the prankster, pull it down as far as it will go, leaving them in total darkness. Then proceed to beat them about the body, randomly, with the stick, taking care to avoid the head. Care must be taken. The blows must not seriously hurt the prankster. Rather, they must be a learning experience. A rapid strike with a forceful hand, but without too much force behind the blow should be enough.
6.) When you are done delivering the artistic statement, take the sack off of the miscreant, and then stuff the cards that they would use for their 'art project' in their mouth. Hopefully, they'll have learned their lesson.
(This is obviously a parody and satiric commentary on the Ministry of Reshelving. I don't want anyone actually hurting anyone else. Except maybe with their mind rays.)
posted by Peter at 10:26 AM
10 Comments:
The way I have handled artistes a few times is asking them what point they're trying to convey. I ask them to explain what they're trying to "make me think" about. And, provided they have worked out what it is they're wanting you to think about, and it's not just some bored punkass prank (see: flash mobs), ask them what kept them from just coming up to me and telling me directly. And then, the sack and stick. And then I stencil something subversive on them. And stuff.
here you go, peter. someone ranting about it:
http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog/?p=749
Wouldn't that be the PATENTED Sack and Stick Method? Huzzah.
I, for one, would love to see the effort that goes into this "consciousness raising" applied to actual problems, such as volunteering to teach someone to read or working with Habitat for Humanity. Why is it these folks only want to inspire others to go out to do good works? Are they too clever to get their hands dirty? Being snarky and superior is FUN!
I don't really want to know the point, I just like making 'em sweat a little bit. Call me joykiller, I guess.
I agree with what you're saying, Mike, but most of the time, it's not subversive, odd, surreal, or the least bit eye opening. I just run into this kind of thing a lot (well, okay, not a lot. I mean, I live in Oklahoma), and it sort of offends me to have some punkass assume that I'm in need of eye-opening. Like if they didn't "make me think", I wouldn't be able to do it on my own, and they're somehow qualified or even have the ability to blow my mind.
Or, the short version is, if they're going to do it half-assed, they're just stroking their egos and wasting my time.
Well, bringing this back around to the topic of the symposium, it is my opinion that their so-called art project is trite. Just my opinion, obviously. Who am I to say this? Me. That's who.
And I'm all for wierd or silly, subversive art projects, but I guess it's the old curmugeon in me, I'm against people being dicks or assholes. And that's essentially what rearranging books in a bookstore makes you, in my eyes.
Call me a crank. I don't care.
I guess it all depends on whether you're the trickster or the person the trick is getting played on. Pranksters never have a problem with other pranksters, and when the prank is over, they go home and are relatively punk'd-free until they think of something else, and go back out to find some targets. And usually, the pranksters feel like the targets of their prank should be grateful that the prankster's taken the time to enlighten them in some way.
I don't know if that relates to this "game", or anybody else's experiences, but there always seems to me to be this attitude that the targets of these pranks are somehow uptight and close-minded for not getting into whatever the artists are shoving in front of them. These kinds of artists love to make things less clockwork and rigid, but they always want someone else's universe to be that way, never their own. No one makes these kinds of intrusions into their lives, it's "wouldn't it be cool if WE did this thing to THEM. THEY would be so freaked out, man."
I don't know, I just have a natural resistance to people who are going to "save" me from my "boring" life. This is probably because I am uptight and narrow-minded in some way.
Also, they are in my yard, and I am not happy about that.
Mozart totally makes They Might Be Giants trite. And worthless.
Just kidding. But I hear those guys take WAY too much acid.
I think I'm going to ignore your argument Mike. And agree to disagree on this. Maybe I'm too uptight. About this, I don't give a hoot. Maybe those merry pranksters are inconsiderate at best.
I can't help but think that my granddad would want to take them out back and give them a taste of Ol' Hickory, know what I mean? Not that he'd ever do such a thing, the man was a saint. But the sentiment is there.
I don't know, maybe I have more of an issue with the motive than the action. And I'm probably reading their motives wrong anyway. But I definitely think it's incorrect to tie "getting it" to "getting into it". I mean, with this reshelving thing specifically, it's pretty easy to "get". Not everything has to have a point, I know, but this particular thing does. And I think a lot of the problems people have with it cover a lot of ground.
I, for instance, personally just don't find it very funny. That's just a personal opinion though. Then there's the part of me that's irritated with people who feel the need to try to enlighten everyone else. That really doesn't have much to do with this specific project. And then there's part of me that thinks that this is kind of like something a first year sociology student or a really really timid Fight Club fan would do. I think it's a legitimate appraisal, in a way that an art critic might say something was cliche (like comparing modern times to the book 1984 is).
I think this is one of those agree to disagree things (which each of you can use as: I am thinking about this rationally, and the rest of you are flying off the handle ;-) ).
Either way, I deeply appreciate how this has distracted me from my workday.
Hey, Mike, I still find consciousness-raising lame. People can't eat consciousness. People can't sleep under a consciousness roof. I'm not saying don't be politically active, just that people should ALSO do something concrete to put their money/time/'lite skills where their mouth is.
Here's a "game." Go to a bookstore, or a Starbucks, or whathaveyou and, taking care not to be seen in the act, make some kind of minor mess that will take 3 or 4 minutes to repair. Sit back, observe the poor wage slave as he or she takes the 3 or 4 minutes. Decide if that 3 or 4 minutes was "no big deal." Imagine the weight of that kind of 3 or 4 minutes many times during the workday, work week, month, year of life.
No big deal.
How on earth can people be so smug about something so stupid? Besides the part where it's human nature, I mean?
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