Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow

This classy clipart illustration illustrates my precise point.

Our home has a problem. Now usually when people say something like that, you expect them to launch into a diatribe concerning its shoddy construction, faulty heating system, or rampant infestation of ghosts who engage in time-honored ghost haunting traditions such as "making the sound of footsteps when you're trying to sleep" or "moving objects from one drawer to the next" or other unspeakably horrifying acts of cruelty. While I can easily complain about our home's 19-second complete construction by illegal Mexican immigrants who learned the previous day how to use a hammer, I feel there's a bigger problem inside these walls, a scourge that will haunt my wife and I wherever we go: her hair.

Now I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing my wife's hair; I'm in absolutely no position to make fun of other peoples' heads or faces, particularly when my hair resembles a radioactive spaghetti spider trying to escape from the top of my skull. But my wife Megan has this superpower granting her the ability to shed pounds and pounds of hair every night while somehow maintaining the same, exact amount of hair. It makes no sense and has baffled scientists all across the world. How can somebody drop fist-sized clumps of hair every night, yet still show no visible signs of loss on her head?

There's hair everywhere: Megan's hair decorates the bathroom floor, shower, bath tub and sinks. If you look at the carpet and follow the follicles, you can track down Megan's current location, like a really weird version of Hansel and Gretyl. Our five-month old baby Lauren is dropping hair as well, decorating her crib and play mats with tiny strands of drool-encrusted baby locks. Downstairs, our two Golden Retrievers Polly and Speedy have scattered tumbleweeds of yellow dog hair throughout the hardwood floor, recreating scenes from various wild, wild west movies in which the protagonist must fight a man in black for the rightful possession of his Orrick vacuum cleaner. Our chairs and sofas are covered with cat hair from our two cats, Kit and Cat, and sitting down anywhere inevitably results in your ass suddenly growing a 20-pound cat hair beard.

With this in mind, I have decided to turn an otherwise bad situation into an incredibly good one. Each night, after Megan has taken a shower, I have snuck into the bathroom and taken pictures of that night's hair aftermath. Since people can pretty much take photos of anything and call themselves an artist, I dub my photos "Hair Art." Through my terrible photo taking ability, and my wife's mind blowing skill of forcefully ejecting pounds of hair every evening, I plan to (somehow) make millions of dollars selling photographs of Hair Art. To show off the goods and maybe drum up a little publicity, I will unveil our first exhibit today, a little photo show I like to call "Bu$h's War On Hair-er." See? It's a parody of "Bush's War on Terror." Us artists like making deep political statements like this. I don't expect you to understand the deep, meaningful complexities and subtle nuances behind my reference, so don't bother.

BU$H'S WAR ON HAIR-ER: A REALLY ARTISTIC ONE-WEEK PHOTO EXHIBIT
By Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka and Megan "Crazyellow" Kyanka

PHOTO ART PIECE #1: "FLEEING THE BARBARIANS"

Horizontal movement creates the feeling of terror and energy.	The oppressive Amerikkkan regime!

Our first piece is a look at the innocent citizens of Iraq, suffering for a war they had no part in. We really tried to inject an atmosphere of raw terror here, showing the crippled, elderly, and young citizens of Iraq trying to escape the terror and tragedy Bush brought into their ceramic village. As they pack their meager belongings and run as fast as they can, the fascist evil Bush administration hovers over them like a fat, evil hog. Actually hogs can't really hover, so, uh, maybe it died when a forklift drove into it. And it's stuck on the end of the forklift. And I guess forklifts aren't really that tall, so maybe the forklift was in the process of being moved to another location by a helicopter. So the Bush administration is a lot like a dead hog on a forklift inside a helicopter.

You'll notice the intricate attention to detail employed on the right shot, as we spent many hours simply setting up the lights and canvas. Ultimately, we selected the southern shower wall because we felt it had more emotions and feelings to offer. We personally feel this piece contains many comparisons to Alfred Stieglitz's early work, particularly his pre-Georgie O' Keefe days. Note the strong use of shape and contrast to convey meaning, such as "the meaning of all this hair in the bathroom is to protest George W. Bush's fascist regime of death and lies."

PHOTO ART PIECE #2: "TERROR ON THE HIGHWAYS"

NO BLOOD FOR OIL.	Our failed oil policy.

When that hate mongering warmongering mongermongering mongrel George W. Bush first announced his war on terror, a day after those Arab guys flew their jets into Twin Peaks, I said to my wife, "you know what this is all about? Two words: OIL" and she nodded her head (causing six pounds of hair to fall out). In this piece, we show American citizens struggling to pay simple utility bills and afford gasoline all thanks to Bush and his evil political cronies, Hally Barton and that old bald guy whose name I cannot recall offhand. The large clump of hair is shooting into the sky, much like oil prices and this is why it's not my fault I can't go to the Art Walk this Friday because I can't afford to gas up my 1977 Ford Fiesta.

We decided to make many hairs wavy and curly to create a sense of uncertainty, a feeling of hesitation and worry regarding the future. When will we cease depending on precious foreign natural fuels, and why can't science create more environmentally-friendly vehicles? The slanted, vertical line on the wall shows the great divide between the haves and the have-nots, a class warfare which the Republican$ and radical right promote each and every day. I grew so angry after taking this photograph that I threw a bottle of Pert Plus across the bathroom and nearly hit our velvet painting of Jerry Garcia.

PHOTO ART PIECE #3: "RIP THE SYSTEM!"

Chaos is what we need to overthrow this regime!	But beware the police state!

Last year my friends and I went out to protest that one meeting where the government leaders figure out new ways to get all the money from poor people in Africa and exploit all the hard working illegal Canadian immigrants. I forget the name of it, I think it's the E3 Summit. We hung out around a paint store at 3:30 AM, and the cops decided to enforce their Hitler-like police state upon us once we started peacefully protesting by throwing bottles of wine through the store window and lighting a trash can on fire while screaming, "FUCK THE PIGS!!!" They assaulted me for no reason, clearly violating my 10 Commandment rights, and some day when I find enough money to pay for a bus ticket, I will find a lawyer and sue the crap out of this state. The cops hit me with nightsticks, clubs, tree branches, baseball bats, and iron bars while shooting me with their tazers and kicking bull semen into my eyes. Then they started saying, "hey you stupid hippie, if you like peace so much, why don't you try a piece of this?" and then they backed over me with a bus. This is why I can no longer see the color red and my head starts throbbing every time I pass near a microwave oven.

PHOTO ART PIECE #4: "DEFEAT THE CHRISTIAN 'WRONG'!"

Their vile, hate-filled church is infecting entire countries!	This is the only true salvation, people!

I have despised Christians for years, at least a decade before it was cool to do so. I am one of the premiere Christian haters, and man oh man do I hate everything about those judgmental, arrogant, simpleminded fools! I hate them so much that, every year around Christmas, I spend all my money to buy the biggest, most expensive Christmas tree I can find, and then I pay a company to haul it back to my apartment and set it up. Then I light it on fire and scream, "HAHAHA TAKE THAT YOU MONEY-GRUBBING CHRISTIANS!!! TAKE YOUR RED STATE SOMEWHERE ELSE, FASCIST BUTCHERS!!!" I knew this lady once, she babysat me in the 80s, she was this really fat and loud lady and she was absolutely a horrible babysitter and ate all the food and I think her husband was a Christian. CASE CLOSED.

One of these days I'm going to break into a Christian church and when they start giving out the wine and those circular pieces of wafer I'm gonna run up to the stage and push over the cross and shout, "STOP BEING MINDLESS SHEEP YOU BRAINDEAD IDIOTS!" and then I'll plaster all their chairs and doors with KMFDM stickers.

PHOTO ART PIECE #5: "GLOBAL WARMING MEANS THE END OF THE WORLD"

Can't you see we're destroying the Ozone Layer? This photo illustrates mankinds' wanton disregard for Mother Earth.	If we don't act soon, this could be our fate!

As a practicing Wiccan of over 25 years, I have developed a very close and intimate bond with Mother Earth, or as I like to call her, "Mystress Faeriey Gaia Enchantymynt Ye Olde Maiyden ov Beauty." My coven and I celebrate REAL holidays, not this Christian-centric crap the rest of Amerikkka engages in just to funnel money into the pockets of Hallmark and Best Buy and McDonalds and the company that makes those circus peanuts. Every March we head out to the woods and enjoy another wonderful "Joyous Celebration of Bountiful Eternal Feasts," where we eat pine cones and spin magical stories of leaf elves. Then we get in touch with our Animal Spirit Guides in a deep, poetic, respectful way which involves smoking a lot of marijuana and staring at tree bark until it begins talking to us. My Animal Spirit Guide is a level 47 Snow Leopard Mage who travels through time. He told me, "Rich, you know what you have to do. You must tell them all about global warming" and I said, "yes, I must" and then he said, "and then you must make that whore down the street pay in blood for giving you the panty eyes."

PHOTO ART PIECE #6: "RACISM'S VILE TALONS SINK DEEPER INTO AMERIKKKA'S JUGULAR"

Is this really a world we want our children to grow up in?	I was declined a credit card just because I am 1/32nd American Indian.

One of the primary reasons I voted against George "Hitler Jr." W. Bush in the 2003 elections was because I feel his laws based on racism, propaganda, and hatred are destroying this country. Amerikkka was founded on a bed of lies, when the Pilgrims fled France in 1800 because the French decided Christians were too intolerant and racist to stay in their country. So the settlers got on U-Boats and drove to Roanoke Island, where they ate each other and all the Native Americans. One pilgrim escaped and started the first US city, Jonestown, which eventually grew into New York. In the past 200 years, Americans have killed off all the Native Americans with an assortment of vile, evil tactics such as giving them blankets infested with locusts and forcing them to drink alcohol while betting on roulette. Americans soon grew tired of enslaving the Native Americans, so they began enslaving African Americans and Asian Americans and Indian Ocean Americans and forced them to work on walnut farms for meager wages. Now white people put subliminal messages before episodes of "Law and Order" telling black people to steal Hondas. This is why I can't get a home loan. I HATE YOU GEORGE W. BU$$$$$H!!!

PHOTO ART PIECE #7: "YOUR WAR ON DRUGS IS A LIE AND ALSO STOP ANIMAL CRUELTY AND TAKE DOWN THE SPEED BUMPS IN MY PARKING LOT"

Our bathtub is an analogy for society.	The toenail clippings and dead silverfish are also an analogy.

The pigs (police) have been harassing everybody in my building just because we like to partake a little bit in the herb, the wacky tobacky. This whole "War on Drugs" deal is utterly bogus and has labeled ordinary, law-abiding citizens as "criminals" just because, according to the police, they're "breaking the law." What a load of horse crap! It's my constitutional right to do whatever I want to my body, and if I want to smoke a few Js and listen to Radiohead for 19 consecutive hours while mumbling to my wife convoluted and arcane theories about UFOs, then that's my right! Our neighbor two floors below was framed and arrested just because he sold a few hundred pounds of pot or maybe crystal meth to a poor, disadvantaged street dealer! That's discrimination if I ever heard it, and this photograph piece details just that. Also I think animal experimentation is just plain wrong. Do you know what scientists do to invent lipstick? They crush bunny rabbit eyes and then inject the solution into the skulls of monkeys just to see how they react! That is horrible, and every time I order a hamburger from Wendy's, I let the person taking my money know how much I despise their business practices and lack of ethics.

While I may be too humble to call myself an amateur photographic genius of monumental proportions, I do, however, feel I am a professional photographic genius of monumental proportions. Our medium, human hair, is a breathtaking act of unbridled creativity no other artists have dared to explore. By combining this medium with my clever, original political messages, I feel we have formed the perfect union between art and hair. Look for our exhibits to tour Amerikkka sometime in 2006, if George "Evil Tyrant" Bu$h lowers gas prices enough for me to rent a U-Haul and drive all the photos to the absolute finest and upscale flea markets on the West coast.

– Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka (@TwitterHasBannedAllMyAccountsEver)