More MN State Fair weirdness...

Well, I have to say this year's fine arts exhibit at the MN State fair wasn't the disturbia spectacular last year's was. Here's me and my pal Linda getting gothic. She's trying to be in character. I'm just hoping the lady taking our picture can figure out my camera.

Last year there were siamese twin sock monkeys feeding themselves into a meat grinder.

And a rainbow rhinestone covered nekkid body-- take that prudishness, in technicolor!

And perhaps not surprisingly, my favorite-- babies by the gallon.

This isn't to say these were my favorite pieces of art, but my favorite weird art. I find plenty of plain old amazing and beautiful art there every year, and of course some things that make me wonder how they got in, art being purely subjective. This year's offering was what I'd call very "safe" though. Nothing in your face or that outrageous-- so, the seed art exhibit held way on the far side of the fair in the horticulture building will have to pinch hit. (click pics to enlarge)

This person submitted a bad seed baby last year. I like the kitty better.

Really quite good, and totally unexpected subject matter.
Way to go off the reservation Elizabeth!

I hope someone sent this to Conan...

I love the guy at the bottom-- "HELLO!"

And my fave-- taking something immediately familiar and giving it a twist.
Nice Skippy. Nice

But Alan Carpenter of Mpls takes first place in my heart for his "Self portrait with first ladies." Linda noticed it seems the inexplicable monkey on Laura Bush's shoulder is copping a feel (?). Alan himself seems to be radiating messiah-like rays of divinity. WTH Alan? WTH? What would be even more hilarious is if this is actually made by someone just pulling a prank on Alan Carpenter, not by him at all. Hmm. Kind of gives one ideas doesn't it?


In other SueNews:

I'm hitting the querying trail again after like, idk-- about a year? Funny thing is, all this time has given me better perspective. My previous query letter su-hucked. I was way to close to the story and characters. Also when I'm going through the manuscript now-- which was beyond perfection when I last looked-- I see it too has a bit of suck that needs to be cleaned out. Funny how that works.

For my next novel I'm checking out Sun Tzu's 2500 year old book (yep-- super ancient) "The Art of War" for research. I can't wait to take a do-over on my YA stalker story. I have a completely different idea of how to approach it now.

In bikey stuff-- riding the trail continues to improve. It's all incremental in my case, but I'm still treating every ride as a learning experience. I'm trying to improve my time too. I ride it now in about an hour. I'd love to knock 10 or 15 minutes off of that by cleaning up my tech skills and getting smoother, and, you know, getting better and more gutsy.

Trusty Pam and I have picked our team name for the Mpls Urban Assault Ride at the end of the month-- "Finger Twist Of Doom." Our outfits will be red and black. (kind of punk-ass) More to come. Stay tuned.