Yeah... I Graduated From Kindergarten - Didn't You?

OK, the other day we needed to go out because we want to do something creative: We are making a "lifecasting". In this case, it is of the wife's pregnant belly. We have had this ongoing debate - I have done pottery, slip casting and clay sculpting in the past, and what I want to do is a genuine exact-image casting, where you make a negative mould using the model and then use the mould to cast your final product in your material of choice. The wife wants to do this newfangled trendy kind of body cast - you just use plaster-impregnated gauze (like they use for casts on broken limbs), spread it in layers on Mom, yank it off (along with any remaining hair) and that's it - paint it how you want it. Personally, I feel it is the lowest common denominator form of a "lifecasting", made so that even people who don't know how to do more complex stuff can still make themselves an image of their belly. To me, though, that is all it is - an image which is a rough approximation. My beef with it is that it is going to appear larger than your belly is because it has to be at least a few layers thick, and no detail comes through. It is true "Lifecasting Sculpture for Dummies".  
 
Amazingly enough, though, it is hardly the worst example of dumbing down going on in our society today. You have Talent? Wonderful... but you know that everyone is special in their own way. It doesn't matter that the guy down the street could not put together two matching colours if he was given only 2 matching crayons, his garden of multicoloured nauseating crap that looks like a dog ate pizza and then vomited is just "beautiful in its own way". Here's a hint - don't just buy one box of everything at the nursery... try picking flowers that go together and are of compatible heights., unless you are going for that trendy Wild Unkempt Look. You know the one Mother Nature makes without trying. But then you ARE the special master gardener, 'cause no one will tell you otherwise. When I was a kid, special meant you wore a helmet to school and rode the short school bus...  
 
Whoa, sorry, way off on a tangent. Where was I?  
 
Oh yeah - we debated how to do the "belly mask/life casting". My wife has no experience with ceramics, sculpting, pottery or anything in 3-D medium, but she is a very skilled painter, so I know that the belly mask "plaster-gauze version" will at least end up looking nice when it is finished, even if it lacks the "life" aspect I prefer. I know I can have some faith it will not look like the horrid pics of stuff I have seen on some web sites that would be embarrassing to hang on your wall, and never become the treasured family heirlooms they should be. (You know the kind of thing - in 60 years when Mom dies, the kids quickly get it out of the house before people visit after the funeral so no one realizes Mom was nuts and had no taste.) I figure what I will do is use some kind of impervious material, like liquid latex, as the first layer inside the body cast so that I can make a casting from the mould on the inside while she can paint the outside, and everyone will have what they want and will be happy. We agree that this is the coolest thing to do for all involved and set out to The Arts & Craft Stores. You know, where you buy the materials needed to make products of your imagination and talents. The materials needed I have looked up online, and are advertised as "available in any craft store".  
 
So... off we go to Michaels. You know, The Arts & Crafts SUPERstore. Have you noticed SUPER nowadays just means real-big-and-shitty-with-no-staff? Ahh, but that is another rant altogether.  
 
At the SUPERstore, and I use the term loosely, I discover that for the most part, you can buy a kit for just about anything. And that's just about it. Want to paint? Here is a kit. It has paint, brushes, canvas, and a PICTURE of what you should PAINT. Huh? Do you hear that rumbling? It is the combined sound of Da Vinci, Monet and Picasso rolling over in their graves. Want to decorate a cake? Here is a kit, which has friggin' stamps and pre-made things of candy icing to stick on your cake - forget about that whole making your OWN icing flowers and trim, we do it for you. Just stick it on. Buy an iced cake at the grocery store and you can do it regardless of the fact that you have 10 thumbs for digits, and you can proudly show off the cake you "decorated" yourself. Of course, you can buy 4 decorated cakes complete, or buy every cake-decorating tool ever made, for the money you paid for the other garbage for that one cake. Ceramics? Got a kit. Paints, pre-made sculpture, and a "decorating suggestion". Paint and display. Rug hooking? Kit - yarn, rug backing with the pattern on it, latch-hook. Hook the right colour yarn on the painted section of backing, it's rug-by-number. Jewellery? Forget that whole soldering, casting & metal-working deal, we got ya a kit - some string & chain, a bunch of stuff to slide onto the string or clip onto the chain, pliers described as a "special tool" and some end hooks. Wow - NOW you are rivalling Tiffany's. Hey, haven't I done all of these "kits" before - WHEN I WAS EIGHT?!  
 
I want material to make moulds. Well, gee whizzikers, I can buy A KIT. Of course, said kit is made to do one - and only one - lifecasting of something the size of a kid's hand or foot, for a mere $25. Let’s see, to have enough to do a pregnant belly, I would need to have - umm, approximately the same amount of cash as the Canadian Government's budget surplus this year. But, they do have available the convenient REFILL for the kit - for the same price as the kit was. Or I can buy a can of latex material that should just about be big enough to make a lifecast mould of gerbil's arsehole, and only for around $18! I'm starting to think the "SUPERstore... not so much", and I am wondering why they have so much SPACE filled with nothing useful. So I take a better look around to find out what in a 10000 square foot store takes up SOOOO much area. And I find my answer pretty quick.  
 
Scrapbooking. Yes, scrapbooking. Isn't that cut and paste for grownups? You bet your sweet bippy it is. The same stuff you did in Kindergarten is available NOW for a mere, ridiculously outrageous, gazillion dollars and you can USE YOUR OWN PHOTOS! Wow, you mean I don't have to cut them out of magazines like the teacher made me do? I can use my OWN?  
 
Yes, the ultimate celebration of mediocrity. There was a time, not too long ago, that a scrapbook was where you kept all your newspaper clippings, movie or sports tickets and memorabilia from significant things in your life. An honourable, inexpensive pastime, it allows you to share your memories with loved ones and to comfort you into your old age. You put together your scraps, reusing and saving things. No more. Now, scrapbooking is a massive, multi-million dollar competition between no-talent morons who have more cash than sense. You apparently are no longer allowed to get an empty newsprint or manilla paper book... oh no. It is no longer sharing your precious memories, it is now "Wow, did you get those kewl new pages at the... Scrapbooking Store? Did you see the new stickers?" STICKERS? Didn't we outgrow those at the same time as we outgrew laughing at Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum Comics? And look, you can buy 20 different kinds of scissors in order to hack the crap out of all your stuff and make it have pretty, fancy edges. Forget that the price of owning all these different scissors could buy you one of the Maldive Islands.  
 
If you have no talent or taste, you can make a modern scrapbook - as long as you have gobs of cash. No one is going to tell you it sucks, because they KNOW you spent mucho dinero on all this crap. So what if you can't compose a photograph, and they all have the tops of heads and an arm cut in half vertically - use those scissors to make fancy edges so it looks like it was MEANT to look that way. So what if your kid's biggest accomplishment to date was NOT getting hit by a car when they ran into the street. Make a scrapbook of all your joyous non-events! Isn't it great to be alive in an era where we can all do the same thing and be admired for it? Isn't it wonderful that talent is not actually needed any more, because someone with talent is willing to sell you the products of theirs? Can you imagine what archaeologists and forensic anthropologists are going to think when someday they dig up all this plastic-laminated 3-trillion-year-half-life crap buried next to your bones? Yeah, that's right - they are going to say "For THIS, they poisoned their atmosphere with toxic waste and piled up so much garbage they had to start shooting it into space? What a bunch of idiots."  
 
I once saw an ad that said "Scrapbooking: America's Newest Favorite Pastime" (sic). That is so what America needs - another activity where you sit indoors on your arse all day long while eating chips. No wonder North American's are skewing towards the obese on height/weight tables. Remember, there used to be "favourite pastimes" that involved going outside and getting exercise and fresh air? Oh yeah, I forgot, those ones now involve shooting oneself up with illegal performance enhancers. So much for that idea.  

Helen Parr: "*Everybody* is special, Dash." 
'Dash' Parr: "That's just another way of saying nobody is." 
-The Incredibles, 2004