UPANDAT’EM!!!  Time to punch out my words, but first, a little nugget of [strange-brilliant?-insulting?-crazy?-ENTERTAINING]:  I’ve known Peter Lee for decades, and he has just graduated with an MFA from Syracuse (congratulations buddy!), a respected institution.  He was able to successfully defend THE MOST BIZARRE/VENOMOUS master’s thesis here:  Peter’s Master’s Thesis. What’s weird about it?  It’s got swearing, bizarrely colored words, and lulzspeak…IN A MASTER’S THESIS.

Context:  In the art world, it is crushingly apparent that unless you are in the top .00001% and damn lucky, you will never make a living doing art.  So Peter created a narrative where an artificial intelligence is created in his likeness, takes over the essay, and attacks him.  He speaks in the typical staid academic fashion while his AI duplicate…well it’s just f’ing crazy.  In this way he’s able to use himself as a stand-in/metaphor/double entendre for the institutionalized bureaucracy/intractability that leads many art students to wallow in a depression/futility that—in some cases—becomes suicidal.  He also applies his worldview to society as a whole, specifically how government/big business oppress the populace in ways that are masked with false nobility and logic.  I don’t know what to think of his commentary; whether it’s stupidly misguided/venomous/needed/on point…but I do know I was entertained as hell reading it—half because it was just weird and messed up, and half because it was actually accepted into Syracuse’s thesis collection and has already been referenced by other students.  The prospect that this thing may end up on something like EbscoHost or JSTOR cracks me up.  Anyways, I’ll let you decide for yourself…as for me?  Back to work!  🙂