Why MailArt is Evil...!!!

Introduction:
Well, yesterday i was thinking of doing some fact checking to support some of my views on this,
But i'm already bored with it, and facts are just toooo tedious for me,
So i'm just going to make shit up, that sounds reasonable to me.
( As a SubGenius; i'm usually pretty close to being right. )

1. Links
1. DragonFlyDream
2. EdGiecek
   If Ed takes a liking to you, he'll make a Egg Head with your name on it...!
   This is considered Very Prestigous...!!!
   i'm very proud of my Egg Head...!
3. Mail Art
4. John M Bennet
5. C Z Lovecraft The Babynous Cult's Contribution
6. Mick Boyle
2. Ray Johnson
   The Thing that really annoys me about Ray Johnson is that his work, as much of it as i've seen, which is very little-- is really lame...!!! Very weak stuff...??? And his claim that he created MailArt/Correspondence Art is highly dubious... Silly Postcards have been around for at least 300 years, And before that; Embellished Victorian Envelopes, And before that; Egyptian Hieroglyphics on wooden sleds pulled by teams of Hebrews...! Just what element of Illustrative Mail did he really contribute...???
3. White Envelopes
   While i was doing MailArt, one of my core focal points was to cover every freckle of the envelope with decorative material, and so when i would get White Envelopes with nearly nothing in them, i would be like slugging me in the stomach...!!! They would completely deflate me...
4. Bits
   i define Bits as little pieces of paper and other do-dads without any redeeming value, that would be included in an Envelope. If the Envelope would include a 'Project' as well, then i would forgive the presence of the Bits... But quite often, i would get a White Envelope with Nothing But Bits... This would be like slugging me in the stomach, then pushing me down a flight of stairs, covered with dog feces... ( left by a dog with numerous intestinals parasites ).
5. Recognition of Alternative Fringe Art
   What all these have in common, and how they relate to MailArt ( Inversely ) is that while they all seem to have the same inconsequentially of MailArt, they have somehow become 'Recognized' by MainStream / or The Orthodoxy of FineArt Appraisers, Historians & Critics.
1. Naive Art
2. Outsider Art
3. Dada & NeoDada
4. Folk Art
5. Schizophrenic Art
6. Raw Art
7. Pornographic Art
   Pornography is undoubtly the most popular form of 'Art' that there is;
   But like Mailart; it just doesn't get the respect that it deserves...
8. Commercial Illustration
   This one is very quirky too...
   i could never understand how 'Art Books' could leave out Illustrators such as Norman Rockwell, M.C. Escher, Frank Frazetta, Jeff Jones, Shary Flenniken, Edward Gorey, Gahan Wilson, Ed Subitzky, M.K.Brown or Mort Drucker...??? ( ! )
9. Adolescent Art
10. Performance Art
    Fluxus / Aktions / Happenings / Street Theatre
    i witnessed this amazing bit of street theatre one afternoon in Bremertowne Washington: i was outside a Safeway, waiting for the bus to come, and there were quite a few other people there, including a well dressed woman that was hysterically ranting and foaming at the mouth and everyone was completely ignoring her... then the bus came and i was sure that if she got on, which seemed certain, she would continue the rant, and deep trouble would ensue... which frightened me terribly, because while she was on the street, i have this feeling that anything is possible, but when you're trapped on a bus with a crazy person, crazy things, by definition, are expected...! So she gets on the bus, and i get on the bus, or maybe it was the other way around, and she turns into the perfect citizen...!!!
    Another time; i spontaneously did a tiny street theatre piece, which nowadays would get me into a HUGE amount of trouble, certainly so... i was feeling kind of fidgety on the bus one day, and the person sitting next to me asked "What in the hell is wrong with you...???" And this next bit is testimony of how quickly my brain works... without pausing, i told him that i had a bomb in my bookbag, and that i was going to detonate it when we got to the bridge...! He sat very quietly for the rest of the trip. It makes you wonder a little bit; did any of the people on the buses, periodically blown up in Israel, know that they were about to be blown up, but were too shy to mention it to anyone...???
11. Foreigner Art
12. Elephant & Monkey Painting
13. Computer [ AI ] Art
14. Op Art / Geometrical Art
15. Found Art
16. Urinal Graphics
17. RubberStamp Art
18. Medical X-Rays
19. Children's Art
20. Abstract Expressionism
    Which should have died a long time ago... i mean really, once you've made the statement that art can be Kant's 'noumena' ( a thing in itself ), where can you go with that... How much variation and exploration is left after that... --An infinite territory of amorphous shapes and colour combinations... How much really needs to be used to waste canvas'...!!! Why not just write a computer program and set a TV on a table that generates these forms endlessly... What is the point of continuously promoting this as 'Art'...??? Really -- It just makes me loopy to open a Art News or Art Forum and see these ads for AE painters, that are no doubt selling these large canvas of paint barf for tens of thousands of dollars...!!! The only valid use for AE would be to forget the canvas and paint the wall itself with these 'designs'... and then when you get sick of it, paint something new over it.
21. Alternative MailArt Venues
    1. Correspondence Art
    2. Fluxist Art
    3. Faux Postage
       Of all the Venues tainted by MailArt, this is perhaps the most Valid...???
       If only Fiskars® would make a scissors that would cut a stamp like perforation that was the correct stamp size...!!! ( the ones that they offer are too dang big...!!! )
22. Zynes
    The other reasonably valid medium that is often associated/tainted with/by MailArt is Zynes...
    What defines Zynes within the taxon of MailArt is it's severe pointlessness ( see below ).
    While most zynes are pretty awful, the idea of zynes, has an important potential to give the sub genius' of the world a tool to disseminate their heretical nonsense, which may be important or significant, hundreds of years from now...???
    If i ever find a place to live again, i think i would like to reapply myself to making zynes...
23. StapleBooks / Weebooks
    It just kills me that i couldn't get anyone interested in Staplebooks... This is where you take a sheet of typing paper and fold it up cross ways, and then cross ways the other way, then Staple the last fold, which is the book's seam, then trim the other three edges away ( there are exceptions to this ) and Walleye! you have a Staplebook...! How many Staplebooks do you suppose you can make, that is; How many different folding patterns are there, from a sheet of typing paper... Well, i discovered and created Templates for about 120...!!! The most pages for a Staplebook that i was able to actually fold and staple was 240 pages...??? Something like that...??? And moreover, there were lots of other Variations...! ...that were possible, but i considered them, usually, too trivial to make Templates for...! And nobody was ever interested in this...!!! Perhaps my greatest contribution to human kind...!!! Concerning those templates, i think i made about 6 or 7 complete sets, so if you have one of them... Be aware that it's a rare item...??? ( ! )
    As a side note to this; i made a few hundred books with these templates, and when i was evicted from my room, i was so depressed that i essentially threw all the originals away...!!! [ Actually; What may be the equivalent of throwing them all away, is that i sent them to Zen Baby in California somewheres...??? -- Apparently he's not reproducing them, and i wouldn't be a bit surprised if he lost them or threw them away...??? ] oh well.
24. Collages
    As part of my personality disorder ( Asperger's ) i tend to 'get involved' with things from time to time, and i go a little bit 'overboard'...???
    Like several years ago; i thought that i would cut out people & 'things' from magazines and arrange them into collages, so that i could then use them to draw from, which was my terminal objective... To draw more complicated pictures.
    Well-- i never got around to that-- and i only made a few dozen collages in all...
    But i became addicted ( ??? ) to cutting things out. Part of this was because i became really good at it. i could cut things out so that there would be nothing of the clipping left on the scrap and no halo around the thing itself... such that i could cut right along the edge of anything... perfectly...!
    And i filled up boxes with people, and pies, and chains, and animals, and babies, and electronic items and so much more...
    Boxes and Boxes, Envelopes full... Thousands of these cut outs... that i never used for anything...!!!
    i couldn't stop.
    i was so happy when i was evicted and i knew that as ONE consequence of that, i would be free of cutting out scraps for collages that i rarely assembled...!!!
25. Correspondence Crafts
26. Rubber Stamping
    Rubber Stamping, although widely 'recognized' by the Art Establishment, is oddly, one of the lowest forms of Art, and a medium frequently employed by MailArtists.
    The Odd Part is that while Rubber Stamping, When in its 'raw' form, ( attached to Greeting Cards-- typically ) It is apprehended freely, But the moment that MailArt touches it, it is forgotten & ignored...!!!
    What i was trying to do with My Rubber Stamping; was to take the redundancy of the Rubber Stamped Image into a new direction, by making this process into a Real Medium for Geometrical Design... ( Which doesn't get any respect either...! ) ...But i don't think that anyone even 'got it'...??? When i would pay my rent in envelopes that i'd decorated with my Stamped Mandala's, My Slumlord would routinely throw them out, believeing that they contained Satanic Imagery... Which seemed to be a popular view; perhaps because they were just so Busy/Complicated/Chaotic that it was difficult to know what was 'In' them... Consequently; i think many people were afraid to publish them, thinking that some deeply offensive 'hidden' image would be revealed after it was 'too late...!!!'
27. Embellished Envelopes
    You would think that Embellished Envelopes would be synonymous with MailArt, but they are somehow treated with a greater intrinsic respect...
    [ Here is something that the internet does to drive me crazy... i was just searching for 'Embellished Envelopes' with www.dogpile.com, and Couldn't find ANYTHING related to this...!!! i distinctly recall that The Smithsonian had invited artists from anywhere to send in their Embellished/Decorated Envelopes, many of which were High Art...!, and now...??? The Smithsonian has completely disavowed any knowledge of this invitation... although-- it was a few years ago...
    But still...!!! ( ??? )
    And you often see Magazines that will include a picture of a 'Fancy' Envelope that someone sent in... And Searches for 'Decorated Envelopes' or 'Fancy Envelopes' return only commercial sites with commercial products...???
    Search Engines are SOOOOOO Stupid...!!! ]
    OK... i found it.
    It was under The Graceful Envelope Project...!!!
    Notice how careful they are to steer clear of any suggestion that this is MailArt...!!!
    Of all the MailArt that i've ever gotten, only a tiny fraction of it, ever approached this level of 'intent' or 'purposefulness'...!!!
28. Projects
    MailArt Projects are MailArt with some 'Idea' behind them.
    It is an EXTREMELY RARE Phenomena!
29. NonCompliance of Group Activities
30. Stupid Post Office
    i'm not really sure how my relationship with my local Post Office in Bremertowne DeEvolved... But at the end of my time there, they were actually throwing away mail that they knew should be delivered to me...!!! ( i am NOT exaggerating this point, i had one of the Main Postal Guys there tell me to my face that they were just throwing my stuff away, and i'm absolutely SURE that he wasn't Bull Shitting Me...! )

In Conclusion:

The common thread here; Is that MailArt is Created-- Invariably-- by hamsters that are so amazingly free of any Artistic Abilities that MailArt is their last Refuge.

You don't sell MailArt, you distribute it to other hamsters, like Supermarket fliers, and it is usually treated with the same respect.

Only a person with the lowest imaginable self esteem, AND a wholly unrealistic self appraisal of their artistic ability would ever participate with the ilk involved with MailArt.

And it might be added that i only quit when i was essentially forced to...
But / And / While / i had become aware that MailArt was incredibly dangerous years ago,
But it's like Heroin... You just can't Quit 'Cold Turkey'...!
You have to dragged away from it, while burly men, with short cropped hair, poke hot cattle prods into your flesh and laugh while your bowels empty onto the recently vacuumed carpeting that you bought last year at a 2 for 1 sale; because they were getting rid of that design, the design that you've been looking for, since the third grade, after seeing it in a book about Blind Japanese Cats with Wings growing out of their shoulders.
And now it's covered with your celery coloured crap, and they are throwing your boxes of MailArt into rusty oil drums and pouring gasoline on them.

and you close your eyes.