There's an old euphemism, 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. I hate this phrase so much. First of all, it's a euphemism, which is humanity's way of slipping beliefs into the 'accepted truths' pool without all that rigerous devotion to testing and reason. But more importantly, it's because the phrase is too oft used these days to mean 'ART is in the eye of the beholder' or 'quality is in the eye of the beholder', which is feel good, PC, Harrison Begeron style ego padding bullshit.

In my writings section I'll eventually put (or have already put and will eventually mention here) my more in depth, serious writings regarding taste and art, suffice to say that skill, talent, effort and imagination are easily definable qualities in an artist, and directly influence the QUALITY of the art.

Of course, many people today don't believe this, so I began the search for a universal constant in taste, a concept either universally accepted as definitely having merit or quality, or better, lacking it. I had to apply conscious thought for all of about ten seconds when the obvious answer hit me.

I imagine almost everyone in the US has, at this point, been subjected to those horrible decals of Calvin peeing on everything from the Ford Motor Company to foreign terrorists. Definitely a trademark of our culture that one of the most loveable characters in cartoon history has been perverted into a mindless way of expressing equally mindless opinions. Thank Dobbs for Freedom of Expression. But in this display of open idiocy, I found my salvation, for here truly was an example of an 'artistic' forum that could be said to lack any merit whatsoever, whether creative, skilled or applied. There is nothing about Calvin stickers that equates 'quality'. And yet, some people apparently like them. This demonstrates clearly that human taste is not given based on merit, and further that merit can be measured.

You might ask why, then, I would choose to devote a page to displaying what I consider to be the definable low point in human artistic acheivement.

I figure, what the hell, right?

So read on, brave explorer, and discover the depths to which a civilization can fall to when governed by idiotic ideals like 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'.