h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We used to know a young woman in Greece who could tell your fortune from the dregs in your coffee cup. Surprisingly accurate.

I wonder what she'd make of this one?

WOW! That must'afa been a cheap for a stain like that, or sack the dishwasher

It must be a Chinese teacup. You should never wash it, as the stuff coating the sides improves the taste of the tea.

Does look like really posh modern art. Expensive. You could sell the mug to a gallery. What???? Sell my mug! I hear SashaQ protest.

I'm pretty sure I would not be enticed into paying admission to a museum that features unwashed mugs.

. Yes. Be good though. An exhibition, Unwashed Crockery. And Cutlery.

Then if someone couldn't afford the ticket, they could work for the gallery, hired to do some washing up. Only they might get confused. Your job was in the cafe kitchen, my friend, not in that exhibition. Now its ruined.

How do people tell fortunes from dregs and tealeaves? Like, what do they see?

The future of course. Yes, but how?? And what? (And when? And, really??)

As I was told, it's the patterns the coffee grounds leave in the cup. Of course, that only works with Greek coffee. Which you may call Turkish coffee as long as you're not in Greece. Just as you can only call Istanbul 'Constantinopoli'.

I know a funny story about art museums and washing-up.

Joseph Beuys was an amazing avantgarde artist. One of his specialties was covering things, like a piano, with felt, and adding about a pound of some kind of fat to the installation. These sculptures would be called 'X...mit Filz (felt) und Fett (fat)'. It had to do with his personal wartime traumas. He had a plate in his head, but that's a longer story...

Anyway, Beuys had an artwork ready to go on display. It was a baby bathtub wrapped in bandages for some reason. Now, accounts differ. My informant told me it was the CDU (conservatives: think Tories or Republicans) who had the event. Other accounts fail to mention politicians. But the fact is that somebody needed to wash dishes after a party. And here was this tub. It just needed to be unwrapped...

Worse: this isn't the only time this has happened in Germany. Cleaning ladies have destroyed several avantgarde pieces, according to Deutsche Welle:

http://www.dw.com/en/cleaning-lady-destroys-contemporary-sculpture-with-her-scrubbing/a-15510231

I love the sentence, 'According to Papajewski, cleaning crews were required to stay 20 centimeters (8 inches) away from all artworks.'

What about dirty minds? Are they works of art, too?

Love the stories, Mister D! And the way you report them, very entertaining.

Makes me want to explore other stories about art installations.

Is that framework on the outside wall of the gallery an art installation? Yes! Its scaffolding.

Oh, that's interesting. I just googled scaffolding to see what it was made of, and it seems that a evidence of a scaffold system has been discovered around the paleolithic cave paintings as Lascaux. This would have been used for painting the ceiling, over 17,000 years ago.

A Paleolithic Michelangelo.

Lovely sense of design, but what's most interesting is what it says about your relationship to the finiteness of life, the universe and everything.
No, indeed, I don't know what I'm talking about, how did you guess?

"I wonder what she'd make of this one? "

I hardly dare to imagine!

"WOW! That must'afa been a cheap for a stain like that, or sack the dishwasher "

It must'afa been a bit of both - it is cheap tea so it has a higher colour-to-taste ratio, but I am also guilty of not washing the mug every day so the colour does build up rather impressively!

"It must be a Chinese teacup. You should never wash it, as the stuff coating the sides improves the taste of the tea. "

Yes, that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it

"Does look like really posh modern art. Expensive. You could sell the mug to a gallery. What???? Sell my mug! I hear SashaQ protest. "

Yes indeed - the artwork could have gone on loan, but I wouldn't sell my mug because it is just the right size and when I once dropped it on the floor by accident it bounced so it is an excellent mug!

That is a sad but amusing article about the museum pieces indeed! I particularly enjoyed the matter-of-fact sentence "In 1986 a 400,000-euro grease stain by Josef Beuys was simply mopped up in Duesseldorf."

"Lovely sense of design, but what's most interesting is what it says about your relationship to the finiteness of life, the universe and everything. "

Thank you - yes, indeed, absolutely... I couldn't have put it better myself!

Bounceable mugs are well worth keeping.

A noteworthy Twitter reply to this photo:

'Well one of my colleagues is in the money if it is art; there are 20 dirty mugs under the sink in one room and the same in the sink in another room. There are only three of us in the department and two of us only have one cup each.' (redfoxpottery)

I sent him a link to Bluebottle's story about the Turnip Foetus A87914929, and suggested donating the cup collection to a worthy university. I got this reply:

'I have previously offered them to the art department and the biology department as they can often be found with Unique cultures in there but no takers.'

Part turnip and part slug, eh?

Frankly, I think that both turnips and slugs would be offended to be compared like that .

Is the university in question doing any research on speeding up erosion? That sculpture ought to be eroded, and quickly!