Monday, September 05, 2005

Secrets and Books

I've mentioned before that one of the blogs I love to check out every Sunday when they add new stuff is PostSecret. For those of you who may not know about that one, it's a project where people make postcard art about a secret they've never shared and mail it to PostSecret anonymously. Photos of some of them get posted on the blog every week. Some of the secrets people share are small, innocent, even funny. Others are deep, dark, life-altering, and painful. Still others are uplifting. I nearly always find something there that makes me smile and something else that moves me or makes me think. And yes, sometimes some that make me go "eeeuuuwww!" So I was very excited to visit the website yesterday and discover that there's going to be a book published about this project. PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions From Ordinary Lives. This one is going on my Christmas wish list. Not long ago I was involved in an art swap based on the PostSecret project. We all made 3" x 5" artwork confessing a secret of some kind and mailed it to the swap coordinator, who was the only one to know who sent what secret. She then swapped them all and sent them back out, so that all participants received a package of around 40 secrets, but we don't know who confessed what. Just like the project they're based on, they range from silly to serious. Here are three I particularly liked. Obviously I can't list artist credits, but if you see something you made here, I hope you're glad I liked it. I deliberately chose to share three of my lighter favorites rather than some of the darker ones. (And no, none of these are the one I made.) In case you can't read the captions they say: Top:"When I say I'm an artist, I feel like a fraud." (I've felt like that before, although I don't anymore.) Bottom Left: "I am addicted to grits..." (While I'm not addicted, I do like them a lot.) Bottom Right: "I want to eliminate annoying people with a ray gun. No trace. No evidence." (Yep. I've had that thought cross my mind. From a karma point of view, I'm really glad it's not that easy to make someone disappear!) Speaking of books (well, I was speaking of a book, just a minute ago), here's yet another quiz I took a while back and hadn't posted yet - The American Lit Test:
Literature Nerd! My Condolences! You scored 84!
You have a degree in this stuff, don't you? If you're a woman, will you have my babies?
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
You scored higher than 99% on booknerdpoints
The American Lit. Test written by xenolaeus on Ok Cupid
I can think of a couple of people on the AQ blog ring I bet will score even higher on this than I did. Anyone wanna try?