Appalachian Cultural Center

A fellow who calls himself "Bubba" (an uncreative pseudonym, in my humble opinion) has told cultural terrorist that he is thrilled to become a member of the International Dada Centennial Committee because he has been celebrating dada in his front yard for years. His county government that had been taken over by Yankees, passed, a few years ago, a law that declared that the collection of what he calls "objects" are actually "junk," and must be removed from view of the street.

He wrangled with them to no avail until he took a road trip on Interstate 40 to visit a woman he met on the internet who lived in Bakersfield California. On the way, he passed by the famous 60's era sculpture that consists of a row of vintage Cadillacs half buried in the dirt of the flat, empty, Texas panhandle. He was reminded of how, in school, he was taught that dada artist Marcel Duchamps turned a men's urinal upside down and declared it to be art. This did not make much sense to him until he witnessed the Cadillacs. He did not collect "objects" because he thought they were art. He collected objects because he liked them. Now, he got a revelation: any piece of junk can best get away with being called art if it is made vertical, rather than horizontal, like the random arrangement of junk in his front yard.

He decided to fight fire with fire. He knew Yankees held art to be sacred, even though they did not hold junk to be sacred. He arranged his junk in vertical columns, got a lawyer cousin to incorporate him as the "Appalachian Cultural Center," and applied for a grant from a different group of Yankees who, since they lived in Washington D.C., did have to drive by his collection of objects on a daily basis. It worked, at least to the extent that the county government has been too deadlocked about him to harass him any more so far.

Other areas of his life were not so sanguine. He proposed marriage to the woman from Bakersfield and she too got deadlocked. Reasoning that everyone in California is an environmentalist, he thought to impress her by naming his vertical junk collection "Replacement Rain Forest."

"I thought it was, you know, ironic. They said on the Discovery channel that the rain forests are being destroyed and can never be replaced. So I thought maybe when that happens Obama will pay artists to make, you know, replacements. But she did not think it was ironic. She just said it was 'cute.'"

The local newspaper printed a photo of Replacement Rain Forest. And soon after, a group of neighborhood boys climbed the columns of junk, one of which toppled and broke the wrist of one of the boys. His parents sued Bubba, who settled out of court for the amount of his grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The woman from Bakersfield is sympathetic, but still deadlocked about marriage.