On Thursday, January 8, 2009, one Rachida Dati, a French Cabinet Minister, returned to work after having taken a short break after giving birth to her child via Cesarean Section.  This event made International headlines because of the length of her maternity leave: 4 days.  She caused a public spectacle arriving to work, with her tightly bundled, newly minted daughter in her arms.  Her reasoning behind the brevity of her leave:  “to avoid the devastating image of a president of the Republic announcing a fundamental reform of the legal system without her being present.”.

4 days.  What took her so long?  Why not 3?  2?  How far can this madness be pushed?  Dati’s case is an isolated incident – mostly because of its public nature;  but for me, it’s a highly telling one.  And it begs the question: how long should maternity leave be?  Under French law, Dati was entitled to the following:  “Maternity leave commences six weeks before the expected date of the employee’s confinement (eight weeks if she already has two or more children), and ends ten weeks after the confinement (sixteen weeks from the third child onwards). It is extended in the event of a pathological condition or of multiple births, and is adjusted if the birth is premature. This leave is deemed, in principle, to be a period of effective employment. It constitutes a period during which protection against dismissal is specially increased, with the guaranteed right to return to the same job”.  At best, Ms. Dati’s actions constituted a simple decline to the advantages offered her, and she bravely made her way back to work.  At worst, she acted in a highly irresponsible manner.

Dati is a very successful, professional woman and public figure.  She is the kind of person that sets the example for working moms.  She makes me look terrible.

Terrible because my own infant son is 12 weeks old today.  And 12 weeks seems to be the gold standard for what passes as maternity leave among my friends and colleagues.  And even so, I don’t think this is enough time.  Am I just lazy, then? Dragging my heels?  Do I lack Dati’s courageousness?  No, no and no.

For those readers that have not actually given birth themselves, here’s what happens:  The Entire Gravitational Pull of Your Life is Shifted.  The planets are forced out of alignment. I don’t know how else to say it.  Your body has been put under tremendous physical stress, if not cut open, and you must heal.  This takes rest and time and lots of help.  There is a new little person on Earth who depends on you for every little thing, and who does not know day from night; who has no understanding of what used to be important to you, and cannot communicate in any other way than to cry.  Sometimes loudly and for hours.  At 3am.  He does not understand explanations for things, or requests.  You must change, and your priorities much change as well.  And you will need a village just to be able to take care of both him and yourself in the most basic way.

In short, you have a new job.  What this means for your old job depends on a highly personal set of circumstances.  But in listening to the particular situations of a large group of women locally, it seems that they always try to make as large an accommodation as possible.  Many of my friends are in the education field, and try to time their babies births for the onset of summer vacay, ensuring at least a 12 week leave that doesn’t have to depend on drawing from sick leave, “short-term disability” (shudder), or missing out on the natural progression of work related stuff.  But they are the fortunate exception; many of the rest scale back their duties – in one example, a 6 week leave (as dictated by Family and Medical Leave Act), followed by a 3 month period of part time work.  Some quit their jobs to return full time several years later.

But this new job that you have, this mommyhood?  It doesn’t pay.  During maternity leave itself, almost no one has paid leave – and there are no legal guidelines at all for this.  If anyone among the group that I asked was paid, it was via accumulated sick or vacation time.  So it’s a sticky situation for most.  Almost no one can afford the full 12 weeks of unpaid leave, so in most cases, something’s gotta give.  And I wish that somehow the maternity leave fairy might be able to descend on new moms and supply enough pay to alleviate the financial strain of being able to devote oneself to mommyhood, because it is something that ought to be valued very highly.

But Ms. Dati’s case seems to be backsliding on this notion; very publically placing value on the old job over the new one.

So, I’m sorry Ms. Dati, that I am not the superwoman you are.  I cannot simply bundle up my newborn and sling him around so that I can avoid the embarrassment of being left out of something important at work.  You see, my little one is taking his nap, after which he will need to be nursed and have his diaper changed.  I only have this small window of time in which to write in my blog, and in order to carve out this chunk of time, I have to neglect other things, like the dishes and the laundry and maybe even a nap for myself since I was up with the baby a couple of times last night.  And seeing how he has not given me his schedule, I do not know how long my chunk of time will last, so I’ll make this short: Take that baby home and tend to her, and then tend to yourself.  Do not make a public show of how tough you are by returning to work so idiotically soon, because it leads the public to think that any longer is unnecessary.  And it is.  It so. very much. is.

Several weeks ago, when I voiced my misgivings about what a pregnant woman with a voracious thirst should drink, it paved the way for much larger questions that touches all of our lives, preggo or no: “Wait, what ARE we drinking“? “What’s IN this can/glass/bottle/cup, anyway“?
In recent news there has been a spirited debate about whether the government should impose a penny-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary beverages.  The fact that it has garnered so much attention by the national media shows us how interwoven soda and its affordability is to our national fabric.  And although I’m not prepared to weigh in on whether such a tax might promote a healthier lifestyle, I’m listening intently to the debate.  And I’m aghast at what I’m learning simply by paying a little attention.

I’ll say this out front: I like a good glass of juice or lemonade, but otherwise I’m not a big fan of sweet drinks.  My tea contains neither sugar nor honey, nor does my morning coffee contain sugar or cream.  I’ve never been a soda person, though I’m no stranger to the occasional can.  My choices in wine and alcoholic beverages are always dry.  For me, it’s just a matter of what my taste buds prefer.  So suffice to say that I do not have a personal stake in this debate.

Given where I’m coming from, I’d like to match up two opposing arguments that I’ve heard; exhibit A and exhibit B:

Exhibit A: Lobbyist for the soda industry appearance on MSNBC within the last few weeks (apologies for not being able to provide specific show/guest info) making the case that beverages account for only 5 Percent of daily caloric intake for the average American, and that the blame that such a tax implies is patently unfair, an argument similar to the one defended by Kevin Keane of the American Beverage Association in this Chron.com article.

Exhibit B: Eat This, Not That‘s documentation of the 20 worst drinks in America, including the “worst soda“, Sunkist; a 20 ounce bottle contains 320 calories and 84 grams of sugar, as much as 6 Breyers Oreo Ice Cream Sandwiches.  Additionally, Sunkist makes use of “the artificial colors yellow 6 and red 40—two chemicals that may be linked to behavioral and concentration problems in children”.  WikiAnswers lists the ingredients in Sunkist as these:  “Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), food starch-modified, natural flavors, caffeine, glycerol ester of wood rosin, ascorbic acid (preservative), yellow 6, red 40″.

So, according to the argument posed in Exhibit A, if one measly 20oz bottle of Sunkist was all the caloric beverage that you drank for an entire day, your overall calorie intake could be extrapolated to 6400.  Is this reasonable?  Would even Kevin Keane agree that this is reasonable?  And I wonder whether he would be willing to weigh in on the effect of the ingredients list: high fructose corn syrup, yellow 6, red 40; as well as what specific ingredient tends to hide behind the term “natural flavors” (hint: MSG).  So, it seems to me that this “don’t pick on us because there are other, bigger fish to fry” is really just awfully sad.  And although the proposed soda tax has been defeated on the several occasions thus far that it has shown up as proposed legislature in Maine, New York, and San Francisco, I hope that the movement gains momentum, and that in time, the American Beverage Association does have its fish fried.  I’ll take a water with that.

In the meantime, if a 2000 calorie-per-day diet is the ideal for most of us, let’s really try, as a culture, to observe that 5% idea — really, it turns out not to be such a bad one — 5% of your calories from beverages: that’s 100 calories a day.  Let’s just all pay a little closer attention to the labels and try to observe this.  It’d be way more effective to our lifestyle than a tax, though our states would still be that much more cash-strapped.

If just 100 calories to drink a day sounds way too restrictive, note the following from TLC Cooking: “look at the calorie count of any soft drink. For example, a typical carbonated soft drink will have 200 calories in a 16-ounce serving. All of those calories come from sugar, and sugar contains 16 calories per teaspoon. By this measurement, a 16-ounce serving contains 12.5 teaspoons of sugar.So go down to the kitchen and get out a 16-ounce glass, a teaspoon and some sugar. Measure 12 teaspoons of sugar into the glass — it’s an amazing amount. Then multiply that by however many sodas you typically consume in a day”.

For further reading, see also New England Journal of Medicine’s “Ounces of Prevention — The Public Policy Case for Taxes on Sugared Beverages”, and the New York Times’s “Health Official Willing to go to the Mat Over Obesity and Sugared Sodas”

Okay, okay, I can’t even keep up the pretense: I don’t hate Facebook. At all.  In fact, I love Facebook.
Imagine this: all of the people in your life, past and present, available to you at the touch of a mouse.  For free.  For someone like me, a work-at-home mom who is pretty isolated in the country, but has befriended hundreds during different times in her life, it’s catnip.  All of my Facebook friends are folks that I have known at some point in my life or other; a collage of my real-life social history.  And Facebook offers the perfect platform to be able to interact with all of them – since I have joined, I have been privvy to all sorts of things in my friends’ lives that I would have previously been out of the loop for: Marriages beginning and ending, sons and daughters being born, relatives passing, health problems and concerns, moving….the list goes  on.  So yes, for this I love you, Facebook.  To institute some kind of pay structure would surely alter this lovely landscape.

But Facebook can’t exist purely for our entertainment.  To exist, it must make money.  And like radio and TV before it, that revenue comes from advertising.  But the rub is different with Facebook.  The relationship between advertiser and Facebook user does not stop, as with TV, at the screen.  Because of the very nature of Facebook, advertisers have our number.  They become privvy to all kinds of information that previous generations of advertising companies could only guess about.  Who our friends are.  Who our favorite actors are.  How old we are.  What we do for a living.  Do we care?  Should we care?  Is the sacrifice of this information better than paying for the service in more traditional ways (i.e. cash)?

I’m picking on Facebook here.  But it is one of the web’s most successful stories that has adopted this “pay with information” model.  Far more online entities have also been doing it with great success; among them, a little outfit called Google.  Has this become the new answer to the longstanding question of how to monetize the web?  I really really hope not, and think there are better models out there.

Daniel Lyons recently wrote about the problem of buying things with privacy in Newsweek: “With money, five bucks is five bucks.  But what is the value of your list of friends?  …if it’s incredibly valuable, you’re getting massively ripped off.”  And more and more, online businesses that are geared toward gathering data and private information are flourishing: from an Alice.com that tracks your shopping needs, to a Mozy.com that backs up your files online.  For most of these services, an approximation of what we are paying, in the form of a privacy agreement, is available to us at signup.  But who among us reads carefully enough through the fine print in order to quantify this price?

Very very few, as evidenced by a recent story regarding the accidental sale of 7500 souls to an online gaming site.  “The retailer, British firm GameStation, added the “immortal soul clause” to the contract signed before making any online purchases earlier this month. It states that customers grant the company the right to claim their soul”.  This is certainly a humorous and rather extreme example, but if GameStation can slide this practical joke into their fine print and make away with 7500 souls, it does beg the question about what larger and more nefarious companies might also be able to do.

Lyons wraps his Newsweek piece in the following way, a near perfect-pitch admonishment to pay attention to how ideas of payment and privacy are changing:  “Only the techies know how much your info is worth, and they’re not telling.  But the fact that they’d rather get your data than your dollars tells you all you need to know”.

This pregnancy has imparted on me a deep, deep thirst.  I seem to be thirsty at all times, regardless of the amount of liquid that I have had to drink.  And I’m not a sipper, I’m a gulper.  I understand that this is common in pregnancy; I was surely thirsty during my first, but not, as I recall, quite this thirsty.

And this leads me to a dilemma.  What do I drink?  Water would seem to be the obvious choice, particularly as I’m drinking so much liquid.  But my choices among water options are troubling:

Tap water: As countryfolk, we have well water.  And we live in the land of industrial agriculture.  Bad choice.

Bottled water: Last pregnancy, I bought bottled water by the case, but felt really bad about all of that plastic waste.  Even though we were recycling, it’s just a shame to add that much more plastic onto the pile.  And besides, I couldn’t really be assured that the liquid in the bottles was any better or worse, contaminant-wise, than my tap water. Non-optimal choice.

Water Cooler: This seemed to be a decent solution to the plastic waste problem of bottled water.  Move up to the 5 gallon system, reuseable bottles, cool, fresh water.  Okay, I still don’t really know about its quality.  But it’s heavenly for chugging.  The hitch: The bottle is stamped with a #7: polycarbonate plastic.  Contains BPA, an endocrine disruptor, which can leach into the water I’m drinking.  Ugh.  Non-optimal choice.

Cans of sparkling water:  Over ice, heavenly.  But having stayed abreast of the BPA story for some time, it has finally come to light that aluminum cans are also lined with a type of plastic coating which contains BPA.   Bad choice.

What’s left?  Water in glass bottles.  Heavy, hard-to-find.  But if anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears!

Yesterday, for the first time ever, I watched the Dr. Phil show.  No, I haven’t been living in a cave; it seems I’ve always known about Dr. Phil, it’s just that the TV here is, 99% of the time, switched off during the day.  And I like it that way.

But I was compelled to watch yesterday’s show, “Are Moms Really That Busy?” in support of my Champaign-Urbana homie, Amy Hatch, who is half of the awesome duo behind chambanamoms.com.  She made an appearance on Dr. Phil’s panel in order to debate a recent finding by University of Maryland’s Dr. John Robinson that moms have, on average, 30-40 hours of leisure time each week.

It’s an easy thing to get a knee-jerk reaction to – particularly if you are among the aforementioned moms who are spread reeeeeally really thin in order to be the best mom and caregiver and housekeeper and working professional that they can be.  The consensus on the panel as to Dr. Robinson’s findings can be summed up the following way: “Are you freakin KIDDING me?!”.  The panelists and moms in the audience were happy to provide the kind of heartbreaking detail of how patently NON-leisurely their lives really are; and how hard, in fact, they do work, and how very very much is expected of them.  That they should even be put in the position of having to defend themselves on this subject is altogether insulting.  Actually, “adding insult to injury” is a perfect characterization.

Of course moms will be put on the defensive by Dr. Robinson’s findings.  I’m guessing that that, and the publicity surrounding it, was his aim in the first place.  The absurd examples of leisure time cited by Dr. Robinson should be all the evidence we need: waiting for a tow truck (in the car w/o kids), opening business email, sitting in the dentist’s office, and the like.

But what went largely undiscussed on yesterday’s show is exactly how we should address this finding:  What’s getting valued?  Who’s setting the standards here?  And why, for christ’s sake, is no one standing up for the very idea of leisure time?  The very notion that we have leisure time carries a subtext that we’re not working hard enough.

Because if we picture it, the dream of leisure time floats above all of mom’s heads, like a detached, unattainable balloon – where one can exist, enjoying our favorite things without interruption, without guilt; outside of time and responsibility.  and as much as we want and crave and need to be in that balloon, if we’re fortunate enough to have the ability to step in it, we’re afraid that others will judge us as being………..the word which can only be whispered………lazy.

Apparently, with the industrial revolution and the gadgets of the 20th century which allow for tasks to completed in a shorter amount of time, there has been a new cold war: the War on Lazy.  We have become so very time and productivity obsessed that we have come to believe, as a culture, that busy-ness is the natural and right state of being.  Which is counter-intuitive.  One would think that the progress made in the last 200 years would allow for more leisure time, and that it would become a natural and virtuous thing.  But something else happened: the standards were raised.  Wash day work cut down to a few hours?  Better impose a higher standard of cleanliness and sell a lot more clothes.  We’ve increasingly been sold a standard that we can’t, and shouldn’t, live up to.  And as moms reach a breaking point in which they can barely handle the stress of raising a family and being everything to everyone, mostly without compensation, they are made to apologize for the joke of what passes as leisure time.  Shame on us.

Listen to how Brigid Schulte wraps up her fine response in the Washington Post:  “it’s 1:31 in the morning; this story is two days late; the dinner dishes are still in the sink; and there’s a form I need to fill out before my daughter goes to school. For a few fleeting moments earlier this evening, however, as I searched for my son’s bike helmet, I did notice that the moon was uncannily beautiful”.  The saddest of poetry, but as moms, we’ve been there.  Maybe even four times already this week.  So instead of going on the defensive, please join me in the following chant:

“More Leisure Time Now!  Better Leisure Time Now!”

And fellow moms, when you see a television commercial which leads you to to think that your teeth should be as white as your wedding dress, and implies that anything less constitutes something sub-standard, please see this for the trap that it is, and take hold of what’s important in your life.  Having flashy white teeth is not being good to yourself (though corporations would love you to believe it) – having time and a little peace in your life to enjoy yourself IS.

In so very many ways, we are living far different lives than our ancestors did. The division is even palpable going back only 100 years; in terms of human history, this is only a flash in the pan, but one fundamental linchpin of 100+ years ago life is all but disappeared from our “modern” life: Process. It was not so very long ago that if you wanted/needed a product, you had to be materially involved in its process. Want a new dress? How’re your sewing skills? Want it clean? Gotta washtub? Want a pot of soup and bread for dinner? What have you harvested or slaughtered or preserved lately that you can use? Churn some butter for that bread?

Granted, we have always been an interdependent species, so no one person was ever typically responsible for every little want/need being filled. But days were typically devoted to a series of processes that are far different from those of 21st century life in the US. At most times in history, processes have been something that you could buy your way out of, if you had enough wealth or power. So as the last 100 years progressed, and the US grew wealthier and more powerful, we have slowly, as a culture, bought our way out of the processes that defined our ancestor’s lives. Are we richer as a culture for it? This is what I wonder.

Last week, I recommended the troubled but darling Gertrude Abercrombie painting “The Visit” at Treadway Gallery’s March 7 auction.  It did not sell; which means that it did not garner a bid high enough to reach its reserve price.  But this ship has not yet sailed.

Bargain Hunters Take Note

The Abercrombie painting is still for sale among Treadway’s Unsold Lots, for a mere $5000 (the number that was likely its reserve price during the auction).  $5000!  For a painting that sold just a year and a half ago for nearly $8000!  And what’s more, for an Abercrombie!  And here’s some gravy to ponder: you can also make an offer on unsold lots, so it is just possible that it might be had for less.  Yowza.  Again, this is a piece to be snatched up by someone willing to hold onto the investment for a while; I wouldn’t recommend it at all to someone who might need to turn it around again in the next five years.

Also among the unsold lots is another headscratcher: a mother and child painting by Brown County artist Ada Schulz.  Shulz was active in early 20th century, known for her impressionist depictions of life in Nashville, Indiana and around Brown County.  Particularly prized are her depictions of children, and among those, mother and child.  Estimated at a reasonable 15-20k, it failed to sell.  It is now for sale on the Unsold Lots list for $15k.  Mind you, signed paintings of hers with this subject matter, of this size typically sell for twice that at auction.  B-a-r-g-a-i-n!!

No, not that annoying place at the mall. Chicago artist  Gertrude Abercrombie (1909-1977), to be far more specific. Abercrombie was a major proponent of the Magical Realism school that incorporated the use of surrealism in the 1940s and 1950s among Chicago area and Wisconsin artists. She was also a cultural force; memorable for hosting musicians (think Billie Holiday), poets (think Archibald MacLeish), and artists at her North Shore home. Abercrombie as an artist who preferred concept to technique in her artwork, and the result is a collection of paintings that are, on the surface, rather naive looking, but draw one in with unusual, often noctural themes. Diminutive and weird, her artwork sells. Among the 65 works in her auction record at Askart, 95% have sold. That’s a 5% buy-in rate, folks. That’s gooooooood.
Treadway Gallery has, among its offerings at the March 7 auction, a smallish 1945 Abercrombie oil, The Visit.  The noctural visitor is one of her enduring themes, so its right on for this artist.  Value-wise, it has a bit of a problem, though: it has only been off the market for less than 2 years.  Previously sold at a rival Chicago auction house in Sept. 2008 for $7930, this time it’s being offered with a 7-9k estimate, but will likely sell for lower.  For measure, Abercrombie’s work commonly sells into the five figure range.  Bargains, at least so far, don’t happen in the market for Abercrombie, but given this piece’s recent exposure in the marketplace, it might translate in to a sweet deal for someone willing to buy and hold for a while.

If you are a TV-friendly parent to a toddler, with cable or satellite TV, you have probably seen, at one time or another, the awfully-cute show about a pair of sibling bunnies, Max and Ruby.  Ruby, 7, is older sister to brother Max, 3, and the show revolves around the ongoing sibling rivalry between the two.  The show is awfully tame and often very very sweet, and my Little One loves to watch it.  In his eyes, he probably relates to Max, the 3 year old who loves to play in the mud and with his particularly loud wind-up toys, much to Ruby’s chagrin.  The show happens in two and three segment bits, each problem being lovingly resolved within the course of each segment.

When we first started watching Max and Ruby as a family, it struck me as a little odd that Max and Ruby’s parents were nowhere to be seen.  Oh well, I shrugged it off, knowing that the show was based on a series of books that I’d never read, and assumed that there was sufficient explanation within the books as to their lack of presence in the show.  Then we Tivo’d the show, and the Little One began to watch it more regularly.

We watched the Thanksgiving episode.  Surely mom and dad had to be around for that?  Nope.  Just grandma and the kids.  Max and Ruby go shopping?  No parents.  Max and Ruby go to the fair?  No parents.  Have a yard sale?  No parents.  Ruby has pajama parties for her friends.  No parents.  Sure, grandma is a regular character, but she clearly has her own digs down the street.

Now curiosity is getting the best of me.  I Google the explanation from Rosemary Wells, the author: “As in most other classic stories, we don’t see Max and Ruby’s parents, because I believe that kids resolve their issues and conflicts differently when they are on their own. The television series gives kids a sense about how these two siblings resolve their conflicts in a humorous and entertaining way”.  Okay………I can dig it.  As a rationale for a series of books, but translated into a TV show, it still is creepy for me to note the continued lack of parental involvement.

I’m all for kids having the opportunity to problem solve on their own.  But when we enter into the territory of everyday family life, as the TV show has, and there is forever no sign of parents having an involvement in their kids’s activities, well, it disturbes me.  Particularly considering that Max and Ruby has been reprised for a new season, with new sets of everyday adventures, and still the parents are nowhere to be seen.

Or are they?  Once in a while, when Max and Ruby are playing upstairs in the house, we are treated to the sight of a closed bedroom door between Max’s room and Ruby’s room.  It is tantalizing, that closed door.  I get the almost palpable sense that Max and Ruby’s parents are behind it, and I have to wonder, at this point………………meth lab?

]]> http://www.cheapisexpensive.net/2010/02/17/max-and-ruby-a-rant/feed/ 2 http://www.cheapisexpensive.net/2010/02/17/max-and-ruby-a-rant/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cheapisexpensive/MnhN/~3/O0LV8FLIAtA/ http://www.cheapisexpensive.net/2010/01/25/a-tool-to-deceive-and-slaughter/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:05:13 +0000 admin http://www.cheapisexpensive.net/?p=385

In preparing to write a short bit about the devastating effect of overexposure on a work of art – that is, how value tends to drop dramatically when a single work of art has been offered for sale multiple times over the course of a handful of years, I came across this small black box.  And it is challenging that notion head-on.  Let me back up and explain.

One of the key factors in a work of art’s value is its freshness to the market.  If it’s been in the same collection for a generation or two (or more), demand tends to rise significantly over, say, if the same work of art is offered for sale a year or two after being sold.  Sure, there are exceptions to this to be sure, particularly in the contemporary art market; but widely speaking, fresh works are king.

Sales venues like Ebay have challenged this notion, but not significantly: if a work of art is offered for sale and fails to meet reserve or garner an opening bid, the future value is still hurt, but there are not any lasting sales records to haunt it – Ebay’s completed auction records only last for a few months or so.  Still, I’ve watched paintings that might have had significant value get completely pummeled by a seller’s repeated unsuccessful attempts at selling it.  For that reason, I never recommend offering a work of art on Ebay more than once.

And now, Caleb Larsen’s A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter.  A single work of art which, by way of its own internal programming, puts itself up for auction every week on Ebay.  As an appraiser, my head is spinning.  What happens to value when ownership is so fleeting as to only last a week?  Motivation to sell is not a factor at all in this equation; it is part and parcel of the work itself.  But what motivates the buyer?  When I first became aware of this piece by way of Felix Salmon’s article, it was listed at $1500.  Before the end of the auction, the price was upped to $2500, but failed to sell.  It’s current auction ongoing, it started again at $2500, and bidding is up to $4250.  Methinks that a rise in press coverage may be a large component of its rise in value.  Therefore, the more publicity that this work receives, the higher its value?  The seller, after all, isn’t “dumping” it back out into the market; the work itself, by design, is placing itself back out into the market.

According to the artist’s response to a question posed within the descriptive text of the auction site, “The perpetual state of uncertainty and the instability of ownership are primary components of the work”.

A work of art for the times, to be sure.  And I will be watching with confoundment at how the market responds.

1/29/10 Update: Bidding on the piece closed yesterday evening at $6350 with 19 bids.  It is currently en route to its next owner, and will presumably be set to auction itself again as soon as an ethernet connection is established.  Wonder what the opening bid will be?  Apparently that is at the discretion of its new owner, but I would still recommend an opening bid lower than the sales price.