by INDIRA CHARUNDER-MACHARRUNDEIRA, Alternate Reality News Service Fine Arts Writer
When it comes to oil paintings and visas that allow people to work in Vesampucceri, art is a poke in the eye of the beholder.
You have probably never heard of Gabriel Famleesedano, an employee of the McDruhitmumpf National Golf Club Westminichester who had never expressed an interest in joining the artistic community. However, when his manager told this undocumented worker from Guatemala that he needed a visa to continue to work there, he was driven to create.
Famleesedano's first effort at supplying the golf course with a visa showing that he was in Vesampucceri legally was written in pencil crayon on a napkin. "This is a common mistake with first-timers," Bobby "Big Bubbelach" Bonavaducci, art critic and two-time winner of a stay at Her Majesty's Leisure in London, commented. "They don't have the resources to create a proper fake document, so they use whatever materials come to hand. The results wouldn't fool a blind immigration officer in a black cat's darkened basement!"
In fact, passports, work visas and other official documents were written on napkins in pencil crayon, sometimes even plain crayon, during WWII because of shortages of embossed paper, which was diverted for use making artillery shells. But, uhh, that's not relevant to the current discussion. The only other record of this happening was when local governments issued napkin visas during the Uncivil War; however, since control of the movement of people through territory has never been a municipal power, both sides ignored the documents. Which, uhh, is even less relevant to the current discussion, but at least it's colourful.
Administrators of the McDruhitmumpf National Golf Club told Famleesedano that they were happy for him to work there, but, honestly, if he wanted to keep doing so, he would have to bring them a more realistic looking visa. His next effort was also written on a napkin, but, perhaps having learned from his first experience, it was in pen.
"Although it may have been as simple as asking to borrow the pen of somebody who worked with him at the golf course," Bonavaducci stated, "this shows that Famleesedano had the capacity to grow as an artist. Unlike pencil crayons, ink is permanent. This creation shows him having a lot more confidence in his craft."
With, unfortunately, exactly the same results: Famleesedano was told to come back the next day with another visa.
For his seventh attempt, Famleesedano stopped working with napkins, replacing them with the insides of cut up cigarette cartons. "This was a conceptual breakthrough for him," Bonavaducci claimed. "Official documents like visas are usually printed on heavier stock paper. Famleesedano was clearly ready to abandon his early arte primitif posturing for a more sophisticated approach."
At the same time, though, he returned to pencil crayons. "You have to understand," Bonavaducci asked us to understand, "Famleesedano was working 12 hour shifts six days a week, mowing and raking the grounds and rebuffing unwanted duffer advances. Not only that, but he had to share a single room with 17 other employees of the golf course in the same boat. Given this, he can certainly be forgiven for a little...artistic backsliding."
In all, it took Famleesedano 59 attempts before he was finally able to create a document that the manager of the McDruhitmumpf National Golf Club was satisfied was good enough to fool an Immigration Corralling and Expulsing Service (ICES) agent. "And, what a masterpiece it was!" Bonavaducci exulted. "As Richard Bachturnovmanive - who everybody knows is actually Stephen Kingfisherhelploess, but he doesn't like it when anybody acknowledges the fact, so shh! - truly said: 'A professional is an amateur who walked over the dead, bloated corpses of his friends and enemies and anybody else who stopped him from achieving his dream.' I, uhh, may have been paraphrasing, here, but you get the idea."
Bonavaducci pointed out that every artist experiments with different forms and materials before they find just the combination that expresses what they have to say. For example, Leonardo Da Da Da Vinci drew 127 different versions of the Mona Lisa, including: as a rat; looking like she had just swallowed a bug; eating a pastrami sandwich; squinting; against a field of poppies; and holding a baby's arm holding an apple. Mac "In Tosh" Kropotskinyanmov drafted counterfeit $100 bills 87 times before he finally created a version that has yet to be discovered by treasury age - err, but I have said too much already.
"Creating great art is hard," Bonavaducci summed up.
It took Famleesedano 12 years of working at the McDruhitmumpf National Golf Club to perfect his visa. A day after he submitted it to club management, he and 14 other men and women who worked there were turned over to ICES for immediate deportation. "I am shocked, shocked I tell you," a McDruhitmumpf Organization spokesperson told us, "to discover illegal immigrants working in one of our establishments!"
This likely, possibly, maybe could have been caused by the government shutdown. How could President McDruhitmumpf beg for money for a border wall to keep illegal immigrants out of the country when he couldn't even keep them out of his properties?
With a heavy sigh, Bonavaducci said, "Great artists are never recognized in their time. I don't know if Richard Bachturnovmanive said that, but he will. He will..."