GOAT SHOW TEXT

The Goat Show started off with one sweet little painting and turned into a year-long quest of producing one goat painting every week—52 paintings total. Each painting was accompanied with an original story wriotten by Brad Bunkers, a quote or random excerpt. This series pushed Bunkers to explore a singular subject with deep conviction and a playful dedication to craft. Here are some of the stories from the Goat Show:

01-06-08
A warning provides a special procedure or special steps which must be taken while completing the procedure where the warning is found. Not heeding a warning can result in personal injury.

 12-15-07
” Australian scientists say they have created a “thinking cap” that will stimulate creative powers. The invention raises the possibility of being able to unlock one’s inner genius by reawakening dormant parts of the brain. It is based on the idea that we all have the sorts of extraordinary abilities usually associated with goats. According to scientists at the Centre for the Mind in Sydney, these hidden talents can be stimulated using magnetism.”

 11-04-07
She had seen plenty of Whiffs in her day. Scratchers. Scramblers. Skinners. Sandbaggers. Slicers. Hole twelve had been home to the most memorable gaffes in club history. Known as the Goldie Bounce, a well-manicured form of hell glinting green, open-jawed for the Sunday dandies.

 10-28-07
Those bovine palookas had to foul it up for the entire Republic . The bluebonnets no longer carpet the chalky wastelands. The mockingbirds couldn’t handle the stench so they flew over the Brazos. They managed to chase out the armadillos while letting the prickly pears run wild. The whole state will soon be caked over with patties as big as Sam Houston’s belt buckle. Damn Longhorns…

 10-06-07
A herbaceous plant with showy flowers, milky sap, and rounded seed capsules. Many poppies contain alkaloids and are a source of drugs such as morphine and codeine. • Papaver, Eschscholzia, and other genera, family Papaveraceae (the poppy family): many species, including the yellow-flowered arctic poppy ( P. radicatum) of the Rocky Mountains. The poppy family also includes the corydalis, greater celandine, and bloodroot.

09-02-07
Hiatus? I hate that word like I hate blue bubble gum. So I was gone for a spell, I stepped out, stretched my legs, walked off the wah-wahs. It surely wasn’t a hiatus! True, I didn’t say goodnight to the kids, I didn’t slip Yvette a kiss, but I did close the gate. I did leave some oats in the bucket. Let’s call it a short pause and move on…

 08-14-07
Tuesday, March 12th. An oversized cardboard box sat on the front steps, the corners torn from 11 days of irreverent transport. A film of ocher dust softened the stark black or the barcode. Just as she hoped, “Pottery Barn, 98011 Sellette Way, Schranerst, IL, 69508.” Box opened, the smell of Made in China whirled about. There, neatly folded and wrapped in cellophane, sat a pair of crimson velvet curtains. She was in love. This was her day.

08-05-07
Ezra was right half the time, and when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it.

 07-26-07
Being tethered to a cast-iron wheelbarrow wasn’t a problem. Not being able to reach the off switch on the furnace was a problem.

 07-22-07
Being the leader looked like fun. As a kid Jr. sat on the south lawn and  gazed at the shiny house on the hill, imagining Sr. ruling the  fiefdom. Jr. never thought much about leadership, the moral responsibility, the finesse of diplomacy, the steady character required to inspire. He just liked the idea of being called, “Leader.” He could finally ditch the pathetic “Jr.” persona and rise up to “Leader!” He could surround himself with Sr.’s cronies, make them do the heavy lifting, use their brains… and of course as the “Leader” he would naturally take all of the credit. ” Yes sir, Mr. Leader!” You’re the boss Mr. Leader.” What every you say Mr. Leader.” 

07-15-07
Twelve Fifty Two wasn’t exactly in city limits although newly paved streets and doublewide modulars surrounded it. The front sidewalk wad entangled in Japanese Honeysuckle. The once glossy Suzanne Somers pink had faded to a dusty rose, blistered paint flaked to the ground. A few pieces of plastic lawn furniture cheered up the front room. The smell of discount aftershave and burnt matches wafted out from bathroom. A hole in the roof helped to ventilate the upstairs bedrooms. The emptiness filled her up somehow.

07-08-07
“Opinions about the odor of bucks vary, and I have had many a heated argument about it. Personally, I do not find this odor offensive; I greatly prefer it to other barnyard smells. Ever had a whiff of a chicken or duck pen on a warm summer’s day? And how about rabbits? If the Pygmy buck’s quarters are clean and he has access to plenty of fresh air and outdoor exercise space, you will find very little to complain about.”

 06-30-07
Being the only Wheaton Terrier on the farm has been an demoralizing challenge. For whatever reason they treat me as if I’m some common barnyard critter—some ungulate good for only milk, meat, and manure. If they could understand the bloodline, the heritage, the tradition, they would no doubt move me into the house. There, sitting on my goose down doggy bed, I would reign supreme. I could carry on with dignity the Terrier traditions. I’d have my own leather collar and matching leash. I’d patrol the lawn for renegade cats. I’d learn to roll over. I’d sucker the children into scratching my belly on Sundays.

06-25-07
The glare off the barley bin caught the frill of his neck as he bathed in the atomic glow. It had to be October in Kansas, the enraged days of dust baked over sweat gone, replaced by white-frost mornings and the hum of Gleaner’s harvesting over the hill. July was just torn paper in the burning barrel now. Thoughts turned to the great migration, fields peppered with Snows, Blues, and Canadians. A loan deer visits in the blue of night.

 06-17-07
“Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.”

06-11-07
“Pabinka’s Blue Period refers to a generation of goats in which the color blue dominates and which she befriended between 1901 and 1904. The blue period is a marvelous expression of poetic subtlety and social melancholy and contributes to the transition of Pabinka’s eating from ungulatism to abstract grazing. As one of the founders of modern abstract grazing, Pabinka is generally associated with Capricornia and related styles which are predominantly abstract. It is therefore essential to realize that at the time of Pabinka’s blue period, abstract grazing as we know it today didn’t yet exist. As a twenty year old goat Pabinka was an accomplished dancer, but like many young goats of her time, she was dissatisfied with the dogmas of traditional grazing. Predecessors like Goatézanne and the Nubians had shown how departures from ungulatism could result in a more direct holistic diet.”

06-03-07
Ona was of the moon. You could see in her eyes a violet glow refracted a million times over. She first noticed the gift early on–renewing fragile souls at the Royal Lithuanian Children’s Carnival. The transformative talent guided her on a tumultuous journey, a kind of vagabond life filled with tortured beauty, enlightenment, and a deep longing for whole grains…

 05-25-07
|Self organization can be understood as the capacity to create information based on the Mandelbrot vector 0 : z z¾ + c considered as a continuous creative process. The key is spontaneous improvisation in the moment – acting in the Tao – returning to Zero. This whole field has been thoroughly explored for millennia by Chinese thinkers and so we will use their terminology.

05-20-07
Looking across the yard at the yearlings a realization washed over her. Time in the spotlight was well in the past, her 

 Her milking production numbers were down. Her feed/gain ratio was off the charts. Worst of all, her once perfectly symmetrical horns were now crumbling. This once proportional beauty used to light up a milking stanchion. At one point she held the Iowa state record for most milk produced in a 48 hour period. She had her own stall with a brass name plate on the gate and the finest virgin-cut straw at her hooves. Ah, yes the tri-county fair glory days, the “best in show” ribbons, the gourmet rations of polenta and extract of alfalfa. All these tender memories seemed so far away as she watched the rendering truck pull into the yard. 

05-14-07
Known as the Bearded One, he roamed the countryside in search of Chanterelles. He smelled like apricots…

05-06-07
By this time she had gotten used to it. The pillow-like cloud had been with her as long as she could remember. It didn’t inhibit her in any way, nor did it hinder her relationships. Most billies found it rather attractive and the ethereal white made for a wonderful photo backdrop. On the darkest of days the cloud hovered in close proximity poised to glide with her.

The cloud became a welcome companion outdoors but it was a different story inside, especially in small spaces like coffee shops and subways. The normally graceful cloud became a dense haze once compressed in such tight quarters. Its billowy softness became a suffocating blanket. Like a super hero seduced by a devilish elixir, the cloud became its opposite…

04-22-07
At the time crossing through the barbed-wire fence didn’t seem to be a breach in Homeland Security. Sparky and I had done it often, usually at night to graze on virgin Buffalo Grass and Sumac. The chicos in fatigues looked harmless enough, plastic gums, dimestore Ray Bans, and camo iPods. They kept talking about bush this and bush that. For toy soldiers they were disturbingly obsessed with shrubs. 

What I want to know, is how in tarnation did these pimple-faced patriots learn about the Taiwanese horn-shock interrogation method?

04-24-07
Let’s make this clear, a bulbous head is quite different than a big head. Bulbous simply translates to robust, rotund, or brawny in my mind, stout you might even say. A less modest creature may walk around with a more arrogant demeanor. Not this lofty-headed goat. For I’m way too intelligent to think my rather large, king-like head could be employed as a seductive charm. You see, someone with my mojo, my charisma, has no time for such self indulgent thoughts. So I say bulbous, if I may be so humble…

04-01-07
At mile marker 12 he turned to notice a glimmer dangling from the rusted barbed wire. Like a Rattle-Shad lure  temps a Largemouth Bass, the object seduced him to the fence. “Ah, Sugar will love this,” he blurted out to the wind. There, just east of Exit 92 was a smashed Jumex can held up by a faded red ribbon. Now if he could just gnaw through the barbed wire…

03-25-07
There once was a nanny that lived on the outskirts of town, tied to a flagpole. There, away from the jumble of glass and alloy, she found her eight by eight patch of Kentucky Blue solitude. She confided in the cloud-hungry sun and badgered the pinhole stars as a way of getting even. It was here she felt herself, it was here she embraced life on the chain.

03-18-07
It all started innocent enough. A few nibbles here, a kernel or two at the hors d’oeuvre table, a midnight snack at the feed trough. If only she could have looked to the future to see how the “silly little habit” would consume her every intention. The bites mushroomed into bushels, the occasional pecking evolved into a persistent gnawing and trivial indigestion turned to Clinical Laminitis.

Although her stomach had doubled in size as she now carried a balloon-like belly on stick legs, it all seemed manageable. Until the ethanol boom. Corn had become a hot commodity, the “Gold of the Bible-Belt” they said. Being a goat, she languished at the bottom of the supply chain. Without her bushel-a-day fix at hand, she became desperate—she devised a plan…

03-08-07
“Naturally, the id knows no values, no good and evil, no morality. The economic, or, if you prefer, the quantitative factor, which is so closely bound up with the pleasure- principle, dominates all its processes. Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge,–that, in our view, is all that the id contains. It seems, indeed, as if the energy of these instinctual impulses is in a different condition from that in which it is found in the other regions of the mind. It must be far more fluid and more capable of being discharged, for otherwise we should not have those displacements and condensations, which are so characteristic of the id and which are so completely independent of the qualities of what is cathected….”

 03-03-07
Ungulotus  Underbite  Correctional Enhancement (UUCE) is typically a two-part procedure consisting of a stage-one jawline alteration followed by a bone density probe and cosmetic refit wiring. Renowned specialist, Doctor Vanschleshing of Switzerland, first performed the UUCE method while studying International Small Animal Husbandry (ISAH) at the University of Kansas in 1974. Although Vanschleshing originally documented UUCE on male Angora rabbits, he later perfected the procedure on domestic goats in the late 1980s while teaching Modern BioGenetic Psychology (MBGP) in Zurich. Today UUCE is widely accepted and practiced by veterinarians worldwide.

02-22-07
If he had to pick a word, it would be negligence. Oh yes, he relished the alone time. In fact he found himself utterly amusing at times, a regular wise guy. But just a little attention, the kind of lavish consideration given to the milking goats, would be nice. Left to overgraze on spilt barley while the purebreds pranced up into the turquoise blue stock trailer on their way to the county fair, he loitered the days away. It’s not that they, the farm hands, were close-fisted, they simply overlooked his existence. And it was this non-action, the act of not doing, that really bothered him.

 02-17-07
If I could just reach my tail I could fix that itch, I could nibble that tickle, I could nix that prickle. One more inch! Life would be good. I’d change my name and move south, maybe take up lawn darts or bocce ball. Get a new pair of shades. Invite all my nanny friends down for the weekend. Ah yes, golf course grazing in the mid-day sun would fade into sunset bathing in casino fountains filled with sparkling mineral water. Wayne Newton. Tom Jones. Oolala! If only…

 02-02-07
Carl was a popular cat being he had the only transistor radio on the farm. Sunday talk shows. Monday night Motown. Reggae Nation every Friday at seven. Carl was a walking sound machine, a hi-def hipster who traded in 9-volts and tin foil. The ladies loved the top-40 and the kids danced to the noon-time oldies, but what really turned Carl’s crank was listening to the Red Sox. He’d rotate the dial to 1060 am, cock his head slightly to the east and there atop the manure pile, looking out over the alfalfa field, he could almost see home plate.

01-28-07
January 26, Henderson, Colorado. After three days of intense searching, police have called off the hunt for a baby-faced Belgian Dwarf goat. Nicknamed, “Hinky” by Lead Officer Bud Thompson, the goat had apparently taken up residence in the Suds-n-Duds laundromat at 1233 S. Jeffers Ave. before local residents reported the goat to authorities. After eluding local police for two days, the Blane County Sheriff’s Special Task Force Unit (STFU)  took over the chase. The goat’s ability to blend in with foliage and it’s incisive maneuvering left officials feeling defeated as they threw in the towel Friday evening. Hinky is described as a gangly, red-gray female with a sweet face, according to reports. “She’s a real cutie pie,” a landscaper told Sheriff Clem Saunders. If you spot Hinky, do not approach her, keep your distance and call your local police department immediately.

 Knapweed Gravy
Knapweed on a twelve percent slope? Is that the best you can do? Hell, I used to eat Knapweed as an appetizer before mowing down an entire mountain of Musk Thistle. In fact I used to mash it up in the stream and make my own Knapweed gravy… and you call yourself “the great eradicator.”

Musk Thistle, that’s wicked stuff, but you know what’ll really raise havoc on the old digestive tract? Hemlock. The best way to tackle Hemlock is to mix in a little Toadflax, or better yet, eat as much Bindweed as you can find the night before. You see, the Bindweed acts like titanium armor; it coats your stomach and helps to counter the explosive wind tunnel effects of Hemlock… If you know what I mean.