As a palate cleanser, I look at art, so here is an art. This is Tabakskollegium [Tobacco Club], Abraham Teniers, mid-17th century. I don't know anything about this art, I just think it looks cool. I'm a big fan of dogs playing poker and this is monkeys going wild at a ‘Tobacco College’ or Tobacco Club.

It's pretty fun, though I don't think this artist has ever seen a monkey. The black monkey looks half bulldog, half kangaroo, half bat. The fuzzy monkey looks like the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz. The monkey in the other room, drinking with a bar maid, looks like Chewbacca. This honestly isn't a very good painting.

This is a very good painting. This is The Ambassadors, a 1533 painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. I tried to install the 225 MB version of this painting as a wallpaper, which ground my computer to a halt until I laboriously removed it. The Ambassadors is a stunning painting which makes me mad at how shit modernity is.

I like some modern art but the fact that most modern art looks doodly and abstract is disappointing. You can lose yourself in old oil paintings as opposed to just being lost. I've seen The Ambassadors live in London and it is alive. You have to get really, really close to see the (literal) painting (on oak).

The Ambassadors is more than photo-realistic, it takes realism into the absurd. WTF is this skull, for example, and what ungodly light source is it lit by?

You're supposed to be able to view this memento mori at an oblique angle, from the very side of the painting. Or maybe through a glass tube. I don't quite get it but it's very cool.

When I look at The Ambassadors I also imagine that the two gentlemen could read and play all those instruments, spoke many languages, and could raise an army or harvest crops. Now we have all of this knowledge in our pockets, and precious little in our skulls. Anyways, that's a small artistic break from the usual fire and brimstone. One art, and another art.