After Warhol

It was time to organize the canned goods. We had chaos in the pantry, with cans and dry goods everywhere. So in the morning, I took some time to get things together, and that included organizing the Campbell's soup cans. 

My big sister Marilyn used to laugh at me for it. That summer that I lived with them back in the 80s, I kept organizing her canned goods: neat rows, like items together, labels all to the front! (No, this is NOT an episode from Sleeping With the Enemy!)

Of course, it made me feel all whimsical and Warhol-ish, and T. Tiger whispered, "Hey, Mom, let's do a photo shoot!" (He's such a hound for good art; and for goodness' sake, DON'T let him anywhere NEAR a museum, where he is guaranteed to cause a fracas!) And so we did, and here is how it turned out.

We've got a *looks closer* festive mouse in a party hat in the upper left, T. Tiger on the right top, and then down below, an anteater, with our itty bitty friends the Crittergators. It's usually the red shirts who take all the risks, but this time it was a greenie who just had to hop on the anteater for a ride.

Now, of course, we  had to call this After Warhol, as he is the one who turned red and white soup cans into art. A brief history of Campbell's soup: 
1895 - first jar of ready-to-eat soup, beefsteak tomato
1898 - debut of red and white soup can
1900 - bronze medal for product excellence, which now appears on label
1962 - Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans exhibited at art gallery in L.A.
The rest, as they say, is history!

I picked one flavor of each kind of soup that we have for this photo. Interestingly enough, the day before, our lunch on a snow-squall-filled-nightmare-weather-of-a-day was . . . Campbell's soup. We started with the can, added our own diced cooked chicken, diced baked potato (with skin removed), and carrots; simmered on stovetop one hour. It was served with toasted cheese sandwiches, oh NOM NOM NOM!

So here is our bit of pop art for the day, and I wanted a song from Pop Art to go with it. That's the name of the first album by Transvision Vamp, a band that originated in 1986. My song is Andy Warhol's Dead, and I can't help adding another personal fave, Tell That Girl to Shut Up. Wendy James was the lead singer, and you may note that they sound a bit like Velvet Underground, who is one of their influences. BTW, the original Pop Art, which I bought on cassette when it first came out, had 10 songs; the newer version, available on Amazon (yes, I bought it digitally) has 32 songs. Enjoy!






Totally unrelated sidebar, in which I get hacked: The afternoon mail brought a credit card bill with a charge on it I did not recognize. It seems I am being charged for Walmart Plus, a service I did not sign up for. This sent my afternoon into a whole different direction, as I investigated and problem-solved. 
1. I got into my credit card account online, looked at the details, and yes, indeed, I'd been charged $13 plus for a month of Walmart Plus. I thought about "disputing" the charge, but a message on screen said to try contacting the vendor first. If I set up a dispute related to a possible hacking, they wanted me to also cancel the card and request a new one. I wasn't sure I wanted to go that far as of yet.
2. I called Walmart Plus at the 800-number that appeared on my credit card statement, and absolutely was UNable to get through their message phone tree thing. Any words I said yielded nothing. My husband came in from outside, took the phone from me, hung up, and then somehow managed to get through, by calling them and stating that he wanted to initiate a new subscription (this was a bold-faced lie, but it got us to speak to a customer service rep PRONTO!). I cancelled the service, explained that I had never authorized it and suspected a hacker was at work, and they agreed to remove the charge.
3. We had TWO Walmart online accounts, one for me and one for my husband, each using a different email address. MINE was the one associated with the erroneous charge, so I got into it, discovered that there was a printer in "my" shopping cart. It was set up to ship to a Walmart in College Station, Texas. What the . . . !???? I figured it was the hacker's work, removed the item from the cart, tried to change my password, was unable to. Sadly, all of the additional levels of security you could set up required a cell phone with texting, which we do not have.
4. I contacted Walmart online via chat, asked them to call me and help me reset/change my password. I did get a callback; got sent to several different other areas, but none of them could help me. Apparently NOBODY there can help change your password if you get hacked. Or at least nobody they let me talk to.
5. Started over. Contacted Walmart online via chat, asked them to call me again. Clearly, I could not update my password for the old account, so the hacker could probably still get in. Husband suggested that I simply close out/deactivate the account. I considered that, and decided it was the simplest thing to do. So I closed out that account.
6. It was a very frustrating, anxiety-making experience. I cannot even imagine what the hackers get out of this sort of thing. We are down one Walmart online account, but it wasn't one I used much anyway (as opposed to our two Amazon accounts, especially MINE, which contains EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING, including all of my music purchases). So . . . this experience was quite annoying, but it could have been so much worse. I hope it's resolved. I can't even imagine what a hacker is getting out of all of this. I wish I'd spent those couple of hours on something more fun! Like making soup can art!