On Mane Street in Pioneertown (an easy drive from the north entrance to Joshua Tree National Park), amongst the (mostly) fake facades, but not all the way to the fake looking but real post office, you will find a unique collection of art…(istic attempts).

Did those directions make sense? No? Sorry!

Let’s try that again. Drive to Pioneertown. Park. Walk through here:

Don’t go beyond here:

Look closer when you near the teepee.

Alternately, stop with the crowd, indulge in a drink (or two), and enjoy the rest of this post:

(Please give my best to Stacey, the photo-bombing bartender.)

Okay, now about that “art.” Not only does our first display qualify as art, it doubles as a good place to test the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Remember that? Here’s a refresher:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. However, the probability that monkeys filling the observable universe would type a complete work such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is extremely low (but technically not zero).

In this context, “almost surely” is a mathematical term with a precise meaning, and the “monkey” is not an actual monkey, but a metaphor for an abstract device that produces an endless random sequence of letters and symbols. ~ Wikipedia

As for that art:

And possibly this:

But then it gets a little sketchy. Is this art?

Or this?

I’m not so sure anymore. My head hurts. Too much thinking…

Is anyone else hot and thirsty?

“Oh, Stacey! Over here!”

(If you DO head to Joshua Tree from there, watch for the Sunburst Sculpture.)