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It's often not a bad idea to look at the person who spews the most hate and hey, if he's not spewing any, it's probably not appropriate.

^that right there^ is the funniest thing I've read in weeks.   

Mind Lazor science - finally explained!

I can't remember where I initially found this poster or who made it, but I wanted to say that this one



has been left up longer than any others I've left around campus and downtown.*  No, the one that's not the boob.  The 'gulik juice' poster has lasted 2 months and counting, while the rest usually come down within the week.  If you (whoever is reading this) invented it, you are the awesomeness.

(*Except for that one sticky note "your friend likes this" which is still on the glass bookcase in my department almost a year after the fact.  I love seeing that thing every day.)

good rant

thanks cram 

[Absentmindedly ravenous]

It's most definitely a truth-claim, that much we know, but we're hard-pressed to say what the parameters might be.  And we're not alone. 

That phrase, "I don't know, it's like, ironical, or whatever" has baffled a decade's worth of anthropologists!  The most they've been able to pin down is that it has something to do with Alanis Morrisette and pissed off high school English teachers.  But all this time we've known it means more, contains worlds, indicates fascinatingly imprecise somethings. 

When I look too closely, it's the grey goop anti-GMO(or)nanotech people kept warning us about.  It thinks it's a Mainstream, and has a devoted press continually rebranding it as such, but it's just grey goop, eating away at the communication of people and ideas.  Absentmindedly ravenous and fascinated by itself.  Then I look away, and it's

A plugged-in 40 year old 20-something walking down the centre of the sidewalk, head down, adjusting her/his ipod with one hand, earbud in one, cell in the other, parting the sea of increasingly unreal others.  So... connected to everything except the exact physical location they're inhabiting, save for the odd shoulder check. 

What that connection that connects her to that fashionable connectivity might be made of?  Well, that's not as interesting, not as shiny as our new cultural black hole, the Ever-Tween.

The Ever-Tween is 30 years old, has 20,000 Friends, is 30,000 in debt and describes herself as moderate.  He's signed 100 online petitions for and against various things, but would never go to a protest (except maybe one like those American comedians threw to make fun of protesters.  That one was like, ironical, or something we're not sure of yet).  She's entirely capable of Having An Opinion about that new thing that just happened before she's finished reading the first three words of the news article.  He's planning his retirement around winning the lottery and sneers at the word union.  She's trying not to smile because it causes wrinkles.

All this filler, seeing patterns in that vacancy.  Everyone seems to think it Means Something.  You know, there's a hoard of tenure-humping meme-chasers currently insisting that it might Mean Something wonderful...

When everything I see looks like everything else.  What's that called again?  And why does it feel so fucking sticky?

Since these petitions are ignored apart from an occasional patronizing and inane political statement amounting to nothing more than a condescending pat on the head, we the signers would enjoy having the illusion of success. Since no other outcome to this process seems possible, we demand that the White House immediately assign a junior staffer to compose a tame and vapid response to this petition, and never attempt to take any meaningful action on this or any other issue. We would also like a cookie.

adorable.    I love it.

side note: Good exercise to put the lie to social media/e-voting =s democracy/empowerment.

Presumably so mom will know where to find them when she comes to clean up our filthy town. 

HAR!  Check out my "America" thread in Apple Talk.  Talk about synchronicity.

I'M NOT PICKING IT UP AND YUO CAN'T MAKE ME.  >muttering<  Can't prove it, never saw me do it... always pickin on me...

I saw it as a polemic taken from the point of view of someone who says things like, "NOW look what you made me do." and you perfectly nailed the attitude of petulant teenager that any sane observer would conclude is our national character.

^also this^

Looking forward to reading the rest of these.

[in]

On each side street of my city any time of year, you'll find 2 or 3 (at the very least) hand-sized bags filled with palm-sized portions of puppy shit.  These bags, whether squished, busted or still intact, are sometimes found dangling from the branches of trees, but are usually left in the middle of the sidewalk.  Presumably so mom will know where to find them when she comes to clean up our filthy town. 

But I guess expecting dog owners to carry Rover's poop all the way home is pretty unreasonable of me.  And it's not like they're rude jerks who don't even bother to bag it. 

No, they're the yuppie gods of compromise, lovingly wrapping each individual dog turd, but instead of lugging the stinky homemade stressballs all the way home, they leave them for me to find.  I wonder if its strategic and surreptitious, or if they carry the PRIZE INSIDE bags around and sneaky-drop them when they think no one's looking?

Next logical question -- Where does it go, if not on the sidewalk?

Would you believe -- the compost bin?  The city, you see, encourages eco-minded folk to mix those individually black-bagged fido leavings in with the potato peelings!  I shit you not!  The plastic baggies that you'll still see melting into the sidewalks year round are biodegradable you see, and gosh, folks use cow manure for fertilizer all the time.  So it's the exact same thing!  Right?

And here's where my head explodes.  Toronto closes public toilets throughout the 90s and early into the 00s with the excuse that gay people like to fuck which is dirty-wrong and AIDS, while in the meantime and in totally unrelated news, all the park benches get seemingly pointless dividers down the middle so that no one can sleep on them anymore.  Same bat channel, the downtown shelters get closed while new shelters open up on the outskirts (6$ a day just to get there and back downtown where the panhandling's a little better).  So, while the city's fattest legislate away the right of homeless people to stop walking, there's human crap in every semi-private public nook all up and down the city streets because the city has left people with nowhere left to GO. 

But what we can do, because we're people who care, is individually bag each shit from each purse poodle, mix em all in with our leftover food, and then spread that nutrient rich eco-benefit all over our gardens.  Not to mention all of the cat piss, shit, litter, bird cage stuff and so on.  Dagnabbit, now that's work worth doing!

I hear you ask, "What else goes into a healthy Torontonian mulch?"  How about raw fish and chicken, leftover cake, baby diapers, candy and menstrual pads?!  YUM! 

This lovely mix is then sent (after 'chemical digestion' and some kind of pressing process) to Compost Farms, where our old plastic and nastiness goes to make "high quality compost" (that looks suspiciously like landfill). 

But back to the point.  This, to me, epitomizes the Strange Times:  side-stepping around one of those ridiculous carefully enviro-wrapped little black baggies only to step in that long red-brown thick smear of human shit on my way to work.

Shit.  I thought Erik Erikson was a joke name.  Whole blog looked fake.   But it makes sense knowing it comes from a thinktank man type.

cain - thank you for the amount you put into sharing what you know.  It's appreciated.

I fit right in!  Unfortunately.

You were hoping to be the odd one out?

Either way, good on you for going.  Stay warm & dry (and greetings my fellow n00b).

EDIT:  2 hours later, I think this sounds ridiculously douchy of me and apologise sincerely to trix.  I wish I could be at the protests here, but the new apartment I've moved into has bedbugs, I'm covered in lovely evil welts, slightly off my bean from 2 weeks of bites, cleaning, move-in, etc. and don't want my contribution to new tent city to be these evil buggers.

The 'odd one out' comment was meant to be a question about tactics, but I see people in this thread have been talking about that already for awhile.  Much respect to people outside tonight.

rhiz,
- out for the night. 

I fucking love Regina!




I know this thread is more about commentary, but I had to pay tribute to this titan somewhere.  He makes my spaz gland happy.

and just one more...  this one from Toronto: http://instagr.am/p/QO75K/

Back on topic - Interesting about the fake photo.  Has anyone looked into who's running the site? (please let it be Tom, the fake syrian lesbian!)  I didn't know about this 53% thingy and just checked out their blog briefly.  What a waste of space.

ima get my drag on.   Is penance from Dok for lax discordianism.

saxakazoo.

Because this great word has to be said out loud, at least twice.

There is a whole blog devoted to this

They're so beautiful... 

http://feministryangosling.tumblr.com/post/11171215605

Good reading, cram.  Thanks for posting this!

more stuff to think about - on decades and time from Utah Phillips : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxyhjhtS1KA&feature=related

"That whole idea of decade packaging, things don't happen that way...
... that packaging of time is a journalistic contrivance they use to trivialise and dismiss important events and important ideas"

When all you hear are the filtered summaries through the news or second-hand reports, you only see how diffused the movement is, how incoherent it is, how small it is, how apparently insane some of the protestors are.

Yes!  And when official history is made up of things like news summaries, you only see how precise The Movement was, the One Thing that sparked it all, the One Point people wanted to make, the Iconic Image and how (of course) it ended.  Women's Lib happened with a burning bra and some academic women.  The Anti-War movement happened when some middle class white woman dressed funny and put a daisy down a gun once upon a time.  Civil Rights was about black people and buses.  Turning histories into stories makes tidy ends of imaginary single-string events, when it's all ongoing and much, much messier.  And much more interesting.   

["Extremely Close and Incredibly Slow"]

My live sloath sex show got rejected.

They wouldn't take my Slugs Gone Wild submission either...     what IS academia coming to?

Call for papers:

The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) invites proposals for papers and artistic contributions around the topic "Extremely Close and Incredibly Slow" for its annual international workshop and conference.

I can't make it, but if your school or work chips in for conference funding / professional development, the deadline for your 300 word proposal and bio is in 3 days.  Conference is March 28th.

Cool idea, cram.

(they're also looking for "Extremely Close and Incredibly Slow" 'performances'...)

Huuuh.

Thanks for this, Hoser. It got the old brain turning. I might actually submit something for this - you never know, you might get lucky. It took me 15 minutes to hash together a proposal on the subject that has been bubbling in the back of my mind for a bit (on the nature of online communities). It needs to be in by the 1st... so I'll have a reread of it after work and probably throw it at the email tonight.

Sweet!  Were you able to get this out on time?

/derail

[leave odes to your rash here]

What I did on my summer vacation, but for viruses you get from other people's fluids.  Feel free to leave odes to your rash here. 

[disclaimer]  This thread is not intended to slight the very real pain people with VDs have, or to make fun of the dead or dying.  It is exactly what it seems – An ode to my MOUF-HERP. [/disclaimer]


It starts as all true stories do: with a Russian exchange student in a back alley in South Korea in 2001.  Wide-eyed, he innocently told me that welter of boils on the side of his mouth was a sunburn.  Instead of saying, That's not what a sunburn looks like!  Or, Oh yeah?  Well, why'd you just burn one side of your lip, HUH?, I instead replied, ohOKMMMFFFFGGGG.  And two weeks later, was gifted with my first case of squirrel lip!

Over a decade later, I've realized not only was The Russian entirely worth it ("You are... too beautiful... My English is not enough...  Is torture to leave you!1!"), but my herp just keeps on giving.

Like right now!  In the past week, I've moved to a new apartment, couldn't use the service elevator (3 flights down, 5 flights up), walked s'more on a foot that's been crackling and nasty for months, one of the cats got fleas, and my Lady Love left for a 3 week vacation back home in Belfast.  Stressed, paid work backing up, eating take-away rather than making depressing dinners for one, picking flea poop off my sheets before I launder them, with tonnes of boxes unpacked so, even to me, it looks like I'm some crazy hoarder chick... 

... THIS is when The Tingle poofs out into a DERP!

This should, by any CIVILIZED STANDARDS, have me shamed and hiding in my apartment, ordering more take-away, crying into my itchy puss.

But there's something... awesome... about strutting through the throngs of businessmen and sports fans down Front St., and enjoying their double-take.  They start out all Fonzie and come up eee.  I make them feel like my cat's fleas make me feel.  And that's a fleeting specialness I have to enjoy while I have it. 

More to the point and more importantly, if not for the visible manifestation of baw-stress on the front of my face, I'd be tempted to pep-talk myself into feeling guilty for feeling crabby right now.  Like this:

Life changes, you roll with the punches, and why are you stressed when you should be elated over more new things in life!?   Hey!  Isn't that a farmer's market down the street?  Whee!!  Why so glum!?

\
\


Whether it sleeps quietly in my spine, or spurtz out through a split lip, scaring riders on public transit, the herp-a-derp shows me that this is not a normal time, and strangely enough, reminds me that my brain/body will have some equilibrium again in a few weeks, as it always does.

rhiz,
- has no shame (and is inspired by dok's invitation to tweet my un-creative trivialities)