It's all about the Dylar pills, baby

So there are actually a lot of things I want to write about, but I'm rather involved in spending all my spare time watching the West Wing, so you'll have to wait. I would, however, like to post this parody of Lazy Sunday about Don Delillo's White Noise. It's awesome (hat tip, Jeremy):



So, anyway, I'll get to the rest of it eventually. Also if you want to donate to any candidates, the quarter (the most important one!) ends tonight for fundraising, so give some money! Check out actblue.org.

why i love gawker

A recent post:

We're frankly a little confused about the spat that's currently going down between n+1 and "lit-bloggers." We're not so much confused about the fight itself, which seems to involve n+1 being ornery about blogs, especially lit-blogs, and said lit-blogs being all ornery right back. It's all come to a head recently on the lit-blog The Millions, and it's left us wondering, just whose side are we supposed to be on here? The blustery intellectual macho-ists of n+1? The whiny, jargon-dropping we-are-too-relevant book bloggers? Sigh. It's like Trump and Rosie all over again.

Following the N+1 and lit blog wars, plus gossip roundups, politics, and nyc media news? Bless your black little heart, Gawker.

The Millions is a pretty rocking blog too.

See a little less (RED)

Apparently I'm not the only one who feels strongly about the (RED) campaign- check out buylesscrap.org, a site that takes on the (RED) campaign image for image. There you can donate directly to the causes the (RED) campaign supports without consuming more product. They say, reject the notion that "shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering." I say, Amen.

(Hat tip to Stephen)

Seriously?

Ok, Wikipedia...you and Conservapedia can rock paper scissors for the eyes of the reading public. But I'll bet a dollar I already know who wins.

Seeing (RED)

So unless you live under a rock or are an avid subscriber of AdBusters (in and of itself problematic), you will have certainly heard of the (RED) campaign. While it is essentially, and openly, a "business model" (promoted by a company called The Persuaders, no less!) it does have a manifesto, which you can read here. The (RED) people have joined up with such companies as Apple, the Gap, and Motorola to brand certain items as (RED), which means that when they are purchased some money will go towards buying retroviral drugs for Africans with HIV/AIDS. In the manifesto, the campaigns says the following:

(RED) is not a charity. It is simply a business model. You buy (RED) stuff. We get the money, buy the pills and distribute them. They take the pills, stay alive, and continue to take care of their families and contribute socially and economically to their communities.

If they don't get the pills, they die. We don't want them to die. We want to give them the pills. And we can. And you can. It's easy.

All you have to do is upgrade your choice.

This is vaguely threatening language, and clearly designed to help consumers view their decision to spend $150 on a cell phone feel more like a philanthropic act. But there are more than a couple problems with this. First, this "we want to give them the pills, which is only possible if you consume more products" is patently false. It has been well-established by many health organizations that it wouldn't take much money to fight AIDS in poverty-stricken areas. What holds them back is partially lack of funding, but it's also proprietary medicines, price gouging from pharmaceutical companies, and the pull-back of funding for preventative programs which teach safer sex practices, abolished by the Bush clan. The reason why AIDS drugs never get any cheaper or widespread is because the populations who have AIDS are irrelevant to most of the world. Poor, largely female, African, uneducated. They count on aid groups to deliver medicines to them, because the real money for pharmaceutical companies lies in promoting and developing drugs that stop incontinence, boost virility, or lower the blood pressure of our obese population.

I don't doubt that there are researchers out there who spend their days searching for cures, or that promotion of statins is necessary to recoup R&D spending. But it goes far beyond that. There is certainly a profit-margin for those in the industry, which spreads to doctors, politicians, and shows it's consequences in the sad story of the millions of people, mostly childen, who die ever year from preventable diseases like dysentery and malaria. Why? Because why should anyone bother spending money to manufacture drugs that no one will be able to pay for?

Which brings me back to (RED). The idea has come under fire, particularly for the contrast between the amount of money spent marketing (RED) products and the amounts which they actually contribute to the cause. But, as they say again and again, they are not a charity. They are a business model. The problem is not the idea that one would pay money for something one wants and indirectly donate to a charity. This has been done for AIDS before, through the sales of bracelets and other jewelry, and I'm sure in other marketing ploys as well. But I think there is a difference. When you buy a silver AIDS bracelet, it's a simple silver bangle with a large AIDS ribbon on the side, signifying that this was a purchase with a point.

(RED) products are, in general, the color red, some are not. Some have catchy slogans promoting the idea and selling the cause, others just the logo. But all of them are simply one item in a brand's line which obstentially make the buyer more socially aware, more politically active. But does it? The (RED) manifesto says nothing about educating buyers about the AIDS crisis, or the real solutions and problems which face it. While putting up some Gap billboards which state the number of AIDS deaths per year may shock some, shocking someone into buying a t-shirt to soothe their conscience does nothing to promote either activism or philanthropy, only Gap's sales figures. The AIDS crisis is no secret, nor has it been for years. The issue is not that people are unaware, or that they need Bono and Oprah at the Apple store hawking iPods to goad them into action. The issue is that the problem is "over there," a place where there are so many problems that the genocide and massive rapes in Darfur barely made a blip on the American radar. People may say, well, what can I do? And certainly, there is plenty. But the answers require real thought, a true facing of the way that our values affect the rest of the world, and whether or not we care enough to change it.

There has been a lot of talk since the iPod's takeover of American ears that you see so many people wandering around, white earbuds in, socially tuned out. And whether it's white, black, or (RED), the metaphor stands- it's a band-aid solution, but not for AIDS in Africa. This marketing band-aid attempts to cover America's occasional guilt over consumption and ignorance, but like the iPod, it's best if you turn the music up and close your eyes.

documentary films: excessively depressing, culturally relevent, or both? discuss.

If any of you saw the Oscars, you may have stuck it through long enough to watch Jerry Seinfeld present the Best Documentary award. His monologue was a bit strange and excessively long, and it struck me at the time that he was winging it because someone was in the bathroom or something and he had to kill time. It was funny, but insulting to the films and their makers and out of step with the tone of the show. One of the nominated filmmakers, John Sinno, has written an open letter over at Indiewire regarding the speech which raises some interesting points about the category, the introduction, and the show in general. Read it here.

the tip of the iceburg

So they've handed down a conviction to Scooter Libby. While it's likely he'll end up in jail for this, as so many of his corrupt brethren have in the past few years, Libby is not the real problem here. He is being used in this scandal, as others have been used in the Abu Gharaib, wiretapping, Walter Reed, Katrina, etc. scandals, as the fall guy for the incredible ineptness and corrupt nature of this administration. There can be little doubt that Cheney is involved in this, but equally little doubt that it will ever matter. Just as no one above the lowest levels of army officials or middling political staff has ever taken responsibility for anything that has gone wrong over the past 6 years, no one above Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, will ever take a hit for this. Maybe I will be wrong. Maybe eventually lawsuits and political pressure will catch up to Cheney, just as public and military pressure finally did in Rumsfield. But it seems unlikely. In addition to the five major political disasters listed above, there has also been the very fact of Iraq itself, and still Bush's cabinet remains intact and his agenda unchanged. Despite plummeting approval ratings, a Democratic sweep in November, and a pathetic list of Republican candidates for 2008, it seems that nothing short of impeachment will keep this president from doing whatever he damn well pleases and Republican supporters from talking the most disgusting brand of bullshit imaginable to keep the lies afloat. While this may feel like a victory, it's more like a step in the right direction, and there are a hell of a lot more of them to go before we can pull American politics out of the gutter.

Zodiac Update: It gets the Pajiba stamp of approval. A commercially-viable movie that doesn't suck, stars Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and has great cinematography? I am so going.

I'll have the Mark Ruffalo, with a side of the Zodiac Killer

So my reading audience may or may not know this, but for all my hatred of slasher flicks, I do have a morbid curiosity about famous serial killers. At once point in the past I even stumbled upon a whole website that gives case histories of all the most dramatized and famous cases in American history, and way up there on the list is the infamous Zodiac killer. You also may or may not be aware that: 1) the zodiac killer killed people in public places and communicated with the media for years, 2) he was never caught, and 3) my boyfriend Stephen has a long-standing and irrational fear of the Zodiac killer with which I like to tease him. For example, if the power goes out, I may suggest something like...the Zodiac killer is lurking around in the basement, just to freak him out. Yes, I am aware this isn't nice, but sometimes he's just asking for it. Stephen, unlike myself, loves horror movies and always tries to get me to see them, so when I heard rumors of a Zodiac killer movie in the works a few years ago, I thought he might actually be excited. However, he set me straight. As for myself, I was fairly unexcited about the prospect of an anything-related horror movie. That is, until about five minutes ago, when I came upon this important fact about the new Zodiac film: it stars Robert Downey Jr. AND Mark Ruffalo, two men I love love love to see in practically anything. Their involvement led me to believe that this was perhaps not exactly a horror film, and I do believe we could instead call it a "psychological thriller", a genre with which I have no problem, even when it verges into horror territory-e.g. Seven. ALSO- it has an 85% positive rating on rottentomatos.com, which is mighty hard to come by anytime of year, but particularly in the dregs of the movie-going season which is Feb/March. So, I may just have to drag someone out to the theater to see this...fortunately for him, Stephen has escaped this fate by a few thousand miles. Don't worry honey- I'll get you later.

Under Construction

I'm going to be messing with the HTML and CSS of this over the next few days, so it might be a little, or a lot, messed up and/or hideous when you happen upon it, depending on what I am doing. I may in the end decide it's not worth it and revert to the black, but I'm also very bored at the moment and coding this is something to do. So we'll see. Anyway, expect disarray.