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.

It's ok, Associated Press, the Mormons like Jesus too.

You know it's got to be a special piece of bad journalism when it's got some of the left's very best defending Republican presidential candidate, and Mormon, Mitt Romney. And, in fact, it is: a particularly bullshit "news" article by the A.P. highlighting the "polygamy branch" of the Romney family tree. Apparently Mitt's great-grandparents were polygamists, though he is against the practice and has been married to one woman for 37 years. (For the record, how many other Republican front runners can say that?) As Shakespeare's Sister rightfully points out, this has "zero fucking relevance" to the campaign. This is no more relevant to Romney's campaign, or life for that matter, than it would be to know that any other politician's great grandparents had been strong proponents of Jim Crow laws, though they themselves of course are not. Bringing it in to the campaign, let alone calling it news, insults the public and the media establishment as a whole, and I really hope that this gets called out somewhere other than the many blogs that have written about it. SS also brings up the obvious religious implications inherent in making big news out of practically fabricated biographical information (insinuating Romney supports polygamy)- while Mormons are indeed Christians, they aren't the right kind, the "strong leader" kind, the sober up and find evangelical Christianity then go make war in the Middle East kind. And that's who America likes to lead it.

Right into the ground.

yay God: oscar edition

Just a brief note to express my happiness that Scorsese (and The Departed!) finally, finally won that well-deserved Oscar, that Jennifer Hudson, Helen Mirren, Forrest Whitacre, and Marie Antoinette's costumer won theirs, slight disappointment for Kate Winslet and Leo Dicaprio, though I'm sure they'll get theirs eventually, and a reference to go fug yourself.com for the best dress commentary tomorrow- and my God were there some bad dresses.

Now if you haven't seen it- go watch The Departed! and Infernal Affairs. It's not exactly the feel good movie of the year, but it's pretty freaking fantastic.

did anyone beta test web 2.0?

It's about one a.m. on Saturday night/Sunday morning, a normal time for me to be up on any night really, but especially on a weekend. Sadly there's so much nothing to do around here I contemplated going to bed a couple hours ago but got sucked into flickr and last.fm, which brought me to updating the blog. I was talking to my sister recently about the horrendously named "web 2.0", which is the phenomenon of web community networking sites, wikis, etc. Blogs fit in to the category, so does Wikipedia (natch), as does flickr, my love of loves, last.fm, the facebook, del.icio.us, and any one of the ten or twenty of these sorts of things I use or hear about every day. Even things with a strong real-world component, like Netflix, buy into web 2.0 and hype their "friends" feature, which I've been using recently with sick fascination to either denigrate or be impressed with the movie choices of my friends. I didn't realize quite how plugged in I was to all this networking technology until I reached the low of trying to get my completely anti-book sister to join Shelfari, a (really cool) site dedicated to sharing and exploring reading habits. After she told me to go and peddle my zeal for literature elsewhere, a message which was delivered via facebook, I think I hit a social networking wall.

I frequently try to get my friends and family members to join me on websites I find particularly cool, especially if it's related to something they are really interested in already. However, no matter how much some friends love their digital cameras, I can't seem to get them on flickr. Same goes with music lovers and last.fm (or any other music site, pick your poison.) It seems that my interests, which include technology, music, lit, writing, photography, film- all the things to which these sites cater- match all of my friend's interests but one important one. The technology one. While I have a few friends who participate in each site, with the exception of facebook, that be all, end all of social networking sites, it seems like there is some idea of "trouble" or "work" built into the idea of doing things online. I'm not sure where this comes from exactly, but there must be some kind of critical mass at which people say, I'm done with new technology for the moment. For a lot of people, that catalyst may have been the iTunes-iPod combo of death, which controls the experience with such a heavy hand that the more freeform method of some networking sites may indeed seem like a lot of work. But I really think that the benefits are worth the five minutes of clicks it may take to figure something out.

Last.fm, for instance. Could I like it more? I don't know. Jonesing for some new music? Hate the radio? Just plain bored of hearing the same songs every hour? Yeah, me too. Know what bands you already like? Fantastic. Type it in a box, they play you bands kinda like that one. Hate a song? Skip it. Love it? Tell 'em. Get a custom radio station of all music you actually like. Imagine that. Make friends with people who like music you do and get some recs. Been listening to music like Ben Folds and feel like some music like Gnarls Barkley instead? No problem. So why the heck are people like, yeah, that sounds cool, but it's too much work to do it. ?!?! Same rules apply with flickr, the photo sharing site that stole my camera-happy little heart way back when it began, and has since even made a paying member out of me.

My bottom line: web 2.0, while possibly the lamest name ever coined, has brought us some damned cool websites, and I'm tired of everyone's lazy excuses for not joining them. While I can 100% see why not everyone might take it upon themselves to write a blog (you may be asking yourself why I do, as do I at times like this), if you have even slightly more than a passing interest in music, join the ranks of last.fm users and find your new favorite band. Or, allow me to peddle my zeal for literature and suggest a visit to Shelfari.com-it's new, it's got teensy books on a virtual shelf, it can help you settle that pesky problem of forgetting what books you want to read, and it will allow you to become a proud participant of the web 2.0 "revolution". And come on, don't tell me you never wanted to be part of a revolution.

Well it's been a while since I've written anything of substance, and I only put up the dog pictures under force of threat by multiple people, so I think it's safe to safe I am totally neglecting my blog. What I am wasting my time with instead? I'm ashamed to say not a whole lot. While I was busy with packing and moving and leaving school, it was easy to take a few minutes and write something, or waste hours online reading the news while I avoided doing something else. But now that I have nothing to avoid it's way easier to just do nothing. I check my email but other than that I've even been away from the computer, unaware of politics, scandal, bad outfits, or any other web items of interest and I still remain surrounded by about twenty boxes worth of junk that needs put away, clothes that need unpacked, and I still haven't really found a job.

So, you might ask: What the hell am I doing with myself all day?! Well, usually I don't really know. Today I spent a good two hours screwing with our wireless network. Honestly it really doesn't seem that bad when I get up and waste the whole day and then go to bed until I start writing something like this, which underscores exactly the amount of nothing one is capable of achieving in a day. While I'll have a job by next week, and then no more time to waste, this is still pretty unacceptable, isn't it? I'll get it together kids. For the blog. Because seriously, I am boring even myself to tears.

gratuitous dog posting

So we're having what the weathermen are calling the "Storm of '07" (ominous, right?), which means about a foot of snow and assorted wintery crap, and while it's causing all kinds of problems for the humans around here, my dog is loving it. In honor of that, and my sister and Stephen's persistent bitching, here are some photos of his first real snow:

Ben- Storm of '07

The link will take you to the picasa web album. Cheers!

lord help us all

So it's been awhile since I've posted and a lot has gone down since that not sucky Monday. In my own life I am in the process of moving, which is the reason for my shady lack of posts. Out in the real world, however, the Colts won the Superbowl in a rainy game upset, Repubs are blocking debate about Iraq in the senate (Reid says: you can run, but you can't hide. Nice.) , and Boston is getting it's panties in a twist over glorified lite-brights used to advertise for the next Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. These things are alternately surprising, depressing, and hilarious, and all have been commented on in excess by my blogging friends and peers.

Instead of putting in my two cents, which anyone bothering to read this I'm sure has either heard or can guess, allow me to direct your attention to these links:

Armed America: Portraits of Americans and Their Guns
Fascinating, and the portraits are fantastic.
(hat tip to Stephen)

Vivavi
Sustainability and green living meets beautiful, really freaking expensive furniture. Sigh.

And this, which needs no words:

here's to you, not sucky monday

so the past two days have been pretty decent, all things considered. we finally got some snow, heroes came back on, the colts beat the patriots, and hillary clinton finally announced her run so we can stop conjecturing about it and start bitching with the facts (those of you that choose to bitch. i say let her run, yay women, etc., vote for obama. but that's just me, and it's only january.)

i just wanted to have a shout-out to these lovely days of sunday and monday, because tomorrow is the state of the union address and it can only be bad for us. normally i try to watch it from a bar with plenty of alcohol at hand to play drinking games and numb the urge to put my hand through the t.v., but this year the crowd is decidedly less political and i have a feeling i will be venting my feelings here along with 9/10ths of the blogosphere, or everyone not associated with pajamas media. it will be covered by every channel, pre-empting whatever you were hoping to watch, but both cnn and msnbc should have good coverage, with msnbc putting chris matthews and keith olbermann on it. also he'll be interviewing hillary later this week, which should be interesting as he hasn't shied away from asking people questions they'd rather not answer. tune in.

that said, here's to a lovely beginning of the week, and the downhill slide that's sure to follow.

shoes are like potatos?

as a recent (ok, i'll say it) drop-out of a literature ph.d program, this combination of article/commentary from gawker brought home all the reasons why grad school is so great, and all the reasons why you want to leave as soon as humanly possible...

n+1 takes on the semiotics of payless
(via gawker)

step by step, lie by lie

as the rhetoric between the administration and iran grows and my boyfriend and i argue over the likelihood of war with iran, it seems worth revisiting this excellent timeline from mother jones, which chronicles in excruciating detail the run-up to the iraq war. they call it "lie by lie" for a good reason...even though we all lived through it, and many of us saw it coming, you'll be shocked to look back and see how much it all fits together in retrospect. it's a disturbing echo of current events, and worth a look for anyone interested in revisiting exactly how we got ourselves into this mess. it's also (nerd alert) a great use of flash and really well put together from a design perspective, if any of that matters to you political junkies. i believe it's also searchable, paper writing folks.

random blogosphere items of interest

not so breaking news:
bill o'reilly is an ass, believes kidnapped children "have more fun" with their kidnappers
(via media matters)

it's heeeere....it will monopolize your system resources, but you'll love every minute of it.
google earth 4

college republicans, still lame.
18-24 and support the war? great, don't enlist, take cookies to some wounded troops.
(via this modern world)

yes yes yes.
why being a feminist does not mean backing all women
(via alternet)