Archive for October, 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »10 Secrets To Being Happy, Healthy & Wealthy
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 16, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, October 16th, 2010Or: “If You Really Know All The Secrets Of Success & Happiness Why Are You Writing About Them On Some Crappy Blog?”
 Why is this woman smiling, in spite of her hideous appearance and trivially self-involved thoughts? Because just by being born, she has everything you spend you whole life only praying you had. |
I’ve been both a victim and a beneficiary of the self-help movement since the 1980′s. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hittin’ a self-help guru in those days; I even had a band manager/mentor (Hi Jim!) who simultaneously inspired my band with forward thinking, and tortured us with pleas to become his est podlings. While there’s a lot of self-improvement tripe out there, there’s also a lot of great stuff. Laugh if you like, but I can shamelessly say that I’ve found something useful in books by all the big names, from old school stuff like Napoleon Hill
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Why Does The Government Keep Promoting Cigarette Smoking?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on October 15, 2010 by admin in Health & Wellness
Friday, October 15th, 2010Thanks to the restrictions imposed by recent legislation, Pall Malls have never looked more appealing.
 How well do you think these would sell? |
I must confess to having what you may consider a filthy, disgusting habit. No, not that one. I smoke. I’m not especially proud of it, and I may actually quit some day, but with no thanks to the US Government. If you don’t smoke, you may not have even noticed the results of the legislation recently enacted that restricts cigarette makers’ labeling of their packaging. So what were the results? Mostly the packages are just lighter shades or more colorful and appealing. In essence, the regulations just drove the tobacco companies to spiff up and contemporize their brands, while giving them incomprehensible amounts of free press. Aside from the fact that it has been recognized for some time that smokers engage in a high degree of cognitive dissonance it is now often argued that warnings can actually encourage people to keep smoking by stimulating their coping skills for dealing with the negative messaging. And it has also been suggested by marketers like Martin Lindstrom (in his book Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
Facebook Really Puts The “FB” in “FBI”
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 14, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, October 14th, 2010But we can all sleep a little better knowing that yesterday’s paranoid delusions are today’s ho-hum realities.
Remember a few years ago, when most people over 25 were just beginning to join Facebook, and this seemingly tinfoil hat paranoiac video (also below) was going around, trying to scare the bejeebus out of everyone by pointing out all of Facebook’s connections with the CIA, NSA, and the IAO’s Total Information Awareness program, as well as the details of its creepy privacy policies and user agreement details? Well, it’s not so tinfoil any more, is it. We’ve talked about privacy a lot before, and how both Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Eric Schmidt have already decided your privacy is a thing of the past, but until the EFF got their hands on some Homeland Security documents the other day, any Big Brother paranoia you might have experienced about your Facebook activities was still a little hypothetical. Well, now you can pretty much rest assured that your every move IS being catalogued, so relax. It’s too late now. Just don’t make casual observations about things that go boom in places where people might shop, or you’ll have the FBI crawling up your ass too. Or at least under your car. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Bob Dylan A Folk Nation “O.G.”?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 13, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wednesday, October 13th, 2010Researching gang signs on the internet may save your life, but it won’t prevent arthritis.
As I glance at the server reports for Dissociated Press, I occasionally get to see amusing patterns. Last week I noticed we were getting a fair amount of traffic for the phrase “folk gang signs”. Which perplexed me for a moment. It immediately conjured an image of Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie throwin’ gang signs or stackin’. But then I remembered there’s a massive coalition of gangs called Folk Nation, and it made a little more sense. Except, then I wondered… who the hell looks on the web for guides to gang signs? I mean, when they let you in the gang, they must show you all the secret hand signs, right? And by the time someone studies them, designs detailed graphics, and puts them on a website, well, if your gang is still using them, they’re not very good secret gang signs, right? So I figure maybe it’s the millions of members of the Scissor Gang Mafia. Which leads to a scary thought: what if all of those people were a real gang? If every stupid guy or girl between 3 and 30 that posed for their Facebook profile with pursed lips and a gangsta sign were part of a real organization, it would dwarf the US Military. So don’t tell them; the results would probably be scarier than the aging white guy angst of the tea party. So kids, keep researching those gang signs, if only to make sure you don’t get shot for accidently using your hands to say “Crips die and I love Justin Bieber”. Who is, by the way, a confirmed SGM member. And remember. Gang signing may not be Cerebral Palsy, but it does cause Arthritis.
End Of Ze World Creator Jason Windsor: Alan Smithee Of The Internet
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on October 12, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010There should be a term for people that accidentally create disposable viral content and then prefer not to take credit for it. Then I wouldn’t have to spend an hour of my life watching Gröûp X stick man videos.
The internet generates a lot of phenomena that calls for new terminology. I think we need a term for useless and disposable media that becomes virulently popular, but that the creator prefers to be distanced from. Sort of like an Alan Smithee of Flash animation. The other day the now-antiquated End Of Ze World animation resurfaced, and as a result, I got a little curious about who created it, and if there was any followup. A logical place to look for this sort of thing is of course KnowYourMeme.com, but unfortunately, they didn’t. Know their meme, that is. They have a slightly confusing entry that references Jason Windsor, his alleged Facebook group, and the band “Gröûp X”. It was immediately evident that the Facebook page was not in fact Jason Windsor’s, so I started searching. Who is this Jason Windsor? Who created the darn animation? And who is this Gröûp X? Well, after a wikiphiliac hour or so of digging, I think I’ve pieced it together. In spite of the fact that someone even went as far as registering the domain EndOfWorld.net to plead for the creator to come forth, and in spite of dozens of sources that credit Gröûp X, it turns it out it wasn’t that hard to get the facts straight. It turns out that the confusion stems from nerdy google-impaired webtards emphatically repeating on comment threads everywhere that “omfg u r so stupid stfu its by group x just watch bang bang bang its so obvious“. By which they mean “if you watch the video Bang Bang Bang by Gröûp X the animation style and fake accent make it clear that they are by the same person”. Which is in fact wrong; End of The World was created by Jason Windsor, a young guy from California who then apparently got hired by Wieden + Kennedy to do some spots for “Nike Sphere”, which included Stupid T-Shirts , Autumn In New York , and Perfect Conditions. Windsor has since kept a low profile, not wanting, I suppose, to be famous for a goofy animation he did as a teen. And the band Gröûp X? If you watch a few of their fan-produced videos, you can quickly see where the confusion would arise. What’s interesting is that the band and Jason Windsor have one thing in common aside from their fake accents and stick-man animations: neither especially wants to be known by name for what they’ve done. The Wikipedia page about Gröûp X says that “mentioning their true identities or nationalities is generally frowned upon by fans and band alike“. Which is probably just as well. The video clips and prank call recordings are kind of quirkily amusing, but the whole phenomena suddenly loses its charm when you read about (don’t do it!) what they’re really like. Clips below. Read the rest of this entry »