Archive for October, 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Michelle Malkin: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Disingenuousness
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 6, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010We shouldn’t fear anchor babies, we should pity them. Especially if they grow up to be Michelle Malkin.
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I feel sorry for Michelle Malkin. And perhaps even more sorry for the uptight white conservative males who hang on her every word (see graphic, below). This is a recent development by the way; since she’s essentially the heiress to Ann Coulter’s hyperbole-driven partisan “journalism”, I’ve always found her ranting to be pretty predictable. So why do I feel sorry for her? Because I took the time to read her basic biographical information on Wikipedia. If you juxtapose the basic facts of her personal life and her desperate (but profitable) pandering to xenophobic white America, an image of an intelligent and driven individual warped by dashed hopes and consumed by self-denial comes into sharp focus. The fact that she was born in Philadelphia as a child of Philippine citizens that had arrived in the United States earlier that year actually makes her anti-immigration diatribes make sense. As a friend of mine put it, “she’s like the slave who says all the right things to make the master happy”. If it matters, the friend who said this is black and Republican. It’s also enlightening that Malkin attended Oberlin with hopes of being a concert pianist. When – as she puts it – she realized that she “couldn’t cut it with piano”, she switched her major to English, later belittling the school as a “radically left-wing, liberal arts college”. So here we have a classic frustrated artist, whose birth is much like that of the “anchor babies” she rails against, whose parents are from a country that has probably felt the negative effects of American colonialism more than most, rabidly upholding the kind of isolationist nationalism that might make Kim Jong-il proud. It’s sad that someone so bright – who has benefited so much from foreign nationals immigrating to America – is so tortured by personal failure and cultural shame that she can’t discuss immigration in a more positive light. I mean, take a look at these mind-blowing lists of American immigrants. With Columbus Day just around the corner, maybe it’s a good time to remember that EVERYONE on this continent is an immigrant. Read the rest of this entry »
Say Jello To A Jiggly New World Of Possibilities
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 5, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010From patching your lawn, to wrestling, to making body parts for ballistics testing, it seems like there’s no end to the uses for Jello.
 Suck it, Aunt Mildred. |
Your aunt Mildred probably thought she was pretty crafty, the way she managed to make not only marshmallows, but actual food suspend itself magically in jello formed in a bundt pan. She had no idea. Personally, I have a basic policy of not eating anything that wiggles, so it’s a good thing there are so many other things to do with Jello. Today someone sent me a link to My Jello Americans, a blog devoted to the creation of amazingly artful jello shots that range from the macabre – like The Jason Voorhees – to the delicately beautiful, like the MJA School of Entomology . This got me wondering what else one could do with jello, and I was surprised by the answer, which is a lot. Like patching your lawn. Or wrestling in it. Or making body parts for ballistics testing on Mythbusters. Or inventing a form of marketing that lasts for decades. The possibilities seem nearly endless. Why, if you’ve grown tired of looking for sanity in modern life and feel like exploring a different sense of futility, you can even try nailing it to a wall. Both literally and metaphorically. Me, I’m gonna wait until it stops wiggling. Read the rest of this entry »
7 People Who Still Haven’t Joined Facebook
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 4, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, October 4th, 2010It’s hard to believe that with Facebook’s incredible market penetration, there are still a handful of people who haven’t joined. Do you know of any?
 Although Jesus is more of a Twitter kind of guy, he may have been the original inspiration for the “Like” button “Thumbs Up” |
If you’re reading this, that means you’re on the Internet. And since you’re on the Internet, you probably have a Facebook account. And if you don’t, well, don’t bother. Although the party will probably never stop now that Facebook has over 500 million users, the party you’ll be joining isn’t the same party that was going on a year or two ago when Facebook enjoyed its early explosive success. Everyone finds their own special relationship with a social networking site like Facebook, so maybe you’re still quite delighted to have a bunch of people you would never have lunch with as friends, because it gives you someone to play Mafia Wars with. Or maybe you derive genuine gratification from “Liking” things or joining political causes, so you can incessantly share your liberal, conservative, or wingnut point of view (not that those are mutually exclusive terms) without actually having the skills or focus to engage in real activism. But if you happen to have joined around the time I did in 2008, you may have found the witty repartee has fizzled, the great friend reconnects have taken place, and you may have come to know all too well the banal existences of both yourself and your “friends”. If that’s the place you’re in, you may have also noticed a couple of interesting waves of new users over the past year or two. First, the ones who joined around that same time as you and I did in 2008 and just didn’t get it, treating the site like the next MySpace. Then, the wave of over-40′s who read about the site in Time Magazine, also didn’t get it, popped in and made goofs of themselves, and then got quiet abruptly, having no idea how to de-activate their account. Then everybody’s mom and grandma joined a few months later, and more recently, it seems that the kind of people who are still on AOL joined, and everything went to hell. What may surprise you though, is the fact that there are still people who haven’t joined. Below are just a few. Do you know anyone who hasn’t joined? Let us know. Read the rest of this entry »
Breast Cancer Awareness Month: I Pink Therefore I Scam?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 3, 2010 by admin in Health & Wellness
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010Is it time to rethink the pink ribbon and early detection approach and focus on direct funding and a CURE for breast cancer?
 The “think pink” theme definitely moves a lot of product. In fact, I’ll gladly sell you this forklift for $100,000 and donate 50% of my profit to charity. |
I’m always happy to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month, partly because, well… as a man I like breasts. But more importantly because of the fact that most of my closest friends are women, and as someone who does work with fashion and beauty (I do work with Dior), I’m acutely aware of how breast cancer is likely to cause a woman much more personal anguish and worry than other serious illnesses, simply because of how our culture places so much emphasis on a woman’s physical appearance, especially her breasts. Which is why I sometimes also ponder whether it’s time we rethink the pink approach. The “awareness month” campaign was founded in 1985 by AstraZeneca, which manufactures breast cancer drugs Arimidex and Tamoxifen. It got some extra oomph in 1993 when Estée Lauder founded The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and established the Pink Ribbon as its symbol. So for over two decades, it has been a powerful tool for keeping breast cancer on the map as a health concern, but to what end? It has been pointed out that the campaign was originally “conceived and paid for by a British chemical company that both profits from this epidemic and may be contributing to its cause“. And if you do a little poking around, you’ll find a lot of articles like this LA Times piece that points out that in spite of all the PR, fundraising, and research, deaths from breast cancer have only declined by about 2% per year since 1990, and the emphasis remains on early detection, not a cure. The major campaigns are still backed by AstraZeneca, which clearly profits much more from this strategy than finding a cure. Draw your own conclusion. Another obvious backfire effect is the fact that so many companies jump on the bandwagon more as a marketing strategy than as genuine fund-raising, siphoning dollars into potentially ineffectual channels. This Daily Finance article gets specific, but you only have to do a quick web search to find all sorts of opportunistic campaigns like the Minneapolis bar Bootleggers’ Twin Titties Series, or the Save The Tatas campaign that centers on products like “Boob Lube, The Original Breast Check Soap” and cheesy soft-porn-themed videos like this (also below) to promote them. And Estée Lauder is trying to “get social” this year with a campaign centered on bloggers posing for fashion photographer John Midgley. They have a Facebook page, but probably don’t realize that this idea has been around with a more user-centric approach for almost ten years with sites like the annual Blogger BoobieThon. So, there are plenty of ways to keep abreast of things, like wearing your I Love Boobies Bracelets 
15 Most Offensive Halloween Costumes For 2010
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 2, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010Stuck for a costume idea this year? Let Amazon help with a bunch of tasteless costumes mostly based on sexual organs. Maybe do a “His & Hers” thing. But if you’re already a dickhead, this list won’t help much.
  Admittedly, in some parts of America this one wouldn’t be offensive, it would be a typical way to spend Saturday night. |
I like to think of Halloween as a fairly light-hearted affair; a time to either just get silly, or for the more repressed amongst us, to live out our secret selves. The latter probably being a good explanation for why so many supposedly straight men seem to get so enthused about dressing up in drag. My tradition tends to be to think up all sorts of great costumes well ahead of time, forget to create them, and then improvise at the last minute. One year this resulted in my putting on a black turtleneck, black pants, and attaching socks and underwear all over to go as “Static Cling”. If you’re ever in a last minute jam, remember – you can always grab some ping pong balls, shave your head, and go as Homer Simpson. But unfortunately, in these tense, post-politically correct times, some people have to take everything seriously. Last year’s controversy about this offensive “illegal alien” costume