Archive for November, 2010

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You Look Hot With A Fag In Your Mouth

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 10, 2010 by admin in Health & Wellness

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

Would making teens associate having a cigarette in their mouth with having a penis in their mouth be more effective than the new FDA anti-smoking campaign?

We took a look recently at how the government gets it all wrong with anti-smoking campaigns by creating legislation that actually drives innovation in tobacco packaging. So I guess we shouldn’t be surprised – since our government is pretty much owned by all the industries that it’s supposed to regulate – that the FDA’s latest anti-smoking campaign looks like it was assembled by interns at RJ Reynolds’ ad agency. Although presumably inspired by the dramatic and offensive images used in the UK and Canada, the images in this campaign are almost kitschy, horribly retouched, and more likely to inspire Photoshop contests than deter smoking. As a smoker who occasionally ponders quitting, I can tell you with confidence that these images will have absolutely no impact on my cigarette consumption, nor any smokers I know. In fact, when other countries mandated that cigarette makers place these images on their packages, a friend of mine would ask friends traveling abroad to try to get him complete “sets” of all the disgusting images for his collection. Telling a smoker to quit smoking because it’s going to kill them is much like telling a skate punk to quit skateboarding because he’ll end up with broken bones poking out of his skin. The danger is part of the seductive nihilistic appeal. If the government really wanted adults to quit smoking, they’d issue free Chantix. It would probably be cheaper than all of these PR campaigns, and might actually help a few people quit. And when it comes to preventing youngsters from starting, I think The Onion was onto something with their It’s Gay To Smoke parody (video below). If you could actually get teens to associate sticking a cigarette in their mouth with sticking a penis in their mouth, peer pressure would take on a whole new dynamic, and maybe the youngsters that really do want a penis in their mouth could get down to business, and the rest could be “scared straight”, so to speak. But seriously, the fact is that a typical teen these days looks for images more graphic than these on purpose, so they’re certainly not going to be deterred from smoking by looking at them. I’d even argue that it’s sort of like the giggling, gross-out teen equivalent of the way Mad Men glamorizes smoking. So below are a few stabs at some alternatives. We challenge you to Photoshop and submit something better, which shouldn’t be hard; these took me about ten minutes. The FDA site has the images in a PDF file (13MB) or zipped JPEGs (6MB) if you’re interested. Read the rest of this entry »

More Alternative Thanksgiving Turkey Recipe Ideas

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 9, 2010 by admin in Holidays

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

People gobbled up our last feature on weird ideas for Thanksgiving recipes, so we’re back to let you know that you can have your cake and meat it too.


As a health precaution, a turkey chef should always wear the appropriate head gear as well.

Thanksgiving, as we all know, is a day of family, feasting, joy, celebration and thanks. Unless you’re a turkey, of course. I don’t know why we have it in so bad for flightless birds. Years ago, when KFC’s slogan was “We Do Chicken Right”, they opened a new location in San Francisco, and while the sidewalk cement was still wet, a friend of mine engraved it with “You done them chickens wrong“. Which kind of sums it up. Our national guilt about the annual turkey slaughter runs so deep that the president is obligated to pardon one each year. But that doesn’t stop us from turning them into lowfat cat food, deep-frying them, stuffing them with twinkies, or turning them into Teriyaki Jurkey . We’ve already shared a few ideas for alternative thanksgiving turkey recipes, but we think this time we’ve found some ideas that are even weirder. Read the rest of this entry »

Rockmelt – A Social Web Browser, Not A Death Ray

[ Comments Off ]Posted on November 8, 2010 by admin in Technology

Monday, November 8th, 2010

The new social network-oriented web browser Rockmelt could easily be pitched as a “Flock Killer”. If anybody knew what the heck Flock was.


We would have been SO much more excited
if it were a planet vaporizing death ray.

In August of last year, we pondered whether the mysterious Rockmelt was a new web browser or a planet vaporizing death ray. Well, the answer has been revealed, and frankly, we would have been a little more excited with the death ray option. So why is someone creating yet another browser? Don’t Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, et al give us enough to choose from and argue about? Well, on the “social web”, apparently not. Rockmelt is designed specifically to pull all your social doodads into one place, in a handy tabbed fashion. This is probably why no-one is calling it a “Firefox Killer”; if anything it’s a “Flock Killer”. And that’s not very sexy, ’cause who the heck has heard about Flock, aside from the guys in the IT department and when I mentioned it just now? I for one won’t be rushing to download and install the recently announced beta version of Rockmelt; if they’re trying to build trust and user engagement, they’ve already scored a few negative points with me. I gave them my e-mail over a year ago to stay informed, and heard nothing of them until they popped back into the tech media buzz the other day, asking for you to connect with your Facebook account if you want to try their beta release. No thanks, Rockmelt. They’re obviously on the right track in some ways though; as this Wired piece points out, the web we knew is dead, and apps and social networking define the road ahead. But to define your launch with a Facebook log in seems a little less than forward thinking. Most of the tech savvy and social people I know have been turned off by the MySpace-ization of Facebook, and are using it less, and with less enthusiasm every day. So if you’re an active Twitter/Facebook/FourSquare type, Rockmelt may be just the ticket. Personally, I’m a little connection weary, and LIKE the fact that I have to access different devices, apps, or websites to stay connected. So Rockmelt, drop me a line when you come out with the death ray version. If you can find that e-mail I already gave you. Launch promo video below. Read the rest of this entry »

Joan Wasser’s Band Joan as Police Woman

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 7, 2010 by admin in Music

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

I’m glad talented violinist Joan Wasser took the instrument off her chin to demonstrate what a magically brilliant songwriter and singer she is.

The only thing stranger than the fact that I hadn’t heard of Joan Wasser and her band Joan as Police Woman until the other day is the fact that I feel like I’ve known her and her music for years. Or maybe the latter is not really so strange, considering the fact that after her tune Start of My Heart (video below) literally made me cry the first time I heard it, I immediately bought her 2008 release To Survive, and in the 48 hours since, have listened to it like, four times. And in between listens, have read about her career and listened to or watched anything by her that I can find. But even if I hadn’t so instantly fallen in love with her work, there’s an intimate intensity and emotional depth to most of it that would have eventually had the same effect. One imagines that some of the incredible depth and “realness” of her expression is informed by the loss of her partner Jeff Buckley back in the 90′s, and more recently her mother (the inspiration for the title track of “To Survive”) but her talent as an arranger and songwriter is remarkable in itself. Listening to her work one is slowly struck by its subtly. I say “slowly”, because her impeccable arrangements allow horns, backing vocals and other instrumentation to weave through the tunes so effortlessly that one barely notices their coming and going until repeated listens. It’s almost hard to believe that she is – as she implies at one point in this interview – an “ear musician”, saying that music theory “is just like math to me“. Although Wasser only has a few solo releases as a songwriter and vocalist, her resumé as a violinist extends back to the 1990′s and includes work with the likes of Lou Reed, Sheryl Crow, Sparklehorse, Elton John, David Sylvian, the Scissor Sisters, Antony and the Johnsons, Joseph Arthur, and Rufus Wainwright. I love that ex-Fishbone member Chris Dowd apparently praised her as a “soulful mothafucka” in the liner notes of a Seedy Arkhestra release. It’s that kind of reference that makes me hope Wasser finds the broader recognition that she deserves without a major label deal; I don’t think they’d know what to do with her! While her music has a mature honesty that is easily understood, there’s an intense beauty and strength in her face, her persona, and her work that defies definition, and would almost certainly be diluted and destroyed by the pop music packaging process. In spite of the fact that so far I’ve only picked up her 2008 release, I’m looking forward to her upcoming 2011 release “The Deep Field” (see clip below). Partly because the title references a place where galaxies are born, and partly because at this rate I will have listened to everything she’s done a couple hundred times by then. Read the rest of this entry »

The QE2, The Titanic, And Why I Didn’t Vote Last Week

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 6, 2010 by admin in Politics

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

But I’m glad you were on deck screaming “I don’t think we should sink!” I’m sure it helped. Oh. And all these “bubbles” you keep hearing about? They’re normal when a huge ship is going down.


Context here if you don’t get this joke

Yesterday a friend asked me if I voted last week. I calmly said “nope”, to find myself on the receiving end of a laser-like liberal glare that screamed “how could you abandon us at this crucial juncture in history?“, but then out loud they said “Why the f— NOT? Are you RETARDED or something???” I then reminded my liberal friend that it’s not nice to say “retarded”, and went on to explain that my decision not to vote was part of my plan to accelerate my collapsitarian vision for a shiny new apocalypse. You see, what liberal, conservative, and especially that other bunch of voters seemed not to notice last week was the fact that Ben Bernanke had instructed Washington to print a bunch of money in a quantitative easing effort. For those of you not familiar with sophisticated economic terminology, 1 bunch=$600,000,000, and according to many, quantitative easing = bank bailout. To me the best part of this all is that since everyone’s calling it “QE2″, we no longer have to resort to that hackneyed “polishing the brass on the Titanic” line. The QE2, as you may recall, was the last of the great steam-powered luxury liners, whose only satisfied customers were probably the British soldiers that she ferried to the Falkland War. The debate will rage about this economic strategy until the results manifest themselves, but for one of the more balanced views of what’s going on (even if you do think he’s full of shibboleth) Paul Krugman sums things up here. And there’s one likely side effect of this cash injection that I find hilarious: in spite of the fact that if teabaggers had any idea what’s going on in the real world, they would be in a psychotic rage about the government printing a bunch of money at a time like this. But in their inexplicable ignorance, they’ll support it with every bone in their little heads, because clearly, if the rest of the world thinks an idea is stupid, it must be the patriotic thing to do. By the way, if you want to print your own money at will just like Ben, HowStuffWorks has excellent step-by-step instructions. Read the rest of this entry »

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