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Lifestyle & Culture

Elite British Photobomber Paul Yarrow

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 29, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

We really need a better term than “photobombing” for the weirdos that insinuate themselves into the background of news broadcasts.

Paul Yarrow’s Mentor, Rollen Stewart

About a month ago someone sent me a link to this site, where they were pondering the identity of a “mystery man” who was constantly popping up in the background of live British newscasts. At the time, I blew it off; to me, a few of the shots looked Photoshopped, and I thought it suspicious that there were plenty of screen grabs, but no video. Well, it turns out there was a mystery man, and he has a message. In his words: “I could have a valid point about something but the microphone is always passed to the person alongside me. The point I am making is that the more you push me aside, the more I’m going to be determined to make my presence known.” Well done Paul, glad you finally got the mike so you could share that. Just don’t become the next Rollen Stewart, who – after becoming a regular fixture in sport broadcasts wearing a rainbow wig and holding up signs reading “John 3:16″ – ended his “career” with a kidnapping and standoff with the police in 1992. While you have to give Yarrow some credit for his media savvy, you shouldn’t give him too much. While there have been hundreds of streakers over the last few decades, only one of them had the sense to cut a deal with the internet casino GoldenPalace.com, the casino best known for spending $28,000 on a decade-old grilled cheese sandwich. Unfortunately for GoldenPalace, they paid him to streak at the same event at which Janet Jackson had her wardrobe malfunction. We really need a better term for this kind of behavior; the term “photobombing” doesn’t really capture the meta-significance of a fat man devoting his life to appearing in the background of a newscast. Suggestions welcome. Read the rest of this entry »

CrimethInc – Anarchy For Fun & Profit

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 25, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

CrimethInc is one of the best-organized non-organizations you never heard of.

I’ve often lamented the demise or sellout of culture-jamming publications like Might Magazine* and Ad Busters, which was part of why I was a little intrigued a few months ago when I saw the anti-consumerism video The Story Of Stuff that was making the rounds on the web. That is, until I dug a little deeper and realized that its creator, Annie Leonard – who comes across as a woman who cares and is making a difference – had a book published by Simon & Schuster, which is ultimately owned by National Amusements and Viacom, and that she was really just cashing in on the very system she opposes. Especially worthy of note is that one of her few programs is an assault on cosmetics, a product that this Simon & Schuster promo video makes abundantly evident she does not consume with any enthusiasm. So as a latent libertarian and aging punk-slash-anarchist-slash-pop culture crybaby, I was excited recently when I ran across CrimethInc, one of the best-organized non-organizations I’ve come across in quite a while. The site is much deeper than it appears; use the search box if you’re not finding something of interest. Their latest articles are about the G20 shenanigans in Toronto, but I found the Steal From Work Day campaign from earlier this year much more amusing. The have lots of free downloads of posters, stickers and literature, but if you want to give them money, they’ll sell you things too. They somehow manage to make the idea of an “anarchist store” palatable by using the hippy-dippy e-commerce support of Portland, Oregon’s BuyOlympia.com. Preview some of their goods below. Read the rest of this entry »

I’d Like To Get To Know Me But I Kind Of Make Me Nervous

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 10, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Saturday, July 10th, 2010

Sometimes self knowledge is the greatest obstacle to self knowledge.

My brain is actually pretty
easy to map lately

Many would agree that the first step in knowing anything about life is to know oneself, so it’s interesting that we don’t know who originally said “Know Thyself”. Many of us actually go through life with little self examination – some with great results, some not. Obviously if you’re “doing it right”, thinking too much can actually lead to bad choices. But probably more often, we avoid self examination because it’s simply too uncomfortable. The fact that many people seem to operate on a rather unconscious level is why one of my favorite lines from a movie is in Blade Runner when Harrison Ford says – referring to the the artificial human that thinks it’s a real human – “How can it not know what it IS?” I personally got an interesting and rather simple lesson in self-knowledge recently while talking to a life coach, which was: One of the greatest obstacles to self-knowledge is assumed self-knowledge. I’ve always been rather self-examining; perhaps to a fault. As a result, over the years I had built up a sort of “story of myself” that was based upon things that I had learned through self-exploration over the years. The problem? I had CHANGED in many ways through those years, but since I “had my story down”, I really didn’t know myself at all. And once I started digging in, I was a little surprised. My assumption that I was oganized and focused had allowed me to become disorganized and unfocused, as I started burning out on my work in web development, my “knowledge” that I was good at fresh starts helped me procrastinate on a fresh start, and my knowledge that I had a high tolerance for stress helped me let my life become an untenable mess of ungratifying work, financial struggles, and never-ending anxiety. So how did I fix things? Well, I haven’t finished yet, which is why I thought this might be a good time to share some things I’ve learned . I’ve touched on this more humorously before, asking If You’re So Rich, Why Aren’t You Smart? and Just Who The Heck Do You Think You Are? Both of those pieces have a lot of links to online tests for things like Howard Gardner’s concept of Multiple Intelligences and Myers-Briggs based quizzes. Just Google Myers-Briggs and you’ll find hundreds more of those. They’re not a bad start. But what I found was that in spite of apparently being an ENFJ (like Oprah, Reagan, Obama, and Abraham Maslow) I was paralyzed by indecision, anxiety, and a sense of futility. Which is how I found out what was really missing for me, which was a more spiritual approach. As a result, I find myself digesting what many would consider a bizarre library of books that range from the spiritual to the disturbingly “self helpy” to the “I wanna be a millionaire” genre. I’ve listed a few below. The funny thing was that it was a couple of the sources I’d least expect that opened my eyes the most – something highlighted in this PositivityBlog piece, which makes three simple suggestions, one of which is “do the unusual thing”. Often doing the thing that is what you least want to do is what you need to do most. Read the rest of this entry »

The End Of The World? It’s All In Your Head.

[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 3, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

Yeah, yeah. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold, yadda yadda. Maybe all this recent eschatology is actually just taurine scatology.

Is the end of the world near?
Probably not, but talking about it
sure sells a lot of books and DVD’s

Okay, western civilization. You had your shot, and the best you could muster was Lady Gaga, Glenn Beck, mortgage derivatives, and American Idol. So when the hell are you going to end like any other self-respecting civilization? Well, pretty soon, according to the seemingly intelligent people who’ve posted 18 pages of immensely detailed commentary on sites like this. And also according to seemingly intelligent people like Michael Ruppert, former LAPD officer, writer, and founder/editor of From The Wilderness , the popular newsletter and website devoted to investigating political cover-ups and peak oil issues. I recently watched the film Collapse, which is essentially an 80-minute monologue delivered by Ruppert in an Errol Morris-like documentary style. Ruppert is an intelligent and articulate guy, and has clearly done his research. And he’s convinced the end is near. I can actually recommend the film; it’s definitely thought-provoking. But as I watched it, a line of thought kept occurring to me. People like Ruppert present a pretty good case for our impending demise, but why are they so fixated on this simplistic outcome? Why such apocalyptic alarmism? I personally don’t think we can use historic models to predict even our immediate future; this is an unparalleled period in human development simply because of population density, mobility, and rapid information exchange that just makes things less predictable across the board. So why do people ranging from a respected scientist like Frank Fenner, who says the human race will be extinct in 100 years to collapsitarians like Ruppert, to borderline nutjob survivalists like the American Preppers Network all think we’re doomed? If you don’t feel like taking the plunge, at least skim The Psychology of Apocalypticism, a lengthy exploration of the topic from a “psychohistoric” point of view. It mostly frames the topic in terms of how religion has shaped our culture, but doesn’t explore two psychological angles I think are pertinent when exploring the “psychology of the apocalypse”. One being the simple anxiety aroused by realizing we may have to change our way of life, and the other being an unconcious collective guilt for how good we’ve had it in the west while so many around the world suffer. And let’s not forget that according to Oxfam, natural disasters actually have increased six-fold since 1980. Oh crap. Maybe the end IS near. Read the rest of this entry »

Psychobabble 101

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 27, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture

Sunday, June 27th, 2010

How to disarm your enemies by twisting the meaning of common psychological terms

Have you ever sat wanting to strangle someone for using pseudo-psychological terms as they babble on forever about the people in their life, and when they were finally done, said something like “wow, that’s really insightful”? Sure you have. That’s because you’re so passive aggressive. It’s amazing that with all the therapy going on in America, people seem crazier than ever, and in spite of decades of research and billions of dollars spent, we still turn to Dr Phil, Dr Laura, and Oprah to deal with the problems in our lives. Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of all the psychological studies of the last century and the terminology needed to make them sound purposeful is just that – the terminology itself. We now have a plethora of terms to address the common problems that we’ll never actually fix, and using them protects one from scrutiny, because using them gives the impression that one is at least “self-examining” or “exploring their personal growth”. Below is a short list of common psychobabble terms, with examples of their most effective use. If you have one or two of your own, feel free to share. Maybe we’ll discover an unexpected s y n e r g y. Read the rest of this entry »

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