Lifestyle & Culture
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Nepal’s Gadhimai Mela: World’s Most Massive Pointless Animal Slaughter?
[ 5 Comments ]Posted on November 23, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, November 23rd, 2009No my friends, the United States still has firm grasp on THAT title.
I think PETA’s gonna have to come up with a better marketing strategy than wieners and boobs if they want to do anything to stop the annual slaughter of half a million animals in Nepal November 24th and 25th. I say “slaughter”, but this is apparently a ritual sacrifice to the Hindu deity Gadhimai. I usually restrain myself a bit when offering any opinions on the spiritual beliefs of others, but I think in this case I might make an exception, much like I might in the case of Mormons, Scientologists, and atheists. All I’ll say is that if the animals are being slaughtered in honor of a goddess of power, the devotees might want to find a new goddess of power. The last time I checked, the people of Nepal weren’t popping up on the first few pages of Google search results for “powerful people”. So, does the whole idea of this mass slaughter disturb you? Well get a grip. Granted, 500,000 animals is a lot of animals (if they were all three feet long and you lined them up nose-to-tail, they’d form a line 284 miles long) but before you get your PETA panties in a bunch, ponder the fact that in the US, we slaughter more cows than that every week of the year. In fact, about 90,000 cows or calves per day. Of course, we sacrifice ours to greed, gluttony, and capitalism, so our results seem to be a little more tangible than theirs. But in my opinion, these numbers make this year’s sudden international outrage seem a little silly. C’mon PETA, sort your priorities. I mean, just because Buddha Boy was a no-show, doesn’t mean you have to pick up all the slack. If you’d like to learn more about the “Gadhimai Mela”, see this rather informative HimalMag piece, and if you just want to wallow in the gore of it all, see this France24 piece or this Himalayan Beacon piece. Read the rest of this entry »
How To Talk Like A Hillbilly
[ 11 Comments ]Posted on November 14, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, November 14th, 2009Well baste my boobs and call me a turkey! I had more fun than a tornado in a trailer park startin’ this list. Help me out.
It may be because of the fact that – hereditarily – I’m probably within spittin’ distance of Appalachia, but I have a fondness that borders on obsession for odd expressions that old geezer friends of mine use. They usually have a sort of southern flavor, sometimes a little hillbilly, sometimes a little redneck, sometimes a little white trash. We’ve talked about regionalisms like Leafpeeping Massholes and general misuse of English before, but I’m trying to assemble and categorize as many of these redneck and hillbilly sayings as I can. As you might imagine, the people most familiar with their usage are the least likely to have a computer and broadband. I worry that we’re rapidly losing some of the most colorful expressions in American English. Here are some highlights from what I’ve collected. I’d love to hear any that you may have heard from your uncle Cletus. Read the rest of this entry »
Urban Tribalism: From Gore Lolitas To Juggalo Furries
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on November 8, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Sunday, November 8th, 2009If you thought Trekkies were scary, you ain’t seen nothin yet.
Before the white man came, the Americas were populated by hundreds, if not thousands (there are 749 listed here) of tribes that spread from the arctic circle to the tip of South America. Funny how things don’t change; although hundreds of indigenous tribes were wiped out by European colonization, hundreds of urban tribes have sprung up in their place. This is true all across the globe, actually; we tend to think of nations and ethnicities as the most useful way to categorize groups of people, but in fact, the enormous number of subcultures within a culture often have more enduring values that outlive the greater culture itself. In the states, we’re most familiar with the broader subcultures like Beatniks, Bikers, Hippies, and Punks, but there are dozens and dozens more that actually have names, and some of them of them are pret-ty darn peculiar. Many of the newer urban tribes are Internet or pop media driven; Furries, Cosplayers, and Trekkies all have sci-fi/fantasy roots, but wouldn’t exist without the web to connect them. I mean, c’mon. They only leave their computers long enough to order pizza and go to conventions, as far as I know. A breed that’s somehow oddly related to this bunch – Role Playing Gamers – seems to eschew fashion and looks for brains, but probably ends up standing in the same corner at a cocktail party. Then there are subcultures spawned by music, which brings us the more familiar Goths and Emos, but also meanders into the more obscure, like Juggalos (fans of the band Insane Clown Posse), or in a frightening collision of cultures, the Juggalo Furry. Which has been described as being “like a trainwreck raping a tire fire“. When this sort of music-inspired tribe evolves because of international media distribution, the urban tribe ends up being almost like a cargo cult, as in the case of the Argentinian Rolingos (inspired by the Rolling Stones), or the Congolese Hindubills (inspired by Buffalo Bill movies). And then it gets weird. Both the Swedish Raggare and the Chilean Pokemón use various pop music, movies, and games as reference points, but only as a weird vehicle for their respective countries’ versions of white trash public sex, street racing, and drinking. Imagine the hicks from your area dressing up like Pokemón and engaging in bisexual sex at the park, and you get the picture. And then there are the body image cults like body modders, and their more style-conscious counterparts like Wannarexics and Guro Lolitas. Researching all these subcultures has left me feeling like an outcast amongst outcasts, which has been the story of my life; even when I was labeled a punk in the seventies, the punks didn’t like me. I hated beer and thought slam dancing was dumb, so I ended up being more like “Rudolph the Rednosed Punk”. So at this point in my life, and given this rather compelling diversity of subcultures, how could I lay claim to being anything other than an Otherkin? Read the rest of this entry »
You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on November 3, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009It turns out all that rassa frassin’ potty mouthin’ is good for you.
Yosemite Sam Letting Off Some Stress In The Workplace |
I’ve received a little flak for the piece Thoughts On Tom DeLay: Are You F***ing Kidding Me?, which dropped an f-bomb in the headline. Oddly, all the feedback was about swearing; none of it was in defense of Tom DeLay. Probably the funniest message I received (why do people never just leave comments around here?) was from “Tom G” who said “No serious news source would use this kind of language in an article“. Well Tom, I’m glad you finally figured out that this is not a serious news source. And for the record, please note that if you search our site for the F word, out of 600+ articles, only two others use it, and both are quoting someone else. But never mind that, cussing is really okay, and there’s science that says so. British scientists (why are they always British?) did a study that found that swearing actually makes pain more tolerable. And if Tom DeLay isn’t a pain, I don’t know what is. Aside from pain relief, this Wikipedia entry points out that profanity can even be used as part of a term of endearment, as in “I love you, you dumb fuck“. And apparently a good round of F-bombs at work also boosts team spirit and moral. And yes. As always, it’s British scientists that say so. If you want to learn more about how cussin’ actually works, see this HowStuffWorks feature. I had no idea, for instance, that swear words were MAGIC, did you? And finally, if your swearing borders on being Tourettes-like, well what the fuck. Maybe you should think about quitting. There’s help, you know. Read the rest of this entry »
What Are You, Crazy Or Something?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 29, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Maybe. But if you’re smart enough to figure it out, you may be suffering from Imposter Syndrome and never take credit for it. Just be glad you’re not descended from the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, or that you don’t have Exploding Head Syndrome.
  Feeling crazy? Bet you didn’t know you can buy straitjackets on Amazon! |
If you occasionally find yourself feeling a little crazy and stressed out, maybe it’s time to put things into perspective a bit. When confronted with a bunch of difficult decisions, you may sometimes feel like your head is going to explode. Well, just be thankful at those times that you don’t actually have Exploding Head Syndrome; I’m sure it doesn’t make matters easier. For the record, if you do think you have things figured out, you probably don’t. It’s more likely you’re suffering from the Dunning Kruger Effect, which makes unskilled people feel an illusory superiority, rating their own abilities higher than they should, while the more highly skilled underrate their abilities. Which is similar to the Downing Effect, wherein people with a lower than average IQ tend to overestimate their intelligence, while people with above average intelligence underestimate their intelligence. Thus the variations of the adage “if you think you know everything, you probably don’t“. To add to your skewed perception, the fact that you’re now aware of these effects may put you in the group that suffers from the “Birder-Grace Effect”. This group consists of those relative few who have heard about the Downing Effect. Their perceptions of their own and others’ IQs are skewed because of their knowledge of the effect. These subtler levels of inaccurate self-assesment are pervasive. You may for instance be a bright, motivated person who is unable to internalize their accomplishments. If so, you may suffer from Impostor Syndrome. Which should not be confused with the Capgras Delusion, which is the delusional belief that someone close to you has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor. Which is only slightly less creepy than the Fregoli Delusion, which causes you to believe that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance. Frankly, writing about all this second-guessing as if I know what I’m talking about makes me wonder if maybe I’m some kind of crank; and perhaps the most embarrassing kind, the Internet Crank. At least, given my anglo-teutonic roots, I can rest assured that I’m not descended from the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine.