Lifestyle & Culture
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »5 Kickstarter Alternatives That May Save Your Social Life
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on October 6, 2012 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, October 6th, 2012How Kickstarter may not only contribute to the demise of your friendships, but modern capitalist society as well. And some ideas for alternatives beyond Indigogo.
 This guy has the right idea. Take the money and ruuuuuuuuuuun! |
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock lately, or unless your mom took away your internet connection because she caught you looking at amateur furry porn, you’ve probably heard about KickStarter.com. And if this goes the way of most other social media trends, within six months, you will have a failed one. A failed “Kickstarter”, that is. It’s apparently already a noun, as in “Got a really stupid idea that no-one in their right mind would fund? Why don’t you just start a Kickstarter?” Having that achievement behind you will fit nicely with that blog you never post on, that tumblr that no-one reads but has been “tumbled” 37 times, and that Twitter feed that has seven followers. But seriously. Is it just me, or have all our friends lost their minds? None of us are any less broke-ass than we were yesterday, but today, damn near every one of my Facebook friends either has a Kickstarter campaign or is pumping their friend’s like it’s a goddamn “Feed The Children” campaign. Aside from the simple math involved, which immediately makes it evident that if we all give each other twenty five dollars, we may have well have just kept it in the first place, Kickstarter does two other terrible things that will probably contribute in a significant way to the demise of modern capitalism. First, much like a kindergarten teacher or senior citizen’s crafts group, it encourages Read the rest of this entry »
Thrive: The Movie
[ Comments Off ]Posted on September 11, 2012 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, September 11th, 2012Put on some popcorn and a tinfoil hat. Foster Gamble is taking you for a ride, in his doughnut-powered spaceship of libertarianism.
Do you ever have a vague sense that something is just plain wrong with the world, and that there must be some unseen forces guiding things? That maybe there’s a group of powerful people connected to banking and large corporate interests that have an agenda for re-shaping the world to suit their desires? That behind the daily headlines we see, there’s a subtext that isn’t being revealed, and if it were, that a lot of global events would make more sense? If you do, and you’re looking for answers, you may want to watch the movie Thrive. Not because it offers any useful answers to these questions, at least sane ones. But there are a few things about the film that makes it worth a look. First of all, there’s the price. It’s free! You can view it right on the creator’s website (or on YouTube, if your prefer). That may in fact be the film’s strongest point. You may actually want to procure a copy though
NextDoor.com – Finally a Way to Meet Those Strange People on the Other Side of the Driveway
[ Comments Off ]Posted on July 11, 2012 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012Through the magic of the internet, you can finally meet those people who live all around you, without ever actually having to TALK to them.
 Sadly, these seniors don’t use the internet, so will never meet and get to know each other |
You know those strange people living in that building next to yours? And those nameless children riding bikes up and down your street each day, the ones who sometimes arrive or depart on a bright yellow bus? You’ve probably wondered: who ARE these people? Do they speak English? Are they paid extras in a big movie you’re in, like Jim Carrey in The Truman Show
Occupy Uranus – The (ahem) End of the World As We Know It?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 7, 2012 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, June 7th, 2012Okay, enough asstrological wisecracks. This summer begins a series of exact transit hits between Uranus and Pluto. When these planets have transited in the past century, we got the revolutionary 60′s and the rollup to World War II.
One fun thing about the world ending is that there are so many ways it can happen. I’ve always been into edgecrafting things, so I found myself utterly dissatisfied with the basic Mayan 2012 scenario. That’s why I early this year, I suggested more interesting possibilities like Chicken Shawarmageddon. I also happen to dabble in astrology (a potentially embarrassing fact I’ve previously shared here and in my Astrology 101 piece), which meant that the revolution and protest of 2011 was no surprise to me. In fact I was predicting it a full year early. That’s probably why I haven’t gotten rich off my astrology skills. Anyway, events are in fact moving along more or less as one would expect when Uranus is squaring Pluto. The two planets began their little square dance in early 2011, coming within 5 degrees of squaring each other for the first time in January, around the time of the Egyptian uprisings. Pluto switched between retrograde and direct motion in short bursts until July, when it got in closer square with Uranus. The two planets remained in a close retrograde orb until Pluto broke away and went direct on September 17, 2011, which interestingly was the first day of the OWS occupation of Zucotti Park. Who knows, maybe the planners did this on purpose. A lot of them are old hippies, you know. In any case, this motion of Pluto pulled the two planets into a wider orb, reaching their greatest separation around the end of December, when they were about 7 degrees apart. You can blame Occupy fizzling on cold weather, I blame it on Uranus and Pluto. In any case, the two have been zooming back together since then, and will have their first transit “hit” (one of several) on June 26. We’re already seeing flareups of revolt and unrest around the world; most recently in Quebec, and prior to that, the May Day protests around the world that were most vigorous in Europe, where austerity is being shoved down the masses’ throats by an affluent elite. We’re also seeing things like (so far failed) attempts to recall leaders in the US, where the battleground again is over the working person fighting to retain their dignity while deceitful and affluent politicians legislate it away through things like union-busting, “emergency manager” acts, and teacher layoffs and pay cuts. So those are the planets involved, and some events that have occurred recently in the real world and their dates, but what is the supposed meaning of the phrase “Uranus square Pluto”? Read the rest of this entry »
Trailer Park Drive-In: God Bless The Hunger Games
[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 13, 2012 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, April 13th, 2012What could be more fun than cornholin’, PBR, and pirated copies of the Hunger Games and God Bless America at the trailer park on a global warming March night? A surreal evening of self-unaware meta-irony, wherein the working class unknowingly watches itself being watched.
Recently, I was invited to a party at a trailer park. Yeah, go ahead and laugh. It’s in your nature, since you foolishly think you’re more like the one percent than “those people”. I said yes of course; as you may know, this is one of my areas of anthropological expertise (see my field work here). Besides, we were enjoying some exceptionally nice climate change here in the Midwest. It was nearly 80 degrees that day. In March! I arrived a little early to find all the expected trappings of a trailer park party. People were cornholing, playing hillbilly horseshoes, and PBR was in abundance. The crowd was a little embarrassed about drinking hipster beer, but they pointed out that they could hardly pass up the 30-pack for $12.99. As the pink slime smoldered on the grill and the smell of medical marijuana began to waft through the air, I stopped mingling for a bit to step into the “back yard” and observe. The back yard in this case was the thirty-foot wide strip between the host’s trailer and the next one. By the way, before you get the urge to get all politically correct on me and tell me the polite term is “mobile home”, the host himself at one point said “Shit. Wikipedia calls them that, but this home ain’t been nowhere”. He also added that “no damn bank is takin’ it anywhere neither”. I pondered his financial savvy for a moment. His house is paid off, but 99% of the “smart” people I know are in debt up to their eyeballs. As I stood watching a particularly spirited round of cornholing, a few guys started attaching a bedsheet to the side of the next trailer and setting up a laptop and some other gear, including an insanely bright portable projector
