The Revolution Needs A Graphic Designer
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 13, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, October 13th, 2011As soon as Occupy Wall St starts using professionally printed signs and posters we can assume the movement has been hijacked, but could we at least lose the “20th century Soviet” and “60′s Power Fist” motifs?
 I’ve personally begun A-B testing for the revolution. |
If you’ve visited DissociatedPress.com with any regularity over the last few years, you know that I’ve been a bit annoyed with Wall Street since 2008 , when the industry built on gambling your hard earned dollars on sophisticated ponzy schemes to line billionaire bankers’ pockets with bonuses came tumbling down like a lost weekend in Vegas. Except when the hustlers lost their wad and woke up with a brain splitting hangover, they somehow managed to convince everyone to float them JUST ONE MORE TIME, swearing they’d mend their evil ways. Well, like any addict struggling with an addiction, they lied of course, slipped themselves a bunch more bonuses and wild parties just months later, and in the big picture, pretty much broke capitalism in the process. So it was with some excitement that I started watching the Occupy Wall St movement begin to gather steam last month; I even set up a site at OccupyAnnArbor.org, figuring if the movement didn’t arrive in my town on its own, I would HELP it arrive. No worries there though, within a few days of creating the site, about 1200 people had gathered spontaneously on one of the many Facebook groups that had suddenly popped up. Which is what I think the power of this movement is; it is genuinely grass roots and citizen-driven. People make fun of the cardboard signs being used at most gatherings, but to me those signs are a GOOD thing. As soon as we start seeing a lot of professionally-produced signs, we can probably assume the movement has been co-opted by a particular party or interest group. But that doesn’t mean we have to prove the “none of us is stupid as all of us” adage is actually TRUE. I think all the ninety-niners (see what I’m doing there?) should take a moment to read Frank Luntz’s Words That Work, and maybe Lovemarks, the brilliant book by Kevin Roberts about why we love the brands we love. The reason to read that first book is because Luntz helped the GOP understand the winning strategy of “it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear”, and the reason to read the second one is because it might help protesters understand that as much as using a black power fist makes you feel like you’re partying with Jimi Hendrix and Malcolm X, it makes the casual viewer think you’re a naive socialist who is out to undermine the American way of life. So while lots of artists like Shepard Fairey and Rob Sheridan are offering up free designs, I think even these talented designers are going a little too “oppressed laborer” with the imagery. So I’ve assembled a few images and ideas of my own about how to reframe the revolution a little. Feel free to chime in or share some interesting thoughts of your own, and if you’re looking for some inspiration, there’s a healthy collection of motifs here. Read the rest of this entry »
If Deficits Don’t Matter, Why Does The Government Keep Taxing Us?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 16, 2011 by admin in Politics
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011I’m taking the same approach to federal budget discussions that I took with the health care bill. I’m hiding ’til they’re over, so I can smugly observe later that nothing has changed.
 This image really has little to do with the article, but we spent a lot of time on it so we like to use it whenever we can. |
I wish I were the US government, or a bank. Then, whenever I’m broke or actually running at a deficit, I could just say “that’s okay, Deficits don’t matter” or “people of America, if you don’t give me exactly the amount of money I need, life as you know it will cease to exist” and everyone in America (and their grandchildren) would give me billions of dollars, which I could share with my other friends who had been frivolous about finances or made some insanely bad investments. Unfortunately, I’m not a bank or the government, so it is mostly with a detached amusement that I sit and read about the shirtless flirts in Washington that we pay so much to sit around arguing about the annual budget. I mean, we shouldn’t be surprised that congressmen spend all their time looking for dates on Craigslist, when the alternative is actually trying to understand monstrously incomprehensible legislation like the health care bill, net neutrality issues, or for the near future, the federal budget. I mean, have you actually ever looked at the thing? Even when the New York Times creates a clever and relatively simple interactive graphic, it’s mind boggling. But definitely preferable to buying the darn thing, I mean, The basic overview is 216 pages and costs 38 bucks, and the Appendix is 6 times longer than that (1368 pages) and costs 75 bucks. If you bought all the available related publications, you’d have 2448 pages to sift through, at a cost of $214.00. And that doesn’t include the CD-ROM, which thankfully is not an audio book read by Timothy Geithner. If you want to learn more about how the budget is put together without spending 200 bucks, the Wikipedia page goes in-depth. Over 13,000 words in depth in fact. Remarkably, the words “billion” and “trillion” are only used 81 and 59 times respectively. Me? While everyone else sits around arguing about taxes, spending, sacrifice, and responsibility, I’ll be kickin’ back, ignoring the doorbell and the phone as creditors continue harassing me. Why? Because deficits don’t matter. And besides, I oddly find myself agreeing with Fox/WSJ writer Paul B. Farrell’s rant Fed dictator Bernanke needs to be toppled – Forget Mubarak, it’s Fed reign of terror that must end. To distract myself while I sit here broke with it not really mattering, I think I’ll play a few rounds of the poverty survival game Spent. Because virtual homelessness is a lot more fun than real homelessness.
There’s An Elephant In The Room
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 26, 2010 by admin in Politics
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010The GOP’s mascot is an excellent symbol for the dysfunctional oblivion of America these days.
There’s a big elephant in the room we call America, and it’s making me a little uneasy. Although I joked recently that a monkey would be the perfect mascot for the American voter, it had never struck me until today how appropriate the GOP’s mascot is if you can pause and view the nation as one big dysfunctional family. After one of the most self-righteous and elitist administrations of my lifetime gutted the economy and destabilized the world in general with their clearly ill-conceived agenda, we now have to listen to former Bush buttboys like Karl Rove implying that the BP spill in the gulf is somehow “Obama’s Katrina”, as if a man-made and Bush-enabled catastrophe can somehow be compared to a hurricane and a shockingly inept and profoundly unqualified FEMA director. And this is just the most recent glaring example of the self-deceit of a typical GOP supporter these days. Don’t get me wrong, I hardly define myself as a Democrat; what makes me even crazier is that this kind of self-delusion seems to cross all party lines when it comes to economics. Have you noticed that as huge segments of the global economy skid into the ditch, what mostly is going on is that people in general and the media in particular keep acting like somehow the trillions in imaginary money that the world is loaning itself is somehow going to materialize later in some magic fairy bank of the future? To me it feels like the global economy is a cartoon character that just skidded off a cliff and hasn’t fallen into the abyss because it hasn’t looked down yet.
Vampire Squids Causing American Brain Death Epidemic?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 5, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010Will the SEC’s investigation into Goldman Sachs finally help Americans pull their heads out of their asses and right some of the wrongs with the virulently corrupt banking and insurance industries? No.
Do you know what frightens me more than any terrorist ever could? The average American these days. They’re a scary bunch. Hostile, frustrated, and often either misled or just plain ignorant. And the scariest part? I think they actually mean well. I was reminded of this the other day as I took a train to Chicago. The passengers in the seats on both sides in front of me were pretty average married couples in their seventies. They had just met on the train, and as they started talking, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a strange queasiness. I usually tend to get along really well with most people of their generation, because I’m a bit of a cultural/moral Luddite myself; I think making money through the misfortune of others is bad, I think we should help each other out when needed, I have a practical level of materialism, and an old-fashioned work ethic. So what caused the queasiness I’m referring to? Well, the utter loss of hope for humanity any rational person might feel as a result of simply listening to their conversation. They started their dialog by agreeing how terrible it was that our president isn’t a US citizen. And then lamented that he had already destroyed the economy and the American way of life with his evil socialist agenda. I knew it would be an exercise in futility, so I didn’t bother asking them why the judicial system and congress and all of Washington was letting a known illegal alien run the country. I also didn’t ask them why, if the president was a socialist, he had so many bloodthirsty capitalists working at his side to prop up the biggest capitalist fraud in history and thereby Read the rest of this entry »
Apathy & The American Revolution
[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 10, 2010 by admin in Politics
Saturday, April 10th, 2010Sure. We need a revolution in America. A revolution in the way we think.
No, not that one. And no, not that new one that tries to ride on its coattails. I’m thinking of a different one. One that’s not necessarily driven by politics. I have to admit I was a little moved by the images from Boston.com’s “Big Picture” features this week that covered the massive protests in Thailand and Kyrgyzstan. Seeing civilians organized in large enough numbers to overwhelm security forces clad in high-tech riot gear immediately made me curious about two things. First of all, how did so many people get on the same page and take action? And second, what were they really protesting? The answer to the first question is still being analyzed by major news sources, but the uprisings had common motives. Most sources are citing government corruption, murky privatization schemes, oligarchical leadership, and financial hardship for the working class while elites flourish. Sound familiar? Why are we so complacent about similar things happening in America? I live in one of the states hardest-hit by the recent mini-econopocalypse. Things are so bad here in Michigan that the city of Flint is burning down while firefighters are being laid off. You may have heard of Flint because that’s where documentary filmmaker and rabble-rouser Michael Moore started his career, with Roger & Me