This is a fascinating video of McCain supporters shouting invective at Obama supporters while waiting in line for yesterdays’ Palin/McCan rally in Bethlemhem, PA. As Todd Dominey joked, “No wonder McCain’s camp is blocking media access to supporters at rallies.” My favorite part is when one of the McCain fans calls Obama a “commie fag.” Are people really still flying the “get a job, hippie” flag?
Update: Coincidentally, Air America’s Lionel show is currently playing clips of McCain supporters at a rally in Ohio saying things like “he’s a one-man terror cell,” that he spent ages one to six “with terrorists,” and he’s got terrorist “bloodlines,” after all, “just look at his middle name!” I’m sure people were saying some of these things before the McCain campaign’s recently ramped up strategy of portraying Obama as a dangerous stranger, but people sure seem a lot more comfortable saying them out loud lately.
Update 2: Thanks to BoingBoing, here’s video of the rally referred to by Air America…
Now and again I get nostalgic for Denver and wonder if maybe I’ll move back in my old age, then something happens like the Denver Police Union releasing a t-shirt celebrating the anti-democratic targeting of protestors during the DNC and it reminds me of the small-mindedness that I desperately wanted to get away from in the first place:
The Denver police union is selling T-shirts that poke fun at protesters at last month’s Democratic National Convention, but the main target isn’t laughing.
The back of the shirts reads, “We get up early to beat the crowds” and “2008 DNC,” and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton.
The front has the number 68 with a slash through it, a reference to the Recreate 68 Coalition, which organized several demonstrations during the convention.
I particularly like ABC 7’s spin on the shirt as “poking fun.” Guess that depends on which side of the nightstick you’re on?
Sam Harris has a great opinion piece in Newsweek about Sarah Palin, and it includes this fantastic bit about the backlash against “elitism” in politics:
…how has “elitism” become a bad word in American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn’t seem too intelligent or well educated.
I couldn’t have written something that reflected more accurately my own befuddlement over the shift of America’s political heroes from smart, successful, high achievers with a calling to public service to “just plain folks.”
For the last two years, it’s been my pleasure to work with my friends from monochrom on collateral and identity components for Arse Elektronika, their now yearly conference covering issues relating to the intersection of sex and technology. This year’s theme is “Do Androids Sleep With Electric Sheep? Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction,” and it kicks off the end of next week at CELLspace in San Francisco. If it’s a subject you find interesting, I can’t recommend it enough.
Of all the programming, I’m most excited about Thursday night. That night, alongside the Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2008 Award Ceremony, monochrom and RE/Search Publications will be presenting the first preview copies of the first Arse Elektronika Anthology, pr0nnovation?. When I was a young gothy, punky, rivet-heady anti-socialite, my friends and I spent untold hours browsing the shelves of counter culture bookshops and RE/Search, publishers of the Industrial Culture Handbook and books about Throbbing Gristle, JG Ballard and modern primitives, were hands down the coolest book slingers on the planet. So, while I didn’t personally design the cover of this anthology, it’s derived from all of the other collateral that I developed for them and seeing my work on the cover of a RE/Search publication has pretty much made my year. I’m tempted to go buy a pack of clove cigarettes and some new creepers just bring things full circle.
Valleywag is reporting that Microsoft is already bailing out on the hotly debated ads featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld as wacky pals having crrraaaaazzzy adventures. Microsoft is claiming that’s it’s always been the plan to have Seinfeld appear only in the opening salvo of it’s new marketing initiative, but given Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s track record of slow-burn mythology building, I’d say that’s a hot bucket-load of PR spin. Instead, I’d put my money on a CP+B office full of creatives pacing around the office complaining about Microsoft’s lack of patience and misunderstanding. It will be interesting to see where they go from here. Will CP+B still have the freedom to produce it’s trademark material, or is Microsoft going to be the one client that they can’t win over?
I really love language. In all honesty, I probably should’ve been a writer rather than a designer but the dudes in my family historically swung paintbrushes, not pens. It wasn’t a path I that thought much about until much later in life. Still, I think a lot about words and grammar and communication, and for reasons unknown to me I hold a deep, unreasonable hatred for a few completely random words. They are, in order of bile-raising power:
Another word that I despise, but for what I think is a rather good reason that I’m not interested in detailing now is:
addicting
That said, there are also words that I like very much. Here are two, selected at random and presented in no particular order:
salacious
pernicious
If you want to broaden the “Words I Like” list to include words that aren’t in the dictionary, you can throw in nurple as well. Actually, that probably deserves a post all it’s own.
Thanks to Caryn at Art Blogging London for pointing out that the first half of Sotheby’s auction of Damien Hirst work has netted a whopping £70,545,100. I’ll save you the trouble; that’s $126,466,216.89 cold, hard American dollars. For only the first half, mind you.
I love Hirst, but on a day when the Dow closed over down over 500 points thanks to too much disastrous economic news to recount, it’s hard to see anything in that number except an ever widening gap between the rich and the poor.
Here’s a great AP video of Matt Damon airing his concerns about Sarah Palin. Scary fact of the day: “You do the actuary tables and there’s a 1/3 chance if not more that McCain doesn’t survive his first term, and it will be President Palin.”
Autumn is all about change so this time around we’re doing something a little different. Our generous friends at Betalevel in Chinatown have graciously offered up their space to host a very special film screening. I’m not tellling you what the movie is yet, but rest assured if you’re a designer you’ve heard of it. As usual, there will also be drinks and conversation along with the occassional spontaneous arm wrestling match.
KERNSPIRACY
A Place for Designers to Share Secrets (and Watch Movies)
Wednesday, September 17th 2008
7:30 - 9:30ish p.m.
Betalevel
in the alley behind 963 N. Hill Street, Los Angeles, California 90012
Detailed directions here.
For the last two years, it’s been my pleasure to work with my friends from monochrom on collateral and identity components for Arse Elektronika, their now yearly conference covering issues relating to the intersection of sex and technology. This year’s theme is “Do Androids Sleep With Electric Sheep? Critical Perspectives on Sexuality and Pornography in Science and Social Fiction,” and it kicks off the end of next week at CELLspace in San Francisco. If it’s a subject you find interesting, I can’t recommend it enough.
