Things To Occupy You Over Break #2: Online Journalism

Vice Magazine

Please be warned - this is not for everyone. You either love it or you're completely disgusted or offended. The magazine is known for being gritty, filthy, pornographic, and insensitive. That said, it's got some good journalism and some stuff you'll never see in the NYTimes. I've linked it here before, but only articles relevant to my articles and always with a warning. To go through the archives, you can either click "archives" up at the top and browse by issue, or click another link at the top and browse by type of article. You'll learn what life is like as a sex slave in lots of different countries (including Iran and Canada), what drug dealers have to say about their jobs, what the different types of white supremacists have to say to each other, and a lot more you may or may not have needed to know about your fellow humans.

Dissident Voice

They took down my favorite article ("Mental Illness or Social Sickness?") but they're still pretty cool. It has a very leftist slant, so take everything they have to say about capitalist governments with a grain or salt, but it can be an interesting perspective. And I just love the photo in the top banner.

Adbusters

A culturejamming, anti-consumerism site with lots of great reading about today's economy and culture. The equivalent of an ideological hug for people who get bummed about about the state of our world. The little slogany banners that change if you refresh the page were the inspiration for my CSWS culturejamming flyer response slips at my school. 

Zombietime

I've linked it here before too. An independent reporter from California reports on left-wing protests with a right-wing slant. Sometimes the blatant bias can be jarring, but I think it's very valuable for people in the activist scene to be aware of how we're seen from a different perspective so we can avoid a lot of the pitfalls that ZT points out. I also find it refreshing to read journalism that doesn't pretend to be objective - we all know reporters are people, so when they come out and admit it, it's nice. The "zomblog" linked at the top contains more interesting reporting that didn't quite make it to the main page.

Found Magazine

People find stuff and send it in. Found Magazine then publishes it. It's pretty neat. Some of my writing has been inspired by it and I love how it gives a glimpse into other people's lives. The total lack of context makes you realize how self-contained each of our worlds are and it gives your imagination a nice workout. This is under "journalism" instead of "misc." because it's actually a printed magazine as well.

CI Holiday Surprise!

There will be more break filler posts! I drew some doodles about the differences between my life at Goucher and my life here at home and figured I'd share them with you. They'll be posted alternately between the TTOYOB fillers, every four days. Yay! The computer here is conked out, so instead of scanning I had to photograph my drawings (which are about an inch tall and done in pencil) and photoshop them to be darker and readable. I know they look smeary and sketchy, but hey, not everyone can be Randall. 

Here's the first one, "On OK Times For Eating":

Things To Occupy You Over Break #1: Videos

Here are some video serieses (seri?) that I adore. They're all addictive, though, so be prepared to sit glued to your screen for a while.

Target: Women

This is feminist comedy/social commentary that points out, then ridicules, messages from the media that women today are bombarded with. She covers things like the Disney Princesses, cleaning products, car advertisements, and botox. If it sounds heavy-handed, fret not: all of the straight white males I've shown it to laugh just as hard as the girls, and many have expressed the desire to marry the female host.

After watching it, exclamations such as "Happy period control!," "Underpants!" and "she's looking like a chubster!" will make perfect sense, and commercials for cleaning products may either arouse or enrage you.

Jack Danyells

Not to be confused with the, er, beverage, Jack Danyells is a guy who yells about abuses and misuses of the English language. Sometimes he sings. He is funny. His intro is disgustingly catchy. You will never say "very unique" or be able to enjoy the song "Ironic" ever again.

zefrank

Zefrank is an adorably cuddly vlogger who kept a daily vlog for an entire year that covered current events, his own life, and dirty space news. It spawned so many in-jokes among his tight-knit, wiki-connected audience that after watching ten or so episodes, you'll feel like part of an exclusive club (but only if you watch them in order). It's silly, hilarious, and just plain fantastic. You will find yourself greeting people with "sports racers, racing sports!," asking "who likes the little little duckies in the pond?" and referring to Google as "our great and glorious leader." You will also be able to whisper "are the new viewers gone yet?" after every ridiculous thing you do.

Is It Okay To Microwave This?

Pretty self-explanatory. Everything you ever wanted to put into a microwave but had the good sense not to has been put into a microwave and videotaped for your amusement and education. They do glowsticks, fireworks, apples, an etch-a-sketch, an inhaler, an iPod, a rubix cube, a barbie doll, a motherboard, and tons more. If only all of our childhoods had been equipped with a ventilated, aluminum-foiled saferoom for microwaving stuff.

Drinking Out Of Cups

This is not a series but it needs to be here. The audio is a recording of a guy who took some sort of illicit substance (our theories are shrooms or PCP), and the animation is, um, a lizard someone decided was necessary to animate it. My friends think the guiding theme behind his string-of-consciousness nonsense is him saying before getting messed up, "this isn't going to do anything to me, I'm more badass than that," hence his constant exclamations of "that ain't real!" and "no way!" after he addresses his hallucinations. Every single line in it is a potent quotable, but my personal favorites are the walkway bit and "they're like the clocks, I love 'em."

So, about me making promises I don't keep...

Some of my more astute readers may have noticed that I said the blog would resume posting in October, but then it did not. Oops.

If you all have it in your hearts to forgive me, I can make it up to you - promise. The hiatus will continue through winter break (the logic being I'll be where all my readers live, and you'll get your Sal fix anyway) but I have posts already set up to post through MARCH after I get back. Seriously!

Here's what's coming up: as well as the one-weekly essays and prose pieces you're all familiar with, I've now started writing slam poetry to perform at the monthly poetry slams at my school, and that'll go up here after I perform it. Three poems per slam, one slam per month - so every month, I'll put up one of the previous month's poems every week. I also got started making little indexed-style charts about my life one night in the Gopher Hole, so some of those (the ones that aren't Goucher in-jokes) will make it up here as well. That's at least a THRICE WEEKLY update, possibly more if the charts start being superfun.

But wait! There's more! This won't go totally ignored over the holiday break - I know you all need something to waste - er, spend - your time reading, so I'll be posting reviews of online 'zines, webcomics, and other nonsense that I read religiously and think you might enjoy too. These will only be around for the break, though, because some of the stuff will suck you into 7+ years of archives and you'll be doing nothing but reading, and it'd be cruel to tempt you during school time. (But once you've read them, you'll get all the pointless little obscure references I'm always making.)

HAI GUYS

I've been a bad blogger. Separated from my beloved audience and distracted by the glitz and glamour of college life, I quit updating. Sad story. However! I officially declare the hiatus OVER as of October 6. I've got some essays and some creative works started and things should heat up again. I miss you guys!

I should have a letter drive. Sometime in the near future I'll promise something like another hourly comic day IF I get a certain number of letters. (Count yourselves lucky. Most bloggers do drives for money.)

Coming up: Post 9-11 mindsets, "Charts & Graphs: a pivotal moment", a holistic approach to the counseling vs. pills question, an extended metaphor involving melted wax, photography from around my campus, social & gender considerations left out in a Connections show on sexuality & rape, and silly things my friends here said.

"Hold On, We're Morons"

(SoCI: I'm at college! It's awesome! I don't have tons of time to write/edit right now so here's a shorter, rougher essay with too many underdeveloped theses and no focus. To my old readers: I miss you guys! Write me! To my new readers: hope you like this. My goofy IB stories can be found in the archives, if that's what you're here for.)

I know, I know - getting down on Hot Topic for being culturally tone-deaf and generally moronic is about as obnoxiously bottom-of-the-barrel as the rape jokes in Do's&Don'ts. I ought to be going after a more interesting, fresh target - like computational linguistics. But, and I'm sorry guys, the thing that's gotten me angriest this week has yet again been brought to you by everyone's favorite sell-outs.

They're selling t-shirts and magnets with the phrase "hold on, I'm on my hamburger phone," from the movie Juno; described on their site as "the newest pop-culture must-have" (I'm glad I have them to tell me what I must have, otherwise I'd be completely lost.)

The big issue here is the proliferation of "pop-culture references" that are just repeated catchphrases with barely any significance to the topic at hand. It used to be that a piece full of "pop-culture references" meant that it was smart, sharp, and self-aware almost to the point of parody or satire. You had to have background knowledge, and the references had relevance and comedic value on their own (rather than just recalling a funny moment by someone else.) Now, we've got scripts that almost seem written around the idea of potent quotables (sorry, I'm talking about quoting pop culture here, have to do a bit of my own.) I can tell, while watching a movie, which lines are going to end up being repeated constantly - Hollywood knows this, and they're going for it. There have even been instances where the popularity of the catchphrases preceded the opening of the show (Borat, Napoleon Dynamite). I concede that this is a form of brilliant viral marketing and it takes some serious skill to write comedy in such a way that it's appealing even in previews like that - but when every preview and every movie is going for the effect, it gets old.

 The narrower issue here is the specific phrase from the movie. It's NOT a comedic moment at all, and it's in fact the most brilliantly poignant moment of the movie. That scene and that line within the scene encapsulate the main theme of the movie, which is Juno's juxtaposition of very adult choices and situations and her youth and continuing innocence. She calls to make an appointment for an abortion, and must tell the woman from the clinic to "hold on, I'm on my hamburger phone" while she shakes the phone to make it work again. Juno deadpans that line to an adult, not realizing that there is a world outside her young world where it's not just taken for granted that people have barely-working "hamburger phones." The contrast of her acceptance of both situations (the phone and the pregnancy) perfectly, sadly, beautifully sums up the conflict of the movie.

Hot Topic either doesn't have a clue and just sees the shallow slapstick element of the silly phone; or thinks its consumers don't have a clue or are willing to overlook a serious thematic device if the HT head honchos tell them to find it funny and buy it. It's pathetic and sad - we've got such brilliance out there in mainstream media and instead of raising up the people to its level, they're doing their best to drag it down. It's like reading Heart of Darkness as a supermarket horror thriller - sure, the elements are there, but it denies or ignores the true accomplishments of the work.

Unchaperoned

(I wrote this in a hotel room in Albuquerque in the middle of the night.)

What began as an excuse, a sympathetic ruse we constructed to convince our parents to let us, both eighteen, drive unaccompanied from Durango, Colorado to Los Angeles, California, soon became the trip’s true reason, the only force that held the gas pedal down and kept us moving forward.  I was there for “emotional support,” a role that overshadowed my previous position the night before, during our first night alone together. The memory of the shameless, ecstatic night, flashing back as we walked down the hospital’s glowing corridors, stung with guilt that held us to a more sober, grave, adult manner than we had been able to manage then.

At the time we had been dating thirteen months, somewhat casually and sporadically, with far more affection than devotion. That fall his best friend was in an accident in California, a motorcycle collision, and they told us back home he would be fine after a few months in rehab. Nathan sent a few emails, in the optimistic tone of denial all guys adopt during hard times. They discussed sports, the nurses at the hospital, and next year’s professors, all with a too-cheery overtone of confidence that Ben would pull through just fine.

That summer things took a bizarre turn for the worse, courtesy of an undetected injury to the brain that had waited, latent, until the weather cooled. On August twelfth, Ben’s mom called Nathan with the news. On August fourteenth, we announced to our parents that we were taking a road trip up to see Ben. What went unsaid was that it would be for the last time. I barely understood why I was going.  Though both of us vaguely recognized the space in Nathan’s life that was about to empty, that I would be called on to fill, it was the allure of an unchaperoned trip that drew me. It was from this hazy knowledge that we formulated our story, a reason poignant enough to override parental concerns. I knew Ben as well as a girlfriend can know her boyfriend’s best friend – from parties, occasional double dates, stories Nathan would tell about growing up. He was there when Nathan learned to swim at five, when he saw his first dirty movie at eleven, when they got caught smuggling alcohol from Ben’s uncle’s trailer at sixteen. I went not because I felt an obligation to visit Ben but because I felt an obligation to Nathan and to my own young sexuality. Our imminent departures for separate universities whispered another unspoken knowledge - we may never get another chance.

On August sixteenth we were walking back down the hospital’s hallway, having left Ben (Ben having left Ben already), feeling painfully our immature callousness in the exploitation of the situation. The night before, when this shame started to unfurl its barbed arms, Nathan whispered, “Ben would have wanted it.” I went along, imagining the two of them high-fiving the next morning. And so the shame retreated back into the shells of our minds, waiting for its next opening, as we took advantage of its absence and of our hotel room, of its distance from every worried parent and brain-dead friend, of its thick comforter and thicker darkness.

But the guilt returned, and we, having no excuses left, were forced to bear its weight along with the awareness that for both of us, the memories of our first night together and Ben and Nathan’s last day together would be forever entangled. The anonymous, thickly covered hotel bed melted into Ben’s clipboard-adorned, thin hospital bed. Ambient lighting from the streetlight outside our window became the blinding glare of fluorescent lights off white tiling. Our sighs and laughs and gasps gave way to Ben’s fragile breaths moving rhythmically through tubes. Where we stopped moving and rocking together, Nathan was in the arms of Ben’s mother, shaking, leaning. Then, I was “Love,” but the woman who would always be “Mrs. Elaine” to Nathan held him now, with none of the girlish confusion I had behaved with then and felt again, a weak stranger with no place in the scene.

I had never seen Nathan cry before, never seen him lean on anyone with such need and desperation. I realized then that my given role on the trip was both my most important one and one I could never fulfill. He turned from Elaine, straightening up from her shoulder, and I reached for his hand with a pathetic futility. He took it, though – the ineffective seeming otherwise with no other option in sight. 

Give 'Em The Old Razzle-Dazzle (or, what's not unfucked-up about drug marketing)

Being sick is not nice. People who help us not be sick are generally regarded as pretty nice. One of JF's buddies put it very poetically when he said that hospitals work to "unfuck people up".

But not everything about the medical establishment is wonderfully unfucked. Take, for instance, drug marketing, advertising, and PR.

This commercial is absurd. There are four things going on - the visuals with cute girls and bright balloons; the fast catchy music; the words at the bottom; and the voiceover. Try and focus on "serious complications" and "side effects may include" when you're watching pretty colored balloons, reading the words on them/at the bottom of the screen, and humming along to the song.  This commercial is almost a self-parody - admission of ridiculous amounts of risks, then desperate "but maybe you should still buy it anyway!" The extreme visual overload of text is representative of pharmaceutical marketing's three-ring circus of smokescreens, sparkles, and doublespeak masking lies and insatiable greed. In keeping with our theme of co-opted vulgarity, these commercials are what is commonly referred to as a "clusterfuck".

But wait! Not only does drug marketing employ showy, distracting sleight-of-hand, it also stigmatizes! Commercials for Abilify (a drug for bipolar disorder) show sufferers alone until they make the decision to take the drug, at which point they are walking and talking with other people. Because the mentally ill can't have meaningful, fulfilling, healthy relationships without Big Pharma helping them out. I can't find the commercials online, but their site contains this warning: Some medicines can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens, and young adults. Serious mental illnesses are themselves associated with an increase in the risk of suicide. When taking ABILIFY call your doctor right away if you have new or worsening mood symptoms, unusual changes in behavior, or thoughts of suicide. Patients and their caregivers should be especially observant for such symptoms within the first few months of treatment or after a change in dose.

So this could actually do the opposite of what it intends to do, but that's not their fault because these people are already messed up! Note how it says "patients and their caregivers" - not "patients or their caregivers" or "patients and their doctors" - implying that even medicated, bipolar people can't really be trusted to take care of themselves. To compare, the similar warnings on websites for Yaz and Celebrex say only "tell your doctor", with no third-person reference to "patients" or "caregivers", affording users more autonomy, responsibility and dignity. I also like the vague "some medicines" that distances the product from the warning. Soon we should be seeing food packaging saying "some food may contain nuts!" or laws like "some people shouldn't kill some other people."

Also, even with that stated risk, it does not say the drug should not be prescribed to teens/young adults, while both Yaz and Celebrex warn that "people with [condition] should not" take them. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this - is psychiatry not enough of a concrete science for these risks to be valid enough? Do we care less about taking risks with the health of young mentally ill people? Is mental illness seen as a "worse" or "more devastating" condition that makes the risk more worth it? What the fuck?

Pfizer also cares more about money than those silly crazy folk, defending their new lucrative anti-smoking drug Chantix and claiming it can still be prescribed to the mentally ill even though it has been linked to mania/depression. (Research credit Furious Seasons.) This mirrors the longer-running issue hinted at above - legal and medical cases established a link between SSRIs (anti-depression meds) and suicide in young people and yet the drug companies (including Pfizer, who makes Zoloft) didn't stop marketing them for adolescent use. All the FDA did was slap a black-box warning on them, allowing Big Pharma to effectively "fuck over" kids and their families for money.

Recommended reading: 

The Boston Globe: Congress Scrutinizes Drug Ads

New England Journal of Medicine study says drug advertising may lead to "overuse" of the drugs and that the FDA enforces regulatory laws "weakly"

LJ community post full of "vintage" ads for drugs, including whole opium

New York Times: PhD names put on studies really written by PR

Apparently I Think With Lots of Dashes

While packing to leave, I came across one of the many tiny little notebooks I carry around in my purse to write down whatever thought, observation, eavesdropped quote or other notes that need immediate recording. Thought you guys might be interested in the ephemera of me processing the outside world. Also, I'd really like to put off packing for a little while longer and have been too busy to write real stuff for CI. Here are some of the little things I decided to jot down.  

The Spiral Staircase: Karen Armstrong 

Jeremiah 29:22 

The lie that tells a truth 

status: high/low/liquid 

breathing (speech) 

counterpoints; for (left arrow) find (right arrow) 

prismacolor markers

Natalie Goldberg: writing down the bones/wild mind 

raya - purple 

blue crabs - mate once in their life :( 

whisper disks 

"the last time you dressed me up to take me somewhere I ended up with more back-handed compliments than you could think of, and herpes." 

when she is not in love 

glass and brick

the most beautiful world is a world entered through imagination (Helen Keller)

something else 

Godless man-oriented city v. nature - good 

forgot to see the sky

Alice Flaherty

gets caught - "waiting for appointment" - uses name from last building

Sabaduria - knowledge 

pigeons 

camera - herself, flash, city - beeps until love throws away 

ice (cubes) 

Appellate practice for the MD lawyer 

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it (Twain)

"I lied about my age once at airport security and am afraid they have it on file somewhere" 

motivation - confident

black gothic spires (europe)

speaks big, wants longs seeks to be heard, grabs your shoulders and shakes, talks too close to your face

Tao te Ching - #11

thunder heartbeat

backwards/upside-down O

people walking - NOT ants

a cycle of wrongs, everyone gets hurt by the system set in place to help them Switchfoot - Stars - track one 

they came right for you.

Creativity, like human life, begins in darkness (Julia Cameron) 

Non c'e amore piu sincero di quello de cibo 

caffienated kiss 

Erik Erikson Identity

Madagascar 120 million years

leo Nisseras

light - only 1/2 reflection; melts into city

hope is a waking dream (Aristotle)

you can't copy it like rhinestones

can you feel the life in the air where you are?

midnight thoughts demanding

Lost in the Rye

(Alternate titles for this post: Lord of the Lies, The Bell Cookie Jar. I'm a nerd. Also, sorry about missing last Thursday's update. Getting ready to leave for college is somewhat time-consuming, what with all the packing, friend-seeing and freaking out I have to do.)

Edit: Apparently the AZ Republic doesn't leave articles up online for very long. Sorry, guys. I had an intro that commented on an article about advice for kids who get "teased" but it has since been taken down. I'm too busy and decided not to write a new intro, so here, have half an essay.

Children and adults don't relate at all. They are essentially two completely alien cultures. Children are incredibly complex, and they construct an entire sub-society complete with its own laws, law enforcement, hierarchy of power, caste system, and economy. Psychology Today recently featured Jill Price (also known in psych literature as "AJ"), a woman who remembers every moment of her life starting around age 8. She has now become an administrator at a k-7 school and says "a child lives in a world that adults left long ago. My memory has made me acutely conscious of that disconnect."

Freud described children as the ultimate expression of the id, and this is true. Children do not embody ignorance or innocence, but are full-fledged humans equipped with all the base, bare impulses and desires inherent to humanity. What they lack is the social and intellectual capabilities to understand the consequences of their impulses or the cultural restrictions placed on them, and therefore are not equipped with the desire or the capacity to validate or rationalize them. When adults want to avoid or "pick on" someone different, they come up with complex rationalization - the economy, the preservation of culture, fear of crime, past experience, etc. When children do so, it is a simple and individual decision with no ostensible greater purpose. Most adults don't realize that children can be seen as undiluted humanity rather than underdeveloped humanity. In them we can observe every beautiful and ugly thing that human behavior can offer, without all the extraneous trappings of adult civilization. When adults want others to feel the same way as them, they introduce religion, politics, or statistics - but a child smashing a friend's Batman toy because Superman is better is only a small-scale version of the Crusades. When adults give to charity, they claim tax breaks and write memoirs about it, but children simply act on the desire to give without thinking about or around it. Adults are essentially watered down children in this respect.

Children are not little, uncivilized adults, however. They see and understand the world differently, constructing social and internal realities completely foreign to almost everyone beyond puberty. What older people perceive as fickle friendships are in fact cunning manipulation and psychological warfare. We believe that children have imbalanced or nonexistent priorities without considering that the importance they place on seemingly insignificant objects or events might have a real origin and meaning. Imaginary fantasy worlds are not daydreams but an integral part of their reality. Adults would do well to wonder why children's minds seem so eager to leave, alter or block out this world. Is it that disorienting and difficult to be young here? Yes. Are children more acutely aware of the injustices and terrors of this world without the softening factors of rationalization, denial, and a sense of control? Yes, again.

Fashion

(SoCI: I've almost run through my buffer of archives and haven't been writing more because I've been busy with the novel, vacations, and getting ready for college. I'll try and keep the M-Th schedule but I can't guarantee anything about the quality of the posts until I settle in at college.)

I absolutely love this essay because it's one of those things that summarizes what you believe before you can; where you read it and realize "oh yeah, that's exactly how I feel"; where you are grateful that someone else managed to put it so eloquently and embarrassed that nobody helped you understand your own views this way before you made an idiot of yourself at the lunch table trying to explain your feelings about your friend Meg's Vogue magazine. Or at least it's that way for me. (Definitely check out the essay, but I am not responsible for the education you will receive poking around the rest of the publication/website. You have been warned.)

I've always viewed fashion as the black sheep of the visual art family. You've got the stately old grandparents, classical sculpture and oil painting, with their kids, the mostly-genteel sketching, photography, and watercolor. The grandkids got a little crazy - modern art, digital art, and abstract sculpture, but they're still part of the family. But little cousin fashion got caught up in a bad crowd, hanging out with advertising and pornography. Got hooked on money - sure the rest of the family uses it recreationally, but fashion's existence soon became almost entirely about sales and profits - and soon she was selling herself to the masses, obscenely accessible. She tries to fit in with the family, twisting museum walls into runways, but they still quietly whisper "oh, fashion? We stopped hearing from her a while ago" when company like ballet or literature comes to visit.

Visual self-representation is a tricky concept. People want other people to get the right impression immediately, and they want to present themselves the way they want to be perceived. We're acutely aware of the effects our clothes have on other people. All of the times I've done something bold along the lines of flirting with a strange boy and giving him my number, I've been wearing something that made me feel powerful (a slinky black dress, a suit, etc.) But once you admit that you dress to be understood, you open Pandora's closet of contradictions. 

Those who wish to dress as corporate-molded, fashion conscious divas assert their individuality by making that choice. Those who wish to dress as nonconformists demonstrate adherence to certain standards by imposing preconceived limits on their self-expression. Those who wish to dress as intimidating or rebellious must fit the exact stereotype that their intended targets understand. This means that it is impossible to "dress like" anything other than oneself, and that by striving for a certain image, we invalidate it. It's the Schroedinger's cat of visual expression. When we use something with a seemingly inherent meaning to mean what we want it to say, we pervert the purity of its symbolism. 

One thing fashion is really good at is the co-opting of visual and other aspects of culture and the piggybacking off of meanings while ripping them out of context. The skull motif, once used for its raw, violent imagery, now shows up on pink children's accessories from Target or Claire's, produced by the giant capitalist conglomerates that the skull's original wearers hated. What does it say about us as a culture when the idea of "fighting the man" becomes alluring in and of itself, allowing "the man" to profit from our love for anything "subversive"? The enemy adapts to create a space for your "rebellion," and the rebels snuggle cozily into that space rather than finding a real place to attack.

Which all raises the question of whether or not visual self-expression counts as a fight at all. In the 1960's, when the hippies were fighting for true social reform and a total upheaval of typical American life, then fashion that rebelled had a significant purpose. Long hair and bright colors on boys who in the 1950's wore almost exclusively crew cuts and white t-shirts demonstrated to the older generations in charge that things were changing and that the youth were living differently. But today, when most adults barely bat an eye at tattoos, piercing, or dyed hair, what purpose do these serve? Has the time come when fashion as social revolt is useless? I would argue, yes, for the most part. We cannot scare the establishment with our looks any longer. Clothing isn't a social commentary anymore, only a self-commentary. 

Recommended Reading (someone asked where I get these links to share, and it's one of two places: I either consulted them to research the essay they're included with, or they're links I saved for interesting value and are relevant to the essay):

Some governments still threatened by fashion: Iran bans "Western" haircuts

"You can buy dangerous for $11.99 at K-Mart" - NY Times article on mainstreaming of skull imagery

"Blog quiz" lists and rates ten specific qualities of a non-conformist (wait...)

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization - Adbusters article about "counterculture" fashions slipping towards absurdity

Rescue pt. 3

(This may be the last installment for a while; it needs a lot of work from here on out)

Inside was a mess. Staffers were racing everywhere, shouting into white headsets. I didn’t even have time to slip mine on before my supervisor rushed up to me. “Dump your duffel and get your ass into the West offices. I’ll be right there.” It took me a moment to mentally locate the West offices – other times, without all the higher-ups buzzing around creating an air of formality, we called them Sears.

He came into the West office main room soon after I did, followed by two of his supervisors. Both were high-ranking military officers, but the complex was a civilian-run operation for legal reasons, so they were referred to as supervisors. This annoyed them. The four of us sat around the round table I had eaten a microwave dinner at the night before and countless nights preceding.

One of the two military supervisors spoke. “We just need to ask you some questions about your shift last night. Something has happened that must be investigated immediately.”

I assumed an appropriate expression of confusion and concern.

“One of our inhabitants has been abducted by a radical cell of DC sympathizers. We have reason to believe she was closely involved with the group claiming responsibility for the incident.” He had his military stripes pinned to the sleeve of his white Department uniform, ironically against regulations.

I fought the urge to laugh at the inanely bureaucratic secrecy. I was to know no details, even though I had worked closely on that case prior to the incident. Very closely, as evidenced by her black eyes complementing the lighter tinge in my knuckles. I took a deep breath and waited for an invitation to speak.

We Only Care About Money, Inc.

It's nice to know where your money is going, and it's even nicer to know that your money is going to something charitable and is going to be spent on something you support. That's why people like recent Dove advertisements informing consumers that part of the money they spend on Dove products goes towards the "self-esteem fund," which runs programs aimed at helping young girls and young women see themselves as beautiful. The self-esteem fund identifies as its enemies the "impossibly perfect" women represented on magazine covers and advertisements.

Ads like these ones, for Axe body spray. It's a good thing money spent on Dove goes nowhere near the production of these ads, right? Except that isn't true. What a lot of people don't realize is that Dove and Axe are brands, not companies. One big organization, Unilever, makes both of them. The same people are financing the toxic ads and the efforts to undo their effects. I'm not the only person to realize this - someone parodied the Dove "Onslaught" commercial, replacing all of the perfect-woman images with clips from Axe commercials in this video.

It's no surprise that big companies lie about their mission and values to appeal to specific demographics. The website for the clothing chain Hot Topic states Just like with the whole alternative music thing, Hot Topic customers were drawn to the underground cartoon, cult movie and comic book scenes. It was a unique culture they could call their own, and it was difficult to find merchandise from these licenses. Hot Topic brought the world of South Park, Care Bears, Superman, SpongeBob SquarePants and lots of other pop icons into our stores. Last time I checked, "underground," "cult," "alternative" and "unique" scenes did not include "[licensed] merchandise" and "pop icons" from the country's biggest networks and syndicates. Hot Topic's slogan, "everything about the music," seeks to distance itself from the "sell-out" image and appeal to the rebellious, fight-the-man tendencies of young people - but it carries exclusively the products of large corporations and the symbols of mainstream American culture.

Hot Topic proved itself to be more about the money than the music or the "underground" ideals when it pulled TWLOHA t-shirts since they contained "religion" and "profanity." A chain that seems to pride itself on individuality and pushing against the mainstream gave up the opportunity to fight for free self-expression and instead caved to the demands of the offended - before the offended made any demands! The policy has apparently always been in place to forbid "religion" and "profanity" as a pre-emptive measure to prevent controversy. Yes, we're fighting the man and his corporate PC BS - in our own corporate PC BS way. Yet its customers continue to be deluded into thinking that money spent in Hot Topic stores supports an underground, unique, individualistic and anti-corporate business. The "Hot Topic Foundation" seeks to enable kids to express themselves in music, writing or other art forms, but one wonders how much censorship exists within the program to limit this expression. I can't find a "Mission Statement" or "Guidelines" of the program anywhere online that spell out rules and regulations, but I can't find the "no profanity or religion" thing either. Nothing says Power to the People like a lack of transparency and rules you don't know if you've broken until you break them!

I have no idea what's going on in theTV ads for a new FX show called "Sons of Anarchy" that show an American flag, right side up and not on fire, behind the title. The website for the show (strangely missing videos of the ads) says it's about a motorcycle gang, which I think is called Sons of Anarchy, with the goal of "ensuring that their simple, sheltered town of Charming, California remains exactly that." While I'm sure some brand of neo-anarchist could make the case that keeping a town sheltered and culturally self-sufficient is a sort of anarchy - letting the residents self-govern and isolating them from big government's influence - the imagery used in the ads seems to evoke more of the radical anarchy people think of; the type those on Zombietime advocate by wearing black and burning things down, and fighting for the destruction of everything that small-town/suburban life stands for. Maybe the show is intelligently and correctly probing the nuances of anarchy - referring to the men as "Sons of" to imply that they were influenced by its ideas but maybe not die-hard followers - but from the way it's being portrayed, it seems to me like it's trying to look "edgy" by piggybacking on misused ideas and symbolism.

Procter & Gamble is at least trying to get things right, though as a large company it's finding it easier to appeal to people's sense of charitable values than it is to actually carry them out. This commercial for the One Pack = One Vaccine campaign implies that P&G is about promoting global health. Unfortunately, it was named #52 in a list compiled by UMass of the Top US Corporate Air Polluters. Still, they at least appear to be working on this problem (pledging to reduce emissions 10% by 2012), which is more than I can say for Unilever or Hot Topic. Off topic but interesting: if anyone is interested in a sociological perspective on the Pampers commercial, Sociological Images has one here.

In related, happier WOCAM Inc. news, those who agreed with my post about drug companies giving free crap to doctors will be glad to hear that a new drug marketing code says that the presence of the swag implies an "unprofessional relationship" and effective in 2009, drug companies are prohibited from giving out these "reminder gifts" (creeeeepy phrase). Awesome! I'm really excited that so many others are taking notice and calling Big Pharma out on its shadiness that things are really starting to change. Reuters has the story here, and I'm so thrilled about it that I don't even feel like getting annoyed at the fact that such an issue is under "Oddly Enough" news.

ADL is Actually Doing Little

(SoCI: Still at Valley View. Remember, kids - if you use a microwave, the aliens can scramble the molecules and get inside your brain.)

I should preface this by saying I am a Jew, I am proud to be a Jew, I don't like getting picked on, and picking on Jews isn't nice. Still, the ADL is conducting itself in an awfully immature, ineffective manner regarding the political equivalent of cyberbullying.

The ADL may have its heart in the right place with this campaign, but I think its resources are terribly misdirected thanks to hypersensitivity. It's a Facebook group, people. It's a well-known fact that Facebook is heavily monitored to a scary degree, which means that it's not exactly prime terrorist organization HQ. (I know plenty of organizations that don't advocate the destruction of anything that prefer to stay off Facebook because of its Big Brother qualities.) There certainly are websites and online groups with power and the capacity to cause real-world harm, but I'm pretty sure they're not on Facebook. Besides, if the ADL knew anything about Facebook, it would want all of its enemies organized through it, because that's the best way to keep tabs on people, especially when your cause is more supported by our government and powerful corporations than theirs is.

The ADL is focused on minor name-calling from a bunch of kids who, even if they are educated about the issue at hand, don't have a lot of immediate global power. For perspective, the organizations I'm more knowledgable about - the mental health organizations - fight very hard against stigmatization and public defamation, but even they don't bother going after Facebook groups or other online annoyances. They have plenty to lose from bad public opinion and yet they focus on those who are really in power. 

I realize that it is somewhat hypocritical of me to claim that an online group of young people can't change anything. The ADL is correct in perceiving an ideological threat in the fact that large amounts of young people are anti-Israel, but they're approaching the issue incorrectly. Shutting down the group is not going to win over hearts and minds from the demographic most concerned with their right to free speech. Taking a cue from Icarus and MindFreedom and even the TAC, what the ADL should be using is counter-education and awareness. If they want kids to support the ADL, it shouldn't attack them but rather stage campaigns of PR that show it, the Jewish community, and Israel in a positive light. They've got a lot to work with - Israel tends to be more progressively secular and modernized culturally, so they can appeal to kids' support of gay rights, free speech, self-expression or sexuality. (Or, they can take a stance that doesn't involve as much annihilation of someone else's culture and homeland - but that's an argument I'd rather stay away from.)

It's also rather hypocritical of the ADL to want to shut down these sites, since they're organizing online and using the internet to connect to like-minded people, and there are plenty of people out there who think the ADL is a dangerous or hate group and want its communications shut down. America allows free speech, and while it's terrible to use the internet to claim that you don't like someone, it's completely legal. The group itself is not advocating violence - in fact, its stated mission is to simply change Facebook's policy and country listings. This is contrary to the ADL's mission but not even close to the sort of threat not protected under free speech. If they want the freedom to organize online against certain ideas and beliefs, then they must respect the freedom of others to organize online against certain ideas and beliefs.

Helping Hands

(SoCI: I'll be at Valley View through the last of July. Will have limited internet access to do things like check on/reply here, Facebook and my newer email address.)

Since I've been bragging to everyone not JF for the last month about how awesome I am for making these, and since this blog has a specific weekly post dedicated to "Stuff I Maked," I now present: JF's Birthday Present. In the spirit of this blog's original conception, I present it in the form of a lab report.

Hypothesis: I am a cool girlfriend.

Research: I got the idea watching Iron Man with him when he kept drooling over the super-high-tech butler helping hands. I got the idea to use lamps when I gave him a broken one of mine to use for parts and he mentioned using it to make some helping hands.

Materials: Secondhand lamps, needlenose pliers, clear nail polish, paintbrush, the internet, stickers, clamps, a flexy light, wire and/or tigertail, scrapbooking tweezers, screwdriver, magnifying glass from headset & plastic holding piece, diamond grinder wheel, magnet with hole, vice grip, dad (for helping)

Procedure: I got some secondhand lamps at Savers, and stripped everything but the base and flexy parts. On one, I unscrewed the bottom of the base, removed the knobs (hint: if you leave the whole clicky on-off knob apparatus intact, it's really fun to play with and annoy people) and threaded tigertail through the magnet, through the switch hole, through another hole, and screwed the base back on. There were two fabric-coated wires poking out of where I took the lamp part off. I trimmed the fabric off (so nothing's flammable), melted a third piece of wire to stick in, and crimped clamps to all three wires. On the other, I took a magnifying part from a headset thing, stripped off the plastic, used another plastic piece to attach it into the flexy part (had to use the grinder to get this plastic piece the right shape). Then I took the little flexy light and wired it to the section of the lamp where the straight metal ends and the flexy part begins.  I found some cool quotes about building/creating/making stuff, and I put them around the bases of the two ex-lamps in letter stickers, painting over them with clear nail polish.

Observations/Data:

Here's the one with the magnifying glass and the attached little flexy light. The light is attached with lime green wire, which is because it matches the stickers I used and also because Bro lost my copper and silver wire. The card attached to it (with lime green ribbon, I might add) has the entire quote I put around the bottom, since only the abridged version would fit.

Here's the quote around the bottom. This one by Alice Walker says "Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful."

A close-up of the magnifying glass attached with the plastic piece and the little flexy light. The paper I used for the cards is paisley because JF likes paisley. The little cards match the big birthday card I made and the tissue paper I used to wrap them in.

This is the other one. The little knob in the middle is part of the lamp base that I screwed back down over the tigertail running through the magnet, to hold it down. The magnet is where the on-off knob used to be.

A close-up of the three clamps. They are on rubber-coated wires that are a few inches long. The wire is posable, but a little less easy to keep in a set position than the flexy lamp arms or the flexy light.

The magnet and the quote. This one is by Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus and says "When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him... for such is the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth."

Conclusion: I think he liked it.

Things I Would Change: The first one doesn't flex all the way; something I didn't think to check on when buying the lamps. It's rigid metal until about halfway up. Also, the wire setup I used to attach the flexy light could definitely use some work (I won't be surprised if the first thing JF uses these to do is improve on that) but I tried a couple different things and this was the best I came up with. Tigertail plus beading crimps were a flop, and there was no way to superglue it while leaving easy access to the battery compartment. I also wish the wire the crimps are on was a little more posable.

Diagnosis: Human (Mad Pride Manifesto)

(SoCI: No, I'm not turning into Furious Seasons. I'll still have other stuff to talk about here. This is just a continuation to my previous post, and is here in celebration of Mad Pride month. Next week, new soapbox, I promise.)

Thus, we are “depressed” not because the world is being destroyed while we sell our hours to mindless routines, but because our brains are too weak to handle it. We are “ADHD” not because our culture slams us with an average of 3000 media messages a day, but because our brains are too weak to handle it. We are “schizophrenic” and “bipolar” not because we were traumatized or overwhelmed by the madness of our culture, but because our brains are too weak to handle it. Instead of taking a ruthless moral inventory of our culture, families, societies, economics, religions, education systems, and pointing the blameful finger outwards, we do it of and to ourselves, and now of and to our biology. Everyone is mentally ill, that is, every individual except the sum of the parts: society. ~From "Indicator Species?" by Steven Morgan

I can't get to the page to link you guys because I don't have a membership and don't want to fool around with all that, but apparently if you log into the DSM-V website, there's a place for "suggestions", and the DSM guys list five categories of suggestions. One of these is "suggestions for a new disorder to be added to the DSM."

When you consider that the DSM is pretty much the be-all-and-end-all Bible of psychiatric diagnoses, that's just weird. Inviting laypeople to make up new disorders? Nobody gets to make up other types of diseases; one has to discover a microbe or isolate a cluster of symptoms or something. This exposes the fluidity and subjectivity of what many people like to present as a solid, objective science. This invitation to create mental illnesses out of imagination, social stigmas, boredom, thin air or whatever speaks volumes about our society and the nature of mental illness.

Most mental illnesses are seen as disorders because they prevent the person from functioning properly in the social world we have set up for ourselves. People have become so indoctrinated into this reality that they fail to realize almost all of the expectations placed on us are arbitrary and unnatural. Nobody counts "air dependency" as a disorder, but if we all tried to live on the moon, this would become a failure-to-cope disorder just like mental illness. If our society had an established place, purpose, or outlet for "mentally ill" behavior, it would become normal. Normal and healthy behavior is completely relative - an American assertive, go-get-em girl would be seen as irreparably rude and offensive in Japan. Does that mean that by changing location and surrounding culture, this girl acquires some sort of behavioral condition? Is failure to hold up to the expectations of other people really a disorder?

I'm not denying the existence of psychiatric quirks that fit DSM-style definitions of named disorders. I'm not (in this post) bothering with the argument over whether they arise from genetics, brain chemistry, environment, choice, or alien lasers. Those are all extraneous issues. The fact is that some people perceive an alternate reality or experience a state of consciousness that is foreign to most, and society as a whole has chosen to recognize these differences as dangerous or broken. 

The most beautiful as well as the most ugly inclinations of man are not part of a fixed biologically given human nature, but result from the social process which creates man. ~Erich Fromm

Why have we chosen to label certain thought patterns as disorders and not others? My entire family hates being late, to the point that we tend to show up obnoxiously early to things. This creates major stress as everyone gets anxious and tense and people start lashing out at each other because they're upset over the threat of being late. Yet because our society values punctuality, it is acceptable to allow this fear to create high levels of stress. But if a different situation causes one to become very anxious and upset, they have OCD, a phobia, paranoid delusions, etc. Even though excessive need to be around other people may culminate in perpetual partying and perhaps a neglect of relationships, studies or other responsibilities, the DSM IV is lacking Tucker Max Disorder because wanting to be around other people has been deemed "normal" - but excessive need to be alone is bizarre and strange. I can write a checklist of traits and say "if these apply to you, you have X disorder," but that's meaningless. Homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness but today is a (kind of) socially acceptable variation on thought patters regarding sex. Did it suddenly become healthier? Why haven't doctors ever decided that cholera or the flu "isn't a disease anymore, jk guys"?

I concede that many people who are labelled mentally ill may engage in behaviors that are destructive to themselves or others, but I honestly believe that if we collectively showed more respect, empathy and need for those whose minds we do not understand, we would severely diminish addiction/self-harm/homelessness related to mental illness. People often assume that these choices stem only from the thought patterns, without considering that the choices may instead be a reaction to the frustration, anger and alienation that are a result of society's refusal to validate those thought patterns. In an interview on Madness Radio, Richard Unger points out that "recovery" rates for mental illness rose significantly in the 1970s and theorizes that it's because during that time, altered or extreme or alternate states of consciousness were more accepted and so the people experiencing them had the opportunity to work through, engage with, and share them.

It is not possible to separate the autism from the person. Therefore, when parents say, ‘I wish my child did not have autism,’ what they’re really saying is, ‘I wish the autistic child I have did not exist and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.’ Read that again. This is what we hear when you mourn over our existence. This is what we hear when you pray for a cure. This is what we know, when you tell us of your fondest hopes and dreams for us: that your greatest wish is that one day we will cease to be, and strangers you can love will move in behind our faces.~Jim Sinclair

Before you argue with me on this point, realize that the thought patterns so strange to you have a huge part in allowing your daily life to continue. You appreciate the madness of others every time you turn on the lights (Nikola Tesla, who paved the way for modern electricity, would be considered "very weird" by any social standards), admire Van Gogh's Starry Night (said to represent the ups/downs of manic depression) or wake up in peaceful America (Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister during WW2, made reference to periods of depression as his "black dog", possibly indicating what the DSM refers to as Major or Manic Depression). Would these accomplishments have been possible if the minds of these three men adhered strictly to the thought laws we have established? I'm inclined to doubt that.

If everyone thought inside the box, we'd still be living in the stone age. Creativity and problem solving require the pushing or breaking of boundaries, and historically this has been done by those who do not see or understand those boundaries to begin with. Society relies on the outcasts of thought for progress, but fears them and chooses to arbitrarily define "normal" within random but rigid limits, leaving little room for psychological quirks. If the majority of the population was bipolar, things would be set up to accommodate them, and those without bipolar "symptoms" would struggle to fit in and understand the world.

My main point: Normal means only what we allow it to. There is no such thing as standardized, healthy behavior. Labels are arbitrary. The DSM is a joke. "Mental illness" means nothing. The ostracization of the strange is deeply hypocritical.

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them, and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it.~Marcel Proust

Recommended Reading:

Dissident Voice: Mental Illness or Social Sickness?

Harvard Gazette: Creativity tied to Mental Illness

FAQs on the DSM website addressing some of the issues I've raised

Critics of the Concept of Mental Illness (Really long PDF scanned book chapter)

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Brain?

(State of CI: Noticing a theme? Mad Pride Day is today. In the upcoming days, the world will be seeing celebrations of neurodiversity, creative maladjustment and destigmatization, as well as declarations of freedom, worth and value from those society has labeled sick or abnormal. MFI has more information here. )

Neurotypical (or NT) people have neurological developments and states that are consistent with what most people would perceive as normal in their ability to process linguistic information and social cues. While originally coined among the autistic community as a label for non-autistic persons, the concept was later adopted by both the neurodiversity movement and the scientific community. ~"Neurotypical", Wikipedia

There are a lot of things out in the world to be scared of. Angry dogs, drunk drivers, fire, floods, nuclear war, people bigger than you, guns, global warming, microbes, monsters, scorpions, getting caught, pandemics, violence, loneliness, uncertainty, fear itself. But ask me what in this perpetually level-orange world scares me the most, and the answer is this: the fact that many people believe that the inability to cope with society's arbitrary standards strips an individual of basic dignities and rights to self-determination, and that frustrations, fears, struggles, perceptions, and beliefs outside the accepted patterns of collective thought and reality render one incapable of making healthy choices for oneself.

The good folks at the Treatment Advocacy Center think that involuntary treatment of the "mentally ill" is an awesome idea even if the people are not endangering themselves or others. The first two bullets under their Mission Statement make this clear - they believe that the mentally ill need other people to make choices for them and that waiting for them to become a danger before forcing treatment is wrong. They claim that "people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder cannot think clearly" which is a completely inane statement for a few reasons:

1.) People with what is referred to as bipolar disorder have "flat" periods during which they are asymptomatic, so even if they were "cognitively impaired" during episodes, they would not be complete morons all the time

2.)  John Nash, Ted Turner, Mark Twain and Winston Churchill; among others

3.) A large group of schizophrenic, bipolar, and others with different minds manage to maintain a few collective communities, run on anarchist principles, which organize events, create publications, and otherwise display the ability to "think clearly" 

Other claims made by the TAC include:

 "we don't take away rights, being crazy already does that." So if you can metaphorically show that someone is already "not free", it's okay to continue to take away their freedoms! I'm off to steal from people in wheelchairs and violate the privacy of blind people because I'm not taking their civil rights, their disabilities already have! It's like robbing a poor person.

"Involuntary treatment hasn't been shown to be harmful." That's why the CIA guys giving LSD to subjects without consent got pats on the back. Nobody has issues getting locked up and  given mind-altering drugs against their will. You wouldn't have a problem with it, would you? Oh, and all these people are liars.

"The mentally ill are violent" This ignores some basic cause-effect issues - for example, those who don't take their meds may be more violent in hospitals/jails because other people are trying to force them to do stuff that threatens their sense of safety. Try and force me to down some beer and we'll see where my elbows end up (hint: your soft parts) but does that mean non-drinkers are violent? It also ignores studies like these, muddies their main point ("force-treat the nonviolent ones"?) and acts as a scare tactic.

Especially chilling is the fact that the words "will" and "rights" as applied to the mentally ill are in quotation marks here. Think about the implications of those quote marks around the "wills" and "rights" of other human beings.

There's a bigger issue here, but it's for another post, and that is the diagnoses themselves - the question of who gets to decide what's rational and what's delusional; what behaviors are healthy and which are not. Most people would agree that stepping in to save a life is good, but what the TAC is advocating is forced treatment for people who are simply not functioning within the parameters of the world we have set up for ourselves. They want everyone to see the world their way, and are threatened by alternate perceptions of reality or society. They think limiting forced treatment to "violent" or "dangerous" people is not enough. We have come up with arbitrary labels like "bipolar" or "schizophrenic" to apply to certain thought patterns and behaviors, and we have collectively decided that they aren't going to fly in our world. People who do things differently are broken and flawed - nevermind that the expectations placed on them are entirely artificial constructs of society. If schizophrenics ran the world, the TAC guys would have a pretty tough time. (Stay tuned for a full-fledged post on this.)

Moral of the story: think like us, or we will make you.

Scared yet?

If you think this has nothing to do with you because you haven't been labelled or diagnosed, MindFreedom has this to say: This movement is open to ALL, whether or not you have personally been labeled by the psychiatric system. Mad Pride is really about Human Pride. Yes, given humanity's track record, Human Pride may seem daunting. Mad Pride celebrates how each person's eccentricities, passion, uniqueness and freedom makes you truly human. Do not allow our very humanity to be pathologized by a corporate mental health system that has gone out of control! Celebrate YOUR Mad Pride!

If you want to see what people have to say on both sides of the debate (or take action), here are some organizations that lean against forced treatment:

Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

Citizen's Commission on Human Rights

(Mind the sensationalism and the ironic Church of Scientology connection)

The Freedom Center

MindFreedom International

Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law

And here are some that favor it:

National Alliance for Mental Illness

The American Government

(also note all the police support of the TAC)

I'm having a difficult time finding more independent organizations for this section, as all searches lead eventually back to the TAC and all their "affiliates" are really just localized or specialized offshoots of their own group. They and NAMI appear to have monopolized this issue. Hm.