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.)