crowth

"The ideological spectacle keeps up with the times by bringing out harmless plastic antagonisms; are..."

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:26:00 +0000

“The ideological spectacle keeps up with the times by bringing out harmless plastic antagonisms; are you for or against Brigitte Bardot, the Rolling Stones, small cars, hippies, nationalization, spaghetti, old people, the United Nations, mini-skirts, pop art, thermonuclear war, hitch-hiking? There is no one who is not accosted at every moment of the day by posters, news flashes, stereotypes, and summoned to take sides over each of the prefabricated trifles that conscientiously stop up all the sources of everyday creativity. In the hands of Power, that glacial fetish, such particles of antagonism form a magnetic ring whose function it is to make everybody lose their bearings, to abstract individuals from themselves and scramble all lines of force.”

- Raoul Vaneigem

"I only crave a corned beef pasty if I’ve been nasty."

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:16:00 +0000

“I only crave a corned beef pasty if I’ve been nasty.”

- My girlfriend.

Time to break out into song…

Simon Jenkins: The bankers lied. And Darling, a mere puppet on their string, knows it | The Guardian

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:34:00 +0000

Simon Jenkins: The bankers lied. And Darling, a mere puppet on their string, knows it | The Guardian:

Still no inquiry. Still no answers. A trillion pounds has been devoted over the past 18 months to protect Britain’s financial system from alleged Armageddon, with not a murmur of value for money. This stupefying sum is more than has ever been spent on any project by any government in British history.

We know where the money came from but we do not know if it was necessary, nor who now has it. We know only that, a year on, Britain is experiencing a worse recession than any comparable country. The lack of accountability, the sheer lack of curiosity from the political community, is amazing.

jingalingisblue: teawithlemon: you can now get mad men...

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:30:00 +0000

jingalingisblue:

teawithlemon:

you can now get mad men barbies. this makes me want to get around to watching it even more

Mad Men Barbies!

I’ve never watched it, so am I correct in assuming that they took the woman with the incredible and curvaceous figure (often praised for being a deviation from the body shape typically championed as the only shape a woman should be) and gave her Barbie’s figure? Because that would seem like a bit of a dick move.

meta-tumblr

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:20:34 +0000

sexartandpolitics:

Hey y’all, remember when we could filter our dashboard by post type?

Wasn’t that nice?

Only helpful if you’re using Firefox, but if you install the Greasemonkey add-on and then this script, you can filter by post type. Choose a post type and hit return in the search box.

Denny Crane: Oh, you should’ve seen Shirley. If anyone...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:49:00 +0000

Denny Crane: Oh, you should’ve seen Shirley. If anyone wonders how she got to be Shirley Schmidt, the evidence was on full display today. She was as strong and as powerful and as dignified as any woman I’ve ever seen. Made me wanna… flip her on her back and have sex with her.
Alan Shore: Do you think you’re a racist, Denny?
Denny Crane: Oh! God… I don’t know. Do you think it’s racist to say a man sounds black?
Alan Shore: I think it’s more offensive to say ‘street’ or ‘urban’ when the inference is you mean black.
Denny Crane: So, what do you say?
Alan Shore: Well, Barack Obama referred to the black sound as a black idiom, more like jazz and less like a set score.
Denny Crane: They let him get away with that?
Alan Shore: Evidently.
Denny Crane: I might vote for him, you know.
Alan Shore: Obama?
Denny Crane: Anybody in America can grow up to be President, that’s what I say. Except Hilary! She wins I puke.
Alan Shore: Barack Obama…
Denny Crane: Yeah. Handsome, great photo op. I don’t know what he stands for. Be a perfect President. He speaks perfect white, as well as black. You never heard me say that.
Alan Shore: What about McCain?
Denny Crane: He speaks Bush now. Can’t win.
Alan Shore: Obama’s against the war you know now.
Denny Crane: So am I. Boring. I’m ready for a new war. Time to blow up Iran. We got Saddam. Now we gotta get, err, Amina… douchebag. And that nutjob in North Korea? They both gotta go. And not because they’re not white.
Alan Shore: Okay. Denny, does it bother you at all that America’s so hated by the rest of the world these days?
Denny Crane: Well of course it does, Alan. Just can’t please everybody. Better to just…
Alan Shore: Blow them up?
Denny Crane: Exactly. And not because they’re not white.
Alan Shore: No.

Shirley Schmidt: My name is Shirley Schmidt, I’m a senior...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:11:00 +0000

Shirley Schmidt: My name is Shirley Schmidt, I’m a senior partner at Crane, Poole and Schmidt. Thank you all for coming. It’s nice to see you all turn out when there’s hard news. Yesterday, my partner, Denny Crane, made some regrettable statements, the most offensive being when he told an African-American law student that he ‘didn’t sound black’. I know Denny Crane. He is not a bigot. When he used the word ‘articulate’, as I suspect Joe Biden used it, as I suspect our President used it, what he was attempting to convey was that he thought Mr Givens would play well with white corporate America. The simple but ugly truth is we all look for that. Perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not, but we do. We have a primarily white client base, we hire associates we feel will best appeal to that base. Before you point your finger at us, I would invite the media to look at its own industry. Consider the criteria by which you choose your anchors. Denny Crane’s statement speaks not to his own racism but to a much more insidious one that exists in a white-collar society that prefers to take its blacks as it takes its coffee. With a little cream and sugar. I’m not proud of it, but until we confront that truth we will not change it. Thank you all for coming.

Generic terrorist

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:27:00 +0000

This was noticed by London comedy person, James Ross, on his facebook, and re-posted by another London comedy person, Kate Smurthwaite, on her blog, and now I’m re-re-posting it here, on my blog.

It’s a news story that ran in the Northern Echo under the headline ‘Terror poison racist’ and on the BBC website under ‘County Durham man admits ricin terror plot’.

After comparing these two reports, James Ross posed this question:

Dear BBC,

Do you think that the fact a chap caught with ricin in a jam jar was a white supremacist is:
a) very important. In fact, central to the story.
b) somewhat important. Let’s give it a good level of prominence.
c) neither important nor unimportant. Let’s at least mention it though, some people might find it interesting.
d) somewhat unimportant. But hey, let’s mention it, we’ve got a whole page to fill.
e) not at all important. How could a motive be relevant to a crime? I, for one, have no idea.

sexartandpolitics: mathewparkin: aoxomoxoaoxomoxoa: CAT PLAYS...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:23:04 +0000

sexartandpolitics:

mathewparkin:

aoxomoxoaoxomoxoa:

CAT PLAYS THEREMIN.

This is perhaps the best thing I have ever seen.

autoreblog

The end was the bit that got me. I chuckled audibly.

"I masturbate a lot."

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:41:13 +0000

“I masturbate a lot.”

- Ernest Borgnine (clip here) (via jasontheexploder)

Lena's Law Petition

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:51:26 +0000

Lena's Law Petition:

In a nut shell, once the train is in motion and the doors are locked, rail companies use good old fashioned extortion to extract the maximum amount of money from law abiding citizens by not accepting rail cards and ignoring valid excuses.

Fare dodging is of course illegal, and should be correctly punished, but the system as it stands is too inflexible to allow for honest people who boarded the wrong train in error, missed their intended train through circumstances beyond their control or couldn’t buy a ticket at the station. Once you’re on a train, the operators have a license to print money. Or at least relieve you of yours.

‘Simple says we believe in goodness’? I think Simple...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:35:00 +0000

‘Simple says we believe in goodness’? I think Simple says ‘we’re a bit simple and probably belong to a cult’. You need a sick bag to watch these adverts.

I love how the Cheshire Cat in the 1903 Alice in Wonderland...

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:08:59 +0000

I love how the Cheshire Cat in the 1903 Alice in Wonderland is grinning like any thoroughly unimpressed cat would. I’m never sure how there’s an endless stream of lolcats when this is about the only expression my cat is capable of.

"Black Book, the Sonderfahndungliste GB (Special Search List GB) which was prepared by the SS..."

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:45:00 +0000

“Black Book, the Sonderfahndungliste GB (Special Search List GB) which was prepared by the SS functionary Walter Schellenberg in May 1940. It was a list of 2,820 British subjects and European exiles who were to be arrested should SEALION, the proposed German invasion of the UK be successful. It also included a list of institutions and establishments which were of particular interest to the Nazis. Apart from obvious candidates such as Churchill and Anthony Eden there were writers, journalists, publishers, and financiers. Noël Coward, H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Violet Bonham-Carter, Victor Gollancz, and Bernard Baruch were among those listed. The man chosen to head the operation to arrest them was an SS Standartenführer (colonel), Franz Six. He was to be based in London and have six Einsatzgruppen working for him in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Edinburgh. After the war Six was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials for war crimes in the USSR.

The British had their own list of people to be arrested if the Germans invaded. Among the 82 names of suspected collaborators was the writer on military strategy Maj-General J. F. C. Fuller, who was Mosley’s military adviser.”

- “Black Book”, The Oxford Companion to World War II

wooliebear: BBC News - Lost Jewish tribe ‘found in Zimbabwe’ In...

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:47:58 +0000

wooliebear:

BBC News - Lost Jewish tribe ‘found in Zimbabwe’

In many ways, the Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe and South Africa are just like their neighbours.

But in other ways their customs are remarkably similar to Jewish ones.

They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.

Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.

It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which confirm their Semitic origin.

These tests back up the group’s belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.

I remember watching the Channel 4 documentary about this, The Quest for the Lost Ark. Incredible and fascinating stuff.

Objectification: what if the world were different for a day?

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:14:00 +0000

Objectification: what if the world were different for a day?:

gauntlet:

Picture this. You open the newspaper one grey morning, and there in a bright pixel smear on the third page is a full-length photograph of a young man. The young man is almost naked; a flesh-coloured thong clings tightly to his hairless cock and balls; he looks over his shoulder at you, his jaw a perfect masculine square, his dark eyes smouldering. Everywhere, this young man is hard, smooth, impenetrable and yet submissive, wanting you to consume him. You turn the page.

There are more young men on each of the pages that follow, naked or scantily clothed, poreless, flawless, with broad shoulders and rock-hard arses and muscles that bunch and gleam under oiled skin. You are used to the sight of these young men; these days, they hardly even arouse you. Their glassy eyes follow you on public transport, on the internet, on television, in the fashion spreads of magazines.

Picture this. Every one of the men and boys whose images you see repeated thousands of times a day is impossibly perfect, hewn from some arcane piece of rock on the platonic plane. Not one of them is over thirty-three. In the shadow of their hard, robotic masculinity, the possibility of paunches and puppy fat and male-pattern balding is unthinkable . They rarely speak, and when they do speak, they ventriloquise; they implore you to look at them, to understand their silent semiotics of commercial masculinity; they threaten and seduce you in a boring parade of billboards, adverts, music videos.

"Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation, asked him what he..."

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:06:00 +0000

“Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation, asked him what he was reading this time.

So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:

Oh, boy - they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch this time!

And, that thought had a brother: ‘There are right people to lynch.’ Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Citation is needed for the ‘dunk your balls in hot...

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:32:30 +0000

Citation is needed for the ‘dunk your balls in hot water’ contraceptive method. YOU DON’T SAY.

Hurry the fuck up with that male pill/injection already. You’re breaking my balls here.

Just got my first ever taste of the Tumblr Radar. Holy crap.

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:49:40 +0000

Just got my first ever taste of the Tumblr Radar. Holy crap.

Robert Mugabe backs David Cameron's Conservatives | The Guardian

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:16:09 +0000

Robert Mugabe backs David Cameron's Conservatives | The Guardian:

“We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour,” Zimbabwe’s president said today. “Conservatives are bold, [Tony] Blair and [Gordon] Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others.”

[…]

Speaking in Zimbabwe after hearing of Brown’s comments to Zuma, Mugabe said: “We have a better chance with David Cameron than with Brown.”

Brilliant. New Labour should get him to do more campaigning for them.