Category Archives: communication

Puppets: more real than the judge

Channel 19 in Akron, Ohio was disappointed that it wouldn’t be allowed to take cameras into the corruption trial of Jimmy Dimora, a former county commissioner. But when life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla: they bring the courtroom proceeding to their viewers’ TV sets by re-enacting them with puppets.

via Puppets re-enact no-cameras-allowed corruption trial on the nightly news – Boing Boing.

It is an interesting moment when real life is understood through fantasy.  Situationists would call this detournement — to turn the medium around against itself.  To corrode the ideas of those who continue to think about this idea.  I bet a lot of people in Akron who talk about the corruption trial wind up including themselves in the ridiculous puppet world.

Even more powerfully, the puppets get replicated through the Interwebs, spreading the awareness of this trial far and wide.   It is a brilliant response to court censorship.

I also think it’s worth mentioning the racist stereotype of Suzanne, the sex worker whose puppet pigment and willingness to take money make her a true prop in the story.

See.  Even though I’m right, that sounds foolish. That is the power of detournement.

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Filed under art, communication, media, representation

Margaret Cho on accountability and fat jokes

Things I could say should be left unheard and unsaid because I am not willing to be the bigger person. I do not take the high road. I take the low road and blows below the belt are my absolute favorite. The best revenge is not living well. The best revenge is revenge. My mouth and mind and typing fingers are weapons of mass destruction and I pity those ignorant idiots who would leave insults about mine or any women’s bodies in comment boxes because there’s ways of hunting people down. Lots and lots of ways. It’s not as anonymous as they think, as stupid as they are.

via Margaret Cho Rightfully Loses Her Shit.

Thanks Jezebel for the linque!

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Filed under communication, feminism, media, representation

Lets Roll: Yelawolf

Some casual notes about this video:

– Not enough flags present.

– Articulating the rural-urban divide has never been easier than this.

– Kid Rock looks a lot like my Uncle.

– Is it required for emcees to have terrible haircuts in 2012?

– We skipped all the places between the Bronx and Alabama.

– Kool Herc should get props — but the necessity of giving him a caption to ID the seemingly-random-older-black-DJ-guy at the end of the video strikes me as a token nod to the codification of the early symbols of hip hop.

– The lifted limo looks like something that the staff of Elemental magazine would mock.

– How much does Monster pay Yela for the promo?

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Filed under communication, hip hop

His name is Lakhdar Boumediene, we locked him in Guantanamo

The New York Times  published the testimony of a survivor of the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba.  Lakhadar Boumediene worked for Red Crescent helping orphan children when he was accused of a bomb plot and was taken to Guantanamo Bay.

I went on a hunger strike for two years because no one would tell me why I was being imprisoned. Twice each day my captors would shove a tube up my nose, down my throat and into my stomach so they could pour food into me. It was excruciating, but I was innocent and so I kept up my protest.

via My Guantánamo Nightmare – NYTimes.com.

He was freed after finally getting a (civilian) judicial review of his case.

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Filed under communication, human rights, prisons, propaganda

Juxtapostion: gendered LEGO

Artifact one:

Artifact 2:

Image from Sociological Images.

Lisa Wade has the brilliant exposition on this shift over at Sociological Images. 

(And how awesome is that first ad?)

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Filed under communication, feminism, representation

Consciousness and eating animals

I’ve been a vegetarian for almost twenty years.  For me it is easy, fun and a delicious.  I no longer see vegetarianism as a sacrifice in any way.  Eating is celebration and to eat vegetables is delightful.

Mark Bittmann, the New York Times food critic seems to be building a path to live with joyous cruelty-free food:

Many vegan dishes, however, are already beloved: we eat fruit salad, peanut butter and jelly, beans and rice, eggplant in garlic sauce. The problem faced by many of us — brought up as we were with plates whose center was filled with a piece of an animal — is in imagining less-traditional vegan dishes that are creative, filling, interesting and not especially challenging to either put together or enjoy.

My point here is to make semi-veganism work for you. Once a week, let bean burgers stand in for hamburgers, leave the meat out of your pasta sauce, make a risotto the likes of which you’ve probably never had — and you may just find yourself eating “better.”

These recipes serve about four, and in all, the addition of salt and pepper is taken for granted. This is not a gimmick or even a diet. It’s a path, and the smart resolution might be to get on it.

via No Meat, No Dairy, No Problem – NYTimes.com.

Kudos to Bittmann for the column, approach, and recipes.  To have veganism be the suggestion for New Years resolutions is wonderful.  The New York Times, one of the most venerable newspapers in North America offers a marker of the persuasiveness of vegan choice in the current public dialogue.

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Filed under Animals, communication, food, health, representation

Einstein and rhetoric of science

Wow.  Talk about an intro to place Einstein in the modernist frame.

Thanks to What the fuck have you done for the relatively cool connect.

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Filed under academics, communication, documentary, representation

Resilience during creation

There is something terribly doubt inspiring about locking your occupation to creative output.  The Rumpus has an advice column — the mysterious Sugar who breaks this problem down with eloquence:

How many women wrote beautiful novels and stories and poems and essays and plays and scripts and songs in spite of all the crap they endured. How many of them didn’t collapse in a heap of “I could have been better than this” and instead went right ahead and became better than anyone would have predicted or allowed them to be. The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your Nerve, deny you –,” as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your Nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

via DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #48: Write Like A Motherfucker – The Rumpus.net.

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Filed under academics, communication, health, learning

Changing culture about head injuries

The rapid pace of cultural transformation on some health issues has been pretty impressive.  Think about how quick major public conversations about health and safety have been about tobacco, seatbelts, and trans-fats.  In these cases it didn’t take long for laws to be changed based on health concerns.

I  think we are on the verge of a new way of thinking about head injuries and sports.  Probably one that will come with new laws and regulations.  As a marker of these changes let us note that several NFL players are suing the league for it’s antiquated approach to head injuries.

Furthermore, the court documents say the league concealed the dangers from coaches, trainers, players and the public until June 2010, when it publicly acknowledged the health threats and warned players and teams.

“While athletes in other professional sports who had suffered concussions were being effectively ‘shut down’ for long periods of time or full seasons, NFL protocol was to return players who had suffered concussions to the very game in which the injury occurred,” the lawsuit states.

via Ex-NFL Players Jamal Lewis, Dorsey Levens & Two Others Sue League Over Concussions | BALLERSTATUS.com.

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Filed under communication, disability, health, representation

Turning Randall Terry gay

Progressives might be losing in this country, but they do seem to be having more fun.

Anyone who has been disappointed by the horrifically bad aim of most glitter bombings can see that this is by far the most successful glitterbombing ever; so good job, crazy dude.

via Man With Boot On His Head Glitterbombs Anti-Gay Racist Randall Terry / Queerty.

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Filed under communication, human rights, protest