Thanks to Retronaut for the astounding verse by Yosemite’s gangsta bear from outer space.
Category Archives: juxtaposition
Indigenous people’s day juxtaposition
Thanks to Vintage Ads for the image.
Filed under colonialism, cultural appropriation, human rights, juxtaposition, learning, Native, race, representation, slavery
Andrew W.K. parties with the My Little Pony crew
I’m thinking about Iris Young and her notion of the city.
“What ever you want to play with, it’s okay. It’s more than okay. It’s good.”
‘It was only released in Japan. But you can get it on illegal downloading. Please do.’
50 minutes and the party cannon emerges.
‘I would tell them. It’s totally fine to be in the corner.’
Dude sounds wicked Canadian.
Previously, I wrote about Andrew W.K performing in a wheelchair.
Filed under health, juxtaposition, learning, music, representation
Two takes on bath salts
Thanks for retronaut for the image
When bath salts first appeared in 2010, the products were crudely packaged — a label from an ink-jet printer slapped onto a plastic container, Ryan said. But over time, they began to look increasingly more professional and often specifically tailored to the place. Products in Louisiana donned names like Hurricane Charlie, NOLA Diamond, Bayou Ivory Flower. Bath salts had also surfaced in Illinois, Kentucky and Florida, but Louisiana was hit especially hard.
The product that Sanders snorted was called Cloud 9. At the time of his death, he was in a drug program for marijuana abuse, actively attending group meetings and undergoing frequent drug tests. He was told that the drug was legal, a great high and wouldn’t show up on a drug test.
via The Drug That Never Lets Go.
This contrast came about organically. My RSS feed contained this lengthy essay on the chemical make up of bath salts and the erotic towel advertisement about three hours apart from each other. It was ordained.
Filed under art, colonialism, drugs, health, juxtaposition, representation
Juxtaposition: New York Times on spray tans and Toxins in your couch
Artifact one: Who Made That Spray Tan? – NYTimes.com.
Even so, the bottle tan — especially when slathered on — tends to turn out brassier and Snookier than the real thing. But at least it’s safer than a binge in the sun.
HOW SAFE IS THE SPRAY-TAN BOOTH?
Darrell Rigel is a clinical professor of dermatology at the N.Y.U. Medical Center.
Are spray-tan booths, where the customer is standing in a fog of chemicals, safe? The concern used to be that you’re breathing in acetones — those fumes that smell like nail polish. Recent studies have suggested that dihydroxyacetone binds with a protein in your skin, and it does get absorbed systemically, but there are no smoking guns.
What do you tell your patients? I say don’t inhale in there. You’ll probably be O.K., but it’s not a totally benign alternative.
via Who Made That Spray Tan? – NYTimes.com.
Artifact 2: Arlene Blum’s Crusade Against Toxic Couches – NYTimes.com.
The problem is that flame retardants don’t seem to stay in foam. High concentrations have been found in the bodies of creatures as geographically diverse as salmon, peregrine falcons, cats, whales, polar bears and Tasmanian devils. Most disturbingly, a recent study of toddlers in the United States conducted by researchers at Duke University found flame retardants in the blood of every child they tested. The chemicals are associated with an assortment of health concerns, including antisocial behavior, impaired fertility, decreased birth weight, diabetes, memory loss, undescended testicles, lowered levels of male hormones and hyperthyroidism.
via Arlene Blum’s Crusade Against Toxic Couches – NYTimes.com.
Filed under capitalism, communication, juxtaposition, nature, representation
911 as Mitt Romney’s campaign song: Rick Ross and Jay Smooth
Freaking brilliant comparison. The Rick Ross strategy of simply lying to make yourself into a celebrity laid out next to the Mitt Romney campaign who, with the advent of VP candidate Paul Ryan, have take lying to a whole ‘nother level.
“Post-realness” indeed.
As someone who has read about the stories Gary Webb reported about the CIA selling cocaine to California gangs, the origin of the “Freeway” Rick Ross name, I’ve felt kind of icky about the linguistic hijack Rick Ross presents. Sort of like someone taking a mass murderers name (Jim Jones?) and re-branding it for sale to teenage pop fans, the choice to appropriate this particular criminal for a nom-de-tough-guy has never sat well with me.
When the real drug-dealer Freeway Rick Ross sued the rapper Rick Ross and lost, I was astounded. I remember ranting at that time that the rapper was impervious to reality.
Jay Smooth suggests the entire republican campaign is generating an inviting and fictional narrative. And like Rick Ross, one that will be resistant to suggestions that it isn’t factually correct. Some communications corrode against other communications.
In this sense, Rick Ross might be the best comparison to the Mitt Romney campaign. “Post-realness” means just making it up and then calling anyone who disagrees with you a bad name.
Since the G.O.P. is having a tough time finding any musician who will allow them to use any of their music, perhaps they should ask Rick Ross if they can use 911? I think it is as strong an ideological fit as Ted Nugent’s “Cat scratch fever.”
1. Explicit biblical reference to open the conversation? Check
2. Focus on wealthy people with explicit disregard for the poor? Check
3. Retaliatory ethics with encouragement of NRA gun violence? Check
4. Consumer identity presented as patriotism? Check
5. Pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps bullshit? Check
6. Women included via objectification? Check
You may know that Rick Ross’s new protege Gunplay (the other guy in the video) has a swastika tattooed on the back of his neck. If Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group did become more explicitly aligned with the Republican party, the value of Gunplay on the roster would obviously go way up. Not only is his name an NRA wet-dream, but the swastika tattoo would probably help get the votes of those die hard right-wingers who didn’t feel that the GOP showed enough visible Nazi tattoos.
Filed under communication, hip hop, juxtaposition, media, music, propaganda, representation
Kiese Laymon and how to slowly kill yourself and others in America
Thanks to wikipedia for the gun photo.
Kiese Laymon is currently an Associate Professor of English and the co-director of Africana Studies at Vassar College. This essay was originally published on his blog, Cold Drank, and was republished with permission. It is an excerpt from Laymon’s forthcoming book, On Parole: An Autobiographical Antidote to Post-Blackness. Laymon is also the author of the forthcoming novel, Long Division, which will be released in early 2013.
I’ve had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I’ve helped many folks say yes to life but I’ve definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
The college decides that two individual fraternity members, Shonda and I will be put on disciplinary probation for using “racially insensitive language” and the two fraternities involved get their party privileges taken away for a semester. If there was racially insensitive language Shonda and I could have used to make those boys feel like we felt, we would have never stepped to them in the first place.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
Mama’s antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it’s to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain’t no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival.
via How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America: A Remembrance.
Filed under academics, communication, human rights, juxtaposition, learning, police, race, representation
Science can be awesome
This is the University of Maryland’s Gamera II, a human-powered helicopter breaking a world record for human-powered flight.
Yep human -powered.
It makes me want to quit my job and start building my own Max-o-copter.
Of course yesterday while women scientists were helping to make the Gamera II fly for the extra couple of seconds it takes to break the world record, the European commission decided to unveil their “science: it’s a girl thing” campaign. I won’t insult you with a link, but it is a stunningly sexist take on why women might be interested in science. Pink clothes, music videos and lip gloss.
s.e. Smith has the insightful analysis of this video over at Tiger Beatdown:
This patronising, pathetic campaign in which science was swaddled in pink sparkles and packaged as something girls can totally do was ridiculous and self-defeating. The video focused entirely on fashion and cosmetics, and the organisation’s site was littered with pinkness and more cosmetics promotion, even though the actual profiles of real women scientists on the site focus on topics like veterinary virology and food security, all of which are fascinating and interesting and might attract interest from young women who would be totally turned off by the offensive framing, and thus are unlikely to see them.
Young women and girls do not in fact need everything to be wrapped in pink in order to be interested in it, nor do they need to see highly traditionalised performances of femininity to believe that something is ‘for them.’ In fact, for girls thinking about science, such displays could be a turnoff; maybe they aren’t interested in performing femininity, or they aren’t conventionally attractive, or, hey, they’re actually smart and independent enough to care about science regardless as to what scientists look like and what they wear in the damn lab, because they’re interested in the research, not the clothes.
via Tiger Beatdown › This may be the most patronising attempt to get girls involved in science ever.
In contrast to the human-powered copter, this misstep seems particularly noxious. Rather than simply including women in science projects, mentoring women, and encouraging all students to be inquisitive about the world around them, the desire to condescend helps to protect the sciences as the realms of sexism.
Humans are pretty awesome animals and when we get thinking creatively, wonderful stuff emerges. Cheers to those who believe that everyone is an intellectual. Cheers to those who trust and like women. Cheers to those who build flying machines without oil. And cheers to Zombie Marie Curie who told us all about this years ago . . .
Filed under academics, bicycle, juxtaposition, learning, representation, resistance
Juxtaposition on transgender discrimination: Action Bronson and Feministing
Artifact one:
Recent wins don’t undermine these tragedies in any way. In fact, it’s all that much harder to see the most marginalized in our community facing violence at the same time that we’re winning victories. Changes in our laws don’t mean people automatically stop hating us. Sometimes increased visibility can mean increased violence. We have to continue working to change people’s minds while we also work to change the laws. Trans women of color continue to face the worst transphobic violence. So we have to continue working deliberately to lift up the voices of trans women of color, to make sure the community most impacted can speak for themselves and humanize themselves.
via A sea change in transgender rights.
Artifact two:
Filed under communication, feminism, hip hop, homophobia, human rights, juxtaposition, representation
Making animal abuse visible: Walt Disney’s Taxi Driver
Damn this is a good mashup. Taxi Driver vs. early Walt Disney. I really like the movie theater scene because it makes visible some wild Mickey Mouse animal abuse that I’d never noticed before. Not to mention the most scathing critique of corporate sanitizing of Times Square that I’ve seen.
Filed under Animals, art, capitalism, juxtaposition, media
Life of refinement 