Many of you will have seen one or both of these two clips. Still, the quality of design here demands another golf clap.
The first makes a graphic reality of middle-school teachers’ dreams. It is the cartographer’s logic summarizing Middle Eastern geopolitics.
This second is a similar paired down mother-google-earth, time lapse map of US conflict. Or rather, an atlas. The US interests are astonishingly global.
It is worth more as an education on forgotten violence, than as a tacky face-off between political parties for fewest war fatalities.
Other inclusions about Secret CIA Prisons, the Retaking of Fallujah and Intelligence footage are jolt to the preferred mood. The viewer, me, was accustomed to the tone of the aforementioned, mildly apolitical forays into mappage.
Check out the rest of the site. I can’t work out whether it is the creation of socially motivated researchers or entrapment by a government agency, but I like it…
Another impeccably designed map. Satisfyingly simple, like a venn diagram.
There’s also a belter about religions’ roles in all the comedy we call humanness.
The title is far too grand for this post which is in truth my own personal reflections on good stuff that America needs to know about. Unfortunately for the yanks amongst our readership, the most chucklesome and inspired comedy I have seen since arriving on these shores is Canadian. Check out the Trailer Park Boys for some boyish rebellion and social debris that is more honest than any offering by American networks. I wouldn’t want to call it social commentary because it isn’t – it is new actors made good by cute script writing and a unique scenario.
I have to admit that when I first arrived in the US of states, John Stewart tickled my fancy. That was five years ago. It was inevitable that Stewart’s platform would eventually be perfected by a greater caricature. The Colbert Report is an inspiration only in that it uses the unfathomable logic of American media and politics to poke fun at us all. It’s limitation is its success – it stabs stoopid Americans in the heart with a stoopid pencil. But only half of America knows what a pencil is, let alone how to use one.
How long will it be before you get sick of Colbert’s rapport? If you’re not turning off your sets when Colbert reaches for his “gutsy” lance of truth, then you should soon. Carry your television set to the roof and throw it to the concrete. What now you ask?
TV is for idiots. Go to youtube, liveleak, videoegg or any web based self broadcast interface of your choosing. All well and good. But where to start? Begin by checking out what the ladies and gents in your home town are doing. You may be surprised…
Alternatively, type in the name of any random mammal followed by the word “attack” and you’ll get some side splitting results. If that doesn’t grab your fancy check out my own sole offering.
Meanwhile, open up another tab and buy, pilfer or download the following recommendations
Time Trumpet. Armando Lanucci continues his smug ambivalence. This clip summarises the distressing trend toward two party, centrist, spin-laded politicking that Britain must now endure. I fear there is no way back. For your information, David Cameron is the leader of the opposition in Britain, but that isn’t important. Cameron recently instructed the Conservative party to post its campaign ads on youtube to attract young voters. Dick.
To be honest, I preferred the days when politicians could throw punches. John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, who is to put it nicely a total tosser, won votes and public favour for this left jab.
BrassEye. I hope that Chris Morris has earned a cult following stateside. His criticisms of media when covering the most sensitive subjects, such as paedophilia, drug abuse and immigration may seem a little close to the bone, but how else are we to deal with public hysteria and corporate thought control amongst nations of idiots? If you can’t reconcile souped up graphics and sensational coverage with real issues on your doorstep then Morris has proved his point. Don’t rely on TV for anything – least of all opinion or direction on the most incendiary of social issues occurring on your doorstep. For the record, Morris was making fools of celebrities years before Sasha Baron Cohen came on the scene. Borat was stolen.
The Mighty Boosh. Many of the best British comedies begin as radio shows. That is why script based comedy endures. The visuals only add to surreal and unhinged narratives of Fielding and Barratt. In the final coup de gras, these two fellows took their ritalin-goth selves to the stage. On a trip of self exile to the outer reaches of Britian, they fell under the spell of Old Greg, a lonely and psychotic lake faerie. Any similarities here between Old Greg and Chapelle’s Rick James, Bitch?
As an aside, both Fielding and Barratt appeared as equally self absorbed characters in Nathan Barley, Morris’ latest contribution to an amoral Britain. Most people hated “Barley”. Those that didn’t jerk their knees frenziedly were those that were honest enough to see themselves in this utterly disgusting human. Laugh at yourselves, we are all idiots.
Peep Show. Nothing kinky here. The show’s name derives from the filming that only used character eye views for the entire season. Peep show is another example of male weakness being the only remaining subject left to chortle at uneasily. We live in an age of stifled laughter … hearty laughter belonged to our parents. Embarrassed laughter is all we have.
America. Embarrass yourselves through comedy, not politics.
My peer group – for the most part – is a well-washed mass of royalty. Or, rather, anticipated royalty. Chris Ott at Shallow Rewards puts it best:
Our parents dreamt of doing lots of things and didn’t, dousing their desires to make sure we could explore ours more fully. The working at gas stations and walking miles in the snow…many of our parents had to supplement their family’s income, and wanted better
Ultimately, our parents’ drive to deliver a better childhood is proving a mistake, if a well-intentioned one. We are a generation embarrassed to have day jobs, embarrassed to work for a living. Embarrassed not to be kings and queens.
Ott acknowledges the myth that this wasn’t basically true of our parents’ generation as well. His implicit solution is to work a tolerable job and save your passion for your free time. Here’s where I disagree. While I appreciate the sentiment and the notion that most kids my age should just get over themselves, I take issue with the one-size-fits-all solution. Some people are legitimately depressed by their 9 to 5 jobs, and it seems like a format for living that better serves fictional economic bodies rather than individuals.
I read about a study once that said the average U.S. employee works more hours than anywhere else in the world, but the amount of work accomplished with each additional hour was the lowest. In other words, our attitude towards work keeps us at the office longer with the least amount of payoff. When you have an arbitrary standard of 40 hours a week, you get people extending 30 hours of work unnecessarily. And I would wager that the increased employee dissatisfaction plays a role in productivity as well.
I can understand why the work week was structured the way it is, but it’s one specific solution to an organizational problem that is perhaps outdated. The drive to maximize one’s earning torque doesn’t work for a lot of people. And for that segment of the population there are socialist pipe dreams. In my view, we should be looking back upon this time a hundred years from now and putting this labor schedule on a level analogous to how we view serfdom now. It’s simply an inefficient system for any civic goals you may have. The only realm in which it makes sense is one driven by bureaucracy rather than populism.
And so I think Ott’s solution is flawed. I think that the king syndrome is the product of our fucked up view towards work and leisure, and the problems of polarizing one’s life into those two categories in the first place. We shouldn’t think that we’re special, but we should acknowledge that we are unique. And rather than having a market economy – which is not a level playing field by any stretch of the imagination – create a variety of life paths that so that you can choose how best your talents serve consumers, we should have a system that takes care of economic necessities while allowing for the diversity of human experience.
Fruity, I know. But I’m sick of most people getting nothing just so everyone can entertain the illusion that they could have everything.
In response to not having a computer I tried to write something in a notebook with the intention of working on whatever ideas landed on the page at a computer later… Instead I had a quickly written rant with no opportunity to tease out ideas or thoughts and the night I thought I might spend a little company time looking around the internet to help flesh things out a bit my manager walked in the room snooping which, obviously, ruined the thought… So instead we have yet another overly emotional, from the hip rant about nothing in particular but transcribed from a notebook and written as quickly as possible on a lunch break in a coffee shop after the girl working there showed me her fucked up wrist she injured in the Odwalla cooler the night before:
Ain’t nothing to do– the traditional rallying cry for bored teenagers, reaction against the frustrations and powerlessness of youth… A million nights of drinking and drugs, thousands of bands, hundreds of fanzines all sprang forth from one shared sensation… We stayed up til’ dawn watching horror movies or playing the same songs over and over again in the motorcycle shop… The Dead Boys beat up hippies and knocked old men down…
In recent weeks I’ve attempted to corrale countless friends into a variety of the traditional activities which were once born from boredom and frustration, but phoned inqueries– what’re y’doing?– no longer find the answer of ‘nothing’… Now people have to wake up early for work, or stay home studying for school or are just too tired to contemplate anything beyond microwaving a meal and watching television… Guess we’ve gotten older and things to do have been found…
Must be a natural progression, through the phases documented by films and books… Hormones run rampant for a couple of years and everyone’s nuts, acting out and picking through their obsessions… Then it’s time to mature, time to go to college and so the band breaks up, the zine doesn’t seem important anymore and another form of acting out and picking through obsessions ensues… By the time we’ve been suitably groomed for entering the work-force the bands and zines have been whittled down to almost nothing, property of the immature and disconnected… Sure, you can set aside a little time on the weekend to pursue your former ambitions or passions or whatever’s less embarassing a term, maybe take a class one night and if you’re up for it you can catch a movie Friday night: but these are now hobbies, not what you do… These things no longer define or identify you…
The flexibility is gone, we have our obligations and we have our schedules… If you’re lucky you enjoy your job– there’s a sense of accomplishment and a sense of worth resulting from every eight hour day… Most people find their way to places that aren’t so bad– the work isn’t terribly demanding, the co-workers are nice enough and the money’s pretty good… You get up and you spend an hour getting ready, an hour going to work, an hour for lunch, and hour to go home, an hour dealing with dinner, an hour trying to relax and an hour trying to fall asleep…
Maybe one day you’ll have a family and a 30-year mortgage… A trip to Europe, a family vacation to Disneyland, a big screen TV and a car… Your sense of what’s going on will become informed by product placement and labor day sales at Macy’s or whatever Junior’s demanding for pulling a straight B average… Maybe one day while cleaning out the attic you’ll come across an old shoebox with that tape your old band recorded, a copy of that zine you used to do, a reel of Super 8– God how embarassing… Maybe you’ll remember people you haven’t seen or even thought about for years and smile, or feel a little sad, or feel a little angry, or feel a little proud or even a little stupid… But you carefully put the lid back on the box and dig around further looking for the fucking Christmas lights…
Well, there’s always your mid-life crisis to look forward to…
