Rockin’ the Chicoms
One of the great things about being an artard — I can have a whale of a time just looking at stuff. Give me stuff to look at and I’m a happy weasel.
I love the internet.
I don’t know what led me to this site, but they sell reproductions of Chinese propaganda posters from 1925 to the present. Hours of wholesome, snarky amusement.
Most of them have titles like “let us strive to forthrightly repel the foreign invader through Mao Tse Tung Thought.” The artwork ranges from really very good to “yikes!”
And then there’s this.
Published in 1986, titled Youthful dancesteps. The description: “Disco is a huge craze in the 1980s. The poster shows that it is accepted and should no longer be condemned as a form of Western decadence.”
There is so much wrong with this picture. His mom jeans. Her capri pants. The finger snapping. The fact that their “disco” band includes a flute and somebody sawing on a bass fiddle with a bow.
Man, what I wouldn’t give to listen to whatever they’re playing back there. (Listening to stuff is my other great pastime. I really, really love the internet).
Anyhow, start at the beginning and have a browse through their gallery. If that doesn’t make you happy to be a Namerican, I don’t know what will.
July 5, 2010 — 9:44 pm
Comments: 13
What it probably feels like to him…
Poor Barack. He’s not having a very good time of it these days. Sometimes, it sucks to be the most powerful man in the free world. Folks won’t let you alone to enjoy your damn waffle.
And now Drudge is leading with this.
Which is just mean.
And petty.
Hilariously, delightfully mean and petty.
June 22, 2010 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 21
And a czar, too!
Yeah. Somehow, this was funnier in my head. Oh, well.
You can go back to talking coins. I’ve been trying to disentangle copyright issues surrounding currency all day. You’d think I’d be safe putting hundred year old coins on junk, but Zazzle is an absolute pain in the ass on intellectual property issues, so I’m not using anything until I find official statements from the relevant mint first.
Anyhow, in the course of that, I found this interesting article. It claims that, per US case law, you don’t hold copyright on your photo of a coin or painting, provided it’s simply a faithful copy of the original. Huh. I did not know that.
I guess it means when I run out of coins, I can go around the internet pinching other people’s junk.
Pinching people’s junk. That did not come out right.
June 16, 2010 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 16
President Urkel vows to kick SEVERAL KINDS of honky ass
Oh, who does this bozo think he’s kidding? Didn’t his mama tell him when you pretend to be something you’re not, you just look a fool?
Whose ass to kick. Pah!
It’s like, “Mister President, people think you’re disconnected, aloof and don’t really give a shit about them.”
Oh, very well then, “grrr! Grrr! Me so angry!”
June 8, 2010 — 1:09 pm
Comments: 19
Ding dong
Helen Thomas, nasty old leftist hag, retired today after inexcusably saying something she really meant: that Israelis should get the hell out of Palestine and “go home” to Germany and Poland.
I’m puzzled by those, particularly those on the right, who think this is just Crazy Aunt Helen being crazy and that firing her wouldn’t be necessary. Blurting out that Israelis should get out of Israel and go home is crazy auntie stuff, on a nuttiness level with “blacks should go home to Africa.”
Specifying they go back to Germany and Poland, where they were murdered in their millions, knocks it right off the nut-O-meter. It’s where “crazy auntie” meets “nursing home.” It’s “whisk you away with a butterfly net” time, right down there with old dudes who won’t stop playing with themselves in public.
And you’d better BELIEVE the left had to purge her fast, lest we wonder how many of them agree with her.
Anyway — goodbye, Helen, you hideous old leftist hobgoblin. Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya — which, from the look of things, was your face.
June 7, 2010 — 5:29 pm
Comments: 28
Civilization versus Islam
You know that famous satellite shot of the Korean Peninsula, where South Korea is lit up like a Chlistmas Tree, and North Korea is pitch brack? The difference between communism and capitalism — oh, how we laughed!
Well, I Googled up a night shot of the Middle East, looking for the same dealio (the lines and the land masses don’t exactly match because one is a satellite photo — earth curvature and all — and the other is a map I superimposed). And there it is. There are pools of light around a few cities in the Middle East, but the only place lit up end to end, like a proper Western nation, is Israel.
Behold the difference between Islam and anyplace you might want to be.
What got me thinking was Doc Zero’s excellent piece today on anti-Civilization. Read it; it’s good. His conclusion is something I have been thinking for a while.
I used to believe if Iran or somebody lobbed a nuke at Israel, then the lefties would be sorry. I don’t think that any more. I bet the reaction would be something more like, “oh, it’s horrible — horrible! What a tragedy. But, really — putting a Jewish nation there was never going to work, was it? And I hate to speak ill of the dead, what with the smoke still rising out of Tel Aviv Crater, but the way Israel behaved. I wouldn’t dare say they brought it on themselves, but…”
Makes me feel sick.
Remember, Dead Pool tomorrow. When the timestamp on this blog says 6pm, which is GMT I think, but if I screw that up again, steve will probably come to my house and beat me to death with my own spotted dick.
June 3, 2010 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 29
Welcome to the internet! First visit?
Someone wrote and asked me for a unicorn-shitting-skittles graphic (yeah, pretty sure opportunities like that are why my folks sent me to art school). I didn’t have time to build one from scratch but, as it happens, I have a unicorn-farting-rainbows graphic in the works for a t-shirt, so I just threw in some Skittles. (If you yearn to know how that looks in color, yearn no more).
First, though, I had to do a Google Images search for Skittles, since I wasn’t entirely sure what the hell they look like, other than real small specks of color raining down on the upturned faces of stoned children on TV (are there really no blue Skittles? What, were they afraid people would use them to mend spinal cord injuries?).
Anyhow, that image search is how I found this heartwarming story of life with the new media: about a year ago, Skittles decided it wanted itself a piece of that viral marketing, social networking thing all the cool kids were talking about. So they launched a web page that would essentially be a live Twitter feed. Every time somebody mentioned #skittles, the page updated.
Yes. They really did that.
With a straight face.
Never heard the scary there’s an escaped lunatic undead shark in the basement AND IT’S COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE music playing in the background.
Soooo…how long do you think it was before somebody tweeted “On the skittles thing? Bollocks arse fuck soapy titwank cunt wankstain piss frenulum shit twat motherfucker toss Rick Astley…”
And from the sound of that inspirational outpouring of cusswords, it was tweeted by a Brit. I’m so proud.
June 2, 2010 — 10:43 pm
Comments: 28
To sit a good, honest cubicle
Any of you punched a real, live timeclock like the one above? I have. Well, not like the one above — a bit more modern — but my Dunkin’ Donuts gig involved paper timecards and a timeclock. Also brown paper pay packets with paper money and coins shoved in, and the itemized sums written on the back in ballpoint pen.
I loved that stupid job. But I digress.
I have been trying to digest this Krugman article in the NY Times about the Tea Party movement. Sooper genius Krugman has worked it out: the Tea Partiers think the GOP is about helping people, but it’s really about helping corporations.
The mood on the right may be populist, but it’s a kind of populism that’s remarkably sympathetic to big corporations.
What the fuck does Krugman think corporations are made out of? Gremlins? Orcs? Delicious cream filling?
Krugman apparently imprinted on It’s a Wonderful Life. He thinks the world outside The Bubble consists of hard workin’ Joes who drive trucks, dig trenches and stock shelves in mom and pop drugstores. That’s what the whole Democrat machine evolved to pander to: the scary populist monster prowling around outside the ivory tower.
In reality, most of us have had jobs like that, before we moved on to something like…I dunno…a corporation.
I spent a miserable hour at the Bureau of Labor Statistics trying to work out how many of us work for corporations, but gave it up as hopelessly hard to define. Whatever. I’m willing to assert, whether you sit in a cubicle or not, the health of corporations is intimately bound up in the prosperity of us all.
Oh, look…I know management can be shitbags. It burns me up the way some of the guys at the top reward themselves WAY out of proportion to any contribution they could possibly make to the company. It’s just plain bad capitalism, that is.
But corporations employ millions of us, and that’s where most of their money goes. And to shareholders — who are also overwhelmingly made up of people like us. And to growth, which is where jobs come from.
I worked for a medium-sized corporation for a quarter of a century. Here’s how the math went: the company had a good year, I got a bonus in January. The company had a bad year, my boss was invited to look around and decide which two of us he could live without.
Okay, I know small, scrappy businesses are the true engines of growth. But the Blue Chips are the lumbering dray horses of our mutual prosperity. How can a fucking Nobel-winning economist think punishing corporations is a good thing?
May 26, 2010 — 12:24 am
Comments: 28
Happy EDM day!
I don’t actually approve of this, you know.
I went to a particularly flaky art school (the Rhode Island School of Design) during a particularly flaky era (the late Seventies) and I’ve seen enough mental retardation masquerading as art to last a lifetime.
There was one egregious kid in my year — I’ve just Googled his name, and I’m delighted to report Google knowest him not — whose whole schtick was sit around thinking up offensive shit. For his end-of-term project in 3D design, he went down to a slaughterhouse and got four bloody severed horse legs, piled them in the middle of the studio floor and called it “Goodbye, Mister Ed.”
Offensive is for people who desperately want attention but don’t have the talent to get it the usual way. Offensive is the “moon, June, croon” of the post-Modern world — it’s dumb, it’s formulaic and it’s so fucking boring.
In a free world, we have to tolerate offensive but we don’t have to celebrate it. Or for chrissakes give it government arts grants. You hear me lefties? I have to put up with Piss Christ, but you shouldn’t oughta have made me pay for it.
When offensive is aimed at the same groups over and over again — people who can’t do much about it but wave a sign or boycott an advertiser — that’s just plain bullying.
Bullies. That’s the word for people who only pick on those who can’t or won’t fight back. “Courage” isn’t even in the same zip code.
So, sorry Muslims — have a little sacrilege. It’s only fair. You want SUV’s, cell phones and dialysis, you’re going to have to put up with stupid offensive shit, too. Freedom is the common denominator.
When you have to live in a world where some things make you crazy angry, my advice is — don’t go looking for them.
Picture was EZnSF’s idea. Dude, I wish you’d said something earlier. I’m tight for time this week; I could’ve used a couple more days to have fun with this. Here’s a big color version just for you. Kidding — it’s for anyone who wants it, but EZ can have the FaceBook honors.
Update: Since EZ doesn’t seem to be around, I posted the illo to FB. But I gave you a shout-out!
May 20, 2010 — 5:45 pm
Comments: 39
One. Last. Time.
I gotta run, guys — I have beaucoup stuff to do today. But I couldn’t go out the door without posting the classic weaselgram of Benedict Arlen one last time.
As an aside…have you ever wondered why it is most men and women who have had long, passionate, productive careers in, oh, engineering or policework or architecture or soldiering seem delighted, when the time comes, to hang up their kit and grow roses for the rest of their lives? But politicians, judges (and doctors) cling on to their jobs with their fingers and toes until they mummify in place?
I don’t have answers. I only have questions.
May 19, 2010 — 12:14 pm
Comments: 17