Or collapsing, depending on how you look at it. People getting laid off left and right. The center cannot, and will not, hold. I’m trying to stay positive and forward-thinking, but it’s becoming really hard. I’m thankful to still be employed. The future is unwritten.
Here’s something nice I discovered this week, however: Picnik, the online image editor. My favorite feature is the Firefox extension, which allows you to edit and upload images without ever leaving your browser. Nice to not have to launch Photoshop just to do some quick image edits/fixes.
Another cool thing I discovered this week is the Maybe Logic Academy. Online courses are offered by well-respected authors and social critics on subjects such as Gnosis, NLP and secret initiation rites. There’s even a course on how to run your own cult. According to the website, by the course’s end “students will have designed and developed their own religious cult to the point of marketability.”
OK so I’ve sort of neglected my REAL blogging duties lately here at Pink Moan in favor microblogging over at Twitter. What can I say, I have a short yet intense attention span. If you’re interested, my Twitter handle is Gnat74.
Weekend before last my friend Kitty and I made a trip to the Integratron, near Joshua Tree. Long story short the Integratron is an acoustically perfect, wooden geodesic dome-type structure. A late UFO enthusiast built it over the course of many years, but now these cool women own it and offer sound bath therapy sessions in the dome. Per the Integratron website: “The Integratron is the creation of George Van Tassel, and is based on the design of Moses’ Tabernacle, the writings of Nikola Tesla and telepathic directions from extraterrestrials. This one-of-a-kind building is a 38-foot high, 55-foot diameter, non-metallic structure originally designed by Van Tassel as a rejuvenation and time machine. Today, it is the only all-wood, acoustically perfect sound chamber in the U.S.” During a soundbath sesh, a series of quartz bowls are rung that correspond to each Chakra. The effect is uber-spacey and trance-inducing due to the dome’s heightened acoustical properties. No, this isn’t just hippie mumbo jumbo. I don’t know if I was in between sleep and wakefulness at one climactic point during the soundbath, but I do know I was somewhere else entirely. Here are a couple of pics, one exterior and one shot of the roof of the dome. Hey the iPhone camera isn’t too bad, sure wish it had a flash:
So what’s everyone doing for NYE? I can’t find it online, but I’d highly suggest reading the wonderful Lester Bangs article on NYE (included in the Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung collection), titled appropriately “New Year’s Eve.” It pretty much sums up how I’ve always felt about this holiday. I’ll leave you with the opening line:
“On New Year’s Eve of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn’t know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with this nearsighted social worker about 20 or 25 who kept babbling about his Volkswagen until I finally had to say: ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the owning of a Volkswagen is a social, or a political act?’”
Here’s a mental health break for the holidays: a hilarious clip from that mediocre Ricky Bobby movie Will Ferrell came out with a couple of years ago. I mean, it’s kind of Xmas-y. It’s all about the baby Jesus…
I’ve been pretty lax about posting lately, I know. I took the GRE a week and a half ago and am in the middle of applying to grad school. So that’s my excuse. What’s yours? Anyway, here is an article that a friend sent to me this week which amused/disturbed me on multiple levels: Supermarket defends itself over Adolf Hitler cake. Here is a pic of the birthday boy, young Adolph, and his parents:
So the kid is pretty cute (as most three-year-olds are), but if Adolph’s parents are supposed to be examples of the Aryan master race, well I hope the White Power movement in America has a few better-looking physical specimens waiting in the wings, ready to represent. Oh and one of the couple’s other children (they have three stair-step kids, natch) is named “JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell.” Jesus that poor kid is going to grow up to be a walking Onion article.
That’s all for now kiddos. If you have suggestions on subjects I should be writing about (other than inbred Aryans), feel free to email me at info@pinkmoan.com. Cheers, queers…
I read about the process known as “Reality Mining” this morning in the below New York Times article. The piece talks about how complex social network behaviors and interactions may be monitored, digitally:
Click here to visit the MIT Media Lab site on Reality Mining. Fascinating stuff, if you like to geek-out like I do. Reality Mining’s potential for evil use, however, = high. If you’re still curious, read this great response post to the NYT article on Tim Boucher’s blog:
Every once in a while I have to do a WTF? post here to touch base with the latest oddities I’ve come upon. Here is one peculiar thing I’ve been meaning to talk about for a little while now: the Plan B gentleman’s night club in Los Angeles, which is located mere blocks from where I work. Below is the shitty, pixelated and aliased-to-hell logo from their web site (I know I shouldn’t post it but it’s so bad I have to):
OK so here’s my beef: who the fuck greenlights the development of a gentleman’s topless club named “Plan B?” Everyone knows Plan B is another name for the morning after pill, right? Yeah, um, there’s nothing sexier than a pregnancy scare, let me tell you. My male friend also commented last night that the phrase “Plan B” invokes images and feelings of disappointment and inadequacy for him. Like: “well I guess since I struck out with my date tonight I’ll implement Plan B, go get wasted and worked up at the strip bar and end my night a drunken, masturbating mess.” Oh and did I mention that this establishment, Plan B, is located exactly next to a charter elementary school? How does this stuff actually happen?
Item number two in my WTF post: Flippers. Flippers are partial denture devices that I first heard about late last Friday night on a VH1 show. Now this show wasn’t about the elderly, it was about the truly disturbing world of children’s beauty contests. Confused? I present to you exhibit A, Amber:
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, a child Amber’s age doesn’t normally have rows of perfect chompers, for one thing. A child Amber’s age usually has a mouth dotted with gaps and gapes from missing baby teeth and half-grown-in adult teeth. That’s where flippers come in. With a little cosmetic denistry your six y.o. girl too can look bizarrely doll-like and prematurely sexualized. Click here to read some important FAQ’s about flippers, including this chill-inducing factoid: “The flipper is also a choking hazard please supervise while your child wears it.”
OK, that’s all folks. Have a great weekend and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do (which isn’t much)…
It looks like those wacky geniuses who call themselves the Yes Men and specialize in corporate “identity correction” are at it again:
Read the real NY Times blog post on the spoof here. You can be sure I’ll be checking eBay from time-to-time in hopes of scoring one of these elaborately fake newspapers.
This is a historic night, boys and girls. I am so happy about Obama winning that I can momentarily forget how heartbroken I’ll be if Prop 8 passes. Seeing the phrase “eliminates right” on a ballot this morning sent shivers, literally, down my spine. I guess the days of Jim Crow laws aren’t really behind us. At least with Obama in the White House, I feel like the climate in this country will be conducive to dialogue and progress. Now, at the very least, all is not lost.
To me Southern racism embodies one of the truest, purest forms of evil. The spirit of Adolph Hitler is alive and well in Tennessee.
As a total aside, read this Wiki entry about the Thule Society to learn what fostered the thinking of Hitler and his Nazi cohorts. It’s truly interesting stuff, and perhaps even offers some insight into how the seeds of racism/antisemitism are germinated. To me it all seems to boil down to poverty, nationalism plus a fear of the “other.” That kind of thinking is rooted in our physical anthropology — how tribes are scared of other, unfamiliar tribes, and so on. I guess we really haven’t evolved much as a species in the last several thousand years:
