Smart ads that are not
Posted: July 28, 2012 Filed under: consumer, crass commercialism, douchebaggery, stupidity, weird 2 CommentsSo I was looking at an online story about that dude who threatened to shoot up his coworkers and had a bunch of guns at home this morning and check out the ‘smart ads’ that popped up:
Ads for bullet proof vests and armor plate embedded in a story about someone who apparently threatened to duplicate the Aurora theater shooting? I don’t know if the content server’s analytics are genius or shit… I mean, reading about someone shooting up the movie theater or workplace might make me want to buy body armor, on the other hand, if I were to be in the bullet proof vest business, do I really want customers associating me with people who go ballistic (oops a pun) and shoot their coworkers or fellow movie watchers? Probably not.
Artist removes halo, adds blue ribbon
Posted: July 15, 2012 Filed under: crime, douchebaggery, stupidity, weird 5 CommentsOK, there is this mural of all sorts of important people including Joe Paterno in downtown State College PA. The artist who painted the mural added a halo over Joe’s head after Paterno died earlier this year. Now that it has come out that Paterno was apparently aware that Sandusky was abusing kids and protected the molester (or, at very best, failed to act on the reports or allow others to intervene), the artist has painted the halo out again. He also added a blue ribbon to Paterno’s coat in the mural.* I was not aware of this, but apparently a blue ribbon means you support the victims of child sexual abuse.
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| Artist Michael Pilato working on the mural |
I don’t have a horse in this race, being uninterested in football, not a victim of sexual abuse** and not a Penn State fan, but, seriously, what the fuck? Isn’t adding a blue ribbon to the image of Paterno kind of adding insult to injury since he helped keep Sandusky in a position where Sandusky could keep molesting kids? Isn’t that “accessory to the crime” or “conspiracy to conceal a crime” territory?
The whole colored ribbon thing starts to make me suspicious anyway since it seems to be a way of looking like you are doing something without doing something. I mean, I guess I can stick a yellow ribbon on the back of my car and it means I want you to know I support the troops or pin a pink ribbon to my lapel and it means I want you to know I support breast cancer research — and maybe that’s helpful because it might spread awareness of the cause. But the cynical side of my nature thinks that it can also be a ‘heart on my sleeve’ gesture done primarily to show others that “I’m a swell person who cares about this cause so you should like me.”
I think there ought to be a special color of ribbon for people who knew someone else was doing something really fucked up and they had the power to stop it but decided not to do anything about it. And that’s the color of ribbon that ought to be painted on the portrait of Paterno (and a good portion of the Catholic clergy) and other people who look the other way.
It’s fine to have heroes, I guess, and if you love Penn State or “Paterno-ball,” then maybe you will want murals and statues and libraries named after him. But please don’t try to imply that he was ‘sympathetic to the cause’ of preventing child sex abuse by painting a blue ribbon on his lapel like some kind of a medal. He wasn’t. Paterno chose football and the school’s image and his friendship with Sandusky and the fact that he probably didn’t want to deal with a scandal over protecting the kids of people he didn’t know from sex abuse. He shouldn’t get to wear the blue ribbon.
* Apparently Sandusky used to be in the group portait and was painted out. Source.
**Yeah, I’m against it — who isn’t? I just can’t claim the cause has greater personal resonance for me than many of the other ways in which humans fuck one another over.
Texas politicians oppose "higher order thinking skills"
Posted: June 30, 2012 Filed under: conspiracy, douchebaggery, politics, weird Leave a commentI hope this is fake but I worry it is not.
“Texas Republican Party Calls For Abstinence Only Sex Ed, Corporal Punishment In Schools”
My favorite nugget:
The position causing the most controversy, however, is the statement that they oppose the teaching of “higher order thinking skills” — a curriculum which strives to encourage critical thinking — arguing that it might challenge “student’s fixed beliefs” and undermine “parental authority.”
Yee-fucking-haw. We are doomed.
Addendum: I went to the source. Visit the homepage of the Texas GOP Convention and you can download a copy of their platform statement. I didn’t read the whole document, but found this:
“Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
Based on this, one of the ways in which the Texas GOP has been misrepresented is that they state opposition to a certain kind of teaching philosophy, and not “thinking” itself, but the meat of the criticism seems to stand. Since the platform statement is intended to be the ‘doorbuster’ that gets people fired up about what these politicians are going to do for them, this is some scary shit. Granted, based on past and current performance, the opposition isn’t any better, but sheee-it. So seldom have politicians been so honest.
Mob Rule
Posted: June 20, 2012 Filed under: bitching, douchebaggery, ideas 3 CommentsI was reading J.R. IV’s post, “In Case Anyone is Unclear,” over on his blog this morning. I wanted to comment there, but comments are disabled, so I’ll do it here.
I don’t know what ‘shit storms’ James is talking about (perhaps something on Google+ ?*), but I believe that reading (or writing) a book like Lolita does not make you a pedophile any more than singing the words of ‘The National Anthem’ makes you a patriot. Updates from the normal life (warning: boring)
Posted: May 5, 2012 Filed under: bitching, douchebaggery 4 Comments |
| Not my actual workplace. The plant is a nice touch. |
Yesterday (or the day before?) I posted, “Too busy to post right now.” Which is completely stupid… since I obviously had enough time to log into blogger and post that I was too busy to post.
I started a new job last Wednesday. This has caused brain overload and time management issues. The job requires about an hour’s commute each direction and is in an office, so I have to look nice and be nice. I am currently trying to help rewrite user policies for cellphone/wireless devices that the employees/contractors of a manufacturer use in the course of their work. In these documents, we need to tell them things that most people should know (like “Don’t use your device to %^&$ up the company, don’t text while driving, don’t use pay-for-use services if you don’t have to, yes, you can use the cellphone to call your family, but remember that it isn’t really YOUR cellphone and the company will bill you for non-work related charges,” etc.). I have to write these things but make them sound nice and not snotty. Most of it seems to be what most of us would describe as ‘common sense stuff,’ but if my past experience is an indicator, there is always someone in every workplace who will take the fact that there is no rule specifically prohibiting a really bad behavior as an invitation to engage in it. So, yeah, there will always be someone who will explain to HR, “I ate my co-worker because there was no policy in my employee handbook telling me that cannibalism was not permitted…”
The job provides a much needed cash infusion but interferes with things that are important to me, like sleeping late or being slovenly.
Updates, set dressing for Maniacs and shut up you
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: art, bitching, commissions, douchebaggery, Goodman, inspiration, weird Leave a comment
If you are one of the 3 people who follows this blog, I thought I would drop in and give you an update.
I’ve got a few commissions on the ‘to do’ list right now, which is good because we always need a cash infusion. Some are for Goodman Games DCC RPG adventures, some are for Barrowmaze 2 (I don’t know when that is coming out, but yours truly did the cover and some monster illustrations so far; more to come)… and there are some others. Plus I am still doing the ‘drawing a day’ notebook (sample from earlier in the year at right — some are better than this, many more are pretty uninspired).
Because the non-profit I was working for has had some funding difficulties, I have had to go back on the job market, and that is eating up a lot of my time and energy. I’ve got some feelers out and have been trying to network; I’m looking for a production/creative position in Detroit Metro; I have photoshop and Indesign and Creative Suite skills plus a pack of good references, but I have never been the best self-promoter and I suck at networking plus no one seems to be hiring so doing the job market thing is an uphill battle.
I was watching the 1980 movie, Maniac, the other night. After feeling beaten down by the job hunt, there is nothing like watching a movie about a fat, pockmarked guy who lives a Norman-Bates life in a tiny, shitty apartment and who goes out at night and kills women and scalps them to help cheer you up. In the killer’s apartment, in addition to all the mannikins adorned with women’s scalps (it’s like Neverland Ranch in there), there is an abstract drawing on one wall that looks really cool and I was trying to figure out where it was from and how I could get a better look at it. I was pausing the video but resolution was low and it was slightly out of focus — it looked like a drawing of polyps and entrails in the style of this fucked up Alberto Giacometti sculpture that I like, but in 2d and in color — like something that someone drew when they were on acid and then their mom threw it out and someone from the movie found it and said, “This looks suitably creepy; let’s hang it in the maniac’s apartment.” I was hoping to find a still from the movie where you can see it and post it to the web and (hopefully) get an ID from someone who knows these things, but no luck so far. Who knows? 
It might have been something that the setdresser picked up in a flea market (I met someone who does set dressing for films, video and photo shoots, and she said that in the 1980s she could get unbelievably great stuff at mid-western thrift markets; she used to fly in from NYC and they would just buy shit and ship it back to NYC for prop use… since ebay, though, her ‘golden days’ of thrifting are over). What the artwork was and where it came from will probably remain an intriguing mystery. I think in the still of the film posted here of the Maniac looking at the newspaper, the drawing in question would be above the bookshelf with the dolls on it behind him.
That is all. Now I have to shut up and get back to work.
Another thing I really hate about Windows…
Posted: March 9, 2012 Filed under: consumer, douchebaggery, moaning 4 Comments
When I am using shitty, shitty windows 7 (which is still much better than shitty shitty shitty shitty fucking shitty windows Vista), sometimes a window will pop up telling me that the program I am using has stopped working. This window gives me the choice of either a) checking for a solution to the problem or b) closing the program. From past experience, a) never works so I always want to click b). When I click b), another window pops up telling me that Microsoft is now searching for a solution to the problem.
If I wanted Microsoft to search for a solution, wouldn’t I have clicked option a)?
As a former Mac user, one of the things I found irritating about the Mac OS is that the designers seemed very fond of dialog boxes that popped up asking me if I was sure if I wanted the computer to do what I had just asked it to do. At times it made me quite snappish. “Yes; I WANT to delete that now go and fucking delete it you smug, condescending, overpriced typewriter!” These days, I’d trade it all in a heartbeat if I never had to touch a Windows machine again. Urrg.
Update & Hell Orifice (probably NSFW)
Posted: March 4, 2012 Filed under: art, douchebaggery, inspiration, Uncategorized, weird 1 CommentI’ve just finished a bunch of drawings for a couple of different projects and need to take a breather today. A relative who still has high hopes for my future keeps sending me stuff to read about professional development, so that’s on the docket for today along with some more drawing and some housecleaning. So far today I have done shopping, my drawing-a-day and walked on the closed-for-the-winter golf course with the dogs. Life is exciting at Chez Limpey.
At right we see a witch about to give Satan ‘the kiss of shame.’ There is nothing I enjoy more than a good-old-fashioned perverted woodcut — speaking of which, have you ever heard of the artist, Tom Huck? You can thank me later. Warning: Link is probably NSFW by most standards, but that is kind of the point so there you go. If I had $1000.00 burning a hole in my pocket, I might do Huck’s bootcamp some time, but, alas, I do not. Anyone want to sponsor me? I’ll send you a woodcut!
A few nights ago I watched about the first five minutes of Zombie Apocalypse. I used to think that making a basically entertaining zombie movie could not be terribly hard… but there are so many really, really, really shitty ones out there (and I am not including ones made by teenagers or fans for a lark), so I think the real problem is that there must be a market for shitty zombie movies. Ah well. Be warned: there is more than one movie out ther under this name — I saw the Syfy one with Ving Rhames.
OK, apropos of nothing important, isn’t this a shitty headline for a news story?: “Hundreds honor student killed in Ohio shooting.” I saw the headline in my news feed and had to read it two times to convince myself that it wasn’t trying to claim that hundreds of honor students were killed in a shooting in Ohio. Why can’t people write good headlines?
Finally, I’m still doing the drawing-a-day thing. Thius is one of my recent ones, which has a funny story behind it. My S.O., Annie, was at a conference with an NPR radio personality and she was going to give him a ride somewhere when she realized that her car was really horribly messy and said something like, “I’m sorry, but my car is so disgusting you will probably want to ride with someone else.” “This I must see,” he replied, so she showed him her car (which was filled with garbage, doghair and spilled leftover Indian food) and he said, “It looks like the anus of hell.” Since then, her ride has occasionally been referred to as, “The Anus of Hell” or “The Anus.” Which dovetails nicely into my fascination with the portrayal of hell in medieval manuscripts where devils and demons are usually escorting the damned into some giant devil’s mouth where they will suffer for all eternity. Good stuff. If MY version of hell, the bad people get stuffed in the devil’s mouth and the really, really, really bad get jammed up his anus. Think on that as you eat your Sunday dinner, you sinners.
Anus of Hell!
I am back
Posted: February 26, 2012 Filed under: douchebaggery 1 Comment
We are back from our brief cross-country jaunt. The dogs are very happy that we came and busted them out of the klinker last night and are still thanking us. That is the thing I really like about dogs. You do something shitty to them (like lock ’em up in the kennel for a week), and, rather than being mad at you , they apologize to you for what you did to them.
Newt or Shrute?
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: douchebaggery, politics Leave a comment
One of these men is a scheming weirdo with a penchant for drama. The other is Dwight Shrute.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Mother Jones published a quiz with bizarre quotes and statements from either Newt Gingrich (former speaker and Presidential aspirant) or from Dwight Shrute (fictional weirdo character on ‘The Office’) and the taker of the quiz has to determine if the quote, expressed desire, etc., is from Newt or Shrute. Normally, you would think it would be pretty easy to tell if a quote, idea or aspiration came from a fictional characher on a situation comedy TV show, but, according to the people who published the quiz, out of the thousands of people who have taken it so far, there has been only a 45% rate of correctly identifying whether any given pearl or quote is from ‘Newt or Shrute.’
Actual question from the quiz for example: When debating the eating habits of T-Rex’s, this man explained, “I believe [the T-Rex] was a predator because I saw ‘Jurassic Park’ and he ate a lawyer and it wasn’t a dead lawyer.”
Was it Newt or Shrute? The answer may surprise you. Take the quiz.