Coding Body Parts as Patriotic

So my professor for my Politics of Fashion class clued me into the following link - I admit it is pretty crass (rhymes with brass!).

The site American Brass Balls sells, well, brass replicas of testicles. But it is how they signify these metal testicles that interests me: "Having American Brass Balls means 'We've Got What It Takes' to: Defeat Terrorism and those who promote it; Defend our Homeland; Show Courage and Determination in the face of adversity."

The sentiment of having "balls" is cliche, but here it has been recoded (and commodified into a disturbingly realistic product) to address the fear of terrorism present in our culture over the past five years. While the site insists that brass balls are for both men and women, it seems to me the site and its shiny products are somehow unable to avoid masculinist associations.

It Takes All Kinds of Critters to Make Farmer Vincent's Fritters

So I'm watching Motel Hell right now - one of the only reasons I have actually loved owning a television with cable for the past year is the happy fortuity that is finding crappy movies you haven't seen for over a decade. It's no 1970s or early 80s, gorgeously taught DePalma flick P (as split screens from Sisters, Blow Out, and Dressed to Kill dance through my head)- this I will admit.

Made in 1980, the film cornily constructs a nexus of late 20th century anxieties about food production and consumption, police authority, and the decline of morals in our culture. Like most mainstream horror flicks, the film reinforces - in not so subtle ways - expectations of middle-class propriety. In other words, the aged swingers, the skanks that contract social diseases from ski instructors, and the nomadic, drugged-out rockers (including "Cliff Claven" - John Ratzenberger - as the drummer) are the ones who get chewed up (literally and figuratively) by the masses for straying too far from the herd. Soylent green is the people you say? Actually, they're just beef jerky. Makes you look twice at a Slim Jim, eh?

Scary Spam Proves Inextricability Between Sex and Death

Now I know that most spam is generated by non-human actors these days, but the message I received this morning was especially frightening, so I thought I would share. Most unsettling juxtaposition of lines? Recognizing when to pull the trigger because some kind of excellence is within reach. Was this spam generated by some sort of Mark David Chapman bot? Sheesh.

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Brunette Teen Fucked Anal Hardcore18yo Blue Eyed Beauty With Piercing Poses In Thong
Happiness is not a horse, you cannot harness it.She poured a little social sewage into his ears.

http://--------------------------

Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.Whoever I am, or whatever I am doing, some kind of excellence is within my reach.
We fail far more often by timidity than by over-daring.There are two perfectly good men, one dead, and the other unborn.Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

I Can Be Serious Too... Sometimes? Okay, at least this once?

I suppose my entries up until now haven't revealed that I can actually take some things seriously. On August 31, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus newspaper, The Daily Illini (DI) published an editorial by John Bambenek, who argued (often illogically and mostly inflammatorily) labor unions are a relic of the past. He constructed an idealized, paternalistic relationship between the university and its employees to suggest the university knows what its employees need in terms of compensation and benefits. I wrote a reply and the DI actually published my response (in print and online):

In John Bambenek's column "Unions: A Relics of the past, taxpayer frustration" Bambenek makes several value judgments about what is "not a bad wage" for teaching assistants and how "difficult" or "hard" living should be expected while one is a graduate employee, since it is not "impossible" to live.

Acting much like large employers, Bambenek forgets a fundamental purpose for the existence of labor unions: it is not for one person - like John - or one side of labor - like the University - to determine the value of labor or what conditions and benefits employees can live on, either comfortably or difficultly. Labor unions like the Graduate Employee's Organization argue instead that employers and employees should be able to negotiate in a productive dialogue, with mutual respect on both sides of the table, what the conditions and benefits of employment should be. An employment contract that has been agreed upon by both sides ensures fairness and transparency of process to all those involved and it guarantees enforceability of the conditions laid out in the contract as well. Without such a contract, employers like the University will continue to make often uninformed and arbitrary one-sided value judgments about what its graduate employees need to be able to support themselves and their families.

Bloody Backs: A Festival Favorite, A Hygenic Nightmare

Now that the summer has officially passed, I suppose it's time to start recalling those moments whose saliency and sheer amount of exposure to biohazardous fluids suggest they deserve memoralization. Or at least for me to blog about them so that you, my one or two sporadic and disinterested readers, can note their passing.

While waiting to hear Spoon play at a music festival earlier this summer, the red-bandannaed, fleshy blob you see in the center of the picture pushed its way through the crowd and towered over me and my fellow short friends. Its back glistened with sweat - a glisten that was dimmed slightly by a fine sheen of dirt that seemed to highlight every pore on its skin that was about seven inches from our faces. In the near center of its back - at my eye level - rested a bleeding cut that slowly trickled blood as it bobbed frenetically and unrhythmically to the music. It threatened to careen into us on several occasions - my initial state of speechless terror at the prospect of this unhygenic impact soon blossomed into a whisper that grew ever louder and louder in my head: photo op.. photo op... PHOTO OP!

What better way to face your fears than to snap a pic of them? They say in some cultures that to take a picture of something steals a part of its soul (seriously, they said it in Zoolander so it must be true). If we captured even a trace of bloody essence in the above photograph, then we have confronted the powerful essence of concert douchebags everywhere who push their way to the front of crowds, stand directly in front of people who are CLEARLY shorter than them, and reek to high heavens because they decided today was the day they were going to try using that rock deodorant, and we have put them on notice (as Stephen Colbert would say).

Why aren't you at Popeyes?

I saw this dog outside of a Dunkin' Donuts in Chicago late one night at the end of a hot, July day. Maybe he didn't know there was a Popeyes just a few blocks down the street.

You crazy dog. Here in Champaign-Urbana, we don't have any Popeyes. Yet Bloomington - 46 miles away - has an embarassment of Popeyes riches (two of them! in the same city! just think of it - twice the biscuits!). I went back to the same Dunkin' Donuts the next night but he was gone. Maybe he finally figured it out.

I like to think of that sweet dog sometimes, feasting upon an overturned dumpster that overflows subtly spicy red beans and rice; deliciously peppery gravy wedded to white, creamy mashed potatatoes; and that signature spicy fried chicken. Watch out for the bones ol' boy... you lucky, lucky dog.

Academia Saves Lives

There are moments in graduate study when I doubt the importance of research in the humanities - both in terms of its scope and reach. But running across a call for papers like the one below comfortingly reminds me that we're up to good things:

REEL WIZARDS: REPRESENTATIONS OF MAGIC AND MAGIC USERS IN FILM
Deadline for Proposals: September 15, 2006

In J. R. R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the Hobbits are warned, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards"; yet, few readers today, in a time when the wizard features so prominently in both popular culture and scholarship,
would choose to follow this admonition. Accepting this as a given, proposals are now being accepted for an essay collection investigating the representation of magic-wielding figures in electronic multimedia.

This volume is intended to serve as a casebook for further academic research on magic-using characters in film, television, and video and computer games. We hope to include a number of essays that offer surveys/overviews of specific images or media as well as a limited number of spaces for investigations of specific films.

As an aid to potential contributors (and those interested in pursuing further research on the wizard figure), a listing of potential topics and a working bibliography devoted to studies on wizards can be found online at < http://mtorregrossa.home.att.net/cfp/wizards.htm>.

Hipsters Across World Continue to Mourn Loss of Barrett and say "Haifa Wha??? Who cares Barrett's dead dude."

Happy Birthday Terra, Observed

I got to see my great friend Terra on her actual birthday this past Monday but tonight we officially observed her birthday by going out and telling the worst jokes imaginable to horrify her. Not pictured but pros at telling the worst of the worst grossout jokes include Melissa, Christopher, and Bart. I may have thrown one or two in there myself...

"YouTube - Broadcast Yourself"

I uploaded my first video on YouTube today - I uploaded it as an mp4 (oooh now you can watch it on a video iPod) so the quality of the video leaves something to be desired. I know the sites I have been frequenting heavily this summer - blogger, myspace, and youtube - still raise a lot of questions for me in terms of the affordances they seemingly provide for the people who use them, the modes of expression they seem to promote, and the sticky business of who or what entities own these sites (particularly with the purchase of myspace by Rupert Murdoch and the subsequent EVIL changes in its user agreement), and in turn, how they set up the relationship between the formal structure of the site and the content that individuals provide for it. Somehow all these questions can't seen to quash my compulsion to keep adding crappy, self-centered content to all three sites...