Entries categorized as ‘rabid consumerism’
June 14, 2010 · Comments Off
This is an amazing art project. The artist, Wieki Somers, creates these pieces out of human remains–out of our ashes. The philosophy behind the project:
her project ‘consumer or conserve’ evaluates this notion of a second-life. she considers, how human ashes can be reused by means of rapid prototyping or 3D printing, so that we may afford someone a ‘second life’ as a rocking chair, vacuum cleaner, perhaps even a toaster? would we become more attached to these objects if this was the case? would our willingness to pay more for a product increase if it is made from human tissue or ashes?
Categories: art · cool stuff · rabid consumerism
June 10, 2010 · Comments Off
I bobbed my hair and it was looking kind of drab with my dishwater blonde/brown color, so I have gone back to being a blonde. (Well, sort of. I forgot how long it takes to actually go blonde in a way that is safe for your hair. It will take the whole dang summer.) It is more fun, yes, but also more of a pain in the ass. I forgot how blonde hair is a signal, much like wearing a dress, that no matter what the wearer looks like, construction workers should hoot, whistle, and shout suggestive things in the hair’s general direction. There is a lot of construction going on around my home and my work. I also wear a lot of dresses. You can imagine the level of hooting. Today a construction worker told me, “Baby, those are some shoes.” He was not looking at my shoes.
I also forgot how you have to wear less makeup when you are blonde. I put on my usual bright red lipstick and I looked just like a Kewpie doll. It’s been so long that I don’t even have any non-bright lipsticks anymore and I had to wear Cherry chapstick instead. This, I know, seems like not-really-a-giant-tragedy in the general world order of things, but trust me, it was highly upsetting. You think I am kidding but really I’m not. I am vain and I need my goddamn lipstick. I will have to visit Sephora and soon.
Categories: rabid consumerism · random
June 3, 2010 · Comments Off
Dear god. If you buy me this car, I promise to start rethinking the whole agnostic thing. Love, Amber.
(PS, thank you NotCot.)
Categories: cool stuff · rabid consumerism
May 25, 2010 · Comments Off
I say good. I’m glad to see that Congress is looking into this…there’s no proof that these genetic testing kits work, and while maybe they do, they could also be a huge expensive rip-off taking advantage of people’s worry over disease and death. Which is very not cool.
Categories: politics · rabid consumerism · technology
April 29, 2010 · Comments Off
Jesus. Liza Featherstone over at the Daily Beast talks to one of the plaintiffs in the Walmart case, and the story she tells isn’t a pretty one:
When Gunter came to work at a Wal-Mart in Riverside, California, in 1996, at the age of 46, with 20 years of retail experience, she was sure she’d advance in the company. A passionate animal lover, she also boasted 30 years of experience raising show dogs. Yet Gunter says she was rejected for the position of pet department head because she “didn’t have enough experience.” The job went (twice) to teenage boys.
During her tenure at the company, Gunter was repeatedly passed over for promotion in favor of men she had trained, she says in court documents. Her bosses didn’t pretend to be running a civilized workplace: Once, after she’d had a fight with her husband, her supervisor suggested, “Why don’t you put your face in my lap and take care of both of our problems?”
Disclosure: I’m proud to work for the labor union that runs the Wake up Walmart campaign to improve Walmart’s treatment of their employees. And we run that campaign precisely because of stories like these.
Categories: WTF? · politics · rabid consumerism
Anyone who knows me very well knows I have next to no tolerance for yuppie bullshit, especially yuppie bullshit regarding food. Including smug, self-satisfied yuppies shopping at Whole Foods and thinking that buying organic is somehow saving the world. In fact, our own goofy preoccupations with eating fresh, eating local, etc have nothing to do with feeding the world’s poor and actually distract us from that task. Glad to see this article in Foreign Policy address the delusion:
…though it’s certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
Helping the world’s poor feed themselves is no longer the rallying cry it once was. Food may be today’s cause célèbre, but in the pampered West, that means trendy causes like making food “sustainable” — in other words, organic, local, and slow. Appealing as that might sound, it is the wrong recipe for helping those who need it the most.
Read the whole thing here.
UPDATE: A friend dropped me a line to let me know the person who wrote this is on the board of Monsanto–not exactly a happy friendly company. So take it with a grain of salt, and know that there are probably ulterior motives behind it. Still, I think the spirit of the article, if not the exact prescriptions, is pretty good.
Categories: politics · rabid consumerism
April 26, 2010 · Comments Off
Categories: Books · rabid consumerism · technology
April 7, 2010 · Comments Off
Harold Meyerson has a great/depressing piece in the Washington Post today on how product placement, or “brand integration,” (it’s a serious business these days) has become more important than ever to the funding of film. Now, he says, it’s not enough for one of the main characters to just be drinking a Pepsi. No, now a lawyer Company X has hired sits in on story conferences and suggests ways to integrate the products into scenes, action and dialogue. Sometimes these decisions can even affect casting and plot.
We used to have the studio system, and when it dissolved it was generally considered a good thing. And it was, for a while. But now that movies are more expensive and funding more difficult than ever to secure, the studio system’s starting to look not-so-bad. Most of our greatest movies (IMHO) were produced under it, after all. It doesn’t seem to have stifled creativity in the same way ridiculous amounts of money can.
But as Meyerson points out, no system designed solely to make money works all that well in the arts.
Every system has its own logic, but none of those systems — be they theocratic, feudal, capitalist or communist — has a logic that’s ultimately compatible with that of the artist.
It’s the age old problem, whatever the art, whatever the medium. How to make money and get audience without sacrificing integrity. The push and pull of business vs. creativity. We need both. But do we really need “brand integration?”
Categories: WTF? · film · rabid consumerism
April 6, 2010 · Comments Off
Categories: history · politics · rabid consumerism
March 25, 2010 · Comments Off
Categories: art · cool stuff · rabid consumerism
Interesting 
