Limed for the Truth

Well, maybe . . .

A couple of months ago I spent a week and a half in the UK to visit my father. While I was there, I did most of the tourist stuff as well, revisiting some places from when I was last there in 2002, as well as checking out a few I had previously missed.

One of these was the Tate Modern, housed in that massive former power plant that sits on the Thames opposite St. Paul’s Cathedral. I spent a couple of hours wandering through, well, I’ll be frank; a whole lot of nonsense, though occasionally experiencing the frisson of seeing the works of Pablo Picasso . . . or the madness of Salvadore Dali, in person.

Then, upstairs, I came across one of the iconic works of modern pop-art: Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam.

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Today I was called a homophobe. That’s right, Poldy got called a homophobe. I’ve been called other names before, thinking nothing of the rather bland kakonomes: fag (1), pillowbiter, cocksucker – all the homophobic slurs under the rainbow.
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The Generation Gap

When I worked at the Gap, my friends rarely asked me for my discount; when I started working at Urban Outfitters, even people I considered mere acquaintances started asking to use my discount. It was always so confusing, as both were similarly priced and had similar clothing quality. Their styles didn’t seem that different when examined on someone’s body. Everyone, however, seemed to be so interested in my job at Urban Outfitters. There seemed to be some generational alignment towards that store. It seemed clearer though, when I recall my shock during my interview.

I was more or less explicitly told not to look for customers to sell to. I was quite shocked. At Gap(2) the managers wanted us to approach all customers to welcome them to the store and lookout for any customers he might even have the slightest desire to buy the smallest article of clothing.(3) . However, Urban Outfitters did not want you to try and create sales by forcing a customer into buying an item they don’t want, and the managers certainly didn’t want us trying to mix and match to make outfits for the customers. While initially taken aback, the philosophies of the two companies seemed to be much clearer when you see it from the inside.

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1) New York City costs more than you have.
2) The attractive girls really are the ones with good personalities.
3) There is a reason no one takes Greek.
4) Start with a shot, then a mixed drink, then beer.
5) No matter who you are, you will get at least a little homesick.
6) Toilets with intense flushing power are a godsend.
7) No matter how much sleep you get, chances are you will be tired.
8) There is no such thing as good caf food.

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Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty has made front page news and high school curriculums in Canada. Bully for them - they’re promoting a positive message in today’s media. There’s the Pro-Age campaign, for instance, where they show older, naked women using their products. Or the commercials where less conventially attractive women soap up in the shower.

But the main focus of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is directed towards children and teenagers. Even a quick browse of their site confirms this: young children with disabilities and plain faces talk about how proud of themselves and their role models they are on one page, on another, it shows how they deconstruct models for billboard ads and magazines to make them more appealing physically.

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty seems to miss the mark, though. There are more than a few ways in which it makes a valiant effort to change perceptions and raise self-esteem, and instead, it just falls up short.

Firstly, there’s a severe lack of focus. They have a very nice website and a few advertising campaigns, but it seems to be more show than anything. The Campaign for Real Beauty smacks of turning a real issue into a way to capitalize on markets that other products miss. Thirty second long commercials aren’t going to change much, no matter how well intended.

Secondly, it’s painfully obvious that they are commercials. Yes, they’re using models that are less than conventional, but that doesn’t change the fact that not a single one of the women they use have a blemish. There are no stretch marks on their ‘plus sized’ models, no acne on their teenagers, and no discolourations, birthmarks, or blackheads. The models even seem to be lacking pores.

Thirdly, the beauty industry is so large and adaptable, that the Campaign for Real Beauty isn’t going to change anything. The whole thing just aimlessly flails at the issue instead of making any real statements. They did one commercial, where they showed a plain woman being turned into a billboard star through makeup and Photoshop, that garnered headlines… and then didn’t follow up on it. There was no pressure on other corporations, no questions to be asked, and no alternatives presented. Was the commercial really trying to force people to think about changes, or was it just a show to make Dove seem like the benevolent corporate friend who you could rely on to not make you feel like an uggo?

When you have so many issues and branches in the beauty industry to deal with, you can’t hope to attack the entire thing without a lot of focus and definition. Dove lacks both of those, and it can’t seem to decide which issue to tackle. It comes down to this: The Campaign for Real Beauty is either a publicity grab for insecure teenagers and middle aged women to buy their products, or it’s poorly planned and ineffective. Either way, maybe it doesn’t deserve the glowing reviews it’s recieved.

California governor Ahnold Schwarzenegger just vetoed a bill that would have abolished private insurance and implemented a single-payer system in California. This is a tiny bit of good news for those opposed to socialized medicine, but ultimately it won’t much matter. The worrisome thing is that such a bill was able to pass at all, and it’s only a matter of time before the state manages to pair a sufficiently liberal governor with its liberal legislature in order to abolish private insurance in California one and for all. Read the rest of this entry »

For my teacher ed journal I wrote a page about the to-do over some teacher mixing of church and state in the charming village of Kearny, NJ. Presented for your reading pleasure …

Lately I have been following with some interest (and despair) the story of a student named Matt LeClair in Kearny, New Jersey. At the public school he attended, Matt had a history teacher, Mr. David Paszkiewicz, who liked to devote some time during his classes to things other than actually teaching history: things such as telling his students that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark and that evolution and the Big Bang were bad science; things such as describing how only Christians could go to heaven. He even went so far as to single out a particular Muslim girl and point out that she was going to hell.

Matt tried going to the school board to discuss the problems he had with this use of class time. The administrators sat down with him and the teacher – and the teacher flatly denied using school grounds to proselytize. At that point Matt produced CDs of recordings he had made during Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class, which contained, in what was definitely the teacher’s own voice, all the evangelism that he had claimed not to do.
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That’s right, folks, there are Muslims out there who genuinely desire peace and harmony and an end to bloodshed the world over. Three million of them, at least. Does anyone else find it funny that for a religion that is regularly lambasted by conservative pundits, news anchors, and politicians as being one of the bloodiest in the world, many of its followers can put aside petty differences like political philosophy and join together in prayer for a better tomorrow? It’s too bad this will never be covered by Fox News, or any other neo-con Bush-ite news outlet, except maybe as a smear story against the gathering for not allowing women (except high-ranking officials) to attend.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not particularly happy about them not allowing women to go to their little shindig, either. But judging by some of the things some women have said about Islam, and Muslims as a whole, I can almost hardly blame them. At least it’s a step in the right direction, right? Now all we need for them to do is to institute some gender equality reforms, and they’ll be all set to join us here in the 21st century. Well, maybe that would only get them as far as the 1960’s, but that’s better than being stuck in the 12th century, right? Regardless, it’s good to see the very people our administration seems to have some kind of vendetta against promoting the same cause we are (allegedly) championing. That cause, of course, being world peace.

Perhaps those of our bigoted and ignorant countrymen could learn a lesson from Mr. Abul Kalam, an Islamic scholar in attendance at the gathering: “Each year more and more people are joining the mass prayer. This shows how Bangladeshi Muslims love peace and are opposed to those who propagate militancy.”

Here’s to hoping three million more Muslims show up next year.

You know what the problem with modern society is?

Acid-free pulpless orange juice.

Acid-free pulpless orange juice. Tell me, what’s the point of orange juice without a kick? Without pulp? Nothing. It tastes like thick orange-colored water, and it’s indicative of the single largest problem with western civilization, nowadays: everything’s got to be clean and easy to take. Nothing exciting, nothing that stirs an emotion, nothing that makes your eyes widen momentarily as the sensation hits you. It’s got to be pre-packaged and guaranteed not to cause anyone discomfort. Everything prepackaged for the mass market, focus-grouped until any trace of individuality is sacrificed on the altar of marketability. This makes everything pretty goddamn bland.

The most egregious example: John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine.’ Bunch of pretty words about unity and harmony (two completely incompatible concepts, mind you) and world peace and whatnot. One of the last lines is, ‘Nothing to kill or die for.’ If there’s nothing to kill for - nothing worth fighting and dying for - then what the fuck’s the point of living? There’s no passion for things anymore, as a society. We’re too passive, too willing to let stuff go because we don’t want to fight.

I don’t have a solution. I think we’re mostly sheep, just gettin’ by, thanks sir, without enough things that we really, deeply care about. Right now we’re down to God (or the lack thereof), the enviroment, and, what, socialism? Oh, and AIDS. We’re low on romantics, or poets and songwriters that don’t suck. [More on that in my forthcoming rant on American Idol.] We have far, far too many lawyers. People used to defend what they believed in. Now we don’t believe in anything except ‘don’t rock the boat,’ and I think that’s a shitty way to live.

I don’t know what I’d prefer people believed in. Honestly, I don’t think that’s my place. I just wish people - not those reading this, naturally; you’re all more than forthcoming on your particular insights - were willing to speak their views on moral issues, on religious issues, on any damn thing they wished without worrying about upsetting someone. I wish we were willing to listen to things that upset us. I dunno, I’m probably just talking out of my ass, but I think the fact that there’s a demand for nonacidic pulpless citrus fruit beverages is really fucking sad, and a sign that we’re stagnating as a civilization.

Nintendo and Sega were certainly the predominant players during the late 80’s and early 90’s, but they were far from the only companies to throw consoles at the wall to see if they stuck. Near the dawn of the 16-bit era, a company called SNK was doing pretty well on the arcade scene with a clever system in which they sold arcade owners a cabinet that could play any SNK game, provided you popped in the appropriate cartridge. Called the Neo-Geo, it was very successful, largely due to the string of phenomenal games that SNK crafted for it, eventually including such franchises as Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, Metal Slug, and others that still linger around today. What SNK soon discovered, though, is that it wasn’t just arcade owners and patrons who were enamored with their box – a small segment of people with money to burn were bringing these systems home with them.

Enter the Neo-Geo home system. $650 got you a console, a couple of pretty nice controllers, and a game. Additional games were a couple hundred bucks a pop. While certainly not for everyone, if you could rustle up the dough, you were in for a home gaming experience that pretty much kicked the living crap out of everything else available at the time. 4096 colors available on screen compared to the competitors’ 256 and 64, about a hojillion sprites on a line – this baby did it all, though “it all” here was pretty much limited to fighting games and the occasional shooter. Still, SNK had found their niche, and they exploited the almighty hell out of it for the next decade.

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