There is a purported Chinese curse which goes: "May you live in interesting times!"

But in all seriousness, how lucky are we! If you read or watched V for Vendetta a few years ago and you've been following news of the Anonymous Phenomenon recently, it's difficult not to appreciate the widespread V/Guy Fawkes imagery that seems to have attached itself to the AnonOps image. I post this now because most of the excitement surrounding them seems to have died down. Rather than trying to judge this amorphous body of persons for their collective actions, I'd rather think of them as a sophisticated new breed of trolls we all must learn to deal with. Compare AnonOps to young conservative activist James O'Keefe, who disguised himself and confederates as a pimp and, presumably, a couple of 'ho's. For another conservative example, take Sarah Palin's marvelously absurd invention of "death panels" during fateful eleventh-hour debates on the health care Omnibus bill. I'm not the first to suggest that the Westboro Baptist Church is comprised of "professional" trolls. I offer examples from America's right wing to demonstrate that anyone can employ the meager art of the troll, although its mastery is an outgrowth of 'net and youth culture. The tactics themselves may be as underhanded as you goddamn like, but observe the examples I gave-they work!

Given that it's a helluva lot easier and media-savvy than civil debate, does this mean we can expect the emergence of only greater and more sophisticated trolling operations?

Movies Not To Watch With Your Economist Friend...

This post is dedicated to my father, an industry analyst with the International Trade Commission. In addition to being a career economist, Dad also consumes a painful amount of literature by economic historians, making him vastly more likely to ruin a perfectly good piece of cinema with so many "fascinating factoids" barely relevant to characters or storyline. It should be observed that the average economist is probably so thrilled to be invited anywhere as to prevent this type of behavior. By the way, nothing in quotation marks should be directly attributed to anyone, least of all my father. He uses more words on average to say...anything. That said, on with the list:

1. Amistad: "Hey, did you know that Irish and Cockney textile laborers largely opposed the slave trade because it contributed to unbeatable prices on cotton fabrics?"
(here, "Irish and Cockney" may just as well be rendered as a single word: Irish-and-Cockney)

2. Mary Poppins: "You know sweetheart, that kind of panic is likely to ensue in any bank where enough people attempt to withdraw their entire accounts at once, because banks usually only keep a fraction of what's been invested in them on hand in cash."
"A more realistic portrayal of chimney sweeps in Edwardian England would depict a hopeless alcoholic who hates his life, his job, and the very sight of sunlight."

3. Pirates of the Caribbean: "Pay attention kids, you're actually learning a lot about the politics of mercantilism."

4. The Wizard of Oz: "This entire story is a fascinating allegory for the conflict between advocates of the gold standard and early monetarists."
(if the previous statement includes factual inaccuracies, it's because I was actually paying attention to the movie).

5. Blood Diamond: "Africa is a giant clusterfuck. I had fun there, though. Everyone was really cool when I was explaining the structural complexities of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Less so if I said that I was voting for McCain."

6. Avatar: I've never sat down and watched this with my father or any other economist, but I just can't help but suspect that they would ruin it.

I'm sure there are more, including just about anything to do with pirates, the Cold War, or knock-on-wood if The Fountainhead ever comes to the big screen.

Is (at least the Southern bloc) of the Republican Party Institutionally Racist?

Well god dammit I just don't know how to respond to what it is that I'm seeing here. Is there any remote possibility that the GOP's blanket disapproval of nearly every aspect of our President's domestic and foreign agenda is even the weeniest bit tinged with elitist white resentment?



Oooh! Oooh! Does it have anything to with L.L. Bean, camping, or Old Navy? Those are some pretty white kinds of things I suppose. What about Dungeons and Dragons, or the death metal scene? Birdwatching? Sweaters of any kind? I don't think that Mr. Beck is quite going there, though.



whoa, whoa, hold on a minute there. This is exactly why I prefer to differentiate myself from mainstream "white" America. This wink-and-nod "white Christian male power structure that we have" is not something in which I have ever participated in as a predominantly Irish-Italian American, or can reasonably say unfairly benefited my ancestors in America. I cannot identify with this notion of "whiteness" that McCain and O'Reilly are tacitly referring to, and are apparently the arbiters and paragons of themselves.

Let it be here known that I would henceforth prefer to be referred to as a "person of pallor" and not as a "White person." So Bill O'Reilly and John McCain have chosen to become WASP'S*, that's their problem, but as far as I'm concerned they are hereby disowned from the any previous association with the mighty Gaelic nations of either Ireland or Scotland, though they be flung all about the earth by famine and Anglo-Saxon tyranny, the hard heel of which has been felt by nearly every great people of the world at one point or another. And as for O'Reilly, may a cat eat your heart and the devil eat the cat.



Well fuck it, it looks like it's not quite the isolated minority I was hoping.

*WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant

Input Upon Being Prompted to Give Reason for Deleting My Youtube Account

relieving a bit of online "clutter" attached to email accounts, usernames, etc. that I either no longer use or no longer have access to. I fully intend on opening a new account and maintaining it because I love youtube and have never experienced dissatisfaction of any sort from this site. What y'all do that not everyone appreciates is provide a reasonably secure, incredibly accessible, and surprisingly broad stream of user generated content that in effect helps to "flatten," along with Wikipedia, Digg, Blogger, etc.; the informational and intellectual discourse of this and increasingly many other countries as well. What this does is blur and challenge artificial institutional barriers designed and put in place specifically to limit and disempower the public by narrowing the streams of media through which "sanctioned" or "appropriate/accepted" newsmaking, reporting, commentary, may be consumed. One effect of Youtube is to degrade the monopolist hold of standard television and printed news media, which in turn reinvigorates our democracy. Thank you so much for making the first ten years of the millennium the most retroactively hilarious since the Prohibition Era.
Sincerely,
Bette

a word with y'all out there

It has come to my attention that upwards of 90% of my relatively miniscule readership comes to me from Linux servers. This would seem to indicate that this blog is mostly accessible to the technorati, most of whom ate probably judging me very personally for this weak sauce template. Humblest apologies.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Obligatory Thanksgiving post

Let me say from the very outset that I believe Tganksgiving is a stupid and distasteful holiday and if you celebrate in the manner of most Americans you should be at least a little ashamed of yourself for being part of a concerted whitewashing of the Peqoet Indian Massacre for which William Bradford, then governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, inaguarated the very first such Thanksgiving feast. Settlers repeated the practice of offering public thanks to god for the slaughter of their pagan neighbors until eventually Abraham Lincoln institutionalized the national legal holiday before marching on the starving Sioux. Feel free to investigate the history yourselves and point out any factual errors in my arid anti-Puritan rant. In your own gluttonies today, dear reader, please pray to the Divinity of your liking that when humanity does make its first mass contact with intelligent life of greater technical acuity that we all be prepared:
For the Intergalactic Mother-fucking British. I've been saying it for years. Pray as well that these imminent conquistadors are kinder to humanity than Europe to its precious neighbors. I will be working today, serving people who for whatever reason are not eating at home today. I will be praying that your collective guilt feeds right into my pockets as I create the pleasant illusion of a giant-ass country Thanksgiving Extravaganza without all of the bullshit. Thank you.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

First Impression: RuPaul's Drag U

I'll admit, I've always loved drag queens. It may be the least "high-minded" and stuffy-nosed of performance art, but at least it's goddamned entertaining. I can't remember any significant period of my life when I wasn't enchanted and delighted by these trampy-campy gender clowns (to tap another branch of popular performance art oft afforded about as much respect as drag queens).

All the same, I love very few things more than to grab a few drinks at Godfrey's in Richmond and watch the girls rock it pretty hard for an ordinary Wednesday evening. It relieves a pretty and intelligent little working girl like me, constantly bitten and hounded by the tacit social demand to apply a full face of whore paint every morning to serve pancakes to a horde of usually jovial rednecks, to see the mask of adornment that defines classic "femininity" taken up by men in masquerade. It reminds me what is costume and what is play.

And now for the show. As far as daytime dribble makeover/amateur sing-and-dance bits go, this is exquisitely fuck-the-important-novel-I-was-reading-glued-to-the-couch-trash entertainment. The show centers around Ru Paul, the "academic dean," so to speak, of Drag U, and some choice picks from the two seasons of Ru Paul's Drag Race. Fans will remember Raven (personal favorite), Jujubee, Pandora Boxx, Morgan MacMichaels, Ongina, and that Flores fellow. She's a fellow of Drag U, right? Each episode the reigning queens compete to affect the most dramatic transformation in some dour hetero-female hausfrau, motorcycle enthusiast, grad student, whatever. A very distinct melange of superb bitchiness ensues.

So whether you skim by on youtube and resolve quickly never to watch an entire episode or fall in love with the wide-eyed and rhythymless pupils of Drag U, I leave you with this to ponder: If you're going to watch trash T. V. at all, why not pull out all the stops?