The Irony Of This "McCafe" Hulu Ad Is Sad

What is Adbusters Magazine going to do now that companies are "sponsoring" ad-free (virtual) environments?

"I work to support my wife's Christian Louboutin addiction."

Best Abramoff Crony Quote Ever!

Governor Rod Blagojevich

WTF is this unbelievably ballsy blanketing of the court of public opinion?

Branded!

Can you technically even be a "maverick" and espouse something other than a classically liberal, progressive ideology?

That's the question posed by John Swartz in this NYT's column that delves not just into the etymology of the term—which began with a 17th Century member of the Maverick family, who "got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants"—but also the current low opinion the Maverick family has of McCain and Palin using their family name today.

Would Biblical Prophecies Influence Palin's Foreign Policy Positions? [Holy Crap]

I am genuinely afraid.

Slavoj Žižek Is A National Treasure.

It's a real shame he's not ours.
This recent interview covers all kinds of great territory—the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, Oliver Stone's failures as a polemicist, Žižek's defenses of the movie 300, of racism (yes!) and of dick jokes, as well as some of his praise (faint praise) for my boy Thomas Frank and Judith Butler's underrated partner, Wendy Brown.

[via BeepBoop, shared by susie]

The 1st Banner Ad On The Internet

According to Adland, this was part of AT&T's 1994 "You will" campaign and it was made by TANGENT Design/Communications of Westport, CT. Specifically, copy by Joe McCambley, the creative director of Modem Media, with graphic design by Craig Kanarick of TANGENT Design (pre-razorfish). The internet has come a long way !!!!!!!!!!1111!!!!!1!

The Truculent Hilarity of 4CHAN Conservatives

The above animated GIF reminded me recently of this actual RNC ad that was running after Barry O.'s speech in Berlin:



I'm slightly weirded out by the crass, low-budget sophistication in both cases; how they appeal on the visceral, gut-level of an internet meme without discussing anything directly — in the first instance Obama-as-Zoolander-scale-pretty-boy-doofus (with iced lattes! Talking Point Bonus!) and in the second instance Obama-as-cocky-pretty-boy-doofus-Leonardo-Decaprio (with internationalist "King of the World" delusions! Another TPB!).

The second also seems to focus on painting Obama's supporters as Far Left, Eurotrash morans — in a way that is intentionally unfair, hilarious and basically what the Daily Show and Sascha Baron Cohen have been doing for over a decade now. This leaves me with the sinking feeling that after several botched attempts, we are coming closer to a world with a successful conservative Daily Show.

A la Greg Sargent's recent analysis — there is also the possibility that this ad was meant to work in some amazing way I never could have imagined.

My Candidate Makes This Look Good

While not as laughable as the David Brooks Applebees misfire, Rove's recent dig at Obama is yet another failed attempt to paint the presumptive nominee as a haughty elitist. Says Rove:

Even if you never met him [i.e. Obama], you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.

Hey! What if I've never met Obama and I've never been to a country club?
[via MoJo via ABC]

Aside: BHO should pick Tommy Lee Jones as his running mate; Or, if he wants to secure Florida, Jeff Goldblum.

Recent Choice Ed Gonzalez

As is often the case with a film review by Ed Gonzalez in Slant Magazine, I had no intentions of seeing this movie, left his review with every intention of not wanting to see it, and feel supremely edified having read his opinion:

[...] worse than the filmmakers' reductivist worldview is their want to tell an Altmanesque tapestry but actually doing so in the bratty, über-punk vernacular of Faith Akin. Since Marcela's depressing way of life isn't profoundly connected to the havoc of the floods that ravaged Prague in 2002, the many allusions to that tragedy feel at once trivial and shameless. But what is Beauty in Trouble anyway other than a dull, borderline contemptuous portrait a pretty young thing escaping her down-and-out life after falling in with a rich and caring older man? Sadly, Hrebejk and Jarchovský seem to understand that their story runs on empty, which is probably why they settle for lazily collaging snippets from the lives of their characters throughout and setting their montages to the music of Czech singer Raduza. So, can anyone tell me what the Czech word for magnolia is?

His recent review of HBO's Recount is equally cutting and a pleasure to read, despite being pretty obvious:

The puppets from Genesis's "Land of Confusion" video give more multifaceted performances than [Tom] Wilkinson, Laura Dern (as Katherine Harris) or Ed Begley Jr. (David Boies), all saddled with characters that seem to have been struck from either black or white molds (as a shrill signpost of his goodness, Begley's character is seen lapping up vanilla ice cream throughout) [...] Only interested in scoring cheap shots, Recount tells us that conservatives are bullies on a very fundamental level, but it's most effective at conveying the sense that Hollywood liberals are only interested in making movies that showcase how right they are—or, in this case, were. And though they were, that's no excuse for this movie's wholesale smugness.

I personally expected to and did enjoy this movie as delicious piece of heavily partisan junk food. And frankly: Would anyone bother watching this movie unless it was to wrap themselves in that smugness like a warm blanket? Or to avoid having to read a book explaining all the technical bullshit related to the Florida recount?

As it stands, my main problem with this film was that even on a short leash, I hate Dennis Leary. Ultimately, Recount was more boring than smug, due to its frequent and glaring bits of hackneyed dramatic license (e.g. the fictitious chance meeting between Wilkinson's James Baker III and Kevin Spacey's Ron Klain that concludes the film. Whoops: RETROACTIVE SPOILER ALERT!!!11!!). So, if you wanted to curl up on your unbleached hemp futon with some soy- or rice-based organic ice cream and watch this with your partner and your adopted Nambian child, I would say go for it. It's exactly what you were looking for. It even has a funny, vocal impersonation of independent-non-grata Joe Leiberman. (What is up with that guy?)

Al Qaeda Accepting Proposals ["9/11 Was A Job"]

From Wired's Danger Room blog:

"Senior al-Qaida leaders through a password protected Internet message board periodically ask their loyal readers to send in their best ideas for attacking their enemies," reports National Defense, quoting recent remarks by Rita Katz, of the SITE Institute.

WFMU's resident anti-fascist researcher (conspiracy theorist), Dave Emory, has been a big fan of Rita's since her participation in the Operation Greenquest raids, a quashed attempt to hold a few Virginia-based Saudi charities accountable for funding al-Qaeda. She's also been profiled in the NYT's.

Borrowed Nostalgia for the Misremembered 80's

My family's free Entertainment Weekly subscription always brings me face to face with ads for 80stees.com, purveyors of faux-vintage, distressed-printed T-shirts ostensibly referencing all the things you loved about the 1980's — like The Big Lebowski, Seinfeld and the U.S. version of The Office.

While I'm increasingly impressed by the acumen (some of) these designers have shown in replicating the texture and look of an actual Salvation Army find, I'm embarrassed by the entirety of this trend. Embarrassed, because the consumer is my generation, since maligned by the reasonably accurate Robert Lanham and praised by aging boomers at Time as "the Millennials" (though I still think our best descriptor came from The Onion AV Club when The Real Cancun hit theaters: 'the Worst Generation').

The T-shirts I find most repugnant on this site also tend to be some of the most aesthetically on the money (and overpriced): This $30.00 Empire Strikes Back T-shirt; This $20.00 Ninja Turtles shirt, I could swear I actually owned in 3rd Grade; and everything by Junk Food designers Natalie Grof and Blaine Halvorson, two douche bags who've made it their lifes' work to give terrible douche bags the cache earned by the rest of us non-terrible un-douche bags.

These are on sale for $9.99 though:





And this amazing Spiderman3 shirt is now $4.99, an actual thrift store price:











(And, yes: ultimately, I find high-priced, true vintage t-shirt sellers like this tiny pony guy even more deplorable.)

After A Swear-Heavy Walk Home Tonight

I don't think I have ever more identified with Bill O'Reilly, as I did watching this meltdown mega-mix:

9/11 Was A Job

The Los Angeles Times reports on documents that depict Al Qaeda as "an organization obsessed with paperwork and penny-pinching and afflicted with a damaging propensity for feuds." Memos, budgetary woes, staffing problems, man keeps biting dog in this chortle-fest until there's no dog left ... cuz is bean al eated!!1!

MORE IMPORTANTLY: I am left wanting to know more about this quoted terrorism expert, Rohan Gunaratna. What's his story? Does something out-of-the-ordinary (like him biting a dog) happen in it? [Link; Photo from The Onion]

New Process Will Transform Nigeria's Flare Gas Nightmare Into Useful Plastics

Which Will Then Become Someone Else's Problem

Nigeria's natural gas reserves are the tenth-largest in the world and, to date, a byproduct of the region's oil industry that has been largely squandered in the horrifically dumb practice of gas flaring.

Now, according to statements made this week by Honeywell Company UOP LLC, Viva Methanol Ltd. will be licensing UOP's proprietary methanol-to-olefin (MTO) and olefin cracking technologies to transform that previously wasted natural gas into an annual 1.3-million metric tons of ethylene and propylene for the plastics industry.

It's hard to argue that this isn't great news, or that making plastics from the pockets of natural gas that escape when drilling oil isn't better than making a hellscape of gigantic flames and clouds of toxic black smoke. As an industrial practice, gas flaring contributes approximately 390-million tons of carbon dioxide annually according to research released last year by the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration; and as you can well imagine based on their eerily beautiful satellite image above, NOAA ranks Nigeria as second only to Russia in active gas-flaring facilities.

Let's ask a naive question: Why did it take until the 21st century to start looking into ways of using this natural gas? The answer seems that merely recovering it for—Oh, I don't know—the energy market somehow wasn't cost effective and that the recent movement on this stems largely from UOP's marketable new processes (co-owned by Norsk Hydro ASA and Total Petroleum) which create "high-value polyethylene and polypropylene."

So, basically, what the global economy is saying to Nigerians (like the Ogoni pictured above) is, "We know you spent much of the early 90's protesting the gas-flaring practices of Shell and that the corrupt Nigerian government hung nine of your political activist leaders with the tacit approval of Shell's then-chief executive, Brian Anderson, but because it wasn't sufficiently profitable to correct the issue at that time we won't. But: over a decade later, we figured out how. Good reactions, etc.?"

To make matters worse, the Nigeria plant—supplied with basic engineering, catalysts, adsorbents, specialty equipment, and technical support from UOP—is expected to finish construction in the in the country's "Lagos Free Trade Zone" (ugh!).

And then of course all that plastic will end up floating in the Pacific Trash Vortex.
The End.
Who wants a beer?

[Link to the bone-dry UOP BusinessWire release; Photos taken from the U.S. Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program via NPR and the University of Michigan via their apparently sloppy and underfunded Environmental Justice Group case studies]

Terrifying Bulk Chemicals Firm: We Now Manufacture Styrofoam Insulation Without Depleting The Ozone Layer

I think it was Royal Tenenbaum who asked, "Can’t someone be a shit their whole life and want to repair the damage?" ("I mean, I think people want to hear that.") Chemical giant Dow today poses a variation on the same question, with "someone" being replaced by "a theoretically immortal legal entity driven entirely by self interest and free under a vicious misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment to exercise the same freedoms as Mortal Americans."

Its "Building Solutions" division announced today the development of a new foaming agent technology capable of manufacturing their STYROFOAM™ R5/inch insulation without the release of ozone-depleting chemicals. The process is also expected to halve their carbon emissions in North America. From their press release:

The proprietary formulation substitutes the hydrochloro-fluorocarbon (HCFC) 142b, an ozone-depleting compound that US and Canadian regulations under the Montreal Protocol require be phased out by January 1, 2010 in North America, with a non-ozone depleting compound. It enables Dow’s North American customers to continue receiving STYROFOAM insulation with the same product performance and cost-leadership position, and reflects Dow’s commitment, as part of its 2015 Sustainability Goals for Addressing Climate Change, to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

This is another serious step forward for the company, formerly the sole manufacturer of napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, a majority supplier of silicone breast implants and stakeholder in approximately 96 Superfund sites (Thanks, Wikipedia!) If I trusted this administration's EPA at all, I'd be very enthusiastic about Dow being their 2008 Energy Star Partner of the Year for excellence in energy management and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. [Link to press release]

This Week In Websites I Want to Save

* Richard Meier & Partners Architects LLP [Link]
* Free MP3's of Ghoul Related Music: "A song-by-song tour through pop music's unexpected fascination with the ghastly and supernatural." [Link]
* Bono: Tax Evader [Link]
* Persepolis Teaser Trailer [Link]
* Frontline: Spying on the Home Front [Link]

October 2001: Conference at WTC Would Have Discussed Terrorism and Building Collapses

Somehow, I refuse to believe this is true:

Audrey McKibbin Moran, chief of staff for Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney, was reading the mail yesterday when she came across an invitation to the mayor.

In October, an emergency preparedness conference would include discussion on terrorism.

"One of the topics they were going to talk about was the danger of collapsing buildings," Moran said.

It would have been at the World Trade Center.

-- David DeCamp

From the Center for Cooperative Research [Link]