Secretly Ironic

I saw a picture on Al Jazeera (couldn’t read any of the text, but the photo series are nifty) of the White House behind some steel blockades. In fact, I could see that they were Blockader Brand Steel Barricades. As with trade magazines for industries I’m not involved in, I like to look at industry safety supplies and specialty catalogs for commercial purposes. Look at the things people want and need, and the businesses that spring up to serve those wants and needs, and you begin to understand the world that goes on around them, commercial and otherwise.

For example, church stores. Nonspecialists work with churches, too, of course. At a conference awhile ago I spoke with the IT director for most of the mid-Atlantic region’s Catholic churches. Powerpoint is big in sermons these days, apparently, and email has made church newsletters much cheaper. And imagine the potential for burka sales! You could shop without having to leave your home and be exposed to the gaze of men. I hear that the burka merchants of Kabul have had some dropoff in sales recently, but I imagine that the Internet could bring them new business from all over the world. Or maybe they’ll branch out into more revealing clothing, like chadors.

I was using the Camino (formerly Chimera) browser, which is based on Mozilla, the basis for Netscape and so forth. But I gave up on a new version coming out, and switched to Safari. Shortly before noticing that there’s a new Camino out. We’ll see which I stick with.

And as to things you can do with that software, I’ve read two web comics recently about violence, lust, and jealousy. One of them is not at all funny and is called Three Men. The other is called
Something Positive, and it’s both funny and wicked.

Public Service Announcement

I’m totally obsessed with fischerspooner right now. Some of the stuff (Emerge, in particular, with the rather encouraging lyrics “you don’t need to emerge from nothing, you don’t need to tear away”) is fantastic and uplifting and just fun dance music. But what grabbed me first was the same trashy, brazen attitude I liked in artists like Peaches and Gravy Train. The song Mega Colon absolutely epitomizes the aesthetic: a sultry woman’s voice singing a song you’d otherwise attribute to a fourth-grade boy. Literally, pottymouthed.

It reminds me of this rant in Vice Magazine awhile back about how the only guys who think thong underwear is sexy are the ones who still think girls don’t poo.

In related news, a black hole is born, and feces befoul our fair parks, our dainty knees, our family homes, and our innocent, sacrosanct childhood memories. Of course we’re going to sue someone about it.