Category Archives: Fans

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Thoughtcrime does not entail life: thoughtcrime IS life.

Pope Vader finds your lack of faith disturbing

Pope Vader finds your lack of faith disturbing

And so, with a paraphrase from 1984 and a quote from Star Wars, that concludes our sermon for today.

Here is your catechism.

True believers are wonderful, right up to the point where they subjugate their individual moral responsibility to their loyalty. At that point, it’s time for a revolt. If they are part of a revolutionary, empowering movement and they suddenly start casting aspersions on one another’s loyalty, of all things, then you know something’s rotten in the state of Cyberia. They may or may not be acting on orders from above; in fact, I find fandoms do this spontaneously at a certain point, particularly those which perceive themselves as beleaguered.

It is possible to resist them at the same time as you pity them.

Up with thoughtcrime!

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Il Troubadore Klingon Music Project & Deserae the Bellydancing Wookiee

Yes, you read that right. Authentic Klingon Bellydance Music.

From their YouTube description:

Deserae dancing to an excerpt of the Shyriiwook Bellydance tune, “Muaarga” (Peace), as performed by the il Troubadore Klingon Music Project at the Viaduct Theater in Chicago (3 August 2012).

The Klingon Music Project is a real thing, as apparently is Deserae the bellydancing Wookiee and now they are both going viral. What can I say? She’s got the nous if not the Nad’s.

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picture this

Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi

I’ve often wondered whether Nobel Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi would have risen to global fame (and a Nobel) if she hadn’t been beautiful. Yes, people think about these things. Well, you knew that. But some people talk about them, too, which is slightly more fraught.

John Molloy, the guy who wrote all those Dress for Success books in the early 80′s, said there was a greater correlation between the monetary success of Harvard grads and their height than there was between their success and their grades. We perceive good-looking people to be not just more attractive, but more intelligent, more diligent, and more moral than their homely peers. Those who listened to the Kennedy/Nixon debate on the radio felt Nixon had won, while those who saw it on television felt almost unanimously that Kennedy had trounced Richard “Flopsweat” Nixon.

And all this is not to say that she (and Kennedy, and those lanky Harvard grads) don’t deserve what they’ve gotten; it’s rather to say that beauty is power. And sometimes it’s hard not to resent that. While I’m glad to see it put to use for the cause of good here, how often has it been used to slip something by us that we should have stopped? How often, on the global stage, have we been desensitized and made victims by the presence of sheer physical beauty?

Today I don’t have any answers. I just hope I’m asking the right questions.

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A Very Morbid Christmas from Calvin and Hobbes

While out on the lawn...

While out on the lawn...

It has recently come to our attention that since beginning our new gig at theDailyDot we have been lax in our usual seasonally-orientated postificationing of slightly altered Christmas Carol videos, Cthulhu references, and mashups. To make up for the deficit, here is the platonic ideal of a raincoaster Christmas blog post: a frosty, yet haunted tableau of the vast and twisted array of demented, cannibalistic snowmen created by that diminutive genius, Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes. And yes, it’s been thirty years.

GOD WE’RE OLD.

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Operation Global Media Domination: the Occupy Vancouver Situation

Octopi Vancouver

The Occupy Vancouver Media Domination Situation? Frankly, it sucks.

Occupy Vancouver sucks for hits, Google features nothing but page after page of mainstream media when you search for the term, and nobody in this town even seems to know I’m back from Yellowknife, let alone at Occupy Vancouver every other damn day/night. But that won’t stop me.

And it won’t stop me from boasting, either. Because I may not have the hits, but I have very glossy retweeters and atters, so there. I’ve lost the direct links to Neil Gaiman and William Gibson (once my favorite Starbucks customer), but that’s just because they talk almost as much as I do!

not to mention a hit-boosting RT of my article from OccupyVancouver and Bianca Jagger. Yes, THAT Bianca Jagger; how many do you think there are? She’s pretty awesome on Twitter, so I doubt the world could hold more than one.

I always say thank you, because I have fucking GREAT manners, bitchez.

and she has excellent manners as well:

And so, even though I spent 15 minutes of my Twitter for the Occupy Movement workshop telling people not to cultivate celebrities as a media strategy, it does make for a quick and popular (and validating) blog post. So, do as I tweet, not as I blog? Or something? It’s been a long day.

Speaking of Validation:

That’ll teach the Province to suggest I intern for them!