Category Archives: Manifestos

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Everything I need to know about America I learned from YouTube

I'll have a double chili nihilismdog to go

I'll have a double chili nihilismdog to go

It’s true, though. It’s not like America is complicated anymore.

Back in 2001 (nearly a century ago, if you don’t think about it too hard) the New Yorker published a truly ground-breaking article on the ways that Powerpoint (itself around and changing worldviews since 1987) was reducing the American capacity for original thought.

PowerPoint, which can be found on two hundred and fifty million computers around the world, is software you impose on other people… The usual metaphor for everyday software is the tool, but that doesn’t seem to be right here. PowerPoint is more like a suit of clothes, or a car, or plastic surgery. You take it out with you. You are judged by it—you insist on being judged by it. It is by definition a social instrument, turning middle managers into bullet-point dandies.

But PowerPoint also has a private, interior influence. It edits ideas. It is, almost surreptitiously, a business manual as well as a business suit, with an opinion—an oddly pedantic, prescriptive opinion—about the way we should think. It helps you make a case, but it also makes its own case: about how to organize information, how much information to organize, how to look at the world.

and, as anyone familiar with human interaction or communications theory could tell you, the way you get information about the world changes your concept of the world, and that in turn changes the world in which you live, if you do in fact live and not just exist. And what does this have to do with burgers, YouTube, and America? Plenty, my friends, plenty.

Think about this: the greatest technological success story of our time is Twitter, which limits what you can say to 140 characters; or we can equally say that it gives you 140 characters of void to fill with existential screaming. Some people have to pad to make the word count.

You thought I was kidding, didn’t you?

Think about the Tea Party, and think about exactly how deeply its members are thinking about the most important issues of the day. You can’t say their politics are not heartfelt, but you’d be hard-pressed to defend this particular capito-populist tribe as an intellectual movement. They make Pat Buchanan look like Bill Kristol. On the opposite side, a relatively intellectual President had to dumb down his message to single-word talking points; not much room for nuance when it has to fit on a Shepard Fairey poster.

 

Shepard Fairey Barack Obama

Shepard Fairey does Barack Obama in words of one or two syllables

And of course, popular culture is debased to the point where the Kardashians have not one but two television series among them, simply because sister Kim has a sex tape and a legendary caboose. It’s not exactly Witness to Yesterday, my friends.

So, yes, everything you need to know about the USA right at this moment, you can get from two brief YouTube videos and twenty or thirty minutes of cogitation thereon.

Here is the greatest scene from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle that does not have Neil Patrick Harris in it:

Now that immigrant can-do-ism and aspirational capitalism have been explained, it’s time to take on geopolitics, and who better to tackle that nest of vipers than Team America, World Police?

That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

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World’s Coolest PhD Thesis

You think I’m joking, don’t you? You probably think this is some moderately-snazzy, TED-derivative powerpoint dog and pony show, doncha? Well think again, pal, because this is an award-winning microbiology PhD defense from Carleton University, presented as interpretive dance.

I say again:

this is an award-winning microbiology PhD defense from Carleton University, presented as interpretive dance.

Behold:

via BMD Love Blog

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Be a Movie Producer!

or look just like one…

Oh god, not ANOTHER one!

Oh god, not ANOTHER one!

No, it’s true: this is a plan to enable you to put “movie producer” on your business card, which will come in handy on a Friday at the clubs, if no-where else. Actually, it will count for something with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who will allow any actual credited producer to purchase a ticket to the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars.

Come to think of it, I’ve got a friend who’s always wanted to go. Hmmmm…

Allow me to introduce With Glowing Hearts, the motion picture:

So far, so awww, right? Yes, it’s an inspirational documentary, perhaps the least likely to be commercially successful genre of film in filmdom. How can you become a producer of this acclaimed-but-so-far-unreleased soon-to-be-classic? Easy; everybody knows there’s one way to become a producer.

You come up with the money.

In this case, you can come up with amounts as small as a Toonie:

Making a film costs money, and although we’ve done a great job at keeping our costs down there are certain expenses which are unavoidable. That’s why from now, until the middle of August, we’re running our Toonie and Tweet Torch Relay to help get us to the finish line and to get your name in the credits.  Starting with a minimum contribution of $2, “producers” can have their name published in a word cloud that will appear in the film’s credit roll and on this site. Increasing your contribution will increase the size of your name in the cloud.

All money collected will go directly towards costs related to finishing and distributing the film like insurance, music rights, and salaries for the great people who have been working on the film with us.  Just click on the Chip-In widget to the right and follow the instructions to use either your PayPal account or credit card, note that transactions are conducted in US dollars but will be converted to your local currency on your bill.  The name that is associated with your PayPal account is the same that will be used for the credits, if you would like a different name to appear in the credits please indicate that under “special instructions for vendor” on the “Review your payment” page.

Sure, it says mid-August, but if you ask nicely you’ll probably find there’s always room for more money (though perhaps it will need more zeros after the 2). Go on, haven’t you always wanted to be a Hollywood big shot? I hear Clooney is breaking up with his latest bimbette, so if you’re a brunette and you can get him good and drunk at the Vanity Fair afterparty, you’ve probably got a shot.

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The Divine Position on Taxation

You know God. He has those mysterious ways. He speaks really, really loudly, sometimes using languages he’s made up and hasn’t even told anyone yet, just for kicks, and sometimes he writes everything down very carefully on tablets designed to last eons and hands them to the clumsiest dude in all of the Middle East.

He’s like that.

But now he’s pissed, and he’s blogging.

BEHOLD, stolen from IAmYourGod who is, of course, on WordPress:

God and Taxation

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everything you wanted to know about Canada but were afraid to ask

Yep, that’s pretty much exactly it: everything you wanted to know about Canada but were afraid to ask, delivered by the funniest man Canada has ever produced, Rick Mercer.

Any questions?