The 53%

Little known fact: I could have been rich.

Have you seen this most amazing internet spoof? It's so hilarious - Thank the man who deprives you of rain by sacrificing your first son in the hopes that HE will provide rain!

I work 900 hours per week at six jobs, and I am also unemployed and have no insurance, but I don't blame SOCIETY! I BLAME MYSELF. Because I am lazy and a loser and oh god, I would kill myself but I love my 6 bosses so much that I don't want to disappoint them. Please please let me be good enough!

This is so amazing! It is an uniquely American (puritan) tragedy that we can be bragging about how much shit we can take, in order to align ourselves with those flogging us, and distance ourselves from those unwillingly also take shit.

The people who aren't spoofs are PATHETIC! My god! I have never seen such servile groveling at the hands of those who don't even both to fathom your pathetic existences! RICH PEOPLE HATE YOU, YOU FUCKING FOOLS!

YOU PEOPLE ARE POOR! YOU HAVE NOTHING. YOU DON'T GO ON VACATION! YOU DON'T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE! YOU ARE ADMITTEDLY TOO POOR TO HAVE CHILDREN!! YOU ARE A SINGLE MOM WORKING 3 JOBS AND GOING TO SCHOOL!!! YOU ARE NOWHERE NEAR THE 53%!!! You are probably in the lowest 15%

AHHH you think by pinching pennies your daughter will be in the 1%! What did you fail 1st grade math?? YOU AND YOUR FAMILY WILL NEVER BE IN THE 1%!!

OK sorry for the all caps. Since these people are actors and their 'tumblr' is a carefully scripting cock brothers right-wing fantasy blog I don't feel angry at the individual actors in the blog, I just like did this whole ranty thing for some reason with the all-caps and now I'm going to step away. Please don't click the link in the beginning unless you too want to be filled with anger towards these actors for a minute before you realized that they are just 99%ers who needed some spare cash in this lame economy!

<3
TV

Guest Post: a 21st-century vampire

I posit a 21st-century vampire, an internet vampire.

He-- or she-- resides in a tiny coffin-like cocoon, surrounded by his own soil. Like Stoker's original Dracula, he can endure daylight but is weakened by it. He finds it disagreeable. He goes out only at night, and only when driven by hunger-- by appetites-- by an unignorable biological craving for other humans.

He shuns the sun. How pasty he's become! To quote Stoker's novel, "extraordinary pallor."

Count Orlok, the vampire of the German Nosferatu films, was preceded and attended by a flood of rats, plague-bearing rats who were OF the vampire but not, like, physically the vampire. Orlok could also move as a shadow or as fog. Thus, from within his lair, this 21st-century vampire, via the internet, is present in others' lives in a spooky, infiltrating way without being actually tangible. His tapping fingers send forth biting rat-words; he slips through social-media privacy-cracks into others' lives like a clammy mist, observing but unobserved.

Like the vampires of old, this 21st-century equivalent is a parasite, a leech, in the sense that he lacks his own energy and can produce nothing-- he can only consume. He lives to drain the vitality from those who are "alive" and active, perhaps via commenting negatively on their actions and their cultural creations. He is full of hatred for those from whom he draws his own vitality-- hatred entwined with need.

His life force is entirely drawn from others. He has no "self" as such but must suck others' selfhood, acquiring second-hand scraps of self, drinking strength from those more vital. He has a bad smell. He hides ghoulishly in a sinister cave, lit by a computer screen and LEDs instead of candles. Again quoting Stoker, he is someone "without a single speck of colour about him anywhere."

This 21st-century vampire doesn't show up in mirrors. He is not self-reflective, beyond a vague anger-provoking sense that something is wrong with him, that he is sick. He may mourn his sickness or perversely glory in it, but he's unable to really see himself; he's cut off from self-perception. He also cannot "see himself" in others: his alienation makes him incapable of empathy. Lonely and twisted, he is not the controlling and seductive aristocratic Dracula of Stoker's book but the wasted-looking and repulsive Count Orlok of Murnau & Herzog's films.

In the German Nosferatu movies, Orlok is defeated by being distracted by a beautiful woman all through the night. How many squandered nights has our 21st-century vampire suffered the same fate, helplessly hypnotized by images of beautiful young things 'til the break of dawn? What a sad and disgusting creature.

He is bound by complex and ancient rules, he holds himself apart from the masses and yet is less than any one of them, for he is not superhuman: he is subhuman, below human, a dangerous incomplete being... and a plague vector.

Burn him to ash! Slice him, puncture him. Stick a stake through him, a tent-peg pinning him down in the filth where he belongs, ensuring this monster can no longer rise from his grave to upset and attack those in the land of the living. If you cannot destroy him, at least ward him off. He is a 21st-century vampire, a creature of horror whose stale unlife is worse than death: better you die than become him.

Occupy Everything

go occupy everything all of the time. give all your money to the occupation. eat all your meals there. sleep there. laugh there. enjoy the cigarettes brought to you by occupy asheville. seriously do that. never fall into the trap of issuing demands. we want troy davis back from the dead. not a zombie. we want to tear this world apart and let the shiny perfect one underneath shine through. i want to ride in the grasslands on the back of a lion and swim as a mermaid. hang onto all your dreams and imagine the impossible!

Love,
Trending Vampire

Ugh the jokes, they write themselves

This is a new post about John Boner and Dick Perry.

On Strangers

Dear Adoring Public:

Yes, we too find it confusing that not only are we at this advanced age and unmarried, but we are at this advanced age and totally unproposed to. We do not understand it as we too think we are a pretty and kindly somewhat-person. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about this. Drunken, unsolicited lectures about how we need to love ourselves before anyone else can love us are not only the thing of the first 25 minutes of romantic comedies, they are really very unhelpful. Yes we would like children, yes our time is running out. Yes we are keenly aware of it. We do not, however, have any control over when or if, these events may occur. We appreciate your horror on our behalf, but ultimately our having to justify our existence to you is both unhelpful towards what appears to be your ultimate goal (ie. getting us married and in a suburban home) and frankly it is hurtful and rude!

It's easier to spot when you are unfamiliar with the trappings

It is interesting when every once in a while someone says something that pierces the spectacle of the contemporary media. In real time, every person of color interviewed about the riots in England by the BBC was asked a first question: why are they rioting? After an explanation about racism and classism and disenfranchisement that person of color was asked a follow up question: so you condone the rioting? The person of color was left confused as they had said nothing that would indicate an opinion on the riot one way or another.

White commenters were then given the stage: the rioters are nothing but criminals and hooligans! This is blatant criminality!!

Leaving the commentors of color confused, were they then in a debate about whether breaking store windows was criminal? Or were they to debate why this was happening?

So finally it all came to a head when race scholar Darcus Howe was asked to explain the riots:


He is an educated man, and he has thought about racism. His interviewer is a privileged ignorant woman who tries to mask her discomfort by attacking Mr. Howe.

there is hope for a better tomorrow.

we hate wading through piles of emails as much as the rest of you. we like vacation better than work. we want to live in an ergonomic world with sepia tones and curved edges. we carry a new world in our hearts.