I’m a little late discovering Michael Ramirez, but…what a douche. I love how racists recycle their crap and think it’s ok to use it against someone else in another time & place. Keep it up guys. At this rate we’ll never attain peace before the actual cockroaches take over the planet.

see > Omid Memarian.

They’re not directly related, but came up in my reading of Priti Ramamurthy (U. Washington) writing on transnational feminism.

“Commodity fetishism” (Marx) refers to the idea that commodities can assume an independent life so that the relationship among things, and between people and things, accompany, conceal, or displace the actual state of relations between people (Burke 1996: 2).

“Representational economy” — “There is no selfhood apart from the collaborative practice of its figuration. The ‘self’ is a representational economy: a reification continually defeated by mutual entanglements with other subjects’ histories, experiences, self-representations; with their texts, conduct, gestures, objectifications” (Battaglia 1995: 2).

These concepts disturb the neoliberal interpellation of us as consumers constantly trying to assert our individualities (esp. as consumers!)

Dammit, every time I read something like this, I question everything. I suppose that’s the point.

J’adore corny, bubbly synth music (esp. 80s) about dark subject matter. My friend Spanky at KALX & I decided once that bars & pubs are where adulthood goes to die. In the alternative we’d like to see a nocturnal, goth theme park (with purple neon-lit waterslides) where you can still get wasted if you wish, but also get on rides and hear songs like this blaring. There’s also lots of sweets involved. One dreams.

This is what happens when a rapper named Busta does an idiotic song called “Arab Money” and during live shows samples Qoranic verses in for the “A-rab money” bit.

In keeping with the theme of Iranian hip hop, Revolution of the Mind from Oakland took a moment to dole out some F-U’s. (Note: strong language and heavy imagery).

On a somewhat lighter tip, his collaborator, Sabac Red, does a straight up good song “The Commitment,” showing some familiar Oakland spaces, like Ella Baker Center (where a dear friend put in a lot of years of toil) and Alameda County Juvenile Justice (that’s another story). Makes me miss home…

There’s always more that a person can do and do it better, but I gotta say, I’m pretty proud of the new president at the moment. He’s done a lot already, and it doesn’t involve golf:

1. saying unequivocally that the US will not torture
2. closing Guantanamo w/i one year
3. immediate closure of secret CIA prisons overseas
4. nullifying all legal orders & opinions by attorneys in the executive branch since 9/11
5. ordering that the army field manual be followed
6. undertaking comprehensive review to try terrorism suspects (i.e. observing basic due process)
7. recognizing the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs of Gazans
(though a lot more needs to be said & done here. Dalal Abu Aisha‘s case seriously broke my heart).

In the meantime, right wingers are already railing – re: his alleged socialism. (shoot, move, communicate? hu?)

It’s not a band.

Being surrounded by the imperatives of a religion that you don’t believe in can be grueling. In Dallas, Texas, one can find a church (a very large church) on every corner of an intersection in some parts of town. That fact reflects the fundamentalist Christian beliefs that pervade Dallas as a culture and community.

But it’s not just Texan suburbs where one is confronted with such symbols and messages. For one lady, the day came to push back. This is the story of how a comedy writer named Ariane Sherine decided to play it, and how her campaign ended up becoming a measure for the loads of people that felt the same way:

“[She] dreamed of just one bus going around London with an atheist slogan after she saw a similar advertisement for Christianity on the back of a bus. She was upset to click on the web link it suggested and be directed to a site prophesying a future of hellfire and brimstone for all non-Christians. She determined to do what she could to offer non-believers a more life-affirming message…”

So now we’ve got 800 atheist buses to ride around London. Incredible!

Hip hop in Iran and Farsi hip hop in general are nascent musical forms that too often suffer from the same ailments as the trajectory of the commodities market: cheaper, faster, more standardized. Then Deev comes along, and makes a few changes, resulting in Iranian hip hop to be proud of…

On the more experimental and phenomenal side, Omid in Long Beach is doing compelling work, though not necessarily in Farsi…and not necessarily hip hop!

Pride is a sensitive and tricky thing among “Persians,” but for me it’s about staying true to certain elements of our original as well as dispersed cultures, while breaking the mold when feeling constrained by them. Deev and Omid achieve an honest moment of that process.

A few days ago I Facebooked this “lego music” specimen as covered by Seb at Cyclic Defrost recently.

It’s too good not to keep sharing.

This video is an example of what’s being called the “legofication” of pop music, i.e. pop music is so generic and standardized in its structure (not to mention pop videos in their imagery) that all the parts are interchangeable. DJ Earworm mashes up the top 25 on the Billboard charts for 2008 to illustrate this point…amazing.

Chromeo is one of the funnest groups to come along since 2002, and I finally got to check them out when they played London last Saturday. I had no idea they had exploded so hugely, and was especially floored by the “chromeeeeoooo, oohhhh-ohhhhh” chanted between songs like a cult of Oz-Chromeo worshiping drones.

It was a seriously fun show full of kitschy adornments. The band’s true-to-the 80s vocodered stylings were an amusement for all, but one that could wear off after a while. (That while has not come for me just yet).

I also dig the fact that they’re “the only successful Arab/Jewish collaboration since the beginning of time,” (hilarious, if untrue) and that David (the Jewish half) is earning a PhD in French Lit from Columbia University in New York while teaching French to undergrads. His dissertation topic: “Theorizing the Pleasure of Reading in Eighteenth Century France.” Nice.

Something always rubbed me the wrong way about Emily, so I uniformly shunned her through the batcave and beyond. Feeling quite vindicated.

My dear friend, Vicente, alerted me of this…

Emily the Strange is a rip off of a 1978 book character.
Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, December 3, 2008.

For irony’s sake, here’s a paragraph from the Emily the Strange website:

“Designers including Jean-Paul Gaultier, Valentino and Marc Jacobs have paid tribute to her, but she doesn’t care! Emily wants you to be yourself, think for yourself, and DO IT YOURSELF. There’s nothing more boring to her than copying everyone else. Emily is the link to the Stranger in us all.”

Hmph.