Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Weasels Ripped My Flesh

We recently rediscovered this cover of Man’s Life Magazine, featuring what looks like David Bowie fighting off weasels. The title of that feature is “Weasels ripped my flesh.” Naturally, we (by which I mean, myself and the ever insane and wonderful Katrina) created a #weaselsrippedmyflesh hash tag on twitter. In case you think we’re disturbed, know that Frank Zappa felt the same way.
Coping when a partner has lost their job
It’s true, men are losing their jobs with greater frequency than women. However, U.S. News & World Report did a great job of missing some fundamental points in their recent article, Recession Tips for Wives.While it does a good job of pissing off men and women alike with its stereotyping, (hey women, your jobs – or job loss – is not as important or devastating as it is for a man, since you’re really homemakers anyway).
While I’m irritated at the advice offered in the U.S. News & World Report article, mostly because it makes a lot of nasty assumptions about the people involved, (men don’t talk about their feelings, can’t function on their own without a woman to do their thinking for them, and women are judgmental harpies who will withhold sex when no money is coming in), at its root, it does try to pass along some truly valid advice. keep reading »
Brand Exhaustion and Captain Missthepoint
In college, the focus was brands – brand identity, brand strength, branding branding branding. Never mind my professor could have moonlighted as Super Douche, or that I did little to disguise my complete disgust with him and his chosen subject matter (devotion to all that is Brand. We are the Brand. You will be assimilated).
As an American, a consumer and someone who spends far too much time thinking about such things, I could have told you two years ago (and, wait, I did tell people two years ago – they laughed), that the day of the Brand was coming to an end.
We’ve seen the folly of Brand management, where the brand identity is all-powerful and all-important – to the exclusion of all other things. Protecting the Brand is priority number one, whereas the customer and his/her experience is not really much of a priority at all. keep reading »
AskMen: A dark beacon of douchbaggery
Oh, misogyny. We keep vanquishing you, but you keep rearing your ugly head in dark caverns of the internet. Dark, dank caverns like AskMen.com. Why can’t you stay gone? In this post, I review the worst of internet comments from this wacky website that I’m often tempted to think is run by a combination of guys who a) have never actually talked to, much less had sex with, a woman; b) think all women are after his “precious bodily fluids” so that they can extort him for child support; or c) think that “fucking awesome!!!!” and “woooo!” are the be all, end all of exclamations. keep reading »
May the smartest God prevail
I understand the desire to provide an alternative explanation to the creation of the universe. After all, evolution is just a theory. However, I feel morally obligated to offer a word of caution to the Christians who are campaigning so fervently to get Intelligent Design taught in public schools.
In order to push this alternative explanation, you can’t reasonably say that the intelligent designer is the Christian God, but simply that there was an intelligent designer. I for one am totally alright with that. However, much like gay marriage is a gateway for all kinds of “unnatural” unions, so too is ID curriculum. keep reading »