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Internet Vices
Illustrator Patrick Moberg compared the most popular social networks with some vices. No further comment.
Irish Daughter
An Irish daughter had not been home for over 5 years. Upon her return, her Father cursed her. "Where have ye been all this time? Why did ye not write to us, not even a line?
Why didn't ye call? Can ye not understand what ye put yer old Mother thru?" The girl, crying, replied, "Sniff, sniff....Dad. ...I became a prostitute.. ." "Ye what!!? Out of here, ye shameless harlot! Sinner! You're a disgrace to this Catholic family." "OK, Dad-- as ye wish. I just came back to give mum this luxurious fur coat, title deed to a ten bedroom mansion plus a $5 million savings certificate. For me little brother, this gold Rolex. And for ye Daddy, the sparkling new Mercedes limited edition convertible that's parked outside plus amembership to the country club
............ ......... .. (takes a breath)..... ........ and an invitation for ye all to spend New Years Eve on board my new yacht in the Riviera and......." "Now what was it ye said ye had become?" says Dad.
Girl, crying again, "Sniff, sniff....a prostitute Daddy! Sniff, sniff." "Oh! Be Jesus! Ye scared me half to death, girl! I thought ye said a Protestant. Come here and give yer old Dad a hug."
a literary lovehate: Jay Sean's "Down"
Just because a song has a repetitive banal dance beat, and an autotuned vocal track to boot, doesn't mean the lyrics can't by high literature. I offer up the current Number One Billboard Radio Song as an example of a lyric that contains all of the thematic complexity of Shakespeare and Siddhartha. Why can't you people bow down and acknowledge lyrical genius when you read it? I heard that on his next album there will be a song trilogy that sums up the key elements of Camus, Proust, and Ezra Pound.
Down
by Jay Sean
Baby are you down down down down down,
Downnnnnnn, downnnnnnn,
Obviously calling upon his Marxist teachings of class warfare, Jay Sean calls to mind how struggling lower class infants not only are trapped by their predicament within a modern capitalist society, but that the slippery slope becomes inescapable as echoed by the persistent repetition of the title.
Even if the sky is falling down,
Downnnnn, downnnnn
Ooohhh (ohhh)
Calling upon the children's literary reference "Chicken Little" Sean expresses the deep-seeded fear felt by young children confronted a society where everything seems crumbling around. A clever allusion is also apparent whereby Roots' protagonist Chicken George is melded with Canadian elder statesman impressionist Rich Little in illustrating the hypocrisy involved in the illusion of rising up without action to back it up.
You oughta know, tonight is the night to let it go,
Put on a show, i wanna see how you lose control,
A cry for a needed self-examination of the internal walls put up around the empowerment of the lower class. Sean sits back as the provoker/reporter who recalls many a standard Shakespearean metaphor about the deconstruction of life as play. Here he asks the everyman youth to abandon class-based expectations and act outside of themselves in an effort to assess the potential for an eventual revolution against the upper class.
So leave it behind ‘cause we, have a night to get away,
So come on and fly with me, as we make our great escape.
In an obvious homage to bleak outlook of life under a capitalist oligarchy, Sean encourages hallucinogenic experimentation as a means of escape and empowerment. As the sky falls down around the disenfranchised, only by letting go inhibitions will they be able to exceed the social parameters they've been forced into.
So baby don’t worry, you are my only,
You won’t be lonely, even if the sky is falling down,
You’ll be my only, no need to worry,
In recalling the struggle of the underclass, Sean asserts a subtle, yet meaningful appreciation for the formation and galvanizing effort of urban guerrilla squads where affected youth can gather under shared roofs of poverty and fear while relying on each other for support. Within these impromptu families, those who have been abandoned by society or their families can gain strength under a unified cause while not having to constantly worry.
Just let it be, come on and bring your body next to me,
I’ll take you away, hey, turn this place into our private getaway,
In evoking the pastoral tones of McCartney's Let it Be, Sean seeks to share his strength in a effort to not only respond to the insurgent threat that seeks to shatter his domain, but also turn revolution into assimilation. By turning the place into a private getaway, Sean admits the temptation embodied in a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous attitude of co-opting that which is depressed and omnipresent around him into a place of exclusion and privilege.
So leave it behind ‘cause we, have a night to get away,
So come on and fly with me, as we make our great escape,
(So why don’t we run away)
While recalling the sense of chemical escapism from earlier, Sean, in a clever turn, brings the fantasy back down to reality by acknowledging the folly of flying to make an escape. His acceptance of the crushing world coming down upon him will not allow him to fly. Flying to him has been the refuge of fantasies and the dreams of a perceived move to a state in which he would become "hyperhuman". Instead Sean's realization that flight is folly, leads him to the conclusion that sometimes the most prudent escape is just to run away. The dreams of flying will have to remain just that.
Even if the sky is falling down like she supposed to be,
She gets down low for me,
Down like her temperature, ‘cause to me she too raw degree,
She crawl all over things,
In taking us on a cycle of flight to walking to crawling, Sean encompasses the entire pattern of the evolution of life. His personification of the sky lends credence to the parallel he draws between the struggle of one's relationship with society as being analogous to one's struggle in a relationship. His evocation of the classic madonna/whore paradigm from the angelic woman in the clouds to one crawling at his feet reveals his confusion at the complexity of interpersonal dynamics in a world where class presupposes humanity.
I got that girl from overseas,
Now she my miss America,
I can’t help be her souljah pleaser,
I’m fighting for this girl,
In an effort to overcome the confusion over his role in relationships with the opposite sex, Sean redefines the archetype by narrowing the field. The allusion to the soldier away at war who, by the symbolism of uniform and mission, can become a de facto hero to the citizens he's trying to liberate becomes a dark irony when recalling the same types of downtrodden attitudes felt by the same people back home. An obvious moment of Sean shining the light on the hypocrisy of military recruitment in lower class communities where the mission becomes escapism as a uniform and gun becomes equated with power, only to evaporate upon the return home.
I’m in battlefield love,
Don’t it look like baby cupid sent his arrows from above,
Don’t you ever leave the side of me,
Indefinitely, now probably, and honestly get down like that, be proud of me,
Yeahhhhhh
Sean surrenders to this role of leaving home to become imbued with a sense of power by a rifle and a rank. Where, back home, the sky was falling down,while serving overseas there is now arrows of love showering down from the skies. We begin to realize very quickly that the woman in the song was really just a foil for his own sense of diffused empowerment. While he surely may have found a way out of the circumstances that he found himself in under the class struggles of a constricting economic system back home, the defined militaristic life has replaced that crutch with a new one: dependency. The duality of powerlessness rings true as the protagonist has substituted social dependency for personal dependency.
The supposed escape has failed. Sean moves the protagonist from one failed system to another. It's at this point we realize the eloquent refrain of the title throughout this song in spurring a reminiscence of the old wisdom which acknowledges that while you can climb out of a hole, you cannot dig out of one. In so doing, Sean completes this tragic tale with a faint recollection that seems more Beckett than Biggie.
thinglets: Thinking of Mitch... All Together
I don't know why, but every month or so I think of Mitch Hedberg. I can't say that Hedberg was the greatest comedian of all-time, or that his style was particularly unique, but his compact humour always sort of struck me as beyond common one-liners. Even though the material was about all things mundane, it didn't seem forced. Sure, sometimes the delivery was stilted, but I always got the feeling Mitch just saw the world differently. I guess Steven Wright is the only other stand up artist who I really believe sees the world close to how he tells it. While someone like George Carlin was a brilliant observational comic, I always got the feeling he arrived at his observations through a much more purposeful intelligence. Hedberg was different - probably high - but certainly different.
My perception may be completely wrong, but four and half years after Mitch Hedberg's death, for no other reason than I've been laughing my ass off to YouTube clips for the past half hour, here are 20 of my favourite Mitch Hedberg observations. You're not forgotten Mitch - unlike the Dufresnes.
- A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.
- An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
- I bought a seven-dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.
- I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.
- I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.
- I like Kit-Kat, unless I'm with four or more people.
- I like refried beans. That's why I wanna try fried beans, because maybe they're just as good and we're just wasting time. You don't have to fry them again after all.
- I recently took up ice sculpting. Last night I made an ice cube. This morning I made 12, I was prolific.
- I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.
- I used to be a hot-tar roofer. Yeah, I remember that... day.
- I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn't have one. So I got a cake.
- I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, "You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit." As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
- If I had nine of my fingers missing I wouldn't type any slower.
- If my kid couldn't draw I'd make sure that my kitchen magnets didn't work.
- My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up. I don't really know what's happening down there. Who is the real hero?
- Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.
- The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.
- This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty.
- Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day. Wearing a backpack and a turtleneck is like a weak midget trying to bring you down.
- You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.
Cargasm: Lexus LFA
This is a beautifully fierce ad. Look. Listen. Wipe drool.
Wow. Everyone needs someone to stand by them.
via youtube.com
Watch this. Fantastic!
