Dec
22
I’ve put some hours in and made an illustrated, tumblr version of Guy Debord’s 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. You can find the first post here. When you finish reading it, simply hit NEWER and it’ll bring you to the next paragraph. Some of you are probably familiar with the book. Others of …
Jan
20
“The redemption of objects is impossible except by virtue of becoming an object. As the work of art must destroy and alienate itself to become an absolute commodity, so the dandy-artist must become a living corpse, constantly tending toward another, a creature essentially nonhuman and antihuman.” –Giorgio Agamben
Jul
29
“Last, but not least, the man who probably better than anyone else understands the psychology of the Attentäter is M. Hamon, the author of the brilliant work Une Psychologie du Militaire Professionnel, who has arrived at these suggestive conclusions: “The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to establish an ideal type of …
May
22
“Media stars are spectacular representations of human beings, distilling the essence of the spectacle’s banality into images of possible roles. Stardom is a diversification in the semblance of life – the object of an identification with mere appearance which is intended to compensate for the crumbling of directly experienced diversification of productive activity. Celebrities figure …
Apr
21
Honour is obsolete. The culprit, as usual, is the modern era and its devices. A better word than obsolete might be endangered. Due to habitat loss. It has always been a difficult value to uphold. It’s one of duty as opposed to pleasure. The honourable choice is very rarely the easy one. When we think …
Apr
16
There are few things in life as rare and beautiful as a no hitter. In the whole history of Blue Jays baseball, only one has been thrown by a Blue Jay. It’s not something you see everyday. As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen one. It’s a magical moment. The only fellow who ever …
Mar
09
In the 1980s, Domino’s Pizza created and ran its famous Noid campaign. The Noid was a creature who carried a gun that made your pizza cold. It was remarkably successful series of ads. Just like “I’ve fallen and can’t get up” or “Where’s the beef?”, its catchphrase, “Avoid the Noid”, became part of the American …
Sep
30
YouTube – Monty python – universe song.
Sep
20
pic nicked from here It’s a habit of youth and one that too few people ever grow out of: Building oneself a box and getting stuck inside it. A human will assign themselves a category and then play that role out. I’m a punk, they’ll decide. I like this and hate that. I’m a …
Sep
09
pic nicked from here Give me a shovel and a piece of earth and I’ll happily dig a rut until you bury me in it. Adventure is for bored people just as fucking is for horny ones. I find the careful maintenance of my routines to be adventure enough. Yet change does occur because change …
Jun
03
People call me names in spurts. Last week, I was dubbed a contrarian about three different times by three different people. It struck me as peculiar. I knew the term but only ever heard it applied to stock brokers – those who look at what everyone is doing and invest in the opposite. But it …
Aug
12
I just wanted to point out an example of how lies are built into any medium. There is always a process of editing and editing is a lie. Here is my photo of Amie Scott at The Phelp’s protest: And here is one that appeared on Flickr: So what’s true? They both are. But they …
Jan
21
Having a suit built specifically for me has been a dream for a long time. The experience has, to date, exceeded expectations and taught me things I did not expect to learn. I’ve decided to spend a few posts sorting through some of these reflections. I could be called shallow and I have been called …
Jan
20
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKYALsp-sIg&rel=1] It looks like the porn industry is switching over to blu-ray. This, of course, means that HD is dead. You can just forget all about it. If porn goes blu-ray, HD is beta. Porn has always been a driving force behind technology. It’s the reason VHS and the Internet succeeded. Combined with the army …
Jan
05
This year “Edge” asked some of the sharpest tools in the box what they’ve changed their mind about. It’s interesting reading. Although I recommend that you peruse the essays for yourself, here’s a few of my favorites. Sam Harris: Mother Nature is Not Our Friend. Rupert Sheldrake: The Skepticism of Believers. Paul Davies: I Used …
Dec
30
The only thing I hate more than celebrities is the concept of celebrity. As far as I can tell, the whole thing is designed to sell soda pop and running shoes. It revolts me. This may be an odd thing for a waiter with a fanclub to say. If I understood myself better, I would …
Dec
21
I know a lot of people who hate each other. Artists who hate bankers who hate musicians who hate fashion people who hate scientists who hate writers who hate hippies who hate scientists until all the Whos in Whoville are just a hateful mess who just want to defend their Whos from the other Whos …
Nov
28
It’s certainly too early to start with the new year’s resolutions — though not too early to start breaking them — but it’s about the right time to start thinking in retrospective. That is, if there is a good season for that, which there isn’t. And, if there was, winter would not even in the …
Nov
25
Pedants hate the term “very unique” and spend quite a bit of time protesting it. I can’t blame them. They are right. Words mean what they mean. Unique means one of a kind. Although my sympathies lie with the pedants, I’m now willing to bend on this term. It is perfectly acceptable to ascribe degrees …
Nov
22
I have discovered a weakness in my stoicism that represents, not a flaw with the system, but one with myself. In the raw world, I attempt to keep my emotions private. People can reasonably assume that I do not have them. Even if they avoid leaping to that conclusion, they remain ignorant of where my …
Nov
18
Not very much. It’s a bit late to review “What the Bleep do We Know!?” Plus, I never saw the whole thing. I watched it for about twenty minutes. Then I vomited. While cleaning that up, I realized that I had not only lost my dinner but also a great deal of respect for the …
Nov
14
I know that I have readers and I do my best to cater but I still view this blog as a private enterprise and notebook. Please excuse me while I indulge myself — aka bore you. There’s just a couple of things I want to jot down because I think they’re basically right — yet …
Oct
13
I know there’s not exactly an overwhelming demand to learn more about stoicism but, after my last post about The Church of Spock, I thought there might be a need. Besides, “The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius” is one of my favourite books. So here’s a lecture in five parts about it. And a quick summary …
Sep
21
As promised, here are the links to Daryl Bank’s pictures from Turkey. There’s one group here and another here. The one on the right is my favourite but that might be because I’m seeing William Gibson speak tonight. And I’m actually excited. That fellow wrote the best first line of the twentith century: “The sky …
Although Ryan Oakley began his career as a simple rake (drunk) he has since become Toronto’s most renowned flaneur (no car) and notorious dandy (overdresses). A misanthropic composer of psycho-geographical fictions (sci-fi), he is also a server of food, a tender of bar and a washer of dishes. While performing all these functions with efficiency and elegance (disdain and malice), he somehow finds the time to publicly criticize friends, strangers and cultural crap.
