OK, you can stop now: new 'stupid things' thread

[coldforge]

I partied with that dude. He came to my prom.

[dieblucasdie]

hahaha oh man

Are we sure this isn't a JT Leroy-type situation? It's just all so purposefully and cruelly ignorant.

I thought that for a second, especially when I read this one:

http://www.xojane.com/beauty/i-loathe-my-scary-dad-i-love-black-eyes-my-3-favorite-liners-all-time

But she is apparently a real person, though the details of her personal story do seem to shift around a bit.  Probably she's exaggerating a bunch of things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqppB81pXEs

No, I went to a nice prep school in Massachusetts, where I wore all the eyeliner I wanted until I got kicked out for drugs senior year and moved to New York, where I wore even MORE eyeliner, and started interning in magazines, and became an editor, and had a nervous breakdown, and went to bed for a year, and returned to the world, still wearing eyeliner, to half-function as the beauty director of this very website that you’re reading today. See? Happy ending! I mean it, too.

So my point is …. EYELINER: I fucking live for it!

[elpollodiablo]

I mean holy SHIT how can this person be a real person

When it comes to “sociopolitical” issues, I tend to focus on the important things: when Obama was running against John McCain, for example, I became enchanted with and then progressively freakishly obsessed with that filthy rich, fallen rodeo queen, pillpopping, brittle-boned, heavily eye-lined-always, bleached-blond flower CINDY MCCAIN, who is now allegedly having some sort of steamy affair, God bless her:

Since Cindy wasn’t on the ballot that year, I didn’t bother to vote for anyone for president. Big deal! I’ve lived in New York since 2000 and every year the damn presidential election for New York State is the same. Nor do I vote for anything local: not for senators or house of representative people (what are they called?). And certainly not in elections for governors or mayors or state senators or city council.

Who has the fucking time! Instead, I like the sleep in on election days and tell my bosses that the line was really long at “P.S. [public school] ___insert made-up-number here ____.” Always works.

Now lest you think I am entirely without political conviction, know also that I was raised by a humorless, militantly right wing, ultra-conservative, LITERALLY CARD-CARRYING MEMBER of the GOP party, who was abusive, evil, pathologically narcissistic and controlling. I loathe my dad. He sucks!

And guess who my father hates? Gay people. Which is why, though I care very little about the economy or global warming or whatever, I am adamantly pro-gay rights! And outspoken about it always. I mean, I may not vote or whatever, but I always scream at someone who says “faggot.”

Furthermore:

(Plus I give $20 a month to some GLBT rights organization that stopped me on the street once when I was doing a walk of shame home from this white rapper’s apartment. But only because I was drunk.)

[davy]

This all reminds me of:



(I took this photo, by the way, at the American Library Association convention back in June.)

[Thermofusion]

I don't know what the 70s-style typeface on the We Did Porn cover is called, but I am getting mad tired of it.

[Thermofusion]

NPR has abruptly decided to stop distributing World of Opera because Lisa Simeone (host) is a member of the Occupy movement. NPR says that participating in political activism violates its ethics policy. Nevermind that the program isn't produced by NPR, nor is Lisa Simeone even an employee of NPR.

Over the past year it's become clear that NPR is run by fucking morons.

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah,that really confused me. I mean, Smiley and West still exists, right?

[elpollodiablo]

A few months ago, for reasons I don’t quite understand, I thought it would be a good idea to become Facebook friends with some people I knew in high school. Nostalgic, bored, procrastinating, emotionally unguarded after wrestling the kids into bed, Facebook’s algorithmic magic produced these old classmates’ names and before I knew it, I’d reached out to them with a click.

Why? I wondered almost immediately. These were people to whom I hadn’t spoken in more than 15 years, people I hadn’t much liked at the time, people with whom I’d had little in common besides geographic proximity and attendance at the same underperforming high school in central Virginia. I regretted it instantly, but tried not to worry. After all, I’m Facebook friends with plenty of people I don’t know well or like much, second cousins in south Florida, random playgroup moms, people I’ve met on planes or at Starbucks. What did it really matter — having a few more virtual strangers in my life. That was what I thought. Then, a day or two later, I read one of their posts.

President Obama had just given a televised speech on the economy, and this particular gentleman, someone I’d never known well but with whom I’d shared a neighborhood and a classroom for most of kindergarten through 12th grade, a fellow I remember as being pleasant, a bit on the quiet side, a member of the marching band, certainly not a bully or a jerk, had written, “Just turned off the t.v. More lies from B. Hussein Obama.” Within a few minutes, 10 people had “liked” this comment. Within a few more minutes, others had begun to add comments of their own, nearly all of which made reference to the president’s skin color, “questionable” national origin, or socialist death-panel agenda. I nearly fell out of my chair. My heart was racing. I squinted at the screen. I read the comments again and again. This was the real deal, not on Fox News but right here on MY computer, on MY Facebook page. I’d invited it in, that horrible place I’d left the day I graduated from high school. I looked down at my keyboard and saw that my hands were shaking. I decided to add a comment of my own: “Don’t like! Boy, am I glad I don’t live in Richmond anymore. You are un-friended!”

Trying to distract myself, I browsed the status of my other Facebook friends, listened to a little NPR, and yet I kept returning to that moment of profound disorientation, that feeling of having slipped into some alternate political universe.

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/22/is_my_facebook_page_a_liberal_echo_chamber/

I enjoy the notion of this person having an existential freakout and having to calm themselves down with some NPR

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

"this new digital life that we all live is so waaaaackyyyy"

[elpollodiablo]

A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, incidentally!

[FreddyKnuckles]

God I hate you guys.

[Little Sixes Little Nines]

A graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, incidentally!

i'm doing that, next summer!

after which i will only answer to "Adam, Iowa Writers Workshop Graduate"

[Thermofusion]

Yeah,that really confused me. I mean, Smiley and West still exists, right?

They're distributed by PRI, who along with APM are responsible for about 90% of the worthwhile public radio programming on your local station (outside of TotN and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, I feel like NPR pretty much sucks these days)

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

A prominent New York blogger who goes by the name David (he wanted only his first name used for this article), decided to make a zine after tiring of the high rate of turnover in online content.

“It’s satisfying to produce something that people can hold and treasure and value partially for its physicality instead of something that gradually disappears,” he said, referring to the way that Web articles and blog posts are often updated with fresh ones after a few hours. In his blog, for example, he critiques album reviews published by the indie music site Pitchfork. He is writing about writing that appears only on the Web — but his print publication, The World’s First Perfect Zine, will be something he can actually touch when it comes out next month.

[jm]

A prominent New York blogger who goes by the name David (he wanted only his first name used for this article), decided to make a zine after tiring of the high rate of turnover in online content.

“It’s satisfying to produce something that three people, including me, can hold and treasure and value partially for its physicality instead of something that gradually disappears,” he said,

befixt.

[elpollodiablo]

The other day I popped into an artsy boutique to pick up a birthday treat for a friend. Flipping through handmade wooden magnets designed by a hip collage artist, I found my finger resting on one featuring a pen and ink drawing of a bird. Nervous, I glanced left and right before dropping the item back into its display.

The image was lovely, but was it cliché? In a post-”Portlandia” world, I couldn’t show up to a party of design-savvy women with a gift upon which someone had put a bird. What would that say about my taste? That it was stuck in last January? The pang in my gut was so specific and acute that I felt only Germans could accurately name it. Did I just experience der Vogelschäme?

“Put a bird on it, right?” I remarked to the shop clerk with a knowing chuckle. She acted like she didn’t hear me. She likely stopped listening to those jokes months ago, after “Portlandia,” the IFC sketch comedy show starring Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, reduced the twee design meme, its creators and consumers to a snarky catchphrase she probably hears more often in this shop than she would care to admit.

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/can_a_portlandia_comedy_sketch_destroy_a_fashion_trend/

I am smack dab in the middle of the target demographic for this show, and I have no idea what this woman is talking about. I think if like, four people in the Slate offices have heard of a thing they feel it's time to write a trend piece on it.

[elpollodiablo]

Oh man I read about this on Vulture *and* the AV Club! IT IS A NATIONAL SENSATION

[Thermofusion]

Did I just experience der Vogelschäme?

*hangs self*

[dieblucasdie]

I've actually heard people make the "put a bird on it" reference a bunch of times, in exactly that sort of setting.  I haven't watched that show, either, but it's definitely a thing Grandpa

[elpollodiablo]

Did I just experience der Vogelschäme?

*hangs self*

That was probably the entire impetus for writing the piece

[Ashley]

I saw a video of the put a bird on it thing on  youtube aaaaaaaaaaages ago and i admit it made me a little sad.

edit: but i also used to have a roommate who only talked about penny wheel bicycles and her boyfriend who was a film student and only wore neutral milk hotel shirts and only talked about how much she hated hipsters with her boyfriend.  she really liked owls.  now i'm just not sure about owls.

[dieblucasdie]

See, pollo, living proof.  ASHLEY EXISTS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

[elpollodiablo]

Shopping habits of people THE WORLD OVER are being change by this sketch! This shit is international!

[jess]

I think I first saw the put a bird on it meme here: http://thephoenix.com/boston/life/121181-look-at-this-fucking-hipster-wedding/
(see p 2)

I still need to watch Portlandia. The bird thing is pretty funny to me, because omg yes it's true.

[Greg Nog]

“Put a bird on it, right?” I remarked to the shop clerk with a knowing chuckle. She acted like she didn’t hear me.

I like how, for salon.com writers, there is now an exact equivalent to a bunch of D&D players having laughing fits over "We Are The Knights Who Say Ni"