bernot

Flickr user Shawn McBee has a most unusual DIY desk. It's made up of 14 wooden wine crates and a matching door for the desk top.

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I made variants.

One of the first things you learn in Biology 101 is that the genetic code consists of four letters: A, T, C, and G. Each represents a chemical building block of DNA, the molecule that encodes the information necessary to build life as we know it. But what if we didn't have to settle for just four letters? Now, scientists have accomplished something once thought impossible: They've created cells with an expanded genetic alphabet that includes two more letters.

French soccer team Clermont Foot have hired Helena Costa as their manager. The club made an official announcement today:

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Photo by KNSTRCT

Photo by KNSTRCT

Chocolate maker Unelefante makes some pretty beautiful chocolate bars including one that looks like melted crayons and another inspired by the drippy paint splashes of Jackson Pollock. You can read much more about them over on KNSTRCT. (via KNSTRCT, Present and Correct)

The “Hate” Bus was the disturbing idea of George Lincoln Rockwell, whose name is proudly plastered all over the bus. He was the founder of the American Nazi Party, calling for “white power” and racial segregation. In the early 1960s, he acquired a Volkswagen van and decorated it with messages of hate, white supremacy and anti-semitic slogans. Rockwell personally drove it with a band of party members around the deep south, organising rallies and speaking at Ku Klux Klan meets. These photographs were taken on May 23rd, three days after the Freedom Riders were infamously assaulted at the Greyhound Station in Montgomery.






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Interviews with musicians can be really, really boring. It’s not a defect of the artists or the interviewers, it’s just that their content is so damned predictable because the occasion for an interview is the same most of the time—a new release and/or a tour. The newest album is...

Photos by Maggie West

The Cat Circus is a one-hour stage show where cats romp around across some stools and cat trees draped in velvet and glitter. If the set design resembles ordinary living room furniture, we're told halfway through the show, it's because it is actually the living room furniture of Samantha Martin, the woman who hosts the show, invented the show, trains the cats, and lives with the cats. She gets reliable laughs when she goes the “Can you believe I’m single?” route—though I hope it’s just part of the act because, damn, that’s a lot of cats to take care of by yourself.

I saw the performance on a Sunday afternoon, the second of three performances for the day, in an intimate but full theater in Santa Monica. The crowd was a mix of children, old people, and young couples in jean jackets—surprisingly light on douchebag hipster types chomping at the bit to blog about their experience there (just me, thankfully).

Nobody was there to be "ironic," at least not in the sense that they were making fun of the show. We were there because we all share a mutual interest in cats humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.

The lights dimmed and the music—"Everybody Wants to Be a Cat," from The Aristocats —swelled. When the lights came back on, our star cat left his carrier cage to reluctantly ride a skateboard down a ramp to center stage, and after some pleading, he clawed at a rope that raised a sign: "Welcome to the Show."

The cat-circus brand is a touring show that has been around for years. It seems to do pretty well. How could this be, I wondered? As the circus progressed, it seemed like a clear outline of every reason why kitschy cats have become such a popular enterprise. 

Cats are assholes.

One of the joys of seeing cats doing stupid things is that it openly mocks how cats want to be seen.

Cats strut arrogantly, displaying their superiority by rejecting most of your ideas on what they should or should not do, but they're also powerless puffballs. They're like old British men, and it’s satisfying to see them get pied in the face.  

The star cat is named Tuna, and she is a big-time diva. The only contribution Tuna makes to the show is pressing her bell, but her attitude is what makes her a star, and that’s why she’s on all of the merchandise. Throughout the show, I find myself alternating between loving Tuna and hating Tuna but never denying that Tuna is one magnetic cat.

Cats are cute.

Duh, a huge part of the fun of seeing a cat do anything is that they’re cute as shit. The eyes, the ears, the fur, the little paws—c’mon! They’re hot little fuckers, and they know it.

There were a few non-cats within the show. A chicken named Cluck Norris competed with Tuna to see who could ring their bell more. On this day, it was the chicken. Tuna gave up after the audience cheered more for the chicken, which I think was honestly only because they liked the name “Cluck Norris,” which was pretty lame. Being a master showcat, Tuna started ringing her bell again only after the contest had been called for Cluck, which was one of the funniest middle fingers I’ve seen from a cat in awhile. “Oh sorry, did I not play your stupid fucking game the way you wanted me to, you cocks?”

There was also a groundhog that came out at the beginning of the show. They’re fun animals too, but they’re no cats. You wouldn’t have this be a chicken and groundhog circus, just like you wouldn’t have a Destiny’s Child stocked with only Kelly and Michelle.

Photo by the author 

Cats have stupid faces.

Cats are such dorks. They’re arrogant, they’re soft and cuddly, and they have the dumbest faces. Cats tend to have one of two faces: They either look pissed off, or they look completely empty mentally. Our most famous cats, Grumpy Cat and Lil Bub, are perfect examples of this.

Tuna is a cat that walks the line of both: She’s equal measures unamused and confused. Her face looks funny blown up on the cardboard cutout, and anytime a trick doesn’t work out, Martin points to it as if to be like, “They’re cats—what can you expect from them?” and it’s good for laughs every time.

Creatures with dumb or empty faces tend to accessorize well, like George Bush in his cowboy hats, and it was pleasing when some of the aristo-cats wore hats. A cat in a hat is never unappreciated (almost never). 

Cats are too cool for school.

Throughout the show, cats wander freely between the stage and the audience. They make their way around getting pet by everyone. It’s cool because there’s ample opportunity to pet cats, but it’s also fun because it is a demonstration that cats plainly do not give a fuck about anything except what they want.

Cats aren’t afraid to cause bidding wars for their attention. Winning the cat over to me instead of the people sitting nearby wasn’t easy, and I’m not proud of some of my tactics (there was a little finger snapping and saying, "Here, kitty” thrown in there), but I was compelled to do it because cats also reward you with being very soft, and they purr.

Can we talk about how pleasing a purr is for a moment? A lady’s climax and a baby’s laughter are the only things that are even in the same conversation, and that’s being a bit considerate, frankly. It’s why we put up with a lot of cats' bullshit, because it is one of the greatest rewards available in everyday life.

The sound that the show ended with was kind of like the equivalent of purring for cat humiliation: It ended with a cat band. The Rock Cats are a five-piece—guitar, keyboard, drums, chimes, and Tuna on cowbell—and their sound is best described as “fuck you.” It was probably the most punk thing a band has done in 20 years. People will be saying years from now, “Man, the Rock Cats had fuckin’ balls, man. They didn’t give a fuck about the audience. Shame they all got too addicted to cat-nip to record another album.”

Hard to believe you just read a full think piece about why cats are fun to mock? You can catch the Cat Circus for yourself—its next stops are San Francisco and Denver. 

Follow Grant Pardee on Twitter.

The strange and sad case chronicled in Linklater’s film might get an even stranger epilogue.

	Courtney shared this story from A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss:
	[gestures] all of that up there is why I read this blog even though it has "weight loss" in the title. So good.

---

So, this was posted, and then my head exploded:

flickr: marcopako

With the help of Jackie Fowler, who has a “supplemental nutrition card” or Oregon Trail Card, Fox 12 visited an in-store Starbucks within a Safeway in the town of Salem. Fowler purchased a tall Frappuccino and a slice of pumpkin bread — and paid for both using her Oregon Trail card.”It’s crazy,” Fowler told Fox 12, showing off the receipt for $5.25.

“They’re overpriced as it is,” said Fowler of the specialty drink. “That’s money that somebody could be eating with — a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk.” Fowler, who made the purchase only for the purpose of Fox 12′s story, says she thinks it’s a huge misuse of the food assistance program.

A spokesman for Safeway told Fox 12 the store recently made the change as an added convenience to customers.

“We think that compliance with state laws is something we can easily do,” Dan Floyd told Fox 12.

According to federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) guidelines, people cannot buy foods that will be eaten in the store or hot foods. However, luxury items that are allowed include soft drinks, candy, cookies, ice cream, even bakery cakes and energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label.

First, let’s be clear, here, on a few things. There are currently around 46 million people on food stamps, at the last numbers I saw from this summer. There are somewhere around 39 million Black people in this country. Even if every single Black person in America – yes, even those lovely 1%ers – were on food stamps, there’d still be 6 million more people for which we’d need to account. I say this for a very specific reason.

With unemployment at 8.6 percent, that means that approximately 13.3 million people who are eligible for employment are, in fact, unemployed. If only 13 million people in this country are unemployed, yet 46 million people are on food stamps, I think it’s safe to say there may be a few income-generating, tax-paying employees of somebody’s company in that 46 mill. The recipients of SNAP benefits are not, in fact, all some form of unemployed leech. There’s a reason why I start off with this, as well.

Let’s talk logistics, briefly. When I lived in Miami Beach, I didn’t see Starbucks in the area where I lived. There was one single Starbucks north of Lincoln Mall (16th; numbers go up the further north you go), and that was on 45th. Beyond that? Nada. (I even checked Google Maps because I genuinely can’t remember any. If you care, you can see for yourself.)  Hell, you look at any area in central Miami-proper – Little Havana, Little Haiti, take your pick – know what you see? You certainly don’t see Starbucks. That’s not coincidence. That’s strategy.

Starbucks, much like Whole Foods, is strategic with where they’re putting their establishments. They’re not going to put a Starbucks in, say, inner inner city Brooklyn, where people can get coffee for $0.75 a pop and couldn’t care less whether or not you get whipped cream or a caramel frappiato (I wouldn’t know what it’s called; I’ve never ordered from one.) Even I could see how that’d be a bad business move. You don’t put businesses who charge luxury prices for every day items in places where people have a difficult time affording the necessities of life. Not because it’s “wrong” morally to charge what you want, but simply because when forced to choose, it’s highly likely that your business is the one that’d lose.

But wait… there’s more.

The people who want to conflate this kind of spending with “buying luxury items like properly raised meats and cheeses,” can stop. Any moment now. I defend the “food stamps at whole foods” crowd because properly raised foods should never be considered a “luxury” in a country proudly billing itself as the richest in the world. Any person who looks at their budget and genuinely finds that they, after having already seen that they qualify for assistance, have a difficult time affording food, should consider applying… and I’m serious. The fact that our fruits and vegetables are grown the way they are – farm labor resembling indentured servitude; meat having to be cleaned with ammonia just to make sure you don’t get too much e.coli in your purchase; pesticides; chemicals, fake flavorings and fillers – is what results in our adulterated food supply. It is not food. It is “food facsimiles” or even “edible foodlike substances,” and a person who wants to eat the way they are supposed to shouldn’t be chastised for such simply because you struggle with justifying spending the money on you and yours. We are in a bad way, as a country, if we can look people in the eye and tell them actual food is a “luxury” and if they don’t like it, they should “have a coke and a smile.” Ridiculous.

Here… is my point, in all its glory. Even though I defend, adamantly, the “food stamps at whole foods” users, this annoys the hell out of me. Not because a mocha choca latta yaya is as “non-essential” or “non-vital” as it gets, but because of the negativity it casts on both food stamp users and Black women. You know what I mean. Because of Reagan, we constantly see food stamp recipients as poor, black, female, unmarried, single parent, whatever. Maybe it’s because I’ve never ordered from a Starbucks, but… this isn’t an inner-inner-city phenom, if you ask me. I’m pretty grossed out by this altogether. However, I feel like this affects college students or “starving artist” types, both of which by and large do not fit the stereotype that President Reagan left us with when he referred to the “welfare queen.” When we think of “food stamps,” we think of “poor people.” When we think of poor people, we think of Black people. And, even though this country (and its wealth) was built on our backs, we’re considered lazy freeloaders by way of our gene pool. Journalistic efforts like this are merely used to further the stereotype. “‘Mack-eye-ah-toes‘ on the taxpayer dime?” Why, how dare you?

I also can’t say that a single person who has read this story, pictured a “starving artist” or a “college student” in line at Starbucks – the ones I suspect would most benefit from this knowledge – holding out their EBT card and asking for pumpkin bread. Instead, they probably saw some Black chick with fresh finger waves and a baby on her hip, holding a EBT card in the hand holding her baby and a brand new iPhone 4s in the other, yelling out “Can I get one of those frah-pah-key-know things?” and telling’ her child, “Shut up, Lil LaNayNay, I’m tryna get my drink on!”

And that, right there, is what annoys me about this the most of all.

Every time I see an “investigative” report about SNAP/food stamps, it’s painted as “look at what these [assumedly Black, always Black] freeloaders [because freeloaders have to be Black, amirite?] are doing? See why we need to change this?” All due respect to those of you who give enough of a damn to do this kind of reporting, but are you bothering to ask why a person can get a coffee for $3, and it’s still cheaper than a full head of fresh broccoli? Are you bothering to ask why our government can subsidize the creation of most of the garbage in this country that’s making us sick, but not subsidize the grocery stores to allow them to sell produce to SNAP recipients at discounted rates? Is that worthy of coverage, or would you rather exploit the weaknesses of the [working] poor, because no one is going to defend them? Would you simply rather highlight “omg, it’s possible to shop at Starbucks with taxpayer money” because it’s not interesting enough to prove that the more egregious fiscal faux-pas are happening far higher up the pay scale? Or maybe because you don’t want to remind the “middle class” just how “lower” they truly are?

Listen. I’m all up for some journalistic muckraking. I’m even up for “picking on” the government. I’m not, however, down with beating up on poor people because there’s a loophole that most of them don’t even have access to in order to take advantage of it. It reeks of “slow news day.” Do your job and cover something more interesting. Start with this. Go.

A Japanese photographer who goes by Photographer Hal was commissioned for a series of condom ads for a Japanese sex shop chain, Condomania — in which he arranges real couples into an empty futon bag and then SUCKS ALL OF THE AIR OUT, HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

The couples stay vacuum-packed in the bag for 10 seconds and are fed sips of oxygen from a can in between shots, which, to me sounds like exactly something from a Hostel or Saw torture porn-style movie, but maybe I just don’t understand “art.” Hal, who based the campaign on his “Flesh Love” series, says the following about his work:

“Human beings aren’t completed if they’re just by themselves. It’s when they come together, when they come really close, that they’re finally completed,” he says. “That’s why I pack them together.”

Look, if I’m not down with sharing a toothbrush with my husband, odds are I’m not going to risk suffering a heart-ruining panic attack to achieve “final completion.”

Photographer Hal delves more into his process in the following video clip. Panic sufferers be forewarned:

(Via Huffington Post)

Filed under: Web Culture Tagged: ART, condom ads, holy terror, TORTURE PORN

In honour of free comic day, have a free comic.

 

You can also still get your commissions here and check out my digital sales here (those are not free)

Here we go.

Welcome to your third annual rendition of “Mi Mamacita Communista.” You will be reading this sucker today, next year, the year after that, and forever until you die. It is Wonket Law.

And so today is May Day! We can have — or heave! — a cocktail for the working man. We can put on Our Marching Zapatos of Ocupado Justice! We can do lots and loads of things! But me, I’m missing mi mamacita communista. She didn’t die or anything, she just retired and moved back to Oklahoma, where they still (unaccountably) haven’t burned her for a witch.

These are things my mother taught me.

* The dog can drink out of the pool.

* It’s best if the babies are naked.

* Protesting is fun! Marching is better!

* It is our patriotic duty to cuss loud and creatively. Lenny Bruce wants us to stick it to the squares. For America. And the children.

* Good names for America’s pets and children include Rosie, Emma, Fidel and Diego, and any of her children who don’t comply will have their kids’ and pets’ names changed unilaterally. Rodents should be named after baked goods.

* The best name for getting arrested under while demonstrating is Emma Goldman.

* Good places to get arrested are the Nevada Test Site, Diablo Canyon, and the mean streets of Thousand Oaks, California, during Gulf War 1.

* Bad places to get arrested are on warrants for failure to appear.

* All the words to “Union Maid.”

* Contra Barbara Ehrenreich, it is perfectly acceptable to pay a lady to clean your house. You just have to pay her three times the going rate, and you may not use the sort of slave agency that can afford to advertise in the Yellow Pages. You must find a lady via reference or supermarket bulletin board.

* C-Span is a joy and a privilege.

* UNION!

*Do not stand around doing nothing if someone else is working. This applies equally to camp-outs and the lady cleaning your house.

* High levels of wealth may be forgiven if they are spent on cliffside or canyon Modernist homes.

* How to make freeway offramp banners out of bed sheets and shelf liners.

* How to choose a losing candidate.

* The names of a high proportion of local flowers and trees.

* The “Hail Mary.”

* The “Our Father.”

* Liberation Theology.

* All 15 stanzas of “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

* There’s no need to hold a grudge for more than a couple of hours, unless your friend is 100 percent right and you are 100 percent wrong, in which case you may stay angry for the next 15 years.

* Blame America first!

* Un pueblo unido … can never be divided!

* I should not wear whore shoes. (She finally gave up on that.)

* Good places to pick fights are at parties and in line at the grocery store.

* There is never an inappropriate time to talk politics.

* DO NOT fail to appear.

* Fun fact! Ronald Wilson Reagan = 666

* George H.W. Bush: Not much better!

* Also, April Glaspie totally told Saddam we didn’t care if he went into Kuwait.

* Seriously, that whole war was based on LIES.

* You know, as opposed to this last one.

* I would regret my Nader vote like she regretted hers for Eldridge Cleaver.

* Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

* No, really, I am not allowed to vote for Ralph Nader.

* WHAT DID SHE TELL ME!

* UNION!

* Read “Catch-22.” A good place to do this is on the sand at Hermosa Beach in 1966.

* Read “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit.”

* Read Mother Jones and the Utne Reader.

* Read “A Prayer For Owen Meany.”

* Read Evelyn Waugh and the sainted Miss Ivins.

* Erma Bombeck was funny too. No, really, she was!

* Read Eda LeShan, and take her childrearing tips to heart. Forgive yourself if you snap and smack your kid, but it’s a lot better to do it because you’re out of control than if it’s in-control and premeditated. Also, kiss your husband or wife before your kids when you get home from work, because the best thing you could possibly give your kids is parents who are happy and in love.

* Read e.e. cummings, Bukowski, and Thompson. The best way to do this is out loud at the dinner table. Also, the scene in “Tracks” where someone takes a shit on Louise Erdrich’s pillow.

* Reading trashy romance novels is giving me a skewed vision of life, and I will never marry and will always be sad.

* I should marry an ugly guy. He will love me.

* I should do my son’s homework for him but make him watch. Eventually he will pick it up by osmosis.

* It is better to have a kid who cusses than a little prig who goes “ooooh I’m telling” when someone else does.

* If you don’t take your kids to parties and restaurants and concerts and galleries and city council meetings, you are loosing an idiot on the world.

* That entails making them behave. Princes and princesses reflect badly. On YOU.

* A little violence never hurt anybody, so there’s no reason not to take a three-year-old to see Lethal Weapon 4.

* Weed will save you from alcoholism.

* There will come a day when I no longer look cute on a barstool.

* How to make a martini.

* How to clean a kitchen.

* How to do all her phone-treeing for the Democratic Club meeting.

* How to use chopsticks.

* Water is life.

* My plants are screaming in anguish.

* If I don’t water my plants, she is going to take them away, because I do not deserve to own plants.

* Also, my dog.

* And my son.

* Whom she will rename Fidel.

* Both of them.

* If people start with their overwrought bitching about STALIN! And 20 MILLION DEAD! don’t bother to respond about the Butcher of Santiago making Chile safe for capitalism, and our complicity in the Disappeared, or about any of our other complicities (even Iraq). Just point and laugh.

* The Contras really shouldn’t have raped those nuns.

* Roberto D’Aubuisson really shouldn’t have assassinated Archbishop Romero and Che.

* Ronald Reagan really shouldn’t have committed treason by sending George Bush pere to Paris before he was elected to promise the Iranians missiles should they be kind enough to keep our hostages just a little bit longer.

*No, Ollie North did not look “sexy” in his uniform, Jesus Christ.

* Viva Sandino!

* Viva Chavez!

* Viva Fidel!

* It’s okay, I can love Jimmy Carter if I want.

* Too bad about Ronald Reagan’s treason and all.

* How to pronounce “primer,” as in a schoolbook: short i.

* How to pronounce “mauve”: long o.

* There are UFOs in Topanga.

* Just because you are driving a crappy old Geo Metro does not mean you are friendless, as the crabby cop who kicks your 57-year-old schoolteacher ass will discover when the former head of Amnesty International and the legal director of the ACLU takes your case.

* The Southern California ACLU got its start in San Pedro, after Upton Sinclair got arrested for reading the First Amendment out loud on Liberty Hill.

* UNION!

* Serious people don’t care if a boycott’s “over” or “doesn’t exist.”

* Brown rice, not white.

* All the words to the 1930s lullabye “Lilac trees,” including the spoken coda: “And then the little pickanniny [!] boy got sick and died, and all the little white children were sorry they didn’t play with him.”

* Just try not crying yourself to sleep every night after that!

* If you love Martin Luther King in 1961 Oklahoma, boys in your high school will threaten to “make you dead.”

* Down with Whitey.

* And the Man.

* And most women too!

* If we’re going to be so un-American as to actually love the Constitution, that means the Second Amendment too.

* But not the Eighteenth!

* Because it was repealed!

* When your kid has to write an essay on What the Flag Means to Him, and you are writing it for him just like she told you to, be sure to include The Right To Burn It.

* Why are you leaving out the best part?

* She knew you were going to leave out the best part.

* Idiot.

* Love your mother.

NORTHAMPTON, MA—With her remarkable ability to determine exactly how others should be allocating their limited resources for food, local woman Carol Gaither is considered to be one of the foremost authorities on what poor people should and should no...

(via)

According to the “Culture Track” study of “attitudes and behaviors among U.S. cultural audiences” you are:

OVERSTIMULATED             PROMISCUOUS 
HYPER-CONNECTED                    CYNICAL 
OVERCOMMITTED                       SELF-FOCUSED

BUT CURIOUS 

The New York-based firm LaPlaca Cohen released this incredibly amusing document (PDF here), boasting data collected from 4,026 people in 50 states (with a +/-1.6% margin of error, wow!) including “Millennials,” “Gen X,” “Boombers” and “Pre War” age groups. Founder and CEO of LaPlaca Cohen, Arthur Cohen says:

These findings reveal audiences that are restless, curious and ‘culturally promiscuous’—eager for new experiences they can share in person with friends and family.

Sluts! Not that there is anything wrong with that.

According to participant polls and social media lurking, between 2011 and 2014, museum attendance went up! Opera attendance went down. Classical music attendance went up! Opera attendance went down. Of course, you only had to make it out just once a year to count, but LOOK AT THIS DATA:

(Image: LaPlaca Cohen)
 

A large part of the presentation earlier this week emphasized “selfies” and other publicly available social media, because obviously if you didn’t “selfie,” it didn’t happen, and there was no art.

ArtInfo points out that various hype-profiled art happenings like MoMA’s Rain Room and the Kusama Infinity Room at David Zwirner were noted. And agreeably so, as they produced a spark in said publicly available social media activity, which made an impact on the way that research and advertising firms perceive our attitudes and behaviors about culture. (Images: ArtSelfie dis magazine)

The post You’re All Art Sluts, Study Says appeared first on ANIMAL.

So what’s the deal with racism, huh? It’s a terrible hobby.

So, announcement time! SFAM has hooked up with Hiveworks to handle ad sales and marketing. There’ll be a few small changes to the site in the upcoming days, but it shouldn’t be anything too disturbing. I’m excited for the partnership and hopefully it will help SFAM reach a new audience and optimize our ad strategy. Here’s to bold experiments!