2010

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Classic Film: Rollerball (1975)

December 21, 2010 in Film, Videos | Permalink

A satire about an unspeakable future in which the world is ruled by a global corporatocracy, athletics have devolved into blood sport and people pop happy pills, Norman Jewison’s thoughtful 1975 drama is a paranoid vision that today seems a little too familiar for comfort.

In the not-too-distant future, a few corporate executives make decisions for everyone in the world. Borders and war and disease and poverty have been eradicated, so why is everyone downing pills and looking for brutal diversions to stave off the pain? One such despicable entertainment is rollerball, a human demolition derby with a body count that’s a welter of roller derby, football, martial arts and motocross. Jonathan E. (James Caan) is the swaggering star player of rollerball. Trouble is, the game isn’t supposed to have any stars. It’s been contrived to demonstrate to the masses that individual spirit equals futility, and that it’s best to stand at attention when the corporate anthem plays. One high-ranking executive (John Houseman, in all his scary gravitas) tells Jonathan that he needs to retire gracefully, but Jonathan, having felt slighted by the corporate overlords in the past, says no. That leads to the game’s violence being ratcheted up even further, as the suits try to eliminate the rebellious rollerballer.

When Jonathan’s teammate and best buddy, Moonpie (John Beck), is left comatose after a brutal battering by the Tokyo team, a doctor matter-of-factly describes his condition: “There is no consciousness, just a deep coma…no dreams…nothing.” Jonathan refuses to sign papers authorizing the doctors to pull the plug on Moonpie, deciding that he will hold out hope that some dreams are still possible. Then he returns to the arena for further battle.•

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Miscellaneous Media: Postcard To Billy Brandwein In Chevy Chase, Maryland (1959)

December 20, 2010 in Misc., Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Seymour Brandwein was apparently a Maryland economist who traveled around the country in the '50s and '60's and sent postcards with state maps home to his son, Billy. This card is from Indiana.

Feb. 26, 1959

Hi–

I’m speaking at Notre Dame tomorrow here in South Bend. They have snow along the streets here which fell back in mid-January, so much that it still hasn’t melted! By the way I saw the Cuban bearded revolutionaries who are on a good-will tour to N.Y. and Washington, at National Airport,

Daddy

I buy these postcards at a Brooklyn flea market.

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Featured Video: Lucan TV Program (1977-78)

December 20, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

From what I gather, Lucan was a jaw-dropping ABC drama about a young man, raised by wolves in the Minnesota wild until he was 10, trying to assimilate into society. Will he revert to his lupine ways? Let’s hope. All kinds of special.

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 20, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Yep, their the real thing, actual bags to throw up in."

Box of about 700 barf bags – $35 (UWS, Manhattan)

Selling a box of about 700 white, plain barf bags. Yep, their the real thing, actual bags to throw up in. Their left over from a publicity gig I did for a client.

It’s just one box and can be carried by hand, unless you’re wicked weak. Worth about $100, so selling at $35 for a quick sale.

You can print labels and stick them on the bags to use for a publicity stunt in Times Square, sell them at the new James Franco movie, use them for your kids’ lunches (especially if your sanwhiches normally make them ill) or just keep them in your living room and use them whenever the govt. does something stupid that makes you wanna throw up – now you can. Should get you through 2012 elections.

Seriously, though, let me know if you’re interested. Thanks and all the best for the holidays!

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“Midgets, Giants, Fat Ladies And Ape-Men Were Both Stigmatized And Honored As Freaks”

December 20, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Salon sisters. The one on the left is mine.

In its pre-WWII heyday, Coney Island wasn’t just an amusement park but also a grand social experiment that was an assault on propriety and a raffish and often outrageous laboratory for urbanism and science (babies were incubated and elephants electrocuted). An excerpt from John E. Kasson’s 1978 book, Amusing the Million:

“Beginning with the various sideshows and exhibits along Coney Island’s main promenade, the Bowery, the tourists entered into this carnival world. As in traditional carnivals and fairs, the grotesque was prominently represented symbolizing the exaggerated and excessive character of Coney Island as a whole. Midgets, giants, fat ladies and ape-men were both stigmatized and honored as freaks. They fascinated spectators in the way they displayed themselves openly as exceptions of the rules of the conventional world. Their grotesque presence heightened the visitors’ sense that they had penetrated a marvelous realm of transformation, subject to laws all its own. The popular, distorting mirrors furnished the illusion that the spectators themselves had become freaks. Thus Coney Island seemed charged with a magical power to transmute customary appearances into fluid new possibilities.”

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“It Doesn’t Matter If The Place Is Manhattan Or Manhattan, Kan.: The Urban Patterns Remain The Same”

December 20, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

"New York, just like I pictured it, skyscrapers and everything." (Image by Dennis Afraz.)

Neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer had an excellent article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, about Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt, theoretical physicists who are applying their science training to urban problems. (By the way, if you’ve never read Lehrer’s book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, I highly recommend it). An excerpt:

“Along with Luis Bettencourt, another theoretical physicist who had abandoned conventional physics, and a team of disparate researchers, West began scouring libraries and government Web sites for relevant statistics. The scientists downloaded huge files from the Census Bureau, learned about the intricacies of German infrastructure and bought a thick and expensive almanac featuring the provincial cities of China. (Unfortunately, the book was in Mandarin.) They looked at a dizzying array of variables, from the total amount of electrical wire in Frankfurt to the number of college graduates in Boise. They amassed stats on gas stations and personal income, flu outbreaks and homicides, coffee shops and the walking speed of pedestrians.

"These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people ‘agglomerate,’ cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars." (Image by Rebecca Kennison.)

After two years of analysis, West and Bettencourt discovered that all of these urban variables could be described by a few exquisitely simple equations. For example, if they know the population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate, with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the dimensions of its sewer system. These are the laws, they say, that automatically emerge whenever people ‘agglomerate,’ cramming themselves into apartment buildings and subway cars. It doesn’t matter if the place is Manhattan or Manhattan, Kan.: the urban patterns remain the same. West isn’t shy about describing the magnitude of this accomplishment. ‘What we found are the constants that describe every city,’ he says. ‘I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.’ After a pause, as if reflecting on his hyperbole, West adds: ‘Look, we all know that every city is unique. That’s all we talk about when we talk about cities, those things that make New York different from L.A., or Tokyo different from Albuquerque. But focusing on those differences misses the point. Sure, there are differences, but different from what? We’ve found the what.'”

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American Auto Deaths Decrease Dramatically

December 20, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Sign in West University Place, Texas. (Image by WhisperToMe.)

Texting while driving is all the rage in scary headlines, but auto deaths in America have been reduced dramatically over the last five years, just as the handheld computing craze has exploded. What gives? Joseph B. White tries to uncover the answer in an article in the Wall Street Journal. It may be that technology (and other factors) are responsible for the decrease. An excerpt:

“So what’s helping to reduce deaths? Technology deserves some credit, according to the data. Deaths in side-impact crashes declined between 2005 and 2008 at a faster rate than the decline for deaths overall. That suggests that side airbags are helping more people survive crashes, the researchers found.

The Michigan study found a nearly 20% decline in deaths among young drivers, age 16 to 25. Among the possible reasons: the increasing number of states that use graduated licensing programs that delay granting full driving privileges until teens have more experience, and rising teen joblessness.

The exact role of the economy in declining highway deaths is a big unknown. Messrs. Sivak and Schoettle highlight pieces of data that suggest that as the economy slowed down, so did motorists.”

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Old Print Article: “Seth Kinman, The Pacific Coast Nimrod Who Gives Chairs To Presidents,” New York Times (1885)

December 19, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

““A unique character is Seth Kinman, the grizzly bear hunter and presidential chair presenter.”

Seth Kinman was a self-made man and a self-promoter. A bushy-faced nineteenth-century California hunter who never met a bear or buck he cared for, Kinman used the skins and carcasses from his quarry to fashion unusual chairs that he presented to several American Presidents.

Kinman began bestowing these odd gifts to Presidents during the Buchanan Administration, which is the subject of the first excerpt, taken from an 1857 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The second excerpt, a reprinted article in an 1885 New York Times that originally ran in the San Francisco Call, further examines Kinman’s life and by then what had become a longstanding chair-giving tradition that had allowed him to become friend to several Presidents.

••••••••••

“A Curious Chair for President Buchanan,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (May 18, 1857): “An old Western hunter, Seth Kinman, sent a chair from Humboldt, California, which arrived in New York by the George Law for President Buchanan. The chair is made entirely of the antlers of the deer, fashioned into a most comfortable arm-chair, with a high sloping back and convenient arms. A pair of antlers, with six points each, form the front legs and arms; and another pair, having five points each, form the hind legs and back. Small antlers, having two points each, join the whole together in a substantial manner. The seat is made from the dressed skins of the bucks whose antlers form the chair. They have, all told, just thirty-one points, corresponding with the number of states now in the Union. The whole chair is simply varnished, showing the original color of the antlers. The old hunter has engraved his address on the left arm point: Seth Kinman, Humboldt County, California.”

••••••••••

The nimrod sits his ass down on President Andrew Johnson’s chair.

“Seth Kinman, The Pacific Coast Nimrod Who Gives Chairs to Presidents,” New York Times, reprinted from the San Francisco Call (December 9, 1885): “A unique character is Seth Kinman, the grizzly bear hunter and presidential chair presenter, now stopping in this city. He is a tall man, 70 years old, straight as an arrow, dressed in buckskin from head to foot, with long silver hair, beard, and shaggy eyebrows, under which and his immense hat a pair of keen eyes peer sharply.

He is the Nimrod of this coast, the great elk shooter and grizzly bear hunter of California, who has presented elk horns and grizzly bear claws from animals that have fallen before his unerring rifle to four Presidents of the United States–Buchanan, Lincoln , Johnson, and Hayes–and has ‘the finest of all’ to present to President Cleveland next spring. He claims to have shot in all more than 800 grizzlies, as many as 50 elk in one month, and to have supplied the Government troops and sawmill hands in Humboldt with 240 elk in 11 months on contract at 25 cents per pound.

Resting atop the chair is Kinman’s fiddle, the neck of which is made with a skull bone from his favorite mule.

He was born in Union County, Penn., in 1815, went to Illinois in 1830, and crossed the plains to California in 1849. He tried mining on Trinity River, but followed hunting mainly for a living. In the Winter of 1856-57 he made his first elkhorn chair, and conceived the idea of presenting it to President Buchanan. Peter Donahue favored it. He went on in the Golden Age with letters to Col. Rynders in New-York, and in Washington he met Senator Gwin, Gen. Denver, and others. Dr. Wozencroft made the presentation speech, and Buchanan was highly pleased. He wrote Rynders to get Kinman the best gun he could find in New-York, which he did, together with two fine pistols. He also got an appointment to corral the Indians on the Government reservation, and when they strayed away he brought them back.

In November, 1804, he presented President Lincoln with an elkhorn chair, which greatly pleased him; Clinton Lloyd, Clerk of the House, made the presentation speech. The chair to Hayes was presented when he was Governor of Ohio, but nominee for President. The chair presented to President Johnson was made of the bones and hide of a grizzly.”

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Newsies Sell Papers On Brooklyn Bridge (1902)

December 19, 2010 in Photography, Urban Studies | Permalink

Newsies on the Brooklyn Bridge clutch copies of the "Morning Telegraph."

These ragamuffins selling newspapers look cute in their caps and coats, sure, but they were largely homeless children who eked out a meager existence by screaming “Extra, Extra!” and hoping to acquire some change. The newsboys were independent contractors who purchased papers from the publishers, and then worked long hours to make a small profit. Their treatment, especially by Hearst and Pulitzer, was Dickensian, and they went on strike many times. But it was their strike in 1899 that finally showed that child labor had clout and got them a small measure of justice. The great photo above, taken by Lewis Hine, shows the boys poised to peddle their papers. Another Hine photo below, which features a female newsie, was taken outside a Bowery saloon in 1910.



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Featured Video: First Singing Computer (1961)

December 19, 2010 in Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

It was in 1961 that IBM programmed a computer to sing for the first time. The computer was a UNIVAC and the tune was the cute 1892 ditty, “Daisy Bell.” It was in 1968 that HAL, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey crooned the same song in a creepy, sickly voice. The full lyrics, if you’d like to sing along:

“Daisy Daisy Give me your answer do

I’m half crazy all for the love of you

It won’t be a stylish marriage

I can’t afford a carriage

But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two”

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 19, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Would have kept Luke warm while he spent a freezing night on Hoth." (Image by Alan Light.)

MENS XL LIMITED EDITION NORTH FACE – $150 (NORTH JERSEY)

  • Seam sealed
  • Detachable faux fur trim
  • Two patch-on chest pockets
  • Bicep pocket

About this product:

This down-insulated, waterproof jacket stays true to The North Face® tradition with innovative attributes, and encompasses a detachable faux fur trim on the hood for added protection and style. With multiple pockets, this durable jacket is ideal wear on cold weather outings; and would have kept Luke warm while he spent a freezing night on Hoth without having to sleep inside that putrid Tauntaun carcass.

Miscellaneous Media: Postcard To Mrs. Ethel Brandwein In Chevy Chase, Maryland (1959)

December 18, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

On front of card: "Restoration of Armored Dinosaur, U.S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution."

March 10, 1959

Hi Mommy:

We saw a big, big elephant here this morning. Daddy also took me to see birds and animals after he opened his locked car.

Billy

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This Week’s Afflictor Keyphrase Searches

December 18, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

Please buy my toenail collection.

Some search engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:

“Highlights” From Another Week Of Afflictor Crap

December 17, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

Afflictor: Forcing orangutans to ponder their dubious life decisions since 2009. (Image by Nonie.)

  • Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Stay Hungry (1976).
  • A.J. Liebling reveals Brooklyn’s illicit 1880s sporting world.
  • Pet monkey washes dishes for Queens woman in 1949.

Featured Video: Computer Sketchpad Demo (1964)

December 17, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Software designer Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad as part of his 1963 thesis at MIT. It is among the most influential programs ever written, opening the door for the development of the Graphical User Interface, which helped make computers amenable to the masses. This 20-minute program demonstrates how remarkably advanced the system was, transforming what had been an elaborate adding machine into an “intelligent” machine.

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“She Wasn’t Afraid Of Public Speaking, Death, Her Heart Beating Too Fast Or Being Judged Negatively In A Social Setting”

December 17, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

"A middle-aged woman known as SM blithely reaches for poisonous snakes..." (Image by JamieS93.)

A rare genetic disorder called Urbach-Wiethe disease obliterates the capacity for the amygdala portion of the brain to cause a person to feel fear. Someone with this congenital condition never becomes afraid, even when it’s the best thing for their well-being. (Thanks Reddit.) An excerpt about the condition from Laura Sanders’ Science News article:

“A middle-aged woman known as SM blithely reaches for poisonous snakes, giggles in haunted houses and once, upon escaping the clutches of a knife-wielding man, didn’t run but calmly walked away. A rare kind of brain damage precludes her from experiencing fear of any sort, finds a study published online December 16 inCurrent Biology.

SM has an unusual genetic disorder called Urbach-Wiethe disease. In late childhood, this disease destroyed both sides of her amygdala, which is composed of two structures the shape and size of almonds, one on each side of the brain. Because of this brain damage, the woman knows no fear, the researchers found.

Experiments have strongly implicated the amygdala in fear processing. Many of these were conducted on animals with amygdala damage. ‘But one thing we’ve never known for sure, because they’re animals, is whether they can consciously feel fear,’ says study coauthor Justin Feinstein of the University of Iowa in Iowa City. ‘So we said, Let’s take a human patient who has this same sort of damage, and for the first time, actually figure out how they’re feeling.’

Feinstein and his colleagues sifted through SM’s past, looking for instances when she should have been scared. SM said she never felt fear, even when threatened with a knife or a gun. The researchers gave SM an electronic diary that she carried for three months to record her emotional state. Fear didn’t make an appearance in the list of emotions. On a battery of questionnaires, SM wrote that she wasn’t afraid of public speaking, death, her heart beating too fast or being judged negatively in a social setting.”

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Old Print Article: Mr. Gould Takes A Bride (1898)

December 17, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Financier Jay Gould, the groom's dad, was widely reviled. Some historians believe he was unjustly tarnished.

Having a father who’s a despised robber baron probably isn’t a lot of fun, even if he leaves you a bucketful of cash. Howard Gould, son of the late and hated financier and railroad tycoon Jay Gould, learned this the hard way when he married in 1898. The wedding ceremony, a lavish affair, was roundly mocked for its excess. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a paper that had been appropriately tough on the old man, came to the aid of the newlyweds, even predicting a long and happy union for the pair. Alas, it was not to be. The second article that’s excerpted, from New York’s Covington Sun a decade later, details the marriage’s bitter end, which involved Gould allegedly being cuckolded by the prominent soldier and nostalgia salesman Buffalo Bill Cody.

••••••••••

“Mr. Gould’s Marriage,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (October 13, 1898): “Howard Gould, son of Jay Gould, a famous millionaire, has married a woman who was at one time an actor. That fact does not justify the hubbaboo of print that has been made over it. Mr. Gould is a free man, being of age and a little over, therefore he may do as he pleases, if he does not break the law. His wedding was quiet and devoid of spectacle, so there was no occasion for the yellow journals to go into verbal convulsions over the waste of a fortune upon the unworthy cooks, waiters, florists, dressmakers, tailors, hosiers, wine merchants, carriage renters, musicians, jewelers, lapidaries and other people who commonly earn something when society gets married.

One interest in the case, however consists in the rumored sacrifice in half of his fortune that Mr. Gould has made in wedding Miss Clemmons. His father left a will which specified that if one of his children married without consent of the others, or his executors, he would lose half his patrimony and the lost half should be distributed among the other relatives. It is guessed that the young man has about $6,000,000, and if he were to lose half of this he would still be able to go to the circus once in a while and even buy pink lemonade. At all events, he married for love, and his life for that reason ought to be happy. So many of our children of millionaires marry pitiful creatures from Europe, for the sake of a title, that it is rather an agreeable surprise to find one of them who knows his own mind well enough to follow it and who has sufficient courage of his convictions to defy the efforts of the dead to rule the living.”

••••••••••

"Mrs. Gould, prior to the marriage, asserted that her relations with Colonel Cody were exclusively of a business nature, whereas they were meretricious."

“Sordid Troubles of the Married Rich,” Covington Sun (April 16, 1908): “That portion of the public which has been waiting so patiently for the oft-delayed washing of the family linen of the Howard Goulds is about to have its reward. Before Justice Dowling, Mrs. Gould’s attorney, Clarence J. Shearn, made a motion to have the issues framed for trial by jury on the ground that they were such a nature that no judge would care to pass on them first.

Sounding a note of self-pity as he surveyed the miserably unhappy life that he had led since he had married Katherine Clemmons, Howard Gould told of the many humiliations to which he had been subjected.

There are allegations of the deepest import to the wife of the millionaire, however, in the answer. Gould charged that not only before but after he married Katherine Clemmons she was guilty of improper conduct with Colonel William F. Cody (‘Buffalo Bill’). It was charged also that she became infatuated with Dustin Farnum, the actor; that she frequently had him in her apartment at the Hotel St. Regis; that she followed him on a tour through the New England States and visited him in his hotel after the performances.

There are charges of Mrs. Gould’s fondness for intoxicants, beginning, as alleged, with two or three cocktails before breakfast, a pint of Hock at luncheon, brandy highballs and unlimited champagne at dinner, whereby on one occasion, it is alleged, she fell from her chair to the floor.

Mr. Gould alleges that his marriage was the result of fraud and misrepresentation on the part of his wife. He says that Mrs. Gould, prior to the marriage, asserted that her relations with Colonel Cody were exclusively of a business nature, whereas they were meretricious. He swears that during 1887, 1889 and 1892 his present wife lived with Cody in London, Paris, Chicago, Nebraska, Virginia and New York.”

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“How Shall The New Environment Be Programmed Now That We Have Become So Involved With Each Other?”

December 17, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Quentin Fiore, the graphic designer who created the book's amazing look, is now 90.

Facebook wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg being named Time magazine’s Person of the Year made me recall an ominous passage from early in The Medium Is The Massage: An Inventory of Effects, from 1967. Not that I think that things are quite this dire, but Marshall McLuhan was pretty prophetic here. An excerpt:

“How much do you make? Have you ever contemplated suicide? Are you now or have you ever been…? I have here before me…Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community’s need to know. The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions–the patterns of mechanistic technologies–are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval by the electrically computerized dossier bank–that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early ‘mistakes.’ We have already reached a point where remedial control, born out of knowledge of media and their total effects on all of us, must be exerted. How shall the new environment be programmed now that we have become so involved with each other, now that all of us have become the unwitting work force for social change? What’s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing?”

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Everyone In Colonial America Was Very Drunk

December 16, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Even though he was reputed to really like orgies, Benjamin Franklin was careful about his body when it came to food and drink, experimenting with vegetarianism and preaching temperance. Franklin’s disregard for alcohol made him an oddball in an age when most folks were continually soused. An excerpt from Joyce Chaplin’s The First Scientific American:

“Fat though he grew, the adult Franklin’s much-noted coolness and detachment may have been the result, at least in part, of his measured consumption of alcohol. His sobriety was striking in an age when people drank steadily–to consume calories, to keep warm, and to avoid tainted water. Tipsiness was so common that it went unnoticed, even in small children, pious clerics, and pregnant women. We might call them drunk; but drunkenness at the time meant inability to stand.”

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Featured Video: Demo Of Computer Mouse (1968)

December 16, 2010 in Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

As the mouse is replaced by the touch-pad in the contemporary world of computing, let’s look back to San Francisco in 1968 when the first mouse was given a demo by its inventor, Douglas Engelbart. “I don’t know why we call it a mouse,” he said. “It started that way, and we never did change it.” From Engelbart’s ibiblio entry:

“Douglas Engelbart has always been ahead of his time, having ideas that seemed far-fetched at the time but later were taken for granted. For instance, as far back as the 1960s he was touting the use of computers for online conferencing and collaboration. Engelbart’s most famous invention is the computer mouse, also developed in the 1960s, but not used commercially until the 1980s. Like Vannevar Bush and J.C.R. Licklider, Engelbart wanted to use technology to augment human intellect. He saw technology, especially computers, as the answers to the problem of dealing with the ever more complex modern world and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of developing technology to augment human intellect.”

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Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

December 16, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"Bunch of morons!"

A sense of decencency and respect (Midtown West)

What is it about Creepslist that makes people think it is okay to forgo all manners and common decency towards one another? This is NOT the .99 cent store. Most people here are trying to sell items at what they have deemed a fair price. If you do not like the offering or asking price, simply move on. It is not your business.

Is your life so empty and meaningless that you peruse CL seeking out listings for sale that you can not afford or “think”, though I doubt your capable of logical thought, the price is unreasonable. Then you feel the need to write to total strangers, mean, horrible things, you would never say to their face. Because lets face it, you are a coward with just an old fashioned computer in your mothers basement. If you were not such a loser you would do what most of us do and simply move on to other listings.

It baffles me, you take the time to write hateful, mean e-mails to total strangers who are simply trying to sell something. You do not know us. You have not seen the item in person, yet you judge so harshly.

For those of you who respond with offers of half for less than half the asking price….are you serious? If we thought if was only worth half, we’d be asking that. Where do you think you are, a bazaar or flea market in Morocco? This is NYC moron.

If you do not like a listing…move on. Do you think your pea brain, pathetic, hateful e-mails do anyone any good or is that the point. Are you just so mean spirited that writing mean e-mails to strangers gives you pleasure? We just laugh at you. We don’t even pity you because you are so beneath morality and decency it’s not worth it.

Lastly, just because you are writing “e-mails” does not mean basic grammar in communication is void. A salutation is usually a proper beginning, then a comma, usually a space or two, then try capital letter for the beginning of sentences (this is first grade stuff by the way), after the “body” and simple “Thank you”, or just your name if it’s all too much.

Bunch of morons!

Yes, I know my spelling and grammar here probably has some mistakes…no need to point that out, the is written hastily and I expect I’ve made some errors.

“Anthropologists Analyze Video Footage Of Collegebound Kids Shopping For Kitchenware”

December 16, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

"One of Jump’s first megaclients was Target, in 2001." (Image by David Weekly.)

David Segal’s Times article, “In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm,” looks at the world of Ideas Entrepreneurs, individuals and companies that help corporations and government agencies solve problems and develop products. The field has its own Orwellian argot (e.g., “thought leaders”) and tries to overcome “highly ambiguous problems.” One such think tank is Jump in San Mateo, California. In this excerpt, Segal writes of how Jump helped Target defend its market niche:

“One of Jump’s first megaclients was Target, in 2001. Still early in its spiffy-design phase, Target was selling home products by the designers Michael Graves and Phillipe Starck. Kmart was teamed up with Martha Stewart. Robyn Waters, then Target’s vice-president of trend, design and product development, was worried that the company’s famous-designer-on-a-budget success was being mimicked in categories that Target considered strongholds. One such category was back-to-college. Using a variety of methods, including ‘Yes, and?’ brainstorming and having anthropologists analyze video footage of collegebound kids shopping for kitchenware, Jump helped devise a product called Kitchen in a Box, a collection of dozens of different utensils, pans, pots and a kettle, later designed by Todd Oldham. Sales took off. ‘It worked phenomenally well,’ Waters says.”

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“You Could Put A Million Dollars On The Table For My Monkey And I Wouldn’t Take It”

December 16, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Micky, taking a break form dish-washing duties. (Image by Michelle Reback.)

Queens Village was the place to be in 1949 if you needed your household chores done by a monkey. At least that was the case according to an article I found in Life magazine’s August 29, 1949 issue. The piece, “Micky the Dishwashing Monkey,” recalls a simpler time in America, when capuchins were called upon to rinse silverware. It also recalls a time when everyone in the offices of Life magazine was apparently drunk.

In addition to his domestic talents, Micky liked waving to pretty girls from the apartment window and rubbing extinguished cigar butts on himself. He also once punched his owner in the foot so hard that she was unable to wiggle he toes for six months. The owners weren’t quadriplegics who needed assistance but apparently just lazy and bored middle-class people. A brief excerpt from the article, which was subtitled “A talented Long Island capuchin loves to work at the kitchen sink”:

“For the past few years Mrs. John Taral of Queens Village, N.Y. has been letting her pet monkey, Micky, wash the dishes for her without ever thinking there was anything special about having a monkey who washed the dishes. Then the newspapers found out about it and suddenly Micky and his mistress landed on the front pages. For days, Micky washed dishes for the press, and Mrs. Taral suddenly realized what a household gem she had.

‘You could put a million dollars on the table for my monkey and I wouldn’t take it,’ she told the Herald Tribune‘s animal story expert, John O’Reilly.”

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“The Smell Of Rotting Beef And Excrement May Be Too Much For Some Visitors”

December 16, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Stephen J. Shanabrook's chocolate sculpture of a mutiliated suicide bomber will be on display at MONA. (Image by Shanbrook.)

Cristina Ruiz has an interesting piece in the Utne Reader about the opening the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania. It’s an eccentric  temple to secularism built by 49-year-old entrepreneur David Walsh. It sounds like an attempt to create a permanent version of the more pungent, button-pushing elements of Sensation. (Thanks Marginal Revolution.) An excerpt:

“Finally, there is the international contemporary art. Walsh owns some 300 works, and more have been commissioned for the opening of MONA. These include an untitled 1998 installation by Jannis Kounellis that incorporates seven rotting beef carcasses and a new version of Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca. The machine, which simulates the human digestive process, creates excrement that is apparently indistinguishable from the real thing.

The smell of rotting beef and excrement may be too much for some visitors, but to Walsh they are important. ‘Aren’t we just machines for manufacturing shit?’ he asks.

Some visitors may find these displays shocking, a reaction Walsh welcomes. ‘There’s a lot of controversial stuff [that will go on display]. And, hopefully, it will cause a backlash because that’s how you attract visitors—and also I want to get some discussion going.’

Other works likely to produce strong responses include Stephen J. Shanabrook’s On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell, a chocolate sculpture depicting the mutilated body of a suicide bomber, and Gregory Green’s Bible Bomb #1854 (Russian style), a mixed media ‘bomb’ in a Bible.”

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December 16, 2010 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Because of marathon gaming sessions at Internet cafes in China, the gov’t banned all teens from the establishments. Image by Matthew Lyons/Game Gavel https://gamegavel.com.

Some parents in China became alarmed in recent years by their children overindulging in web-related activities, particularly marathon gaming sessions. That led to a market arising in Internet-addiction boot camps, and as often is the case, the cure was worse than the “disease.” Electroshock therapy was just the beginning of the madness. An excerpt from Christopher S. Stewart’s article on the topic  in Wired:

“One of the first signs that things had gotten out of hand in China’s Internet-addiction camps was the emergence of Uncle Yang — Yang Yongxin — a psychiatrist who opened a treatment center at a state-owned hospital in eastern Shandong Province in 2006. His camp was one of hundreds that had sprung up in China — many of them unregulated, uncredentialed, and relying on a grab bag of treatments: antidepressants, counseling, even intense physical exertion. (One sent its young clients on a 528-mile trek through Inner Mongolia.) What began as a fairly well-regarded and disciplined approach had spun into a growth industry, packed with untrained entrepreneurs.

Yang’s battery of therapies included electroshock — known as xing nao, or ‘brain waking.’ Electrodes were attached to his patients’ hands and temples, then shot through with 1 to 5 milliamps of electricity. One girl recalled wearing a mouth guard to prevent her from biting off her tongue. Some sessions apparently went on for a half hour; occasionally, a shock was said to leave burns. In an interview with a local paper, Yang defended the practice, saying, ‘It doesn’t cause any damage to the brain. But it is painful, quite painful!’

Yang was not a psychotherapist, nor was he licensed to administer electroshock. But that didn’t matter. He claimed to know what he was doing. ‘It will clear the mind,’ he promised. He charged almost $900 per month — a remarkable sum for a country in which the average monthly wage is around $400. Still, some 3,000 desperate parents sent their kids to him for four-month stints. The media hailed Yang as a ;national Web-addiction expert,’ recounting his heroic tales of life at his rehab center. Even after Yang’s methods were deemed excessive — in July, Chinese authorities banned electroshock as an Internet-addiction treatment, claiming the tactic required further study — his services were reportedly still in demand.”

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