I want to share two things I'm quite happy about that are only peripherally related to hip hop.
For starters, I don't trust the Democrats any further than I could throw them but I find the Republicans far more disgusting and am quite happy to see so many of them currently being humiliated. Let's make this a trend, shall we?
On another off topic note in which I will indulge, though I am moving away from that kind of thing, I'm extremely happy to see the . This is the show that includes the awful number I as an example of how badly classic tracks can be treated. Such travesties should be attacked at every opportunity.
I'll have to say, I'd forgotten that Twyla Tharp was the choreographer and had a large role in the show's creation. Tharp was a very important choreographer in the late 20th Century. It's sad to see how far she's fallen.
Seriously, look at the video and tell me you haven't already seen something similar in a really bad high school production.
All in all, that's a lot of junk getting swept out the door.
Posted by Clyde on November 9, 2006 in I'm feeling very off topic at the moment and, in such a case, a blog like is exactly what's needed.
Dude, somebody stole my weed!
Dude, they caught the motherfuckers that stole my weed!
Weeds was also running a summertime video contest called .
It may be ongoing but the details are unclear and you have to register at Break.com to find out more. Let me know if anybody gets in on this because folks claim hip hop rules the suburbs and we know rappers love weed so why haven't I heard about any of you creative types getting any play from Weeds?
Doh! I get it now. That chronic's got you stuck on the sofa!
I was checking out some posts from Adisa Banjoko on the warrior's art and it included an from an anarchist website. Clicking through to check out the source, I found an announcement calling for essays on the topic of .
The call for essays includes an important point:
By negating strategies of advertising, branding, and propaganda, anarchists and revolutionaries have often failed to successfully create winning campaigns in the marketplace of ideas.
The sad result is that by waging poorly conceived campaigns, anti-authoritarians have defeated their visions before communicating them to the public at large. Without a viable communication and public relations strategy, anarchism has turned into an anachronism.
It sounds like an interesting project to follow, not just for anarchists like myself, but also for folks concerned with marketing social change and with marketing ideas that are difficult for others to hear.
On a personal note, one of my own roads not taken involved a variety of ideas to make anarchism more understandable to a broader base, including a game concept that could work at most levels of gaming from mobile phones to immersive environments based on protest and street fighting scenarios and notes for an anarchist cinema that would focus on fictional narratives of anarchist life.
If you're a renegade game designer interested in making money while spreading anarchy, hit me up:
clyde(at)prohiphop(dot)com
Since no one took me up on my , I thought I'd do a quick roundup of online April Fools' postings that either caught me or caught a bunch of others.
Actually, I was going to update the earlier post with my faves but it just looks kind of sad when you ask for response and don't get any.
Especially when your also seem to be deteriorating. On the other hand, it's great to see people responding to various posts so I'll just follow the conversation rather than try to dictate the terms.
But back to April Fools' and the two posts that threw me off.
Although Robert Scoble's post didn't catch me, I was taken in when I saw in my newsreader that he'd changed the title from Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger to Google Geek Blogger.
I had actually just been commenting on some controversy or other involving Scoble (if you follow tech blogs you hear about this guy all the time) when I checked my newsreader and saw Google in his blog title. I rushed to the site to see just how confused I was and then immediately caught the joke.
In my own defense at my confusion, I had not yet had my first cup of coffee.
I figured that the posts in were April Fools' jokes but I have to admit that I seriously thought Rafi Kam might be changing the name of his blog since he is a tech geek in addition to being a hip hop blogger.
Fortunately I don't check for SOHH News very often so I wasn't taken in by their news prank.
However, a variety of news sites and blogs were taken in, many of which did not cite their source. I bet this one will circulate on the web for all eternity (or until the endtime, whichever comes first).
Fark's Drew Curtis provides Wired with an account of the of all time (I guess).
They aren't necessarily April Fools' joke but they're worth a read.
Posted by Clyde on April 4, 2006 in I keep starting these long pieces and then stopping them so let me make this brief with the disclaimer that I generally don't like to talk partisan politics but sometimes one has no choice.
Clinton's administration .
This accomplishment meant that a lot of poor people got screwed but it was for the long term greater good (not that it had to be that way, but that's how it was). This was also a historical accomplishment that should have made Clinton a hero. Instead, idiots fixated on a lie about an extramarital blowjob, one told by men daily all over the world, and the Democrats had to go.
Now the and the U.S. Senate has raised the to avoid a default on U.
S. Treasury notes that would help initiate a monumental process of international economic meltdown.
Look, I'm an anarchist but I support the Democratic Party in the voting booth every now and then.
Liberal Democrats may not be able to give conservatives of any party the beatdown they deserve, but they care about the poor and take their responsibilities seriously. Now if they'd just stop lying about blowjobs, since that seems to be the big priority to this nation, they might be able to take some stronger steps towards a society in which poor people get some support rather than being abandoned so miserably.
Or maybe all you idiots that turned on Clinton could recall where your obsession with blowjobs led you and try to make a smarter move next time.
Like asking George W. about his trips to .
Recently I was checking out writing jobs at and, while wandering through the site, found an ad from with the heading "Chatter - Online Marketing Ambassador.
" The ad said:
"We are looking to hire 30 Online Marketing Ambassadors to Chat and Write Message Board Messages.
Talk about video games, movies, sports and much more.
We are also looking to hire 2 Online Marketing Managers.
"
I briefly considered applying for the job as a form of research but just couldn't bring myself to do it. However, I poked around the and, in addition to seeing the prominent names of many large corporations, found the bio for who "sets the tone for the viral campaigns that deliver individually tailored messages and dialogue to highly targeted segments."
Paddy's online biography goes on to explain that he,
"recruits, trains and certifies the online Marketing Associates with the Online Campaign Managers.
Under his instruction and management, they learn how to use guerillaPR's Proprietary Technology that allows them to be in 2 Chat Rooms and 10 Instant Messenger sessions at the same moment in time, while also learning the 7 techniques of human engagement to maximize communication impact and conversation effectiveness. When certified each Marketing Associate can seamlessly blend into an assigned target market to engage them in conversations that result in increased traffic, awareness and branding."
I hope I don't have to explain the implications of this information but I do want to say that I'm not picking on Guerilla PR because this kind of thing is much more commonplace than people realize.
But it is the first time I've found a website by one of these companies that lays out so clearly the fact that people are getting paid to shill for corporations by going in and acting like everyday people.
"I just read about Ashlee in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks.
"
And , you'll see that miss mandy was all over the place, as if she was paid to cut and paste the same phrase everywhere she could.
Now I'm not picking on Ashlee Simpson either, she has enough problems. Although I think she should take a break and start studying music more seriously and come back, not anytime soon, but when she's ready to be something similar to a real musician.
Guerilla PR? I bet they would have done a much more sophisticated job with this campaign of lies and falsehoods.
I love it when someone expands a term in a useful way beyond it's typical usage.
Kevin Kelly's defines a "cool tool" as:
"any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true."
Kelly bases his choices on recommendations and experiences that indicate that something works well and can be relied upon, i.e.
:
"stuff that is extraordinary, better than similar products, little-known, and reliably useful for an individual or small group."
For Kelly, that means a site like that facilitates small grants to people with specific immediate needs, as the site says:
"Since May 2002, when Modest Needs became a charitable foundation, the members of this community have helped 1332 families to afford $246,932.24 worth of unexpected expenses ranging from the fee for a GED exam to the cost of burying a stillborn child.
"
If you find Modest Needs of interest and you hadn't encountered their site before this post, please remember, you heard it first from a hip hop site.
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