Category Archives: bizarreness

Helix and the Trouble with Tropes

Posted on January 13, 2014 by | 2 comments

Good science fiction is tough to come by. There’re plenty of factors we could point the finger at for that, but more often than not, it seems the people who produce sci-fi just don’t quite understand how it works.

Science fiction is, at its core, a means of exploring some sort of political or philosophical or ethical question. The spaceships, the time travel, brave new worlds- they’re all framing devices for questions about what makes us human…

…how we treat others…

…or our place in the universe.

Continue reading →

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Posted in bizarreness, morality, science, science fiction, technology, television, writing

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An Asian Man’s Reaction to AMWW Magazine

Posted on January 10, 2014 by | 2 comments
amwwmag

I want to write an entire separate post about this logo, which goes against everything I learned in Graphic Design.

To start with, AMWW Magazine is a website, not an actual print publication. The letters in its title stand for “Asian Man White Woman” which makes it sound like it’s a place to find niche pornography; I assure you that it is not. Under its About section the writers describe the work they do as:

“…a resource for both men and women in order to learn how to connect and hopefully meet their romantic, cross-cultural partner. Whether it’s for a brief, passionate and illicit one time liaison to a lifelong romance that smolders well into the twilight of your life, our interracial dating advice blog aims to give both men and women practical and solid information from both sides of the gender lines on how to improve your dating, sex, and love life.”

Now I found AMWW while being linked from race site to race site, probably starting with the racebending tumblr, but when I found it I wasn’t quite sure how to react. After showing it around to friends online and reading through a good number of the articles myself, I arrived at the very vague conclusion that it made me uncomfortable.

Writing this post is a way for me to explore that feeling. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in bizarreness, race, relationships, sex

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Culture War Correspondence: Atheist Churches

Posted on January 8, 2014 by | 7 comments

GORDON: Brothers and sisters, we are gathered together today in the eyes of…

well, nothing. Today’s discussion will cover the growing number of atheist churches in the West.

EVAN: That may seem like a ludicrous concept to any and all of you, so I think before the two of us really begin discussing this movement that originated in the UK [of course] I think it would be good for us to share what our first impressions were of that term.

So, Gordon, what did you imagine an atheist church was, or would be like?

GORDON: Well, my immediate reaction to the concept was that it’d all be some kind of satire, like Pastafarianism, though the more I thought about how one would actually function, the more I kept returning to some kind of a cross between a support group and a study group.

Continue reading →

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Posted in bizarreness, Culture War Correspondence, Europe, morality, religion

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Shame Day: Shia LaBeouf

Posted on January 7, 2014 by | 1 comment

Writing the first Shame Day of 2014 is a difficult position to be in. The topic must be the source of some terrible wrongdoing, but must also have committed that wrongdoing in a way that truly incenses us as decent human beings. All that being said, let me present today’s subject, Mr. Shia Saide LaBeouf.

Now rest assured, dear readers, I have reasons for targeting the former child star and lead in Disney’s Even Stevens and repopularizer of the word “no.” Believe me, I wouldn’t willingly put myself through having to check and recheck that I’m spelling his surname correctly otherwise. To begin with, midway through December of last year he released a short film titled Howard Cantour.com.

The film follows the titular Cantour, an internet film critic, and received a pretty hefty amount of critical acclaim. Not only that, but it starred my number one favourite stand-up comedian who almost exclusively jokes about food, Jim Gaffigan. It was also a near shot-for-shot adaptation of the comic Justin M. Damiano, by Daniel Clowes.

Continue reading →

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Posted in art, bizarreness, comics, film, media, morality, Shame Day, writing

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The Truth About Welfare (From Someone Who Works In Welfare)

Posted on January 5, 2014 by | 9 comments

I don’t talk about my work much. Partly that’s due to the fact that I tend to be pretty paranoid and partly because there’s not a ton of stories I can tell that’ll produce a reaction other than this:

I work at the intersection of nonprofits, social work, and welfare, and in spite of the relatively complexity (chaos might be a better term) of all that, I would still like to try to clear some things up about the system I work in and the people I try to serve.

I. The “Welfare Queen” is a Myth

There’s an imaged that’s been popularized in this country of the lazy, entitled so-called “welfare queen” who does nothing but collects a nice fat check every month which she blows on drugs, luxury cars, and plasma TVs.

This person, for all the outrage and bile she generates, does not exist. Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in America, bizarreness, Economy, food, health, money

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Gordon Brown Fixes Education (In A Single Post)

Posted on December 2, 2013 by | 13 comments

I’ve brought up the subject of education a few times now. I’ve never explored the subject on a grand scale, but I intend to rectify that today. Here’s some of the key issues our society seems to have with education, and what I think we could do to fix it.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to say right here and now that I was homeschooled and can’t speak with first-hand experience on a lot of what I’m going to be talking about. A less arrogant man would take this as a sign that he should probably just shut his ignorant mouth about it, but I’m going to forge recklessly ahead. I do have some cursory teaching experience (though that’s to an adult population), I’ve helped kids with school in a professional capacity, and what with this culture’s frankly creepy obsession with high school (which oughta be a post in and of itself), I feel I’ve got at least a grip on what we’re dealing with.

Let’s begin. Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in America, bizarreness, education, money, politics, science, Youth

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