Matt Toder commented to me this morning that it would be fantastic is there was a place where you could view a collection of all the icons I’ve made for the rotator script on the right side of this page. Never one to deny a great idea, I’ve done just that. Now you can see large versions of all The Black Laser icons by either clicking on the icon to the right OR on the link down below.
Awesome! Thanks, Matt!
Gardner has some very strong feelings on the passing of Prop 8 in California, the roots of which will become quite clear when you watch his video. And rightly he should. It’s an important issue back in my home state, one which has ramifications across the entire country. It’s a battle between rationality and fear, between fairness and cruelty, between allowing people dignity as human beings and taking away their rights based on the misinterpreted words of someone who I am pretty sure would have been in support of gay marriage.
I think my feelings on the whole thing are clear. It is not right for people’s rights to be taken away. Whatever you feel about gay marriage, the issue has deeper implications on our society and the casual erosion of our civil liberties over the last decade. Laws should definite people’s rights, keep people safe, and act as a guide for society to run smoothly; they should not REMOVE A RIGHT THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN GRANTED. Imagine if a group of people put an item on a ballot to take away women’s right to vote, or turned black people back into property. Totally absurd, right? Proposition 8 was the same thing, all in the misguided name of “religion” and “morality” and “family values”. What a crock of shit.
When I see fundamentalist Christians up in arms about issues like this, I have to wonder, “Have you ever read the Bible? Did you hear the message of Christ? You know, love everyone and all that jazz? Do you remember the part where Jesus was all, ‘Hey guys, don’t pay attention to that OLD Testament. I’m the hot NEW TESTAMENT’ and yet all of your fear-mongering, hate-spreading nonsense is based on like four passages buried deep in the Old Testament?”
GUESS WHAT GUYS, GOD DOESN’T HATE FAGS. I grew up Catholic, attended Catholic school between Preschool and 12th Grade, have a great-uncle who was a priest, a great-aunt who is a nun, and I’m pretty sure that the Christian God is a God of peace and love. He doesn’t hate anyone. At all. Anywhere. That’s the whole thing: GOD LOVES EVERYONE. Even if you don’t believe in God (I don’t), you have to admit that Christians believe that God loves everyone. No questions asked. Anyone who calls themselves a Christian and acts in a contrary way is wrong.
Also, God doesn’t hate science, so you guys can drop that idiocy too. Evolution is real. The Earth is older than 6000 years old. I mean, really, saying, “Well Gee, the world is very complex, so there’s no way that it wasn’t designed,” is not only stupid but it’s just plain bad logic. It’s all metaphor, people.
/rant.
Anyway, check out Gardner and help our brothers and sister get their rights back in the state of California.
Are you serious? This is the greatest shit I have ever seen.
In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.
I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that’s strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably “controversial.” One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its “Fuck the Man” symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.
Check out all of them here: Justine Lai – Join or Die
Obviously, this is Not Safe For Work.
I didn’t make this, but I thought I’d share.
But he also happens to be perfectly suited to his current line of work: a television host. I just saw this video linked on his Facebook page and I thought it too perfectly represented him not to post it for everyone (read: the 10 people who read this site) to see.
If you live in LA and have never seen his show, “1st Look” on NBC, check it out. I don’t know what it is or what it’s about except that it is an unquestionably perfect vehicle for his brand of lunacy.
And, if you haven’t yet, buy yourself a copy of the film he and I did together as director and editor respectively. Go now!
Beloved bunny, fluff-ball, and happy-dancing poop-machine Round passed away this morning after a brief, but sudden, illness. She was 5 1/2 years old.
It was a bright, cold Valentine’s Day when Juli, her brother Peter, and I were walking along Houston street where it provides the northern border of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Where we were going, I don’t know, nor does it matter. What does matter is that as we walked, we passed a mysterious pet store that never seemed to be open. On this day, there was a small glass terrarium at about eye level that nothing but a tiny grayish brown lop-eared bunny and some wood shavings. Maybe 6 inches long, the little fluff pressed her face against the glass, catching Juli’s eye. We stood and admired the adorable little thing for a moment before continuing on our way.
Two weeks passed during which Juli brought the bunny up as often as she could.
“Do you remember that bunny?”
“Wasn’t that bunny at the pet store cute?”
“It lives in a terrarium, like a turtle!”
“I wonder what the bunny is doing right now?”
One morning we were on our way to the library at NYU to work on something when she asked, “Can we stop by the pet store?”
“It’s out of the way,” I said.
“Pppplllleeeeeeeeaaassssseeeeeee!!!!” she argued.
“Ok,” I said, and off we went, out of our way along Houston from her apartment on E 6th and Avenue A. As we approached the pet store, she noticed that, for once, it was actually open. Of course we went in. Juli asked the crazy lady who ran the store all about the bunny in the window. She went over to the little glass box holding the bunny and pulled it out. She told us that she had picked this bunny especially and then asked if Juli wanted to hold it.
She looked at me with a “should I?” look in her eyes and then took the baby rabbit in her hands and held it against her chest. In that instant she melted and I knew that we were walking away with that rabbit. Round was so small that she fit in her hand from the tip of her fingers to the heel of her palm. She was a ball of wild, unbelievably soft fur with ridiculous dangling ears. Juli was in love.
Tucked into a cardboard box, we brought the rabbit directly back to Juli’s apartment and set up all her various accessories. I don’t think we ever made it to the library that day, but I’m not sure that it was meant to happen. I think that we accomplished that day what we were supposed to and the school work was unimportant. It seems like a lot of important things in my life happen like that.
One of my favorite memories is of my brother Nicholas chasing you down the hallway at Mom and John’s house, you scampering away from him as he ambled behind you, his arms out like some menacing creature from a Japanese monster movie. You spent a lot of that day trying not to be humped by my Mom’s Yorkie, Duffy.
I also remember the first time you flopped in your cage. We were living at 175 Stockholm street and eating dinner and you decided that was a good time to unveil this new trick you’d figured out. It had me and Juli laughing for hours.
I remember when you were very little and Juli still lived on East 6th Street. We would take you into her little backyard area that had some planters and you would tear ass around in the dirt, digging like crazy. One day a cat was stalking you on the fence and you went flat to hide. Juli chased the cat away. You never really had any cause to worry.
Round, you were indomitably sweet even if you could be a cantankerous old bitch, but you were a member of our little family here in Brooklyn and we will miss you. Though your life was not ideal by bunny rabbit standards, we took as good care of you as we were able, providing you with all the greens you could eat, space to run around, a spacious (kind of) hutch to live in, and as much affection as we could give. I will miss the way you would run up and nudge my ankles while I was cooking dinner, hoping that I would get you a treat. I will miss the way that you would lay by the toilet on hot days, earning yourself the nickname “white trash bunny”. I will miss the way that you could be sitting on the floor looking utterly normal and then explode into a body-twisting happy dance and then bounce off. I will miss the way you would take your treats and run off like a dog. I will miss the way you would force your head into my hand when I stopped petting you because, god damn it, you weren’t done being petted yet. And most of all, I will miss the life you brought to our tiny, dark Brooklyn apartment.
I never knew a bunny before you, Round, but I suspect that you were something special. You were certainly special to us. It was good of you to wait for Juli to come home this morning. Her heart aches for you, but at least she got to say goodbye. We will miss you.
This is the first time I’ve ever actually heard Isaac Asimov’s voice. This clip is pretty short, but I like the idea of science fiction becoming reality. Asimov describes it here from his perspective in the 1970s, a world of growing computational power, post-space travel, the emergence of the technologies that would change the world over the next few decades. But, for us living in the 21st century, we can see the way that films like Star Wars and television shows like Star Trek have affected the development of current technologies. I mean, what is an iPhone except a Tricorder that actually works? Have you seen the androids being made in Japan?
Nexus 6s, here we come.
