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All Hail the Double Face Palm of Fashion!
Oh the consternation! Oh the anguish! What are people to do when presented with such a horrible choicewhen their very societal presence and standing threatened by a humble German sandal.
Dear Fashion World and associated flaky devotees – you amuse the fuck out of me. Someone ‘famous’ does something different and then whether it is a good thing or not, you ravenous lemmings go whole-hog-wild and make it a trend.
Case in point – Australian bedroom slippers:
“Generally worn for warmth and comfort, Australian ugg boots had never been considered fashionable in their country of origin.[27] But the Deckers UGG brand emerged as a fashion trend in the US through Deckers’ actions to promote it as a high fashion brand. Deckers solicited endorsements from celebrities such as Kate Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker,[29][35] Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lopez,[36] and product placements in television series such as Sex and the City, and films such as Raising Helen.[27][37] This marketing campaign “led to an exponential growth in the brand’s popularity and recognizability.”[38] Oprah Winfrey received a free pair when her endorsement was sought by Deckers; she then bought 350 pairs for her entire production staff, and eventually featured UGG brand boots as one of her “Favorite Things” on her TV talk show in 2000.[39] Other actresses who discovered UGG brand boots through surf shops began wearing them.[32] The company reported US$689 million in UGG sales in 2008,[40] almost a 50-fold increase from 1995;[41] By 2012, worldwide sales of Deckers UGG boots were over US$630 million a year, with 95% of world market share. By way of contrast, ugg boots in Australia were worn predominantly as slippers and associated with “daggy fashion sense, bogan behaviour” and the “outer suburbs” when worn in public.[42][43][44][45][2] According to Australian fashion stylist Justin Craig: “The only people who get away with wearing them are models, who give out the message: ‘I’m so beautiful, I can look good in any crap.‘“[29]
Yeah and now these slippers are nearly ubiquitous – why? – because the people on TV said they were cool. *facepalm*
Now, you people doing the same thing with Birkenstocks. Someone who, arbitrarily appointed as famous, wears a pair of birkenstocks, and an article of footwear once considered “untouchable” is now hotter and more of a “must-have” than the preserved tears of baby-jebus. It is a load of foolish bandwagoneering that illustrates how ingrained the herd mentality is and how pliable the term ‘fashionable’ is.
“Why Arb,?” my gentle readers must be asking. “Where is this all this bitter animus coming from?” Well dear readers it comes from my adoption of Birkenstocks as footwear of choice based on the utilitarian needs these shoes satisfy for me. From my shiny patent leather dress shoes, to my winter/teaching clogs, to my summer sandals, Birkenstocks have meant I can work and play in comfort and not have to worry about unergonomic footwear slowing me down or ruining my posture. Birkenstocks are well made, high quality, highly – utilitarian products – that when associated with the frivolity of the fashion world, irks me to no end.
Oh, and I have not forgotten about Tom’s either with their insipid ‘feel-good’ marketing bullcookery.
I’m glad I’ll be dead when humanity’s collective shit hits the fan. I used to get all wrapped up in debates about Capitalism and the slow motion Seppuku we’re committing. I was genuinely flummoxed when my arguments were characterized as hopelessly naive and that my positions were unfounded vis-a-vis economic reality (a.k.a the dominant capitalist consumption paradigm).
Bollocks to that noise.
I’m out of fucks to give about important economic arguments and how super-fucking-awesome capitalism is. I will not be around when glitz comes off of our over-consumption and enough of humanity realizes how hard they’ve been screwed over by our benevolent job creating, all-boats-raising, [insert mendacious free-market dogmatic sentiment here], elite whose only goal is to keep their particular party going on the backs of every else. I, if consciousness exists after corporeal death, will be bathing in tears of the elite, relishing every savoury nanosecond of schadenfreude, as their hard “earned” lifestyle and material wealth crumbles to ash in a fiery pyre with the rest humanity.
Our human tendency to stratify our societies is our downfall. The inequalities that capitalism creates blinds those with power and privilege to the destruction of the very means of survival. Ronald Wright wrote this about the importance of the biosphere and the resources it supplies. To0 tree-huggy for you? Tough darts friend, the historical record is littered with the wrecks of societies that did not learn this fundamental lesson.
The lesson I read in the past is this: that the health of land and water – and of woods, which are the keepers of water – can be the only lasting basis for any civilization’s survival and success.
—A Short History of Progress, p 105
Don’t believe me? Well fuckmesideways bro, you don’t have too, it might be easier if you don’t see this one coming. The good scientists over at NASA have published a neat study on the merry death-spiral we happen to be inhabiting, The Guardian has an article summarizing said paper, thus we’ll peruse the highlights here.
This paragraph’s prescience is chilling:
“Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.” Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to “precipitous collapse – often lasting centuries – have been quite common.”
Useful thought experiment time. Imagine when you were a teenager. Remember how thoroughly self absorbed, shallow, and brain-dead you were? That same myopic narcissism is reflected in intellectual, political and social stands that typify the attitudes of the elite. This NASA study is a smackdown of all of what our cherished elites hold dear.
Will a peer reviewed article suddenly change minds and ingrained attitudes? Considerthe prevalence and persistence of religious belief despite the wealth of knowledge that contradicts said venerated mythology. The sheer number of people that haplessly cling to religious delusion is a testament to the doggerel stupidity our species is infected with. The peoples minds we need to change have the influence and the inclination not to listen to reason. So let’s not get all lathered up about the ramifications of this report, even if does purportedly deal in fact.
“It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
“The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.
Mmm. Sounds nothing at all like our society. But let’s not learn from the past because the ignoble fate suffered by those societies couldn’t possibly happen today.
Because hubris.
(I could have stopped the post here, but sadly, my sanguine nature runs both wide and deep, thus we continue, hoping a difference might be made)
But what are the causes of the downfall of human civilizations?
“[…]lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity”; and “the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor]” These social phenomena have played “a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse,” in all such cases over “the last five thousand years.”
Wow. You mean the rich worry only about getting richer and fucking everyone else over is an actual historical(now supported with SCIENCE!!!)fact? Thank you brave scientists heads for nailing that conclusion that has been obvious to anyone who studies history and has more than two fucking neurons to rub together. So one could say that a system that creates stratification – CAPITALISM – isn’t a really a good system to blindly, balls-to-the-wall-style, endorse. Who would have figured that shit out (hint: rhymes with ‘parks’).
“Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with “Elites” based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:
“… accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.”
Are you enjoying your peon status? I know I certainly am. But hey, you could make it rich someday too and live just like the fat cats – not that the elites would propagate popular myths (thank you corporate media) to keep the drones in line. But why listen to bitter ole Arbourist? Ronald Wright has done the dirty work and comes to a similar (paraphrased)conclusion:
“Wright sees needed reforms being blocked by vested interests who reject multi-lateral organisations, and support laissez-faire economics and transfers of power to corporations as leading to the social and environmental degradations that led to the collapse of previous civilisations. Necessary reforms are, in Wright’s view, being blocked by vested interests who are hostile to change, including American market extremists. Wright concludes that “our present behaviour is typical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance” and calls for a shift towards long-term thinking:”
Yep, and the Elites and their libertarian teenager mentality are going to resolutely deny this until they are standing in the warm rich glow of their freshly razed gated communities and mansions. Only then does this sort of message sink in.
“Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions “closely reflecting the reality of the world today… we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.” In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:
“…. appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature.”
So many options, how about option #2?
“Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that “with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites.”
Oh this sounds all gloomy and pretty shitty overall, do we have some sciency facts on this? Of course we do…
“In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most “detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners”, allowing them to “continue ‘business as usual’ despite the impending catastrophe.” The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how “historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases).”
Pretty good argument for a more egalitarian society no? Because the status quo means most of us die and the remainder to to live life Hobbsian style: “Nasty, Brutish 
and short.” Did statement that just send up a dog whistle for our dear friends of capitalism?? Sharing wealth, income redistribution.. the soon to be named spectre of unfuckingwashed Socialism?
Damn straight, son.
Oh were you contemplating bringing some apologia for capitalism to the comments section to set me straight on how fucking wonderful it is and how really if we just keep innovating it will be a panacea for all? (Tell that to third world parents whose kids(21 a minute if you have statistical fetish) are still dying of preventable diseases). Change this shitty system now or get used to the happy-funtime reality that Hobbes and Malthus intimately describe.
“Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:
“While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory ‘so far’ in support of doing nothing.”
It won’t change, not by our hand. I get that – keep the orgy going kids; I expect nothing less.
But as I said earlier I won’t be around to stew when things go sideways (well maybe as a wizened old soul on a rocking chair with a shotgun and cats), so enjoy your mess assholes. I’m frackking done with this.
Let’s close with a non swear word laden summary from Ronald Wright of many of my thoughts on humanities majestic progress and the challenges we face:
“Things are moving so fast that inaction itself is one of the biggest mistakes. The 10,000-year experiment of the settled life will stand or fall by what we
do, and don’t do, now. The reform that is needed is not anti-capitalist, anti-American, or even deep environmentalist; it is simply the transition from short-term to long-term thinking. From recklessness and excess to moderation and the precautionary principle.
The great advantage we have, our best chance for avoiding the fate of past societies, is that we know about those past societies. We can see how and why they went wrong. Homo sapiens has the information to know itself for what it is: an Ice Age hunter only half-evolved towards intelligence; clever but seldom wise.
We are now at the stage when the Easter Islanders could still have halted the senseless cutting and carving, could have gathered the last trees’ seeds to plant out of reach of the rats. We have the tools and the means to share resources, clean up pollution, dispense basic health care and birth control, set economic limits in line with natural ones. If we don’t do these things now, while we prosper, we will never be able to do them when times get hard. Our fate will twist out of our hands.”
—A Short History of Progress, p 131–2
Short History of Progress Wikipedia.
Short History of Progress Review on Quill and Quire
Surviving Progress: Documentary Film featuring Ronald Wright.
The Massey Lecture Series: A Short History of Progress produced by the CBC on youtube-
What most abortions look like.
Having laid down the smack on this forced-birther, he then laments being called on his misogyny and fundamental disrespect for the female portion of the species. This is Red Pen of Justice Territory folks.
Before he gets deep into the anti-choice bullcookery we detour into his deep important thoughts about the Olympics and human rights. Let’s see what he has to say.
“No religion but Christianity can support them[human rights]. (Atheism certainly can’t, as is becoming increasingly apparent.”
Oh wow… christianity the saviour of human rights, but only if you happen to be a white heterosexual male. Hmmm,women…submit to your husbands (because submission has everything to do with human rights) and heaven forbid if you are a homosexual. Oh you’ll be burning forever in hell? Atheists – have you made fun of the holy ghost? See you in hell too. The love of jebus is thick in the air, I can feel it!
We’ll skip the philosophical wanking and get down to what makes this religiously deluded liberal dude such enemy to women and and their rights.
“Talking about abortion as a right “to choose” or a right to “have bodily autonomy” is flagrant misrepresentation.”
Yes, those noises women make when defending their rights – just “misrepresentations”.
“I don’t have the right to choose to kill someone else. My rights over my body don’t give me the right to kill someone else’s body.”
Funny how badly forced birthers argue are when trying to be all moral and prescriptive. Of course, when it is not their body and their rights being effected, the holy jack boots of jebus are forcefully applied, despite reason and logic.
We here in civilized society prize bodily autonomy – the use of my organs by another is by my consent or not at all. Of course, being christian he and his god have no problem with slavery, so slavery for women is a-okay because Mr.Noble High Horse is preserving life, all the while taking a shit women and their rights.
I do love the smell of religious hypocrisy in the morning.
“Abortion advocates mostly know this though, so they try to portray the fetus as being somehow less than a “someone else.” Human rights are intended precisely to protect people from that sort of move. “
Well when legal and medical experts define someone as alive, you know like possessing brain function, which a fetus does not possess for a good part of its growth cycle, then we can talk about human rights. Medical facts aside, we don’t let other adults with full humanity dictate how our organs are used so…Mr.fetus you seem to be straight out of luck.
“We don’t get to say that someone else doesn’t count, we don’t get to say that someone else doesn’t deserve rights, we don’t get to set standards about whom we protect and whom we abuse. “
Wow. Much morality. Much pretense. Little connection withe real world. Go try your little speech to someone in Afghanistan or Iraq, or anyone in Central America they will tell you how much American’s value “life” and what they do to preserve the sanctity of it. My god man, you must bathe in naivety, to make such blithely arrogant pronouncements such as these.
We say who counts and who doesn’t count. Ask any black person in America as to how much they “count” and how many rights they have and if they are treated the same as you. In your “christian” nation under god seems to be just brimming with equality for all!
No. We’re not taken in easily as you. Your magical whitewashing of the world and morality might be fine for churchy-churchy time and your churchy-church friends, but outside the jebus-bubble in this place commonly termed as, reality, facts matter. The world is much more complex that your simple moral prescriptions and you can’t handwave-away the geopolitical reality we inhabit no matter what your sky-daddy says.
So, take your pious moralizing and settle it firmly back in your church,where I’m sure your illusive bullshite makes perfect sense and has a receptive audience.
“The last few posts I’ve tried to be objective and rational. “
Couldn’t fool me. Charity? WTF is that?
“They throw around deliberately inflammatory terms like “forced birth” and “a woman’s right to her body,” so that people react emotionally and don’t notice the treachery. “
Ah! Women, when speaking up for their rights demanding to be treated as human beings as opposed to incubators, are actually making ‘inflammatory statements’. Your fainting couch has arrived, please use it at the first available opportunity.
“They deliberately cloud the issue so that people won’t think about it. “
So sayeth the prophet from the side that regularly lies about medical facts such as stages of foetal development, pregnancy, and effects of abortion on women. I imagine that makes you quite the expert on clouding the issue, no?
“Suddenly it’s not death, it’s liberty. They trick us into thinking that maybe the human beings we abandon don’t actually matter.”
Oh, you mean like the women you conveniently erase while pining for a forced birth dystopia. Yeah-no, your fetus-fetish stinks from here and can only be seen as hatred toward women and their status as human beings.
“God help us. God help the ones we won’t help. God give them peace and a home with a Father that won’t reject them and leave them in the clutches of a monster.We ought to be willing to die to save them. What have we become?”
Yes, I think you should pray a lot more. Significantly more, maybe so much more than you won’t have time to post your misogynistic forced birth opinions on the interwebs and save me the time of refuting your mendacity.
A big thanks to Moe over at Whatever Works for finding this short video on our ISP’s. Just watch the free market in action…
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to stare down the barrel of a gun loaded with stupid. Thanks to the phenomena known as Neknominating, now I know. I have yet more people to add to my already turgid list of people who are too dumb to live.
Neknominate – People record themselves chugging or “necking” — usually beer — often doing something else extreme at the same time. Then they nominate others to out-drink them.
As the CBC gravely intones:
“A potentially dangerous new online video trend where people down alcoholic drinks in sometimes increasingly extreme ways, then challenge friends to do the same, is growing in popularity across the globe.”
I’m waiting for the trend in which people do stupid-shit while mowing the lawn, or shoveling snow, or picking up litter and then posting that on the internet. But hell no, that might actually improve the world. Pro social behaviour? Forget that noise.
Find your helmets and the hazmat suits dear readers, we’re going into the high back-country of mendacity, where the stupid is rugged and the ignorance is thick. Yes, we’re going to go visit our dear friend Matthew again because it is so rare to find such a deluded ball of procacity and self-delusion all in the same person.
But before we go on our merry gasconade we should warn the uninitiated – Matthew is a rebarbative hunk of misogynistic shit, his hatred of women runs astonishingly deep and his words can be quite shocking for the uninitiated. Consider yourself warned. Let loose the RPOJ from its sacred scabbard and into the ferocious maw of puerile thought-fap we go.
“Even a Slut Doesn’t Deserve to be Raped”
Oh wow. Even the title is filled to the brim with malevolent idiocy. Pro-tip Matthew – women are people not objects for your wang-prophecies.
Modern “feminists” have this controversial idea known as “rape culture” that’s been bothering me for a while.
There is nothing controversial about rape culture fart-knocker. What merits attention is the lengths half-wits like yourself will go to deny the reality of what is happening to women in our culture, as I’m pretty sure this is the direction you’re going to take.
I did a little research to try to figure out what exactly they mean by it, and I was disturbed by what a bleak and one-sided picture they paint.
Oh really? I’m curious as to the depths of your research, as to date it has been a indisputably shoddy train wreck of fail. But, the optimist in me says maybe ‘this’ time you won’t bollocks things up, so let’s investigate what you’ve uncovered.
What some of them seem to mean when they say “rape culture” is:
- that women and girls who dress in tight/revealing/slutty clothing are supposedly criticized (“slut shamed”) for being slutty
*Looks at title of post – looks at this sentence* – You have not a fucking clue what you’re talking about.
- that if these women or girls ever do get raped then they will supposedly also be blamed (“victim blamed”) for it
Wow – still no clue. Par for the course for Matthew whose hyper-skeptical glasses have been set to 11 for all these mysterious claims made by feminists.
- that the rapist will supposedly not be blamed at all and will just be allowed to go free
Facts suck don’t they Matthew, especially ones that don’t agree with your fevered view of the world. Understand one thing douche-nugget, most rapists will never spend a day in jail. (Source.)
- that supposedly the key to ending this “culture” of rape is to continue to dress like sluts in order to convince people that this is just a normal way for women and girls to behave
Err..no. The key to ending rape culture is for men (and the societal norms that enable them) to stop raping women. This is not rocket science, Skippy.
But here are the problems I have with this, and it falls on both sides of the issue.
A fair and balanced analysis I’m sure….*facepalm*
First, I hate women and girls who dress in tight/revealing clothing, and I don’t mind that they are criticized (“shamed”), because they are creating a public nuisance. Showing off your body causes sexual frustration.
Important notes from your boner are irrelevant to how women look and dress. They are not responsible for your man feelings, not now, not ever. Try and act like a fracking grown up for once in your life.
This is biological sexual attraction, and if you don’t understand that then you are either a sex addict who has been exposed to sex so much that you’ve become desensitized to it or some asexual person who had almost no sex drive to begin with.
Ah, so why aren’t you out killing some meat for your clan in the jungle? What is it with dudes trying to use biology to justify their shitty behaviour? We live in this thing called society and is marginally civilized if you can’t handle that shit, then leave.
To what I think is a normal male, it’s like an itch that needs to be scratched.
Funny how your idea of “normal” coincides with what you believe to be true. Almost like it is a self-reinforcing cycle of ignorance and stupidity. You need to meet these guys – Dunning-Kruger – you’d get along smashingly.
Sexual frustration in turn can tempt a person to engage in unhealthy and desperate behavior such as impulsive forms of consensual sex, porn addiction, or solicitation of prostitution. Most of this is legal in some sense or another (depending on your geography), but it’s all arguably a form of humiliation, and tight/revealing clothing indirectly promotes it. In other words, women and girls who dress like sluts indirectly harm other women.
Wow how about you take a step out of the cradle and claim your agency instead of blaming women for all of your problems.
Second, there’s the issue of blame. I actually believe that, objectively, tight/revealing clothing will increase a woman’s chances of being raped. It’s simply a combination of biological sexual attraction and self-control that some men lack. “Feminists” who advise women and girls to dress as slutty as they want and not care what people think are really doing them a disservice and endangering them. I am not “blaming” victims, but I am trying to give them some advice.
Wow, thanks but no thanks. Women hear shit like this everyday – and it is shit – because it places the onus on them for being raped as opposed to those who are responsible – the fucking rapists. Of course, blaming the victim is nothing new under the sun.
Finally, there’s the heart of the issue, the practical aspect of “blame”, which is how to deal with rapists. I actually don’t think even a slutty woman deserves to be raped. Rape is way too harsh a punishment for any behavior, no matter how foolish or irresponsible.
Redemption? No cookie for you! Saying rape is bad at the end an article that blames women for being raped wins you nothing but scorn and contempt.
No one deserves to be traumatized like that, which is why the rapist must still be punished. If the rapist were not punished, then he or future rapists might be encouraged to try to repeat the same horrible act (which I just said should not be allowed to happen to anyone regardless of how reckless her behavior was).
How magnanimous of you.
So, I say: (a) punish the perpetrator, (b) advise the victim to be more careful in the future, and (c) continue to criticize women and girls who dress or act sluttishly because this last point is really a separate problem.
One out of three is still a fail.
I’m not on the side of “rape culture”, but I’m not on the side of “feminism” either. I instead choose what I think is a realistic and sensible medium to encourage a more peaceful society.
Oh yah, you and rape culture are bros, dude; let me assure you of that. What you “think” is usually weapons grade bullshite with a heaping side of misogyny that attempts to make women responsible for shitty male behaviour. Let me know when that tune changes; then we can start talking about realistic and sensible.
The very notion that we are spending money on an assortment of rubber disk chasers, gravity assisted sled-fanatics and dancers-on-frozen water angers me. What infuriates me is the notion that throwing money at this motley crew will somehow enhance Canada’s standing as a nation and that “owning the podium” will bring us international regard.
What a pile of feel good nationalistic hoo-haa.
Canada should be spending its money on improving the living conditions of its people. When our First Nations have a safe and clean water supply our international standing will grow. When our homeless do not freeze to death in the streets our international standing will rise. When we eliminate child poverty our standing will increase.
Spending money to win a shiny metal disk for a 7 second soundbite on the world stage is not only stupid, it is irresponsible.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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