Tuesday, September 23, 2003

We are nihilists, We believe in nothing

The other day, I was surfing the web, as I am wont to do, and I discovered some fairly interesting (if by interesting I mean either actually interesting or easy to make fun of) sites that I thought I'd share with you, my loyal following.

My adventures started over at left pedal, run with grace and cunning by the keen Donnie Boman. While reading Donnie's witicisms, I glanced over at his links list to make sure that WWKAD? was properly represented. It was. So I looked around a bit and saw a link that read "The Situation Room" and decided to click on it.

I really didn't read a whole lot of the site, but I did a lot of clicking. Some of it pleased me and some of it did not. This is nobody's fault but my own, and I understand this completely. This should be considered neither praise for nor an indictment of this website, but rather a collection of web oddities that I happened to find all at the same place. Understood? Great.



Classic rock music videos in ASCII. Pretty cool.
I'd like to see some contemporary videos.



A collection of subversive posters that almost all miss the point from Wake The World.

I would never try to suggest that I am currently or that I ever was completely satisfied with the administration's argument for/handling of the war in Iraq, but I have to admit that I'm very, very far away from getting illogically angry about non-issues. Look, for better or worse, I'm glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and I believe (if Christopher Hitchens is worth his salt, which I'd bet he is) that many people in Iraq - and in the Muslim community - are glad to be rid of him. Does the end justify the means? No, of course not, which is exactly why we'll elect someone else in November of 2004 and hurriedly purge ourselves of the Patriot Act and all the other filth this administration will have left behind. That said, who gives this much of a shit? Not me.

The first poster reminds me too much of the WW2 propaganda posters, coffee table books about which probably exist in most of our homes. Why is it that we can look at these old propaganda posters and laugh at their naivety, but the dillweed who designed this "Fashion 2003" (which by the way is a terribly lame title) poster thinks he's just written the next Doonesbury?

And the second poster: Nothing says "I... uh... I'm not really sure... uh... what I believe... in..." like this poorly-kerned (and, as far as I'm concerned, therefore poorly designed) nonsense palindrome!

    If this one doesn't tickle your fancy, try our "Rise To Vote, Sir!" poster where the word "Sir" looks like it's made out of ice cream!

And to ignore the ambiguous pronoun answer the question of the third poster (which thoughtfully asks "Why isn't it called Terrorism when it's committed by the United States?"): because they're different things. They have different purposes and are carried out in different ways. Let's not forget that the United States didn't invent war. We're not the ones who codified it.

The only good poster of the whole bunch (that I saw, that is; I stopped looking after I'd found enough to make fun of) was the one that The Situation Room had displayed (I should have just stayed there).

It looks good. It's funny. It's not decidedly idealistic, but it's smart enough to know that. In fact, if you added breasts to this poster, I'd marry it.

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