Tag Archives: violence

An Open Letter to Google Glasses Pioneers: Prepare to Be Punched in the Eye!

March 6, 2013 By in Panopticonic Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 103 Comments

Hi there, Google Glasses Pioneer!

This is an open letter warning you to put down your Google Glasses if you care about the health of your eyes and the prosperity of your soul.  Those glasses are going to cost you a lot more than $1,500.00USD because your face is going to pay the price for prying into the public, everyday, lives of those all around you.  Nobody will trust you.  Everyone will suspect you are recording their every move — even if you are not — but because you can!  Be thankful for universal Obamacare — because you are going to need it with the rising year.  This is not a call for violence against you; this is a call out that violence will be waged against you.

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Rihanna Gets a Gun and Shoots Herself in the Breast

June 3, 2011 By in Boles Blues, Dramatic Medicine Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

We have been big supporters of Rihanna — but the tastelessness of her new “Man Down” video where she assassinates a man before the song even begins — is just too much tacky for our type.  We are also plainly aware that the core mistakes of the Man Down video are identical to the errors made in the video for “Love the Way You Lie.” We see a pattern here and we don’t like the mosaic.

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Strengthening the Binding Between Virtual Violence and Real Aggressiveness

May 31, 2011 By in Urban Semiotic Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

On May 12, 2008, I wrote — Violent Imagination Shaping Brain Reality — and the argument for that article was that we are formed and influenced by every experience, be it real or virtual, and that is why we must not seek out violence in our entertainment and pastime memes because the aftereffects are too dwelling in our real lives:

One can no longer argue gory movies, neighborhood killings and violent video games do not re-shape the brain in bad and terrifying ways.

One need not kill in order to perceive the effects of murder on the body by the brain — and that is a harsh and bitter reality for us to accept when so willfully immerse our children in a culture of violence and celebrated bad behavior.

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When Beauty Leads To Death Threats

April 4, 2011 By in United Stage Tags: , , , , , , 6 Comments

There are many ways to voice your disapproval of something. For example, when people disagree with me on my journal, they don’t hesitate to tell me. When I am at a meal and I mention that I only buy music in vinyl format, someone will inevitably voice their disapproval by speaking up and saying so. My friends in school protested the first Gulf War by walking out of class — not sure what that accomplished, but it definitely got the teachers to know how their students felt about the war. The one way to air disapproval with which I cannot agree, however, is that of death and the death threat.

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Stopping the Steeping of a Tea Bagger Nation

October 26, 2010 By in Urban Semiotic Tags: , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

The idea of living under a Tea Bagger Nation is a nightmare few would cotton to and that is why each and every one of their candidates must be stopped dead at the polls.  Tea Baggers are about violence and stupidity and hatred and Racism and fear and they crave authoritarianism under the rule of their burnt thumbs.  It is up to us to stop their steeping.

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The Family Tragedy of American Chopper

February 11, 2010 By in Celebrity Semiotic Tags: , , , , , , 96 Comments

Yesterday, The Learning Channel announced the quick cancellation of “American Chopper.” The last episode will air tonight at 9pm Eastern.  Over the six-year run of the show, I watched almost every episode — purely for the love of seeing Paul, Jr.’s designs come to life in metal — but the one, universal, totem taken away from the program is the horrible reality of an alcoholic father who is envious of his sons and sabotages them at every turn week after week and year after year.  The constant threat of physical violence, coupled with emotional and verbal abuse, makes Paul Teutul, Sr. one of the most despicable men in the history of reality television as he not only strangled, but castrated, his most beloved and most talented son, Paul, Jr.

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Violent Crime and American Football

September 8, 2009 By in Urban Semiotic Tags: , , , , , , 3 Comments

I was looking at Google Trends the other day and something strange stood out to me: A rather unfamiliar name appeared three times in the top ten search result with two different spellings. I knew immediately that I had to do some kind of investigation to find out who this man was and why everyone was searching for information about him and the faux-celebrity known as Tila Tequila.

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Is Carrie Underwood a Jesus Invoker or a Vigilante?

July 22, 2007 By in Urban Semiotic Tags: , , , , , , , 9 Comments

Carrie Underwood is a big star and she exploded as one of the winners of American Idol.
I find Ms. Underwood to be rather boring and without an invigorating personality, but the fact that her debut country album sold over 6 million copies says something about my taste in music or what country music fans find valuable in the promotional package that is Ms. Underwood’s carefully crafted good-girl facade made of peaches-and-cream and lots of virtuosity in the name of God and His only son.

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The Uglier One

May 6, 2007 By in Urban Semiotic Tags: , , , , 16 Comments

Ugly is everywhere. Some of it is visual. Most of it is internal. None of it is ever hidden.

A lot of it used to be punished via Ugly Laws. Some of the best Ugly Advice I was ever given came to me as a youngster in the form of punches to my face from a crew-cut boy two years older than me — but in my same fifth grade class. His name was Alex.

He was a bully. He wore a perpetual scowl.

He outweighed most of us in class by 75 pounds.

Everyone hated him.

Everyone admired his giant fists and punching power.

He was a brute in a boy’s body.

He was a boulder that gathered moss.

While the rest of us wore mop-top bowl haircuts, Alex waxed the ends of his crew cut and shaved the base of his neck every morning.

Alex imparted his reality to me in a flurry of blows to my face after I had taken the advice of my mother’s boyfriend to “stand up to a bully and fight him on your own turf!”

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Violence as Commerce in the Urban Core

October 24, 2006 By in Urban Semiotic Tags: , , , , , , , 15 Comments

Based Violence for Profiton our conversation yesterday in the comments thread for my Red in Tooth and Claw: The Language of Killing article, I am curious to know your thoughts on the following matter.

Do you believe violence — as framed in the context of yesterday’s article — creates or serves as commerce in the urban core?

Is the infliction of physical suffering a necessary city commodity from which secular humanism rises?

Or does violence only eat itself by gnawing and clawing away at its inborn behavior until red is all that’s left?

Violence for Profit

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