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io9.com
This year’s Fremont Solstice Parade was bigger than ever. Both the real parade (see below) and the unofficial body-paint bicycle brigade preceding it.
What may have once been considered daring and rebellious, is now an ordinary, accepted thing; another smug celebration of how fabulous we believe ourselves to be. Thus is the Seattle Way.
You can also say with certainty that the event was popular, on a solitary hot sunny day bookmarked by drizzly days before and after it.
The parade proper was about one and a half times as long as it was just last year. The “political” paraders were out in force with such simple messages as “wind power good, Monsanto pesticides bad.”
A small utility manhole in the street was left uncovered. That’s how this CRT-headed advocate for electronics recycling crashed his trash.
Also on hand were the usual music and dance troupes, and the giant flora-n’-fauna kinetic scultpure thangs.
via theatlantic.com
quickmeme.com
kuow
lostateminor.com
via geekwire
Amazon wants to build a triple-globe shaped, five story thing, variously called a “biodome” and a “greenhouse,” as part of its three-block skyscraper project. It would be on Lenora Street east of Sixth Avenue.
First comment:
Any architectural thang with three segments, in which the two smaller segments are spherical, is bound to lead to a lifetime of snickering jokes.
Arrangements of one or more spherical objects at the bottom of a 50-story tower will engender the same responses.
Amazon’s either being brave, or clueless, or devil-may-care bombastic, or some combo of the above.
Second, slightly more serious, comment:
As gargantuan New Seattle monuments to world-class-osity go (and I wish a couple of them would go), this one looks at least somewhat friendlier than the planned central waterfront makeover, kitschier (in a good way) than the Sculpture Park, and not nearly as brutalistic as Chihuly Garden & Glass.
Depending on how it works out, and how tolerant its staff is toward civilian activity within, it could be a welcome addition to the cityscape. Or at least a place in which to hide out from the rain for a bit.
wikipedia via king5.com
No.
And that’s an official, final no, for the next year at least.
factmag.com
scarfolk.blogspot.co.uk
No, today’s princess is not about romance: it’s more about entitlement. I call it “girlz power†because when you see that “z†(as in Bratz, Moxie Girlz, Ty Girlz, Disney Girlz) you know you’ve got trouble. Girlz power sells self-absorption as the equivalent of self confidence and tells girls that female empowerment, identity, independence should be expressed through narcissism and commercialism.
via messynesychic.com
photo by kyle johnson, from the set 'portraits of seattle' on flickr
It’s been more than a week since Jen Graves’ Stranger story, “Charles Krafft Is a White Nationalist Who Believes the Holocaust Is a Deliberately Exaggerated Myth.”
The paper’s print issue is now off of the stands.
The controversy continues.
Like many participants in and observers of the Seattle visual-art scene, I’ve long known about Krafft’s open admiration for neo-Nazis and Holocaust revisionist pseudo-scholars. He didn’t keep his views secret. They just hadn’t been written about in the local arts media, prior to Graves’ article.
While Krafft was out of the country when the article was written, Graves was careful not to allege anything about Krafft’s beliefs that he hadn’t specifically mentioned in national blogs, podcasts, talk-radio shows, newsletters, and his own Facebook posts.
Still, the counter-allegations of “hatchet job” etc. against Graves abound.
In the online comment thread for the original article.
In a spirited defense of Krafft (“despite his occasional idiocy”) by his friend (and my sometime book publisher) Adam Parfrey.
And in an essay by white-nationalist book publisher Greg Johnson, “The Persecution of Charles Krafft.”
Some of the counter-attacks are predictable.
There are people who sincerely defend white nationalism and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.
Then there are people who assert that Graves, the Stranger, and the Seattle cultural establishment in general are a bunch of PC do-gooders who can’t handle any real dissent from their party line.
Ah, the last rhetorical refuge of the bigot and the bully; to turn around and whine that they’re really the victims.
By the way, that last remark of mine is directed toward Johnson and some of the other commenters—not against Krafft himself. Krafft has always been open and forthright about his extreme beliefs, and about his fondness for guys who express even further-extreme beliefs than he does. He hasn’t, as far as I know, ever played the faux “victim” card.
•
So how do I feel about Krafft, you might (or might not) be asking?
I believe he’s a sincere admirer of various military and paramilitary aesthetics, including those of the Nazi and Warsaw Pact eras.
I believe he’s got a big flaming ego, that enjoys tripping on the “Oh, aren’t I being a naughty, politically-incorrect cad?” vibe.
And I believe “irony,” at least the kind of irony viewers have long perceived was in Krafft’s ceramic rifles and hand grenades and Nazi-kitsch revival pieces, is a tiresome premise.
Every work of “satire” or “parody” contains, in its aesthetic, the real worldview of its creator.
Andy Warhol, for instance, really was a capitalist. Quentin Tarantino really is an exploitation filmmaker.
And Charles Krafft really does get off on power fantasies.
Even really, really sick ones.
gawker.com
webclipart.about.com
As the many unattached among us face with dread the day devoted, by Hallmark and other marketers, toward luvvey-duvvey cutesy-poo, comes a new study on “the old man-woman thing.”
Authors Bobbi J. Carothers and Harry T. Reis claim, among other things, that:
Imagine the possible implications!