not falling down

Is anybody else just fucking creeped out by the American Apparel “Meet Melissa” ads? I’ve seen them a lot on the Onion and a few times on IndieClick affiliates, I’m not sure where else. The ad is a picture of a pretty girl with dark hair in a white t-shirt, smiling under a badly lit shower and looking kind of nervous. The ad has a rollover sidebar. Expanded, it reads:

“Meet Melissa. She won an unofficial wet T-shirt contest held at the American Apparel apartment in Montreal. Her prize for winning was a travel mug from McGill University, and the satisfaction of a job well done.

Melissa is wearing our new ultralight Sheer Jersey T-Shirt, AKA “The Summer Shirt,” available at our stores and online.”

Let’s translate that.

“Meet Melissa No Last Name. We had a party at a company apartment, then piled on the peer pressure and alcohol until we got some girls to pose under a shower. We thought this one was hot, so we’re going to put her face and upper chest on a few billion pageviews. We didn’t pay her shit!

We’re reasonably sure Melissa’s over 18, but hey, no last name and no pay means no paper trail, right? P.S. Go to our site and you don’t even have to look at her face, just her hands over her breasts splashed real big on the front page.”

For a company that’s trying to build a rep as progressive (“Sweatshop Free, Brand Free Clothes”), they sure come off like fratboy assholes there.

Update 1453 hrs: Ashleigh linked me to an enlightening Business Week article.

Wheeler came to visit us. It was fun! We played a whole lot of video games and some board games and ate high-quality vegetarian foodstuffs. He stayed with Lisa and Scott three nights and me and Maria for two, and did not hold me responsible for making him trudge all over Bardstown Road in the heat. Wheeler is, to quote Sumana, a good houseguest and a friend.

Lisa, Wheeler and I constitute three fifths of our weekly instant-messenger-based Nobilis game. Normally we play from our disparate locations in Louisville, Louisville, New Mexico, Georgia and Connecticut; this time the aforementioned three of us were all in my apartment at different computers, which was a neat if odd kind of synthesis. It’s easier to Laugh Out Loud at a joke when there are other people doing the same within earshot.

Zoom in.

The sword Anne’s holding is also a guitar, and a magic wand.

It’s a sworguitwand.

“We got you surrounded, Moloney!” harshes the cop with the bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!”

“You’ll arrest me?” Anne shouts back.

“Shit no!” The bullhorn catches the other cops laughing. “We just want an easy target!”

“This is it,” she mutters. “Live by die by, right?”

“Yea,” says Jesus grimly, unholstering his Desert Eagles. “When I was cornered, you gave me to cap.”

“Shit, Jesus.”

“Today I am your vengeance, Anne!”

They blow out the door, fire and bullets, wailing hard on high G.

Mom’s safely in London, doing everything. Apparently a mild bombing isn’t enough to shut down anything cool. She saw Brian Dennehy in Death of a Salesman. Live. My mother has seen Brian Dennehy on stage and I haven’t!

Overheard from the next cube, on the phone, just now:

“I know! I put a big… oh em gee exclamation point exclamation point!”

NOBODY SAW THAT.

To snark is to be impressed with the opinion that you are writing; the more you consider your argument to be inviolable, and the weaker and more ad populum it is, the snarkier it is.

To snark is to fall victim to the fashion of the moment. Fashion does not matter. Hence, the snarkier you are, the less you matter.

I’ve found that this last sentence is rapidly becoming the foundation of my political philosophy. First, consider all sources of news and opinion on a matter; second, discount or discard these sources directly according to their snarkiness. Third, look carefully at the heaviest things you’ve got left.

This is why Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh don’t matter. This is why Molly Ivins and Tom Tomorrow don’t matter. This is why Aaron Swartz matters, but Aaron Sorkin doesn’t; why George Will mostly matters, but Mallard Fillmore doesn’t. This is why the Daily Show, bless it, doesn’t matter. This is why Seth Schoen matters. This is why Orson Scott Card used to matter, and doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s not just about how seriously you take your subject matter. It’s possible (if rare) to be light-hearted about something without being snarky, and even if you treat your flamewar with Gawker like it was your daughter’s life, that doesn’t make it worth anyone’s while. It’s about consideration and logical rigor, about resisting the cheap shots and the urge to smirk. It’s about speaking to principles and facts, not targets; it’s about not gloating. It’s about the setting aside of childish things.

I don’t matter, not yet, because I liked writing this too much. There’s a vicious glee in outright dismissing the people who pollute the bandwidth of political discourse, and Dave Eggers would call me out on doing it.

The weird thing about last night’s shootout is not that police killed a baby in crossfire. It’s that they were trying to abort a meme at the same time.

Maybe nobody will try to use a baby as a shield again, knowing that the police are willing to shoot through her. Or maybe somebody will. Knowing that death was inevitable didn’t stop Eric and Dylan.

Why hasn’t anyone started using the Griffin Roadtrip or similar devices as personal pirate radio transmitters? They’d be perfect for coffee shops, student unions, seating areas of city parks–especially places that don’t have free wi-fi yet. All you’d have to do is set out the big LCD screen so passersby can see it, turn on your mp3 player of choice and be the ultralocal DJ. I’m totally going to do this whenever I cave and buy an overpriced hard drive with a stereo jack on it.

It’d be better to increase the gain on your tiny transmitter, of course, maybe by adding bigger batteries or using a higher-watt AC adapter, but I’m not an electrical engineer and I don’t think I know any. Also, I think boosting an FM transmitter above a certain level is illegal, but then that’s half the reason to do it anyway. It’d also be pretty cool to trump the LCD screen by wearing a t-shirt with your band of choice real big on the front. 88.5: ME RADIO!

I wonder if printing up such t-shirts would qualify as willful inducement? I hope so.