Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Humping USB Dog

HUMPING USB DOG
Down Boy!
Harley and Duke are naughty doggies. They won't eat out of their food bowls; they track mud all over the place; they are constantly burying our pens; and they have a peculiar naughtiness whenever they spy a free USB port. They...well...they sort of, kind of, um... "go to town," if you will. And they won't stop until you um...separate them from the source of their affections.
Why are they like this? We have no idea. It doesn't serve any purpose, but it's what they do. They are insatiable. And that's all we really have to say. Harley is brown and Duke is black, and you can take your pick. Oh, and don't worry - if the kids ask what the doggie is doing to your computer, just say, "He's trying to jump over the computer, but he got a little stuck," or "The computer is giving him a piggyback ride." Either will suffice.
Each dog is about 2.25" tall and requires USB power to get turned on. Sorry, we had to.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
First Lady Collectible Doll

Thanks to the fabulous JEZEBEL website, I learned about a must-have addition to anyone's political propaganda tchotchke collection, the First Lady doll from Danbury Mint.
http://www.danburymint.com/collectibles/prod/Michelle-Obama-Inaugural-Doll_12568.aspx?tag=D1&manuallinktypeid=2&source=WG03&cm_mmc=google-_-collectibles-_-branded-_-michelle+obama+sitelink
England's Poet Laureate' Ode to Becks
Achilles by Carol Ann Duffy
Without him, it was prophesied, they would not take Troy.
Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs...
But when Odysseus came, with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar,
And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball...
But then his heel, his heel, his heel...
Note the subtleties of her poem. First there is the tragically serendipitous nature of Becks' injury. Second is her audacious anachronism. Third is her post-Modern appropriation of Classical myth to bring such tropes closer to the British, privileging the global/glocal mass cultural form that is football. Third, her way with words. Rhyming "sarong" with "song" which although geographically incongruous might be seen as in the interests of melodious rhyme and as a post-Colonial move to undermine the hegemonic role of Western culture. She could have gone another route, the sartorial and temporal incongruity, selecting "thong" to rhyme with "song" and thus inserting a meta-reference to Posh and Becks' well-known fashionista tendencies and recent underwear advertisements. Here she would have fused several mass cultural forms - fashion, print culture, video, the internet, and football. So, one might say, in passing over "thong," she dropped the ball. Ah, her heel, her heel, her heel.......
