Because anyone who feels that the only thing worse than a politician who’s too busy playing the game to give a shit about fixing anything is a politician who talks a big game about how poisonous the game is and how much more important it is to fix things, then goes right back to playing the game, is a troll.
There are lots of reasons we’re excited to be launching the Obama 2012 campaign’s new Tumblr today. But mostly it’s because we’re looking at this as an opportunity to create something that’s not just ours, but yours, too.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Bonus points if you wonder which game designers were in the room when cap and trade carbon emission control schemes were designed. Awesome, eye-opening presentation.
To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means ‘not like this’ and ‘not like that.’ And the ‘not like’—that’s why postmodernism, with the prefix of ‘post,’ couldn’t work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one.
In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. But now, mainstream culture isn’t complacent, it’s stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That’s not wimpy—it’s powerful and productive.
Michael Azerrad from the February 2010 issue of Paste.via stewf
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Who knew intelligence could be an underground movement? Who knew that it needed to be? For once, do we have an underground culture that isn’t anti, but is rather a reaction that seeks to embrace something positive? Is it a positive movement, choosing a way of thinking or a way of approaching problems for its own merit, rather than the fact that it is not something else? Are we finally post-anti and pro-something?
I’m getting tired of the “Everythingisbroken-Everythingsucksism.” Reading it over and over is harrowing. Listening to bickering doesn’t do anything. Finding scapegoats to blame doesn’t create progress. When we gawk at the illusion of stability dissolving, it’s a reaction to the wrong half of the equation. If things need to change, it means that what we do becomes incredibly more important. Do. Action suddenly becomes more valuable. It means that there is opportunity, if one can perceive everyone else’s blind spot and find some white space for themselves. If everyone is getting together and complaining, it means that there’s a lot of unoccupied space somewhere.
Basically, it means that your contribution matters. And if you can muster up the strength to push against your fear, you might be able to do something that changes the game, just like Eva did. It isn’t about being Anti. It’s about being pro-something-good and making and acting and moving towards Pre-something-incredible.
It makes me consider writing something about how I’ve used Old Spice deodorant for years because I prefer their snap-to-dispense solid despite how abhorrent I find their Axe-esque product line to be, a conflict that typically results in me staring blankly at a wall of antiperspirants in the personal grooming aisle attempting to determine which of their cryptically named scents will suck the least. I find that fact especially interesting considering how much I’ve loved all their ads in this vein since the first one with Bruce Campbell in 2007. It makes me wonder if they contribute at all to my brand loyalty, because I feel as if I consider the two totally independently of each other.
It also makes me want to write about a quote from Banksy which scares the hell out of me:
The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.
My own aspirations to work in the field are sufficient for that observation to give me pause, but work like this seems to give his argument even more credence. Had the teams at W+K Portland who created this ad (and its predecessors) been born in a parallel universe where they engaged in the only slightly artsier career of comedy, or more specifically tv/film comedy, I’m convinced they’d have solved NBC’s late night woes three times over. And it’s not just the writing, although the whole damn thing is so funny that it’s not even worth trying to choose which quotes to pull. Let’s take art direction; the inexplicably soapy bottle only gets funnier when you consider that the best explanation is a self-referential gag about over the top product depictions in ads. Then there’s the perfectly plopped breton sweater, the endlessly flowing diamonds, and so on. And of course, the casting, which has been consistently awesome throughout the campaign—but holy fuck is this guy good. “I’m on a horse” is terrific, of course, but check out the delivery on “you’re on a boat” and, my personal favorite, “the tickets are now diamonds.” Absolute murder. I can’t find a single frame, a single line, a single inflection that doesn’t seem perfect.
Anyhow, I’m too tired to do a better job of composing my thoughts, so just watch that funny thing and be glad that there are people out there who work hard to make awesome stuff that makes us all laugh, whatever their intentions (though I will note that the cool kids at W+K don’t lie awake at night wondering if we’re going to purchase Old Spice brand products; they already know they did good work and P&G has long since paid them anyway).
"According to Schick’s marketing research, during the Valentine’s season, U.S. pubic hair removal rates briefly approach those of Brazil, traditionally the smoothest country on the planet. While Americans seem willing to chop it all off for their annual celebration of romance, personal trimming still varies by season, and plummets to levels almost as low as Greece’s during the week of Thanksgiving."
