It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything about #OccupyWallStreet, and even longer since I first posted about the movement’s inception. Since then, a lot of things have happened, most of which are still too difficult to cope with intelligently or even handle on basic level. The world is awaking, bursting at the seams of what it means to be a society. It’s exciting, but frightening as well, confusing as always.
I hope to unpack all of those thoughts soon. Put them into the right places so that I can have a better grasp of what Occupy means, why in some ways it was a tragedy, and why it’s still hopeful. Most importantly, why its failure is a personal failure.
For now, if you’re supportive of the moment, continue to do what you can. Some of us in the comic scene have decided to come together for a Kickstarter project called Occupy Comics. Top names in the industry are creating their own interpretations and stories from the Occupy movement for a book that will be collected next year. For now, funds raised will be donated by the artists to various efforts around the world to help the Occupy movement continue. There are only a few days left to contribute if you’d like to help out or get a book.
Creators involved include: Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan), Dan Goldman (Shooting War), Amanda Palmer (Evelyn, Evelyn), Ben Templesmith (30 Days of Night), Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead), Riley Rossmo (Cowboy Ninja Viking), Tim Seely (Hack/Slash), Zoetica Ebb (SuicideGirls, Biorequiem), Steve Rolston (Queen & Country), Tyler Crook (B.P.R.D.), Steve Niles (30 Days of Night), both Brea Grant and Zane Grant of the SuicideGirls comic series, and many more. Plus, several other top creators will be announced soon!
If you’re into the idea, please contribute to the Kickstarter. And if you have an idea of your own for how to keep the Occupy movement alive, please make it a reality.
“It’s tough not having more people to relate to you as a women.”
– Karen O
The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs have just released Show Your Bones, the follow up to their hugely successful 2003 album Fever to Tell. Born out of the New York garage scene, the single “Maps” put them on the map and they havent looked back since. I caught up with the incredible Karen O before the band embarked on their latest tour.
INTO: Shows, music, dancing around in the car, drinking beer, cooking, elephants ( for their big trunks), art, sext messaging, carne asada tacos.
NOT INTO: Sidekicks, Kraft cheese singles, The Beatles, pork, bouncers that take away your fake ID, really expensive clothes, The Fully Down, getting peed on in the shower.
MAKES ME HAPPY: San Fran – I wanna move back soo bad, the West Coast is my true love.
MAKES ME SAD: When I run out of beer/cigs.
HOBBIES: Masturbating, cooking, drawing, belly dancing, and sex.
5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Oreos, Earl Grey tea, Zune, conditioner, and oscar.
VICES: Smoking, pot, drinking, and tattoos.
I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Being a big dork and telling really bad perverted jokes.
Since its launch in 2004, Facebook’s genius has been its ability to express complex relationships between people and things in a simplified graphical form in a way that is easy to grasp with just a couple of minutes browsing at any one time. Thus, its storytelling format is clearly ideal for condensing convoluted shit like life, the universe, and everything into an easy to read feed. A new book, authored by Wylie Overstreet, rather successfully does just that, telling the entire history of the world in just 153 not-too-dense pages. Here, in this excerpted first chapter, we breeze through the pertinent points of a few billion years, learning more-or-less everything we need to know about a period of time bookended by the birth of the universe and the birth of man.
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In August 2010, Wylie Overstreet published a satirical article called “If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses” on CoolMaterial.com. Within a month, it had received 3 million views and had been “liked” by 120,000 Facebook users. In The History Of The World According To Facebook (published by It Books), Overstreet expands this concept into a full-length history of the world, from its creation up to the present day, as if Facebook had existed all along and Abraham Lincoln had written a status update about “taking the missus to the theater” on April 15, 1865 and Ben Franklin had done the same alerting his network that he′d signed the Declaration of Independence (“Bring it,” replied John Adams). Filled with hundreds of real-life historical figures and thousands of not-at-all-real Facebook statuses, comments, and actions, and parodying Facebook users′ proclivity to over-share and use lazy jargon (“lol,” “rofl,” “fml,” etc.), this is the definitive humor book for those who spend too much time online.
In today’s America, I could easily say I was a Catholic, a Baptist, a Mormon, or a Muslim and likely get less criticism and hatred spewed at me than simply saying I don’t believe in any god or book that talks about a god. It’s for that reason that today I ‘come out of the closet’ and proudly say that I’m an atheist. I won’t apologize for that and hopefully more atheists will do the same.
At the University of Kansas recently, a group of students launched a campaign called ‘We Are Atheists‘ modeled after the famous ‘It Gets Better’ campaign focused around gays and lesbians.
The ‘We Are Atheists’ ideal is simply a way for more non-believers to come out and not be afraid to speak about their lack of belief in a god, or their belief in science or evolution, or whatever it is that brought them to decree that they are an atheist.
Co-founder Amanda Brown put together a five-minute video that’s being circulated around YouTube speaking about why she is an atheist and encouraging others to speak out as well.
It’s a similar ideal to that of famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who started the ‘Out Campaign’ a few years ago. Dawkins created the movement with the exact same thought in mind:
“The Out Campaign allows individuals to let others know they are not alone. It can also be a nice way of opening a conversation and help to demolish the negative stereotypes of atheists. Let the world know that we are not about to go away and that we are not going to allow those that would condemn us to push us into the shadows”
Atheism is almost like a dirty word in American culture. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in May 2011 asked voters what potential traits would sway them negatively away from a political candidate. 7% said that a political candidate being a woman could sway them away, 33 % said a candidate being gay could push their vote the other way, while 46% said that a candidate who had an extra marital affair wouldn’t get their vote. As for atheists, well a whopping 61% said that that was a negative trait that would keep them from receiving a vote.
The fact is, not believing in god scares the general public because believing in god, any god, is something that’s so widely accepted, that society by default dictates that you have to believe in something to be accepted. It’s not enough that the Bible, Koran, or any other religious texts all disagree on where the world came from or how to get to heaven, that ultimately religious folks all believe in some magical spaceman in the sky – believing in anything rather than nothing is preferential when it comes to creating camaraderie.
The fact is I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in a higher deity, I don’t believe in the Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon or any other religious text. I went to church as a kid and I thought I believed in god the same as everyone else around me. I had an aunt and uncle that took me to church with them and I felt accepted, and I felt like this was what I was supposed to do.
As time went on however, I realized that I never felt a ‘divine presence’ and when I read the Bible cover to cover, it literally scared the hell out of me. How could a god that was supposed to be so loving and forgiving be so selfish as to ask you to literally love him above everything else? How could this same god kill, murder, and have horrible acts done in his name on page after page after page?
I always joke with people that the easiest way to make an atheist is to have them read the Bible, but the reality is that it was a shock of reality for me as much as reading any book about science or even Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. There is however just as much wonder and amazing things in science as there will ever be in a book like the Bible, conversely there’s a lot less rape, murder, and genocide in a science text than a book talking about god.
I do have morals and none of them are based on the Ten Commandments or other religious beliefs that have been passed along. I know I shouldn’t kill a person because it’s simply wrong, not because god told me it was wrong.
With the holiday season just around the corner, I’m sure to have friends ask me about how I’ll celebrate Christmas, and I usually respond with the same thing every year: “It’s a day off from work.” But pushed deeper, I’ll happily explain that I don’t celebrate Christmas the same way that I don’t celebrate Easter or any other religious holiday.
Sure, Christmas is more about gift giving and seeing family now than anything to do with the supposed birth of Christ, but it’s something I’d rather not acknowledge and that’s my choice. The same way I don’t expect all of my friends to read the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, or follow the speeches given by Christopher Hitchens.
The fact is I’m an atheist and that doesn’t make me any better or worse of a person than anybody reading this article. But I refuse to be afraid to talk about why I don’t believe a god exists the same way so many Christians happily thank god when something good goes right in their life.
If that makes me a lightning rod for criticism, so be it. I know I’m not alone and I’m happy to stand up and make the statement.
“On my radio show I just play what I want. With my band I just do what I want. On the talk show I just want to talk about what I want. Isn’t that what the whole idea is, live and uncut.”
– Henry Rollins
A lot of people out there think that it’s not a good idea for these ranting and raving pundit types to have their own TV shows. Well now we’ve got our very own incensed host on TV, Henry Rollins with the aptly named Henry Rollins Show. For those who may not know of Henry, both of you, Rollins cuts an imposing figure in the hardest of rock concerts as a seminal member of Black Flag and founder of Rollins Band. A man covered in as many famous tattoos might seem an unlikely candidate for a talk show until you hear Rollins speak. Whatever comes out of his mouth is the truth. Rollins is an astonishingly well read man who is at just as much at home acting alongside Al Pacino as he is vomiting in a Siberian train bathroom.
INTO: I like to go on adventures. I recently went to the rain forests of Belize. I love scuba diving. I’m a complete nerd for biology. I’m in love with my hammock and Harry Potter. I love food and cooking.
NOT INTO: Roaches, clowns, feet, or dope addicts.
MAKES ME HAPPY: Being with friends and loved ones.
MAKES ME SAD: Rejection.
HOBBIES: Scuba, reading, video games, tokin’.
5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Cell (it sucks), cigarettes (though I’m “quitting”), eyeliner (well a girl’s gotta look good), my hammock, my friends.
VICES: I don’t always think before I speak, which results in me being loud and very blunt. Also I tend to go on rants about the biological correctness of statements – my friends hate it.
I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: Workin’, schoolin’, tokin’, and sleepin’.
