I hate subway ads and love culture jamming. So imagine my delight when I stumbled onto the website Printable Cold Stores and Other Adventures in Geek Graffiti, which provides (what else?) printable cold sores to be applied to the smiling, Photoshopped, “perfect” faces that try to sell you everything from cosmetics to contact lenses to cars during your morning commute.

As the site’s creator explains:

Nowhere in advertising is the gap between natural beauty and manufactured perfection more apparent than on subway posters. As we wait for transportation, we are unwillingly assaulted by larger-than-life representations of supposedly beautiful salespeople. The large scale of these ads and their extremely close proximity to the viewer offer up more than perceived intimacy, however… they give us the chance to see the mechanical flaws designed to correct their physical flaws.

Why don’t we just see them for what they are? They are regular people just like us, they just have a team of retouchers waiting at the ready.

Printable cold sores allow us to take action! Bring these people back down to our level, and tell advertisers that you don’t agree with their message.

The site also notes that tagging subway ads is illegal and that the cold sore creator is “merely presenting a theoretical solution to a real-world problem,” rather than endorsing graffiti. Whatever. It made me laugh.

(Link via Gothamist.)

If anyone’s been to the movies lately, you’ve probably seen the poster or the trailer for Black Snake Moan, the new movie directed by Craig Brewer, best known for Hustle and Flow, which showed us just how hard it is out there for a pimp.

In the trailer for Black Snake Moan Christina Ricci plays a half-naked “nymphomanic” in the poor American deep South, who has just been raped and beaten almost to death. And she seems to spend most of the movie chained to the radiator by a crazed Samuel L. Jackson. But, wait, here’s the kicker: from the music and dialogue in the trailer, I think this movie is supposed to be a comedy.

(more inside…)

Well, whaddya know:

from the Toronto Star:

“T-shirts emblazoned with the words ‘No means have aNOther drink’ are no longer being sold in Bluenotes stores nationwide.

The shirts, a play on the ‘No Means No’ slogan that the Canadian Federation of Students uses in its campaign against date rape, set off a flurry of complaints from anti-violence agencies.

(more inside…)

I thought I was still dreamining on Saturday morning, when my alarm went off during an episode of the CBC’s show GO. The show’s concept was a contest called “Canada Skims Magazines,” a riff on the broadcaster’s Canada Reads literary contest, where celebrity panelists defend books they think the entire country should be reading.

On Saturday, GO invited four panelists to defend the magazine they think the entire country should skim. The lovely Jean Yoon was awesome enough to take Shameless on the show, pitting the mag against the much-more skimmable shopping mag Lou Lou, celeb mag HELLO Canada (defended by funny man Scott Thomson) and a gardening magazine (defended by Olivia Chow!).

Hilarity ensued as contestants had to trash the other mags, read excerpts from the mags to a jazz beat and, one by one, send the losers to the shredder!

It was very exciting to hear Shameless win! We now have the illustrious title of the first-ever winner of Canada Skims. Moments like these make me proud to be a magazine maker. Thanks Jean Yoon!

[This is a great creative arts/radical history workshop course for Asian Youth, run in Toronto by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Gein Wong (who both have been profiled in Shameless!). I participated in their first session, and it was fantastic!]

The Asian Arts Freedom School is a writing/performance and radical Asian history and activism program for Asian/Pacific Islander youth in the Greater Toronto Area. We had our first session this summer and were met with incredible success, to the point of overflow crowds. After a break, we’re back, and will be starting up our next cycle on Tuesday, March 6, 2007.

Where: Freedom School is taking place at the Kapisanan Philippine Arts Centre 167 Augusta Ave in Kensington Market. Kapisanan is just north of Dundas, in between Spadina and Bathurst.

When: We meet from 6:00-8:00 every Tuesday night starting March 6.

What: Workshops are a mix of writing and spoken word, dance, film, music and theatre exercises, rad guest artists, radical API history and activist skills. we end each 12 week cycle by creating a zine and a performance night.

All workshops are FREE, and well have good food and free tokens!

(more inside…)

Back in late January Nicole wrote a post about Hillary Clinton officially announcing her intention to make a bid for 2008 US Presidency. Nicole wisely asked us to watch for how Clinton would be depicted along the road to the race…

Well, in terms of “depictions” I really didn’t forsee this one:

I’m trying to think of something to say here, but I’m at a loss. Please help me out. Seems like it’s “I’m just trying to be funny” week at misogyny central. First “funny” t-shirts and now sexism with your bucket o’chicken.

This just in: Bluenotes is selling a t-shirt for men that says in big letters (excuse the weird formatting):

” NO
MEANS
HAVE
aNOther
DRINK ”

Oh Lord. For the full article, plus photo go here.

At least the Avalon East Coalition Against Violence from Newfoundland is already on this one.

Last week saw the unfortunate passing of Valentine’s Day. I hate Valentine’s Day. People I have dated will say it is because I have a penchant for unsentimentality, that I am unromantic, and that I am a bit of a love party pooper. (Well, the ones who are still bitter would likely say these things.) A few days before the “big” night of the 14th, I went to a yearly literary party (we usually get together at Christmas but the timing didn’t work out this year) and I went around to everyone saying “Happy Heartbreak!” in my most saccharine voice. I was hoping that the boorish literary crowd would indulge my hatred of cheap emotion and bad chocolate. I wanted to joke about heartbreak, loss, and Nina Simone. I was playing the role of V Day’s arch-nemesis.

Instead, everyone looked at me like I was pathetic. I got pep talks, blank looks, and requests for more martinis. (I was playing bartender.)

But I’m not particularly heartbroken at the moment. In fact, I am dating a few different people who rock my world. I have amazing friends. My life is overflowing with love of both the erotic and platonic sorts.

So please don’t attribute my blase attitude about Valentine’s Day to bitter unrequited love. It has more to do with hating throwaway objects and too shiny emotions. And I don’t like sugary treats. I prefer savoury!! In general I hate feeling “forced” to display emotions and depth of feeling. I never hug mascots. Clowns with painted smiles freak me out. (I do like the tragic ones.) I dislike buying gifts for people’s birthdays and/or anniversaries. I resent trotting out the (commercial) love as proof of… caring? commitment? friendship? But at the same time, I’m a deeply caring and sentimental person… I just don’t show it with stock phrases and Hallmark. When I am going to say something special to you, I really mean it. I don’t use words like love lightly. If people do so with me, I get suspicious. Wouldn’t you?

So I think I might have found the right V Day event in Toronto and you should come too! Apparently some local writers are going to read stories about love gone wrong, bad girls, sex soured, scorching heat and a new twist on lust that is guaranteed to leave marks. Sounds purrrrfect.

Not sure why it is happening more than a week after the yuck day, but I’m going to go check it out:

Get Your Lit Out - Heartbreaker
Thurs, Feb 22
Doors open at 7 p.m. - 10 p.m. (it says here “until hearts reach fever pitch”)
Edward Day Gallery
952 Queen St. West (just west of Shaw St., entrance through courtyard).

With cool queer writers Marusya Bociurkiw, Rose Cullis, Tara-Michelle Ziniuk, Julia Gonsalves, Chanelle Gallant, and Lisa Foad.

The promo reads “Heartbreaker is also prepared to break the spell of your winter hibernation. So unwrap yourself from that blanket, roll out of bed, bring your soggy love letters and empty chocolate boxes, and be prepared to get read to!”

See ya there!

Again, thanks to the fabulously informed ladies at Feministing, I am learning about a world outside the safety of my apartment that is causing me to throw things at the computer.

A recent study on “women who claim to be victims” (cough, cough, triple cough) of date rape drugs has revealed that they were really just drunk. And the implication is that because they were drunk “they were asking for it.” Maybe if they didn’t drink so damn much they wouldn’t have been raped? And they just used that date rape drug excuse to cover up the fact that they had an unladylike good time? (Please note dripping sarcasm.)
Well, at least that is how it seems to have been reported by the media…

For optimal anger, read this story from the UK’s Daily Mail, which includes the thoroughly misleading headline “Drug rape myth exposed as study reveals binge drinking is to blame.” Or even better, the subsequent comments that read “Sadly, until some women learn to behave like ladies this will continue to happen” or again, even better, “Vindication at last. Perhaps now society will look upon our women not as the fairer sex but with an equal eye and as much to blame as the men.”

Throwing things yet?

Or how about this headline: Women warned on rape drink risk. “Alcohol campaigners today said that the growing culture of binge drinking among young women left them more vulnerable to serious sexual assault.” So I suppose that means that if I have one too many at the bar and end up being sexually violated, at least I was warned? Is this a shocking misdirection of blame, or what?

Don’t worry, Feministing has managed to set things straight with a few recommended headline changes for confused journalists. How about “Men warned to stop raping drunk women” or even better “Stop getting drunk and raping women, a**hole”