r.mutt's blog

7/25/07 ONE KISS CAN LEAD TO ANOTHER woman arrested for kissing cy twombly. gross. 7/21/07 MY BLOODY SECRET SHINE the greatest sarah records band of all time, pt. 2. 7/17/07 THE OTHER NINETY-NINE (POINT NINE NINE) PERCENT so there's this new $15 basketball shoe called the starbury, endorsed by stephon marbury. compared to the basketball stars hawking $100+ shoes, what marbury has done is laudable. i don't think many inner city kids are going to be shot for their starburies. my first impulse was to wonder about labour practices. i mean, nike could conceivably manufacture the same air jordans they currently do, charge $15, and still make a lot of money if they made a big deal about it using grassroots media instead of paying wieden + kennedy tens of millions to market it, if they gave jordan equity instead of tens of millions for his name and likeness, and by cutting out all of the other non-production overhead that, combined with an insane profit motive, makes those shoes so ridiculously expensive. so is the starbury giving back to poor kids on this continent at the expense of poor kids in asia? according to wikipedia, the company that makes these shoes has its production overseen by a third party called the fair labor association. the nation, which claims that the starbury and air jordans are of the same quality and durability, is not so sure about the labour part. what interests me about all of this is its public reception. check out the reader responses to this article. what do you say to these people? because, you know, not all of us are sitting in an ivy league classroom twice a week, talking about exploitative labour issues and transnational capital. i'm currently in one of those classrooms, in a seminar devoted to this very problem of how to make the other 99.99% of people on this continent feel the sense of urgency necessary to mobilise and use its latent power as an enormous population of high level consumers (an arrogant, self-righteous, and presumptuous pedagogical project, i know; but let's suspend the ethics for a moment). and i think i've come to the conclusion that we (or our seminar, at least) have no gift to set anyone right. i, for one, still have no idea what to say and am less sure than ever that i would even want to say it if i did. 7/17/07 SHE WAKES UP EVERY MORNING TO THE SOUND OF SARAH RECORDS ON A COMPILATION TAPE THAT WAS SENT TO HER FROM PARIS '93 entry still forthcoming, as is one i just conceived about the conceptual project of monoculture media conglomerate (a.k.a. "our organization"). in the meantime, the greatest sarah records band of all time, pt. 1. 7/11/07 IN LIEU OF HAVING ANYTHING OF MY OWN TO SHARE my current favourite song in the world: mirah's "while we have the sun." i've been listening to a lot of m.y.t.z. recently and, i have to tell you, i think it's making me emo. in other portland pop news, go to katy's myspace page to hear dear nora's recent cover of the zombies' "this will be our year." it was recorded, so far as i can tell, for curt's wedding. by the way, if you're reading this curt, congratulations. one last thing: jona blogging about the japan leg of mirah and katy's "dancing in the dark" tour. 7/10/07 ET IN ARCADIA ALWAYS mp3 blog update. a real blog entry coming soon. it'll about the dream of '93. here's something to tide you over. r.mutt's diaryland profile tradition and the individual talents' friendster profile monopöle!'s myspace profile your emily dickinson's facebook profile —————blog archives