Where My Raccoon Dogs At?

It's probably silly of me to point out this and other ethics issues in the mainstream hip-hop community, but I feel like someone has to point a finger back at the finger-pointers once in a while. Which brings me to today's post:

Jay-Z's RocaWear* is made with dog fur.

The Humane Society of the United States tested the "faux fur" and found that it is from raccoon dogs, which may have been skinned alive for their coats (as seen in this WMV).

I'm not against wearing fur or leather per se. But I do think this is more evidence that pop culture's beloved hip-hop moguls are not beyond exploiting third-world production in an effort to glamorize the first-world's ghetto-chic. People look up to you, Jay-Z... and what an example you set for them. Selling dog-fur coats to your people kinda takes the piss out of any otherwise sentimental and poignant lyrics you might have on Kingdom Come, eh Sean Corey Carter? (Or should we call you DogFur Hovito now)?


* WARNING: The Wikipedia entry for RocaWear seems heavily biased and laced with BS.

RIP, RAW

Robert Anton Wilson has gone off the grid for good.

Author of the longest book I ever read cover-to-cover, RAW was a unique individual who quite optimistically tied the worlds of philosophy, religion, folklore, paranoia, conspiracy and counter-culture together with remarkable wit. A self-described "model agnostic", RAW did a lot more of influence than I can begin to detail here... check his Wikipedia entry for more.

From his site:

January 11, 2007

Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.

All Hail Eris!

On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.

(that's it from Bob's bedside at his fnord by the sea)

RAW Memorial February 07
date to be announced

I've gleaned a lot from the works of RAW, and while I'm sad to hear of his passing I'm also glad to know his influential mix of optimism and anger will live on for years and years to come. In fact, my interest in his favorite subjects is renewed with his passing. For those of you who don't know who RAW is, check this video.



Hail Eris, all hail Discordia.

The Elvis Taxon & Taxonomy's Comeback?

Paleontology meets rock and roll: The Elvis Taxon. [via Kottke]

Maybe this is too soon to answer, but is taxonomy making a comeback? The term originally applied only to living organisms, but there are folks who will argue what constitutes or closely mimicks a living organism's behavior (social networks, information, perhaps anything that can be categorized).

Last year, Tortoise named a boxed set after A Lazarus Taxon, now we have the Elvis Taxon. With the increasing attention paid to user experience and information architecture, especially in terms of interactive media, I think we're going to see more references to taxa (plural of taxon) in general.

Two Tips On (Not) Sounding Stupid

Two things that, for some reason, I've heard or read a LOT in the past couple weeks. Two things that are widely over-used and very incorrect. Two things I hope you'll learn to avoid saying, because they make you sound stupid. Two things that make me ignore everything else a speaker has to say, because these popular errors do a lot to remove a speaker's credibility.

1. Trying or giving anything more than 100%. Say this and you not only are a liar, but you've proven that you are terrible at math and not thinking about what you're really saying. Do the math. You can't have more than 100% of anything, because 100% is all of it. It's impossible to give 110%, so don't say that to someone if you want them to have more confidence in your abilities. You might as well come out and say "2+2=17".

2. Saying "it's in our company's / corporation's / brand's DNA". Absolutely not. Companies, corporations and brands do not, nor will they ever, have DNA. Claiming that anything is part of your organization's DNA shows that you don't understand what DNA is, and that you are spewing meaningless gibberish. Do your homework before you ape something that sounds scientific, or you'll look like a fool. What you're talking about are ideas, not genetic information. It's likely that, if you're referring to anything at all, it's a "meme" or "meme-complex". Have some respect for science; try not to butcher it just to feel like you sound important.

Piracy is a business model

Interesting post on Boing Boing, quoting a Disney co-chair Anne Sweeney. While the executive's comments at Mipcom seem clearly spurned by the belief that "content is king", Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow rounds out his post with a moment of clarity to which more studio execs and marketers should subscribe:

Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Well put. I'm inspired to put it this way:
Conversation is king because no one can own it.

(Not even Disney, not even with all the pirate references ... coincidentally made as a Disney pirate movie special edition DVD is made available for pre-order.)

In fact, Sweeney goes on to mention that some consumers want to consume content in a timely fashion so as to not miss out on the proverbial "watercooler moment" - conversation, in not so many words. This doesn't jive with her "content is king" stance. You don't bring content to the watercooler, you bring conversation. Let me give you an example:

This week, had I a watercooler conversation, it would have been about how the streaming online player for selected ABC programs doesn't work very well, and how the Disney-owned network was unable to stream more than twenty seconds of LOST without grinding to a halt for minutes at a time (an unpleasant, frustrating user experience). I'd then turn the conversation to the feeling I got, saying "just go buy it at iTunes and be done with this", and how I thought I'd just been teased into buying content I was supposed to have gotten for free. I'd managed to see a choppy two minutes of the episode, and now I wanted to see the rest. This is where I'd let the conversation go parenthetical...

(What do you do when the brand new, free streaming player isn't working? You can pay two dollars for the same content - plus DRM - at iTunes, or you could just watch for the content on a free P2P network, where you can get the content that will keep you in tomorrow's conversations.)

I would have concluded the conversation with mention of the BitTorrent options for freely acquiring the content on which our conversations thrive.

Does that make me lazy? Possibly.

I thought I was edgy in pointing out that at least one lyric changed between the leaked version of Crazy and the album version ("possibly" was originally "probably" in the refrain -- I'll work on getting some mp3s up here to compare). I am now somewhat humbled, because I am so late on this juicy tidbit of trivia:

Crazy is primarily (heavily) based on a song from an Italian movie soundtrack called "Nel Cimitero Di Tucson" [source: Music For Kids Who Can't Read Good].

Aside from the fact that it has been generally over-played for the past several months, the song seems much less crazy to me now.

Common, change your name to Commercial already.

When he still went by Common Sense, I saw this Columbia College drop-out hanging with his buddies at a Wendy's in a suburb of Chicago - that's right, a suburb, not Chicago proper.

A few years later, I watched him "perform" at NIU. It was so uneventful, people in the far-from-sold-out crowd were sitting down on the floor and some even nodding off to sleep.

Fast-forward a few more years and he's done away with all Sense, and openly fancies himself one of those psuedo-poetic, racially charged "issue" rappers. By no coincidence, he also started doing a lot more commercials and fashion spreads. He still claimed to be "representing" Chi Town through all this.

Common, come on. How can you possibly "represent" Chicago when you, like Kanye, don't even live there anymore? Maybe you need a hook to sell your records? Maybe geography isn't your strong suit.

Let's talk about social issues, since you claim that's what you're all about. Did you ever stop to think that the empty calories in Coca-Cola are helping to deteriorate the health of "your people" and contribute to the obesity epidemic? Your role as a shill to promote cola is in direct conflict with the stated mission of your children's charity.

Let's address the real issue: you going commercial. With this new Gap deal you've got, not only are you now potentially mid-shark jump, but you're also wearing out your own moniker. I think you should just change your name to Commercial and spare us all the cognitive dissonance.