pointdexter

The Secret to US Theogeography

I think I have finally begun to understand the way the US lines up in terms of political parties and/or presidential voting, religious belief/fervor, and how this all maps out geographically.

It's the weather.

Almost makes me reconsider my career choice...

American Gallery of Psychiatric Art -- [ via Philo ]

I wonder if in 2025 the 1990s ads will look as terrifying as the 1960s ads do now.

Hip Hop Around The World.

Polish Hip-Hop Rocks the Homies on the Blok

From today's New York Times:

"They are known as "blokersi" (pronounced bloh-CARE-zhee) for the housing projects or "bloki" that circumscribe their lives. Day after day, they sit outside their cracking concrete towers, drinking vodka and beer, hanging around and looking for ways to make some cash. In winter, they favor the stairwells."

Excellent article. The universality of hip-hop is an amazing thing, not only because it moved from neighborhoods uptown (Harlem and Boogie-Down Bronx) to neighborhoods around the world (see also working-class suburbs in France, Spain) but because it taps into a thousands-year old tradition of oral storytelling and poetry, from the Flood Myths to the Illiad to Grandmaster Flash. Indeed:

"Rhymers like Peja say they don't want to get rich fast, or even get out of the bloki, clinging instead to the life they know and casting themselves in the tradition of Poland's most famous 19th-century poet, Adam Mickiewicz, and the "Mloda Polska," or Young Poland movement that defined the country's national image in the decades before Poland won freedom in 1918.

"If Mickiewicz was alive today, he'd be a good rhymer..." (said a young man quoted in the article.)