Here’s a little social experiment: Erase your MySpace page. Go ahead, you’re going to have to trust me on this one. And while you’re at it get rid of your Facebook page as well. Right now, I’ll wait. Also delete your LinkedIn profile and take yourself off of Match.com, Friendster, and Classmates.com. Peekyou, Flickr, and Twitter – all gone. Next, walk over to your window, open it up, remove the screen and collect the following items: PS3, XBox, Game Cube, etc. Toss ‘em right out that sucker. Cell phone? iPhone? Google phone? Yup, toss those out the window too. Just for good measure, if you are one of the last few still harboring a landline, might as well detatch that. And finally – this one is going to hurt – haul that television over to the window and let that big guy fly. That’s right, no more cable, no more HBO, no nothing.

DISCLAIMER: RKNet Blog is not responsible for any lost or damaged items resulting from this experiment, or injuries resulting from falling personal items.

So at this point you may be wondering what the purpose of all this is. I assume most of you readers wondered this before you removed your self from all connections between you and your friends, family, and business associates and threw thousands of dollars worth of electronics to the streets below. Well, the reason for this experiment is twofold. First, if I see one more commercial with that smarmy, coy douche bag, Dan Hesse I am going to devote the rest of my life to Durden-esque system-fighting. And two, the everyday life of too many Americans has become so crammed full of distractions that the important things in life are now self-obsessed, masturbatory (side note: “masturbatory” has actually been proven to be the funniest word in the English language, so go ahead and chuckle despite the seriousness of this topic) functions solely aimed at attention whoring or money grubbing.

Certainly one could blame poor parenting for creating generations of fickle minds and self-centeredness, but that’s a whole different conversation with sociological implications I am not currently prepared to address. What I do know however, is that I have watched plenty of television and felt the depraving addiction to lame TV programs. I have participated in social networks and felt the emptiness of wondering what strangers think of me. I have texted people for no reason, drunk dialed, and entertained other desperate attempts at pointless neediness.

“Hey, wait just a second,” you readers may be protesting at this point, “if you have detached yourself from social networks, communications devices and other mind-numbing electronics, what are you doing writing for a blog??” Very good question, dear reader. The unfortunate truth is I cannot do all of these things. (I tried by abandoning television and video games, which was a big step but ultimately trivial when compared to the lot of things I could not remove from my daily life. I also rationalized that ignoring people’s calls was like not having a cell phone, but it’s not.) This is why I need you all to carry out this experiment for me – for all of us.

It is my dream that one day I will be able to disconnect from everyone and from everything. I would urge everyone to at least consider it – if only temporarily, or only just a little. I have even considered moving to places that do not embrace a culture of television, do not have as much accessibility to internet, cable, cell phone towers, etc. Not only is it healthy, but I think it’s the only way to avoid a zombie apocalypse.

In this case I am using the term “zombie apocalypse” to refer to the very real possibility of the world ending at the hands of superficial morons, or as I like to call them, zombies.

There are of course many logical arguments against abandoning such useful devices as telephones, televisions and computers like,

“How am I supposed to communicate with the ones I love?”

“What if something important happens somewhere, I will have no way of knowing.”

“I may be left unprotected during emergencies.”

and other such fit-for-emo-song complaints. Well these are real concerns, but the true pessimist will see the benefit right away. A true realist will come around eventually. And you optimists have fun seeing how many friends you can horde on Facebook while civilization crashes down around you.

My point is that I cut out television from my normal life and felt better immediately – healthier, happier, so on. I also recognize my addiciton to attention through social networks and through cell phones and email, and it makes me feel dirty. I will even go so far as to say that I felt like a more genuine person before I got wrapped up in the tsunami of mass communication that is rapidly forming a global society. Too much staring at screens will drain you physically and obsession over image will drain you mentally, perhaps even change you. That is why I am warning those of you who may share my experiences. Get out now, while you still can.

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Hi friends!

We just added some Google Friend Connect features that will allow you to publicly declare your RKNet fandom. GFC supports login/signup via Google accounts, Yahoo! accounts, OpenID credentials or AIM signin info. Right now you can add RKNet as a favorite site using this feature, link to us via Facebook, Myspace, etc and invite others in your contact list to be friends of the site too (which wouldn’t hurt our feelings any).

The 50th person to become a member through Google Friend Connect is going to get something special. The member sign up is on the home page: randomkitty.net – and there’s also a login/signup mini-box in the upper right portion of the sidebar on the blog home page.

Soon as I figure out what I did wrong before, we’ll use this service to offer more feedback options (starred reviews of articles being the big one), and eventually we might find or build a few custom gadgets for you to play with when you visit.

Also, I just got finished going through my Blockbuster online account and I pulled up my rental history to share with everyone. I listed each movie, when it was rented, and some short notes about each film. If I get ambitious I may start doing the same thing with my physical film (DVD) library. Anybody know of a fast way to catalog stuff like that? Hit up the comments and lay it on me, man.

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Good evening children, I come to you yet again blathering however it’s not complete nonsense, this one actually has some thought behind it that doesn’t involve tearing out the asshole of a pop culture icon (since most of the opening acts nobody knows.) A couple weeks ago I contacted Sir Jeffery Nothing from the masked Ohio metal band Mushroomhead for two purposes — for him to take a small part in my short film, and to do an interview promoting their new DVD Mushroomhead, Vol. 2
due out October 28th. And instead of saying “Ew, no, queer. Hurry up, the wife’s coming home soon,” he said that he would take part. The interview was a concept that came later, I figured since the segment for the film wouldn’t take very long (recorded two shots collectively spanning just under 10 minutes) why not a little bump for something they got coming out. Plus I have my system all worked out where this time I can actually interview him on camera and publish the footage. I had interviewed him about a year and half before at their show in Portland, Maine but I couldn’t extract the footage from the DVD where I burned it. Now I can do it but damn it takes a long time.

So I truck out an hour and a half away from home for day two of the Rock & Shock Festival, a three day event that compiles two things that work together beautifully — balls to the wall metal and pure unadulterated violence. The headlining acts for the second day were Mushroomhead (who got second billing, they were on before the main act) and Gwar. However before they took stage I realized something, opening acts are kinda like sex — in that you start out dry jerking, then next time you do it with lube, then you cum, then head, go through a couple skanks just to grease the wheels further and then finally you’re in a broom closet with Heidi Klum or Margaret Cho because you’ve had about six scotches and can barely operate without causing harm to yourself. The first band was a complete scream band, basically taking heavy double-bass drums and doing a shitty Dr. Claw impersonation to it. Second band was a bit better, still in the vein of screaming surpassing actual music all while the vocalist had a very Vince Neil/Nikki Sixx rip-off kinda hair-do. Let this be a lesson to you kids, an aggressive voice isn’t the focal point when it comes to metal music. Any 14 year-old girl with a vocal box can make that guttural sound no problem, but those who can balance between that and singing, more respect to them than anything.

Skip a band or two later a band called Kingdom of Sorrow takes over which is more or less a super-group featuring a bassist who did a tour with Black Label Society, a guitarist from Type O Negative, and I believe the vocalist from Hatebreed with two other guys. In comparison to the acts before Mushroomhead and Gwar these guys were actually good since they did balance the music well, the vocals were mostly screams but they were coherent and had a range in sounds. Also one thing I tip my hat to about them was the fact that the vocalist had showmanship, interacted with the crowd whereas the prior acts were like, “Fuck it, we only get 30 minutes and you probably won’t remember our names after because we didn’t actually say it.” Now the band that went on before Mushroomhead and after Kingdom of Sorrow, I gotta tell you, FUCKING SUCKED!! Imagine if you will a skinny Hot Topic kid with gauges, skin tight clothing over his skeleton-like body, and nose length hair dancing like a constipated gorilla while screaming high pitched sounds that would make a bat want to slit it’s wings open and attempt to fly through the air with the wind gliding into the wound so as to nose dive into a vat of salt, all of which is considered a blessing than to rather listen to one of Suicide Silence’s “songs.” (Damn, that was verbose.) I had never heard them before then and I don’t intended to listen to them ever again unless I’m getting a full frontal lobotomy without anesthesia, in which case I’ll blast that shit that way it numbs my brain right up. To those of you who liked Suicide Silence, please consult an abortionist immediately for your future hell spawn just to cover yourself.

Half hour after the sonic rapists leave the stage Mushroomhead takes a hold of The Palladium, which from where I was premium. For those who have never been to The Palladium, let me give you a lay of the land. Imagine the store from Empire Records if it was slightly more broken down, featured a bar and was retrofitted as a theater. So it has a very interesting design which given the event seems both juxtaposed and also disturbingly appropriate. If it were being filmed for a DVD I’d almost think that David Fincher was making it since it has quite the similar tones to it’s lighting and architecture. Prior to Mushroomhead taking the stage I went to see them across the street at the DCU center where the other half of the Rock & Shock event took place, with many booths with lovely schwag such as bootleg DVDs (there wasn’t a single DVD that didn’t look like a bootleg), shirts, patches (I picked up a Stark Industries patch, one for S.H.I.E.L.D. and one for Blue Sun which is featured in the realm of Firefly and Serenity), and anything your heart could desire. They were there at 7:00 to do a signing for fans, and hearing about it I jumped right into line and managed to make it back to the venue with time to spare. For things to get autographed I brought a poster I made almost a year or two ago which has the members of the band rotoscoped and they all loved it. One of the singers, Waylon, virtually froze upon seeing it he liked it. If it weren’t for the contacts he was wearing I would’ve thought his eyes went white naturally. Got a couple pictures from the signing, some schwag then cut back to two and half hours later they take charge of the stage.

This is the third time I’ve seen Mushroomhead perform live, first in late October of ’06 at Mark’s Show Place near Manchester, NH, then in February ’07 at The Station in Portland, ME. Both really small venues and both purely great shows. As I told Jeff in our first interview in Portland, they’re a band who can make a closet-sized place like The Station (which it very much was) and make it seem as if the crowd was never-ending. This time it was almost the opposite, while the venue was considerably larger than the previous two it actually felt a whole lot smaller. Maybe due to the mass chaos and six foot males gently gliding near my head toward the stage. Starting off with a heavy hitter “12 Hundred” the audience is immediately whipped into a frenzy as the band creates fire and sweat while they play. Shortly before Jeffery Nothing’s part kicks in he arrives on stage with a new type of make-up that is a hybrid of his long-going outfit known as The Butcher with this Butcher-Devil-Heath Ledger Joker type of deal. And it looked gorgeous. Periodically throughout the show I would watch Jeff virtually transform himself into the character he was on stage, as if he was channeling the presence of Ledger’s Joker through him. As I said, it was pure serenity. And with the benefits of a larger venue come little games like stage diving and moshing, both which took place from the crowd and members of the band. They did a couple songs I’ve never heard them play live such as “Xeroxed”  and their cover of “When Doves Cry” by Prince. Closing out with “Solitaire Unraveling” the show was an overall powerhouse as expected. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Gwar (probably good because from my understanding everyone in the crowd got spewed with movie blood and fake semen. Yummy.) After I got out me and my co-conspirator Some Guy Named Al trekked over to the bus area, interviewed Jeff and filmed his segment for my short film. The events that unfolded from the interview follow in the video below. The events from the film will come later. Enjoy, and until next time, I’m Sketch E Whiteface reminding you to control the overpopulation, kick a skater in the balls.

=Sketch/Ed

Mushroomhead signing at the DCU Center

Mushroomhead autographing my self-made poster. They loved it.

Screen capture from my interview with Jeffery Nothing. There are several moments like this. Not sure what we were looking at.

Jeffery Nothing in a promo pic for the upcoming short "This Side Up: Omerganite."

PART I
PART II

MISC LINKS

• Mushroomhead, Vol. 2
• Mushroomhead Official Site
• No Wear Clothes
• Mushroomhead MySpace
• Jeffery Nothing MySpace
• Filthy Figures MySpace
• This Side Up Entertainment MySpace

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A short film about a young man who likes to draw. In the quivery, rich, hand-drawn art I see shades of Bill Plympton and Don Hertzfeldt, and Gerald Scarfe.

Yet the twin animators, Joy and Noelle, do exude a lot of unique character. The music fits like a well-oiled glove, and the voices are at once genuine and caricature of their intended characters.

If you enjoy this dilly of a pickle, and also maintain (for whatever reason) a MySpace account, I recommend popping by their MySpace Video spot and let them know how much you enjoyed it!

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I couldn’t tell you why but I take such a perverse amount of pleasure in the Xs that keep cropping up in place of where my actual “friends” used to be. It’s almost enough to let this account sit here until this site officially implodes in on itself. Unfortunately it’s become such a haven for melodramatic teenagers (Gaia without the cute avatars?), that it is highly unlikely it will ever go away. While it is true some people do seem to use this for what could be claimed is its “original purpose”, based on my experience I think the vast majority are composed of about five types.

1 – Whores – This is a very broad category. This includes spam accounts to generate pay-per-click revenue for any number of ridiculous products, as well as people whose extreme attention seeking behavior earn them the more generic label of Ho. Just to clarify, this category includes:
~ jailbait who put up pictures of themselves in their underwear
~ “scene kids” nee “emo kids”
~ businesses who put up some manner of profile front (I’m looking at you Carlo Rossi),
~ And of course, actual whores and/or sluts (one expects cash and advertises as such, the other just makes you pay for everything then dumps you), etc.

2 – Drama Students – While I applaud the philosophy of “never stop learning”, this does not apply to the kind of overly melodramatic and destructive behavior that one is likely to pick up during the Junior High and High School years of one’s life. Quite frankly I never wanted to use the internet to find out who hates who and why, and it’s largely because I usually don’t give a flying fuck. I disrespect drama in all forms, but internet drama… Stupid to the nth degree. Whatever happened to the good old fist fight? The screaming match in public? People are getting awfully passive aggressive. I blame all that “self-esteem” crap they taught us when we were all little.

3 – Angst (omigod awesome link lol)- It comes from all sides. I’m guilty of a bit myself. It’s that bizzare ritual of self-deprication in public, seeking sympathy, understanding, and/or open communication from any source even if it includes a bunch of people you don’t really like all that much. Angst, drama, and whoring are usually daisy chained together 4lyfe, but this gets its own category because there are career angst-and-woe types out there who absolutely must insist that they are miserable (or perhaps really are miserable) at all times, in the most public ways possible. How many people really give half a thought to you? Probably not as many as you would hope. Learn to bottle and die early of heart disease, if it was good enough for your grandparents and great-grandparents, it’s good enough for you. (Then give me all your meds, maybe there will be something good in that pile of rubbish doctors prescribe for behavioral modification.)

4 – Fledgling Media Breakouts – Before the recent rash of whores through my approval box, the only time I would bother to check this thing is when some manner of small or local band wanted me to rally to their flag. Sure thing guys, more power to you I guess. Someday I might even stop being such a workaholic and find the time to go catch a show. Who knows?

5 – /B/tards and Related – These people of indeterminiate race, religion, quanitity, and quality want you to be a retard who will fill in your password at the drop of a hat, without paying attention as to whether or not you really are still on the myspace servers. Then they’re going to take your brilliantly crafted profile and probably replace it with something involving memes, cuss words, and/or penises. Anonymous is legion, and they really don’t give a shit about you or your friends, so if defiling your profile is going to be funny to anybody, it will be done if you’re stupid enough to give up your information blindly. Quite frankly if you can’t be bothered to monitor your login information, you deserve it. (Besides, I think it’s kind of funny, too. …desu)

I hope I have made both my disgust and my amusement with this Borg-like hive of ridiculousness that is myspace. Please do let me know if I’ve forgotten any key points.

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I was poking around in my google mail, when the news crawl, ticker, whatever you want to call it, came across with the blurb mentioned here. It sounded relatively interesting, so I clicked. Go ahead, check it out. I’ll wait.

http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/forbesonfilm/ve_fof111706?partner=rss

As those of you who followed that link can see, I sat through no less than a minute and a half of advertising and financial news data that had absolutely nothing to do with the article I was supposed to be seeing. For those of you who didn’t visit that link, allow me to provide a breakdown.

First 10 seconds: Summary of upcoming content. No mention of the article shown in the above link.
Next 30 seconds: Samsung commercial.
Next 100 seconds: Various financial news, again, no mention of the linked article.
Next 30 seconds: The EXACT SAME Samsung ad.
Next 20 seconds: Another ad.

Then and only they did get they get to the “point” i.e. the piece about Jack Black. It was apparently about the upcoming Tenacious D movie, but by the time I got to that point, I was so irritated by the barrage of un-asked for information I no longer had any interest in the information that actually related to the link that brought me there.

Color me stupid, but I was under the impression that have the attraction to internet media had to do with the lack of bullshit and filler one typically associates with the more “traditional” forms of media. Television, for example, is stuck with static streaming, and basically have to bend the way their revenue source wants them to bend. Internet content is a bit more fluid in nature. They could rip that down, promote it, or move it however they see fit at any time. I could understand running an ad before the main content, and even another one after, but this was ridiculous.

To get people to read this article here, for example, I wouldn’t draw people in using links for Viagra or casinos, feed them this article, then say “oh by the way, Viagra is great if you’re at a casino”. That would be a shitty thing to do. There’s a lot of internet, and not all that much time. Incidentally, based off of this ill behavior on the part of Forbes, I’m half-tempted to go marketing this article with Viagra and casinos, since I’ve now mentioned them. Or maybe a slightly less competative term, like maybe “emo” or “pony midget porn”.

Hey, why not? If the big dogs can use deceptive content presentation and linking tactics to get people to watch their advertising, why can’t I? Afterall, the promise of relevant content is what makes MySpace so popular, isn’t it? “Hey look my friend from high school, hey look, cursors and diplomas and lots of people to date through x service… wait, where’s that friend of mine again?”
Time to sign me up for some contextual advertising… post haste. Jerks.

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Go here: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 pick five quotes you like a whole lot, and post them.
Forcing the spread of a trend/meme/whatnot is sooooo myspace. pfft.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967), ‘But the One on the Right,’ in New Yorker, 1929

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892), “Song of Myself”

I felt like poisoning a monk. Umberto Eco (1932 – ), on why he wrote the novel “The Name of the Rose.”

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back. Arthur Rubinstein (1886 – 1982)

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. Frank Lloyd Wright (1869 – 1959)

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I will be the first to admit that I have been off the deep end lately. So I was not actually thinking when, earlier today, I pulled any and all notes of interest or personal information off of my profile page. However, upon further consideration I have come to a solid reason as to why it’s a good idea to leave it blank.

That reason is, I prefer not to be yet another willing whore to statistical marketing. Every bit of information that is input here in terms of what one is interested in, what category of things one clings to, the type of profiles one is linked to, is all juicy advertising feedback that you just willingly forked over. I never had a particular issue with standardized testing when I was in grade school (remember that stuff?) with the strong exception of one part: the personal data part. That being all the requested statistical data one was “strongly encouraged” to fill out prior to taking the test. I always had a problem with this procedure. “Why,” I thought to myself in my youth, “do they need to know if i’m white or asian, male or female, if this is a standardized test? It should be based on standards of education, not standards of human types, right?” Well, of course not, how can we continue to compartmentalize people by gender, race and religion in this country unless we do so via proper education and of course proper marketing? There are disadvantages to be had within a free, democratic, capitalist environment.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of this new wave of contextual advertising sites and blogs and the like. Hell, it’s very likely that it will make me some money as well, in which case I suppose that will make me some kind of statistical whore master, but I’d much rather be the master of this situation than the slave.

I am aware that every single day that goes by, I need things. Things to get my job done, things to stay alive, things because I want things. That isn’t slated to change any time in the near future. This site network is so bloated with advertising that I think it’s safe to say I’ve seen over-fed ticks that were more attractive. A very large percentage of this advertising is absolutely nothing that I want, need, or could be persuaded to buy. The beauty of the internet should be finding what you want, and need, faster than just having a bundle of Madison Avenue folks decide after months of grueling testing what you might want based on the reactions of a handful of people who are presumably just like you. How many times do you not give a shit what commercials are playing on TV? Unless you like making fun of them, my money is on a lot of the time.

And poor The Internet. It was once a paragon of searchable, on-demand information. Now with the advent of dummy sites, multiple sites with marginal differences, splogs, spam, and onmouseOver advertising media (fucking smilies can fuck off), how is it any different from from any of the other boxes that talk at us all day? Radio, papers, magazines, tv, you know, “traditional” media.
Anybody remember the old cartoons where the protagonist was trying to avoid something? Eating, or sleeping or killing some canary? All they would see everywhere would be signs for food, or rest, or roast chicken or something. And it would become a blur of neon signs until they could think of absolutely NOTHING besides that which they wanted to avoid. Traditional media (including billboards and shopfronts) pretty much innundates us with this kind of constant exposure conditioning towards consumption of goods and services. (When they aren’t taking a cue from our lovely government and using the fear tactic.)

This is the part where I get back to the idea at hand. Remember the concept of a searchable, on-demand, useful source of information…what was it called again? The Internet, right. Except for the part where we’re going to have to wait for Internet 2: Because We Fucked it Up Royal in Part One! Just like government, and any actual market for any goods or services, the end product is controlled by those allowed to be in control. In the case of the internet, control of the most visible sites is being left to the same type of people who convince you that Budweiser isn’t canned old people urine every year during the Super Bowl. This, I believe, falls under the category of “Just Fucking Lame”.

Myspace is a really convenient way for all types of marketers to mine for interest-related data on a very large group of people without having to pay for it or talk to anybody. I hate to pay for things, and I hate talking to people a little more every day, so I understand the allure here. How is anyone going to know that you have goods and services available unless you actually get the word out? The short answer is they won’t. In walks advertising to remedy the situation of woeful product anonymity. Yet there are more respectful ways to advertise on the internet without relying on a series of “personalized” pages that look like some kind of crayon box full of reconstituted dog shit and leet. (Note from the author: My current profile set up is hopefully minimized of these characteristics, however I have never been the most color-savvy web developer.)

I do have faith in search engine marketing, if the power-houses of search keep putting their foot down as much as they can about what sites are and are not authorities on keywords. I have faith in contextual advertising to an extent, although I fear the potential for rampant abuse is going to lead to issues with that as well. I would just like to move away from the constant bump-and-grind of the public media, and I was pretty sure that the internet should be able to provide that for me. Two types of sites seriously bother me: those with little control or direction in their actual visible marketing, those too much control over how interests are categorized and turned against the users, and those that fall under both catagories. As long as those type of sites exist, and are wildly popular, I find it hard to believe that the broadcasting medium of the internet will continue to hold much validity. All forms of media have had their novelty period, heyday, public trial, and ultimately have ended up as mistrustful sources of information. Yes, even the Almighty Internet. The cynicism isn’t too deeply ingrained in regards to the internet yet so I do reserve some hope for virtue over profit margin.

Not MySpace though, MySpace was created for the marketers, by the marketers, and unless you know a way to overthrow a dot-com, that’s what it’s here for and how it will stay.

Recommended Reading for those unimpressed by MySpace: http://www.trentl.com/?name=News&file=article&sid=50

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1. G Is for Googol
2. g is backwards compatible with 802.11b
3. G is coming to your town!
4. G is Out.
5. G is for Gallipoli. Gallipoli is the name of a small town on the Turkish coast.
(The Turks call it Gelibolu.)
6. G is a Backdoor Trojan Horse that will attempt to connect to an IRC server on
port 6667.
7. G – Is individualist anarchism capitalistic?
8. g is properly written in lowercase and italic
9. G is better known as Madonna's limo driver
10. “g” is an acceleration

Oh hawt.

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Am I the only one sick and tired of those chintzy plastic “show your support for X cause” bracelets?

If not, please, share your gripes. If you wish to defend them, please, also share your thoughts.

I find them to be a lousy way to show support for anything. All it says is “Hi! I'm one of those opinionless bandwagon people you see so much of. I'm fairly certain that at least half a cent of my buying this goes towards some cause I have vauge knowledge of, so I'm going to buy it and make people think I am a thoughtful and charitable human being.”

You are not thoughtful or charitable, you are a faker with poor fashion sense. Wake up and smell the factory exahuast. You, the bracelet wearer, appear to me to be a total tool. Have a conversation with me about Charity X, enlighten me as to your basis for support. Point me in the direction of known functional charitable groups to which I can and should lend support. Take your tacky-ass, fake sympathy elsewhere otherwise, you damn poser.

Granted, perhaps my basis for complaint is weak because I rarely participate in charitable activity, but I still have enough dignity and savvy to understand that paying 5$ for an ugly chunk of rubbery plastic – which was probably made in something akin to a sweat shop – isn't going to benefit anybody but those who get paid down the manufacturing chain. Said manufacturing chain benefiting the CEO-types the most. Pretty weak and disgraceful if you ask me. Maybe the originals were of some value, but guess how many knockoffs and fakes there are now? Tons. Screw it. I'm going to give my old clothes to goodwill and try to drive an efficient car and recycle and try my best to be a helpful nice person to as many people as I can. That's honest, that helps, and it doesn't compromise my meager attempts to be classy.

The G – 1
Fake Charity Shit – 0

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