February 6, 2007
Truesday: Turn On The Magical Shining Light!
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
Not that we need any more reasons to appreciate our fine little piece of Texas Xanadu, but what the hell is up with Boston?
Bostonist, please help me to help myself understand the root cause of this foot-shooting massacre of common, pop culture. I don’t want to rag on the city because it obviously needs some help. But I’m pretty damn tempted, even though the (blatantly hypocritical) irony therein would be almost too much to bear: “we are Austinites from the inner core of the country and our culture is advanced beyond all that you can possibly comprehend with 100% of your brain.” But I won’t say that, because, well, I just can’t spur myself to kick a city while it’s obviously down.
Pointless aside: I drove through Boston once, stopping only to eat at an Applebee’s near/in Cambridge, wondering why the hell the freeway system had no goddamn lane markers.
Word around the campfire is that the sarcastrobots behind Misprint Magazine are already trying to corner the Lite Brite market on Ebay. The mind RACES with possibilities and anticipation! Oh, the litigation!
One thing which can definitely be said is that two million is CHEAP for the kind of publicity this stunt/hoax/act-of-baddassedness has generated. Now, even my father knows who the Mooninites are, since their descent/ascent to terrorist/icon status. If it turns out that the wookie and his Steve Jobs look-a-like, partner-in-pseudo-crime had planned this all along, I will cry a torrent of jealous-joy tears at the sheer momma-slapping majesty of their brilliance. Did they get the attention of the entire Boston market with some busted-looking Radio Shack action? You’re damn right they did. Boston and beyond. Even the (ten, unicorn-barbeque-wealthy) Saudis (those who have electricity AND internet access) are googling “angry cigarette box cartoon” right…. now.
Now.
And… now.
The entire cnn-watching world got ruthlessly finger blasted on that one as the image of an angry Utah with legs, sportin’ the ol’ “sit-n-spin, motherfuckers” got plastered all up and down the interdigitube-o-tron-i-nets.
But beyond the miracles of bloated advertising budgets, the real victory here lies in that for the first time I can fathom, cartoons got some play off a sales method which has always been tapped for far more insidious purposes. Well, I guess those Cartoon Bible Stories have been playing off it for decades, in a tangential sort of way (and maybe less evil, though poorly drawn). But not with such blatant irreverence.
It’s been used to sell razor wire and cluster bombs.
It’s why we sell personal freedom in exchange for a mad-shifty appearance of national security.
It’s the crappy PowerPoint-presentation-of-the-mind used to sell xenophobia, racism, tit-jobs and shitty hair pieces.
It’s the easy-trigger most commonly used to sell little Skip-Through-Wonderland pills for fixing potentially, probably, (and should be) broken dicks.
And now, finally, thanks to years of careful groundwork put into place by numerous financial and political interests, Fear gets tooled-out to sell something much more practical: some fuckin’ Jersey-slappin’, fast-food based ‘toons, man. Boo-yeah, Halliburton: get that facial.
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Mmmm... "the entire Boston Market"
Yes, Boston needs to be insulted for their idiocy, but don't leave out your cousin, Bostinist. They repeated the "bone-headed advertising" line fed to them by the authorities. How hard is it to realize who the true bone-heads are in this situation? It took Bostonist a week to figure it out. Disappointing.
Internets news runs on a week delay.
Two of the the "Hoax Bombs" were unrelated to the Advertising fiasco. At Tufts-University Hospital a bitter ex-employee put two fake pipe bombs in the desks of former bosses, this is most likely the true reason things got out of control in Boston. The Hospital had to be evacuated, including major ER and Trauma centers. There's one article in the Boston Herald about this, no other media source covered this HUGE part of the story.
Internet commentary obviously runs on a week delay too...
hxxp://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/06/suspicious.device.ap/ - It looks like the "wookie" knew that his devices were the hoax devices, even video taping the Bomb Squad. Its one thing if the thing was an accident, but another to let an accident turn into a mess. What a jerk.
It's already chilling how often people drop the t-bomb, more so who gets to call what gets done to them 'terror', and who has to have it called something more telling and objective, such as 'non-lateral warfare'. The ownership of the t-bomb itself testifies that what we consider terrorism is already the result of marketing, more so since most news sources have been defunct for so long, adult cartoons are just as legitimate as other forms of information. If anything, I hope this lifts the veil over the very blurred nexus of psy-ops, terrorism, and marketing.
Everything will change for the better because of this. I can feel it.
"The only thing left we have to fear is fear itself" F.D.R, 1933
"We have met the enemy, and they are us" - Walt Kelley, 1954?
Every year aggressive drivers* kill more American Civilians (12,000+) than all the terrorists, domestic and foreign, have killed since 1900. I actually looked up the figures civilian deaths at the hands of various terrorist(s) including Lynchings. Roughly 7,000.
When I was a kid (11) my family's church in Chattanooga got regular bomb threats and in one case an actual bomb, a "Bombingham"-type device (6 sticks of TNT attached to a wrist-watch timer).
Some times I think the only Americans who know what terrorism means on a daily basis are naturalized or Deep South veterans of the Civil Rights movement.
If a non-fission bomb of any sort went off in a crowded Austin location (10,000+ within a mile radius), the fatalities from people being trampled or run over or other such acts would exceed the fatalities from the actual device.
* insert "aggressive drivers" AND "Insurance Information Institute" into a Google search term box. Be sure to use the quotation marks and all caps for and.
Good point on the marketing originating with Bible cartoons. That book is the source of 95% of all brown-skin paranoia in this country.
My hope is that this fiasco, in concert with others yet to come, will eventually rip the mask off early-21st century's "reign of terror hysteria."