Nutrition consultant & educator Karen Hanrahan has kept a plain McDonald’s hamburger from 1996 without doing anything in particular to preserve it and it is in nearly the exact same shape as when it was sold 12 years ago:
That’s 1996 on the left, 2008 on the right.
She writes, “Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike - this is a chemical food. There is absolutely no nutrition here. Not one ounce of food value… McDonalds fills an empty space in your belly. It does nothing to nourish the cell, it is not a nutritious food.”
When I reference Urban Hiking, what I’m thinking of in my mind is occasions where I’ve walked long distances through unfamiliar areas to reach a far-off destination (say, across a city) without ever having felt a sense of being lost but instead retaining a sense of exploration and enough focus to be charting the previously unfamiliar territory between my position and my desired destination. Part of my ability to do this is a keen sense for cardinal points, but honestly they sell that in stores and it fits in your pocket.
Here is an example from Aug 2, 2006 when I decided to walk home after a windy thunderstorm from Bloor downtown to Northern Etobicoke just using continuous course correction based on an awareness of directions and always choosing the path less familiar when presented with a choice.
Urban Hiking is fun, educational and exploration-based but has some more practical direct applications than the modern sport of Urban Exploration in places like warehouses (which is wicked) and storm drains (which seems to me like an unpleasant place to spend your time).
Urban Hiking is about assessing the often unfamiliar immediate environment for information (paths/potential paths) while remaining anchored in the broader geography.
With cardinal points, a sense of adventure and the ability to evaluate your surroundings for opportunities on the fly, it becomes irrelevant if you are unaquainted with your immediate location. You can avoid ever being lost yet still be constantly getting aquainted and discovering areas and experiences.
By retaining a conscious and lucid mind about your surroundings you can master their layout and choose routes through areas that avoid pollution (proximity to busy roadways), potential crime or physical obstacles. This allows you to choose your experiences-en-route as being as scenic or shortcut-quick as you desire.
I found out about the exhibit (and that it was by Banksy, as it exists anonymously and is staffed by randoms) from Wooster Collective, whose RSS feed I really need to stay up on because I just missed them speaking in Toronto by a day. I’m really glad they were careful about spoilers and left out some of my favourite things, like the leopard. (The exhibit is closed now.)
Many people who lined up did so only because they were walking down the rather busy street it was on and saw a line of people waiting to get into what appeared to be a pet store with a leopard in the window. I heard a lot of “Uh, I think it’s an art thing?”
Some things you had to see online though, like the record of the view from the mother CCTV camera’s lens:
Unlike his first North American exhibit in LA where Banksy painted an elephant to match a magenta-and-gold wallpaper print, officially decreed illegally animal abuse, much of this exhibit had strong anti-animal exploitation themes. Banksy not only said that this was a concious flip, but that much of the money from the elephant exhibit went into funding this one.
A woman outside was handing out Go Veg For Thanksgiving pamphlets but I rejected them because I’m already vegan, I already have good Thanksgiving recipes, and our Thanksgiving had already passed anyway. I don’t think she was officially associated with the exhibit, just using the opportunity.
So, I recently took a trip to New York City, leaving from and returning to Toronto via Megabus, a company that seems to mostly rent Coach Canada / Coach USA’s buses out and drive them themselves.
Our first driver was very conscientious and genial, and counted heads to make sure everyone was present after a stop. When we got to Buffalo, the driver switched. Nothing much happened for most of the trip, and after the Buffalo Airport stop we were down to 5 passengers bound for NYC.
I was sleeping in the back through part of New York state and awoke to find a woman lying injured in the aisle of 5-passenger bus and moaning / calling out for help saying her shoulder hurt and she couldn’t get up. She had apparently fallen, and the driver wasn’t pulling over or doing anything to respond to the situation, he just kept speeding down the highway.
Even with all the passengers on the bus standing up and yelling at him variations of “Stop! Stop the bus! Someone’s hurt! Pull over! Someone is injured! Don’t you have policies to follow? What is wrong with you, why are you not stopping? Why are you still speeding down the highway when a woman is injured back here and needs a hospital?” and so on, he continued to speed and not respond.
The bus continued down the road for ten to twenty minutes (in traffic and at or above the speed limit) with the woman lying, moaning in pain on the ground. One passenger called the bus company and the only thing that came of the conversation was him yelling “Don’t tell me he has it under control! He doesn’t have anything under control, he’s speeding down the road!”
The driver finally pulled over in Hackensack, New Jersey after some conversation in Spanish over his radio, and he asks for everyone’s information while the passengers use their own phones to call an ambulance and contact the woman’s local relative. He wrote down my name incorrectly even though I showed him my ID and explained which was my middle and which was my last name.
Volunteer college kid paramedics wearing track pants (one yellow with a robot bursting out of his rear) arrived to try to awkwardly lift the woman and load her into an ambulance. Apparently this is what happens in the states. The woman said that she had a checkered suitcase under the bus and “it” was loaded into the ambulance with her.
When we arrived in NYC, the only suitcase left was not our solid black one but a checkered (houndstooth) one with a pink ribbon tied around it. It then took the whole of the next 24 hours to deal with tracking down the hospital she went to, trying to explain to the staff there that they might need to remove it, trying to track down the relative the woman was going to visit, and trying to get the bus company to do anything at all to assist with this. What they did was misinform the woman’s relative, claiming that we had their bag with us.
We eventually had to make our way through an unfamiliar city at our own expense to locate the home of the injured woman’s relative and retrieve our bag that she had luckily taken on to NYC and not left in New Jersey. Luckily, they were some of the nicest people we interacted with in the States. We found out then that the woman had broken her shoulder.
Then, on the way back, we were given the wrong bus departure information on our itinerary and missed our bus. We ended up having to sleep for 11 hours on the floor of the subway level of the Port Authority bus terminal with random riders and homeless people and then as we waited for our Toronto-via-Buffalo bus at gate 309 as instructed, the driver called out “Buffalo” without mentioning Toronto at gate 310 and had I not gone and asked we would’ve been stuck there for another span of hours, playing Fuzzle and watching one-footed pigeons hobble around and fly laps inside.
The feed refreshed at a faster rate than that, this was just the screenshots I could manually snag.
As of right now, the camera is still up (larger version). It’s weird that I don’t even know the country but I was able to watch someone feeding birds live over the internet.
This is an essay on post-irony that I wrote, with my peers as intended audience, in November of 2005. I was just rereading old stuff and decided to repost it since the link to the oldest archive is now gone. This predates this blog and most of what I’ve observed/understood/thought/said about post-irony, so deal with that. I may have made a few very slight changes to update it.
November 14, 2005
keep quips quiet no dissent unless commodified irony’s
Chris Orbz - [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
im getting really sick of irony
everything is a joke to everyone
including everyone else dying and themselves dying
they dismiss everything with a wisecrack with no humour value and immense horror value, and then everyone laughs and waits for the next joke
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
i think this is the point we’ve gotten to yes
a tv show
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
yeah
like i was in the king david at york today and heard half a conversation
guy: how unhealthy?
girl: pretty unhealthy
guy: compared to diet pepsi
girl: okay, not THAT unhealthy
guy: jeez, that sure doesn’t make me feel good about the diet pepsi. but i got a bottle the size of the ones in the machines for a dollar, so at least im getting a discount in exchange for my health, hahahahaha
i wanted to smack him and yell don’t you see how moronic that is? are you really that fucking stupid?
and that’s everyone’s reaction to everything
i love when people use the ‘clever’ retort of ‘well, everything gives you cancer’
i’ve gotta say i think television has outdone the nuclear bomb as the worst invention of all time
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
is it the invention itself, or the way it’s used
because the nuclear bomb can only be used for mass destruction
television could have been used for anything
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
i dont buy this crap about tv being potentially good
i guess it could’ve been used for education
but i dont know about that
a computer does everything good a tv could much better
tv is continuous and one-way
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
not anymore with rogers digital cable
now you own your tv
and you can bring it on to the subway and stuff
and in your car
i think not all irony is a negative thing
although maybe it goes beyond irony what i’m thinking of
i guess it’s a positive thing if it provokes positive change
not just tells people EVERYTHING’S FUCKED!
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
it doesnt do that any more though
people find it satisfying in itself
they go huhuhuhuhuh
and they’re done
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
sort of the fact that they know it satisfies i guess
makes people think they’re on the winning side because they get it
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
liking supersize me while having the mcdeals memorized
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
yah that happens a lot
and now mcdonalds is putting health information on the boxes
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
ha ha ha look my lungs look like this picture
im gonna die ha ha hacking cough
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
do you believe that maybe for every 100 people who do see it even a few of them change?
because like Will quit cigarettes because of that sort of thing
and however innaffective it might be if it gets to some people it might be worthwhile. The same way as the negative is true.
For example like sprite releases an ad right and everyone talks about how crappy and gimicky the product is, and they feel they win because they haven’t bought into it. But this is missing the point of the ad. Because that one time or those one or two times that you do buy it is directly because of the ad because you now recognize the brand.
but you think you’ve won because you’re conscious of it
Chris Orbz ~ [Insert cleverly self-referencing post-modern statement here] says:
thats on every cigarette package though, that doesnt work for most things
that’s an issue of 100% meme saturation
if 99 cigarette packs say MMMM DELICIOUS and 1 says cancer, no one will notice the cancer one
although the ratio when you’re dealing with issues and things is way beyond that
if you can’t afford to wrap an entire subway station in ads its barely worth it to even try to advertise
that which describes the essence of my being at the moment says:
yah true i suppose
in the past, i’ve already tried to outline the post-irony bit in the following way:
- modernism is writing something clever and subversive on a billboard.
- postmodernism is writing the text “something clever and subversive” on a billboard.
…what’s the next step beyond that?
it’s hard to put clearly into thoughts and words, since what has
developed of postirony is only becoming clear over time, and much of it
has not even developed yet. this is still far from the popular state of
mind at this point. do you still find ‘internet humour’ funny? or are
you one of us who think that maybe there’s only so much stuff that can
be cranked out on automatic, and that it’s getting rather boring?
i no longer find comedic pieces of culture funny - but i find the whole culture unbelievably hilarious… i can barely stand to be in the room when other people are watching television, but i could spend an hour flipping through 5 cropped seconds of everything and wish i had it recorded afterwards.
the stuff online that is intended to be funny, i don’t really find all that funny. but a google image search for any random word can have me rolling on the floor from the results.
i can maybe convey, if not explain, a facet of postirony through art. this won’t be a comprehensive philosophical outline, but perhaps this will help extend one part of your mind into it so that you can begin trying to feel your way around it that way i’m trying to do.
first and foremost, although moving away from the as-weird-as-possible, “weird for weird’s sake” nature of postmodernism must inherently be a move towards some sort of normalcy (alex shakar might not necessarily agree), this can’t simply be a reversion to previous modes of thought. it has to come out of extending postmodernism until you reach the point of breaking away from it significantly enough that it is something classifiable different.
^ i would describe this video as a piece of postirony art (in fact,
i’d apply that to much of the here’s my card records library, such as
bodybreakcore)
it seems postmodern in that it comes off as “weird for the sake of
weird,” but (and maybe this is as much perspective as it is the
subject) to me it isn’t really that. for one thing, i submerged myself
so deeply in postmodernism that this doesn’t even seem weird to me any
more, in the same way that breakcore now just sounds like drums to me.
this uses culture in a way that is both similar to and different
from the typical postmodern approach. the difference being the irony.
when postmodernism uses a piece of culture, it chooses a specific piece
of culture which, placed in a new context, creates a specific message
out of the sum total of the original piece of culture and the new
context. if you aren’t familiar with the original piece of culture, you
won’t “get it.” you are required to be familiar with it in order to
understand and appreciate it properly.
postirony use of culture, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily
require that you be familiar with it in order to appreciate it. in the
case of the get crackin’ video, it is jam-packed with snippets of
culture, however they aren’t quite cultural references. rather than
being specific references with which you must be familiar, they are
simply a collage of late 20th century mainstream culture. the impact
that it manages to pull off isn’t based on the viewer being familiar
with the specific video clips that are used and “getting” the
connection, “getting” the irony of the juxtaposition -
instead, it relies on the viewer having spent their life
being overinundated with the medium of television. not simply
the content, but the perception of the medium through life. those of us
who have at least as many hours of television memory as real-life
memory have minds that are very carefully honed to television, along
with all of its patterns and idiosyncracies. far from being a random
collage of television images, these television images are put together
based on how the specific aesthetics of each will instantly and subconsciously impact the overinundated.
do you see how that is a step beyond postmodernism, as it is based
entirely on being exposed and overexposed and hyperoverexposed to
postmodern culture? rather than using wit and irony to appeal to our
conscious minds, nwodtleM realizes that a lifetime of wit and irony
presented to us in repeated patterns have burned certain responses into
our brains, responses that are highly predictable due to the consistent
homogeny of media presentation and the overwhelming way in which it has
surrounded us our entire lives. he then simply pokes and prods at that
subconscious programming and is able to elicit consistent responses in
his viewers.
that’s why it all goes by so quickly. you’ll probably notice missy
elliott and madonna, and hey is that bruce willis? it doesn’t _matter_
if it’s bruce willis, except that when you see that image you have an
immediate reaction. there’s nothing special about madonna except that
when you see those images of madonna you react in a specific way
subconsciously, contributing to your whole reaction to the whole piece.
that’s why some things can be included for only a single frame -
it doesn’t matter if you see it long enough to know what it is, all you
have to do is see it long enough to see it and the necessary reaction
will be produced.
this video accomplishes two things:
one, it is interesting art in a novel contemporary way.
two, when you think as deeply about it as i do, it speaks volumes about the state of the human being at the turn of millennium.
another, much shorter way i can describe that:
i can’t stand watching any tv show whatsoever,
but i could flip channels all day long and never cease to be amused by four random seconds of everything.
it’s not the content of the subject matter, it’s simply the subject matter itself.
perhaps it’s something like this: “if there’s an explanation, i don’t want to hear it.” i’m sick of the endless whys - can we have some real whats again?
just give me the painting and keep the damn preamble to yourself.
sadly, i’m still postmodern enough to feel the need to overanalyze
and thoroughly explain all of this, to be too self-aware, but i’ve got
my reasons for doing that here and by and large it’s become something i
no longer do. i do prefer to have something accomplish whatever it will
on its own, and leave it at that. talk is cheap (and everything else is
ignored). i could comment deeply on every single advertisement (britney
spears - the perfume) but i realize that if i truly care, it’s time to
move beyond that.
if you’ve gone so far into the deep end of postmodernism that
you’ve reached the bottom and are growing disinterested, or if you’ve
even gone a little further, i hope that those ideas about postirony can
help to draw your mind forward and give you a framework within which to
begin figuring your way around a new headspace… and maybe you’ll reach that point where you can stop framing your whole life as though it takes place within your “headspace”.
the postirony mindset is what comes of having spent your whole life
watching tv, but no longer currently watching it. (that’s kind of a
metonymy for the whole of mainstream, corporate produced “culture.” )
if you’re still able to actually sit and watch tv, you’re not
really there yet. but odds are you’re deep enough that you could be.
try disconnecting from mainstream media for a while - a month, ideally
a few months, a television season would be best. i’ll bet that once
you’ve broken out of the habit of wanting to watch tv in general, you
won’t even be able to watch it. if you find or feel that you need
motivation to or assistance with pulling the plug on your set, i’ll
refer you to www.turnoffyourtv.com
doing this will be a success first in that it’ll help pull you out
of being susceptible to most marketing, which will be a very healthy
move for your subconscious mind. our media culture is like radiation,
and thoughtful exposure to hours of repeated messages will burn them
into your brain just as much as brainless exposure to them would. this
includes self-image, world view, and addiction to and reliance on an
entirely consumption-based lifestyle. they know how to get inside your
head. you can’t outwit them because they’re not relying on outwitting
you in the first place. as well, you will escape the through-a-camera-”wow-this-is-crazy-its-like-a-movie-or-something!” way of seeing life. it will be the crucial first step towards reconnecting with reality and connecting with the future.
Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology.
Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?
To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice when serious discourse dissolves into giggles?
America’s consuming love affair with television…
It serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse – news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion – and turns them into entertainment packages.
i say it’s time for a REAL, contemporary perspective on the issues
we’re faced with. the issues we’re all hyperaware of, some brand new,
some several decades old, ones modernism seriously made an attempt at,
but failed because those kind of straightforward, conventional tactics
may have accomplished something in the 60s, but that stopped being true
in progressive steps. first, it stopped being effective in creating a
solution to the problem at hand, and then second, it stopped being an
effective way of reaching people (due initially to their
disillusionment from failures and defeat, and then due to the whole
brainwashing thing i’m trying to call attention to).
so then people got cynical about that, but the truths still
remained true. unfortunately, people could only be reached through
irony… what amounts to the most successful political pieces as far as
our generation is concerned?
adbusters-style “subversion,” basically parody, wherein a marlboro cowboy may have a flaccid cigarette (the effectiveness can be noted in that health canada even copied that one) or an overhead view of an a.a. meeting is pictured with the chairs arranged to form the outline of a bottle of absolut vodka.
if you’ve picked up an adbusters recently, however, you may have
noticed that they now use real discussion about real history, real
issues, real tactics, and real modern lifestyles.
they’ve moved beyond irony. it’s time you do too.
it’s time to put an end to this mass disconnection from real life, and it must start within each one of us.
every single one of you is among the smartest and most
well-informed beings that have ever lived on this planet.
unfortunately, you were also born into a culture where you’ve been
raised by television, newspapers and advertising, no matter how good
your parents were, and the result is that your phenomenal intelligence,
your record-setting IQ, is diverted to appreciating and
producing creative humour/entertainment while setting aside the most
vital things in the world as “boring.”
it’s time for you to start taking what you know seriously and start
making serious efforts to actually apply that knowledge in everything
that you do.
- Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
- Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
- Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
- New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but
the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.
Anyone in BC, there’s a referendum on May 12th that looks like the best shot of anywhere in the country to transition to a properly proportional system. STV seems as confusing as our MMP in Ontario, but at least you have a cartoon to try to explain it.
We had…….. arguments on Facebook?
(Polls show that elderly landed immigrants do not, in fact, care about your Facebook group.)
Hopefully BC starts something and the rest of Canada can catch up with it.
Phone/PDA? Mobile version!
