LISTEN TO IT #11: USING THE PINK SIDE OF THE FORCE

During Gay Pride week, we discussed Judas Priest and Rob Halford’s insistence that his sexual orientation should really come as no surprise to anyone.

But then metal has always had kind of a mixed message about these things.

Except for Nanowar of Steel, an Italian metal band that at least claims to to be 100% gay.

It’s hard to know how serious they are, particularly since (1) their lyrics are more focused on metal than gayness, and (2) they’re a borderline Manowar parody band (which may or may not explain why they’ve modified their name from Nanowar to Nanowar of Steel).

Either way, they’re actually quite good (provided you like 80s metal) and also quite funny (provided you find bands that take The Metal too seriously unintentionally hilarious).

And they have a new album coming out soon. Here’s the single, in which they ride tricycles of steel, hunt poseurs and take credit for lots of things. 

Taller than Mario Bros,

This is dF

HAINAN: THE SIGNS

One of the highlights of any trip to mainland China is humorous English signs translated literally and unedited with free software, which I love not because I think people who can’t write English correctly are funny, but because these signs are genius be-bop poetry no native English speaker could ever think up.



They’re all pretty self-explanatory, though it’s worth mentioning that the fifth pic is supposed to be an "exit" sign, and the last pic is from the propaganda section of the Hualong Coffee Factory entrance. The guy on the right is Deng Xiaoping, who liked himself a cup of joe whilst inventing Socialism With Chinese Characteristics.

The coffee factory itself was interesting in that – like a coconut factory we saw earlier in the trip – it was a front for a huge store selling coconut and coffee products, with the aisles designed as a giant maze so that you had to walk past every available product to get to the exit, with no shortcuts possible, and plenty of sampling stations along the way. There was a ruthless kind of cleverness to it.

Up next: the streets!

Give me a sign,

This is dF

HEY YOU KIDS! FREE LEMONADE IS UN-AMERICAN! I'M TELLING YR PARENTS!

ITEM [via nebris ]: Financial guru Terry Savage comes across three little girls giving away lemonade for free – and goes ballistic on them for promoting Socialism.

No wonder America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy. We all act as if the "lemonade" or benefits we're "giving away" is free.

And so the voters demand more -- more subsidies for mortgages, more bailouts, more loan modification and longer periods of unemployment benefits.

[snip]

If we can't teach our kids the basics of running a lemonade stand, how can we ever teach Congress the basics of economics?

Or maybe it's the other way around: The kids are learning from the society around them. No one has ever taught them there's no free lunch -- and all they see is "free," not the result of hard work, and saving, and scrimping.

If that's what America's children think -- that there's a free lunch waiting -- then our country has larger problems ahead. The Declaration of Independence promised "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It didn't promise anything free.

Of course, it’s easy to pick on little kids and lecture them on fiscal responsibility and the moral virtues of capitalism and free trade – things that they arguably don’t need to learn until they’re at least in middle school – so if I may take a liberty and speak on behalf of the lemonade girls:

O lighten up, you killjoy.

The Declaration of Independence may not promise a free lunch, but it doesn’t say yr obligated to put a price tag on every single thing under the sun, either. There is such a thing as doing things for fun, and giving things to people without expecting anything in return. And, while we're blathering about capitalism, there is such a thing as a business model that involves giving away free products (companies like Skype comes to mind) to the point that the entire concept of "free" in the economic world is changing radically. (You'd think someone who gives financial advice for a living would know that, especially one that quotes Acts 20:35 on her own web site).

If yr going to tell kids that it's bad to give away stuff for free, then you might as well teach them that it’s wrong to buy someone a Christmas present if they didn’t get you anything, that it’s okay to help the less fortunate as long as they pay you for yr charity (either via cash or services like yardwork, car wash, sex, etc), that donating yr clothes to the Salvation Army is a big fat waste of time and that there’s no point in taking up a hobby unless someone’s paying you to do so. Because it's the same logic.

On the bright side, instead of growing up to become welfare mothers expecting a free lunch, they'll grow up to become politicians.

Christ. Leave it to a grownup to take the fun out of everything by projecting their own political hangups on little kids who usually don’t do things for the same reasons that adults do them.

But then I can say that, because I did the same thing once.

TRUE STORY: I set up a Kool-Aid stand at the end of the driveway. And I didn’t intend to charge any money at all. Why? Because I was afraid that if I asked for money, no one would want my Kool-Aid. I was doing it because I thought it would be fun to play Kool-Aid Stand, and since I was only playing, it seemed wrong for people to give me real money.

I was eight years old.

If some strange woman in a car had given me a lecture on economics and entrepreneurship I’d have run off in terror, locked myself in my room and sworn off commerce for life.

That said, I did manage to confuse quite a few adults who tried to pay me. They had a hard time believing I didn’t want any money. But they didn’t make a federal case out of it.

But we didn’t have blogs in those days, either. 

Stone free,

This is dF