the blog quebecois

With all the strife and trouble in the world, it's no small comfort that we all -- men and women; Christian and Muslim; Jew and animist; capitalist and Communist; black and white and brown -- that we can all come together and agree:

that this is the butt-ugliest prom dress ever.

Plenty more where that came from.

the moment that some call eternal that some call insane
now helmets on each head awaiting the first lead
the pageant is named the pencil rain

-- they might be giants

I don't know if it sells pencils, but give Faber-Castell full marks for creativity.

The midnite hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'awl's neighborhood

-- michael jackson

I don't know about you, but I don't plan to answer the door this Halloween. At least not if they've sold a lot of these.

There's still time before Sunday, folks, to outfit your kids in one of The Worst Halloween Costumes of All Time. Spooky stuff.

How many poor kids that got stuck with this one had to hear, "Hey Rubik, how about if I rearrange your face?" This very well may be the least popular costume of all time, 2nd only to the failed Parcheesi costume of 1974.

Via Who Killed Theresa?

he's a victim of his own time
in his vintage suit and tie
he's casualty dressed to the teeth
in the latest genocide

green day

"We are watching the birth of a hybrid man. ... Why not put on a pink-flowered shirt and try out a partner-swapping club?" asked [French marketing and style consultants Nelly Rodi's managing director Pierre Francois] Le Louet, stressing that the study had focused on men aged between 20 and 35.

Sociologists and other experts spent three months analyzing some 150 magazines and books and 146 Internet sites, as well as interviewing a dozen experts from Europe, the United States and China.

The traditional man still exists in China, Le Louet said, and "is not ready to go". But in Europe and the United States, a new species is emerging, apparently unafraid of anything.

"He is looking for a more radical affirmation of who he is, and wants to test out all the barbarity of modern life" including in the sexual domain, said Le Louet . . ."

Methinks about the only "barbarity of modern life" he's going to be testing out in that getup is the business end of a glory hole.

This is so explosive I was tempted to steal it outright. But that would be wrong. Credit must go to the hard-chargin' newshounds who dug it up. Take a bow, boingboing!

Two high school girls in Livermore, California ran a social experiment on preppy retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and mall punk outfitter Hot Topic. Shannon Nichols, 18, is blonde, bubbly, and has perfect grades. So she dressed like a goth and applied for jobs at the stores. Nichols's friend, Sarah Adams, stuck with her preppy look and also sought employment at the shops. From Inside Bay Area:

The most dramatic was how the Abercrombie employees treated Sarah in comparison to how they treated me," Nichols says. "As soon as she walked in, the cashier started talking to her and told her she could meet with the manager."

Adams explained that she had no retail experience, and really no job experience. That didn't matter, she was assured by a young man identifying himself as the store manager. In fact, she didn't even have to fill out a job application, she just needed to come to a group interview being held in the next two weeks.

Nichols experienced a far different response from store employees, who basically made it clear: Don't let the door hit you on your gothic backside on your way out.

Well, duh.

There's been a palace revolt at Autonomous Source! Max and Talia have overthrown their oppressors -- and worse, have figured out how to work the computer!

Oh sure, locking their parents outside in the snow seemed like a good idea at first. After all, they did get to eat all the goldfish they wanted and there was no one to stop them from banging the pots and pans in their kitchen rock band. Plus, they hadn't had to brush their teeth or wash their hands all day. But now Mommy and Daddy were all cold and still. Neither Suzy nor Callie could work the VCR. How were they going to watch their Barney tapes? Not to mention the vast quantities of bloomer pudding accumulating in their pampers. Maybe Operation Get Rid of the 'Rents wasn't such a great idea after all.

Okay, it isn't really Max and Talia. It's from a site called Threadbared, which is a couple of women who put up the covers of dressmaking patterns, knitting guides, etc., and proceed to weave bitchy fun at their expense. You'll be in stitches.

What we wear is a statement about ourselves; about our hopes, our fears; a message to the world. What is this trying to communicate? It is saying, "Beat me up and steal my lunch-money." No jury would convict me.

Taken from this blóg. It's in Portugese, but I get the feeling that these are supposed to be objets d'art rather than everyday clothing. Still.

. . . they're not kidding.

Camouflage fashion by D�sir�e Palmen.

RalphBorland.net:

Suited for Subversion is a project to create a suit that protects the wearer at large-scale street protests. The suit also monitors the wearer's pulse and projects an amplified heartbeat out of a speaker in the chest of the suit.

I designed and fabricated the first prototype of the suit as part of my Masters Degree in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. The project draws on my work as an activist involved in street demonstrations in New York, and is influenced by the work of other activists and demonstrators who wear protective clothing and make creative use of tools and technologies for protest.

Of particular influence are the 'white' or �white overall� tactics of the Ya Basta, WOMBLES, or the Tutti bianche, who wear white protective-wear to protests. Like the Pret a revolter clothing line produced by my friends Las Agencias, and pictured below, centre, my suit fuses white tactics with more playful, carnivalesque, or 'pink' tactics. As much as my suit is armour, it is also disarming; as much provocation as protection.

Suited for Subversion is part of the exhibition SAFE: Design Takes on Risk at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2005/2006.

What the well-dressed denizen of rabble.ca will be wearing in the Spring Protest season. Far be it from me to dissuade them from running around looking like a bunch of sofa-bolsters, though I suspect it'll just encourage the police to perfect their baton-poking techniques.

They should try something like this. Cheaper, offers just as much protection, and perfect for taking in a World Cup game or two after the demo.

well tell me again what you were thinking
when you got that bruise tattoo
forever black and blue
owen

Dude, dude, dude. Having a badly-done tattoo of Pee-wee Herman is not going to get you any props in your local biker (unless it's of the three-wheeled variety) bar .

More flesh-and-ink atrocities here. SFW, mostly.

Make sure you don't miss "Mr. CooL ICE" (Don't worry, you'll know him when you see him.)

I've noticed that some fashion designers really don't seem to like women very much.

Then again, they exhibit real hostility towards men, too.

Child Toilet costume is a very funny kids Halloween costume. A Child toilet costume is also perfect for every potty mouth kid. Use as a modern day Dunce cap. Young boys love this silly Toilet bowl Halloween costume. One size fits most kids size 7-12.

Years later, you'll be paying for a psychiatrist to pry these happy memories out of your shattered mind. I hope they have that on the warning label.

I happened across a fashion-show photo the other day but it was too small and poorly-lit, so I went looking for a better copy. It was from the Fall/Winter show at London Fashion Week, the work of a hot young designer named Gareth Pugh.

Google found a Gareth Pugh, all right, but it turned out to be the name of a company in England (Wales, actually) that specializes in industrial and agricultural pre-fab buildings, such as the winery storage shed at left. This couldn't be the Gareth Pugh, lion of the catwalks from Paris to Milan to New York, could it?

Plugging gamely along, I finally found the show I was looking for. I must apologize for my initial skepticism; surely only the fertile mind of the man who gave us this:

could have conceived of this.

Pictures purportedly of New Jersey teenagers and young adults in a new (and somewhat alarming) subculture which features spiky haircuts and those bottled tans that give your skin the healthy glow of a carrot.

More pix here.

A commenter at BoingBoing, though, points to a trend that's out of Europe:

The origin of this picture is actually probably not NJ, but rather a techno discotheque in Vienna, Austria, called "NACHTSCHICHT" ("nightshift") whose patrons are primarily from working-class backgrounds.

The habit of using ridiculous amounts of tanning lotion - coupled
with regular visits to the solarium ("soli") - is so commonplace here
that you barely spend a day without seeing at least a couple of these
guys on the streets. There are numerous videos and galleries on the web
that provide you with "best-of" compilations of this absurd trend.

The skin hue is referred to as "Prolo-braun" (Proletarian Brown).
Many of these fashion victims refer to themselves as "Krocha", which is
also the name of the style of dance that they like to practice (related
to the europe-wide "jumpstyle" trend). Note that not all Krocha are
Prolo-braun.

Ah, fuggetaboutit.

Holy Taco:

WHY YOU THINK YOU’RE COOL: Dude, this game totally rocks! I love this song! Hell yes! Welcome to the Jungle, baby! You’re gonna diiiiiiiiiiiee!

WHY YOU’RE NOT COOL: Despite what the commercial says, you do not suddenly turn into Slash when you’re playing this video game. You are playing a child-sized guitar that doesn’t even have strings. It has multi-colored buttons and an on/off button. And playing this video game does not mean you can play the guitar now. If I have to hear someone say “I can totally play ‘Anarchy in the UK’” but actually mean “I can totally play ‘Anarchy in the UK’ on Guitar Hero,” I am going to take a pee inside the nearest PS3.

Warning: Language

Even before I clicked the link I knew where these pictures came from: The Style on The Downs competition at the Epsom Derby. First prize was a new Jeep; I'm guessing that these weren't among the finalists.

Best Week Ever:

A model walks the runway at the Thom Browne Spring 2009 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Exit Art on September 9, 2008 in New York City.

All is forgiven.

1970s Swedish dance bands smash the stereotype that nothing good can come of mullet haircuts and matching leisure suits.

Stunning (if somewhat location-specific) "urban camouflage." Warning: Some pictures NSFW, but you can sort-of-plausibly claim that you had no idea there were naked wimmins afoot. Or aboobs.

I never have and never will understand the use of cardboard boxes as a way of displaying the feel of being a robot. Even in old episodes of Star Trek I felt that crappy boxes were used. But at least those boxes were spray painted or something.

I mean I understand that a robot may have some square element to it hence using a box, but when we don’t even decorate the boxes? When we give no feel whatsoever that this is supposed to be a robot we’re dealing with?

Well then you just have a bunch of idiots wearing boxes.

And it's a good thing we don't, because several of these are deserving of the death penalty.

Via The Presurfer