Neko

howdy ! here are some resources that i think are cool/useful/random

  • webmaster links
  • Youtube vids
    • Video Essays -A collection of all my favorite youtube essays (the vids i generally like more are near the top)
    • UNHhhh -All the episodes of UNHhhh in order

  • reading
    • A soft manifesto- By Cortney Cassidy
    • How to Make a Zine -Written by Rona Akbari with illustrations by Somnath Bhatt
    • The History of Gyaru (Three parts)
    • Is it worth the trouble? - By Ralph Ammer

      • How forty-one women—including Dorothy Parker, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lena Horne—were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s “Red Scare.” At the dawn of the Cold War era, forty-one women working in American radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. The ostensible reason: so-called Communist influence. But in truth these women—among them Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne, and Gypsy Rose Lee—were, by nature of their diversity and ambition, a threat to the traditional portrayal of the American family on the airwaves. This book from Goldsmiths Press describes what American radio and television lost when these women were blacklisted, documenting their aspirations and achievements.Through original archival research and access to FBI blacklist documents, The Broadcast 41 details the blacklisted women's attempts in the 1930s and 1940s to depict America as diverse, complicated, and inclusive. The book tells a story about what happens when non-male, non-white perspectives are excluded from media industries, and it imagines what the new medium of television might have looked like had dissenting viewpoints not been eliminated at such a formative moment. The all-white, male-dominated Leave it to Beaver America about which conservative politicians wax nostalgic existed largely because of the forcible silencing of these forty-one women and others like them. For anyone concerned with the ways in which our cultural narrative is constructed, this book offers an urgent reminder of the myths we perpetuate when a select few dominate the airwaves.

      As a practising mortician,Caitlin Doughty has long been fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies. In From Here to Eternity she sets out in search of cultures unburdened by such fears. With curiosity and morbid humour,Doughty introduces us to inspiring death-care innovators,participates in powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in the West and explores new spaces for mourning - including a futuristic glowing-Buddha columbarium in Japan,a candlelit Mexican cemetery,and America's only open-air pyre. In doing so she expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with 'dignity' and reveals unexpected possibilities for our own death

      In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician's knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual,hilarious,and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans.

      Most people want to avoid thinking about death,but Caitlin Doughty--a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre-- took a job at a crematory,turning morbid curiosity into her life's work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters and unforgettable scenes. Caring for dead bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, Caitlin soon becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. She describes how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes) and reveals the strange history of cremation and undertaking, marveling at bizarre and wonderful funeral practices from different cultures. Her eye-opening, candid, and often hilarious story is like going on a journey with your bravest friend to the cemetery at midnight. She demystifies death, leading us behind the black curtain of her unique profession. And she answers questions you didn't know you had- Can you catch a disease from a corpse? How many dead bodies can you fit in a Dodge van? What exactly does a flaming skull look like? Honest and heartfelt,self-deprecating and ironic,Caitlin's engaging style makes this otherwise taboo topic both approachable and engrossing. Now a licensed mortician with an alternative funeral practice, Caitlin argues that our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead).

      The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington,inflated cremation costs,the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves,and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations.

        - if you are to only read one of these books please let it be the "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"!! it's an open converstation within the funeral industry (which i can go on a whole spiel another day) and honestly it brings humanity/ritualism to a overcaptialized and overcommercialized aspect of our lives. Doughty writes like the dead are dead, not products of emotional sidetracks held by the reins of capitalists.