ByronCrawford.com

Now more than ever

The press release for this year's Buy Nothing Day. This could be the best Buy Nothing Day evar, so to speak, in that everybody's broker than mofo. But will anyone actually heed this guy Lasn's message?

BUY NOTHING DAY ORGANIZERS
CONFRONT THE ECONOMIC MELTDOWN HEAD ON

Now in its 17th year, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated every November by environmentalists, social activists and concerned citizens in over 65 countries around the world. Over the years, Buy Nothing Day (followed by Buy Nothing Christmas) has exploded into a global movement, inspiring the world’s citizens to live more simply and buy a whole lot less.

Designed to coincide with Black Friday (which this year falls on Friday, November 28) in the United States, and the unofficial start of the international holiday shopping season (Saturday, November 29), the festival takes many shapes, from relaxed family outings, to free, non-commercial street parties, to politically charged public protests, credit-card cut-ups and pranks and shenanigans of all kinds. Anyone can take part provided they spend a day without spending.

Featured by such media giants as CNN, USA Today, MSNBC, Wired, the BBC, The Age and the CBC, Buy Nothing Day has gained momentum in recent years as the climate crisis has driven people to seek out greener alternatives to unrestrained consumption.

This year, Buy Nothing Day organizers are confronting the economic meltdown head-on – asking citizens, policy makers and pundits to examine our economic crisis.

"If you dig a little past the surface you'll see that this financial meltdown is not about liquidity, toxic derivatives or unregulated markets, it's really about culture," says the co-founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, Kalle Lasn. "It's our culture of excess and meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that's at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in."

Economic meltdown, together with the ecological crisis of climate change could be the beginning of a major global cultural shift — the dawn of a new age: the age of Post-Materialism.

"A simpler, pared-down lifestyle – one in which we're not drowning in debt – may well be the answer to this crisis we're in," says Lasn. "Living within our means will also make us happier and healthier than we’ve been in years."

Free Crystal Gunns

Former pr0n stars should be allowed to work as lunch ladies in elementary schools, right?

I'd definitely say so.

What's the worse that could possibly come of it? It's not like they're gonna be acting in pr0n while they're handing a kid his tray lunch. I wouldn't even necessarily give a shit if they continued their careers in pr0n while they served as lunch ladies, so long as the two don't overlap too much. I wouldn't want any lonely, Star Trek convention-looking guys, like Vinnie Paz, showing up to the school trying to have their copies of Alexis Texas Is Buttwoman signed while my kid's trying to have his lunch.

Otherwise though, I could see how the kids might benefit from being in the presence of such beautiful women. Something tells me that, if I'd had Gianna Michaels feeding me ravioli every day from the ages of 4 to 11, I'd be more motivated to do something with my life besides rolling off of the couch at 11 and spending the rest of the afternoon reading and writing. Like selling poorly put together children's shoes, or trying to defraud foreign governments. Something my parents could be proud of.

I'm actually more concerned with the idea of girls quitting pr0n, unless they just get old. There's nothing worse than when your favorite pr0n star just up and disappears. Then you can hardly appreciate her work without wondering if she's lying dead in a dumpster somewhere. Though if you're like me, you somehow find a way to persevere.

After the jump is a clip I found on, where else, World Star Hip Hop about this woman Louisa Tuck who used to act in pr0n films under the name Crystal Gunns. Now she's a lunchlady in an elementary school. Some of the parents are upset. But the district's not gonna fire her just because she used to be in pr0n, because then she could probably sue. Sweet.

Jedi Mind Tricks: Huge fans of Howard Stern

Literally. Ha!

Check the following quotes from an interview $habooty did with Jedi Mind Tricks' Vinnie Paz.

On whether or not he's met Howard Stern:

Nah man, I wish.

On the quality of the past few Star Wars films:

Terrible - they ruined the legacy, man.

On his favorite fucking thing in the world:

Eric the Midget is my favorite fucking thing in the world and the more people hate him, the more I love it.

On the perks of living in Philadelphia:

No, I haven’t [seen "The Killers of Comedy" yet]. Being in Philly though, and just being out and about, I saw Beetlejuice in Atlantic City at a fight. You see people around, like Bob Levy…love him.

There's actually a lot more to the interview than that. I just thought it was funny that Vinnie Paz has apparently spent his entire life listening to Howard Stern. Hopefully, I didn't just ruin Jedi Mind Tricks for my homegirl Melissa Perfect Calmness.

Checkit: Shabooty Interview Series: Jedi Mind Tricks [shabooty.com]

T-Baby performs "It's So Cold in the D" live on the radio

One of these bullshit Wild Man and the Cooter morning radio shows got T-Baby to come into the studio and perform "It's So Cold in the D" live. But they had her self-edit out all of the curse words.

So for example, "How the fuck are we supposed to keep peace?" becomes "How the hell do we supposed to keep peace?" Weak! Wasn't the whole point of "It's So Cold in the D" that it's so ridonkulously vulgar?

You can tell she doesn't even feel right singing the cleaned up version. She keeps looking around the studio after she substitutes hell for fuck, like, "Why am I even bothering to do this?"

Couldn't they have put her on 7-second delay and hit the bleep button live while she was singing? I guess they didn't want to run the risk of missing a swear - and hence incurring a fee - just for motherfucking T-Baby.

Check the video for yourself after the jump.

Everyone check out my Blip.fm

It's like Twitter plus Last.fm, or, if you don't live in your mom's basement, it's like your own personal radio station where you get to select and comment on all of the songs.

I would say it's the best site evar besides World Star Hip Hop, but they took away the ability to upload your own songs to it the other day. So now it's kinda gay. You can still upload songs to your own site for use on Blip.fm, but how in the fuck am I gonna do some shit like that?

Here's a link to my station:

http://blip.fm/invite/byroncrawford

What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World

World-renowned public intellectual and anti-pr0n activist Noam Chomsky in his first major address since this year's "historic" presidential election.

Parts 2 and 3 after the jump.

President Bush pardoned John Forte

Remember? He was a weed carrier for the Fugees. At the height of that sample any ol' bullshit from the 1980s craze, circa '98-'99, he had a song out that sampled "99 Red Balloons."

Then one day he got caught walking through the airport with some ridonkulous amount of cocaine in a suitcase. He claimed he was just carrying it for somebody. Which would have been believable to me, given his line of work, but I guess the judge wasn't buying it.

Plus, because of those bullshit manditory minimum laws, the judge didn't have any choice but to lock him up for 14 years. People who actually kill people don't go to jail for 14 years. Er, at least not always. It was 2001 when he got locked up, so he's already done half that. Damn.

The New York Times, which referred to John Forte as a backup singer to Carly Simon, didn't say why in the world the president would pardon a random weed carrier.

My guess is that John Forte had been carrying for Carly Simon, and she felt guilty that he had to go away for 14 years just for trying to bring her her coke. So she appealed to President Bush, who was probably a big fan of hers from back in the day. They may have even done coke together back in the '70s.

Don't be surprised if you start seeing a lot of coke dealers getting pardoned in the next few weeks. This could be a hot Christmas.

Checkit: Bush Issues 14 Pardons and Commutes 2 Sentences [New York Times]

Soulja Boy is wack even by southern rap standards

According to Last Week's Poll
If I had to do this poll over again, I wouldn't have included Soulja Boy, if only because including him would only throw off the results. He's arguably as wack as anyone on the list, and everyone hates him right now for his silly YouTube videos and what have you. Of course he was gonna run away with this poll.

When I posted this poll a week ago, some of you fruits even tried to argue that Soulja Boy shouldn't be included, because he doesn't count as a rapper per se. I'm not sure if I'm buying that argument. It strikes me as similar to Soulja Boy's own argument that older rappers shouldn't criticize him, because he's just a kid.

Soulja Boy's 18 now, right? How long is he gonna continue to use this I'm just a kid argument. Wasn't LL Cool J like 18 when he came out with "I'm Bad?" At some point, Soulja Boy's gonna have to admit that he isn't as young as he is retarded.

Last week's poll had to do with which southern rapper is the wackest of them all. Check the results.

Wackest southern rapper?

1. Soulja Boy (49.5%)
2. This is a trick question, right? (35%)
3. Shawty Lo (18.9%)
4. Gucci Mane (14.4%)
5. Lil Boosie (12.9%)
6. Yung Joc (11.7%)
7. Lil Wayne (9.8%)
8. Webbie (8.9%)
9. Young Jeezy (2.0%)
10. Bun B (1.4%)

Total Votes: 660

If you don't count Soulja Boy, and This is a trick question, right?, which I personally took to mean that all of these guys are equally as useless (I would have picked it myself, but you know I had to vote for Bun B, for my own personal amusement), but I'm sure some people picked as a protest against the fact that any of these guys could be considered wack, you see that most of these guys are considered about equally as wack.

Shawty Lo, who I'm altogether unfamiliar with, aside from the fact that he's involved in a beef with T.I., did the best/worst, but he hardly did that much worse than, say, Lil Wayne, who's supposed to be one of the top rappers in the game right. Meanwhile, he's stuck right there in the middle with guys like Webbie, Lil Boosie, and Yung Joc. It's like people couldn't decide which one of these bums they like the least.

Barack Obama: The Puppet on the Left

Watching Barack Obama spend the past few weeks now staffing his administration with the most hawkish members of Congress, people from the Clinton administration, and even some people from the Bush administration, I couldn't help but be reminded of Bill Hicks' classic bit about how, when you're elected president, you're taken into a smoky room and shown a film of the Kennedy assassination from a never before seen angle, suspiciously off the grassy knoll.

Bill Hicks' comedy has had a way of remaining oddly prescient years after the fact. The past eight years in particular, you could listen him talk about President Bush and the Iraq War and think he was talking about the present, despite the fact that he died way the fuck back in 1994. I wonder what he would have thought about America electing its first black-ish president.

After the jump is "American Politics," a video I found on YouTube where some guy has taken audio of Bill Hicks discussing his view of politics in America, and added corresponding images from film, TV commercials and what have you. It's actually kinda brillant, in an extra low budget, half-assed sort of way. Someone should take the entire album, Rant in E-Minor, and give it a similar treatment. If they do, and they make any money from it, I should receive some sort of fee. It's not like Bill needs the money now anyway.

A Tribute to Experience

Another one of these rock hip-hop mixtapes, if that makes any sense. Remember a while back I posted that '90s alternative rock tape.

I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed this one. It makes sense that I would like the guy's music. But you guys know I hardly listen to anything unless it's brand new. Turns out Jimi Hendrix was on that black people trying to play rock music shit way before it was all trendy.

Take that, TV on the Radio!

Only thing is, I'm not sure if I'm gonna dig any deeper into Jimi's catalog. Nullus. I might just continue to crank this. Which is too bad for whoever's caking on Jimi's corpse these days. Hopefully, they don't have the Internets. They might try to put the kibosh on this.

Checkit: DJ.Concept - Jimi Hendrix: A Tribute to Experience [Execute Sounds]