from the 2037 Hammacher Schlemmer Glaven catalog This is the device that instantly turns Soylent Green and other flavorings into a soft-serve treat. The unit combines frozen Soylent Green and any additional Soylent products you can scavenge and instantly churns the ingredients to produce a treat with the texture of frozen yogurt or soft-serve ice […]
Continue readingTag: Consumerism
The Skwib: The Thomas Kincaid Pop-Up Christmas Tree and Consumer Happiness Dispenser
(from the 2037 Hammacher Schlemmer Glaven catalog) This is a six-foot Christmas tree that pops up instantly and is pre-decorated with original artwork by renowned holiday artist Thomas Kinkaid, all of which can dispense Viritron’s patented Santa Virus. The tree rises from a flat position in concentric circles to its full thirty-inch width and seventy-six-inch […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: The Laser Equipped Autonomous Robotic Vacuum
(from the 2037 Hammacher Schlemmer Glaven catalog) This is the robotic vacuum that navigates autonomously through your home up to seven times per week, where it can either clean your floors or patrol for intruders. The unit’s specially designed dual, counter-rotating agitator brushes spread carpet fibers and enable the vacuum to remove hair and other […]
Continue readingThe Skwib: The Best Levitation Belt
from the 2037 Hammacher Schlemmer Glaven catalog This levitation belt earned The Best rating from the Hammacher Schlemmer Glaven Institute because it was the easiest to put on and operate while falling from a building. 48 out of 49 of our tests were successful, and only one of our Testing Drones was killed during the […]
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Great Shopping Shift
I end each day quietly lamenting how I haven’t yet succeeded in completely reforming the global economy. Certainly, it’s a tall order. I search for economic and environmental sustainability. I explore no-growth, steady-state economics to see how we can transform our society’s deranged obsession with unlimited capitalist growth into a more eco-socialist model. I don’t […]
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Pubic Humiliation: The Case of the Ugly Vagina
Earlier in the month, when I clicked an inbox link to a webpage for a fundraising campaign, I did not expect to get lost in the political quagmire of women’s rights, feminism, grooming, surgical enhancement, self esteem and pop culture. A vaguely disinterested click of the mouse quickly sucked me into a black hole of […]
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Austerity Leads to Suicide Rate Increase
Friday’s Vancouver Sun had a short item that you might have missed, “Suicides up, road deaths down due to recession.” It’s in the bottom corner of page B5: Suicides rates rose sharply in Europe in 2007 to 2009 as the financial crisis drove unemployment up and squeezed incomes, with the worst hit countries like Greece […]
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: I, for one, would like an HST job – and it might sway my vote.
If you’re registered to vote in BC, and provided that Elections BC hasn’t completely screwed up your voter registration (I have, at times, received three voter information cards for variations on my name), you’ve probably by now received a ballot in the mail for the mail-in referendum on the HST in BC. (If you haven’t […]
Continue reading350 or bust: The End Of Cheap Oil: An Opportunity to Create A Better World
“As a species with the creativity, adaptability and opposable thumbs that enabled us to create an Oil Age in the first place, we can be pretty certain that there will be life beyond it. Similarly, we may be able to prevent the worst excesses of c…
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Nestlé’s War on Breastfeeding Mothers Takes Shameful New Turn
Infant formula is a medical necessity for those who are unable to breastfeed their infants. There are a host of medically sound reasons why a mother, in conjunction with her physician would choose to utilize infant formula in lieu of breast milk. The regulated manufacturing of infant feeding products has come a long way in […]
Continue reading