anti-cool song of the week: Admit It by Say Anything

the lyrics are what make it great:

Despite your pseudo-bohemian appearance
And vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs
You know nothing about art or sex
That you couldn’t read in any trendy New York underground fashion magazine
Prototypical non-conformist
You are a vacuous soldier of the thrift store Gestapo
You adhere to a set of standards and tastes
That appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges (bullshit)
Giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to incoming and outgoing trends and styles of music and art
Go analog baby, you’re so post-modern
You’re diving face forward into a antiquated path
It’s disgusting, its offensive, don’t stick your nose up at me

Yeah, what do you have to say for yourself
Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah
Yeah, what do you have to say for yourself
Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah

You spend your time sitting in circles with your friends
Pontificating to each other
Forever competing for that one moment of self-aggrandizing glory
In which you hog the intellectual spotlight
Holding dominion over the entire shallow pointless conversation
Oh, we’re not worthy
When you walk by a group of quote-unquote normal people
You chuckle to yourself patting yourself on the back as you scoff
It’s the same superiority complex
Shared by the high school jocks who made your life a living hell
And makes you a slave to the competitive capitalist dogma
You spend every moment of your waking life bitching about

Yeah, what do you have to say for yourself
Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah
And I say yeah, what do you have to say for yourself
Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah

Cause I’m proud of my life and the things that I have done
Proud of myself and the loner I’ve become
You’re free to whine, it will not get you far
I do just fine, my car and my guitar

Proud of my life and the things that I have done
Proud of myself and the loner I’ve become
You’re free to whine, it will not get you far
I do just fine, my car and my guitar, yeah

Well let me tell you this, I am shamelessly self-involved
I spend hours in front of the mirror, making my hair elegantly disheveled
I worry about how this album will sell
Because I believe it will determine the amount of sex I will have in the future
I self medicate with drugs and alcohol to treat my extreme social anxiety

You are a faker (admit it)
You are a fraud (admit it)
Yeah, you’re living a lie (hey) living a lie (hey) you’re life is living a lie
You don’t impress me (admit it)
You don’t intimidate me (admit it)
Why don’t you bow down, get on the ground, walk this fucking plank (yeah!)

Yeah, what do you have to say for yourself
Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah
And I say yeah (what do you..)

Proud of my life and the things that I have done
Proud of myself and the loner I’ve become
You’re free to whine, it will not get you far
I do just fine, my car and my..
Guitar, guitar go!

I drift drift drift drift drift yeah
I drift drift drift drift drift oh yeah

And I am done with this
I wanna taste the breeze of every great city
My car and my guitar
My car and my guitar
So you’ll come to be, made of these, urges unfulfilled
Oh no no no no no
When I’m dead I’ll rest
When I’m dead I’ll rest, lay still

DIY jewellery love

neon-sprayed cheap old watches. awesome. found at Naughty Secretary Club.

free idea: the ‘I’ve lost my cellphone’ facebook app

what it does when you add it: trawls all your friends’ profiles who’ve listed them numbers and puts them in a list for you. sends those who have a little box that allows them to drop their number in.

no more joining silly groups and wondering, ‘does this person who has lost their cellphone again really WANT me to send their number since we are more friendly acquaintances than friends?’ .

MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, Virgin – this one’s for you.

cool things found on the internets

i spend so much time online, and the more time i spend online the more cool stuff i find, and the more cool stuff i find the more fragmented my time spent in any given place becomes. i’ve resolved to make a concerted effort to document more of the things that inspire me, for whatever reason. starting with this rad sofa box i found at swissmiss:

ffffound.com is an image bookmarking site i like to frequent for sheer viewing pleasure, or what i call a Brain Massage. some gems include:

and then i see that Courvoisier is kicking their latest branding efforts up a notch by collaborating with urban/skate / hip hop brand LRG this (USA) spring. some of the awesomeness includes these branded gadgets – iPhone and BlackBerry. mmm, me please.

thanks NotCot.

i also came across this article on a speech given by Bill Cosby on how to combat racism, and i find it pretty inspiring. as someone who lives in a racially charged country, it’s refreshing to hear someone speak from a rational place on the topic.

african fashion blog of the month: Bella Naija

i’ve been doing some work on fashion trends in Nigeria and Ghana over the past month and Bella Naija has been one of my favourite blogs to hit. always on the look out for fellow African bloggers – this is my shout out to her.

how to respond to critics: uwe boll speaks out

i’ve always had a soft spot for people who speak out and defend themselves. to me it shows substance. much slated German director Uwe Boll has released a statement regarding an internet petition to stop him from making movies. for those of you who aren’t familiar with his movies click here. and this is what he has to say.

love it.

interesting stuffs

Time magazine’s first ever Blog Index.

Damien Hirst + Andy Warhol + Levi’s Pop-up Retail store at Fred Segal in the states. eerie and cool.

Friends of mine Jen and Cuan won a trip to Zanzibar in a design-off at Design Indaba this year (old news but at last i have found a picture of the ad):

yes please: camera glasses – never get escorted out of a shopping mall ever again

this is a must-have for our grasses, who are forever telling us about how security in malls and branded parties are asking them to delete their photos. pity about how the glasses actually look, but maybe Spitfire can get in this asap.

find more about them here.

via thinkgeek.

south african novel of the year: Moxyland

25th of April is the launch date for Lauren Beukes’s first novel – Moxyland. I have been privvy to the manuscript pre-publishing, and i sincerely hope it goes cult classic. set in a future Cape Town, your life is controlled by your cellphone, you are hostage to a government that oppresses its citizens through censorship and genetically modified Alsations called Aitos watch your every move. the character cast is made up of an artist who sells her body to an energy drink in exchange for being able to create her art, a super genius hacker who helps her digital graffiti friends break through information control to disseminate the truth and a rich kid blogger who has a sociopathic lack of conscience. i sincerely hope it gets picked up by a large rich studio looking for something different to produce and gets made into a movie. anyhow watch this space, i will be well documenting the launch.

We can just create a facebook application, right? Wrong.

i highly recommend to all our clients that they read Seth Godin’s new book Meatball Sundae, which demystifies ‘New Marketing’ very succinctly. it basically says that if you’re selling meatballs, don’t go sprinkling toppings all over your offering, toppings in this case referring to an elaborate and badly thought out web presence.

i know from my experience clients are very keen to jump on the facebook wagon, and they think the easiest way to do this is create an application that users will add, but if we’re to be completely honest here, apps have lost the novelty allure that got users to add them in the first place. this post i found on 3 Minds is a useful guide to what will and won’t work. my reccommendation is simply: don’t do it. there are a million apps out there now, and when my friends invite me to add the ‘Which cupcake are you’ quiz, i delete them, because facebook apps have become the new spam.

customised cigarette boxes

we have a whole bunch of unbranded cigarettes, though we can’t say why just yet. but we’ve had loads of fun getting our smoker grasses to customise them. here are some of the results:

cool stuff seen around

we gave the jesus on our windowsill a regal banana jacket for easter.

stickers on the till in Idols store in Musgrave Centre, Durban. made by the shop assistants.

badges in Idols, through the glass.

you can get a water massage at OR Tambo airport, while fully clothed. pretty cool.

a Style-my-Coke booth at the Design Indaba. I got an I Love Jozi styled Coke.

the Mac store in Rosebank has used International Graffiti artist Faffi as inspiration for their new range, and decked out the store accordingly. it’s awesome – they’re even selling Faffi vinyl toys in store. very progressive for a main market cosmetics brand.

found this on a wall in one of our editor’s studios.

caught my brother’s first gig as the drummer in a band called The Wailing Jimi’s at Assembly a couple of Fridays ago.

a pretty piece of art i saw at a party. but blurred but hey.

and this great blockmounted pic found in an old university computer lab. brilliant.