Godammit, I’m Mad!

Bed, Bath & Beyond is recalling its Dual Ridge Metal Boutique tissue holders, which were found to be contaminated with radioactive material.

The contamination was first discovered in California when two packages bound for stores in Santa Clara and San Jose containing four tissue holders triggered radiation alarms at truck scales, according to a Jan. 6 report posted on the NRC website.

In the notice on its website, Bed, Bath & Beyond said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the tissue holders do not pose a threat to anyone’s health.

No threat to anyone’s health, no no no no.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre told The Associated Press that there is little to no risk to human health, but it’s better to avoid unnecessary exposure to radiation.

Got that? It’s better to avoid radiation. You know, if possible.

Remember that factory in China where 17 workers committed suicide? Remember how we were assured that compared to the general population of China, this rate of suicide was actually very low?

Foxconn is Apple’s largest supplier of iPads and iPhones. Apple wants us to think of it as a utopian company run by the benevolent prophet Steve Jobs. It doesn’t want us to look at the grim truth about how its products are manufactured.

They aren’t brought to us by storks! They aren’t made in the US, either. They are made in Foxconn’s three Chinese factories, the most modern of which is an antiseptic nightmare of dehumanizing work conditions. Another worker jumped to her death on November 24, but I only found out because I was looking for images from China Fashion Week.

Joel Johnson wrote in Wired Magazine about the sense of guilt that drove him to visit the Foxconn plant in Shenzhen, an industrial city in southern China. The company has put nets around its buildings to break the fall of potential jumpers. It has opened counseling offices and forced workers to sign contracts that forbid suicide and warn that families of suicides won’t receive any unusual compensation.

Maybe we’re supposed to think that the million workers employed by Foxconn are lucky to be employed. That only works if you think you’d feel lucky to work a ten hour shift with forced overtime, where you raise your hand to use a restroom. You’d have to feel lucky to live in a dorm room with seven strangers and can only watch TV in a common room with bench seating.

Two independent reports found that worker conditions at Foxconn were incredibly poor, and that Apple had failed to keep its promises regarding Foxconn.  In the first quarter of 2011, Apple posted a record high in revenue of $26.74 billion.

As a reviewer of electronic gadgets, Joel Johnson was burdened “with an outsize provision of guilt—an existential buyer’s remorse for civilization itself. I am here because I want to know: Did my iPhone kill 17 people?”

After touring Foxconn, his answer was Yes.

I’m glad I don’t own a single Apple product. I would never buy one now. If I meet Steve Jobs in hell, I’m going to tell him what I think. Meanwhile, I hope you will pass this story on. We can’t easily opt out of civilization but we can choose which companies to do business with.

This skirt by Kevork Kilesjian would look great with a massive viking helmet, don’t you think?

At $1,495, the price is just right, and the designer’s name suggests he may be amenable to killing you with a plastic bag.  Maybe he could even do this before you suffered the indignity of wearing the skirt!

Shopbop,  of course.

It’s been nearly a year and I’m surprised to still be here. I swore I’d go after him if he left. But things are complicated.

June 6 will be a year. I know it’s just a day on the calendar but still I feel the weight of its significance. I have to go to the grave, where I’ve had to pay for a granite marker. I don’t think I can bear it but I have to. I haven’t been back since we buried him. Mostly because I pretend he’s around, maybe in another room or maybe in New York, where he lived for so many years.

When no one can hear me, I whisper to him and beg him to come back. Maybe he’ll hear me and change his mind.

I’ll miss him every day for as long as I live. It’s better when I stay in denial.

I wish I could hug him and smell him. I’ve been reading all the email we sent to each other: All the links to things we thought were funny or enlightening or stupid, all the mp3’s he sent me, all our complaints and encouragement. Thank god for email. It’s so full of our relationship. It’s a way to spend time with him. It’s something to treasure.

If I have to keep living, maybe I can do something that Max would be proud of, or maybe I can help with suicide prevention. In the end, even though I know there’s no god or heaven or hell, I know we’ll be together.

Some days are easier than others.  I’m still thinking about the Bitter Intellectuals project. Max would love it. We need a url to get started.  Just try to bear with me while I work through the bad days.  xoxo

“Suicide is not a rational act. It is an act of desperation, carried out after a monumental struggle.“

If only we could all form a safety net for those who can’t see a way out of their suffering! Please Don’t Jump is a FB page dedicated to just that effort. The gallery of photos is a monument to human compassion.

Read about how media can help prevent “copycat” suicide by responsible reporting.

Death should never be romanticized. People who jump are not in their right mind. When you jump, you take the rest of us with you.  It’s not a solution.  It is endless trauma. It’s not a gay issue or a bullying issue, it’s depression and hopelessness.  We need to stop talking about cyberbullying and start talking about support  for those who are vulnerable.

Some organizations were calling for a moment of silence tonight, to mourn the recent spate of suicides. Silence won’t help. I’m calling for a vow to reach out to a troubled friend, family member, loved one or stranger. Remind them how much they are needed.  You might not be able to help, but it will never be a waste of time.

Which subject do you find more appealing: Houlihan cargo pants by J Brand or the BP oil leak?

On the one hand, the cargo pants are flying off the shelves everywhere! Stores are having to re-order them to try to meet the ragign demand for them, at $230 a pair.

On the other hand, 37,424,000 gallons of oil has gushed into the Gulf of Mexico as opposed to the 21,000 gallons per day estimated by British Petroleum last week.  In fact, the daily rate is 1,050,000.

On the one hand, the Houlihan cargo pants have been seen on Jessica Alba, Hilary Duff, Ciara, Rihanna and Sea of Shoes, among other fashion victims leaders. They are the It-est It Item you will see this summer. You too can dress like all your idols if you have $230 and an internet connection!

On the other hand, we now know without a doubt that the US government is owned by Big Oil. The staggering lack of action or expertise at handling this environmental catastrophe is clear evidence of who’s running the show here. Obama, Bush, it doesn’t matter who the oil companies put in charge since they just do what their masters tell them to do.

And yet….the cargo pants. They are tangible. They are achievable. They don’t make you think of death and destruction and cancer and deceit and paranoia or greed.

They come in vintage navy, olive and taupe.

Why do we have to have people like Leonor Scherrer? The daughter of French designer Jean-Louis Scherrer, she is the ultimate spoiled, entitled ultra-hipster who favors a dykey Goth look and has started a company called Leonor Funeral Couture to provide “fashion for the bereaved.”

“Her line even comes complete with its own fragrance, Maximilia, named after Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish friar who took the place of a condemned man at Auschwitz.”

But wait! She’s also recording an album that includes a cover of Schubert’s “Death and The Maiden.”

Get it? She loves death! Death is so cool!

Riccardo Tisci adores her and so does Diane Pernet. In an interview with Diane, Leonor says, “I had no idea death was such a taboo.“  Maybe on her planet, they  have different taboos. How can one expect such a person to know what we proles are like?

But aside from her breathtaking level of pretentiousness, she also offers the discerning enthusiast the kind of self-aggrandizing clulessness that results in a confession like this one:

“I lost a close friend recently and the grieving process takes a long time. I think of him every time I see someone on the street looking like him. In fact, I’ve still got his number on my phone and haven’t been able to delete it yet.”

Her friend died recently but she hasn’t deleted his phone number yet?!? The woman is a fucking saint.

Actually, no. In fact, the first thing I thought upon reading about her was, Wow. What a fucking cunt™! Why doesn’t she have anything better to do than market an ironic appreciation of death?

All week, I’ve been reading the little tributes to Alexander McQueen. Some of them just feature a nice picture with either “R.I.P” or “There are no words.”

But there are words, and I’ve been waiting for them.

People who kill themselves take a lot of other people with them.

They aren’t “laughing in heaven with Isabella Blow”, they are just dead.

People who kill themselves are usually in great distress. They are not right in the head. If we take care to monitor our depressed friends and loved ones, we might be able to save them; but we might not.  Maybe we need to reach out more. Maybe we need to make depression easier to talk about. Antidepressants still carry a stigma even now. I can’t stand to hear people say “Oh, my doctor recommended medication but I’m not taking that route.” You never hear anyone with pneumonia making that statement.

Maybe Alexander McQueen was unhinged by grief over losing his mother. Now his dad has to deal with the loss of a son.

No one wants to talk about the brutality of suicide. The people left behind are victims as well. It’s an act of negation, a complete loss of hope, but it’s also a selfish act. I would even say ruthlessly selfish.

I’m not worried about whether poor Alexander McQueen is resting in peace, but I’m deeply sorry for his family. It will fuck them up forever.

Don’t kill yourself, you fuckers! We need you here. Things will get better. That is my message, so pass it on.

Morbid Anatomy is a blog about icky dead stuff.  Every time I go there, I feel slightly ashamed, as though I’ve just peered into Hollister Hovey’s curio cabinet. But the author is clearly passionate about her subject, and I have to respect her obsession. There are some images there that are truly nauseating, like the ones of syphilitic penises, but others (like the photo above) are often weirdly beautiful.

Obit is a website about death that has a modern sophisticated look about it, kind of like the Starbucks of death blogs. They even have an advice column “for the dying and those who care about them” by someone named Judy.  What they need is a Hit List™, so I guess I need to start one.  Sting will be in the top five, as will Bono.  Nominations, anyone?

Finally, sticking to my theme of All Things Icky, here is a photo from the online site of Oak NYC, a trendy clothing shop.

Looking at the boy’s tragic tattoos, I felt bad for his mother. Somewhere, a woman is heartbroken. And yet, I saw this photo again, on a fashion blog, where the comments ranged from “Rad” to “The clothes look cool and the models even cooler.”

For the last 24 hours, I have been acutely remorseful about watching Michael Jackson’s head on fire. I watched the video online, and now it’s being played on CNN, in an endless loop of mock horror and shock. Even Mark Geragos was disgusted, noting to Larry King that beheadings were available on video but weren’t appropriate for TV viewing.

It’s wrong to observe personal suffering in such a dispassionate context, and I feel debased by doing it. I’m so sorry! If only I could expunge it from the record of my sins.

Less sensationally, Dash Snow died this week, nearly a year after making me angry by his mere existence, and I’m sorry about that, too. I still think he was a pretentious, attention-seeking hipster, but I mourn his death all the same.

Dash Snow was 27, and probably knew it was the magic number for those who think “Live Fast, Die Young” is actually good advice.  His downtown hipster friends are shocked, even though he was a heroin addict. No Diprivan here, just the usual method of going out.

Why do people have to become drug addicts and create such misery for their loved ones and such devastation for those they leave behind? Why can’t anyone save them? Why do people enable them? Why do they want to escape their lives when it’s the only one they’ve got? Why stick that first needle in your arm, you motherfuckers?

It’s a terrible mystery to me but I still want everyone who knows a drug addict to do whatever they can to lead them to safety. Rat out your friends and co-workers and children and spouses and sisters and brothers.  They’ll be mad, but that’s okay. Make them mad.

A real artist and a fake artist, both dead now, dead as a doornail, no matter how the news media recycle their stories. I wish they’d let me rest in peace.