This is pleasing, in a low-key kind of way.

Filmed in Tokyo in 1998 by Dennis Wheatley and Stefan McClean.

(h/t, Coudal) 

Further to Guy Dammann’s regard for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, Darleen has unearthed another display of unspeakably radical selflessness over at Feministing:  

Along with the emancipation of women, sexual liberation has become very much a part of politics around the world. To the conservatives, both these issues challenge ‘family values’. But what if there were no families? What if we say no to reproduction? My understanding of reproduction is that it is the basis of the institutions of marriage and family, and those two provide the moorings to the structure of gender and sexual oppression.

Sorry, I should have warned you; there’s quite a bit of boilerplate.

Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered and classed social set-up. Not only that, families prevent the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.

Families with children are selfish, see, and squanderers, and prone to consumerism. I hope you’re taking notes.

So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it.  

But of course. Again, note the approving nod to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, the ultimate goal of which is “phasing out the human race.” Until that glorious scenario is achieved, VHEMT strives for a world in which the human population is, ahem, “less dense.”

For newcomers, three items from the archives:

Art Bollocks Revisited 

Artspeak and political lockstep.

“The more sceptical among us might suspect that the unintelligible nature of much postmodern ‘analysis’ is a convenient contrivance, if only because it’s difficult to determine exactly how wrong an unintelligible analysis is.”

Lefties Revisited 

In which we follow a bizarrely inept attempt to launch a radical left wing tabloid. Dogma prevails, hilarity ensues. From Vanessa Engle’s documentary series, Lefties.

“I was interested in free speech… I was a Communist.”

The Greater Good (2) 

Arabella Weir passes among the proles, hoping to be noticed.

“Here we see crystallised one of socialism’s moral inversions. By Weir’s thinking, even if you had a grim and frustrating experience at a state comprehensive you should still want to inflict that same experience on your children. Ideally by sending them to a really disreputable school with plenty of rough council estate kids and people for whom English is, at best, a second language. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that Ms Weir regards children, even her own, not as ends in themselves, but as instruments for the advancement of an egalitarian worldview. That, or as playthings of her own vanity. Which may well add up to much the same thing.”

Feel free to rummage in the greatest hits.

In case of emergency, chocolate pills. // Not-so-angelic sea angel. // Origami kraken. // Onion goggles. // “It’s full of stars.” // The cover art of Scientific American. (h/t, Things) // More art of the title sequence. (h/t, Matthew) // Endings of note. // A compendium of less-than-special effects. // An animated history of the internet. // Auditorium, a game. // Armchair from hell. // Stylish travel bag/doghouse. // Vintage upscale compass. // Triple-axis spirit level. // Impressive tool chest. // Scientist action figures. // London without people. // Vincent Price is The Last Man on Earth. (1964) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Pal Joey.

Further to this, Anna thinks you may enjoy the Japanese Watchmen trailer.

Are we excited yet?