Dreadlock Truth is a vital resource for fans of countercultural hair and the generally hair-conscious. Among its nuggets are tips on upkeep, colouring and decoration, and where to find accommodating employers. (Book shops and health food markets are recommended.) There are of course photo galleries. Other subjects of interest include energy-channelling, mushroom use, coping with flashbacks, and mental health services.

Oh, and there’s a lovely section on lice: 

Pull your dreads up and try to bun them up if you can, or at least pull them into a high ponytail. Use about a half bottle of rubbing alcohol (70% or higher)… Tie a plastic bag tightly around your head for about 30 minutes. It’ll itch and it’s annoying and stinky, but it’ll kill the bugs. Rinse, and watch the bugs fall out.

The site also includes message boards devoted to “dance and object manipulation,” with subcategories covering stilt-walking, juggling and hoop-dancing, and a section in which dreadlocked adventurers share their tales of “injuries sustained in the pursuit of happiness.” One 230 lb gentleman explains how, “I once almost knocked myself out dancing at a local concert,” while another devotee relates the perils of poi, a form of performance art involving the spinning of tethered weights, sometimes enhanced with glow stick chemicals and/or fire: 

I extinguished a flaming poi with my eye once. Luckily it was burning low and about to go out anyways.

Much to learn, so little time. Via MeFi. 

Gay Patriot ponders the twilight of The Patriarchy: 

It’s interesting that the feminists chose Chicago for their “Smash the Patriarchy” message, because nowhere has the Patriarchy been more successfully smashed than in the inner cities. Households led by fathers have become exceedingly rare, single women raise families without husbands, and very few people participate in capitalist enterprises; the inner cities have become radical feminist utopia. How’s that working out for them?

Eric S Raymond does some impolite maths: 

That 2% [of the U.S. population, i.e., black males aged 15-24] is responsible for almost 52% of U.S. homicides. Or, to put it differently, by these figures a young black or “mixed” male is roughly 26 times more likely to be a homicidal threat than a random person outside that category – older or younger blacks, whites, Hispanics, females, whatever… 26 times more likely. That’s a lot. It means that even given very forgiving assumptions about differential rates of conviction and other factors, we probably still have a difference in propensity to homicide (and other violent crimes for which its rates are an index, including rape, armed robbery, and hot burglary) of around 20:1. Any cop who treated members of a group with a factor 20 greater threat level than population baseline “equally” would be crazy. 

A long discussion ensues.

And Robert Stacy McCain probes the deep feminist philosophy of Ms Emma Watson: 

Emma Watson is the actress most famous for her part in the Harry Potter movies. More recently, she has become “Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women,” a job that evidently requires her to say silly feminist stuff on Twitter, e.g.: “Gender equality not only liberates women but also men from prescribed gender stereotypes.” Ri-iiight. Because what guys really need is to be liberated from “prescribed gender stereotypes.” All the hot babes like Emma Watson are crazy for guys who don’t fit “prescribed gender stereotypes,” right? So you will probably be surprised to learn that Emma Watson is dating a bald scrawny impoverished poet  the biggest jock at an elite university:

The 23-year-old former Harry Potter film star has recently begun dating a fellow Oxford University student named Matthew Janney… Janney, 21, is not only a student at the prestigious institution, he is also a star rugby player for their varsity team. Despite his prized athletic skills, Janney has also been recognised for something else: his looks. According to the report, the college student was named “Oxford’s most eligible bachelor” and “best looking player” by the university’s rugby team’s official Twitter account.

In other words, an Alpha male, the epitome of “prescribed gender stereotypes” from which Emma Watson says we need to be liberated.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.

Or, They’re Teaching You. Can’t You Tell?

Yes, it’s once again time to wade through the aesthetic slaughterhouse that is performance art. This time, I’m treating you to edited highlights of a ninety-minute “durational performance” by Katy Albert and Sophia Hamilton, aka Mothergirl. This Chicago duo tells us that their work “exhibits a strategically refracted or misrepresented view of current political and philosophical discourse, creating a space where viewers are challenged to think critically about their own relationships with feminism, consumerism, and representational visuality.” But of course. Given their talent, or at least their self-regard, how could it not?

In the video below, filmed in 2013 near an onramp in the city of Chicago and titled Don’t Sleep, There’s a War Going On, we see the ladies beating themselves around the head and face with large feather pillows. Thereby enlightening passers-by, obviously. The duo describes the piece as “a physical act of frustration – an ambiguous response to the implicit guilt of inaction and the weight of overwhelming knowledge.” If the point of the performance somehow escapes you, due to your philistine tendencies, the ladies provide clues to its deep meaning, and by extension their own brilliance: “The lack of clarity serves two purposes: to show the expansiveness of war and to allow [the] audience to access the image first and the meaning second.”

Now cower in the shadow of their artistic enormity: 

Because I know you love it, here’s more “guerrilla art” on a bridge. Or more specifically, an “infiltration in public space.” This time the venue is Pier 66 at the 2011 Fountain New York Art Fair, where Canadian performance artist Martine Viale thrills and captivates passers-by, armed only with a carrier bag of bobbins and a head wrapped in yarn. The powerful climax is rather special.

A triumph, I think you’ll agree.

Ms Viale regards her body as “a place of research” and her “artistic practice” is, needless to say, terribly intellectual, indeed profound, focussing as it does “on ‘process-action’ and the corporeality of space and time that allow for simultaneous multi-dimensional developments.”

Ms Viale’s other, no less mighty works include Intra Muros 1, highlights of which can be seen here, Elongation, a “physically demanding” work that involved stepping from one bowl of blue paint to the next, and which, for one reviewer, “evoked a metaphysical cloud of unknowing,” and Ma Interval (Tel Aviv), in which our fearlessly transgressive artist wrapped wool around some bus station benches and then stood motionless for over an hour, presumably waiting for applause and recognition of her talent.

Previously on a bridge.

Worthy of the Guardian, but found in the Telegraph:

It is the softly spoken radio show that provides good-natured help and advice to thousands of gardeners every week. So regular listeners to Gardeners’ Question Time may be horrified to discover it has been accused of peddling racial stereotypes. According to an academic, the sedate Radio 4 panel show is riddled with “racial meanings” disguised as horticultural advice.

Dr Ben Pitcher, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Westminster…

That’s this chap.

…claimed the programme’s regular discussions on soil purity and non-native species promoted nationalist and fascist beliefs. Speaking on another Radio 4 programme, Thinking Allowed, the academic said: “Gardeners’ Question Time is not the most controversial show on Radio 4, and yet it is layered with, saturated with, racial meanings.”

“The context here is the rise of nationalism. The rise of racist and fascist parties across Europe. Nationalism is about shoring up a fantasy of national integrity. My question is, what feeds nationalism? What makes nationalism powerful?” Dr Pitcher said the “crisis in white identity in multicultural Britain” meant people felt unable to express their views for fear of being called racist, so expressed their racial identity in other ways, such as talking about gardening.

Remember, folks. For academics in the Clown Quarter, it pays to be unobvious.

When not hearing racism in discussions of soil acidity – and seeing it in Scandinavian furniture, which is “all about race” – Dr Pitcher writes about “how the meanings of race are made and remade in acts of creative consumption.” And, obviously, “the relationship between race and neoliberal capitalism.” He is, in fact, “setting out a framework for thinking about race in the twenty-first century.” Our senior lecturer in sociology also ruminates deeply on “Top Gear and postfeminist media culture.”

Yes, a giant walks among us. Let’s all follow him.

Update:

Here’s the Gardeners’ Question Time website, in case any of you want to comb through the content for those hidden racial messages with which it’s apparently “saturated.” The episodes on the National Botanic Garden of Wales and the Chelsea Flower Show look particularly suspicious.

Update 2: