My new favorite website

[lapsedmodernist]

I knew about Left Behind for kids but somehow I missed the FEMA for kids website. Meet Herman, the spokescrap for the site! (And obviously a genetically mutated offspring of Bert the Turtle from everyone's favorite cold war classic "Duck & Cover"). You can play the government's apocalyptic variation on Rock Paper Scissors. Also it says "concentration GAME" over at the right. I know, what with the small print I also thought it was "concentraion CAMP." Oh yeah, and if any of you end up ordering the freaking WORLD TRADE CENTER COLORING BOOK please do let me know how it is. Bonus? An exegesis of earthquakes in the Turtle Tale: A Native American Legend (TM), which actually dovetails quite nicely with Clifford Geertz's theory about "turtles all the way down."

Also you could buy this! Just kidding, that one's not from FEMA. But it could be!

[On Edit: that was supposed to be spokescrab but I like my Freudian slip so much I will leave it in. I also think it would be funny if the FEMA website had a spokescrap for real, like the Christmas Turd on South Park]

Comments

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether to thank you or cry. I like excerpts of it with fengi's editorializing, check it out on his page.

[chitinous.livejournal.com]

Oh my word. All the images of all the turtles on their backs and loving it.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

now, did you mean for that to sound dirty?

turtle pr0n

[chitinous.livejournal.com]

Ha! Now that you mention it...

[apropos.livejournal.com]

So so so so so so so "neat".

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Look at fengi's entries for today, esp. the one with the FEMA shack in repressive desublimation colors and the one above it, featuring selections from the WTC coloring book.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

The colouring book and its brain-gut axis angle pushes my neurogastroenterology buttons.

So, how many New Yorkers had stomach/gut problems after 9/11? Informal survey?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I drank and liberally ingested pharmaceuticals nearly constantly for about a month straight after 9/11. It might have given me stomach problems, but fortunately I don´t remember on account of being drunk all the time. I do remember constant low-grade chest problems, like lots of little chest colds that never got full-blown but it seemed I was always on the urge of getting one.

[apropos.livejournal.com]

I had almost no appetite for weeks, which seems to have been a common reaction among my friends.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I didn´t have appetitite for days (probably side effect of whiskey and pharamceuticals) and for weeks afterwards watching TV could literally make me lose my appetite. I still can't watch CBS due to the negative conditioning of that fall--it appalled me to watch it yet there was nothing else I could physically watch and that resulted in some horrible cognitive schism.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Also, not really apropos of anything but I hate how 9/11 has become the gravitas-lending trope when you are at that moment on a date when something serious needs to be said to transition from banter to kissing.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

After I kiss a few more expats, I'll let you know if the Rwanda genocide is our 9/11. They haven't made any T-shirts yet, but in the book I just bought by General Dallaire who was in charge of the UNAMIR soldiers at the time, he says that as soon as it was over, foreigners started showing up in Rwanda again and having their pictures taken next to piles of bodies.

Speaking of kissing expats and Rwanda, the crush boy has gotten a copy of Hotel Rwanda, which I didn't see when I was home, so I'm hoping to see it this week...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

verge, not urge. Gah, what's wrong with me today.

[already2late.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank god someone's spending time and money creating this stuff. I feel so much better now that I've colored in my picture of how I want the future to be.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

honestly, I find it scarier that they want to train kids early on to color within the lines of How History Happened.

[isolt.livejournal.com]

"Although disasters themselves aren't fun, learning about them is!"

I have no words.

[spawnsong.livejournal.com]

Those T-shirts have been around for a couple of years and if i saw someone wearing one, i'd be pretty tempted to deck them. As for sarcastic 'Judd' and the crew, i think that shit would make some kick ass bathroom reading material. I'm seriously considering making a purchase to make the trip to the head a funny experience for my guests.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

my best friend actually bought that T-shirt while high. I don't think he has worn it anywhere though. I have my deafult 9/11-related position w/r/t that shirt--if you were in NYC on 9/11, wear the hell out of it. If you weren't--fuck off.

[theophile.livejournal.com]

I was close enough to NYC to see the columns of smoke, but not within the city boundaries. but the way I see it, the shirt is damn funny whereas I'm not sure that posited ownership of tragedy is. I'm going to have to dig out my shirt and wear it around again in the hope of getting decked by tough guys. >:(

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

the Fema website is hilarious. The shirt is unspeakable. I found your LJ throught Rootlesscosmo. I like your stuff--am adding you as a friend, okay?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

sure thing! Are you a fellow Brooklyn denizen?

[brooklyn-jak.livejournal.com]

yep--hence my LJ name. I live in Flatbush--the Ditmas Park area.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

At one point in my urban nomadism I lived in Flatbush (East Flatbush off Church Ave on the 2) but I don't know the Ditmas Park area that well. Do you like it?