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Occupy Wall Street (the Berkeley Edition)

  • October 18, 2011 3:39 am

The tents I could’ve predicted.  The nudity, however, I did not see coming.

On Saturday night, my two sons and I were walking from Ichiban, a sushi restaurant in downtown Berkeley, to Yogurtland, a frozen yogurt shop about five blocks away, when we stumbled upon the local chapter of Occupy Wall Street.

Twenty or so protestors were camped out in a small circular plaza in front of Bank of America.

Wells Fargo and Chase branches were across the street, but they didn’t have a little plaza.  I can only imagine the Chase and Wells’ execs laughing at their B of A counterparts over their heirloom tomato and artisanal cheese salads at Chez Panisse.

99%

  • October 6, 2011 1:00 pm

DOMINIC

Dominic Mah is a writer, editor, director, and ex-professional gambler. He is also @dommah and @thorhulkcritic (for nerdcore reviews of film and pop culture) on Twitter. Mispronounced in the right way, his name is a strong Vietnamese curse word. 

Lately, I’ve been so moved by the events in New York and the #Occupywallst movement. As a native Berkeleyan Californian, I’m all in favor of taking to the streets when the ruling powers are untouchable by conventional means. The Occupiers’ rallying cry/slogan “I am the 99%” shrewdly appropriates a generation’s debilitating tendencies towards narcissism and whining (two things I’m perfectly good at) and redirects them towards an idea that is both unifying and empowering; that is, you are not a “special victim” nor a lonely hero; you are most people, and most people are you.

I can’t say I’ve had a hard existence. As a middle-or-somewhere-around-there-class American I still enjoy vast riches compared to the beleaguered majority of the world. But as far as ticking off to-do items on the Economic Collapse Checklist, I’ve hit a lot of the benchmarks:

Who’s #1 in Internet Porn? Why, Hello, Pakistan!

  • July 13, 2010 11:59 pm

According to the good folks over at Fox News, Pakistan is the #1 nation in the world when it comes to online searches for pornographic material. That’s right—the Muslim nation known as “The Land of the Pure,” the nation that is the sexual equivalent of a cold shower or nude photos of your 82-year-old Aunt Hoshi, the nation which regularly bans material considered blasphemous, is also the top country for Google searches per person when it comes to certain sex-related content. To wit:

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for “horse sex” since 2004, “donkey sex” since 2007, “rape pictures” between 2004 and 2009, “rape sex” since 2004, “child sex” between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, “animal sex” since 2004 and “dog sex” since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country also is tops — or has been No. 1 — in searches for “sex,” “camel sex,” “rape video,” “child sex video” and some other searches that can’t be printed here.