If you’ve watched any amount of television with a target demographic between the ages of 18 and 35, then you’ve most likely seen commercials for 5 Hour Energy. Presented more like an energy drink swift-boat campaign, the commercial lambastes other energy drinks for having too much sugar, caffeine, and ultimately cumulating in a “debilitating crash.” Just a note of caution: if you’re at the point where coming off a caffeine high prevents you from getting even the most basic of tasks done, you may just want to take a god-damned nap.

5 Hour Energy is nearly odorless, which proves the adage “silent but deadly” to a disgustingly perfect degree. Tasting like the Cocaine energy drink without the throat burning, which is to say absolutely disgusting, 5 Hour Energy claims it is lemon-lime flavored. Look, I know I haven’t eaten a lime recently, but I’m pretty confident in saying that my last bite on that fruit didn’t taste like vomit, okay 5 Hour Energy? You’re fooling no one.

What makes matters worse is that it is impossible to drink 5 Hour Energy like a normal human being. The creators have made the opening of the bottle so small, so unnaturally tiny, that if you try and place your lips around it like you would a can, it creates a vacuum that only trickles out small amounts of the disgusting snake oil. This means that the only way you can actually drink 5 Hour Energy is by holding the bottle away from your mouth and literally pouring it down your throat. Thankfully, there is such a small amount of liquid, you can finish the bottle in 1 or 2 gulps.

One of the interesting aspects behind 5 Hour Energy’s advertising is how they’ve turned the drink’s size into a positive. The packaging only holds 2 ounces of liquid and yet it costs more than even the most popular energy drinks. However, if their claims of sustained energy were true, nearly everything could be forgiven. Unfortunately, 5 Hour Energy offers no significant increase in “energy,” alertness, or whatever stupid claim the company will try and make next. Worse yet is that its “low in sugar” claim comes from the fact that they use the artificial sweetener sucralose. So, we have a drink that tastes disgusting, is sweetened with fake sugar, offers no significant boost in energy, and costs more than three times the price of my favorite energy drink.

What does this drink have going for it, you may ask? Well, it is, at very least, an amazing source of B vitamins. However, according to the bottle’s own warning labels, the amount of B vitamins obtained is less than a person undergoing B-Vitamin therapy. Which is just a missed opportunity, really. Look, not to nit-pick, but I’m pretty sure anything will give you less B vitamins than a B vitamin therapy regime.

5 Hour Energy is made by the company that makes those Chaser hangover remedies, Living Essentials. Up until a few months ago you’d find this out by looking at the label for the drink, but oddly all new packaging for the product omits any reference to its parent company. They’ve even gone so far as to remove the once-giant Chaser logo that adorned the otherwise identical design. The only reference you’ll find to company is on its website, which offers even more off-putting information. Apparently, all claims that 5 Hour Energy makes are based of its formula “as of October 2007.” While it isn’t uncommon for companies to change a drink’s formula, it is odd to see them advertise the change without disclosing the differences. While this itself isn’t anything necessarily nefarious, it is just another odd check mark against 5 Hour Energy.

The other odd check mark against the drink is that it is made by the same people that make a pill that claims to cure your hangover.

Overall Rating: Awful. These kind of products are exactly the reason why the Food and Drug Administration was created.

Further Reading:
Website: 5hourenergy.com; Chaser

- Rob O’Reilly

Cross-post warning: This story also appears on our Gamefilter website.

When not causing mass-hysteria over homemade lite-brites, the local government of Massachusetts likes to do other, more productive things. For example, in an effort to save every child from the increasingly common disease of playing videogames, the Massachusetts legislature is set to consider House Bill 1423, a law which not only would make it illegal for minors to purchase M rated videogames, but would also ostensibly classify said games as “pornography.”

If this all sounds familiar: it should. Nearly identical pieces of legislation have been proposed in other U.S. states like Louisiana and Utah, where in both cases the idea was dropped over concerns of constitutionality. It also shouldn’t surprise you that known pseudo-lawyer Jack Thompson, who essentially wrote the two previously mentioned bills, has had a hand in constructing the Massachusetts bill.

The bill as it will be discussed this week, followed by commentary:

SECTION 1. Section 31 of Chapter 272 of the General Laws, as
appearing in the 2004 Official Edition, is hereby amended by
deleting the definition “Harmful to Minors” inserting the following
new definition:—
“Harmful to minors”, matter is harmful to minors if it is obscene
or, if taken as a whole, it (1) describes or represents nudity, sexual
conduct or sexual excitement, so as to appeal predominantly to the
prurient interest of minors; (2) depicts violence in a manner patently
offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community, so as to
appeal predominantly to the morbid interest in violence of minors;
(3) is patently contrary to prevailing standards of adults in the
county where the offense was committed as to suitable material for
such minors; and (4) lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scien­
tific value for minors.”

SECTION 2. Said Section 31 of Chapter 272, as so appearing, is
hereby further amended by inserting in the definition of “Visual
Material” after the word “videotape”, the following:— “interactive
media,”.

As a resident of Massachusetts and an active gamer, the basic concept of legislating the sale of videogames, for any reason - be it content, or whatever pet issue local Politicians like to pander with - spits in the face of not only our American values, but the historical tradition of Massachusetts as the birthplace of American democracy. Legislation of any kind is censorship. This ugly truth is inescapable.

As with previous attempts at censorship, the bill as proposed, and the rhetoric espoused by its supporters, is at best misleading, and at worst sensationalist. It swims against reality, instead constructing its own where recent murders on the streets of Boston are solely caused by violent videogames, where the retail industry doesn’t already have strict guidelines in place, and where there isn’t already a self-regulating body which imposes, at very minimum, exorbitant fines. Even if all these things were true, the proposed legislation wouldn’t even approach what would actually be necessary.

While we’ve never dealt with a more resourceful group of young people, ultimately those under the age of 18 are the ward of their Parents or Guardians. In turn, most of these games are actually purchased by Parents because most retail stores will not allow a minor to buy them. There will of course always be chinks in the armor and a game may get to a youth that would otherwise been overseen and intercepted by his or her Parents. However, unless we are willing to segregate these products behind dark curtains, in back rooms, and within feet of the glass cases holding an assortment of marijuana pipes, any proposed legislation will ultimately relegate videogames, no matter how trivial an artistic expression they may appear to be, to second class status as something unabashedly harmful and unfit for consumption. Amazingly, even if we were to take every precaution proposed, including the above outlined, it would still not prevent a single youth from getting a game they truly wanted.

All this legislation would do would make it harder for Adults, who consume the lion’s share of interactive entertainment, to purchase the products they are entitled to buy. This goes  beyond just the game industry too, which is already one of the most heavily moderated entertainment industries in America. Games brandish large, impossible-to-miss content advisory emblems with clear, easy to understand descriptions of what is contained therein. This is entire leaps and bounds above either the movie or music industries. If even these content advisories are not enough for consumers to make informed decisions, then we must look at where this train of thought would lead us.

Once videogames are sanitized to the point of irrelevance, what will happen to violent film? The Departed, at times, is hyper-violent and littered with adult language, its themes are dark and disturbing, yet few would argue that the movie is not a work of cinematic art. If translated into a game The Departed would be rated M and no one under the age of 17 would be able to purchase it from a retail store. This is nearly identical to its current status as an R rated movies, save for the fact that those standards on sales to minors aren’t nearly as strongly enforced.

This entire piece of legislation lacks any understanding and sensitivity of the issues at hand. If these Politicians truly see games as an analog to Pornography, then their knowledge on how the industry has grown since its inception is inept and their insistence on sticking their heads in and raking filth in on top of the constitution is a criminal waste of time.

I urge anyone who feels strongly about their rights as an American to join the Entertainment Consumers Association’s fight to preserve your freedoms. You can write your local lawmaker through the ECA’s website petition, located here. You can also contact your local congressman’s office via telephone to register your distaste on this attempted dismantling of the U.S. constitution.

For more information: GamePolitics.com

- Rob O’Reilly

Coming from the makers of Cocaine, Brawndo is an energy drink made in promotion of a movie that, even when compared against the movie’s release on DVD, is about a year and a half too late. See, usually beverage tie-ins are created in anticipation of another product’s release, like how Mountain Dew created Game Fuel for the release of Halo 3. However, rare is the product that gets release for damn near unrelated reasons years after a time when it could have possibly been relevant.

Well, regardless, and seemingly in the face of common sense, we have Brawndo: the Thirst Mutilator, an energy drink based on the movie Idiocracy. In the movie, Brawndo serves as a metaphor for our corporate controlled culture and the influence large corporations can exert over the Government . The movie extrapolates these ideas to the point where Brawndo, a sugary sports drink, is made the official replacement for water. Relegated to only being used in toilets, water is even usurped in irrigation systems, which effectively destroys the production capabilities of the future America. So, in essence, Brawndo is commentary on modern marketing, group think, and deadly corporate double-speak.

Which makes the real life Brawndo all the more insulting. But we’ll get to that later.

Brawndo tastes a lot like homemade Powerade, which is to say watered down, watered down Gatorade. The drink is nearly tasteless with a vaguely citrus aftertaste. While not being terrible, the taste is just a little weird and off-putting. If you’ve ever made Gatorade from powder, you’ll sort of know what Brawndo is like to drink. Powder-made Gatorade has a weird chalky consistency that feels like miniature clumps of sugar scraping its way down your esophagus. In other words: unpleasant at best.

While not being marketed as such, Brawndo tastes like a diet drink. This is due, of course, to using the current sugar replacement darling sucralose instead of high fructose corn syrup or cane sugar. While replacing the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup is never a bad thing, using sucralose is arguably no better. If they were trying to go the healthy route, they should have used all-natural cane sugar instead.

To its credit as an energy drink, each can of Brawndo is loaded with caffeine. A whole can will net you 200mg, which is more than half of what you should probably limit yourself to a day. While this doesn’t beat Cocaine, another energy drink made by the makers of Brawndo, few drinks do. However, it is at least possible to finish a can of Brawndo, so you’ll definitely get more caffeine in the long run.

The packaging is good enough for being, more or less, a straight rip of the movie Brawndo’s packaging and advertising. It won’t win awards, but it’s a licensed drink, so it’ll do. The can features the same taglines and idiot-speak from the movie, using circular logic and over-obvious statements. This is carried over to Brawndo’s official website, which is formated sort of like a blog. However, unlike the movie where interactions with the idiot public are tempered through the perspective of the average-intelligence Joe, there is no filter here. So the “blogger” just come off looking more like an asshole, instead of just simply being a moron.

As previously mentioned, Brawndo is made by Redux Beverages, the company behind the Cocaine energy drink. Considering their pedigree, it isn’t surprising that the message of Idiocracy is lost on Redux. The movie’s Brawndo is an indictment of everything real life Brawndo represents, which at least puts it into the “totally missed the fucking point” hall of fame, alongside such cultural milestones as Fight Club: the videogame. Not familiar with the Fight Club videogame? Well, it was a 1-on-1 fighting game released years after the cult favorite book-turned-movie and featured amongst its playable characters Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit.

Yeah.

However, to not be a total killjoy, some of Brawndo’s advertising is actually pretty funny. Sadly it isn’t enough to justify a damn thing. Not a damn thing.

Overall rating: way below average. Brawndo is yet another modern Pespi Blue from the premier source of modern Pepsi Blues, Redux Beverages. You’re 0 for 2, guys, good luck with that.

Further Reading:
Website: Brawndo
Wikipedia: Idiocracy; Pepsi Blue

- Rob O’Reilly

The inaugural post for this website was an immediate concession: nothing I can do here will ever top Soulja Boy Tellem’s contribution to our society, an epic narrative of a man’s struggle to both crank that and robocop called succinctly “Crank That (Soulja Boy).” At the time I postulated that “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” was our society’s swan song, our “greeted by Spanish Conquistadors moment,” and that everything done from that moment forward was ultimately the downtrend from our culture’s apex. If I had known that these statements would have been seen as some sort of a challenge, trust me, I never would have typed word one.

It is with great hesitation that I present the first official entry into a new series of cultural essays about our society’s greatest achievements, an R&B soliloquy from Riskay entitled “Smell Yo Dick.”

Produced by DJ Quest, and featuring a stunning spoken word monologue by Aciance, “Smell Yo Dick” sees Riskay asking the most profound and universal of questions to her lover, whom she suspects of having committed adultery: “can I smell yo dick?” In the face of mountains of evidence like camera-phone photos of him dancing with “dirty foot bitches,” erratic behavior, and inconsistency when returning home, Riskay changes her request for dick smelling to a demand, saying “what you need to do is let me smell yo dick.”

Riskay represents the modern female, a woman in charge of her sexuality and subsequently in control of her life. She presents the new reality, that her identity is not dependent upon her relationship to the alpha male, when she says, “but nigga you need to stop lying, before I get mad and pull out my nine. You wanna new bitch to fuck? That’s fine. But don’t fuck hers and try to fuck mine.” She presents herself as forceful, somehow understanding, and yet intolerant of any transgressions.

We are also given insight into the mind of Riskay’s man, here brilliantly portrayed by rapper Aciance. This character is nothing short of a modern day Heathcliff, a man possessed by another spiritual or paganistic force, and consumed by a raw, primal sexuality. He defies explanation and, at most, presents an “other” to our ballad’s Catherine, Riskay. When Aciance raps, “smell my dick? Wait a minute, hold up. See, that’s how a bitch get her eye swoll’d up” he affirms himself as the radical and the dangerous unknown.

“Smell Yo Dick,” is the ultimate expression of modernity and its effect on sexuality, identity, and traditional relationships. There can be no other entry as perfectly suited for the beginning of a great tome of our society and culture.

“Smell Yo Dick” is currently on exhibition at Riskay’s myspace page. A Youtube version is provided below for your convenience.

Further Reading:
Official Website: Riskay Music
Myspace: Riskay, Drama Queen

- Rob O’Reilly

Cross-post warning: This story also appears on our Gamefilter website. You can read more beverage reviews here.

If there are two worlds that have been set on a collision course, it is certainly the worlds of highly caffeinated energy drinks and videogaming. Remember those youthful nights spent trying to fight both Bowser and one’s own eyelids as they instinctively try to trick you into sleep? Of course you do! Up for review today are two energy drinks “inspired” by videogames and manufactured by Boston America Corp.

Power Up! “Product not intended for children”

First is Power Up!, a Super Mario inspired drink. Sort of fruity and not too carbonated, Power Up! tastes very watery. I’d even initially go so far to say that maybe this was some kind of manufacturing mistake, like how, possibly, not enough of the base syrup had made it into the can. However, for reasons explained later, this is an incredibly generous concession and one that is completely wrong. Really, the drink is just incredibly mediocre.

Also mediocre is the packaging job. Sporting a Mario 2-era Mario holding a mushroom against a blank blue background, they didn’t even try to make this drink appealing. They really could have done something special here, like use some 8-bit graphics or recreate the famous first level of Super Mario Bros. Hell, if they had even bothered to have Mario bashing open some bricks to unveil a starman, I’d have given them a pass. As if this affront to graphic design weren’t enough, the can is shoddily manufactured too! The label wrapped around the can is a little too long, so, as you drink, flimsy plastic rubs up against your lips.

I don’t know what I should have expected from a Mario inspired energy drink. Really, how do you translate the Mushroom Kingdom into a flavor? Should this have been somehow Italian flavored? This drink is licensed by Nintendo too! And, keeping faithful to their new licensing seal, the drink comes with an Official Nintendo Seal printed on the can. No, not the one of quality, just a quick affirmation that, yes, Little Jimmy, Nintendo made a few pennies of this quick attempt to co-opt your childhood.

Maybe I got my hopes up a little too much. This is made by a company called Boston America Corp., after all, a company so devoid of creativity it got its name from it’s location on Earth.

Overall rating: Mediocre. If you take into consideration my childhood love of Mario, this would get much, much worse. Unfortunately, I strive for objectivity, so I will review the drink strictly on its merits.

Resident Evil T-Virus Antidote “Based on a game rated Mature by the ESRB.”

Next up we have Resident Evil T-Virus Antidote, a drink which gets its namesake from the long running survival horror series Resident Evil. After how disappointing Power Up!’s packaging was, T-Virus is downright inspired. Though the idea of a jumping Tyrant monster holding the severed head of Jill Valentine would have been too fantastic of an idea for me to pass up, Boston America Corp. thankfully showed some restraint. Replete with Umbrella Corp. logos and having actually seen some time within a photo editing program of some kind, it is actually really surprising that this was made by the same company.

Unfortunately, as soon as you drink T-Virus, the type of people you are dealing with becomes readily apparent. Resident Evil T-Virus Antidote is the exact same drink as Power Up! Yes, the Resident Evil inspired energy drink tastes identical to the Super Mario inspired energy drink. Let me make this abundantly clear: Boston America Corp. produces one liquid and then packages it into two different cans, one based upon a series of games where you must shoot thousands, nay tens-of-thousands, of zombies and another based on a game where a portly Italian plumber grows a raccoon tail and jumps into giant green shoes.

This is downright pathetic. Both drinks are just shameless money-grabs. There really isn’t much more to say, read the Power Up! review to know what this tastes like. For the lazy: it tastes watery and is a waste of your goddamn time.

Overall rating: Mediocre. Yet again, I’m striving for objectivity. Individually, in a whiteroom environment, T-Virus is neither bad nor good.

Sure, maybe expecting a company to treat a valuable licenses such as Resident Evil and Super Mario with care and respect is a little much. I will give you that. But is it too much to ask for them to make at least two different drinks? This is worse than Mountain Dew Game Fuel, which, if I recall correctly, at least successfully approximated the taste of Master Chief’s sweaty crotch. At least that shit was authentic.

Further Reading:
Website: Boston America Corp.

- Rob O’Reilly

I’m not sure if the makers of Cocaine had intended for this pun to be used in every review, but I feel it necessary: I’d rather snort Mötley Crüe-at-their-peak levels of actual cocaine than ever have to drink this stuff again. Cocaine, an energy drink which purports to being “the legal alternative,” is quite easily, without an ounce of hyperbole, the most awful tasting drink ever mass-produced. I say “mass-produced,” because I assume someone, somewhere, has made a bathtub-beverage from fermented septic tank runoff.

Honestly, where to begin? The drink smells slightly fruity, which is easily the most pleasant thing I can say. As soon as you take a sip, though, everything goes downhill; the taste it just truly, truly awful. Tasting sort of like liquid cinnamon, the drink burns your throat as it makes its way down. As if the sensation of just swallowing a lit cigarette weren’t bad enough, the aftertaste is the most realistic imitation of throw-up I’ve ever experienced. Seriously, after a single sip it feels like you’ve just finished a brisk, five-hour round of purging the contents of your stomach.

I’d go on about the subtle nuances of the drink’s flavor, but I couldn’t even finish it. I stopped half way because the taste is just so repulsive.

Cocaine is really a text-book case of marketing gone terribly wrong; the Pepsi Blue of energy drinks, if you will. The problem with Cocaine is that, instead of relying on its taste, it fully relies on its image - a loose basis to begin with let alone when it is based off the one-time gag of “har-har, I’m drinking cocaine!” See, contrary to popular opinion, gimmicks aren’t necessarily bad things. Even Cocaine, with its tasteless, insensitive gimmick, could be a marketable product. However, once you’ve got the person to succumb to the gimmick, unless you can hook them with something else, you’ve already lost a future customer. This is the problem with Cocaine, the only reason to ever buy it an additional time is to show a friend that, no, you weren’t kidding this truly tastes like vomit.

Unless you’ve got a business plan that only involves selling a single can to your customer base, this type of product is just unsustainable. Or, in the case of Redux Beverages, the makers of Cocaine, you have a business plan based around either buying weird licenses, e.g. licensing Brawndo from 20th Century Fox, or creating drinks painfully contrived in their name and marketing. I’m not so sure how sustainable that particular plan is.

Anyway, here are some technical energy drink positives: the drink is low in sugar and incredibly high in caffeine. Each 8.4 ounce can contains 280 mg of caffeine or for those that don’t wish to do some math, a little over 33 mg per ounce. For perspective’s sake: Coca-Cola has about 3 mg of caffeine per ounce. While the drink is technically low in sugar, it does get its sweetness from sucralose, also known as Splenda. So for those wary of drinking artificial sweeteners, be aware.

Overall rating: Quite literally, insanely awful. It makes you both question the sanity of those that produce it as well as your own for consuming it.

Further reading:
Website: Drink Cocaine
In Video: The Daily Show: Just for the distaste of it (embedded behind the “read the rest…” link)

- Rob O’Reilly

Read the rest of this entry »

The following is a response to Gloria Steinem’s op-ed piece “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” published in the New York Times on January 8th, 2008.

The man in question was born in Chicago, Illinois and, after some education, earned a degree in law. His wife would go on to become the governor of Arkansas and, with a campaign centered around the concepts of hope and change, would later become President of the United States. Our man would later do very well for himself and become a Senator.

Be honest: in my recap of all the “significant” moments of this supposed man’s life, what has this person ever really done? What has given this person the dramatic insight into the affairs of the highest political office in our country? Proximity? How large is the concentric circle we draw around another person? In 16 years time, when both our man and his child are given their respective 8 year terms, who do we turn to to continue our dynasty? The White House Head Chef?

Remember, I’m presenting this as everything this person has ever done.

Let’s step back for a moment: much like with the story I gave above, isn’t it easy to marginalize anyone’s very existence when you paint with such broad strokes?

That’s what this is about really: marginalizing. We downplay people’s contributions to our country and for what? To make the person we endorse just a tad bit more justifiable? To give an air of legitimacy to a candidacy? To propose, as if divine will or by very conception, a right to ascend to office? Hillary Clinton doesn’t deserve to be President. Neither does Barack Obama. These people must sway us with their campaign, with their message, and with their attitudes, not with their gender, race, or class.

I don’t begrudge Gloria Steinem for her choice of candidate, Hillary Clinton, because in reality, everyone running is a fine choice. I begrudge her because she does exactly what she bemoans the media for doing: playing the “gender” card. Within short breaths, she says Hillary is accused of playing her card when talking about the “boys club” of politics, then goes onto say that female voters and their candidate’s gender is always suspect versus a male voter and his choice.

I’m not saying this isn’t true, it most likely is. What I’m saying is that this is not unique, especially compared against race. We need look no further than Bill Clinton’s own recent marginalizing efforts against Barack Obama. Yes, of course, because his opponent won in South Carolina, the contest was meaningless from the get go. Do you know that Jesse Jackson, that fringe civil rights leader, won the South Carolina primaries twice? Did you know it is because black people vote for black people? Bill Clinton wants you to essentially know that and he wants you to know it so well, he told it to you twice on the campaign trail.

What I begrudge Gloria Steinem for is a concept that many modern civil rights groups have adopted: the idea of unparalleled strife and injustice. No, no, please believe: my problems far outweigh your problems!

This classically happened with the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement, before the time when either women or blacks of either gender could vote, women’s suffrage would constantly assure the powers that be, that, no, giving us the vote will not lead to black voting. Thankfully, it was this very prejudice that would split the authority of those early movements and bring about modern egalitarian Feminism, one inclusive of race, sex, and sexual persuasion. This is identical to many black civil right’s leaders current position on gay marriage. Those leaders want to assure you something: that the black person’s struggle to gain identity, independence, and basic humanity is incomparable to a gay couple’s struggle to gain recognition as a social, spiritual, and legal unit.

So long as we’re only pulling for ourselves, we will never get out of any of the problems we’re in. Gloria Steinem knows this, she references the abolition and suffrage movement in her op-ed piece, however, she doesn’t apply any of the lessons learned from the unification of those two civil rights movements. To have a Feminism that wants equality between the genders, but then only recognizes the stereotypical negatives attached to male identity and enforces this as ineffable truth, is not only counterproductive and hypocritical, but is by no means a legitimate feminism. This, honestly, is my only problem with the Clinton campaign; they ascribe to the false feminism: she wants it both ways. She wants the ability to cry, something that would cook any other male candidate’s goose, and she wants to be forceful and assertive without being seen as a bitch. I’m honestly willing to give you both abilities, I am, but if you’re going to defend one action with “I’m a woman,” and the other with “you’re a man,” please excuse me for not considering you an active defender of feminism.

I don’t begrudge Gloria Steinem for her reasons to support Hillary Clinton, excluding one: that Madam President would not have “masculinity to prove.” Which one of us espouses the belief that men and women are equal? I’d hope both of us, but honestly, the problem with selective sexism is that it is still sexism. Sure, I’m willing to give you that Madam President wouldn’t have a masculinity complex, something that every man apparently has, so long as you’re willing to concede that she will be susceptible to premenstrual syndrome and for one week out of every month the world better be on crisis watch.

What I begrudge Gloria Steinem for is titling her op-ed “Women Are Never Front-Runners,” as if the United States has always had such a long history of black politicians and black presidents. As if less than a year ago, Hillary Clinton wasn’t considered the front runner. As if up until Iowa, the Clinton campaign hadn’t seen itself as the formality required before the inevitable. Neither women or African-Americans have ever been front-runners and to try and claim that one is due before the other is not only a baseless assertion but one that tarnishes your ideals of race and gender equality.

Steinem ends her op-ed as such, “we have to be able to say: ‘I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman’” which is fine. You can support any candidate for any reason you want. However, how does gender as a vote qualifier not fit into the sentence immediately preceding this one?

“This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees.” But we can choose our leaders from a pool limited by estrogen, powerful husbands, and nebulous political one-up-manship? How is using a person’s gender as a basis for voting not sexist? Let’s imagine a world where a George Steinem wrote the following: “we have to be able to say: ‘I’m supporting him because he’ll be a great president and because he’s white, male, and Anglo-Saxon protestant.’” If you heard someone say this you wouldn’t hesitate to call them out on it.

If you truly want your presidential choice to not be limited by sex or race then you must stop limiting yourself to either sex or race. The fact that Barack Obama is black or Hillary Clinton is a woman should never enter into your consideration as to whether they’re a good candidate. You need to look at their beliefs, what they stand for, and what they plan to do. If you truly want to erase the boundaries that exist in our culture between various social classes, races, and genders then you must stop using them as the basis for validating your opinions.

“It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all barriers,” Steinem writes. It certainly is, but it doesn’t mean we must disparage one to support the other. We must not make our decisions based off of the superfluous or the superficial but the real and substantial. You shouldn’t at all care about the candidate’s race or gender but their position on health care, the war, or the economy. Maybe I’m too idealistic, maybe a little naive, but I hope that, one day, we can finally be able to say, “I’m supporting this person because they will be a great president.”

Nothing more and nothing less.

- Rob O’Reilly

A quick tip to the citizenry and local authorities of Boston: today is the 1 year anniversary of your collective freak-out over a guerrilla marketing campaign. So, when looking overhead, possibly on some scaffolding set up in a construction site, and you see some bright blue lights arranged on what can otherwise be called a homemade lite brite, don’t get all hysterical and call the bomb squad, or worse, Mayor Menino.

Nothing against the guy, I just don’t like his voice.

In memoriam, it appears that some artists have put up their own homemade light brites, but this time they’re not using copyrighted characters from a popular late night television show. No, this time they’re using 8-bit remixes of such figures as President Bush, Osama Bin Laden, Peter Berdovsky (one of the guy’s arrested for doing the original Aquateen display), and Sam Travis Ewen (the CEO of the company that commissioned Berdovsky and Sean Stevens for the campaign). While an Osama Bin Laden lite brite probably should at least perturb you, don’t let it get in the way of visiting the various “installations” all around Boston. Head on over to Make:Blog for the pictures and Google maps of the various “tour stops.”

And what about Berdovsky and Stevens, the men famously arrested for installing the original mooninite LED displays? Well, instead of talking about their various hair fancies, this time they’ve gone the more overt route and released a digital postcard (pictured right). The Bostonist has a round up of what the guys are doing currently, as well as a few links to the original news stories.

Okay, everyone take a deep breath. I don’t need another 4 hour delay on I-95 because some robot is blowing up scraps of plastic, diodes, and batteries. Click the “read the rest of this entry” link below to see some pictures and video.

Make:Blog: LED art all over Boston today
Bostonist: Never Forget: First Anniversary of Aqua Teen Day

- Rob O’Reilly

Read the rest of this entry »

Not content to just Web Drift the highways and byways of the internet, Martin Sargent has finally launched his new show on Revision3. Internet Superstar, a cross between Sargent’s two previous shows, Infected and Unscrewed, follows a dejected Martin Sargent on his quest to understand how one becomes an internet mega-sensation. In this episode Sargent talks to the man behind Big Beautiful Wonder Woman, a website devoted to drawings of Wonder Woman in one of two sizes: zaftig or morbidly obese. He also interviews Tom Green, of former MTV fame, about his new nightly show, Tom Green’s House Tonight.

Make sure to watch at least these two parts: the Computer Professor advertisement and the two girls/one cup reaction videos.

Revision3.com: Internet Superstar

- Rob O’Reilly

Coolah Energy, with its total co-opting of Australian culture, is a drink that arrives about 20 years too late. If it had been released in the 80s, can you imagine how well it would have performed? You could of had such Australian luminaries as Paul Hogan and Yahoo Serious drinking it by the liter in the commercials, drop-kicking a kangaroo into outerspace, and then crooning out, in that delightful brogue, Coolah’s tagline “Energy… from down undah!” Oh the possibilities! The commercials, quite figuratively, write themselves!

Unfortunately, Coolah missed that party boat. Fortunately for us, however, Coolah actually tastes really good. The drink is lemon flavored, with the closest taste approximation being carbonated lemon-lime Gatorade. Don’t let that analogy fool you though, Coolah tastes much more like a soda than the typical watery sports drink. In fact, those who generally hate energy drinks will probably really enjoy this one.

There is a reason for that, I should add. The history of Coolah is one of odd cultural exchanges between the United States and Australia. First, we need to go back to the 70s, when Coca-Cola was producing a drink called Rondo. Ultimately unsuccessful, Rondo was discontinued in the mid 80s but not before it could inspire an Australian soda called Solo. Solo is produced by Cadbury-Schweppes, which owns the Dr. Pepper/Seven Up company, which is the group responsible for producing Coolah, which cites Solo as its inspiration. No, wait, there is more: Coca-Cola is the company currently bottling and manufacturing Coolah, which, in that amazing roundabout way, is derived from their original drink Rondo.

No, this story isn’t over yet! In an odd turn of events, Fox Motion Pictures decided to advertise their movie Idiocracy a year after the DVD release with an energy drink based on the most popular liquid in the movie: Brawndo, “the thirst mutilator.” The inspiration for the movie drink Brawndo came originally from the Coca-Cola beverage Rondo, which was famous for its tagline “The Thirst Crusher!” So, in a twist M. Night Shyamalan himself could not have written, there are currently two unrelated energy drinks on the market which are completely inspired by a failed soft-drink from the late 70s.

Whew, did you get all that?

History aside, Coolah is all around well done. While the Australian iconography on the packaging is a little overwrought, it does succeed in being unique without being downright embarrassing or ethnocentric. The nutritional facts are passable by being relatively low in sodium, but high in sugar, which unfortunately, is derived from high fructose corn syrup. It should also be noted that, despite tasting and drinking like a soda, Coolah has an incredible amount of caffeine. An entire can will give you 150 mg of caffeine, which is about half of what you should limit yourself to in a day. For some perspective, Coca-Cola has a little less than 3 mg of caffeine per ounce, while Coolah has over 9 mg.

Overall rating: Great. Coolah succeeds by being one of the best tasting energy drinks out there.

Further reading:
Website: Coolah Energy; Brawndo
Wikipeida: Solo; Rondo

- Rob O’Reilly