How Self-Reliant is the FIC?

"Imitation is SUICIDE", wrote the great Ralph Waldo Emerson in an essay entitled "Self Reliance". I concur. It is my belief that the definition of schizophrenia is living the life of a copy-cat. Copying the attitudes, beliefs, and yes, fashion choices of other people, thus, adopting their personality traits in psychosis. I believe the individual should stand out, must stand out, and will stand out even in the event that he or she should begin to follow somebody else's mode of thought. That is, even if their vain intention is to follow the norm and conform to society's will instead of forge their own God-given path, they will stand out like a sore thumb. Therefore, their suicide attempts that Emerson speaks of are evident. Blindly following each other's paths. Copying each other's speech patterns. Walking contradictions that are afraid of standing out, yet do stand out, albeit as people that do not think for themselves. The Fashion Industrial Complex is cultural suicide, and it is rampant.

There are numerous terms given t0 the class of people that tend to follow instead of look within themselves. The word that comes first to my mind would be the term "poser". A person that studies cliques and social patterns and does what ever he can to fit in is a poser at best. Posing to attract attention from mediocre circles that do nothing but pay attention to the latest new thing. As if some type of prestige were to be gained from hanging around the cool kids. Other terms follow. Lemmings and sheeple are meant to describe a broad range of people that follow each other into the ditch as far as leaders and political movements are concerned. The more they follow, the more dumbed down they become by their own choices that are influenced by looking at someone else's vain example. And by their own choices, I mean that everyone decides to commit cultural suicide by being a fool and following the norm. NO ONE is forced to conform by any standard. People think they are but they are not. This is part of the illusion the FIC creates.

A person who does for himself and is himself at all costs can be called self-reliant. This is diametrically opposite to what the Fashion Industrial Complex prescribes for every man, woman and child. Even in the United States of America, they want a cultural dictatorship where every saying and teaching put out by the FIC is obeyed by the huddled masses. Without question. Even sayings that were put out by the revolution of the 1960's have been mocked and co-opted by the FIC to exploit the public. That is why I say at the masthead of this blog, "BEWARE" the Fashion Industrial Complex, echoing Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex speech at the end of his presidency. We must beware for our lives are at stake. Bewaring is the first step towards self-reliance. Once that is accomplished, breaking out of the box is possible.

Someone in Vacuous Blogland is Hijacking my Cause: Introducing Laura Jane Faulds, Fashionista Opportunista

As a writer and an activist, my job is not only to expose the Fashion Industrial Complex and all of its soul-sucking endeavors, but to also seek out like-minded individuals who share my philosophy and would love to see the eventual destruction of the FIC once and for all. So I did a search on google for "Fashion Industrial Complex", hoping that my search results would turn up at least one writer with similar views. By the way, I never assumed I was THE person to unearth the existence of the FIC, let alone name it. No doubt people before me have had my observations that in 2004 I had begun to write down and take to the streets.

My search led me to "nogoodforme.com", a website that bills itself as "Your Ultimate Fashion Mixtape". That label is, at best, tacky and smacks of overweening FIC snobbery. Yet Laura Jane Faulds, self-described "senior writer" at nogoodforme.com has taken it upon herself to try

and explain in her own words what the FIC is. Bear with me, and please try not to wretch on your keyboards. She writes, "As you should all know by now, The Royal We of nogoodforme.com is all about loving fashion and loathing The Fashion Industrial Complex (tm). We use the term FIC (tm) to encapsulate the stupid, boring, problematic garbage that unfortunately comes along with how most people think about fashion: Brands and Dollaz and Misogyny and Elitism, Oh My! As such, I generally try to think about fashion in terms of self-expression and garments and innovation rather than associating myself with any particular style-istic segment or school of thought."--Funny. From the content of her website, I would've thought the exact opposite, what with her using words such as "redonk" and "hella-conceptual" to describe things that may or may not suit her fancy. Note that Ms. Faulds curiously places the (tm) symbol after mentioning the FIC. Just whose "TM" are we referring to, honey?! Hers?! I don't think so.  Although I could babble on about the numerous cases I could make against her for copyright infringement, my main concern was her sincerity in defining the FIC's existence. As you already know, the FIC I describe in my articles is far beyond whatever her imagination could grasp.

While my gut instinct was telling me, "Go ahead, Ted, blog her to oblivion!!", I had another idea: A meeting of the minds with the woman. I figured since she had enough ingenuity to coin the term "FASHION INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX", we would hit it off and I would perhaps gain some long-overdue exposure to my blog. No such thing happened. In good nature I sent the editors of nogoodforme.com an e-mail, praising their website. NOTHING. WTF was I thinking?Well, them being a widely-read website I could understand them not answering their backlog of e-mails, so I did the next best thing.  I e-mailed Ms. Faulds herself. Not a word, not a syllable. At this point, strike three was pointless as her take on Obama (see above photo). My general interest in whatever views she might have had on the FIC had already greatly weakened. My only conclusion is that this Laura Jane Faulds is a self-serving fashionista who eagerly co-opted my use of the term "Fashion Industrial Complex" for marketing her "redonk" blog. She could very well be a plant from the FIC itself to try and subvert the noble cause of exposing the truth. Why else would she choose, like a high-school cheerleader, to ignore my e-mails unless if she truly has something to hide? My advice to Laura: Stop lying to yourself. And stop lying to your readers. How dare you claim to denounce the FIC when you yourself ARE the FIC! There are REAL people with REAL problems, like unemployment and homelessness which the Fashion Industrial Complex creates! But you wouldn't care about that, would you? Your life is all about fashion, fashion, fashion, and partying and worrying about which hipster fuckface you're going to screw on Friday night. You don't have any real issues, or real concerns which would pertain to your identification of the Fashion Industrial Complex! 

I have said my piece. Now I leave you with Al Goldstein, porn connoisseur and owner of Screw Magazine. Although he is perhaps best known for his candid "Fuck You" commentaries on Midnight Blue, a cable-access show he hosted from the 70's to 2003, when he went "broke"(he also started speaking out about Bush at this time). If he were here right now, he would most likely say, "FUCK YOU, Laura Jane Faulds, YA FUCKIN CUNT!! And FUCK YOUR "Ultimate Fashion Mixtape!!"

Barack Obama:How Selling Out Became a Trend in '08

Welcome to part II of my in-depth expose of the Obamanation that causeth desolation. You may recall that in February I wrote about Obama being a hipster phenomenon creating a cultural dictatorship in the realm of politics. This time I'm back with a second helping of dish on the topic of the lionized black man running for office in November who seems to be pulling all types of people out from the woodwork that aren't even fond of black people in general, but pretend to care about social change by voting for a black person without foreknowledge of his credentials. Let's face it, a black man in Barack Obama's position would not have attained such notoriety without certain "friends" in high places(ie. CFR, Pfizer, and other multinationals). The majority of African-Americans would do well to figure out who exactly this man is who claims to speak for them. However, as long as Rupert MURDERdoch and his bigwigs continue to run the Fashion Industrial Complex--lining their pockets with the money they extorted from the mindless fashion drones they employed--it will become increasingly difficult for there to be any revelation concerning Obama and his cohorts. This is a classic example of how the Mass Media seeks to overshadow anything of relevance by promoting celebrities instead of actual news. Hell, even John McCain himself compared Obama to Paris Hilton. Now, I'm no fan of McCain, but at least with him you know what you're getting. He's a fascist and and doesn't deny it. He supports the so-called "war on terror" 100% and brags about it. So does Obama but he pulls underhanded schemes to conceal that fact. How much of a hypocrite do you have to be to supposedly state that you're against the war in Iraq but for the war in Afghanistan? It doesn't make any sense, but then again nothing in this government does.



That being said, I'd like to point out that most Obama supporters do not even question the credentials of their "fearless leader", much less do they know anything about him, save that he's black, so he must be cool, right? It's just ridiculous how the sheeple think. That if they see something put out by the media as "fashionable" they unquestionably support it all the way, even if it's something completely debasing, and racist to boot. That's the true definition of a sell-out. Someone who does something just because he or she sees the Joneses doing it. And not even bothering to ask why. Barack Obama has got to be the biggest hoodwink the American Public has seen since Roswell. He and his handlers throw around the word "change" just enough so it can soak into their enslaved minds. Then people actually start believing this garbage, that a Democrat, whether he be white or black, is actually capable of changing the system without towing the party line. Just look at Joe Biden. What a joke!



Barack Obama is sell-out galore. For 20 years, he attended Jeremiah Wright's church without raising any issue with the radical content of his pastor's sermons. He was even married by Wright. So after 20 years of being a faithful member of Wright's flock, in early 2008 Obama, like Peter, denied the Christian teachings of his pastor for fear of persecution from voters. As far as I'm concerned, that is a sell-out. And this business of receiving corporate monies from HMO's is also shady. But, of course, hipsters, the biggest sell-outs on the planet, could care less. They'll conform with their peers to their dying day.

John Varvatos: Rock and Roll's Antichrist

In October 2006, Hilly Kristal lost a major battle to save his beloved CBGB's from drowning in the urban wasteland that is called Manhattan. After much litigation and failed negotiations with Mayor Bloomberg to secure a new location for the club, the future of live music in New York City was put down like a invalid racehorse named Barbaro. For 18 months, the site laid dormant. Passerbys would mark the legendary birthplace of American punk with graffiti as a shell of its famous storefront remained. Meanwhile, the Bowery Rescue Mission next door, the same that leased CBGB's, continues to house the homeless of the Lower East Side; a poignant reminder that homelessness in New York is prevalent in all walks of life, including struggling musicians. Unfortunately, there is no alloted shelter for the underground rock movement.

It wasn't just the physical landmark that was CBGB's displaced by gentrification. The very soul of underground rock was, in my opinion, wrenched from the Bowery into utter oblivion. The infrastructure has fallen. The New World Order under the Fashion Industrial Complex has taken shape in the form of a old enemy, ROCK AND ROLL FASHION DESIGNERS. A cunning and crafty serpent by the name of John Varvatos has cleverly wormed his way into the scene by capitalizing on the CBGB's site, creating a boutique for famous rock stars. Could this be the prophesied Rock and Roll Antichrist?! Let's look into the Bible: SECOND THESSALONIANS 2:3 states, "Let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first(gentrification on the Lower East Side), and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God(or Rock)or that is worshipped, so that he as God (of Rock)sitteth in the temple of God (CBGB's)showing himself that he is God(being a designer demigod for Rock stars)."==John Varvatos clearly fits the profile of the Rock and Roll Antichrist as somebody who has usurped the holy ground of CBGB's to fuel his sick greed.

Like any candidate for an Antichrist, John Varvatos has chosen his Rock Star minions, among whom are Iggy Pop and Chris Cornell. Both have a specific task and mission. While Iggy is the quintessential model for Heroin Chic ('nuff said), Chris Cornell is your regular sell-out. As frontman for Audioslave, his role as part of Rock COINTELPRO was to seek out, and disrupt the political works of Rage Against The Machine, by replacing frontman and ardent communist Zach de la Rocha. HENCE, rendering the group's radical philosophy useless. The name AUDIOSLAVE in itself ought to suggest one thing: rather than "rage against the machine", people (or sheeple) would be more comfortable with their iPods, being a SLAVE to the FIC. That is all for now. TAH TAH!

The Hipster Crisis of 2008: Williamsburg residents plug Barack Obama

I was recently at the mini-mall on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, when I overheard a gaggle of moronic hipsters gaggling about Barack Obama. They were elated over his recent victory and proceeded to give each other high-fives in celebration. I kid you not, this has been the phenomenon in the past 5 months or so. All over Northern Brooklyn I have seen signs with Obama's face saying "CHANGE BROOKLYN CAN BELIEVE IN" posted in locales such as stores and restaurants. Although the fall of Williamburg has been long confirmed since as far back as 2001, this certainly puts it in stone.

Hipster, by definition, is a yuppie that sets the standard for what is hip by considerably tacky fashion quotas. They regard themselves to be elite because the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, and the books that they read are considered to be "avant-garde", thereby setting a distinction between them and non-hipster 'hoods. A hipster is usually what follows after radicals and artists when a neighborhood is gentrified. The hipster embodies the radical and artistic aspects through their individual styles but contain none of the substance of the people they displaced through gentrification. They are usually the first to spout the academic content of leftist politics without the raw grassroots approach. By academic leftist standards, electing Barack Obama would be right on the money. Why? BECAUSE HE'S BLACK. On the other hand, an educated leftist who does research on candidates would tell you that Barack Obama is far from reputable.

For generations, modern white hipsters have been guilty of subjecting black people to their image of what is cool. For example, hipsters do not consider themselves to be complete in hipsterdom unless if they have a token black in their circle. And by that I don't mean just a random black person who's down to earth and easy to talk to. NO, I mean the lionized black that hipsters consider an object of devotion, the author of "hip", so to speak. Sorta like the type Sonic Youth sings about in "Cool Thing". The way these hipster doofi approach integration is in its nature subjective, by which they think blackness equates automatic coolness, and something to idolize without a clue as to what the black experience entails. And what could be cooler than a black president?! To me, nothing could be more overtly racist than to single out black people as being demigods and not ordinary people. And nothing could be more ludicrous than to decide who the next president is going to be, because of his race.

And what do I think of Barack Obama? If he weren't an Uncle Tom he'd be torn to shreds by the media and Hillary Clinton, and that's a fact.

The Slacker Movement: What is it all about?

Recently, Roman Shusterman, an activist, began holding out a sign in Union Square Park. It said in bold letters, "Slackers of the World Unite!" The sign generated a response of several threads on Sean Hannity's website, where they went into further detail of how he was calling for the Million Slackers March. Although being that Sean Hannity's bigoted eccentricities do not mesh well with the message Roman was trying to promote, I will add that any response is favorable, contrary to what I've been experiencing with my own personal blog (ho de hoho hum!!!) I am rather astonished since card-carrying members of the Fashion Industrial Complex would generally ignore and give two-word responses, if anything. I would like to thank the person who put us on the website, political differences aside, for helping me and Roman introduce people to the idea of the Slacker Movement. However, I would like to take the time to clarify exactly what it entails.

I was the brains behind this idea. A slacker, by definition, is generally somebody that does not want to work. 'Nuff said, right? Wrong. A slacker can be many things. In the 90's, the Alternative generation glamorized the slacker lifestyle as rebelling against what society told them they should be doing for a living. Now as much as I loved the Grunge era, the negative portrayal of slackerdom--as capitalized by Kurt Cobain--did little but feed into the Fashion Industrial Complex's degradation of my generation through stereotyping their likes and distastes. Think of Beavis and Butthead being redirected through MTV to metamorphose an entire generation through subtle mechanics. This phenomenon killed the entirety of the Alternative/Punk movement and prevented it from making any waves as far as social reconstruction. As the FIC tends to do, it nullified any component of true socialism and decadently rendered it passe as it was swallowed alive by the "bohemoth" media and became nothing more than a trend to follow.

In mainstream culture, the term slacker is thrown around to include people that are generally frowned upon by corporate 9-to-5 society. These include artists, performers, activists, and journalists that don't want to earn a salary that pays their bills but kills them inside. I fall into that category. I myself am employed, but I do not consider my job conducive to a career that fulfills the mind, body and spirit. Therefore by virtue I fall into the slacker category because I have an occupation where the work I do is despised by the corporations even though it keeps things running. I am a messenger, otherwise known as the literal corporate carrier pigeon. Most of the work I do as a messenger is for the Fashion Industrial Complex, ie. designers, boutiques and retailers. I am directed every day by security guards in large office buildings to use the service entrance because the beautiful people in the lobbies and normal elevators do not want to know that messengers exist. This is not the kind of work I want to do for the rest of my natural life. Therefore I am calling on people who feel the same way, in order to create a better workforce for creative types to thrive, for all who at one point in their lives have been given the slacker label to form a MILLION SLACKER MARCH!!

The purpose of this march is not satire or sarcasm, in fact my republican friends on the Sean Hannity website were busy debating whether or not myself and Roman were serious about the march idea or if it was just a joke. But regardless if the title "MILLION SLACKER MARCH" is catchy and could come across as a joke, millions of lives are wasted because they have fallen into the slacker category and accrued the punishment of living up to the shameful stereotypes that plague us as a whole. These include laziness, drug addiction, and even homelessness. So it is a serious issue. We therefore need a forum where the slackers of the world can reclaim our identity as people that want to be given a chance under a progressive government that can adequately respond to the demands and work requirements of all people, not just FIC/corporate types.

The FIC-engineered imprisonment of Paris Hilton

Talk about publicity stunts. Paris Hilton, in the style of OJ Simpson, Robert Blake and Michael Jackson attempted to flout justice by claiming medical excuses but was unsuccessful. Now, after crying for her mommy like a 3-year-old on national televison, Paris has "successfully" served her 23-day prison sentence for driving drunk with a suspended license. And the world could not be more of a pleasant place to live. But enough gloating. The issue at hand is not her apparent comeuppance being perhaps 2007's greatest victory, but the fact that her supposed reformation as a person is suspect. Leave it to the Fashion Industrial Complex to construct such an abomination that more impressionable youth would consider the subcommandante of the bimb brigade someone to emulate. They do this through various media, i.e. Paris Hilton's publicists, pr puppets and handlers. The FIC has so many tricks up their sleeve that it is possible that the arrest/conviction in itself was engineered as a publicity stunt to elevate Paris Hilton's tarnished image.

A friend of mine says that this is a turnaround for Paris Hilton and that as a result, she will lend herself to worthy causes, such as the antiwar movement. He also claims that Paris will also change the Fashion Industrial Complex for the better. To coin a cliched phrase from the 90's, AS IF!! Even if she so much as outwardly reforms her character by dressing in more modest clothes and beginning to associate with more dignified people (think Christine Aguilera), the Fashion Industrial Complex cannot and will not be reformed as a result. As for her recent interest in spiritual matters, whatever church she belongs to (the Church of plastic spa treatments, most likely) may as well be using Paris to gain more churchgoers for purely political/financial reasons and having nothing whatsoever to do with spirituality and/or religion. What CAN she possibly do that's different? Unless if she decides to do a version of "The Simple Life" where she poses as a homeless person (which would have been a better punishment than prison), it's safe to say that I will not in any way, shape or form subscribe to the kinder, gentler Paris. She couldn't possibly overcome her shallowness. If the Fashion Industrial Complex uses this as an example of how people can turn around, I'm not buying it.