Nerdy Needs

NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER! Shipping mid-November 2014.

LiartownUSA is proud to offer a full-color, glossy, 12” x 12” wall calendar, painstakingly crafted to honor and celebrate our bravest, most productive modern heroes: ONLINE SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISTS.

What began as an imaginary calendar on a blog post is now the first Liartown artifact to respectfully and consensually enter the real world. Hailed as “the absolute best cat calendar!” by none other than Jezebel.com, this impressive calendar showcases 12 absolutely precious kittens, each carefully selected through a grueling audition process. Unlike bland, privileged garbage kittens chosen for nothing more than shallow good looks, Social Justice Kittens radiate fierce strength in the face of untold adversity, and all are gifted with a dazzling array of genders and orientations to go with their tiny, oh-so-kissable faces! THE STATUS QUO WILL NEVER FULLY ACCEPT THESE KITTENS!

After thousands of years of cis-het, patriarchal BULLSHIT, here’s a calendar that DARES YOU to speak truth to power. A calendar which boldly announces to the world that you aren’t going to sit back and let others speak for you. A calendar that holds you up high so others can see you’re able to stand proudly on your own. Here at LAST is a calendar that urges you to lean in really close and actually drink the sweet, pathetic tears RIGHT OFF YOUR OPPRESSORS’ STUBBLED CHEEKS!

Each month features a charming kitten professionally photographed in a heroic pose appropriate to a small cat defiantly speaking out on the hottest social justice issues of the day. A sassy, challenging declaration erases any doubts about each cat’s passionate rejection of the dominant paradigm.

In the end, the choice is simple: financially support the ideals embodied by this treasured, unique gift, or refuse to purchase a copy and become one of those hateful fake allies who actively embrace injustice and murder.

Earlier this year I reviewed a study that found that, simply by changing the weight of an object in hand, psychologists can manipulate how seriously a person takes an issue.  In other words, when holding something heavy, matters seem heavy.  Or, concerns seem weightier when one is weighed down.

Thanks to an email from USC professor Norbert Schwarz, I was introduced to a whole series of studies on what psychologists call metaphorical effects.  These are instances in which a metaphor commonly used to describe a psychological state or social reality can, in turn, induce that state or reality.  So, for example, holding a warm cup of coffee makes people feel warmly toward each other (here), getting the cold shoulder makes people feel cold (here), people placed in a high location seem to be high in a hierarchy (here), and cleaning one’s hands makes a person feel morally clean (here).

Schwarz was the co-author, with Spike W.S. Lee, on another example of a metaphorical effect.  They wanted to know if smelling something fishy made people suspicious.  It did!

In the climactic scenes of the film Quadrophenia, based on The Who’s concept album, Jimmy (Phil Daniels) rides a prized Mod scooter along the cliffs at Beachy Head, East Sussex, before hurling it over the cliff on to the sea-lashed rocks below. It’s a symbolic end to Jimmy’s life as a Mod, as a follower believing in false idols, like his hero Ace Face (Sting) (whose scooter he stole), a local Mod leader, who turns out be nothing more than a bell-boy lackey. Jimmy’s fall is central to the film, and to Pete Townhend’s album. But Jimmy’s symbolic crash may have actually been inspired by the death of Mod teenager, Barry Prior in 1964.

“I would say every artist is, in effect, trying to figure how the human race can be saved from itself. So in those days when we sang for the union workers, and today when I go around and sing on a picket line, I’m not really being all that different. Artists who say ‘We’re only interested in art for art’s sake’ are fooling themselves, I think.”