The following fictional article posted in the Village Voice may be of
note to people in the NWoD venues.

If you have IC questions about it, please email me
(NeutralMatt@gmail.com)

Begin IC:

Attached to the following article are two photos; the first photo is
of a strikingly pale woman “feeding” off of a man dressed in flannel
shirt, tight jeans, wearing black glasses and a horrified look. The
woman herself has very sharp features, and is sporting a lovely red
leather mini dress with white crosses around the hem.

The second photo is of a chiseled, younger man dressed in a white
suit: the sleeves of the suit jacket have been cut short, revealing a
black dress shirt with large cuff square cuff links that have a photo
of St. Gemma on them, and the pants have a cargo-pant pocket on the
side.  He is standing behind a woman, staring at the camera with his
mouth open and “fangs” extended, two holes in the women’s neck with
tiny drips of blood coming out of them.  One arm is wrapped around his
“victim”, a woman with dirty blond hair, while the other is pulling
off her cardigan suggestively, revealing the “We are the 99%!” t-shirt
beneath.  The woman has her eyes closed and her face is in a peaceful
repose of what could be either ecstasy or death.

Local fashion designer Oustren VanGould’s newest collection, “Wall
Street After Dark” was unveiled last night to mixed reviews. The line
features models wearing VanGould’s latest fashions dressed as vampires
feeding off of Occupy Wall Street protestors.  The displays are
somewhere between macabre and faux-Hollywood to the point where
VanGould’s rather pedestrian effort seems wasted. Unsure whether this
was a publicity stunt based on the recent Twilight movies or an overt
political statement regarding the “99%” movement, we sat down with
VanGould to talk about greed, luxury, and why he doesn’t apologize for
either…

An interview with VanGould:
Village Voice: The fashion industry and designers such as yourself
have faced a lot of criticism for creating goods designed to appeal
exclusively to the wealthy.  What’s the value in pursuing haute
fashion as a design ethos?

Oustren VanGould: You know, it’s simply not true to say that my
designs appeal exclusively to the wealthy.  My designs appeal to those
who value luxury.  The devil is in the details: the same design
produced by a small team of workers without concern for mass
production is going to have more pieces, more details, more luxury
than if you interpreted the design to be produced as cheaply as
possible as fast as possible with appeal to the largest number of
potential consumers.   There isn’t anyone out there who doesn’t want
luxury; it simply happens that there are many out there who can’t
afford it.

VV: What about criticisms that your production methods exploit slave
and child labor in third-world countries?

OVG: Listen, anyone who wants to criticize that haute fashion as some
reserved only for the “very rich” has never considered what the price
tag would be if we made the same goods in America, and without boring
you with numbers, I’ll simply say that if I moved my production work
here, not even the 1% could afford my garments.

VV: Your new collection is very controversial – what were your
inspirations?

OVG: You know, in many ways I’m sympathetic to the Occupy Movement,
because as an artist I have to respect passion.  But America isn’t my
home and I wasn’t born here, so I look on it with a bit of an
outsider’s perspective, and that was really the inspiration.  The
clothes themselves are all about outsiders co-opting symbols into
inappropriate contexts.  Crosses on mini dresses that you’d never wear
to church, cargo pants as part of 3 piece suit, corsets as part of
swimwear.
Meanwhile, it comes back to luxury.  Vampires, before Twilight made
them all glittering teenagers, were associated with dark passions,
with sensuality, with timelessness, with beauty.  It’s a very
beautiful collection with dark colors, lots of leather, silk, fur; all
things that feel good against the body. Textures which you want to
touch, and at the same time very classic shapes and lines that will
never go out of style.  I could have been boring and put my models in
castles or Bram Stoker’s London, but I wanted to push outside the
comfort zone.

VV: So it’s not the clothes themselves, but the context which matters?

OVW: Yes, absolutely.  If I make one beautiful bespoke suit for myself
and wear it to a party, I’m an artist who has made something with his
own hands, and that’s worthy of admiration.  But if I make a dozen,
sell them for $5,000 a piece, and someone else wears it to a party;
suddenly I’m exploiting the poor and denying health insurance to the
unemployed and I should be ashamed of myself – talk about out of
context!
I wanted to put luxury right up against its critics and ask the
uncomfortable question, who is really the vampire here?  We’re all
feeding off each other, creators, consumers, protestors,
marketers….there’s no doubt that Wall Street and its ilk are feeding
off the 99%.  And I’m feeding off the 1%.  I wanted to acknowledge
that, but in a way which isn’t apologetic, because I’m certainly not
sorry for it.

<–end IC

Matt Blank, US2007039568
aDST Legacy

Over 10 Years, House Majority Leader Says, Citing Report

The proposed final health care legislation would cut the federal deficit by more than $100 billion over the first 10 years, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said on Thursday, citing a finding by the Congressional Budget Office that is expected to be released on Thursday. The office found that the overhaul would cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the subsequent decade, Mr. Hoyer said.

The New York Times
Section: Op-Ed
Wed, March 31, 2010 — Late Edition

Divide and Diminish
By: Jasmine York, Ph. D.

This week, I want to dust off my crystal ball and make a prediction: in the future, the biggest land animals will be smaller than they are now.

Here’s why I think so. As a rule of thumb, larger animals need more food than smaller animals; they also need more space. Obviously, it takes more land to grow 100 rhinoceroses than it does to grow 100 rabbits. One hundred tigers require more land than 100 foxes. Indeed, meat-eaters, being higher in the food chain, need even more space than plant-eaters. For land mammals, every kilogram of prey supports just 9 grams of carnivore. So to feed one tiger of 180 kilos, you need 20 tonnes of prey. To support a breeding population of tigers, you need rather more. (For non-metric types, 2.2 pounds of prey feeds one third of an ounce of carnivore; a tiger weighs about 400 pounds and needs 22 tons of prey.)

When we break up rainforests or steppes, or build roads through pristine landscapes, we start to fray the fabric of nature.

When we humans burn tracts of forest, or make islands in some similar way, the immediate impacts depend on a suite of factors, including how many islands there are, how big they are, and how close they are together. It also matters what is between them. Fields may be more hospitable to wildlife than roads or water; under some circumstances, life forms may be able to flit from one fragment to another, and the “island” nature of the fragments will be reduced. Perhaps we can use such patterns to shape how we use land, to try and minimize the impact we have.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps we should stop getting mired in details, and reflect on what we know: small islands are simpler, less ecologically interesting places than big islands. When we break up rainforests or steppes, or build roads through pristine landscapes, we start to fray the fabric of nature. We may not see the full impact today, tomorrow, or next year. But we know what the long-term effects will be. By fraying nature we make the planet a simpler, duller, diminished place.

The New York Post
Section: Local News
Thu, April 01, 2010 — 9:49 AM ET

—–

Mauled floater in the Hudson River!

For the third month in a row another body has been pulled from a body of water, this time the Hudson River. Sources say its body was found in the same condition as the last two maulings, apparently giving very little evidence except for the appearance of being attacked by wild animals. The victim, 39-year-old Anthony Rose-Swanson, was an investment banker at Bear Stearns Companies, Inc/ JP Morgan Chase Investments, and resident of the Upper East Side. Anthony Rose member of the notably philanthropic Rose Family of New York City.

Last seen leaving his apartment on 86^th street for his morning jog, Anthony was reported missing for 2 days before his body was found and identified this morning. The Rose family mourns his death, and his mother, Estelle Steadler –Rose, in an angry statement to the press stated, “That city should be ashamed for letting this insanity continue. Until then we would like to mourn our boy in peace.”