text:
The Brand Underground
Posted Under: Brand Underground
[Since the version of this story many people have linked to is behind a firewall now, here it is in full. By Rob Walker, from July 30, 2006, issue of New York Times Magazine:]
Aaron Bondaroff is 29, part Puerto Rican, part Jewish, Brooklyn-born and a high-school dropout. His life weaves through the most elusive subcultures of lower Manhattan. A-Ron, as he is also known, is one of those individuals who embodies a scene. "I'm so downtown," Bondaroff is fond of saying, "I don't go above Delancey."
Even so, he longs for something bigger, like the cultural noise made by the Beats in the 1950's or Andy Warhol's Factory in the 1960's or the bands and fans who clustered around CBGB's in the 1970's. He wants to "make history" and join "the time line" of New York. He is not an artist, an author, a designer, musician, filmmaker or even a famous skateboarder or graffiti writer. So in another era, Bondaroff might have had to settle for his cameos in some of the acclaimed images of youthful outsider debauchery captured by his photographer friend Ryan McGinley. He could be, in other words, a counterculture muse, like Neal Cassady or Edie Sedgwick.
In our present era, however, he may not have to settle. There's a new alternative, one that's neatly summed up in a question that A-Ron has been asking himself lately: "How do I turn my lifestyle into a business?"
The answer he came up with is worth paying attention to because it speaks to a significant but little-noted development in contemporary culture. Young people have always found fresh ways to rebel, express individuality or form subculture communities through cultural expression: new art, new music, new literature, new films, new forms of leisure or even whole new media forms. A-Ron's preferred form of expression, however, is none of those things. When he talks about his chosen medium, which he calls aNYthing, it sounds as if he's talking about an artists' collective, indie film production company, a zine or a punk band. But in fact, aNYthing is a brand. A-Ron puts his brand on T-shirts and hats and other items, which he sells in his own store, among other places. He sees it as fundamentally of a piece with the projects and creations of his anti-mainstream heroes.
This might seem strange, since most of us think of branding as a thoroughly mainstream practice: huge companies buying advertising time during the Super Bowl to shout their trademarked names at us is pretty much the opposite of authentic or edgy expression. But branding is more complicated than that. It is really a process of attaching an idea to a product. Decades ago that idea might have been strictly utilitarian: trustworthy, effective, a bargain. Over time, the ideas attached to products have become more elaborate, ambitious and even emotional. This is why, for example, current branding campaigns for beer or fast food often seem to be making some sort of statement about the nature of contemporary manhood. If a product is successfully tied to an idea, branding persuades people — consciously or not — to consume the idea by consuming the product. Even companies like Apple and Nike, while celebrated for the tangible attributes of their products, work hard to associate themselves with abstract notions of nonconformity or achievement. A potent brand becomes a form of identity in shorthand.
Of course, companies don't go into business in order to express a particular worldview and then gin up a product to make their point. Corporate branding is a function of the profit motive: companies have stuff to sell and hire experts to create the most compelling set of meanings to achieve that goal. A keen awareness of and cynicism toward this core fact of commercial persuasion — and the absurd lengths that corporations will go to in the effort to infuse their goods with, say, rebelliousness or youthful cool — is precisely the thing that is supposed to define the modern consumer. We all know that corporate branding is fundamentally a hustle. And guys like A-Ron are supposed to know that better than anybody.
Which is why the supposed counterculture nature of his brand might arouse some suspicion. Manufactured commodities are an artistic medium? Branding is a form of personal expression? Indie businesses are a means of dropping out? Turning your lifestyle into a business is rebellious?
And yet thousands and thousands of young people who are turned off by the world of shopping malls and Wal-Marts and who can't bear the thought of a 9-to-5 job are pursuing a path similar to A-Ron's. Some design furniture and housewares or leverage do-it-yourself-craft skills into businesses or simply convert their consumer taste into blog-enabled trend-spotting careers. Some make toys, paint sneakers or open gallerylike boutiques that specialize in the offerings of product-artists. Many of them clearly see what they are doing as not only noncorporate but also somehow anticorporate: making statements against the materialistic mainstream — but doing it with different forms of materialism. In other words, they see products and brands as viable forms of creative expression.
Through aNYthing, A-Ron sees himself as part of a "movement," a brand underground. And maybe there is something going on here that can't simply be dismissed just because of the apparent disconnect between the idea of a "brand" and the idea of an "underground." After all, subcultures aren't defined by outsiders passing judgment; they are defined by participants.
To try to understand this phenomenon and how it might play out, I sought a test-case category in which I could compare the experiences of several upstarts over time. The T-shirt, a simple commodity, seemed an ideal vessel. While some indie products are handmade, many more are, like T-shirts, manufactured goods that attract consumers largely through branding. Even with this single product as a framework, the variety is dizzying. Some T-shirt branders target high-end consumers, some are attached to the curious world of sneaker collecting and some are harder to categorize. Like A-Ron's brand.
Bondaroff dropped out of high school at age 15 to spend more time partying, getting into trouble and hanging out with the people who were worth hanging out with. He ended up getting a job in Lower Manhattan at the Supreme store. Theoretically a skateboard brand, Supreme was really an attitude brand, and the store had a reputation as a place where clerks would insult you to your face if you weren't cool enough. A-Ron was not only cool enough, he was photographed for Supreme ads and became its "unofficial face." He offered his opinions about what would make the photo shoot work better or which underground artists the brand should work with. Supreme caught on in Japan, and by the time Bondaroff was 21, he was visiting Tokyo and getting asked for autographs by kids who had seen his picture in magazines. "I was always bugged out by that — people are like, 'Oh, you're that guy,"' he told me not long ago. "You get famous for nothing."
While still basically working a retail job, he was also becoming the cool guy who is flown to Australia to sit on a trend-setter panel or whose elaborate birthday party is underwritten by Nike. He was figuring out that he had the option of becoming, in effect, a corporate muse. But he concluded that there was no reason to rent his coolness and knowingness to other companies. The point of aNYthing was to turn his lifestyle into his own business.
He devised his brand not long after Sept. 11, 2001, and it is deeply tied to his love for New York City and his own status on the current downtown scene. The "NY" in the logo resembles that of the New York Giants football team, and aNYthing designs often blend familiar New York iconography (from The New York Post nameplate to Lotto signs) with the brand's name. His boutique opened last year on Hester Street on the lower Lower East Side.
One reason an underground brand sounds nonsensical is that countercultures are supposed to oppose the mainstream, and nothing is more mainstream than consumerism. But we no longer live in a world of the Mainstream and the Counterculture. We live in a world of multiple mainstreams and countless counter-, sub- and counter-sub-cultures. Bondaroff's brand is built on both the sort of microfame that such a finely cut cultural landscape enables and on his absolutely exquisite ability to analyze that landscape. He knows that he is seen by the various trend-hunters or Japanese magazine editors or marketing types who hit him up for the latest news as a professional Cool Guy. He recognizes that taste is his skill.
He and his friends have even turned downtown demographics into a kind of parlor game: there are Cool Guys and the Art-Damaged crowd, the Parent Haters, the Dropouts and so on. "I like to label all the different scenes," he says. "I coin the phrase, and people use it, and it goes back to me." In fact, he has a related set of T-shirts coming out in the fall. He called up his friend Futura, the veteran graffiti artist, and asked him to write "Cool Guys"; that will be one of the shirts. "I'm exposing everybody," Bondaroff says, and includes himself in the critique. ("I'm definitely a Cool Guy — the top Cool Guy on the scene," he said. "I'll say it loud and proud.") This is the quintessence of the postmodern brand rebel, hopscotching the minefield of creativity and commerce, recognizing the categorization, satirizing it, embracing it and commoditizing it all at once.
If A-Ron and his crew are the ideological descendants of the scenesters who clustered around Warhol in the Factory period or hung out at CB's in its heyday, then perhaps they're trying a new tactic in the eternal war against the corporate suits who co-opt the rebellion, style and taste of every youth culture and sell it right back to the generation that created it. Perhaps the first lesson of the brand underground is not that savvy young people will stop buying symbols of rebellion. It is that they have figured out that they can sell those symbols, too.
Daniel Casarella represents a second iteration of the brand underground. At 28, he is a young man who has something to say. Several years ago, he became fascinated with the gritty, turn-of-the-century New York underworld described in Luc Sante's book on the era, "Low Life." His brother, Michael, who is 23, was writing his college thesis about 19th-century New York literature, and the Casarellas came to believe that the depths of the forgotten past offered an intellectual antidote to the superficial, surface-driven present. The first time we met, in early 2005, Casarella told me the story of the Collect Pond in lower Manhattan: drained because of pollution in the early 1800's, it was filled in and became the brutal Five Points slum. "My brother and I have this theory of the Collect being the original sin of Manhattan," he said, launching into a riff on man's betrayal of nature and its consequences.
He wanted to get these ideas across to others, but instead of writing a novel or making a series of paintings, he started making T-shirts. He learned screen printing at the Fashion Institute of Technology, but never considered actually joining the industry to work long hours for somebody else. Instead, in 2003, he founded Barking Irons — the name is 19th-century slang for pistols — a line of T-shirts with stark but intricate graphics that looked like old woodcuts, paired with mysterious phrases that refer back to the secret history of New York. One was inspired by the Collect Pond and another by a Washington Irving story. After he had printed some of his first designs, Casarella dropped off samples at Barneys in a paper bag.
A pricey department store doesn't seem a likely place for expressing ideas, but the store's buyer called him the next day. It turns out "new ideas" are exactly what the company was hungry for, according to Wanda Colon, a Barneys vice president. Its "young minded" Co-op spinoff stores cater to consumers who seek self-expression specifically through nonmainstream brands, like Gilded Age or Imitation of Christ, she said. Barking Irons got attention in the fashion trade press and on blogs like Coolhunting.com — and from an apparel distributor called Triluxe. A Triluxe executive told me that what the Barking Irons brand had going for it was "point of view." Adam Beltzman, the owner of a Chicago store called Haberdash — one of many boutiques serving the same shoppers Colon describes — liked Barking Irons' aesthetic, but what sold him on the brand were the background narratives. "There's something meaningful behind it," he says. "There's something to talk about." Soon Casarella was thinking way beyond T-shirts, and he projected confidence. From that first batch of a few hundred shirts in 2003, Barking Irons had seen its orders climb to 12,000 a season.
It is often said that this generation of teenagers and 20-somethings is the most savvy one ever in its ability to critique and understand commercial persuasion, and it is probably true — just as it was true when the same thing was said of Generation X and of the baby boomers before that. (And it will no doubt be true when it is said, again, of those now in middle school.) But understanding or "seeing through" the branded world is not the same thing as rejecting it. What bothers Casarella about mainstream branding are big, blatant logos that turn the wearer into a walking advertisement and are supposed to function as simplistic "badges." That approach, he suggests, is what makes big brands as shallow as most Top 40 music or Hollywood movies. It is not that these forms are inherently bad; it is that they always seem built for the lowest common denominator, and the contemporary consumer demands more — more originality, more sincerity, more not-in-the-mainstream, a greater goal than just making money. That is what he sees Barking Irons as doing in the realm of the brand.
Barking Irons does have a logo, but it appears inside his T-shirts, where only the consumer sees it. That's the way, Dan Casarella maintains, to make a deep connection. If it seems a little incongruous to combat superficiality by way of T-shirts that retail for $60 or more at Barneys or A-list boutiques, well, in his view, that's the best place to find an audience that "gets it." When Casarella declares that his project is part of a "revolution against branding," what he really means is not the snuffing out of commercial expression but an elevation of it.
My third example of a grass-roots brand maker is The Hundreds. Its co-founder, Bobby Kim, is 26, one of three children of Korean parents who came to America and made good; his father is a physician. Growing up in multicultural Los Angeles, Kim was into hip-hop, punk and skateboarding. He is the kind of person that the marketing industry chases relentlessly, and he knows it. But of course he scorns mainstream efforts to speak to his generation. In an essay on his Web site, for example, he blasted the "commercialized" version of skateboarding culture that he sees in the X-Games or on MTV as a "big-industry ruse."
Four years ago, he met Ben Shenassafar, another child of successful immigrants (his father is an accountant from Iran), not while skateboarding but at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, where they had some first-year classes together. They bonded over their mutual interests in art, music and design — and their mutual horror of becoming the respectable suit-wearing drones their parents wanted them to be. Seeking a more fulfilling alternative, they came up with the Hundreds (as in "selling by the hundreds").
Now known as Bobby and Ben Hundreds, they started with T-shirts and a Web site. TheHundreds.com featured Bobby's essays and interviews with people he admired: "The culture's finest brands, artists, designers, photographers, retailers and media," the site says. Department-store chains were too mainstream for the Hundreds; instead, they wanted to get their T-shirts into certain skateboard shops or independent "streetwear" stores. Their bête noir was Urban Outfitters, which they saw as the ultimate corporate vulture.
The first store they set their sights on was Fred Segal, the trendsetting boutique in Santa Monica. They showed up one day in 2003 and "ambushed" the buyer. "There are 50 new T-shirt lines that come out every day," Bobby explained to me, so they knew that theirs would rise or fall on the strength of the Hundreds as a brand. "We really emphasized that we weren't just a T-shirt line — we were more of lifestyle" that aimed to "bring this subculture out," he says.
The Hundreds lifestyle and its components — Los Angeles, skateboarding, music, art — sound a little vague and may be most apparent by analyzing a recent Hundreds T-shirt graphic. The shirt has a title: Jerky Boy. The design takes the logo of Tommy Boy, the pioneering hip-hop label, and reimagines its three silhouette figures in the style of the moshing cartoon teenager used as an emblem of the legendary Southern California punk band the Circle Jerks. Looming over the Circle Jerks mascot, who is repeated in three Tommy Boy poses with props including skateboards and handguns, is "The Hundreds" and the phrase "California Culture."
Streetwear designers often refer to graphics that riff off some other logo or icon or brand name as "parodies." Kind of like the Ramones logo, which took the presidential seal but substituted a baseball bat for the arrows the eagle clutches in its talons. But the word "parody" can be misleading: often the visual references are more like a sampled bass line — recognizable to some but not to others — that makes a remix add up to more than the sum of its parts. It can be tribute or mockery or something in between, but the new cultural value that results accrues to the minibrand that did the remixing.
It is impossible to overstate the number of tiny streetwear brands with names like Crooks & Castles or Married to the Mob that are working variations on this territory. And it is easy to see the attraction for the new upstart branders that seem to jump into this realm every day. You don't have to worry about the credentialing procedures that now define the traditional high arts, like getting a master's degree from a well-connected art school or hobnobbing on the writer-retreat circuit. For people like Ben and Bobby Hundreds (or the Casarellas or A-Ron), you don't even need to study marketing. Their apprenticeship was the act of growing up in a thoroughly commercialized world.
The symbols and references and logos these minibrands create are usually said to "represent" a culture or lifestyle. But I found myself asking, What, exactly, did that culture or lifestyle consist of — aside from buying products that represent it?
Bobby did his best to clue me in. "It's just the idea of trying to be rebellious," he said. "Or trying to be a little bit anti, questioning government or your parents. Trying to do something different." Those are familiar answers, and this is hardly the first time that vague rebelliousness has been translated into an aesthetic. The style and iconography of punk, like that of other "spectacular subcultures" (to use the phrase Dick Hebdige coined in "Subculture: The Meaning of Style"), arguably did more than music — let alone ideas — to fulfill one of the crucial functions of any underground: group identity. It just happens that in this instance the symbols, products and brands aren't an adjunct to the subculture — they are the subculture.
Many of the success stories that these minibrands aspire to replicate — like A Bathing Ape, Supreme and Stussy — have been around since the early 90's or longer. Countless others have come and gone. Among the survivors are Lenny McGurr and Josh Franklin, better known as the graffiti writers Futura and Stash.
McGurr, who recently turned 50, has seen many iterations of the dance between subculture and mainstream. He made the transition from painting on subway cars to selling paintings in East Village galleries back in the 1980's. The Futura-Stash creative partnership began around 1990. Separately and together, they made T-shirts, and they struggled to get by. Today, the brands and products they create or oversee — from clothes to vinyl toys to rugs and pillows — are sold in boutiques around the world. Franklin has his own stores, Recon and Nort, in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and Berlin; Futura has stores in Fukuoka, Japan, and Bangkok. Futura and Stash's Williamsburg headquarters is a rambling series of rooms filled with boxes of merchandise, 10 or so employees and a skate ramp.
One thing that has changed since the days when they scrambled to make a living is that Japanese consumers have embraced certain small New York brands as something culturally significant and worth a price premium. Nigo, a Japanese designer, built a fanatical following for his A Bathing Ape brand partly because he collaborated with so many graffiti writers and others who had an aura of authenticity that impressed young, hip Japanese consumers. "The legacy of our history from New York gave us a lot more credibility over there than it did here," McGurr says. He compares it with the black jazz musicians who had to go to Paris to be appreciated.
The second change is technology, which has allowed production to become more accessible. (It is easier than you think for a two-person brand to work with factories overseas, using computer files and the occasional package.) The technology of the Internet has also acted as an amplifier. Ten years ago, a new T-shirt design could not be flashed around the planet minutes after completion. Now there are blogs like Hypebeast and Slam X Hype dedicated to this practice, reporting dozens of new products or design collaborations from the brand underground every day.
There is a third factor: manufactured commodities have in fact become accepted as quasi art objects, and there is no more stark example than the sneaker. Hunting for unusual sneakers and modifying them with markers or different laces has been cool for decades, a phenomenon defined in Harlem and the Bronx. ("We were the first generation, and only one, to enjoy sneaker consumption on our own terms," Bobbito Garcia declares in his book about sneaker-hunting in the 1970's and 80's, "Where'd You Get Those?") Eventually the sneaker companies began to cater to this market, manufacturing rarity through "limited editions," commissioning small runs of sneakers made for specific stores or designed with the help of people like Mister Cartoon or Neckface. (If you don't know who they are, these shoes aren't for you.) Instead of stealing ideas from the underground, the big sneaker makers positioned themselves as supporting it. The strategy seems to work. Both Stash and Futura have designed co-branded products with Nike.
If sneakerheads were willing to treat athletic shoes made by multinational corporations as cultural objects, then new boutiques would treat them that way, too. Today, there are such boutiques all over the country; people sleep on sidewalks outside some of them because they have heard about some new limited-run product and want to be first in line for it. Occasionally things get out of hand and the police are called. There are magazines about sneakers, and there is a sneaker show on ESPN, and a sneaker Podcast called "Weekly Drop," and a sneaker documentary, "Just for Kicks." NikeTalk, a community and gossip Web site created by and for sneakerheads, claims to have more than 50,000 registered users.
Several years ago, some sneaker fans in Australia decided to mount a show of their collections, and this became Sneaker Pimps, which has been on a permanent world tour ever since. When it last hit New York several months ago, the line outside the club Avalon, where the sneakers were on display, stretched well down the block. Inside was a cross between a trade show, a museum exhibition and a night club. Walls were lined with notable sneakers, famous customizers were on hand and an artist named Dave White, who paints impressionistic portraits of sneakers on canvas, was on a platform, working under a spotlight while D.J.'s spun. Later, Public Enemy performed. Warhol's Factory laid the foundation for giving consumer objects fine-art scrutiny, and Keith Haring's Pop Shop built on that foundation, but it is hard to imagine that either artist could have predicted such a thorough product-as-medium spectacle. A line of Sneaker Pimps clothing is in the offing.
The effect of the Internet on sneaker hunting has been to make the scene more accessible — and more visible. With the Web, a relative handful of fanatics scattered around the world can look like a scene, and if enough people buy into that idea, then eventually it becomes a scene. This has created a new layer — half-consumer, half-entrepreneur — who snap up hot commodities with the sole intention of reselling at a profit. A T-shirt that Futura or Stash designed 10 years ago, made in small numbers because that was all the market would support, might now trade hands on eBay for $100; today some of the most successful minibrands keep production runs well below demand to maintain an image of specialness and rarity (just as the sneaker giants do). You can say the Internet made the market or that it simply made the market visible, but these are the same thing. Nothing draws people like a crowd, virtual or otherwise.
TheHundreds.com is not fancy, but it makes clever use of technology. The site is regularly updated with gossip from the scene and pictures of the Hundreds' friends (and of parties and girls). There might be a clip from YouTube, the video-sharing Web site, of an evening news report on the crowd lining up to get the latest Stash-Nike collaboration from a boutique in San Francisco or of local teenage skaters showing off in free Hundreds T's. Bobby also has a MySpace page and more than 3,500 "friends" (in the MySpace sense of the word). "I don't want us to be a faceless entity," he says. "People can talk to us."
People like Scott Litel, for instance. The Hundreds barely existed when he found their site and sent an enthusiastic e-mail message asking to be part of their promotional "street team." He was 16 at the time, just another kid in Valencia, 40 miles north of Los Angeles. He listened to punk and hip-hop, preferring to seek out lesser-known acts. But skateboarding was basically the center of his social life. Through skate videos, magazines like Mass Appeal, which covers alternative culture, and then the Internet, he learned about Supreme and various Japanese apparel companies. He would make his mom drive him, or when she wouldn't, he would take a bus to the Union store in Los Angeles, where the coolest stuff was sold.
Litel liked the Hundreds because of the Southern California connection and because it wasn't a brand that everybody knew about. It was like hearing a great band before anybody else caught on, the familiar yet underrated pleasure of inside information. "When something's not made for the masses," Litel told me, "it's more personal."
Soon he was part of the Hundreds team, helping out however he could, spreading the word, just being around. By the time I met Scott earlier this year, Ben and Bobby had started to pay him and had given him a column on the Web site. Now 19, he loved talking to the people at the little stores that sold the Hundreds shirts, going to the events and being part of the community — being, in fact, as he is now known, Scotty Hundreds.
Even in a world where the mainstream is less than monolithic, every subculture sooner or later has to reconcile itself with the larger cultural forces around it. A movement has to move somewhere, and the scene makers have to figure out how to make a living. That is what the Retail Mafia was up to last year at Magic, an apparel trade show that filled the entire Las Vegas Convention Center, with an impressive booth arranged to resemble a Coney Island boardwalk. The Retail Mafia was an alliance of brands associated with the downtown New York scene, including Alife, SSUR — and aNYthing, A-Ron's brand. Boost Mobile, the West Coast wireless company, had just produced a set of limited-edition phones, co-branded with the Retail Mafia members, as an elaborate strategy to impress "influencers," which is what corporate America calls Cool Guys.
Stash and Futura had a booth across from the Retail Mafia, and the Hundreds were nearby as well. Instead of displaying their shirts, Ben and Bobby had them on a rack blocked by a table and covered by a sheet. Ben explained that the point wasn't how many stores they could sell to but which stores. This sounds like a strategy borrowed from luxury goods, but the Hundreds framed it as a matter of integrity: the sheet was there to fend off retail buyers representing stores that stocked too many mainstream brands. The Hundreds brand was being sold in about 60 stores, from New York to Paris to Tokyo, and what mattered was that they were the right kind of stores, stocked with other independent, properly underground brands. They would only lift the sheet for people they could trust.
In his 1934 memoir, "Exile's Return," Malcolm Cowley asserted that by 1920 the bohemian "doctrine" of Greenwich Village could be broken down to eight key points. Several of these remain fairly timeless markers of counterculture: liberty, living for the moment, protecting one's individuality from the common fate of being "crushed and destroyed by a standardized society." Each person's "purpose in life," the codification states, "is to express himself." Cowley wrote that the bohemians saw themselves standing in opposition to "the business-Christian ethic then represented by The Saturday Evening Post," a mainstream valuing "industry, foresight, thrift and personal initiative."
But that old-fashioned value system, Cowley argued, shifted to a consumption ethic of spending and leisure, and the bohemian doctrine, it turned out, "proved quite useful" to the new mainstream ethic. Cowley posited that bohemian ideas about the primacy of self-expression and living for the moment "encouraged a demand for all sorts of products — modern furniture, beach pajamas, cosmetics, colored bathrooms with toilet paper to match." The shift, he wrote, happened shortly after World War I. So for 80 years or more, the central problem of consumer culture and counterculture has been the same: it is very easy to confuse the two. Which is why, actually, Cowley was not so much praising the bohemian idea as scorning it.
Every subsequent counterculture has wrestled with the same basic predicaments, although the terms of the debate have, gradually, evolved. Punk's media moment passed by the early 80's, but it helped inspire a new counterculture, sketched by the music critic Ann Powers in her pop-culture memoir, "Weird Like Us." She described how under-the-radar fliers and fanzines, small record labels and other modes and tactics "coalesced into practices that went by names bluntly characterizing their hands-on approach: indie, for independent, or D.I.Y., or do-it yourself." The hip-hop and skateboarding subcultures operated in much the same way. And while Powers has less to say about the visual arts, a generation of designers and graffiti artists in cities and suburbs across America — Barry McGee, Mark Gonzales, KAWS, Ryan McGinness and others — built reputations outside the gallery world and under these very influences.
In "Beautiful Losers," a catalog for a traveling museum exhibition of those artists, Aaron Rose, a curator, points out that pretty much all the artists in the show "have at some point broken the law to express themselves." On the other hand, Rose points out that many of these artists have dabbled in the commercial world, whether accepting projects for big companies or becoming de facto brands unto themselves. The 1980's and early 90's was a time when certain record shops, small record labels (Sub Pop, SST, etc.) and even logos (like the artist Raymond Pettibon's for the L.A. punk band Black Flag) started to matter almost as much as the bands. And while some brand-underground participants cite the influence of hip-hop as evidence that their tastes transcend standard demographic categorization (it's a "mash culture" or a "merge culture" and so on), the real significance of that influence may be that no other spectacular subculture has so exuberantly venerated the leveraging of nonmainstream authenticity into entrepreneurial and material success.
If the dance between subculture and mainstream has always been more compromised than it appears and if every iteration of the bohemian idea is steadily more entrepreneurial than the last, then maybe a product-based counterculture is inevitable. Maybe subcultures are always about turning lifestyles into business — or the very similar goal of never having to grow up. Maybe the familiar corporations-against-individuals dynamic ("They manufacture lifestyle; we live lives," as The Baffler, the alt-opinion journal, declared in 1993) is simply outdated. In "Weird Like Us," Powers wrote, "I believe that alternative America becomes stronger by willingly engaging with the mainstream." Maybe that's what this optimistic generation is up to and maybe its strategy of engagement is simply more pragmatic than the carefully crafted cynicism of past cliques of self-styled outsiders.
Actually, I'm not sure I completely buy that. Refusing to be the fodder for someone else's lifestyle-making machine because you are building your own still strikes me as a hollow victory. But maybe I'm just too old to get it. And I have to admit, the more time I spent with the minibrand entrepreneurs, the more I had to concede that what they have been up to is more complicated than simply imitating the culture they claim to be rebelling against. They believe what they are doing has meaning beyond simple commercial success. For them, there is something fully legitimate about taking the traditional sense of branding and reversing it: instead of dreaming up ideas to attach to products, they are starting with ideas and then dreaming up the products to express them.
When I saw Ben and Bobby with their collection at Magic, the trade show in Las Vegas, they had just taken the bar exam. Their parents — who wanted their kids to take advantage of the American-dream opportunities offered by a good education — were disheartened that the Hundreds was looking less and less like a phase. Of course, to Ben and Bobby, the Hundreds is the American dream.
The thought of ending up a lawyer, stuck in the mainstream world in such a decisive way and forsaking the partying and hanging out with other people involved in the brand-underground scene, had been much on Bobby's mind as he worked on new designs. He came up with a shirt that borrowed the silhouettes of the Lost Boys from a Peter Pan cartoon, included a quote from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and tweaked the results into a starker, streety style by the inevitable inclusion of the Hundreds logo.
A few months later, they got the official word: they had both flunked the bar. Ben sent out the specs for the spring '06 line; orders climbed to 4,500 shirts. "We never have to grow up," Bobby said.
Barking Irons popped up in GQ, Elle Girl, Maxim and elsewhere. The main character (played by Adrian Grenier) on the HBO show "Entourage" wore a Barking Irons shirt, and this fact was reported in People magazine. Late last year, the brand went global: a friend of the brothers' helped coordinate a miniature trade show in Tokyo, leading to their first sales to Japanese retailers and a full-page spread in a Japanese shopping magazine. The Casarellas included a few more point-of-view brands like No Mas, whose T-shirts and other products explore the deeper meanings of sports culture. And they traveled to Turkey, where they had found an apparel factory to manufacture "better garments," like polo shirts, thermals, hoodies and belts.
The brothers felt they needed to expand quickly, they told me late last year, because imitators were already at their heels. Daniel showed me a magazine page featuring one of their T-shirts along with several other shirts that knocked off their visual style but paired the graphics with words and phrases like "Crap" or "This Sucks." This was one of Casarella's fears: competing against a dumbed-down, meaningless version of his own ideas. Meanwhile, the relationship with Triluxe, their distributor, collapsed. Such firms promote and distribute apparel brands, showing their wares at trade shows and in private showrooms, advising them on sourcing and pricing strategies and taking a cut of the money. The brothers had decided that based on some belated research, they were paying too big a cut. After months of bickering, the partnership melted down for good in April.
By then the brothers had signed a lease on a 3,000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of a building downtown on Bowery, below Delancey. When I visited in May, it seemed like an awful lot of room for a two-or-three-person company. A few antique pieces were lying around, some framed maps, a trunk, a barrel, a fitting dummy. The plan is to turn the back half of the space into a showroom, possibly pulling in some other brands. They were also plotting a Web site — part magazine, part online store for selling some of the antiques they have collected. But the better-garment orders were around half of the minimums that the Turkish factory required, and in late June they were still waiting for deliveries that they had hoped to have a month earlier. T-shirt orders had been around 10,000 — a slight decline from the previous year. The trend-spotting blogs that helped early on had moved on to spotting more upstart brands, with new points of view. Lately, Daniel was suffering from headaches that he couldn't seem to shake.
One thing that makes these upstarts harder to write off than the familiar waves of M.B.A.'s declaring that Internet companies are rebellious or that being a middle-management "change agent" is the new rock 'n' roll is that, for all the literal and figurative headaches, they are sticking to their ideas. It just happens that their ideas are tied up in products. The Casarellas are now making jewelry out of some vintage New York silverware pieces they have collected. And printed inside their branded garments is a Walt Whitman quote: "Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."
In March, the Hundreds had a breakthrough. Their spring '06 line, still dominated by T-shirts, included a hoodie with an all-over paisley print. The day these arrived, a number of their cool-guy friends dropped by the new office space they had rented in West Hollywood; Bobby took pictures and posted them on TheHundreds.com. One of these images ended up on the front page of Hype Beast, the streetwear blog. Bobby put the whole line up for sale on the Web site at 1:30 in the morning; then he turned off his cellphone and went to bed. A few hours later, his girlfriend was pounding on the door of his apartment. Ben, unable to reach Bobby, had called her with the news: the entire line had sold out. Bobby posted a new entry on the site: "Which one of you sickos is up at 4 a.m. buying T-shirts?"
Soon the paisley hoodies were going for $250 or more on eBay, two or three times the retail price. Of course, Ben and Bobby had only made about 500 of them and under the orthodoxy of the scene would look like sellouts if they manufactured more. (Ben's accountant father has softened on the Hundreds as a potential business, but couldn't understand why they didn't make more of those "stupid paisley hoodies," Ben says.) A few weeks later, the retail consulting firm Doneger, whose clients include major department-store chains, sent out a bulletin called "Streetwear — The Next Generation," naming brands that trendsetting kids in New York City were wearing. The list included Nike and Stussy, but also upstarts like Artful Dodger, Triko. . .and the Hundreds. Their summer '06 T-shirt orders were up to 10,000.
Not surprisingly, the Hundreds were optimistic; Bobby talked about the brand being around "for centuries." On the site, he posted pictures of the latest line outside Supreme: "It's a great sign for our industry/culture/scene/whatever-it-is. It shows how fast we're all growing. . .another notch for the independents." In a way, the primary goal that binds together all the disparate entities of the new brand underground is independence: the Next Big Thing will be a million small things.
Even so, sometimes Bobby felt as if something were missing. When he talked about it, he seemed to be grappling with the kinds of things that had bothered me earlier when I had been trying to figure out whether there was more to the Hundreds lifestyle than buying certain products and brands. "I kind of feel like these kids — all they know is sneaker collecting and buying T-shirts, and they don't think about anything else. Every T-shirt brand is just something stupid — a rapper and some guns." Bobby said he wanted to steer the Hundreds look in a more "socially conscious, activist-oriented" direction, maybe dealing with issues like the way efforts to defend freedom can curtail freedom. Now that the Hundreds has a voice and a following, he said, "I'd like to say something."
Just like his subculture and bohemian heroes, A-Ron has an uneasy relationship with the commercial mainstream and its representatives. He sees his brand as something apart from the sneakerhead world, let alone fancy department stores. "I ran into the Boost guys recently," Bondaroff told me some months after the phone-marketing stunt had ended, "and I told them I wasn't really happy with the project. It didn't change anybody's lives; it didn't make history." Maybe it helped Boost, since the phones were written up in Rolling Stone and other magazines, but it hadn't helped him. The Retail Mafia basically ceased to exist as a concept, and half the brands in what he called "the movement" were scrambling to work with the sneaker giants or other big brands, from Levi's to New Era. "We're independent brands, we did this for a reason, not to be like the establishment brands," he said. "It's, like, what's the purpose? Why'd you start your brand — just to be an offshoot of a major company?"
But while A-Ron has figured out how to turn his lifestyle into a business, it is still not a business with much scale. "I don't want to be sitting at my desk 10 years from now," he told me, "trying to be cool and witty, better than the next little brand." He is trying to tie aNYthing to more projects, with more meaning, to more people: music, books, even a documentary. He has opened an online store on his Web site, where his blog announces the latest parties and offers pictures of the cool people dropping by his store. He traveled to Europe for the summer trade shows there and has been thinking about whether he can open a store in Japan.
But lately he has come to the conclusion that to join the time line of underground movements that left a mark on the culture, he has to figure out how to get aNYthing recognized well beyond Delancey Street. To "cross over," he said, you need "to make your thing official, to stamp it" — the way rap videos did it for A Bathing Ape in the U.S. or how the brief glimpses of Supreme logos in Larry Clark's movie "Kids" helped that brand. You need access to the mainstream. He would not even rule out shopping malls, under the right circumstances.
"My whole thing now is if you don't sell out, you sell out on yourself," he went on to announce. If he could get the money, the resources, he could go bigger, with more creative projects, reaching more people — and he wouldn't worry about being called a sellout. He raised his eyebrows for emphasis: "I was cool before this thing happened. It didn't make me cool." It's a line of thought that many cultural rebels come around to, sooner or later. "We're here," he told me, "to do business."


text:
Simply Hosting provides an average guaranteed ticket response time of 20 minutes.
If you are dissatisfied with your service for any reason, you will receive a full refund of your web hosting fees if you cancel your hosting account within 30 days the activation.
Our disaster recovery experts can review your environment and propose solution that can help you achieve your recovery targets.
Means that your website will be up and running at least 99.9% of the time during any 12-month period.
Our team is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year to help you.
Our first priority is customer satisfaction. We strive hard to maintain good relationships with our customers.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
MARKETPLACE AUSTRIA FOOD 2012 on 3rd October 2012 in Vienna, Austria
The Austrian Federal Economic Chamber is presenting an international cooperation forum tailored to food and drink buyers from the worldwide retail and wholesale sectors. The programme includes face-to-face meetings with Austrian food and drink manufacturers as well as visits to companies and tours of their production sites. There will also be a range of informative discussions on Austria's food and drinks industry.
The forum MARKETPLACE AUSTRIA offers international buyers from the food and drinks sector a unique opportunity to discover new products and meet potential business partners. Accommodation (2 nights incl. breakfast in a 4* hotel in the centre of Vienna) and an evening dinner is included free of charge for international guests. Participants should complete the online registration by 31st July 2012 .
The international cooperation forum will be held at the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber in Vienna on 3rd October 2012. Further information on the event including registration, programme, organising appointments online (B2B meetings) with other participating companies etc. can be found on the event's website: www.b2match.eu/food2012


text:
The Canadian economy gained 29,400 jobs in January after a surprising downturn in December — a turnaround that will likely put some spring in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's step as he prepares to deliver the budget next week.
The unemployment rate also slid 0.2 percentage points from December to 7.0 per cent for the first month of the year as the number of full-time jobs increased, Statistics Canada reported Friday.
While the job numbers exceeded economists' expectations of 20,000 more jobs in the month, some cautioned against reading too much into the volatile numbers, saying the employment trend is still sluggish.
"While no ball of fire, today's solid comeback represents a nice recovery from the ugliness in last month's Canadian employment report," BMO Capital Markets chief economist Doug Porter said in a report.
"Notably, though, the unemployment rate at 7.0 per cent is precisely unchanged from three months ago and from a year ago. In other words, the underlying trend in job growth is just firm enough to keep up with labour force population growth — no better, no worse."
Others noted the rebound only made up for two-thirds of the 44,000 jobs lost in December.
Capital Economics said it "suggests that bad weather isn't the only factor depressing labour market conditions." It expects modest employment gains over the next few months.
CIBC economist Peter Buchanan said the gain in jobs was better than expected, but noted the monthly job numbers don't say all that much about the whole economic picture.
"These are volatile numbers and also we did have that large decline (in December)," he said.
Trade numbers Thursday showed the Bank of Canada's much-hoped-for export recovery is still a work in progress, Buchanan added.
Canada's trade deficit grew to $1.7 billion in December. The increase came as Statistics Canada also revised the November trade deficit to $1.5 billion compared with an initial estimate of $940 million.
But there were encouraging signs in full-time work, Buchanan said.
The January jobs gain was led by a 50,500 rise in full-time work, while the number of part-time workers fell by 21,100.
The number of self-employed workers increased 28,300.
The overall increase in employment included 15,200 more jobs in transportation and warehousing, another 14,600 in finance, insurance, real estate and leasing and 16,600 jobs added in professional, scientific and technical services.
Health care and social assistance added 16,900 jobs, while accommodation and food services grew by 17,000.
The additions were offset in part by 25,400 fewer people working in business, building and other support services, as well as 16,000 fewer employees in public administration.
The labour force participation rate — the proportion of people either employed or underemployed and actively looking for work — was 66.3 per cent, compared with 66.4 per cent in December as the labour force shrunk by 20,900 people.
Meanwhile, the employment rate or proportion of the working age population actually working was 61.6 per cent, unchanged from a month earlier.
Ontario's unemployment rate fell 0.4 percentage points to 7.5 per cent as 6,000 more people found employment and fewer people looked for jobs, Statistics Canada said.
Prince Edward Island employment rose by 1,000 in January, with the unemployment rate at 11.3 per cent. The number of people of working in New Brunswick fell by 2,400 as fewer people searched for work.


text:
Experts at the Federal Aviation Administration are expected to say next week whether they recommend accepting Boeing's plan to fix its troubled 787 Dreamliners so the planes can resume flying, the agency head said.
Officials in the FAA office near Seattle, that certifies new planes as safe for flight, are reviewing a Boeing proposal to revamp the 787's lithium ion batteries to prevent them from catching fire, or to protect the plane in case of fire, Administrator Michael Huerta said yesterday.
Huerta declined to say when he might decide whether to accept the plan or how long it might be before the planes are back in the air.
Boeing officials presented the plan to Huerta last week.
The planes have been grounded since January 16 after a battery caught fire in a 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport and a smoking battery in a different 787 forced an emergency landing in Japan.
Calling the plan "very comprehensive," Huerta said Boeing engineers worked with outside experts to narrow the potential causes of the incidents to a few possibilities, and then redesigned the batteries. The 787 has two identical 32-volt batteries, each with eight cells.
Investigators have said the incidents began with short-circuiting in a single cell, leading to a chemical reaction that causes progressively hotter temperatures. That spread the short-circuiting and fire to other cells.
Boeing's plan includes redesigning the batteries to prevent individual cells from catching fire, Huerta said.
Should that fail, the plan includes steps to prevent a fire from spreading to other cells or outside the box that contains all eight of the cells.
"What Boeing has assembled is a team to look at the universe of potential causes, and their proposal is to mitigate all of them," Huerta said.
If the plan is approved, the next step would be extensive engineering and testing before any final determination could be made on resuming flights, he said. He described the process as "effectively a certification plan."
"We have to be assured that this is a good plan and that it is going to result in a safe situation," Huerta said.


text:
Long information
What is it and how is it used?
Insuman Comb 30 is a fluid (suspension) for injection under the skin. The insulin contained in Insuman Comb 30 is made by a biotechnology process and is identical with the body's own insulin.
Insuman Comb 30 is an insulin preparation with a gradual onset and long duration of action. It comes in cartridges sealed in disposable pen injectors, OptiSet.
Insuman Comb 30 is used to reduce high blood sugar in patients with diabetes mellitus. Diabetes mellitus is a disease where your body does not produce enough insulin to control the level of blood sugar.
|Table of Contents
|What do you have to consider before using it?
|How is it used?
|What are possible side effects?
|How should it be stored?
|Further information
What do you have to consider before using it?
Do not use Insuman Comb 30
If you are allergic (hypersensitive) to insulin or any of the other ingredients of Insuman Comb 30.
Take special care with Insuman Comb 30
Follow closely the instructions for dosage, monitoring (blood and urine tests), diet and physical activity (physical work andexercise), injection technique as discussed with your doctor.
Special patient groups
If you have liver or kidneys problems or if you are elderly, speak to your doctor as you may need a lower dose.
Before travelling, consult your doctor. You may need to talk about
- the availability of your insulin in the country you are visiting,
- supplies of insulin, injection syringes etc.,
- correct storage of your insulin while travelling,
- timing of meals and insulin administration while travelling,
- the possible effects of changing to different time zones,
- possible new health risks in the countries to be visited,
- what you should do in emergency situations when you feel unwell or become ill.
Illnesses and injuries
In the following situations, the management of your diabetes may require a lot of care:
- If you are ill or have a major injury then your blood sugar level may increase (hyperglycaemia).
- If you are not eating enough, your blood sugar level may become too low (hypoglycaemia). In most cases you will need a doctor. Make sure that you contact a doctor early.
If you have type 1 diabetes (insulin dependent diabetes mellitus), do not stop your insulin and continue to get enough carbohydrates. Always tell people who are caring for you or treating you that you require insulin.
Some patients with long-standing type 2 diabetes mellitus and heart disease or previous stroke who were treated with pioglitazone and insulin experienced the development of heart failure. Inform your doctor as soon as possible if you experience signs of heart failure such as unusual shortness of breath or rapid increase in weight or localised swelling (oedema).
Using other medicines
Some medicines cause changes in the blood sugar level (decrease, increase or both depending on the situation). In each case, it may be necessary to adjust your insulin dosage to avoid blood sugar levels that are either too low or too high. Be careful when you start or stop taking another medicine.
Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you are taking or have recently taken any other medicines, including medicines obtained without a prescription. Before taking a medicine ask your doctor if it can affect your blood sugar level, and what action, if any, you need to take.
Medicines that may cause your blood sugar level to fall (hypoglycaemia) include:
- all other medicines to treat diabetes,
- angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (used to treat certain heart conditions or high blood pressure),
- disopyramide (used to treat certain heart conditions),
- fluoxetine (used to treat depression),
- fibrates (used to lower high levels of blood lipids),
- monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors (used to treat depression),
- pentoxifylline, propoxyphene, salicylates (such as aspirin, used to relieve pain and lower fever),
- sulfonamide antibiotics.
Medicines that may cause your blood sugar level to rise (hyperglycaemia) include:
- corticosteroids (such as "cortisone", used to treat inflammation),
- danazol (medicine acting on ovulation),
- diazoxide (used to treat high blood pressure),
- diuretics (used to treat high blood pressure or excessive fluid retention),
- glucagon (pancreas hormone used to treat severe hypoglycaemia),
- isoniazid (used to treat tuberculosis),
- oestrogens and progestogens (such as in the contraceptive pill used for birth control),
- phenothiazine derivatives (used to treat psychiatric disorders),
- somatropin (growth hormone),
- sympathomimetic medicines (such as epinephrine [adrenaline] or salbutamol, terbutaline used to treat asthma),
- thyroid hormones (used to treat the thyroid gland disorders),
- protease inhibitors (used to treat HIV),
- atypical antipsychotic medications (such as olanzapine and clozapine).
Your blood sugar level may either rise or fall if you take:
- beta-blockers (used to treat high blood pressure),
- clonidine (used to treat high blood pressure),
- lithium salts (used to treat psychiatric disorders). Pentamidine (used to treat some infections caused by parasites) may cause hypoglycaemia which may sometimes be followed by hyperglycaemia.
Beta-blockers like other sympatholytic medicines (such as clonidine, guanethidine, and reserpine) may weaken or suppress entirely the first warning symptoms which help you to recognise a hypoglycaemia.
If you are not sure whether you are taking one of those medicines ask your doctor or pharmacist.
Using Insuman Comb 30 with food and drink
Your blood sugar levels may either rise or fall if you drink alcohol.
Pregnancy and breast-feeding
Ask your doctor or pharmacist for advice before taking any medicine.
Inform your doctor if you are planning to become pregnant, or if you are already pregnant. Your insulin dosage may need to be changed during pregnancy and after giving birth. Particularly careful control of your diabetes, and prevention of hypoglycaemia, is important for the health of your baby. However, there is no experience with the use of Insuman Comb 30 in pregnant women.
If you are breast-feeding consult your doctor as you may require adjustments in your insulin doses and your diet.
Driving and using machines
Your ability to concentrate or react may be reduced if:
- you have hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar levels),
- you have hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar levels),
- you have problems with your sight. Keep this possible problem in mind in all situations where you might put yourself and others at risk (such as driving a car or operating machines). You should contact your doctor for advice on driving if:
- you have frequent episodes of hypoglycaemia,
- the first warning symptoms which help you to recognise hypoglycaemia are reduced or absent.
Important information about some of the ingredients of Insuman Comb 30
This medicinal product contains less than 1 mmol (23 mg) sodium per dose, i.e. it is essentially ?sodium-free?.
How is it used?
Based on your life-style and the results of your blood sugar (glucose) tests, your doctor will
- determine how much Insuman Comb 30 per day you will need,
- tell you when to check your blood sugar level, and whether you need to carry out urine tests,
- tell you when you may need to inject a higher or lower dose of Insuman Comb 30.
Many factors may influence your blood sugar level. You should know these factors so that you are able to react correctly to changes in your blood sugar level and to prevent it from becoming too high or too low. See the box at the end of this leaflet for further information.
Frequency of administration
Insuman Comb 30 is injected under the skin 30 to 45 minutes before a meal.
Method of administration
Do NOT inject Insuman Comb 30 into a vein.
OptiSet delivers insulin in increments of 2 units up to a maximum single dose of 40 units.
Your doctor will show you in which area of the skin you should inject your insulin. With each injection, change the puncture site within the particular area of skin that you are using.
How to handle OptiSet
Insuman Comb 30 comes in cartridges sealed in disposable pen injectors, OptiSet.
Read carefully the "OptiSet Instructions for Use" included in this package leaflet. You must use the pen as described in these Instructions for Use.
A new injection needle must be attached before each use. Only use needles that have been approved for use with OptiSet.
A safety test must be performed before each injection.
Mix the insulin well and check it before first use. Later, you must mix the insulin well again immediately before each injection.
Mixing is best done by gently tilting the pen back and forth at least 10 times. To assist in mixing, three tiny metal balls are present in the cartridge.
After mixing, the suspension must have a uniform milky-white appearance. It must not be used if it remains clear or if, for example, clumps, flakes, particles or anything similar are in the suspension or on the sides or bottom of the cartridge in the pen. A new pen with a uniform suspension on mixing must then be used.
Always use a new pen if you notice that your blood sugar control is unexpectedly getting worse. If you think you may have a problem with OptiSet, refer to the Questions and Answers section of the attached OptiSet Instructions for Use, or have it checked by your doctor or pharmacist.
To prevent the possible transmission of disease, each pen must be used by one patient only.
Special care before injection
Make sure that neither alcohol nor other disinfectants or other substances contaminate the insulin.
Do not mix insulin with any other medicines. Insuman Comb 30, pre-filled pen,OptiSet, is not designed to allow any other insulin to be mixed in the cartridge.
Empty pens must not be re-filled and must be properly discarded.
Do not use the OptiSet if it is damaged or not working properly (due to mechanical defects), it has to be discarded and a new OptiSet has to be used.
Mistakes in dosage
If you use more Insuman Comb 30 than you should
- If you have injected too much Insuman Comb 30, your blood sugar level may become too low (hypoglycaemia). Check your blood sugar frequently. In general, to prevent hypoglycaemia you must eat more food and monitor your blood sugar. For information on the treatment of hypoglycaemia, see box at the end of this leaflet.
If you forget to use Insuman Comb 30
- If you have missed a dose of Insuman Comb 30 or if you have not injected enough insulin, your blood sugar level may become too high (hyperglycaemia). Check your blood sugar frequently. For information on the treatment of hyperglycaemia, see box at the end of this leaflet.
- Do not take a double dose to make up for a forgotten dose.
If you stop using Insuman Comb 30
This could lead to severe hyperglycaemia (very high blood sugar) and ketoacidosis (build-up of acid in the blood because the body is breaking down fat instead of sugar). Do not stop Insuman Comb 30 without speaking to a doctor, who will tell you what needs to be done.
If you have any further questions on the use of this product, ask your doctor or pharmacist.
Insulin Mix-ups
You must always check the insulin label before each injection to avoid medication mix-ups between Insuman Comb 30 and other insulins.
What are possible side effects?
Like all medicines, Insuman Comb 30 can cause side effects, although not everybody gets them.
As with all insulin therapy, the most frequent side effect is hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar). Serious hypoglycaemia may cause a heart attack or brain damage and may be life-threatening. For further information on the side effects of low blood sugar or high blood sugar, see the box at the end of this leaflet.
Severe allergic reactions to insulin may occur which may become life-threatening. Such reactions to insulin or to the excipients can cause large-scale skin reactions (rash and itching all over the body), severe swelling of skin or mucous membranes (angiooedema), shortness of breath, a fall in blood pressure with rapid heart beat and sweating.
Side effects reported commonly (Seen in less than 1 in 10 but more than 1 in 100 patients)- Oedema
Insulin treatment may cause temporary build-up of water in the body with swelling in the calves and ankles.
- Injection site reactions
Side effects reported uncommonly (Seen in less than 1 in 100 but more than 1 in 1000 patients)- Severe allergic reaction with low blood pressure (shock)
- Injection site urticaria (itchy rash)
Other side effects include
- Systemic allergic reactions
Associated symptoms may include large-scale skin reactions (rash and itching all over the body), severe swelling of skin or mucous membranes (angiooedema), shortness of breath, a fall in blood pressure with rapid heart beat and sweating.- Eye reactions
A marked change (improvement or worsening) in your blood sugar control can disturb your vision temporarily. If you have proliferative retinopathy (an eye disease related to diabetes) severe hypoglycaemic attacks may cause temporary loss of vision.
- Skin changes at the injection site (lipodystrophy)
If you inject your insulin too often at the same skin site, fatty tissue under the skin at this site may either shrink or thicken. Insulin that you inject in such a site may not work very well. Changing the injection site with each injection may help to prevent such skin changes.
- Skin and allergic reactions
Other mild reactions at the injection site (such as injection site redness, unusually intense pain on injection site, itching, injection site swelling or injection site inflammation) may occur. They can also spread around the injection site. Most minor reactions to insulins usually resolve in a few days to a few weeks.
Insulin treatment can cause the body to produce antibodies to insulin (substances that act against insulin). However, only very rarely, this will require a change to your insulin dosage.
Tell your doctor or pharmacist if you notice any of the side effects listed above or any other unwanted or unexpected effects. To prevent serious reactions, speak to a doctor immediately if a side effect is severe, occurs suddenly or gets worse rapidly.
How should it be stored?
Keep out of the reach and sight of children.
Do not use Insuman Comb 30 after the expiry date which is stated on the carton and on the label of the cartridge. The expiry date refers to the last day of that month.
Not in-use pens
Store in a refrigerator (2°C - 8°C). Do not freeze. Do not put the pre-filled pen next to the freezer compartment or a freezer pack. Keep the pen in the outer carton in order to protect from light.
In-use pens
Pre-filled pens in-use or carried as a spare may be stored for a maximum of 4 weeks not above 25°C and away from direct heat (for example next to a heating unit) or direct light (direct sunlight or next to a lamp). The pen in-use must not be stored in a refrigerator. Do not use the pen after this time period.
Medicines should not be disposed of via wastewater or household waste. Ask your pharmacist how to dispose of medicines no longer required. These measures will help to protect the environment.
Further information
What Insuman Comb 30 contains
- The active substance is insulin human. One ml of Insuman Comb 30 contains 100 IU (International Units) of the active substance insulin human. 30% of the insulin is dissolved in water; the other 70% is present as tiny crystals of insulin protamine.
- The other ingredients are: protamine sulphate, metacresol, phenol, zinc chloride, sodium dihydrogen phosphate dihydrate, glycerol, sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid (for pH adjustment) and water for injections.
What Insuman Comb 30 looks like and contents of the pack
After mixing, Insuman Comb 30 is a uniformly milky fluid (suspension for injection), with no clumps, particles or flocculation visible.
Insuman Comb 30 is supplied in pre-filled pens, OptiSet, containing 3 ml suspension, (300 IU). Packs of 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 pens of 3 ml are available. Not all pack sizes may be marketed.
Marketing Authorisation Holder and Manufacturer
Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH
D-65926 Frankfurt am Main
For any information about this medicine, please contact the local representative of the Marketing Authorisation Holder:
BelgiëBelgiqueBelgien sanofi-aventis Belgium TélTel 32 02 710 54 00 LuxembourgLuxemburg sanofi-aventis Belgium TélTel 32 02 710 54 00 BelgiqueBelgien
sanofi-aventis Bulgaria EOOD . 359 02 970 53 00 Magyarország sanofi-aventis zrt., Magyarország Tel. 36 1 505 0050
eská republika sanofi-aventis, s.r.o. Tel 420 233 086 111 Malta sanofi-aventis Malta Ltd. Tel 356 21493022
Danmark sanofi-aventis Denmark AS Tlf 45 45 16 70 00 Nederland sanofi-aventis Netherlands B.V. Tel 31 0182 557 755
Deutschland Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH Tel 49 0180 2 222010 Norge sanofi-aventis Norge AS Tlf 47 67 10 71 00
Eesti sanofi-aventis Estonia OÜ Tel 372 627 34 88 Österreich sanofi-aventis GmbH Tel 43 1 80 185 0
sanofi-aventis AEBE 30 210 900 16 00 Polska sanofi-aventis Sp. z o.o. Tel. 48 22 280 00 00
España sanofi-aventis, S.A. Tel 34 93 485 94 00 Portugal sanofi-aventis - Produtos Farmacêuticos, Lda Tel 351 21 35 89 400
România sanofi-aventis România S.R.L. Tel 40 0 21 317 31 36 France sanofi-aventis France Tél 0 800 222 555 Appel depuis létranger 33 1 57 63 23 23
Ireland sanofi-aventis Ireland Ltd. Tel 353 0 1 403 56 00 Slovenija sanofi-aventis d.o.o. Tel 386 1 560 48 00
Ísland Vistor hf. Sími 354 535 7000 Slovenská republika sanofi-aventis Pharma Slovakia s.r.o. Tel 421 2 33 100 100
SuomiFinland sanofi-aventis Oy PuhTel 358 0 201 200 300 Italia sanofi-aventis S.p.A. Tel 800 13 12 12 domande di tipo tecnico 39 02 393 91 altre domande e chiamate dallestero sanofi-aventis Cyprus Ltd. 357 22 871600 Sverige sanofi-aventis AB Tel 46 08 634 50 00
Latvija sanofi-aventis Latvia SIA Tel 371 67 33 24 51 United Kingdom sanofi-aventis Tel 44 0 1483 505 515
UAB sanofi-aventis Lietuva
Tel: +370 5 2755224
This leaflet was last approved on {date}
Always carry some sugar (at least 20 grams) with you. Carry some information with you to show you are diabetic.
HYPERGLYCAEMIA (high blood sugar levels)
If your blood sugar is too high (hyperglycaemia), you may not have injected enough insulin.
Why does hyperglycaemia occur?
Examples include:
- you have not injected your insulin or not injected enough, or if it has become less effective, for example through incorrect storage,
- your insulin pen does not work properly,
- you are doing less exercise than usual, you are under stress (emotional distress, excitement), or you have an injury, operation, infection or fever,
- you are taking or have taken certain other medicines (see section 2, "Using other medicines").
Warning symptoms of hyperglycaemia
Thirst, increased need to urinate, tiredness, dry skin, reddening of the face, loss of appetite, low blood pressure, fast heart beat, and glucose and ketone bodies in urine. Stomach pain, fast and deep breathing, sleepiness or even loss of consciousness may be signs of a serious condition (ketoacidosis) resulting from lack of insulin.
What should you do if you experience hyperglycaemia
Test your blood sugar level and your urine for ketones as soon as any of the above symptoms occur. Severe hyperglycaemia or ketoacidosis must always be treated by a doctor, normally in a hospital.
HYPOGLYCAEMIA (low blood sugar levels)
If your blood sugar level falls too much you may become unconscious. Serious hypoglycaemia may cause a heart attack or brain damage and may be life-threatening. You normally should be able to recognise when your blood sugar is falling too much so that you can take the right actions.
Why does hypoglycaemia occur?
Examples include:
- you inject too much insulin,
- you miss meals or delay them,
- you do not eat enough, or eat food containing less carbohydrate than normal (sugar and substances similar to sugar are called carbohydrates; however, artificial sweeteners are NOT carbohydrates),
- you lose carbohydrates due to vomiting or diarrhoea,
- you drink alcohol, particularly if you are not eating much,
- you are doing more exercise than usual or a different type of physical activity,
- you are recovering from an injury or operation or other stress,
- you are recovering from an illness or from fever,
- you are taking or have stopped taking certain other medicines (see section 2, "Using other medicines").
Hypoglycaemia is also more likely to occur if:
- you have just begun insulin treatment or changed to another insulin preparation,
- your blood sugar levels are almost normal or are unstable,
- you change the area of skin where you inject insulin (for example from the thigh to the upper arm),
- you suffer from severe kidney or liver disease, or some other disease such as hypothyroidism.
Warning symptoms of hypoglycaemia
- In your body Examples of symptoms that tell you that your blood sugar level is falling too much or too fast: sweating, clammy skin, anxiety, fast heart beat, high blood pressure, palpitations and irregular heartbeat. These symptoms often develop before the symptoms of a low sugar level in the brain.
- In your brain Examples of symptoms that indicate a low sugar level in the brain: headaches, intense hunger, nausea, vomiting, tiredness, sleepiness, sleep disturbances, restlessness, aggressive behaviour, lapses in concentration, impaired reactions, depression, confusion, speech disturbances (sometimes total loss of speech), visual disorders, trembling, paralysis, tingling sensations (paraesthesia), numbness and tingling sensations in the area of the mouth, dizziness, loss of self-control, inability to look after yourself, convulsions, loss of consciousness.
The first symptoms which alert you to hypoglycaemia ("warning symptoms") may change, be weaker or may be missing altogether if
- you are elderly, if you have had diabetes for a long time or if you suffer from a certain type of nervous disease (diabetic autonomic neuropathy),
- you have recently suffered hypoglycaemia (for example the day before) or if it develops slowly,
- you have almost normal or, at least, greatly improved blood sugar levels,
- you have recently changed from an animal insulin to a human insulin such as Insuman,
- you are taking or have taken certain other medicines (see section 2, "Using other medicines").
In such a case, you may develop severe hypoglycaemia (and even faint) before you are aware of the problem. Be familiar with your warning symptoms. If necessary, more frequent blood sugar testing can help to identify mild hypoglycaemic episodes that may otherwise be overlooked. If you are not confident about recognising your warning symptoms, avoid situations (such as driving a car) in which you or others would be put at risk by hypoglycaemia.
What should you do if you experience hypoglycaemia
1. Do not inject insulin. Immediately take about 10 to 20 g sugar, such as glucose, sugar cubes or a sugar-sweetened beverage. Caution: Artificial sweeteners and foods with artificial sweeteners (such as diet drinks) are of no help in treating hypoglycaemia.
2. Then eat something that has a long-acting effect in raising your blood sugar (such as bread or pasta). Your doctor or nurse should have discussed this with you previously.
3. If the hypoglycaemia comes back again take another 10 to 20 g sugar.
4. Speak to a doctor immediately if you are not able to control the hypoglycaemia or if it recurs.
Tell your relatives, friends and close colleagues the following:
If you are not able to swallow or if you are unconscious, you will require an injection of glucose or glucagon (a medicine which increases blood sugar). These injections are justified even if it is not certain that you have hypoglycaemia.
It is advisable to test your blood sugar immediately after taking glucose to check that you really have hypoglycaemia.
Insuman Comb 30 suspension for injection in a pre-filled pen. OptiSet. Instructions for Use.
OptiSet is a pre-filled pen for the injection of insulin.
Talk with your healthcare professional about proper injection technique before using OptiSet.
Read these instructions carefully before using your OptiSet. If you are not able to follow all the instructions completely on your own, use OptiSet only if you have help from a person who is able to follow the instructions. Hold the pen as shown in this leaflet. To ensure that you read the dose correctly, hold the pen horizontally, with the needle on the left and the dosage selector to the right as shown in the illustrations below.
Follow these instructions completely each time you use OptiSet to ensure that you get an accurate dose. If you do not follow these instructions completely, you may get too much or too little insulin, which may affect your blood glucose.
You can set doses from 2 to 40 units in steps of 2 units. Each pen contains multiple doses.
If you have any questions about OptiSet or about diabetes, ask your healthcare professional or call the local sanofi-aventis number on the front of this leaflet.
Keep this leaflet for future reference each time you use OptiSet.
Schematic diagram of the pen
New information for use:
- Name of the insulin is printed on the pen.
- Dosage selector can only be turned in one direction.
Important information for use of OptiSet:
Always attach a new needle before each use. Only use needles that are compatible for use with OptiSet. Always perform the safety test before each injection see Step 3. If you are using a new OptiSet the initial safety test must be done with the 8 units preset by the manufacturer. The dosage selector can only be turned in one direction. Never turn the dosage selector i.e. never change the dose after injection button has been pulled out. This pen is only for your use. Do not share it with anyone else. If your injection is given by another person, special caution must be taken by this person to avoid accidental needle injury and transmission of infection. Never use OptiSet if it is damaged or if you are not sure that it is working properly. Always have a spare OptiSet in case your OptiSet is lost or damaged.
Step 1. Check and mix the insulin
A. Take off the pen cap.
B. Check the label on your OptiSet and insulin reservoir to make sure you have the correct insulin.
C. Check the appearance of your insulin. Mix the insulin by turning OptiSet slowly up and down at
least 10 times (do not shake the
D. Check the appearance of your insulin. It must have an evenly milky-white appearance.
Step 2. Attach the needle
Always use a new sterile needle for each injection. This helps prevent contamination, and potential needle blocks.
Before use of needle, carefully read the ?Instructions for Use? accompanying the needles. Please note: The needles shown are for illustrative purposes only.
A. Remove the protective seal from a new needle.
B. Line up the needle with the pen, and keep it straight as you attach it (screw or push on, depending
on the needle type).
If the needle is not kept straight while you attach it, it can damage the rubber seal and cause leakage, or break the needle.
Step 3. Perform a safety test
Always perform the safety test before each injection. This ensures that you get an accurate dose by: - making sure that pen and needle work properly
- removing air bubbles
If you are using a new OptiSet the initial safety test must be done with the 8 units preset by the manufacturer, otherwise the pen will not function properly.
A. Make sure the injection button is pressed in.
B. Select the dose for the Safety Test.
New and unused OptiSet a dose of 8 units is already preset by the manufacturer for the first safety test. In-use OptiSet select a dose of 2 units by turning the dosage selector forward till the dose arrow points to 2. The dosage selector will only turn in one direction.
C. Pull out the injection button completely in order to load the dose. Never turn the dosage selector
after injection button has been pulled out.
D. Take off the outer needle cap and keep it to remove the used needle after injection. Take off the
inner needle cap and discard it.
E. Hold the pen with the needle pointing upwards.
F. Tap the insulin reservoir so that any air bubbles rise up towards the needle.
G. Press the injection button all the way in. Check if insulin comes out of the needle tip.
You may have to perform the safety test several times before insulin is seen.
- If no insulin comes out, check for air bubbles and repeat the safety test two more times to remove them.
- If still no insulin comes out, the needle may be blocked. Change the needle and try again. - If no insulin comes out after changing the needle, your OptiSet may be damaged. Do not use this OptiSet.
Step 4. Select the dose
You can set the dose in steps of 2 units, from a minimum of 2 units to a maximum of 40 units. If you need a dose greater than 40 units, you should give it as two or more injections.
A. Check if you have enough insulin for your dose.
The residual insulin scale on the transparent insulin reservoir shows approximately how much insulin remains in the OptiSet. This scale must not be used to set the insulin dose.
If the black plunger is at the beginning of the coloured bar, then there are approximately 40 units of insulin available.
If the black plunger is at the end of the coloured bar, then there are approximately 20 units of insulin available.
B. Select your required dose by turning the dose selector forward.
If you turned past your dose,
- and you have not yet pulled the injection button, you can keep turning forward till you reach your dose again,
- and you have already pulled the injection button out, you must discard the dose that has been loaded before you turn the dosage selector again.
Step 5. Load the dose
A. Pull out the injection button completely in order to load the dose.
B. Check if the selected dose is fully loaded. Note that the injection button only goes out as far as the
amount of insulin that is left in the reservoir.
- The injection button must be held out under tension during this check.
- The last thick line visible on the injection button shows the amount of insulin loaded. When the injection button is held out only the top part of this thick line can be seen. - In this example, 12 units are loaded.
- if you have selected 12 units you can inject your dose.
- if you have selected more than 12 units then only 12 units of your total insulin dose can be injected with this pen.
In this case what should you do:
- either you can inject what is remaining in the pen and complete your dose with a new OptiSet. - or use a new OptiSet for your full dose.
Step 6. Inject the dose
A. Use the injection method as instructed by your health care professional.
B. Insert the needle into the skin.
C. Deliver the dose by pressing the injection button in all the way. A clicking sound can be heard,
which will stop when the injection button has been pressed in completely.
D. Keep the injection button pressed in and slowly count to 10 before you withdraw the needle from
the skin. This ensures that the full dose will be delivered.
The pen plunger moves with each dose. The plunger will reach the end of the cartridge when the total of 300 units of insulin has been used.
Step 7. Remove and discard the needle
Always remove the needle after each injection and store OptiSet without a needle attached. This helps prevent:
- Contamination and/or infection
- Entry of air into the insulin reservoir and leakage of insulin, which can cause inaccurate dosing.
A. Put the outer needle cap back on the needle, and use it to unscrew the needle from the pen. To
reduce the risk of accidental needle injury, never replace the inner needle cap.
If your injection is given by another person, or if you are giving an injection to another person, special caution must be taken by this person when removing and disposing of the needle. Follow recommended safety measures for removal and disposal of needles e.g. contact your healthcare professional in order to reduce the risk of accidental needle injury and transmission of infectious diseases.
B. Dispose of the needle safely, as instructed by your healthcare professional.
C. Put the pen cap back on, then store the pen until your next injection.
Storage Instructions
Please check section 5 ? How to store Insuman Comb 30 - of the reverse (insulin) side of this leaflet for OptiSet storage instructions.
If your OptiSet is in cool storage, take it out 1 to 2 hours before you inject to allow it to warm up to room temperature. Cold insulin is more painful to inject.
Discard your used OptiSet as required by your local regulations.
Protect your OptiSet from dust and dirt.
You can clean the outside of your OptiSet by wiping it with a damp cloth.
Do not soak, wash or lubricate the pen as this may damage it.
Your OptiSet is designed to work accurately and safely. It should be handled with care. Avoid situations where OptiSet might be damaged. If you are concerned that your OptiSet may be damaged, discard it and use a new one.
Questions and Answers
Wrong dose selected. Follow the instructions in Step 4 to select the correct dose. Dose has been selected and the injection button has been pulled out and pressed in again without a 1. Attach a new needle. 2. Press the injection button completely in and discard the insulin. 3. Perform the safety test. needle attached. If the safety test is successful OptiSet is ready for use. If test is not successful, the pen might be damaged. Use a new OptiSet. If in any doubt whether the pen is working correctly use a new OptiSet. The dosage selector does not turn. You are turning in the wrong direction. The dosage selector can only be turned forward. You are turning forward while the injection button is pulled out. Press the injection button in completely to discard the dose and select again. The amount indicated on the injection button is higher than the dose selected. Difference is 2 units. Discard insulin, then set your dose and check again. If the same error occurs again, OptiSet may be damaged, use a new OptiSet. Difference is more than 2 units. OptiSet is damaged, use a new OptiSet.
The amount indicated on the injection button is lower than the dose required. There is not enough insulin in the reservoir, you can do one of the following inject the amount indicated on the injection button from this OptiSet and then inject the remaining dose using a new OptiSet, or inject the entire dose using a new OptiSet. The injection button cannot be pressed in. 1. Make sure you pulled out the injection button completely. 2. Attach a new needle. 3. Press the injection button completely in to discard the insulin. 4. Perform the safety test. OptiSet is damaged, use a new OptiSet. You dont hear clicking while injecting. Insulin is leaking from the pen. Needle may have been attached imprecisely e.g. at a slant. Remove needle and replace with a new needle attaching it straight see step 2. Perform the safety test see step 3. Air bubbles are present in the reservoir. Small amounts of air may be present in the needle and insulin reservoir during normal use. You must remove this air by performing the safety test see step 3. The tiny air bubbles in the insulin reservoir that do not move with tapping will not interfere with the injection and dosage. OptiSet is damaged or is not working properly. Do not force it. Do not try to repair or use tools on it. Use a new OptiSet. OptiSet has been dropped or subjected to impact. If in any doubt whether the pen is working correctly use a new OptiSet.


text:
Remember that First Kiss video from a few days ago that is currently sitting at just over 40 million views on Youtube after just four days? Turns out it was a staged ad for clothes, the people in it were actors, and we were all duped into thinking it was authentic.
Despite that video being a lame fake, the concept was interesting, and it prompted Belgian TV show Volt to make an actual first kiss video with real strangers.
- Reposted by


text:
Creator of the terrifying Cthulhu mythos, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, a.k.a. the Sage of Providence, was often less than wise in his divisive opinions. But he was an inveterate letter writer and throughout his life he cultivated a loyal network of correspondents, many of whom were pioneers of weird fiction too. Explore his network.
Letter writing is a rich and ancient form of communication. It offers deep insights into the thoughts, feelings and experiences of people from every walk of life in a more immediate way than almost any other medium. As well as the content of letters, the set of circumstances surrounding a letter's creation, transmission and reception tells a story in itself.
Data visualisation strives to make sense of the large and complex, condensing and clarifying complicated data in a single image. It can achieve an impact that words simply cannot replicate.
Visual Correspondence uses data visualisation to makes sense of a person's life through their correspondence. Who they wrote to, who wrote to them, when and where - these flashes of detail unveil a rich narrative about people and our past through images.
As well as providing tools to visualise huge collections of correspondence, in bringing together detail on 165327 letters from 56 collections, Visual Correspondence provides a new way to explore the letters themselves. Links to the full text of the letters are provided were possible and added information helps put the letters in context. Hopefully in exploring this site, you will start to see correspondence in a new way.


text:
Law & Order: SVU has booked Revenge scene-stealer Roger Bart, Veep's Anna Chlumsky and Broadway vet Raúl Esparza for an upcoming episode, NBC announced Thursday.
In the episode, titled "Twenty-Five Acts," Chlumsky plays the author of a best-selling erotic novel — maybe a nod to 50 Shades of Grey? — who accuses a high-profile talk show host (Bart) of a brutal rape. However, the SVU squad gets suspicious when they discover her account of the rape mimics the chapters in her book. The squad, along with the DA's office (Esparza), also struggles to keep the case from turning into a media frenzy.
Exclusive: Law & Order: SVU casts Adam Baldwin as Cragen's replacement
The episode is set to air sometime this fall. The trio join previously announce recurring guest star Adam Baldwin, who will play the new captain of the squad.
Bart is best known for his roles on Desperate Housewives and Revenge, and can currently be seen in USA's Political Animals. Chlumsky, who rose to fame in My Girl, currently stars on HBO's political comedy Veep. Esparza has guest-starred on both Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent and most recently starred in the Broadway production Leap of Faith, co-written by SVU showrunner Warren Leight.
The new season of Law & Order: SVU premieres on Wednesday, Sept. 26 at 9/8c.


text:
With everyone hemming and hawing about airport scanners being a huge invasion of privacy, GE decided to put the fun back in showing your guts to the world. Their interactive Visible You installation lets you see your insides in action.
OK, they're not necessarily your insides – the display shows detailed models, one for men and one for women, that are readjusted to a visitor's height when they step up to the booth. But the effect is the same: watching your beneath-the-skin movements tracked in life size HD. In addition to all those bones, visitors of the Shanghai Expo, where Visible You is installed, can see their muscles flex and their nervous and cardiovascular systems in action.
A.C. Slater, who makes a brief video in the cameo above, seemed most interested in the muscles part. [CNET


text:
If you're planning to fly this week, don't even think about packing a dessert to make the trip less hellish. Rebecca Hains says that last week a TSA agent at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas seized her red velvet cupcake, which was baked inside an 8 ounce jar. "He explained to me that the frosting constitutes a gel-like substance and part of the way that he had arrived at this decision apparently was that it was in a container in which it conformed to the container's shape," Hains said. "I offered to take it out and put it in a zip-lock bag on the spot and he said 'no I can't let you touch it.' So once he had identified it as a security threat it was no longer mine and I couldn't have it back." Hains says she wasn't traumatized by the loss of her baked good, but the "encroachment on civil liberties" and inconsistency — earlier, a TSA agent at Boston's Logan International Airport let her go through security with two of the cupcakes. Plus, if the agency is now letting people fly with weed, it's just cruel to deprive them of their snack foods.
Image via Anna Hoychuk/Shutterstock.


text:
Do you have a gear oil leak around your differential pinion? Worried you could run low on gear oil and ruin the differential? Omix-ADA offers high-quality replacement pinion seals to keep the gear lube inside the differential where it belongs.
What is the inside diameter of the seal?
Asked by snoopy93 from North Palm Beach on
Hi Snoopy The ID on the Dana 35 Pinion Oil Seal is 1.85 inch. Thanks
Answered by LWiff ext 4804 from North Palm Beach on
How do you get to work? At Omix-ADA we take the road less traveled. With an in-house engineering department the company continuously develops and tests new products. At Omix-ADA the team knows what it is like to work in an environment the preserves the rich Jeep heritage. They get to live it everyday when they arrive at their offices. With thousands of products that we support a vast network of retailers and distributors. Whatever Jeep you drive, Omix-ADA and Rugged Ridge make Jeeps rock. For longer than twenty years, Omix-ADA has engineered and fabricated over 15,000 different restoration and replacement parts for Jeep drivers. Omix-ADA Corporation owns the quality aftermarket off-road brands Rugged Ridge, Alloy USA, Precision Gear, and Outland Automotive. Shop Omix-Ada Now
Lowest Price! Guaranteed!


text:
|Endives, Apples and Grapes
Last week I missed my FFWD recipe because, I just couldn't get it done with all the activities going on in my life. This week however, knowing that we would be on the road Wednesday and Thursday, I made my Endive, Apples and Grapes on Tuesday for my lunch. I already knew my husband would not be partaking of this dish. After all these years, you just know things!
Since I'm a vegetable lover, I knew I would enjoy this one. Endives sliced in half, apples quartered, and a few small clusters of grapes…all sautéed in salted butter. Twenty minutes on one side, until nicely caramelized, then turn over and cook for another 20 minutes. The ease of this dish made it possible to pack, do laundry, clean out the fridge and still have a delicious lunch! I am looking forward to trying Dories' Bonne Idée, with wedges of pumpkin or squash. She suggests warm maple syrup drizzled over the top with some toasted pecans. YUM!!
I really enjoyed this dish and I know I will be making it again. I also know it's something I would not have tried if it wasn't for Dorie! Happy Friday everyone!
This recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspans cookbook "Around My French Table" and you can also find it here. To see what my fellow Doristas are doing check it out here.
|Loved this dish…would really like to try it with the pumpkin or squash


text:
If you're in the New York area, come out to meet your fellow io9 readers (and editors) this Thursday, the 23rd, from 7-9 PM at The Magician bar. Free drinks to first ten comers.
Charlie Jane and Annalee (that's me) will be in NYC this weekend, and we're dragging Meredith along with us to host the io9 NYC Meetup. We'll be in the back room at The Magician, from 7-9 PM (and probably a little later to be completely honest).
Free drinks to the first ten people who find me (I'll be in my Godzilla tie) and tell me what their favorite new scifi novel or comic book of the past year is. You must be prepared to offer a reason why it is awesome! Depending on how drunk I am, I MAY be persuaded to buy drinks for people who can list a favorite indie scifi movie, but this is not guaranteed.
See you Thursday!
SPECIAL NOTE: If you live in Portland and think Graeme should host an io9 meetup there, raise your hand!


text:
To transform lives through ecumenism, capacity building, advocacy and service delivery.
One Church; United in Faith and Mission Witnessing to Jesus Christ and Transforming Lives.
In pursuing its Christian calling, the Council shall uphold:
|Preceding Week
|17 February 2019 - 23 February 2019
|Following Week
JEvents v3.1.18 Stable Copyright © 2006-2014


text:
Big news from last night's post-game show with Rocco DeMaro: GM Neal Huntington confirmed that when Pedro Alvarez is called up he will play third base and Andy LaRoche will go to a bench/utility role. This is not entirely surprising as NH has always said that he didn't want to devalue Pedro by moving him to another position unless he had to but this is the first confirmation I've heard or read.
I fully expect Alvarez to be recalled for the next home stand starting Tuesday. The everyday lineup should then look like this:
Not too bad. One more power hitter at 1B/RF and it would look a lot better. Now given that lineup potential, why would John Russell do this tonight:
McCutchen CF
Walker 3B
Doumit 1B
Jones RF
Church DH
Milledge LF
Iwamura 2B
Cedeno SS
Jaramillo C
No Tabata? Church DHing? Doumit NOT DHing? Iwamura playing? Let's tackle these individually.
Jose Tabata is a 21 and has been in the bigs for three days. Word from the Pirates (via Rocco) is that Tabata is just getting a day off. He's played two games! More truthful would be saying "Justin Verlander is starting and we don't think Jose's ready to face someone that nasty."
Ryan Church doesn't need to be in the game at DH. He had one week last month where he was the only one who was hitting and now JR is in love with him. My guess is that he's still regaining his strength after a nasty stomach flu and this is JR's way to get his bat in there while taking it easy on him. But there's no excuse for that when…
…You have your good bat/no glove catcher playing out of position at first base. If Doumit's not going to catch he should be DHing. Barring that, Delwyn Young – who is as mobile as a road cone – who be a better choice at DH.
Finally there is Iwamura. I posted about his struggles last month and nothing improved after that. Luckily Walker was promoted and has hit well and been very athletic at second. I expect Aki is in because he's more familiar with Verlander. Also, Andy LaRoche's back has been a problem and he hasn't hit at all lately either.
That's the end of my lineup rant. If you're still with me then thanks for reading. For all I know these guys could go hit six homeruns tonight and run away with the game. It isn't likely but anything is possible in a single game.
Filed under: baseball, Pirates | Tagged: Akinori Iwamura, Andrew McCutchen, Andy LaRoche, baseball, Delwyn Young, Garrett Jones, Jason Jaramillo, John Russell, Jose Tabata, Justin Verlander, Lastings Milledge, lineup, Neal Huntington, Neil Walker, Pedro Alvarez, Pirates, Rocco Demaro, Ronny Cedeno, Ryan Church, Ryan Doumit | 2 Comments »