Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems for alcoholics, and Mores for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren’t. One should never lend money to a Marlboro-menthol smoker, though you could usually count on a regular-Marlboro person to pay you back.

Can you guess what brand he smoked before reading his essay?

Massimo Vignelli has updated his classic modernist 1972 map of the NYC subway system for 2008, and is releasing a limited edition of 500 36" x 45" prints for $299, all signed by Vignelli and available only through Men's Vogue.

I hate that I can't afford it but at least the proceeds are going to a charity, the South Bronx's Green Worker Coop.

[ via tumbl.us ]

All of the book cover illustrations from the 70s French science fiction imprint Chute Libre are driving me insane, they're so beautiful and just so perfectly of their time. They make me want to have an underground volcano lair to hang posters of them in.

[ via Asphalt Eden ]

Anyone who pays attention to fashion may want to know that those in charge of deciding these things have pronounced doom on the dress.They, meaning mainly fashion editors and designers, claim the dress is dead. Kaput. Three years of women in dresses is enough.

Of course, anyone who pays attention to fashion knows that it's run mainly by gay men and women-hating women—most of whom don't give an honest shit that women actually like wearing dresses because they're easy to wear and oh-so-flattering. Or, you know, that straight men love seeing us in dresses. So fuck the fashion industry and fuck the "full-legged, pleated high- and low-waisted" pants they want us to wear in the fall; my dress-wearing compatriots, let's keep on keepin' on.

Which is more awesome: the Fantasy Critical Mass Hand Daggers on the left ("the Ultimate in hand protection" for $95) or the scorpion-like Fantasy Death Stalker Knife on the right (surely a bargain at $69)? I can't decide.

"I have yet to hear any character on the show say something interesting or funny (though there are a couple of moments that call up bits in Jessica Simpson’s reality show several years ago, such as her breaking her head over the conundrum of “chicken of the sea”) or see anything that expands my sense of what it’s like to be a young person in Los Angeles. But “The Hills” isn’t aiming to stimulate or inspire; I think people watch it mostly to figure out why they’re watching it."