Inside the Mind of Joe Six-Pack, part II

November 17, 2008

WELL, THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF JOE SIX-PACK PHOTOS was a success. A success in that I posted on this blog for the first time in a while, and it was something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Based on the handy graph that wordpress provides, it looks like about ten people looked at it, or e looked at it ten times, something like that.
So here’s more! I didn’t do a good organizing job, so I may repeat some from earlier. My apologies. There are a lot of similar themes here, it’s hard to keep them all straight.

Again, I have to offer this disclaimer:
I IN NO WAY ENDORSE THE CONTENT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS THAT FOLLOW. THESE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE TAKEN FROM THE INSIDE OF TEMPORARY RESTROOM FACILITIES AND ELSEWHERE ON A CONSTRUCTION SITE IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, IN 2007 AND 2008. MANY OF THESE PHOTOGRAPHS COULD BE CONSIDERED “NOT SAFE FOR WORK,” BUT DESPITE THEIR GRAPHIC NATURE, THEY ARE FROM MY WORKPLACE, SO I HAVE CHOSEN NOT TO LABEL THEM AS SUCH.

This particular set contains some extremely graphic language, some of which I think would qualify as hate crimes, so please don’t continue if you would rather keep a pleasant image of society. Unfortunately these are some of the pictures that made me really want to broadcast all of them. In fact, I was tempted to post them and name the project and the companies running the it; I thought surely they should share in the culpability here–how else will this kind of thinking ever end? In terms of politics, when I first started seeing these types of graffiti, I was really disappointed, especially since it was before the election. Soon, some of the rallies the Republicans were holding started to mirror what I was seeing on the walls.
Just remember, Obama won 53%-46%, for both the good and bad those numbers entails.

The classic “tunnel” set-up returns:

I saw this same joke on My Name Is Earl the other night, except the subject was a phone booth:

Somewhere in here, there’s a term paper about men’s impulses to use sex as a weapon or the way hate and lust intertwine. I’m sure that’s what this guy was going for, but he ran out of room on the mirror:

This shot came a lot later in the chronology of my taking them than I’m presenting it here (I guess that’s true for a lot of these). It was actually the graffiti that made me start taking pictures of them again after a few months of letting it slide:

The idea that any person on this construction site besides me has any idea who Trogdor or Homestarrunner are is so outlandish that I was dumbfounded to find this written on a port-o-pot wall. Even the guys that I’m friendly with, who I consider good guys or informed, smart, “cool” guys, I don’t see as having the kind of…hipness? it would take to like that stuff. It cheered me a great deal.

Surprisingly, a bunch of these have been turned to “W”s since I took this:

Team spirit:

I suppose I should’ve included some of these in the pre-election edition of the Mind newsletter:

When I started taking pictures of graffiti again, there were two main themes: one was this kind of extreme racism coming out, the other was more personal attacks, from what I could tell they were on particular foremen, and all involved some sort of homosexually-themed insult

As tcb says, “yeah dude.”:

This one is kind of wonderful. Someone drew a menacing picture of a KKK guy in a hood, which was really great to find in my workplace. Soon, it transformed into the rather more cheery drawing we see here:

Also, “I’ll fuck my mom again you bastards” is classic. I should’ve given it its own shot.

Some of these I can’t even muster a snarky comment on.

Just remember:

Honestly, this is the first time in my life that I heard of the KKK being in MD:

Someone in recent months started writing stuff just for the purpose of writing the most ridiculous, wrong, disgusting thing possible. I kinda dropped off on recording them.