The Worldwide Culture Gonzo Squad, Inc.

Massive Attack (w/ Hope Sandoval) - Paradise Circus (from...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:23:17 -0500

Massive Attack (w/ Hope Sandoval) - Paradise Circus (from Heligoland, out Feb. 9th) [Via http://twitter.com/haute_muffy via debauchette]

Auto start, yeah. Sorry.

*AHEM* Not, I repeat, NSFW. Now remember, as adults you must be sheperded like children in a thunderstorm. Fear your own shadow. Don’t talk to strangers. Fall in line. And for fuckity fuck’s sake, stay away from the Satanic lust beast (possible band name, yes) that’s hiding beneath your evil evil evil foreskin (if you were lucky enough to keep yours) and/or (Hermy/Trans friends, I feel you) skulking between your apocalyptic labia. Hands inside the ride at all times. Voices down. Behave. *cough cough*

Trip Hop royalty, Massive Attack, are at it again (http://tinyurl.com/yaw977g). Which is grand news, no doubt, but what’s really got me going is this vid (Directed by Toby-Dye, starring legendary porn priestess Georgina Spelvin and sporting scenes from the throwback porn masterpiece, The Devil in Miss Jones) My own personal war against ageism is bolstered by this fucking wonderfully fucking beautiful fucking thing.

From the Stereogum post (Because they’re better at this than I am…pip pip):

“Titanic if it were a porn documentary,” where if instead of flashing back to cute scenes with Leo, Old Rose was flashing back to money-shots with Disco Stu. A sweet old woman starts the show by describing why she never really made it as a prostitute (typical grandma small talk), but how she really shined when a camera was on. Sexually speaking. Her reminiscences and descriptions of the sensations of physical attraction and orgasms are cut with actual footage from her “fuck film,” so strap in for ’70s-styled blowjobs and all the associated trimmings (or, lack there of). Massive Attack and Hope provide a seductively spacious soundtrack, but your attention will likely be directed elsewhere the first time through.

In a society…nay, world where sensuality & sexuality are publically ruled by youngsters who know the least about sex, it’s refreshing to have such absurdities thrown back in our collective face. Britney Miley Gaga VI isn’t sexy. That’s right: Grandma knows the score. And grandma gets it on. And she has a thing or two to teach us if only we can get past the silly idea of her sexuality somehow being creepy.

why Maker ethics might save us all

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:30:06 -0500

Creativity and Curiosity often go hand in hand, and both are discouraged in our society. Sure, we may talk big about them, but take a moment to think about the last time you came up with a truly outrageous idea, how the people around you reacted. What about the last time you went on a learning binge? Did the people around you look at you oddly? If not, count yourself lucky.
Come on a bit of a jump here with me - I think this has to do with how litigious our culture is. We generally look outside ourselves for blame when things go wrong. I’m not going to get into why we do this displacement of blame - others will be far better at discussing that than myself. What I can talk about is what that tendency does to us, and how we might remedy those mindsets.

An example, of sorts:
A producer has cater to the lowest common denominator when designing and marketing their product, both to reach the largest possible audience, but also to protect themselves. A producer has two general directions to go with their product in relation to their clientele, regardless of what the product is: open it up, or close it off. Opening it requires some level of disclosure about how the product works, encourages learning about the product, feedback about how to make it better, etc. This is expensive, assumes the user will take some personal responsibility interacting with the open product causes its breakage or their injury. The general mindset is that the risks of injury or intellectual property aren’t worth taking. So the other route is followed: closing the product off. The producer takes full responsibility for a product not working, but also protects themselves from intellectual property theft (thereby protecting their asset), has full control over the safety of the product, etc. They are much safer. The populace at large is, after all, stupid and litigious.

That’s where my issue comes in. The population at large is *not* stupid and litigious by nature, but because they are expected to be, and are treated as such. You can blame it on the Halo Effect (link), or one bad apple, or whatever you want to. Our court system is even based on precedence. If people before you thought that the action you’re parsing was a bad one, you’re supposed to also think it’s a bad one. But that also means that you can change that simply by making it clear how you’re dealing with a situation. We can change expectations, both in the legal and in the meatspace worlds. Most juries do find silly suits as just that - silly. We just hear about the epic and huge ones (lady that spilled coffee on her lap and won a bunch of money? Yeah, actually read the case sometime. I totally agree with the decision) because that’s what our media goes for. We need to focus on the ones where the juries or judges tell the plaintiff to suck it up, to quit being stupid, etc.

In short… hack it. Take it apart. Show them the new way.

‘Lucky’ is the collaboration between Melbourne...

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:23:07 -0400

‘Lucky’ is the collaboration between Melbourne based ‘All India Radio’ and animation company ‘Dee Pee Studios’.

It involves a painstaking animation technique, whereby the team paints in the air with glow sticks, frame after to frame to create entire sequences of animation, sometimes taking a whole night to shoot.

Borrow The Indifference (Ed. I'm a spectator here too. Just passing along the uber. -Jerem)

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:32:52 -0400

- Written By ‘Siva de Ferrera [A.K.A. Keith Ferrera]

Mail will be delivered by telepathy in 18 months. They are beta testing it now.
V0.86’s only bug to speak of is that files larger than 100MB make the recipient breakdown in tears. V0.97ALPHA fixes that bug and only at 1.2GB does the recipientstart to drool and recite screenplays from old Kaptain Kangaroo episodes. RC 1.0 will almostcertainly come with disclaimer. With the speed at which the Available Information Ageis traversing, intercourse, by touching forefinger-to-forefinger, is not too far away.
Japan, as always, is on the forefront of that technology.
In fact, thumb-to-forefingerauto erotica SNAPS, as they are being referred to, are already being sold in Manga shops andBody Alt Clinics in New Tokyo
and the openware downloaded on most Distributed Hash Trackers.
Short for Sexual Narcissistic Auto-Erotic Pleasure Signalation, they have replacedHeroin as the “New Nod”. Outlawing their commercial use in the U.S. has only made them moreprevalent and SNAPS modders have turned into the equivalent of a back alley abortionist…or abolitionist depending on which wing you cower under. Ironically though, drugs are no longeran issue since they, being only a substitution for prolonged orgasm, can’t compete with the real thing.Snapping your fingers in a Jazz club used to pronounce your hip appreciation for the artist.

Now, Mole Kids pop and lock, genuflect and gesticulate to MOOG lines and compressed beats

at24 hour Stations

situated intra-bowery,

underground…

with raw fingers… oozing…

Clasping hands, they hail one another with the credo, and subsequent manifesto, “Under and Out,”(as they Soul Shake, finger clasp, abrazo, and snap their fingers back on the release,taking care to firmly graze each others SNAPS) choosing to stay undergroundand riding the outer edge of frequency and technology, jacking whatever they can.
In these OutRiders, Morrison’s Ghost still haunts, moving their souls closer stillto The End through these depraved and vagrant halls.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Borrow The Indifference

The abstract nightmare that is the the double-ought Decade is beyond our beatific imaginings.All the children are on Serotonin Re-uptakes…Them dementia prone nostalgics are driving them absolutely mad….and their parents are on Atypical Neuroleptics .
Hippies close in and infect us with PTSD.You selfish Fucks!God is sitting in a virtual reality busgoing insane from the never-ending slaughter film. Crying with me.
He realizes this… is the end,but is too disturbedto stop the rotisserie.His tears are desperate, but… he hears us not.
His pain is deep.This is his fault.He is forsaken.He has forsaken himself.
The sunbeam in his eye is glinting,glistening in his wet orb.He sees, butforgets his transgressions.
We are lost on his dandruffed scalp.We are the plague on his skin.We disturb him.We have disowned him.
He is alone and praying to give us peace.The parameters are too great.The rain falls intermittently throughout history.We gag on our monumental discrepancies.
We fight and coerce one another.We have lost touch with choice.We devise broken divisions of mistrust and abandonment.We strike and miss the totality of the struggle.
We curse our name.We bow to horrific non-fiction.Grabbing the neck in the mirrorwe strike with irrelevant Dogma.
We curse our loinsleaving our seed’s innocent child in perpetual assault.Destroy our nameIn-The-Name-Of.
Worship confused menand damn the others.The sand falls through the fingersand we hear not the wind.
The angry screamcriedfellowships with ignorance and lays wasteto friendship and brotherhood.
We are cloth and are clean.We are matter and existto balance anti-matter.We are one and only.
We cannot bring ourselves to the end of ituntil weborrow the indifference of the seato the shore.
Solace is a place beyond truth.Truth is irrelevant.We are a lost specieswaiting for a blackhole to swallow us with ambiguity.
We know ourselves backwards.We revel in it.Saccharin bravery and rehabilitative economic sanctionswill be the death of glory and Capitalistic socialist Neo-Conservatist Democracy.
Lose trust in a caricature.Dance silly to the Honky-Tonk Soul.It will glitch and glow to hyper-sensitive collective mediocrityand abandon itself to television opinion and categorical news.
Fishing will only happen on the radio.A wheel well willcollect mud as designed,unknowingly.
Darwin is proved and exonerated.We kick the wheel.We practice inconsequentials.We are proud and relevant.
And still the pain falls.It fallsand washesthe pride from our lips.
We jabber onand waitfor the firstto fall.
When he whispers that gentle commandHe gives us ,graciously,our last deep breath.
She runs her fingers through our hairone last time.She kisses our neckand divides time.
Our eyes closedwe see nothing.We heara timid and thoughtful love uttered.
She lingersthat moment like…unlike…ever before.
(Someone imagines a kind scene playing out on a stage)
Gleeking a final timeand brings reality to a complete and final retreat.In that finality the shadows live a lifetimeof doubt just as we had.
Pulling their black faces over our eyes.Nothing fingers clutchsun cast liesand don’t cry out.
Fuck! It’s never over.The back becomes the frontand polarizesthe insignificance.
The poem only ends the words,but the thoughts continue to prevail and destroy the living mind.It’s only inheritance; Schizophrenia and unreturned Love.Not enough and way too much.
Not worthy of the delicious completeness.Not born of Love, but constant reconciliation.of abandoned hope and futile adolescent grip.The suction of single purpose to open warmth.
We cannot bring ourselves to the end of ituntil weborrow the indifference of the seato the shore.
Solace is a place beyond truth.Truth is Siren, singing us to shipwreck.We are a lost specieswaiting for the singularity to swallow our ambiguity.

Find the author here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=107910556
Thanks to @QMaab, via Twitter.

I’m going to call this “the little festival that...

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:33:00 -0400

I’m going to call this “the little festival that could”. LOLA (London Ontario Live Arts) fest in London Ontario is happening now, having just launched last night. Throughout the core of the city are art installations based on the theme of light/ darkness. Today begins the music portion of the fest as well, with VIctoria Park hosting 2 stages, a mainstage and the trans/media stage. VJ POMO and myself will be VJing on the mainstage all weekend …

But what really struck me other than the usual amibitious work being done by fesitval organizers is how much tech they’ve included. lolafest.com/live will be streaming content online for the next 48 hrs, not from just the videography on the stage, but from LOLA staff (and even artists) equiped with nokia cellphones capable of streaming live videofeeds (let’s call it live documentary) via a huge transciever unit called the C.O.W. which is set up in the park. We’re going to be hooked up with one of these phones later today to add our experience to the LOLAness.

Also (and this is the first time I’ve ever seen then used in Canada in person) LOLA fest folk added QR coding to all the signage (each artists station has a sign like in the pic — the one above being for our VJ sets on the mainstage). Linking the art to digital mobile content was a fantastic idea, allowing the viewer to investigate more about the art and the artists.

I’ll be semi-live blogging on my tumblr page all weekend. As they’re also setting me up with a wireless account that I can access right from where I’m VJing. THanks to the C.O.W. I’ll find out what it stands for and edit this :).

** the COW is simply. the cell on wheels. hmph was hoping for something more dramatic.

I was cruising along the lastest post on HackAday last night...

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:06:19 -0400

I was cruising along the lastest post on HackAday last night when I came upon this video.

An artist releasing their first album is always and exciting time,anyone who’s participated in cultural production can relate to that feeling. But kudos to audio artist Moldover for doing it in such an innovative manner. Printing the CD liner into his own custome circuit boards is such a fantastic idea and not just for their aesthetic. Actually converting each CD case into an optical-thermin is sheer brilliance if you ask me! And not content with releasing something that’s merely an electronic toy, he pops a 1/8’” minijack in there so it become an instrument that can be used for recording, amplying etc.

I’m a bit smitten by the idea of this. A clever melding of form and function. I’ve already ordered a copy for myself.

The world’s first meta-time-strategy game. It’s like...

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:19:00 -0400

The world’s first meta-time-strategy game.

It’s like Starcraft with time travel. And it deals with paradoxes.

After I have a cup of coffee, perhaps I’ll be able to explain why this brings me so much joy. Mostly having to do with prepping our brains to actually deal with such things, and being self-aware enough to understand the impacts of things in the past and therefore potentially how our current actions affect the future. Most of the time we just wing it, and come up with the reasoning later. This… this is good.

It’s the early 21st century. You discover a new TV show...

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:03:06 -0400

It’s the early 21st century. You discover a new TV show when someone searches twitter for the usage of a new term of the zeitgeist, “funemployed”; because they’ve named their show that.

Because keyword searching on twitter is all they really need to do in order to market it, to make it viral.

Except it’s not on broadcast or cable TV, it’s on YouTube.

They’ve had the idea for the show, knuckled down, made the thing and uploaded it.

You are impressed. You notice how much it has improved from the first episode. You instantly recall the earlier eps of Pure Pwnage and how that grew to become an internet sensation.

You become ever curious, so decide to ask the makers of the show some questions. Because this is the 21st Century all that requires is a direct message on twitter.

They graciously agree to a QnA and you post the results. (You aren’t quite sure why you write the intro in the second-person; you decide to reference Stross’s Halting State and then run the QnA)

Funemployed is one of the best shows I’ve seen on YouTube. How did it come to be?

Thanks! Funemployed started out in its planning stages over a year and a half ago. After college I took a year off to save up money and then moved to Chicago in June 2007. When I got here a friend told me it’d be hard to find work for about 3 months — The 3 Month Curse. I scoffed at the time, but really couldn’t find work and ended up having to work crappy temp jobs and promotions out in public to make rent. My friends who also moved to the city found the same problem, having to take up unpaid internships and temp jobs until something landed.

A friend of mine, David L. Andrews, who is also inspiration for one of the characters in the show, described it as being “Funemployed”, which I thought was hilarious, and my girlfriend at the time, Courtney Lane and I thought might be a good basis for a musical or a TV Show. After all, so many of my favorite movies and TV shows target certain times of people’s lives and rites of passage, i.e. High School Graduation, freshman year of college, getting married and having kids; but what about that year right after college? When you realize after all the hard work you did in school didn’t teach you a thing about actually going out and and making your way in the world?

My neighbor, improviser Alex Harris (Lockwood) and I decided we wanted to do something creative with our time and express the frustrations of our post college lives, and started planning out characters based on people we knew who eventually became the guys you see in the show. My friends from college, filmmaker and actor Michael Lippert (Jay) and his wife, actor Kate Carson-Groner (Amy) moved to the city as well, and we all started collaborating writing scripts. It went on like this until we had about a season’s worth of episodes written, and then we met up with some old college friends, filmmaker Christopher TK Coyne and Producer Katey Selix, and sequential artist Dan Hale (Bill) and started making Funemployed a reality.

The production value is particularly impressive. Can you tell us a bit about the equipment and software you’re using to create it?

The production value is thanks to the efforts and abilities of Christopher TK Coyne and Michael Lippert. Chris is basically a one man film crew, and though he lives in Milwaukee, and travels all over shooting an array of projects, still makes the time to come to Chicago to film Funemployed. Chris is a proud owner of a RED Camera, which allows us to film at up to 4 times HD quality. The camera has an ability to film incredibly beautiful imagery without necessarily needing a lot of lighting setups, although he is responsible for that as well. We film mainly on the RED, and also film pickups and smaller scenes with Michael Lippert’s HVX camera, which shoots HD as well, just without the same ability and depth of field as the RED. The editing is thanks to Michael, who works full time at Cutters, a posthouse here in Chicago. He works primarily with Final Cut, and does an excellent job making sure we all look good. Both filmmakers bring an immense amount of passion and professionalism to Funemployed that really made this project what it is today.

What’s your rough budget per episode?

We operate on a shoestring budget. We’re Funemployed after all. But we do try to use our surroundings and capabilities to our advantage. We try to use Chicago based artists for music and locations for shooting as much as we can.

We offer free advertising through our show and our website, http://www.funemployedchicago.com, in return for allowing us to utilize assets of other artists and companies. Our biggest advantage has been having Chris Coyne on board, and having the equipment at hand. We mainly spend money on lunch and props, so we each chip in when the episode is over.

The Internet has been providing superior entertainment to commercial TV for a while now. In particular I’m thinking of shows like The Guild and Pure Pwnage. Are these shows that influenced you to try something yourself?

Truthfully, when we originally started talking about the concept for the show, we weren’t as into the webseries world as one would think. We just wrote what we thought would be funny and hoped that somehow we’d be able to make a show that looked professional and worth our time. However, as we have started making Funemployed happen, we have become aware of shows that draw a strong parallel to the type of show we are trying to do. Shows like The Guild, We Need Girlfriends and others are similar in feel, but we didn’t necessarily draw as much inspiration from existing shows on the web.

If not them, then what did inspire you?

People tell us all the time that Funemployed has a strong similarity to Flight of the Conchords or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And it’s true, we love these shows and did draw inspiration from them. One thing we dealt with in the planning stages of the show was, “OK, we’ve got four guys and a girl, how do we not make this ‘Sunny’?” But I think we’ve tried to develop characters that are hopefully memorable and based on ourselves. One thing we’ve tried to do to separate this show from others is developing a heightened sense of reality; a feeling of life or death in every mundane or otherwise ordinary scenario. And many of the situations are based off of real life experiences. Trying to hit on a girl at an office temp job, having things stolen at a house party, passing out with my shoes on, trying to grow a beard unsuccessfully; these scenarios are based on our lives and then exaggerated to ridiculous heights. I constantly ask people to share stories about what their lives were like when they were unemployed, or stories from being employed with awful jobs as well to draw inspiration. But I think that’s what makes the show so fun, is that it is rooted in reality while still having a sense of the ludicrous in it.

Now that YouTube will share revenue with it’s “top creators” do you think it’s become a viable medium to work in? Or are you just putting this out there for free in order to raise your profile and get paid work down the road?

Getting paid to film Funemployed would be awesome. Do I think it will happen? Maybe not, but I think that Youtube has proven itself to be a viable resource for young unknown creatives and people across the world to get their stuff seen. And you can see a number of people who have made careers for themselves purely from YouTube fame. I think we all do this not expecting anything but to make the best thing we possibly can. We are all very dedicated and passionate about the show and want to do it as long as we can come up with funny ideas and a good story. And we have a blast filming it.

Gen Y seems to be coping a lot of flack in the media as the generation that’s had it too good and never had to struggle. Yet your show is all about graduating and looking for employment just as the economy is collapsing. Do you see the parallels between now and the early 90s, when the young Gen Xers were known as Slackers?

One thing I think has been incredibly bizarre is that when we started writing this show, it was just about us having trouble finding work. It had nothing to do with the onset of the current recession, just about our personal experiences. It was more about us being theatre and film majors graduating without the ability to get a decent paying job right away. It was probably sometime in the winter of ‘08 that I had even heard of a recession, and people still weren’t taking it very seriously. So with the economic climate the way it has become, suddenly the idea of Funemployed became even more poignant and accessible to a wider audience than we had ever planned on. ”Funemployed” suddenly has become a sort of buzzword all over the media, even put into Urban Dictionary, and here we have a show about exactly that. I would never take credit for coming up with the word “funemployed”, after all I took the idea from something my friend randomly said back in June of ‘07, but now you see it in newspapers and on TV, and it’s exciting to be making this series when it’s so relevant to the times.

I think you can draw a lot of parallels from generation to generation. I think the adjustment from college life, where you are led and facilitated to do the work that hopefully you are able to continue doing in a professional setting, to actually being in the real world, where everything you do is on your own, is a pretty jarring experience. No one’s holding your hand anymore, noone’s telling you what to do; at first it seems like permanent summer vacation. But when you realize that this isn’t a vacation, this is your life, and you need to get up off your ass and get your shit together (I mean hopefully we all come to this conclusion rapidly after getting out of college), it can be pretty weird. And that adjustment period is nothing that we haven’t all experienced in some way or another.

So if Generation X were a bunch of slackers, what is our generation? Boomerang Kids? The Internet Generation? I don’t know, but I think technology has changed things for both good and bad. You can easily apply for jobs online, but so can everyone. So even though there’s that ease in applying for things, the competition is much higher than it might have been twenty years ago. I think each generation struggles in its own way. But honestly I am pretty lazy.

Do you dream of being the next Kevin Smith, the “slacker” made good?

All of us on the creative team have different goals for our careers. Really all I want is to be able to support myself with what I love to do. I think that’s what all of us want. Michael and Chris are definitely geared towards being successful filmmakers, while Kate and I would love to be more in front of the camera or on stage. I know that our main concern is to always be pushing ourselves and growing as artists. We’d all love to have the opportunity to keep working together in the future and work on projects that we all find as entertaining as this. I think to be as widely recognized as Kevin Smith would be cool, but we’re just doing what we love right now. It has been such an awesome experience, and it’s incredibly rewarding to see an idea we had almost two years ago finally snap into reality. If we can continue doing stuff like this until we’re old, we’ll be happy people.

Looking forward, how many episodes of Funemployed do you have planned? Any hints as to what adventures we might be seeing?

We’ve got at least a season and a half of episodes written. We’re in the middle of wrapping up production on Episode 3, “There Will Be Beards”, and Episode 4, “Dark Ted”. We’ll also be dropping a Funemployed parody music video later this month. As far as the story arc goes, you can expect plenty more roommate rivalry, a slew of different crappy jobs, more insight into mind of Lockwood, and maybe even a little romance. We’re excited to continue making Funemployed, and making it as awesome as we can.

Twenty Years Hence, A Fierce Ecology

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:38:29 -0400

As the world changes, so do our needs. As our needs change so does the world.

Who needed literacy 20,000 years ago? Who needed the internet just twenty years ago? In just twenty years hence, you might need a garden and a second head complete with penile attachment. To show you’re stylish and forward thinking, perhaps you’ll grow the garden on your clothes and your second head not only has the penile attachment but a matching scrotum chin. There, you keep your DNA computed, semen tweets translated direct from thoughts.

You meet up with a friend who has a head womb to ejaculate and impregnate with a dream. Few days later, its head gives birth, via self-organizing vomit, to a chimera that acts like a carnival barker, spouting your combined ideas on street corners, hawking only the finest dream images to bored commuters for credits uploaded into your organ banks. A good portion of this is paid as a bribe to the cancer corporations so they keep your substitute kidneys healthy. The rest is spent on dream improving drugs. After all, you’ve gotta stay current or get left behind. Get left behind and all your replacement parts get the fucking cancer. It’s a fierce ecology.

Just ask your chimera.

Right now, it’s wrestling over the prime real estate with other creatures of the same type. Winning some battles, losing others and every minute becoming obsolete. When it’s not fighting it’s desperately mating to birth fresh fantasies, hoping to get its own cash flow going, hoping to sell little monster dreams to other chimeras and save the money to buy an upgrade into full human status. It’s not likely. But it’s the only chance it has.

More likely, it’ll just collect wounds and weaken until the young drive it off into some death ghetto where it’ll be eaten and turned into compost by the garden trolls. Those god-damn garden trolls. With their pointy hats and big blind eyes, selling the compost back to humans as dream enhancing drugs. Always pricing it beyond reason.

They only come out at night. Preserves the skin.

And they’re vain about that.

Nostalgic tales of media piracy

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:11:52 -0400

Afflicted with yet another Winter plague, I spent the better part of the waking hours of the past four days burning through the DVD box-set of Neon Genesis Evangelion, a show I had missed first time round.

Whilst discussing this landmark anime with my buddy the daniel, he shared the story of how he had earnestly tracked down taped copies of the show from a “supernerd” in California.

This reminded me of my own experiences earlier in that last decade of the 20C, where in my fellow nerds had used IRC to organise tape exchanges, all to obtain the latest season of X-Files as it aired in the US. We would anxiously await the arrival of the latest tape full of episodes, and crowd around one of the few video players in the library capable of playing NTSC recordings.

Fast forward to the early 21C and we have a guy known as The Todd. The definition of an early adopter, he had shelled out for the first available ADSL connection, and would pass around the office VCD (and later SVCD!) copies of the latest US shows. This was how I first saw 24, Alias.. and Firefly in the original broadcast order that turned me off it for years to come, months or years before they aired in Australia.

But The Todd would not take requests, so I had to commit the worst sin of all, paying money to a grey re-seller “legally” importing content from Taiwan, to get my fix of GITS:SAC season1. Beautifully packaged, perfect broadcast quality DVDs with English subtitles that had gone through at least two languages translations beforehand. It was pretty, but barely comprehensible, yet I would still hand over $25 per disc.

Because someone always makes money on piracy, even if the legitimate owner isn’t. If it’s not the grey re-seller of yesterday, it’s the ISP of today selling 100Gb a month plans. It’s these profiteers that should that MPAA/RIAA etc should be going after, not the impatient consumer.

By the time season2 of GITS:SAC was airing, I finally had a broadband connection myself. Determined never to suffer the fate of incomprehensible subtitles again, I found a fan-subbing group I liked and stuck to it; even though that meant often horrendous gaps in between eps.

Like any good media pirate, I observe the Golden Rule - steal it now, buy it later, and have even taken my love of GITS:SAC skin deep.

Each jump in tech has provided new and easier methods of piracy, with increased quality (HD .mkv’s anyone?). It is funny to think that as a generation comes online, the available standard will be the expected standard. I doubt a tween today even knows what a VCD is, let alone what to do with a VCR.

These are the shows I remember most at each turning point.

Now, it’s your turn.. what are your nostalgic tales of media piracy?

Epic Road-kill

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:52:00 -0400

Epic Road-kill:

A fin whale — a threatened species in Canada — was found dead and firmly wedged against the bow of a cruise ship following its arrival from Alaska.

Birth Of A MicroNation, Part One: Declaration Of War

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 08:00:00 -0400

It was a cold afternoon on the 24th July that a new national flag was hoisted proudly toward a cloudy, winter sky. It’s founder, sole Citizen and Supreme Leader raised a three-finger salute as the wind caught the cerulean blue pillow case - haphazardly emblazoned with thirteen yellow stars encircling a silhoetted Neil Patrick Harris.

A single patriotic tear slid softly down his cheek at the momentous occasion.

Few people would be familiar with the Federated Commonwealth of Malatora - in fact, I myself had never heard of it until stumbling across their official webpage whilst enjoying my morning coffee.

Founded in 1995, FedCom is an egalitarian state favoring isolationism. They’ve developed a concise set of laws known as the Code Of Malatora, complex military protocol - even a variation of the World Calender wherein the epoch coincides with the year that mankind launched its first artificial satellite into orbit (1957AD = 0SE, Malatoran ‘Space Era’). Malatorian history showed that they had originated in the United States - however after realising the difficulty of succession, re-located to Australia, and in turn a 39.4 km² plot in an undisclosed South African location.

What made Malatora stand out from other “new-nation projects” - was the transhumanist focus, what they call The CyberTransplantation Project.

To quote from their website:

The ultimate goal is to develop the technology to transplant a living human brain into a cybernetic total-body prosthesis. This technology will extend lifespans to 500 or more years, and render the individual (or “Cytran”) immune to all external disease and environmental effects, capable of immense strength, as well as being extremely durable and easily repaired.

A utopian society not only beyond the thrawls of capitalism - but founded with the sole purpose of advancing the human species towards the singularity.

The site seemed legitimate enough - least compared to the domains of other South African nations such as Zimbabwe. I read on.

Cytran bodies will be made available exclusively to FedCom citizens who want them. The technology will not be exported.

This latter fact, struck a chord. I’d already tried to lodge an application for citizenship within FedCom, but it seemed at the time that the domain server was experiencing technical issues. I attempted to contact FedCom’s Supreme Commander Robert Lord via his MySpace page - but instead was greeted by the pasty avatar of a twenty-five year old computer programmer from Indiana.

The only fathomable explanation was that the Malatorian Security Intelligence Organisation was blackwalling me - offering up this bogus account as a diversion, a complex means of subterfuge in effort of keeping the identity of their leader secret and hindering my quest to gain access to their secret cybernetic technology.

I returned to scouring the web for some way in which to enter discussions with this isolated society of minds - to no avail. Restricted discussion boards. Dead ends.

There was only one solution….

War.

If FedCom wasn’t willing to share it’s research, I would form my own micronation - and take it by force.

Using some discarded linen, fabric paint and a desktop printer I completed the last of the six step guide ‘Founding A MicroNation’ on www.ehow.com - The Free Republic Of Shared Robotics (But No Roberts) was born.

It saddens me that the first diplomatic act as Supreme Leader should be one of war, but I am strong in my resolve. I shall fight to uphold the One Truth: if I can’t be a robot, no one can.

Tribuo mihi chalybs viscus, vel tribuo mihi nex!

(Give me steel flesh, or give me violent death!)

Fuel for Your Nightmares: Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina...

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:30:46 -0400

Fuel for Your Nightmares: Unknown Lifeform in North Carolina Sewer

Not really, but hey Cryptozoology Boogaloo!

Tubifex tubifex, also called the sludge worm, or sewage worm, is a species of tubificid segmented wormthat inhabits the sediments of lakes and rivers on several continents. T. tubifex probably includes several species, but distinguishing between them is difficult because the reproductive organs, commonly used in species identification, are resorbed after mating, and because the external characteristics of the worm vary with changes in salinity. These worms ingest sediments, selectively digest bacteria, and absorb molecules through the body wall.

The worms can survive with little oxygen by waving hemoglobin rich tail-ends to exploit all available oxygen. They can also survive in areas so heavily polluted with organic matter that almost no other species can endure. By forming a protective cyst and lowering its metabolic rate, T. tubifex can survive drought and food shortage. Encystment may also function in the dispersal of the worm.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tubifex_worm

NNY Twitters (And frightens Monty Python characters)

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:19:49 -0400

If you were like me, you found Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (And the superior SQUEE!) in a Hot Topic. It’s okay, you can admit it. The place had it’s time. Point being, it outlived Hot Topic, due to the quality of the work (Happy Noodle Boy aside).

There’s a reason Vasquez went on to assault the world (Thank fucking christ) with Invader Zim: He’s a comic genius. Funny funny funny guy. Smelly too, by all accounts. BUT, we’re not here to talk about that guy. Attention hog.

Y’see, Johnny, it seems, has his own Twitter. No, really. He’s found a means to reach us beyond the pages of the comics. He’s gone all technofied. Helps me fight through the monotony of my “real” job, getting random tweets from the unhinged lad. Vicarious murder never felt so good. A few faves, below.

*********************

“Keep hoping someone will, with their dying breath, let loose some cryptic lead about a treasure map. Thus far, nothing.”

“You know, I’m older now, and I like to think wiser. Also, I made a guy dress up as a bear, lit him on fire and pushed him off a skyscraper.”

“What is the deal with this weather? One minute it’s raining, the next you’re murdering a family of 4 in their home. Stability, please!”

“You think a person about to get their throat cut would appreciate some levity, but damned if my Leprechaun-style jig wasn’t for naught.”

Okay, so those were all recent, but it presses my point, doesn’t it?

Follow him here: http://twitter.com/Johnny_C

But for fuck’s sake, keep off the loose soil.

Fuel For Your Nightmares: Coconut Crabs

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:05:53 -0400

The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become.^[1] The species inhabits the coastal forest regions of many Indo-Pacific islands, although localized extinction has occurred where the crab is sympatric with man. Generally nocturnal, they remain hidden during the day and emerge only on some nights to forage. Their body is divided into four regions; the cephalic lobe, forepart, trunk, and opisthosoma. It is a highly apomorphic hermit crab and is known for its ability to crack coconuts with its strong pincers to eat the contents. It is the only species of the genus Birgus.

It is also called the robber crab or palm thief, because some coconut crabs are rumored to steal shiny items such as pots and silverware from houses and tents.

H.P. Lovecraft knew things. KNEW. THIIIIIIIINGS.

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_crab

IN YOUR HOUSE. STEALIN’ YO SHIT.

The Samurai Umbrella!

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:38:04 -0400

Just in time for the start of the Japanese rainy season (tsuyu) the Samurai Umbrella is here! An umbrella that can be worn, sheathed and unsheathed like a samurai sword (katana) has become all the rage among Japanese men in their 30s and 40s.

Gear up and change a rainy day into a childhood dream! ;)

Original Japanese article (with photo slide show) from Walker

Yeah, I’m gettin’ one of these, bet your roaming-the-countryside-in-search-of-trouble villains on it.

Dancing to make music with conductive ink. A quick follow-up to...

Sun, 31 May 2009 09:14:16 -0400

Dancing to make music with conductive ink. A quick follow-up to Jerem’s post, via Futurismic | Posthuman Blues.

Temp Electro Body Mod

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:58:49 -0400

Body paint that conducts electricity.

You heard me.

(http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2009-05/01/body-paint-that-conducts-electricity.aspx)

A Possible City-Future

Tue, 26 May 2009 01:08:46 -0400

I’m going to combine two ideas here: that of cloud computing and that of wireless networks. In a lot of ways they depend on each other: cloud computing is certainly enhanced by wireless, and wireless has really come into its full through cloud computing. I feel that this combination is an important step in both technical progress and also the acclimatization of culture into this mindset of information and connectivity. However, I don’t believe our course will continue in this way.

I believe that in cities, where there are many people with personal devices, we will construct our own networks. Personal devices - laptops, desktops, phones, tablets, etc - can already connect without the help of the larger network. True, it’s an ability which is talked down and covered up by the larger networks, but it exists. We will start to construct our own networks. Devices are fast approaching the storage and processing capabilities to hold all of your personal information (and you can still collaborate via the network), so off-site storage will soon be unnecessary. What is to prevent the hackers, the makers from further developing and propagating city-wide stand-alone networks?

I do not believe this will replace connection points to wireless provided by larger corporations, at least not for quite some time. We are connected to each other regardless of geography, and this is not a situation I would like to see change. However, relying on those around you to connect to people would provide both a sense of geographical community (not to trump worldwide community, but only as another form of human interaction) as well as an independence from corporate-granted access to information.

Hadopi, french three strikes law adopted

Tue, 12 May 2009 15:20:49 -0400

Hadopi, french three strikes law adopted: As ridiculous as it sounds, and after the European Parliament clearly stated by the re-adoption of the amendment 138/46 that access to Internet was a fundamental right, the French National Assembly accepted the Hadopi bill.
The bill will directly reach the French Senate tomorrow, and will be probably voted the same way, without any surprise, since the French President N. Sarkozy made a point he wouldn’t allow another blow to his bill like the one he had in early april.
Guy Bono, in reaction to the vote, declared he will call the European Commission to challenge the French Government upon censoring the Hadopi, for being against the community rights.

Hadopi being supposed to protect the intellectual rights of “artists” during the digital revolution, I’ll leave the final words to someone I recognize as one, M.J. Keenan, the lead singer of Tool, who tweeted this, this afternoon, probably not about the Hadopi but oddly fitting in this context:

Someone posted a satellite foto of the Music Industry from space. it sorta looks like… hmmmm… http://www.lemonparty.org/
— mjkeenan