spasticrobot

Inventory for Summer 2004

Here's my Inventory for Summer 2004. It's everything I've been doing, reading, watching, and listening to. I've been keeping one for each season since Spring 2001. It's really a great way for me to keep track of things.

Books
100 Great Tips For Graphic designers
Toothpicks & Logos
About Face 2.0
Crystal Express by Bruce Sterling
Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling
Negrophobia by Darius James
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol
Connected or what it means to live in the Network Society by Steven Shaviro
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari
Guy Debord by Anselm Jappe
Art and Photography ed. David Campany

RNC Wende Update; More protests, RNC kicks off with major emphasis on 9/11.

The Republicans opened their convention with a rousing and congratulatory collective pat on the back. Summoning memories of 9/11 presenter after presenter heralded George Bush’s response to the terrorist actions of that day. I guess they think that sending a gigantic military force to illegally occupy two nations, one of which had nothing to do with 9/11, is the proper response. The bottom line on the war on terror is that we are losing it because of our instance on using conventional military tactics, like invading and occupying nations. If we continue on the track that Bush has led us on we will surely continue waging a war that, in the president’s words “may be unwinnable”.

Yesterday over 3,000 protestors from 52 organizations led by poor people and people of color marched under the banner of Still We Rise. The intention of the march was to raise awareness about the skyrocketing rates of poverty, unemployment and the slashing of benefits in NYC.

Bikes Against Bush creator Joshua Kinberg has written a statement about what went down when he was arrested. His account corroborates the Satan’s Laundromat story about detainees having to sleep on a floor covered in motor oil and transmission fluid.

Today's A31 actions have already started with attempted organized protest and street blockages on Wall St. and Tavern on the Green, both of which were prevented by police from happening.

RNC Wende Update; This is what democracy looks like.

The United for Peace & Justice Protest went off without any major disruptions. UfP&J estimate the crowd number at around 400,000. A group of anarchists set a large dragon puppet on fire but that was about the worst of it.

You can see some amazing uninterrupted footage of the protest over at CSPAN.

Reading the news flashes at NYC Indymedia over the past few days has been really interesting. Yesterday’s updates read like highly original fiction.

Bikes against Bush creator Joshua Kinberg has been arrested and his bike / slogan printer has been confiscated by the NYPD. He didn’t even get to use it.

Friday’s Critical Mass ride was about 5,000 strong and the NYPD arrested 264 riders. That’s more than the total amount arrested during the DNC. Here’s a really crazy firsthand account of the blogger behind Satan’s Laundromat getting arrested and locked up in a diesel covered holding tank with a bunch of other riders for 20 hours.

A Wende for Our Times; NYC, the GOP and hundreds of thousands of techno-protestors

The Wende; Sterling’s Deep Eddy scenario and Die Wende in historical terms.
The Bruce Sterling short story “Deep Eddy” is about the events surrounding a massive cataclysmic event called a Wende in Düsseldorf in the year 2035. Sterling’s Wende is a massive confluence of various protests, electronic disturbances and random anarchic actions that combine to create an event so chaotic that it crashes every system in the urban infrastructure that it occurs within. It starts with small plans by numerous and varied groups of activists, artists, and other assorted troublemakers who then multiply into a heterogeneous body of critical mass. Sterling describes the Wende as, “rumor, boosted by electronic and digital media, in a feedback-loop with crowd dynamics and modern mass transportation. A non-linear networking phenomena”.

Revisiting Theory

I've slowly been getting back into critical theory. I've been reading Deleuze & Guattari and I've opened back up some various philosophy and theory reference books as well. Last night while reading John Lechte's excellent 50 Key Contemporary Thinkers I decided to completely throw myself into the pursuit of theory again in the form of a self-taught course on Hegel, Marx and the evolution of Dialectical Materialism. I'll be collecting various notes from different instructors on all the texts and theoriticians I have listed.

If anyone out there wants to join me in this pursuit you are welcome to. It would be nice to have some people to bounce ideas and notes off of. Also, if anyone thinks I should add or subtract any important thinkers or works on the list I have up please do so.

Update

Had another great weekend. Shanna and I went to see Garden State on Saturday, which I found to be quite enjoyable, the cinematography and soundtrack choices are especially nice. The remainder of the weekend was spent doing various chores and errands, several of which were wedding related. Oct. 15th is creeping up on us.

Also, listening to Bjork's Medulla in it's full glory is a revelation. I'm going to post a full review of it this week, but for now I can say it's easily her most powerful work. She's really approaching something big here.

Netflix just got even better

Netflix is opening a distribution center in Baton Rouge. This means that I can get a new dvd two days after I drop a previous one in the mailbox. This means I should be able to receive almost 1 title per business day. That's almost two times the amount that I get now.

Girls

After years of silence Prodigy has a new single out. It's called Girls and the video for it is utterly and amazingly fresh. When I watched it today, I felt a rush similiar to the first time I saw Aphex Twin's Windowlicker video. I love seeing something so totally new that it kind of jolts you awake and forces you to take notice. The hugely talented Graphic Designer Julian House is the director. I wonder if he has any other video work floating around out there.

Life Aquatic

Wes Anderson's latest film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, finally has a trailer released. It looks better than my highest expectations.

A new challenge to the Electoral College

Colorado is sending some very interesting legislation to ballot in November. Proposition 39 calls for Electoral votes to be doled out according to the percentage of the popular vote that each candidate garners. I think this is a great idea. If more states moved to this kind of a model we wouldn’t have some of the campaign and election problems we’ve seen in places like Florida.