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Month of Blog: Learning Points

Here we are, four weeks later and the Month of Blog is complete. What do I have to show for a month of focusing on retro content, even without the daily link to the current networking site(s) of choice?

  • Well, I can optimistically say that my brain thinks less in the framework of “I should post that on Face Book.” Good to know that the billboards of my mind have been cut down by the chainsaws of indy-driven content.
  • I had some moments at the beginning where I was ahead of the daily postings and I had some moments here and there where I missed a day and had to back date a post (this just happened today).
  • I enjoyed taking what interested me and putting it in the context of daily posts rather than Face Book or Flickr’ing the content. There’s liberation in not posting to a feed-driven site, where one can get lost in the chatter. There’s freedom from looking at one’s personal content that is not in the framework of a clean, yet bloated, framework.
  • My brain and social network didn’t implode because of less activity on the corporate social sites.
  • I did have a few instances of not having much to say, but enjoyed posting random content that filled the gaps.
  • I realized that my webstats site is not that user friendly for a moderate blogger. Urchin 6 needs to give me graphs and more dumbed down stats!
  • Photos, thoughts, dreams, lines, stencils, politics, remembrances, music, creations … I hope you enjoyed rattling around my brain for a month straight without distractions from all the other tickers of brain rattlings.

And what about the future?

As I continue to feel ODd on FaceBook, I will continue to go retro and blog. But I doubt I’ll keep up the daily postings. This has been a refreshing exercise in mind and thought liberation.

Thank you for your participation!

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Critical Mass:20 … Welcome to San Francisco!

When I moved to SF in August of 1997, I didn’t know anybody or anything. Looking back, I see myself back then as a soft-skinned rube (which I was) who had landed into an alien land of an edgy, left-leaning city full of kooks, freaks, radicals, burners, and all manner of people from all corners of the globe and economic scale. Boom times were happening back then, and not just for the dot coms and investment banks. Burning Man had just had a wild week in the desert and gained national attention exactly a year before my arrival. Back East, it was a blip on the CNN feeds. (here’s a little video taste of the Cacophony Society’s Burning Man 1996). And only a month prior to my landing in SF, an entity called Critical Mass had been harassed and roughed up by Mayor Willie Brown and the SFPD. (see a video of this event here).

I only knew about Critical Mass from picking up the latest copy of the SF Bay Guardian my first ever Wednesday in the City. They had an intense photo of cyclists getting arrest, their bikes impounded, for no real reason than being in a huge bike ride that defied any type of control. Being a cyclist in the Southeast, which meant that I rarely rode on paved roads for fear of being killed by car drivers who felt that they owned ALL of the pavement, I was instantly inspired by Critical Mass.

So, on the last Friday of August 1997, I hopped a MUNI bus down to Justin Herman Plaza to see what the hell this monthly activity was all about. I didn’t have my bike. I didn’t know anyone who would loan me one, and I couldn’t afford to rent one. So I showed up to find thousands of cyclists, piles of riot cops, media and cop helicopters, and a general sense of fun an celebration. I walked through the mass of riders, waiting to wander off into the city to cause mayhem with the Friday car commute home, with amazement. I’d never seen so many bikers in my life. Continue reading “Critical Mass:20 … Welcome to San Francisco!”

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The Other 4/20: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

While plums of purple haze drift over the City from Golden Gate Park’s Hippie Hill, let us not ever forget the unfortunate disaster that is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The human deaths on this day in 2009 were a tragedy, the aftermath is yet another sad example of our capacity to shit where we eat.

Earthjustice Blog posted a great page with news about the spill.

Dead dolphins keep washing up on shore in unprecedented numbers. Oil-coated coral reefs are dying in the deepwater. Eyeless shrimp and crabs with holes in their shells are showing up in relatively empty fishing nets while killifish, a minnow-like fish at the base of the food chain, show signs of chemical poisoning.

And critics say offshore drilling safety and oversight remains woefully lacking.

Meanwhile, coalitions continue to form and grow against fracking, the Alberta Oil Sands (and the Keystone XL pipeline), arctic drilling. In the past two years, fracking has caused earth quakes, the Keystone pipeline as not approved, yet arctic drilling is about to begin. I cannot imagine an oil spill in the rugged Arctic Ocean.

That would be an even worse disaster than in the Gulf, if that can even be calculated in terms of destruction upon the Earth.

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Why am I an activist? Weeds from the cracks.

I could probably go on and on about why I am an edutainer (a word Jonathan Youtt though up, that aptly fits what we do with the Sustainable Living Roadshow’s Conscious Carnival). It’s something to do. It sometimes pays. It’s an amazing way to be involved in the conversations that matter. Many folks get confused when I tell them what I do, which can also be described as an environmentalist carny activist. Huh?

After working for Ben Cohen’s Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities (in VT, IA, and NH… see the blog posts here) as a carny activist (“spokesperson”), I came back to San Francisco and plugged into Jonathan’s version of eco-themed games. We only had Toss Out Fossil Fuels at first, but then Jon added Recycle Swish, Eco-opolis, the GMO Freak Show, Seeds for Change and then the rest of the Roadshow.

But today, at BART’s Blue Sky Earth Day celebration, I have two clear examples of why I love bringing games with a message to the general public. One would think that San Francisco and the Bay Area is an educated place where we are all lefties that live the liberal dream of hybrid cars, organic food, and biking to work.

Today, while working Eco-opolis (The Model Green City. The city of tomorrow today.) a young woman came up to the game asking about GMO foods. She had NO IDEA what genetically modified foods were. She was shocked to find out that corporations like Monsanto genetically alter all kinds of foods and vegetable products (we do not eat cotton, but it is GMO). She learned that organic means, for the most part, not GMO, and that there is no law to label food as GMO in the USA (though this might change if California gets a proposition on the ballot for November). She learned to ask about where the food comes from and if it is GMO. She learned that local farmers markets are the places to go to talk directly to the farmers about their produce. And I personally learned that what I do with the SLR actually matters for those people who don’t keep up with this.

Secondly, a blue collar worker came up to the Eco-opolis game and started asking me questions about bike lanes. He was dressed as a carpenter, with another guy dressed the same way, wearing canvas overalls, big boots, and a work shirt. This guy lived in Hayward and biked to work every week via the dangerous frontage roads near the Coliseum BART station. He hated the commute but is a committed cyclist. He asked me how he could get bike lanes in Hayward and so we had a great talk about Bike Coalitions, Safe Routes to School, and organizing local cyclists to pool their resources and get the local government to direct funds towards safe cycling routes. I personally learned, once again, that you can never judge a person by their appearance. This is always a sweet lesson to receive again and again.

So why am I an eco-carny? Simple: because of these two people. In a matter of 30 minutes, I made a difference for these two folks. They walked away from my game empowered and more informed. I saw them walk away happy to be where I was and as passionate about what I do. I have a few analogies that I use to tell myself that I am helping shape the future. One analogy is about urban vegetation.

Where there are cracks in concrete and asphalt, weeds and flowers will grow. And, over time, those cracks widen and become more green. This is a simple way of staying optimistic for the future, and for the progress of humanity.

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You are already a member…

Ah… Rev. Ian Stang and his cadre always make me smile.
So blessed to have seen “Bob” here and there in the early 1990s and then found out what it all “meant”.
Doubly blessed to live in SF, where abnormal means normal, and the normals are, well… from Walnut Creek!
Triply blessed to know that all post-web high weirdness and mocking mayhem stems from the  Discordian and Illuminatus! roots of the CoSG and Bishop Joey’s First Church of the Last Laugh. These idiots found inspiration from mid-20th Century nuts, including the Merry Prankster/Situationist/DaDa/Fluxus realms.

BEHOLD…. something to seriously not be serious about, unless you feel the deep need to be serious about something that is possibly not seriously worth being serious about.

…………….

ARE YOU ABNORMAL?

Then you are probably BETTER than most people!

IF you suspect that things are much worse than you ever suspected…
IF the only thing you’ve been able to laugh at for the last 5 years is the fact that NOTHING is funny anymore…
IF you sometimes want to collar people on the street and scream that you’re more different than they could possibly imagine…
IF you can possibly help us with a donation…
IF you see the whole universe as one vast morbid sense of sick humor…
IF the current “Age of Progress” seems more like the Dark Ages to you…
IF you are looking for an inherently contradictory religion that will condone megadegeneracy and yet tell you that you are “above” everyone else…

Then…

THE CHURCH OF THE SUBGENIUS could save your sanity!

Using SubGenius secrets of BULLDADA and MOREALISM you can now MIRACULOUSLY ELIMINATE COMPULSIVE URGES such as smoking, eating, sleeping, working; end baldness, constipation, sex-money problems, assouliness, and painful shortage of SLACK!

Become a Doktor of the Forbidden Sciences… Make religion a kick-ass adventure! Indulge in Self-Help through Raising Hell!

The SubGenius:

Patriot or Alien?
Personal Savior or False Prophet?
Nurd or Hero?
Inspired Madman or Complete Jackass?

Thought you’d tried everything? YOU AIN’T SEEN NOTHIN’ YET! Learn to THINK BIG! Develop the tricks of Length Extension! Bring your weirdest dreams to rampaging LIFE!

Stand erect for you own abnormality. WISE UP! They are out to get you.

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The Facebook IP License

Find all the terms here.

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

This appears to be a straightforward clause that allows FB to show your IP content on their site. They clearly state, prior to this clause, that “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook.” However, the main sentence of this clause is “you specifically give us [Facebook]…. license to use any IP content that you post on… Facebook.”

The obvious reason for posting IP content on FB is to have people share it, tag it, and like it. And the only way out of this license agreement is to delete your IP content. If it has been shared around the FB networks, then those copies need to be deleted too! That seems almost impossible to do if you have years of IP content and get a reasonable amount of shares on it.

FB appears to not include any simple way to notify those who have shared your IP content to please delete it so that this license can be terminated.

Sneaky twists, those FB billionaires.

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Use as Wallpaper

I think one of the best things I like about my iPhone (well, and my old crappy Blackberry) is snapping a pic and then setting it as the background image (screen saver, wallpaper, etc.). With the iPhone camera, which is good for a phone camera, I have started to take more than just stencil photos (I usually use my camera camera for nature shots). I took the recently-posted empty F train car photo specifically to use as wallpaper on the iPhone.

Here are three more photos I took specifically to frame in a smart phone. They are all vertical. I do take horizontal shots of some things to use on my laptop for a desktop image. Please feel free to grab these images and use for backgrounds on your phone. Just drag/drop and put in your phone’s camera roll to tap/select as wallpaper. Remember that they are all protected by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike agreement. You can use them but not make $$ off of them!

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DREAM: An Execution

In a not-too-distant future, Mark and I are slated for execution. In this murky dream world, a techno-totalitarian government rules, so we are not quite sure why we have been taken under custody and slated for death. It could possibly be because we have opted to not embrace the technology of the times.

While locked up, we get a final visit with loved ones. I get a bag of money from my mother, and am not sure what I can do with that in my final days of living. Mark gets drawing supplies. Being presented as enemies of the state, our underground popularity soars. Some of our guards are sympathetic. At one point, we are left unguarded near a community convergence center. All the beautiful people there recognize us and so Mark and I try to figure out a way to escape. Our attempt is short lived, but we are not punished.We end up back in custody with guards who treat us kindly.

The government may not know what to do with us. Right before our execution date, Mark and I have a tearful farewell. We hug and cry and say we love each other. He is traumatized by the looming public death. I see it as my end and beginning, telling Mark “maybe we’ll come back as humans again.” But the deadline passes and the government keeps us alive.

My money proves to be invaluable. Inside the bills are smaller $2 bills, which must be a rare treat for this world. The wrappers turn out to be gift cards for many businesses. Mark and I are separated, so I begin to pass out the favors and gain enough grease to reunite with Mark again. He too has become a poplar artist under demand and so has gained traction as well.

We begin to plot our escape in earnest, especially now that we are celebrated outlaws in these dark, heavy times. The will of the people is on our side and we can only hope that there is a path out of this odd stasis we are in.

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Mu-Ban Discussion with ROBBBB (Beijing)

Last year, Sean Leow took my Street Art tour of San Francisco’s Mission District. He knew a good bit about art in the streets and eventually asked me “do you know about any stencils and graffiti in China?” My answer was no. I believed that it existed and was not that well known due to language barriers (as well as accessing evidence of a sometimes illegal art inside a tightly-controlled country like China). Leow not only knew about street art and graffiti from that part of the planet, he also was part of a group of people who were creating content for the site Neocha Edge, based in Shanghai. He gave me links and jpgs of art from China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. I eventually posted them up in the Asia Archive, and was happy to have two artists, Brother and ROBBBB, get their own artist archives.

Since then, ROBBBB has gotten in touch to say hello from Beijing, pass his personal link along, and give me some more jpgs to post into his archive.

I am happy to know that there are stencil artists getting up in China. When I wrote “Stencil Nation,” I attempted to include parts of Asia in the content. I was fortunate enough to find a few photographers via Flickr who had traveled to Taiwan and Japan and snapped up some stencil photos. Back in 2008, Asia seemed to be a blank spot in the Stencil Archive geography. There were no books, and artists like Logan Hicks were just starting to travel there with stencil art. I knew it had to be there, and, like the rest of the world, street art and graffiti has blossomed in all cracks and corners of the globe. Including Taibei and Beijing.

(Stencil by ROBBBB, Beijing)

During our most recent email exchange, ROBBBB wished that the English-speaking world could find out more about stencils in China. So I asked him some questions and he was glad to answer them. I have cleaned up the grammar of ROBBBB’s answers, but have tried to keep the spirit and intent of his answers intact. I look forward to seeing more mu-ban art and graffiti from China. Keep an eye out for new works by ROBBBB, along with other folks who cut the negative space.

……………………………

Stencil Archive: How do you say “stencil” in your dialect?

ROBBBB: We call stencils “模板”. To pronounce it, it is spelled “mu-ban”.

Stencil Archive: My research shows that cut out art originated in China. Do you have any historical details about cut out art?

ROBBBB: Do you know the “paper-cut for window decoration”?

Stencil Archive: No.

ROBBBB: “On the joyous New Year’s Day, a lot of people in this area stick various kinds of paper-cut – paper-cut for window decoration – in windows so that they can enjoy it. The paper-cut for window decoration not only sets off the joyous festive air; it also brings beautiful enjoyment to people by incorporating decorating, appreciation, and an ease-of-use into an organic whole. The paper-cut is a kind of well popularized folk art, well received by people through the ages. Because it is mostly stuck on the window, people generally call it “the paper-cut for window decoration”. Continue reading “Mu-Ban Discussion with ROBBBB (Beijing)”

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Copyright Yer Sh!t ??

Woe be the artist who doesn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Who would expect to have that song become a YouTube sensation, or that illustration to end on on the cover of a magazine? FaceBook and Google+, etc. may weasel in on your rights too, if you post things on there. After the success, what do you have if you haven’t covered your ass?

And did you co-create a work? Do you have a collaboration agreement with everyone else? If you have a project that becomes successful, © and ownership issues may become messy.

Then again, there is also Creative Commons, which Flickr.com allows for content sharing. I protect my content under ©©. This allows creative re-use, but not to make money from re-use. You can scroll to the bottom of this page and read all about it. Try to make money off of my content, and >:)

A funny video on © your music:

This is not legal advice btw. Need that? Ask a lawyer!

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Dream: The Carriage House

A group of volunteers show up to the community space where I work. Their main project is to tear up an area of grass that is covering the road between the community space and an old, Victorian house. I wonder where DX is, and why he isn’t with these guys who obviously look like his co-workers. They have that rough and ready-to-party, punk DPW appearance. I look around for an iPod to play some music and realize it is out by the area where they are stripping out the grass.

At some point, AG and DH show up. AG has a flying machine made out of a few pieces of wood. He takes us for a spin. I balance in the middle and DH holds on to a vertical piece. When we get back, the grassy area is clean. The Victorian now sits in the middle of the road! I ask one of the gruff guys why they got rid of the park area and they say that it had too many bugs.

With the work done, the volunteers party. The band Chumbawamba shows up, sets up, and starts playing. They go into their infamous hit “Tubthumping” and a female member of the band gets out a propane torch and goes out to light a pile of debris in the parking lot. She also goes to the Victorian and tries to light that on fire. She fails and then hands the torch over for me to make an attempt. I try and nothing alights.

Walking inside the building, I begin to wonder who lives there. I do not recall anyone that does. I am thinking about how to get the title to this building when a woman in a badge and uniform walks in. She’s here to look at the property and ask about the opening of the street. I hide the torch and then see a SF Sheriffs patrol car speed into the community center’s parking lot. Relieved that the building isn’t burning, I walk through the space with the officer.