infobong.com

known as a mook

My subscription to ReadyMade is about to lapse, and despite receiving renewal notices for the past three months, I don't think I will re-up my subscription. The magazine has gotten rote with the same kinds of projects issue after shopping and an editorial direction I don't like - too much shopping, not enough DIY ethos. I used to fantasize about being the Slacker Martha Stewart, putting out a book like Punk Planet's DIY files, only funnier, so I find the toothlessness of ReadyMade particularly disappointing.

Today, I learned of Make, computer publisher O"Reilly's foray into the DIY market. Its edited by Mark Frauenfelder, whose 'zine bOINGbOING left a huge impression on me in high school, so I'm looking forward to seeing this project come out next year.

invisibility is so painfully obvious

It's pretty amazing that bloggers were invited to cover the Democratic National Convention, but its perhaps unsurprising that the convention hasn't started yet, and its already ignited a "blogblogbloggyblog" moment.

architecture and image communicating

Lately, I've been looking for information on making stencils, and Google wasn't much help. However, I came across this thread, which led me to StencilRevolution, which offers stencil tutorials, as well as galleries of stencil art submitted by participants.

system with nostrils

I'm not sure this is an experience shared by all UT folks, but my classmates and I often get a kick out of discussing how the Longhorn logo resembles a diagram of a uterus. I suggested that the logo should be called "Bevovaries." Someone pointed out that the logo omits the ovaries, so the name isn't al that apt. I think that's a valid criticism. Regardless, I still laugh when I seem some guy being all macho in an oversized truck with a burnt orange uterus slapped on the back.

Apparently, if you're a Dodge owner, your vehicle comes standard with a uterus symbol, requiring no other aftermarket parts to bring out your truck's feminine side.

practicing perversity

I took some strange classes as an undergrad. I think I graduated in English and Film Studies because I made an effort to take the strangest classes I could find, and the English and Film programs offered classes like "Rhetoric, Orality, and Video" and "Pulp Fiction: Oneiric and Non-Oneiric Narratives." But the strangest class I took was titled "Attraction and Repulsion in Anglo-American Culture," but I referred to it as the "filth" class, since it was basically an overview of what you might call "scat studies." We read a lot of the obvious theorists in the field like Kristeva and Battaille and some not-so-obvious theorists as well. Our literary readings included The Madness of King George and Todd Haynes' Safe.

My classes at UT don't seem quite as strange. Yeah, I TAed a class on transgender studies this spring, and I wrote a term paper about hacking the i-Opener, what weirdness there is doesn't excite me anymore. Its like my life has become predictably weird. I wondered if that "Attraction and Repulsion" really wasn't that weird - I was just a young, impressionable math major struck by the prospect of studying continental theory, so I decided to sneak a peek at Professor Barney's CV. He's since moved to SUNY-Albany, but he seems to be up to his weird ways, presenting papers like, "The Anal Eye of Ecstasy: Scatology, Fantastical Bodies, and Sublime Theory in Enlightenment England." Yeah, I don't think time has given my memory of that class a little extra flavor.

I often think about emailing my old professors from undergrad and pick their brains for a moment. I'd email Professor Welch about her piece on Into the Blogosphere, or ask Professor Barney if he's heard !!!'s "Shit, Scheiße, Merde."

telling people to shut

I saw this post and decided to create a new category for this blog, "blogblogbloggyblog." The post is a reprint of another post which quotes the entirety of a third post and points to two more posts on the same topic, a movie that remixes TV footage in order to critique a network that was the result of right-wing critiques of the mainstream media. I didn't think of my "meta-media" category was strong enough for this kind of data bricolage. I've been aware of blogs for a while and have blogged myself for three, but I suddenly ask myself, who are these people who spend their free time recyling information and why do they do it?

technology as an after-burner

The New York Times has a story on Landmark Theaters' plans to install high-definition projectors into each of its 57 theaters. Landmark, which owns the Dobie Theater in Austin also plans to produce low-budget digital feature to play on the new digital screens. Yet, according to the story, some indie purists are skeptical of Landmark's intentions.

<lil jon voice>What?</lil jon voice> The article doesn't mention that producing a movie on film is more expensive by orders of magnitude than producing a movie on HD video. By offering digital projectors in its theaters filmmakers who shoot and edit on DV will be spared the cost of making a 35mm transfer, so it will be less expensive for DV filmmakers to reach commerical exhibition and decrease the amount of time it takes to get a movie to the theater. With digital projection, a poor MFA student could bring a timely documentary to the Dobie just in time for election day, rather than waiting for a 35mm print.

knows me anymore

Dude, I love the Meat Puppets. On a business trip, I picked up Meat Puppets II at Amoeba in Berkeley, and, listening to it now, I'm reminiscing about tooling around Silicon Valley in a rental car with that CD blaring over the tinny stereo.

magic roundabout

If there were cargo cults among the Pennsylvania Dutch, they would produce artifacts like these.

hyper-technologized culture obsolescence

Mediageek has an interesting post that asks Are CD Players Obsolete?" Although I was only looking for a CD player for my home stereo, i ran into similar problems. Its next to impossible to find inexpensive component CD players these days. Target and the electronics retailers are crawling with super-cheap DVD decks that will play CD, but the only CD players they seem to offer are portable units. Since I don't own a TV, I was a little wary of buying a DVD player for CDs, since many of them depend on on-screen menus for navigation. I looked around on the Internet for CD players, and the few new players that are out there are gear for the kind of folks that have tube-based amplifiers, which is certainly not me. I toyed with the idea of buying one from the thrift store, but all of the units were old and beat up. I eventually bought a Technics SL-PD8 on Half.com for $40, shipping included. Except that its hideously huge - no component should be wider than a turntable - I'm really happy with my new toy and even happier about not having to use my computer as a CD player.

unheimlich maneuver

As many readers know, I'm fond of my hometown of Tulsa, and I study television, among other things, in graduate school, so I was amped when I saw a link to Tulsa TV Memories posted on bOINGbOING. The site unfortunately doesn't provide any streaming video of old Tulsa TV, but it provides screenshots and synopses of locally-produced programming largely from the 1960s and 70s. I'm particularly fond of the Tulsa Counterculture page, which alleges that stodgy NPR outlet KWGS once aired a show called "Subterranean Underground" hosted by a jock called "The Foxy Lady." And, of course, the site devotes a lot of space to the late-night comedy show hosted by the mysterious Mazeppa. Growing up, I often heard my parents and teachers reminisce about Mazeppa and his all-expenses-paid vacations to Turley, but I've never seen the show myself. I've lusted for these Mazeppa tapes for years, but I have a hard time laying out that much cash for a show I've never seen.

emotional stake in our products

The Bakersfield Californian has started an interesting project. Its spinoff The Northwest Voice is a neighborhood paper with a newshole filled entirely by readers and residents. All of the stories and photos submitted are posted to the paper's Web site after a cursory editorial review, and the pick of the crop are published in the twice-weekly paper edition. The Californian hopes that the project will increase community involvement and interest in the main newspaper. I know nothing about Bakersfield geography, but I suspect Northwest Bakersfield is an affluent part of the city, if there are sufficient numbers of digital cameras and competent writers to produce a paper edition twice a week. Perhaps the paper is trying to increase readership in a wealthy part of town by publishing their kids' Odyssey of the Mind results and girl scout cookie sales.

In addition, the paper gets free content and more places to sell ads. When I read the quote, "The open source model offers us a new way to connect with readers, to better understand their worries and joys, and to enable them to share some of themselves with the world," I wondered if "open source' suddenly meant "Free Labor." Mary Lou Fulton, the exec quoted in the story has launched a site, opensourcejournalism.org to explain her philosophy.

Of course I'm being critical, a project like this has the potential to bring community-specific issues to the forefront and give ordinary people the ability to have the experience of creating media without the worries of covering production costs, but I wonder how white-bread the news is. If The Californian operated a similar project in South Austin, would it allow Save Our Springs activists to publish stories about battles over Wal-Marts? If the paper chooses not to publish stories on controversial issues, I wonder how beneficial the project is to the community.

beeps bleeps phases

Oh rad, Pitchfork reports Warp Records will release a DVD set of videos by Warp artists September 21. The DVDs will contain 30 videos from Warp's 15 year history. I generally don't see the point in buying DVDs, except if they're super-cheap or they're full of music videos. My friend Regina got me the Matador Records 10th Anniversary DVD for my birthday a few years back, and I think its a great buy. I can put it on for some eye candy without feeling commited to watching the whole thing.

simultaneous appearance of art

I've always been fascinated by comix; superhero and fantasy comics always seemed cheesy to me. Even as a kid, I preferred Judge Dredd and Too Much Coffee Man to the X-Men or whatever the big studios were pushing. In high school, my pal Alex lent me his copies of Maus I and II which opened my mind to the discursive possibilities of comix. Lately, my interest in comix has been renewed: I've wanted to flesh out my collection of Black Hole comix, last week I read Guy Lawley's "I Like Hate and Hate Everything Else: The Influence of Punk in Comics" in Punk Rock So What: The Cultural Legacy of Punk, and now the cover feature of today's New York Times Magazine dicsusses the state of the graphic novel comix. Gosh, I may have to head over to Austin Books this afternoon...

outside slaps them up

The New York Times has a story about what it terms "street art," the illicit application of wheatpaste posters and painted murals in public spaces. The story mention " a curatorial Web site for street art around the world," The Wooster Collective. I tracked it down after reading the story, and I'm like, "Oh Yeah!" All my synapses are firing at once looking at the images of physical urban space used in meaning-making. And they even have an RSS feed!

BTW, I really dig this picture, which I ran across a few weeks back when I was working at a 3D animation camp. I had it up on screen of a computer near the door. A young student walked in, and shouted, "Ew!" like it scared him or something. I went back and looked at the pictures on the Wooster Collective, and I think part of the reasons the images seem so arresting is that many of the shots are pretty contrasty and don't have a lot of depth-of-field (well, they're taking pictures of walls, duh). Combined with the two layers of the image, the street art and its context, the viewer has a lot of information to process in order to make sense of it.

playbook and angle

Always providing timely advice for the ruling class, Forbes is running a feature that many exec can surely use, "The Best Place to Go to Prison." If I wasn't so opposed to the use of prison labor in the private sector, I'd suggest Lay and his pals stock Wal-Marts on the graveyard shift or perhaps man a register at a West Philly Burger King.

better red than thread

I think I'm wayyy behind the curve on this one, but Threadless T-Shirts is a cool concept. Users can submit t-shirt designs to the emerging online community, where other users rate designs and give feedback. I can't tell if designers get a cut of the revenue, which would make the difference between this being a cool company and an exploitative project. However, I do know that I'm, ahem, too old to wear most of the shirts - they reflect that meaningless irony that grates people my age - but this shirt is OK by me.

biting my nails

Perhaps Jared will be the only one that appreciates this, but, good gravy, I just found a .torrent of Renegade Soundwave's 1989 album, Soundclash. KTOW, the indie/alternative station in Tulsa when we were kids, used to play "biting my nails" so much I still get it stuck in my head from time to time. I can't wait for the download to complete.

side-effects of the cocaine

I've got a fat stack of wax sitting out, and in an effort to duplicate the runaway success of "The CDs on My Desk Right Now," I've created another Listmainia! List, "The LPs Atop My Crates Right Now." This list gives readers a snapshot of my musical diet by enumerating the LPs sitting atop my crates at this very moment. I mostly buy used music, so, yes, my taste is about twenty years out of date.