infobong.com

My end-of-semester load isn't so interesting right now, so I've been goofing off with Flash.

This graffito above the Wheatsville Co-op parking lot pretty much sums up my feelings about the election.

I've been fooling around with the scanner and filters, and this came out.

i like this image

As a follow-up to an earlier post detailing the weirdness of Wild, Wild West Philly, I dug up some old digital camera pictures of Sam's Place, the grungy corner store-slash-deli I used to call "anarchy coffeeshop."

Ruth cheerfully slaps some cream cheese on my bagel.


Ruth took this picture of one the resident cats climbing out of the sink.


45th and Pine from the deck outside Sam's Place.

At today's march, a man was hauling this wagon full of books and signs protesting Bush's lack of attention to domestic issues, particularly education. He was collecting books for the Inside Books project, so it was both street theater and direct action at the same time.

We congregated at the Lyndon Baines Johnson library on the UT-Austin campus, then marched up Red River Street to the federal building in downtown Austin. This young man was distributing bagels from his modded bike as part of the Food Not Bombs project.

I asked him if it was difficult to maneuver. He said he got used to riding it quickly, but you can't ride very fast because its hard to stop with its coaster brakes.

marching up Red River

The march took us past the track and soccer field, where the Texas Relays were taking place. Many of the spectators, particularly African-Americans showed their support as the march went past. These young women were particularly excited, hollering their support and dancing to the drummers.

When we got to the federal building, the drummers set up shop under a structure hanging over the street. The noise was darn near deafening.

The news media was in attendance this afternoon, and I took a couple of shots of them in action.

I have not altered this image in any way: I plopped the bag in the scanner, scanned, and cropped. Each time I've passed the Golden Stream display at H-E-B, I've done a doubletake, then thought to a grab bag of the questionably branded hippie treats to post on the blog, and, tonight, I finally did it. At first I thought, it might be an example of Engrish, poorly-used English from Asian companies, but the bag says Golden Stream is based in Fisher, Indiana, so that theory is out the door.

Prentiss has some amusing images of bumper stickers he has detourned. I've seen the cut-up Waterloo Records stickers a few times around town, and the late, lamented Sound Exchange had an R-Rated Titty Bingo remix on their counter, but he's opened up a whole new world of bumper sticker mutilation to me.

I've been using my spring break to do some artwork. I wish I found more time to be creative or whatever.

When I left Philly, I was trying to make my colors super-smooth, like on this one. On the ones from the weekend, I wondered if making it uneven would get me some depth.

I finished two other pieces, but they were too ugly to put online. Then again, we live in ugly times.

Thanks to the magic of 1-hour processing and Studio 4B's slide scanner, I've managed to upload images of Austin's ice storm while there's ice on the ground.

Frozen berries near the Sacred Cup coffeeshop.

Corporate coffee under ice.

"Yeah man, we've got the couch out on the front yard, so you should come out to the East side and chill on the snofa!"

Perhaps you can't tell from this shot, but traffic on I-35 was at a standstill after the storm.

Today I joined concerned citizens around the world and took whatever action I can to stop the impending war with Iraq. Some friends and I joined a demonstration at the Texas Capitol to take a principled stand against the war. Below are some pictures from the protest.

Some activists made a maypole in the shape of a missile and danced around the phallic, pagan plaything.
I'm not sure if I was more surprised to see the president on the South lawn of the Capitol or to see flames erupting from his crotch.

My classmate Jean shot video of the action as well, but I haven't had a chance to look through the footage. If there's interesting stuff, I'll compress it, and post it here.

I took this picture from the steps of the Capitol, to try and give you lovely readers of how many people were there. I'm not sure if I have a sense of how many people were there. This Austin American-Statesman story suggests there were between 8,000 and 10,000 participants today.

After the rally, we marched down Congress Ave, to the other side of Town Lake. Congress is a major thoroughfare through downtown Austin, and we held up quite a bit of traffic. As we neared the Congress bridge, my cohorts and I looked back, and realizing there were marchers stretched back to the Capitol.

Check out the ACME Heart Maker, an old school Weblication I found via Reverse Cowgirl.

At 11:30 this morning, my classmates and I walked out of class to protest the looming war with Iraq. A demonstration was held on the Austin campus, and a larger demonstration is planned at the Texas capitol 1pm Saturday.

After leaving class, we congregated on UT-Austin's East Mall to begin the march.


The march was split into two groups. My group went West on 24th Street; turned north on Guadalupe, holding up traffic on the Drag; and finally marched up the West Mall to the tower. A rally was held on the steps of the tower on the South Mall.

There was a veritable buttload of people there. According to The Austin American-Statesman, UT said there were 2,000 demonstrators today, but it sure seemed like more than that.

Here's the best image out of the last roll I had developed. Its from November's Buy Nothing Day celebration I documented earlier, but on a second roll of film. Austin's Inside Books project collects and distributes books to prisoners in the Texas correctional system, and these are books waiting to be mailed to prisoners.

At the event, Inside Books has a notebook filled with letters and art from recipients of books. You could tell the project was very meaningful to the prisoners, just by looking at the amount of effort they put in their drawings. (OK, I'm sure prisoners have an overabundance of free time, but still.) Some of the letter brought a tear to my eye as I learned how important reading was for these people. One of the most memorable letters was from a man who said he had a problem with masturbating on women guards and reading gave him something better to do!
Growing up, my Catholic parish also collected books for prisoners, so I thought it a little amusing that the Church and anarchists have similar social justice projects. The organizers in Austin said they have no shortage of books to send prisoners, but it costs $2 a pop to send a book to a prisoner. I wondered if church book drives distributed books through the priests and nuns that serve the prisons. A lot of the letters I read that day requested books about Black nationalism, labor issues, and the like, so I'll bet the Catholics don't cater to those interests.

Here is the "scanner abuse" remix of that image:

Anti-war activists held demonstrations around the country yesterday. While the big ones were in DC and San Fran, Loophole said he was participating in an action in Tulsa. Hopefully, he'll give us a recap. I did my homework, checking protest.net and the Austin IMC, but it doesn't appear there was an action here this weekend. I'm not sure what I think about protest.net; as an online application, I find it a useful source of information, but there are other, arguably more important, aspects to activism than just protesting. Anyway, here's an interesting story from the Washington Post about how activists are using the Internet as a means to organize - something I've experienced firsthand without much thought, but is apparently newsworthy to the mainstream media.
So, since I didn't see any actions planned in Austin, I decided to participate by scanning some pictures I took at a march I participated in back in October.

I don't have a lot of experience taking pictures in crowds, and these shots certainly reflect by lack of ability.
Here are marchers lining up at a park in downtown Austin.

I don't know what these big puppet-sculpture-thingies are called, but I found this pretty amusing. Death sits on the president's back, leading him with a quart of oil.

We marched up Congress Ave. You can see the Texas Capitol in the background. Some cars going in the opposite direction honked as a sign of support. We passed a hotel where corporate muckety-mucks jeered us from the bar's balcony as we went by.

These RTF students dressed in black for the occasion.

I'm not sure what message this guy is trying to communicate, but I don't think I agree with him.

The march ended in front of the federal building where there were drummers and people shouting stuff in bullhorns. Afsheen is holding one of the signs organizers handed out.

I lost my wallet some time ago, and I finally decided to upgrade from the green rubber band I was using to a bona fide wallet. I decided to follow these instructions and fashion one out of duct tape. I was a little skeptical of how durable a duct-tape wallet would be, but as I was making it, I realized that duct-tape is basically adhesive cloth covered in plastic (duh), so this wallet could potentially outlive me. The results are homespun, but have a certain punk appeal.

interior

exterior

I don't have have anything against the fine folks at BookPeople; the sticker was longer than the wallet, and one of the logos needed to be redacted. I picked BookPeople, since I got the sticker at Waterloo Records. I highly recommend this project to anyone, but readers who want the anarchist-chic of a duct-tape wallet without the extra effort can buy one from Beckybot for $20. I'm sure Becky's duct-tape skillz far outstrip mine.

As I promised earlier, here is the recap from last Christmas' Tofurky extravaganza. Everyone had a blast, enjoying the succulent flavor of a turkey made of tofu and gluten There are nine images below, each between 10 and 20KB, so it might take a while for people on dial-up to download, but that's no reason not to read on.

After I bought my plane ticket to Tulsa in Novemeber, I remembered that I needed to order Tofurky in advance, so I called Akin's from my office in the Philadelphia suburbs. The people at Akins thought it was a little strange someone would order a Tofurky from Philadelphia, but they were happy to fill my request.

When I arrived in Tulsa, all I could think about was Tofurky and how this would be the best Christmas ever, but it was late at night, and Akin's was closed, so I couldn't pick up my bird. I went to Akin's first thing the next morning. At the store, Justin pulled my Tofurky out of the walk-in. He seemed excited about Tofurky, too.

Torfurky was kind of expensive, around thirty bucks. I later learned that the Wild Oats chain (which Cate jokingly calls "White Folks") keeps Tofurkys in stock around the holidays and sells them for less. Darlene, a college-age clerk, checked me out. Justin said, "Darlene would look a whole lot better on your Web site than I would." I wholeheartedly agreed, but she wouldn't let me take her picture, so, alas, Darlene does not appear on the m4dbl0g.

Tofurky needs to thaw overnight before it is cooked, so it sat on the countertop for several hours taunting me and my family with its 100% vegan goodness.

Preparing Tofurky is a fairly involved process. The box includes the Tofurky roast, vegan giblet gravy, drumsticks made of tempeh, and a delicious "wishbone" made of Tofurky Jerky. In addtion, the roast needs to be basted with a mixture of soy sauce and orange juice.

After basting, you swaddle the Tofurky roast in a protective wrap of aluminum foil. This keeps the roast moist.

Here is Tofurky happily roasting in the oven, next to Mom's pumpkin pie. It seemed to take forever. My Mom yelled at me to shut up several times as I sang extemporaneous songs about Tofurky.

When Tofurky was fully cooked, I arranged its constiuent parts on a plate and garnished it with some kale and baby carrots. My mom told me to drink some champagne in the hope it would get me to shut up.

Tofurky had a place of honor at the McConnell family dining table that Christmas. Everything looked delicious, well, except for the stuff that had dead animals in it. Mmm... Tofurky.

Everyone said Tofurky was delicious, especially the tempeh drumsticks, but, for whatever reason, there were plenty of leftovers. That just meant more Tofurky for me!

All in all, Tofurky was an unqualified success. I think my Dad was a little jealous of Tofurky, since he keeps asking me, "You're not bringing one of those damn tofu turkeys again this year, are you?"

I took this picture back in August. I didn't think too much of it when I got the roll back, but I like it a lot now, so I'm posting it here. I still need to work on my scanning skills.Update (12/21): I fiddled with the scanner until I got the colors closer to the way they look in the print. Go me!

And here's a little pastiche that I made when I was in Philly, so its not new or anything, but I'm posting it now.

I finally got my film back from Austin's Buy Nothing Day festivities, so I'm posting my recap for you here. For readers unfamiliar with BND, its a yearly action held the day after Thanksgiving where participants buy nothing, in order to call attention to the West's consumer culture. As you will soon see, I badly need to hone my scanning skillz, but I think you will be able to make out some detail in the images.

Last Friday, I attended a Buy Nothing Day gathering at East Austin's Plaza Saltillo, which featured live music, food, and other free activities.

For context, here's a shot of downtown Austin from Plaza Saltillo. East Austin has traditionally been the hub for a variety of minority communities in Austin. Many of the people in East Austin are very poor. I-35 separates East Austin from the rest of the city, so the boundaries for the community are distinct.

As a statement against the consumer culture an all-free swap meet was held; people brought garage sale-type items and left them in an area for others to take what they wanted or needed. I scored a brand-new bicycle lock still in the cellophane.

This guy scored a fur coat, and he sure did look sharp. He also had a wild bicycle that had an extended fork. Atop the fork was a piece of a shopping cart, allowing him to use his bike for transporting a large number of items at once.

This might have been iZac's favorite part of the Buy Nothing Day Activities. A number of local restaurants, including the Magnolia Cafe and the Sacred Cup coffeeshop donated vegetarian free food, since, well, we weren't supposed to buy anything, but we needed to eat. Magnolia's rice was awesome, and a number of people said Sacred Cup's vegan chili was yummy, but it was gone before I got there. Sacred Cup is a few blocks from my pad, so I'll go there and try it some time.

This is Eileen. She's part of Austin's Yellow Bike Project, which takes donated bikes, paints them yellow, and releases them for the community to use for free. Each of the bikes were named, and carried a disclaimer removing the project from any liability.

The Yellow Bike project released about 50 yellow bikes that day at the plaza, and kids of all ages were taking the bikes for a spin. After some initial reluctance, I hopped on a cruiser, and pedaled around the plaza as bands played on stage. There ain't nothin' better than listenin' to some country music while ridin' around on a yeller bike; I wished I went to more shows where you could ride around on bikes instead of imbibe beer and inhale secondhand smoke.

After all the bands played, some college-age kids (with nice cars) put on a puppet show mocking the machinations of market economics. Books Behind Bars, an organization that distributes paperback books to prisoners also had a booth at the party. I had a great time at Buy Nothing Day; I think part of the reason it was a success is because it was a celebration of activists projects around Austin, rather than an event that antagonizes mainstream culture. The vibe was very positive and fun.

I finally added two pictures to The Mirror Project that I've been meaning to get up. One is from a coffeeshop in Tulsa, and the other is from Jimmy Houston's van. Here's an old one I took in Philly.