Baron 357 RIP

Baron 357 passed away April 23, 2007 after a long fight with ALS. He will be greatly missed, even as his legacy lives on. A documentary short film about him is in the works. See the link above for details.

14 days to save Internet radio -- Raise hell or lose it

Problem in a nutshell: Internet radio is mostly done by people like you and me, with very limited $$ and a love for music. These DJs provide most of the public musical diversity now that big corporations own most of the analog radio stations. The music industry, now famous for shooting itself in the foot, wants to raise the fees on internet radio, which will put many, if not most of them, out of business immediately. Fees are retroactive. The day the music could die is May 15 because that's the day of the vote on H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act, which was introduced by Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL ) to save the Internet radio industry.

What to do: call and write your congresscritters and tell them to support this bill.

If you are a musician, it is even more important for you to write now, if you want to save this outlet for your own business and creative interests, because both sides of the issue argue they are doing this for you.

A summary of the problem is at the link above, and there are links near the bottom of that page for writing and calling info. Here's the main site, to send your letter from:

savenetradio.org

Run for US President on MySpace

[This should be interesting. This whole 2008 election could be won or lost on YouTube and MySpace anyway, but this show might allow the real issues to be discussed and force them to be addressed across the board - if FOX doesn't manipulate the results. - Susan]

"In INDEPENDENT, the winner will receive an award of one million dollars that they cannot keep. What they do with that million dollars is subject to a list of options, all political in nature, but the choice the winner makes will be greatly influenced by the MySpace community and the viewers of the network television show.

"Will the winner choose to donate the money to a political action group (e.g. global warming or education reform)? Will they provide the initial donation to form a third political party that better represents the voices of young Americans? Will they make their own run for the White House in 2008? All of these decisions will be shaped by viewers who watch the show, and influence our winner.

"With the access that MySpace's powerful social networking tools allow, the candidates will have deep real-time access to their viewers/constituents in a manner that is unprecedented in reality programming.

"All candidates interested in running as INDEPENDENT will submit themselves via MySpace Video. Once the candidates are chosen, each will create MySpace Impact profiles to serve as their campaign platform."

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

1 Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

2 Create a gulag

3 Develop a thug caste

4 Set up an internal surveillance system

5 Harass citizens' groups

6 Engage in arbitrary detention and release

7 Target key individuals

8 Control the press

9 Dissent equals treason

10 Suspend the rule of law

Berlin wall section secretly removed over Easter weekend

We can hope the officials are telling the truth and that it's being restored and preserved, but the secrecy is suspicious. The Berlin wall is important world history and important graffiti history. Even if it can't remain in Berlin for some reason, it needs to be preserved as possible.

Delta INC Interview 2006

Delta - Interview
Uploaded by on-point

Thanks to Shok1 for the tip.

Delta's work is amazing. Here's a photo of a fine Delta piece I found in Rotterdam in 1995.

Idiots eradicate another Banksy in London

Graffiti removal is even more expensive when masterpieces that draw international tourists are wiped away. Smart money would have replaced the surface and taken the artwork to auction. The cleaning people wouldn't have had to work again if they'd preserved it instead.

Ket busted in Ecko-Vallone free speech struggle, NYC

Will the rule of law triumph over the rule of the mayor?

This reminds me of Rudy G's vendetta against Espo after the effigy and elephant dung episode.

There will be benefit activities for Ket's legal defense fund, to be announced.

3 other guys are facing 43 counts for painting tunnel walls in New York. The city claims an unlikely $10,000 in damages, and for that they want 7 years of these young men's lives. Sounds like they need a good lawyer too.

Slick's site is up for a Webby Award

You can vote for it at the People's Choice.

Slick's is in the "personal sites" category and it's called "This is Slick's dot com".

A minimal registration is required (you give them an email address and they mail you a link to click) to prevent frequent re-voting.

Australian Pratt vandalizes mural, refuses to pay for it

Here's another story that points out how this zealous, self-aggrandizing defacement of a graffiti art commissioned mural was actually vandalism. And of course, vandalism is NOT ABOUT WHO DOES IT, right? Rich white guys? Government grandstanders?

If the graffiti argument is *really* about legal placement vs illegal defacement, this guy should be charged -- just like he so badly wants to charge the people he doesn't like for doing the same thing.

Think, people, think.

"The original picture allegedly removed by Mr Pratt who is the Deputy Speaker of the ACT Assembly was painted by a local graffiti artist affectionately known as "Dan the man" and featured a man playing disc or frisbee golf.

"They want me to replace it, I'm not going to," Mr Pratt said. Disc ACT secretary Greg Sparksman said the club was extremely annoyed by Mr Pratt's actions and his unwillingness to apologise.

"We believed he vandalised our legal artwork of disc golf," Mr Sparksman said.

"He didn't apologise we have asked for $3000 and an apology and he's not prepared to do it."

Writers demonstrated, calling for him to be punished alike.

Odeith's "anamorphic" style

Odeith, in Portugal, is working on a new kind of 3D that creates optical illusions. Some of his pieces look like they are protruding from the wall, while others ignore the wall surface in order to create a new picture plane, as shown in this video.

RIP Ayer by Revok, time lapse

The first of many such delights promised by The Seventh Letter and Known Gallery.

(That's Persue's Bunnykitty character being painted over in case you're curious.)

Make Internet TV

Useful tutorial on do it yourself internet video equipment and processes.

via BoingBoing.net

Massacre Monkeys

There's something deeply wrong when each tragedy competes with every other to be the most, the worst. Everyone seems to want to be on any top 10 list, to get on TV. News helicopters circle like vultures. Disasterporn and competition for the prizes no one should want are sick monkey habits we need to break.

Speaking of sick monkey doings ... killing people you don't even know is so lame. And how dumb is it to kill people we love? The whole notion of killing a woman so nobody else can have her is offensive. Is she your stolen property? Your escaping slave? Please. If a relationship isn't working, walk away. Life is too short to fight about it. If you feel the need to confine or spy on your partner, the relationship is already over. Trade up. Each breakup is an opportunity to have a better relationship next time. Captivity is a cage for two.

Also, let's stop treating fear and anxiety as diseases we should take drugs for. Life is scary. Be brave. Offer aid and comfort to others. Expressing emotions with weapons, spewing hate, and surrounding ourselves with nice safe police states and pain killers are all symptoms of unbridled fear and lack of self-control.

Today's murdering coward at Virginia Tech, although responsible for his own idiotic decisions, is also a symptom of our collective sick monkey condition. It takes a better kind of human to face life with open hands, mind, and heart.

Every single death is someone's heartbreak. I grieve with and for us all today.

Color Guide

Compilation of color knowledge, tools, and resources that every designer needs.

-via digg

Kitchen Diaries

Criticize Bush or go to a peace rally and get on do-not-fly list!

This is so wrong, so illegal, so appalling, words fail me. The effective response to this type of abuse of power is for everyone to do these things and thus render the list useless. (Clearly the list is already useless, but you know what I mean.)

Haze: Mad Skills 2

Installment 2 goes to Push from Los Angeles, a genius of invention. Shown is some recent sculpture, but it's only the tip of Push's iceberg of fascinating work.

Haze: Mad Skills 1

Haze has a blog! He's doing a series called Mad Skills. #1 features Shoe, one of the true style kings of Europe, from Amsterdam.

Thanks to Jon Creech for the heads up.

Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

A member of my artificial extended family and the author of the world-view altering books:

Cat's Cradle
Sirens of Titan
Breakfast of Champions
Slaughterhouse-Five

has left us. His point of view will always remain, though, to remind us what kind of species we might have been, had we put a bit more thought into it.

The NY Times said: "His last book, in 2005, was a collection of biographical essays, "A Man Without a Country." It, too, was a best seller.

In concludes with a poem written by Mr. Vonnegut called "Requiem," which has these closing lines:"

" 'When the last living thing

has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be

if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up

perhaps

from the floor

of the Grand Canyon,

"It is done."

People did not like it here. ' "



... and so it goes.

San Francisco graffiti art classes

School with Warn and Cast

Naturally 7 rocks the paris metro

Concert sauvage dans le métro !
Uploaded by lapapsprod

This is wonderful in so many ways. Check out how many people are recording it. Now imagine how many people will see/hear it. And it's an awesome performance of course. Is that the sound of MTV rolling in its grave?

Thanks to Keenyu for the link!

Graffiti-printing bike misplaced by NYPD, rider arrested to prevent protest

It turns out that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, you can get arrested *before* you participate in a political protest. I feel safer already!

His bike's worth a look too. He converted it to use spray paint chalk to make dot-matrix lettering on the pavement.

The bike and the arrest are old news, but the extent to which the gov will go to prevent protesting is a story the media seems ready to start telling, finally. Too bad we can't seem to get a better gov instead, one we don't need to protest against all the time.

Until then, though, it's important to keep legal protests legal no matter where you live, because it's the governments you can't protest against that do the most damage. You'd think a unionized police force would already know that.

Vulcan at Google