Obsolete Magazine

Book Review: East of Bowery

2012-01-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

Issue #5 of OBSOLETE! was so jam-packed that we had to leave out the reviews page this time- I'll be periodically posting those reviews here. Please consider scoring a hard copy of the new issue- it's our biggest yet...

East of Bowery
Text by Drew Hubner, photos by Ted Barron

“ In those days, New York City was absolutely lousy with people who had come to the big city to become writers.”

So begins “No Rio”, the fourth chapter of East of Bowery, by Drew Hubner at Ted Barron. Hubner and Barron tell the story, through short vignettes and photographs, of the late 80's Lo-Ea-sider everyman- a dope-shooting writer who moves from bar to squat to dope spot to poetry reading to NA meeting, on the black and white streets familiar to anyone lucky enough to have experienced those twilight days of New York downtown greatness. It's all in there- Save the Robots, The Circle bar, The “Hat”, Sophie's, the Gas Station, The International, the Zoo Bar. PS 122, ABC No Rio, Max Fish, Angelica's, The Parkside, Blue and Gold, Mona's.... The Tompkins Square riot, Clayton Paterson, Adam Purple...

The project began as a web collaborative between writer Hubner and photographer Barron, and has now been published in book form by Sensitive Skin (which has itself grown from 80's East Village zine to webzine and now publishing house).

Hubner's writing is visually rich and his storytelling tight. “The imagery of physical things will carry whatever sort of lies you can think up”, his protagonist states at one point, and it works for Hubner in this case- in his bio he claims that the stories are total fiction, but they read as utterly believable memoirs. The voice of the time and the place is present, but despite the junkie theme, he's not “doing” Jim Carol. He has the perspective of someone looking back, without glorification. He tells the story of one of those who came from the outside, (in this case Raleigh) rode high in the pre-hipster days, and then crashed hard into the wall of addiction.

Barron's photos are wonderful artifacts of the time- images of the Lower East Side that is no more. They are beautifully composed, but they stop time so effectively that the have the feel of a tourists snapshots. Instead of the Empire State Building or Times Square, they are of the intersection across from the Gem Spa, children with a toy gun next to a Dinkins era police cruiser, a cat on a shooting gallery rooftop. If I have any complaint about this book, it is that I would have like to see more of Barron's photos, and in a larger format. Luckily, there are more available on their blog, http://eastofbowery.blogspot.com/.

Hubner and Barron have done a great job of capturing a moment in time- those last days before Giuliani changed New York forever, when art lived with the poor, not in the sanitized world of internet marketing. Before digital media brought everything to everyone, when mutant culture still eddied in artistic backwaters, high, nodding, un-tweeted.

OBSOLETE! #5 goes to Press

2012-01-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

At long last! Issue #5 is going to press. Click the links below to preview the cover, table of contents and introduction.

This issue is our biggest yet, with more essays, fiction, poetry and artwork than ever before. It includes work by Bob Pfeifer, Spike Vrusho, Diana “The Doc” Thomas, City of Strangers, Cheryl Ammeter, Lenny Zenith, Michael X. Rose,Karim Hetherington, Chuck Miller, Chris Schipper and Walter Sun Chien, and more.

Please help keep the underground press alive by ordering your copy today!! You can order copies at the right of the page.

Cover: Larger View

Table of Contents: Larger View

Intro Page: Larger View

SOPA SUCKERS

2012-01-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

From OBSOLETE! contributor Shane Bugbee's blog...

ok, the SOPA deal...

seems like a distraction, an intentional distraction devised by the powers that be.

the real issue is the NDAA bill... and yet, we the Internet e-people have embarrassed the sopa cause over the larger and much more important issue - the attack on OUR bill of rights.

I'm thinking the USA has already been bought and sold... I mean, think about it... these NEW laws are real similar to the laws the chinese folks must follow. coincidence that we borrow a shit ton of cash from these folks and out of nowhere we have these fucked up bills being pushed down our throats...

read the entire commentary at Shane's blog, the Nonsensical World of Shane Bugbee

2011-12-26T07:13:00.000-08:00

The first four issues of OBSOLETE! have come and gone, and I owe you a big THANK YOU for your support! As we move ahead to the new and expanded issue #5, I hope you will consider continuing your support with and ad purchase or ad swap.

Our new ad prices are as follows:
1/4 page- $45 ( 4.75 X 7.75 inches)
1/2 - $75 (10 X 7.75 inches)
full page - $125 (10 X 16 inches)
10% off for buying ads in the next 2 issues....
We would also be happy to negotiate an ad swap for ad space in your publication, banner advertising on your website, plugs on your podcast, etc)

Last year, we shipped issues to subscribers all over the world, we shipped free copies to over 50 independent booksellers from coast to coast, and distributed free copies through locally-owned businesses across eastern and central Iowa. Over 1500 copies of each issue hit the streets. This year, we hope to gain distribution through a major independent distribution outlet and increase our reach.

Also this year, we will be revising our approach- because of ever-increasing mailing costs, we will be putting out only 2 issues in 2012, but doubling the size of those issues. That way, readers will get as much great content as last year, but we will reduce the postage costs substantially.

A little preview of what to expect in Issue #5:

Fiction:
An excerpt from Bob Pfeifer's new novel "University of Strangers"
"Quasar Gets a Car" by Walter Chien
"Orion Express" - Gauntt and Dana, illustrated by Cynthia Martin

Non-Fiction:
Retro Drag Racing by Diana "the Doc" Thomas
Kings of Scrap: How Gingery Publishing pioneered the open-source hardware movement
An excerpt from "Benchclearing:Baseballs Greatest Fights and Riots by Spike Vrusho
Occupy by Tim Beckett

Poetry:
Chuck Miller

Artwork:
Robert Schefman
Michael X. Rose
Karim Hetherington
Don Rock

Ad space is limited, so please email me and reserve yours asap- artwork deadline is January 10th.

Thanks again for your support, and let me know if you have any questions-

Happy New Year!

Rich

obmag@feral-tech.com
http://www.scribd.com/collections/3361180/OBSOLETE-Magazine
https://www.facebook.com/pages/OBSOLETE-Magazine/333173264856
http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/

Chuck Miller in OBMag #5

2011-11-25T16:49:00.000-08:00

Look for three new poems by Chuck Miller in the upcoming issue of OBSOLETE!

Deadline Extended!

2011-11-14T17:12:00.000-08:00

Because of the number of folks who have contacted me with last minute story and artwork ideas, I'm extending the Deadline for OBSOLETE! #5 to Saturday, December 3rd. Get those pieces sent in ASAP!!

Looking for "Occupy" scene reports for ObMag #5

2011-11-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Hey folks- can you send me a paragraph or two about your local "Occupy" scene for the next issue? It doesn't need to be slick or polished, just something that captures the local flavor. Photos, flyers or other stuff we can reprint are also welcome.

Please submit work digitally to:

obmag@feral-tech.com

By Post:
Rich Dana
OBSOLETE Magazine
POB 72
Victor, IA
52347

The End Is Near! Submission deadline for ObMag #5 is Tuesday.

2011-11-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

We have had more submissions than ever before for the upcoming issue, and some great stuff! It looks like we will be putting out a blockbuster issue- and it's not too late for you to be a part of it!

November 15th is the deadline for submissions for the next issue of OBSOLETE!

Would you like to see your short fiction, poetry, essays, illustrations cartoons or photos in real, honest-to-god PRINT? Get off your lazy artist ass and send your work to obmag@feral-tech.com . Short stories and articles should be less than 3000 words. Full page comics and illustrations should be formatted to an 11 X 17 page (smaller works welcome).

Did I mention that we PAY? OBSOLETE pays $1 per line for poems or $5 per 350 words of prose (minimum payment for either genre is $20, maximum $100). Artwork. photos and comics will be paid on an individual basis, ranging from $10-$100. We ask for first North American serial rights only. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. This applies to original, unpublished work- if you would like to submit previously published work, we are happy to trade for ad space.

Want to Submit by mail?

Rich Dana

OBSOLETE Magazine

POB 72

Victor, IA

52347

Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with your work if you would like it returned. Do not send your only copy! Please do not send original artwork.

The Hall Mall: History of a Counterculture Institution

2011-11-13T06:19:00.000-08:00

I just ran across this article while searching through my archives- I wrote it five years ago while we still had our shop, "Feral" in the Hall Mall in Iowa City. Since then, the Hall Mall occupancy has once again dwindled. Still, it remains "The Upstairs Underground", and hopefully will serve as testing grounds for alternative entrepreneurs for years to come.

Like many people who grew up in the area, I first encountered much of what is referred to as "Counterculture” in Iowa City. Since the 1960's, Iowa City has had the dubious distinction of being the center of Counterculture in Iowa and it has been home to countless bars, galleries, bookshops, record stores, boutiques and music venues catering to tastes outside of the mainstream. Those of us who have spent some time in this town occasionally grow nostalgic for favorite spots long gone.

I was imprinted early - I spent a lot of time as a child playing between the aisles of Epstein's Bookstore while my parents attended poetry readings. Even at the age of nine, I felt very much at home among the beats and the hippies. In my teens and early 20's, hardcore punk was my thing, and the Unitarian Church basement was the center of our DIY scene. Still, as times changed and scenes have come and gone, certain institutions have survived.

Gabe'n'Walkers/Gabe's Oasis/Gabe's/The Picador is one such institution - despite its recent change in ownership and the removal of the G-word, The bar at 330 Washington remains the most consistent venue for local and up-and-coming bands.

The New Pioneer Coop is another – although many of their original hippy base have turned in their VW beetles for Volvo station wagons and now shop for aged balsamic vinegar rather than mung bean sprouts, it is still the town’s only retail food coop, and has employed countless artists, musicians and slackers since its inception in the early seventies.

Along with these institutions and a handful of others, another, less illustrious cornerstone of Iowa City’s alternative scene has survived since the early seventies. Less of a cornerstone, perhaps, than a cinderblock rammed under the axle of a rusting 69 microbus, The Hall Mall has remained the reliable source for all things counterculture since the days when Jim Morrison walked the earth. Dubbed "The Upstairs Underground" by tattoo artist and Hall Mall veteran Stingray, it has been home to countless vintage shops, record stores, smoke shops and tattoo parlors, providing Iowa City with its own microscopic version of London's Kensington Market or New York's St. Mark's Place.

Like the universe, the Hall Mall is in a constant state of chaos. Businesses come and go, but the vibe remains the same. The merchants maintain an "anything goes" feel and a cooperative attitude that warms the hearts of libertarians and anarcho-socialists alike. "The rent is cheap and the attitude is loose," according to Bil at Focus Body Piercing. "It's the kind of place that, if you are thinking about starting a business, you can go for it. We have built-in foot traffic and the people up here support each other."

Over the years it has been home to businesses with names like The Wicca Shop, Underground Stereo, The Plainswoman Bookstore, Hemp Cat, Good Times, Ruby Tuesday, and Electric Head. The current residents include Exile Tattoo, Focus Body Piercing, The Konnexion, Antiques and Oddities, Rusty Records, FERAL!, the recently opened Convenience Store and Velocipede InfoShop, and the soon to open White Rabbit.

Located above the ped mall at 114 1/2 East College Street, the entrance to the Hall Mall is an inconspicuous doorway sandwiched between College Street Billiards and Vito's. The narrow, poorly lit stairwell leads upstairs to a long, open vestibule, flanked by a series of identically transomed doorways, framed in dark wood popular at the time of the building’s construction at the turn of the last century. Reminiscent of a seedy office building where Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe might have hung out their shingles, one can imagine these offices once housing green-visored bookkeepers or dark-eyed palmists. Something about the location and the modest size has made it the lair of independent small businesses for over a century.

The building which houses the Hall Mall was known in days past as the Schneider Building, originally the home of Schneider Brothers Furniture, Carpet and Rugs. City records show that in 1916, the Schneider Brothers empire had grown to encompass three buildings on the block, and in addition to the furniture business, the building at 114 was listed as "furniture and undertaker."

During the 1920's, the upstairs began to be listed as a separate address, 114 1/2, "The Schneider Building Offices." In the following decades, the offices housed a beauty shop, a number of lawyers, real estate brokers, lenders, "Morford the Chain Man", a publisher, and by the sixties, it was home to the Johnson County Democrats, Alcoholics Anonymous, and L.L. Pelling, now one of the biggest paving companies in the Midwest.

In the early seventies, when downtown business districts across the nation began their decline, many of the spaces at 114 1/2 went empty. It was not long before a new breed of hippie entrepreneurs, including Gregory J. Stokesberry, discovered them. Also known as "The Wizzard" (a moniker bestowed upon him by the late great artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth), Stokesberry moved in to four adjoining spaces formerly occupied by L.L. Pelling in 1975. Along with Red Rose Old Clothes and Emerald City, "Gregory J. Stokesberry - Organic Merchant" was one of the original pioneers of the counterculture business revolution that would become the Hall Mall.

I recently visited "Wizzard World Headquarters" in Cedar Rapids Czech Village, where Stokesberry runs his current business, marketing original artwork and t-shirts and publishing a magazine, all targeted at the "Kustom Kulture" audience.

"The Hall Mall was the only place in town where a start up could find some cheap space," says Stokesberry. "I got married and had to make a living. I was into antiques, I was in to green plants, all the hippie decor stuff, ya know, and I was in to the birds and monkeys (editors note: exotic animals, not the bands) so that's what I did. I was a hail and hearty lad with a pickup truck - I used to move jukeboxes up and down those stairs."

"The first were Rose (Red Rose Old Clothes) and Kirk at Emerald City - I moved in after them. We all tried to make it nice ... I used to go out and get a bottle of sherry and cookies from Barbara's Bakery. Every afternoon we would have cookies and sherry ... it was always real cool. Eventually the bums started coming up and grabbing handfuls of cookies...the unemployed bums, I mean, as opposed to us employed bums."

The Wizzard was kind enough to take me to his storage space where we discovered a drowsy raccoon sleeping in front of the original sign that once hung outside his store. It is a hand-carved piece by Bill Schnute, the master woodcarver whose work was a hallmark of Iowa City hippie style.

Several of those original businesses survived and thrived, becoming essential parts of the downtown scene, catering to the tastes of those who couldn't find what they wanted in the sterility of the growing mall culture. Throughout the 80's and 90's, the Hall Mall housed a continuous flow of alternative businesses. "This was the place to be - I had heard of this place in Chicago. I moved out here when my girlfriend came to go to college, and I started tattooing up here in '95. At the height of the grunge era, it was always full of people," says Stingray at Exile Tattoo.

It was the 90's - the economy was strong and business was good, and a second generation of Hall Mall regulars was coming of age with their own taste for the bizarre...but times were about to change. Corporate America was waking up to the potential for profit in the underground scene, and set out to create a safe, mall friendly version to sell to the masses. By the end of the 90's, the political climate in America was changing as well. The election of George W. Bush in 2000 heralded the beginning of an era of new conservatism and intolerance, and places like the Hall Mall were bound to experience the fallout.

Hemp Cat, a hemp clothing store and one of the Hall Mall's most popular businesses, was raided in 2001 by the “The Man” and although no charges were filed, their computers were confiscated and they were forced out of business. Several other long-time mainstays left. Stingray and several others left, and Electric Head went into decline. There was a fire. The Hall Mall hit hard times. People began asking "is there anybody up there anymore?" It was down, but not out.

A new generation began to take up residence. The Konnexion, Davey Jones Tattoo, the Lowbrow Cafe and Rusty Records opened, and they were working hard to bring the Hall Mall back to life.

In 2004, with the independent spirit, youthful zeal and naiveté which is a hallmark of Hall Mall tenants, Kelly Stucker bought an existing Hall Mall smoke shop, “Shasta Mountain,” reopening under the name "The Konnexion." “I just kinda jumped in with both feet and hoped to hell it would work out.”

“I used to hang out at the Hall Mall when I was about fifteen – I remember flirting with the cute guy at Moon Mystique. Twelve years later, I have my shop in that same spot…it felt really freakin’ awesome when I got my key to the front door and the old Moon Mystique. It was just fate…”

In October of 2004, my wife Ericka and I were pedaling my paintings and custom bikes and her jewelry at the "Inktober" Tattoo Expo when we met Kelly and Davey. They convinced us that the Hall Mall was coming back, and we should consider renting a space. We opened FERAL! on a shoestring, just before Christmas, selling vintage oddities, lowrider bikes and outsider art and homemade organic catnip toys. It seemed, somehow, like a good fit.

"The Hall Mall revival is underway," according to Brad Allison of Antiques and Oddities, one of the most recent residents. "Back in the day, there was a waiting list to get a space here. 20 years later, there is space available, and I jumped at the chance."

As with all things, the cycle is coming back around, and the "Schneider Building Offices" are being reinvented once again. The Hall Mall has become a music venue, featuring some of the best young acts in the area and offering the only space in town available to the experimental and unabashedly weird. Plans are underway to give the hallway a new look, and to do a mural project in the stairwell. Before long, we hope to have a film festival. Free wireless and comfy sofas provide one of the few smoker-friendly places to study and hang out. As it has always been, the potential of the space is limited only by the resourcefulness of its occupants.

As I grow older and more cynical, I remain optimistic about the Hall Mall. As I watch the increasing corporatization of our society, it seems more and more essential to maintain an outpost whose only mission is to buck the system. If counterculture can truly have a tradition, it is ours to uphold. Like Marlon Brando in "The Young Ones," when asked, "Hey Johnny, What are you rebelling against?" the Hall Mall answers, "What have you got?"

OBSOLETE #5 - Call for Submissions!!

2011-10-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

November 15th is the deadline for submissions for the next issue of OBSOLETE!

Want to Submit by mail?

Rich Dana

OBSOLETE Magazine

POB 72

Victor, IA

52347

Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with your work if you would like it returned. Do not send your only copy! Please do not send original artwork.

What’s going to become of libraries?

2011-09-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

by Christopher Schipper

A bright young Canadian woman asked me this question recently, as we waited, sheltered from an afternoon downpour, for a streetcar to return us downtown from the New Orleans Museum of Art. The subtext to her question was unmistakable: the eventual demise of libraries, in her mind, was a foregone conclusion. Such questions, sad to say, are neither unique, nor surprising. Reasons for such assumptions are obvious: the rise of the internet has made libraries, in the minds of many, superfluous. Financial support for institutions of education and culture has been in sharp decline for years; a recessionary economy makes the future of libraries perilous.

If the future of libraries is uncertain, the fate of the great city of New Orleans was even less certain not so long ago. I was in town recently for the American Library Association’s annual conference, as I had been five years before. Ten short months after the disastrous hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the devastating flooding of the city, ALA opted to go ahead with plans for the annual conference. Flood debris still littered much of the city, high water marks were clearly visible, and many storefronts were empty. The people of New Orleans were warm and gracious, but the city seemed a shell of her former self. With a diminished population – and tax base, the future of New Orleans seemed pretty shaky.

When I read predictions of doom for libraries, I am now reminded of remarks I heard at the more recent ALA conference, most notably from the current mayor of New Orleans. I learned that, in the aftermath of the storm, governmental officials made a crucial realization: that libraries are an essential community component; in the days and weeks following Katrina, residents flocked to their libraries, to obtain information, and to communicate with loved ones. Conference attendees were delighted to hear that, with this in mind, New Orleans will have added twenty libraries by the end of 2011. In doing so, New Orleans has made an important investment in its future (this is no small accomplishment in the current ‘cut my taxes’ political environment).

It was not until the main collection of the Cedar Rapids Public Library (where I worked for 13 years) went underwater that, through the tireless efforts of my former colleagues, the federal government (FEMA) finally declared libraries to be an essential service. It’s important at this point to also note that, while the CRPL print collection was destroyed, that library endures.

Let’s consider for a moment what we mean by: library. These days, whether or not the word library represents a physical place is an open question for debate. Many of us have fond childhood memories of visiting the local library – often a Carnegie Library, themselves architectural monuments to Knowledge. Carnegie libraries were long the centerpiece of hundreds of small towns and cities; classically designed, and laden with books for community use and enrichment (libraries, incidentally, represent another American institution that is nearly extinct: the shared public space). Libraries, however, have never been only about books. Besides the Internet, technology has created what many regard as the greatest threat to the printed word and to libraries: the e-book. Indeed, I have many well-intentioned, passionate lovers and defenders of libraries, who regard the relationship between these formats as a competition – in other words, a zero sum game. Concerns that technology will replace beloved print editions are not without basis – a number of libraries have done exactly that, but for a number of reasons, I can’t see that happening everywhere any time soon. Time magazine recently published an article (“Is a Bookless Library Still a Library?”) that considers this question. Personally, I think a library without books would be a contradiction in terms, but this a possibility. Information is now available in more formats than ever before; people use different formats because of different needs. Libraries are about much more than just the books they house – they’ve always been about connecting people with the information that they want or need; officials in New Orleans understand this, and the future of libraries in that great city, for now, is bright.

I’m the director of the campus library at San Juan College – a two-year school located in Farmington – in a remote and rural part of Northwest New Mexico. Farmington is often referred to as a border town, because of its proximity to the Navajo Nation. Our geographic location contributes to a very significant digital divide (the chasm between those who have access to the internet and those who do not), making any predictions for the obsolescence of print wildly premature. While we have e-books available for use, our print collection is still heavily used – in part because some of our users lack what many of us take for granted: home internet access, a personal computer, and in some cases – electricity. If not for the library, many library users would lack access to not only the internet, but information that is essential to their lives. In today’s political climate, perhaps the very egalitarian nature of libraries motivates some of the questions related to the value of libraries. While uncertainty about the viability and future of libraries (and despite the rise of the internet) persists, their continued use is not at all in question:
Library use continues to climb. Sixty-eight percent of adults in the U.S. have public library cards, the greatest number since the ALA began collecting this data in 1990.
Americans visit libraries more than 1.3 billion times and check out more than 2.1 billion items each year. Users turn to their libraries for free books, to borrow DVDs, to learn new computer skills, to conduct job searches and more.
Americans go to school, public and academic libraries 50 percent more often than they go to the movies.
A 2006 poll conducted by the American Library Association found that 92 percent of respondents expect libraries to be needed in the future, despite the increased availability of information on the Internet.
Nationally, the average user takes out more than seven books a year . . . but users turn to their libraries for more than books: to borrow DVDs, to learn new computer skills, to conduct job searches, and to participate in the activities of local and community organizations.
Nearly all Americans (96 percent) – even if they are not regular library visitors – agree that libraries play an important role in giving everyone a chance to succeed. They support our public education and lifelong learning.
There are now more public library buildings in the U.S. than there are McDonald’s – a total of 16,592, including branches.
Library use continues to rise – public library visits exceed 1.3 billion, and libraries circulate more items than Fed Ex ships – more than 2.1 billion books, CDs, DVDs and more.
Americans check out on average more than seven books a year. They spend about $31 for the public library – about the cost of one hardcover book.
Americans spend about two-and-a-half times as much on salty snacks as they do on public libraries.
(http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/advocacy/advocacyuniversity/toolkit/talkingpoints/libraryuse.cfm)

As the last bullet point above indicates, financial support for libraries is sadly lacking. In New Mexico, we have a bond initiative to support libraries, but the measure requires voter approval every two years. This “book bond” came into being as a way for the voters to supplement the lack of legislative support for libraries throughout the state. In the run-up to the last bond approval, I was called a dirty Marxist for making the case that libraries in the state are under-funded, and desperately in need of the money that the bond represents! While libraries are hardly a socialist enterprise, the return on investment is impressive, if one considers the bullet point above (average checkouts: 7 books per year).

At San Juan College, we serve a terrifically diverse demographic, with widely varied informational and technological needs and expectations. During my short time here (I began work here in 2006), I’ve noticed a shift from non-traditional students, to a younger demographic; students who have just completed high school, and have never known a time without Internet. With ready access to web-based information, and a lifetime of technology skills, what use do younger, tech-savvy students have for libraries? Can the internet serve as a viable substitute for libraries? If one considers the internet to be a library of sorts, one would also have to concede that it is a very poorly organized library, and one that grows by staggering degree every day; portions of the internet are available only at a cost (e.g. – research databases and other subscriptions). Libraries provide resources that assist students in this regard; access to subscription-based research databases is a common feature at US academic libraries, and professional staff (i.e. – reference librarians) that is skilled in assisting users with the navigation of the internet and other complex information media.

Younger students are oftentimes not traditional readers, and some never have owned a book. Many of our youngest students seem not to recognize the value of print formats; they lack familiarity with standard research strategies such as the use of the subject indexes that are commonly found in the back of books. Any reading that these students do is more commonly from an electronic screen – a reality that today’s library ignores at its peril. Our library must also recognize and support the variety of learning styles that exist among our students. Kindles that utilize a text-to-speech function are invaluable for our developmental or dyslexic students. Our library has five Kindles available to borrow; we have recently purchased three Nooks for circulation as well. We have approximately 70,000 volumes in our print collection, but also about 25,000 e-book titles. My point is that we strive to meet the needs of all of our users, and do so using a successful integration of formats; we offer books, magazines, journals, electronic articles, e-books, Kindles, Nooks - successfully, and without incident. To do otherwise is truly to risk obsolescence, particularly among younger library users. Lacking an adequate array of useful resources, and a well trained staff, a traditional library is little more than a room full of books, in the eyes of our youngest (and future) users – and a dinosaur. Incidentally – we still spend more on print books than just about anything else.

I don’t know what the future of libraries in the US holds. The liquidation of bookstore giant Borders is in the news today. A political solution to the nation’s budget and debt crises is proving elusive. Adequate funding for the nation’s libraries may assume diminished priority over time, but this would be penny wise, but pound foolish; voters are tragically unable or unwilling to recognize the connection between the taxes, and the services such as libraries that many take for granted. Libraries represent an invaluable repository of knowledge, culture and human achievement – and a means for most of our citizens to actualize their own potential. Libraries have always evolved; a decent library is a dynamic thing, but one that cannot afford to stagnate.

9/11, oil and being part of the solution.

2011-09-09T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a short essay I wrote for the Iowa Renewable Energy Association newsletter shortly after 9/11. I think it's still relevant, unfortunately.

From “Energy Matters”, Fall 2001

by Rich Dana

“By the way, if you want to have a war over oil, leave me out of it- because I don’t think we need it. All I have to say is, go solar! Go wind! Let a little freedom into your life, and help your neighbors stay free, too. FREEDOM!”

Richard Perez, Publisher, Home Power- keynote address at I-Renew Expo, Sept. 8, 2001

I was disassembling the geodesic dome we had erected at Prairiewoods for the expo on September 11th, 2001. It was a warm and windy late summer day, and the trampled grass in the meadow still held the positive energy of all those curious and excited visitors who had walked there in the previous days. But the radio in my truck flooded the air around me with news of unspeakable acts of desperate and hateful men.

My mind was back in New York, tracing in vivid detail the sights and sounds of my daily bicycle ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, under the shadow of the twin towers, dodging taxis or catching a tow on the back door of a delivery van, to my woodshop just a few blocks north of the Trade Center.

I sat down and looked up through the octagonal and pentagonal sections of the dome, which made the sky and prairie around me like the colored segments of a stained glass window. I feared for my friends and family back in the city, and for the world, and listened with dull, numb disbelief.

In the month that followed, I kept thinking about the words of Richard Perez, during his keynote address just 3 days before the attack. He talked about the freedoms that renewable energy can bring. Among them were economic freedom and freedom from wars over oil. In those months I have read extensively about the roots of the hatred for America in Central Asia and the Middle East, and realized the extent to which motivations for action on both sides of the conflict are determined by the lust for oil.

It is with this knowledge that I invite you all, as members of the renewable energy community, to join me to work with new and greater resolve, to prove to the world that we in Iowa CAN become exporters of homegrown energy, that we CAN significantly reduce our nations dangerous reliance on vulnerable sources of energy like foreign crude, natural gas and nuclear. We know that we can do this by using the great renewable resources we are blessed with here in Iowa, not the least of which is our minds, our hearts, and our spirit.

Let us in Iowa and across the nation take this on as our personal responsibility, to make this Americas last battle caused by foreign entanglements rooted in oil, and to honor the lives of those forever entombed in the rubble of corporate greed.

ObMag#4 Intro

2011-08-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

Senile: /see-nahy-ul/
Having or showing the weaknesses or diseases of old age, esp. a loss of mental faculties.

Nihilism: /nahy-uh-liz-uhm/
1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.

Here’s how it went down.

Political unrest in the Middle East drove up fuel prices and the cost of living. A protracted war against a seemingly undefeatable indigenous guerilla force sucked the national coffers dry. A gutless democrat president was steamrolled by corporatist republicans and downturns in housing and manufacturing dragged the economy into recession and sent unemployment to record highs. And Ronald Reagan was elected President.

It was in that atmosphere of post-Vietnam imperial decline that punk came of age. Nihilism was the message. The government and society had sold out the American people. Older hippies were well down the path toward yuppiedom, so punks chose to start their own alternative culture. Punk was based not on the collectivist optimism of the psychedelic generation, but more on a vision of a DIY culture rising from the ashes of mundane mainsteam middle-America. Punk bands booked their own tours, pressed their own records, designed their own flyers. Punk artists took to the streets or started their own galleries. Punk writers published their own ‘zines. A subculture grew and punks flourished, without the permission of the growing corporatocracy. Punk was the last best hope for a life outside the establishment system.

In the 90’s, many punks, now in their 30’s, sadly but not unexpectedly took the opportunity to sneak back into the middle class from whence they came. The Clintonian neo-liberal tech-boom train was leaving the station, and “alternative” college rock enthusiasts rushed to get on board, following their hippie elders into the world of khaki pants and retirement accounts. The new breed of assembly line worker was being born. Not on the factory floor- oh no, President Clinton made sure that those jobs went overseas- but rather in the climate controlled cubicles of the former punk outposts like San Francisco, Seattle and Lower Manhattan. But this assembly line is better! You could listen to your favorite punk tunes (through headphones), wear your Chuck Taylor Allstars (to signify that you are “thinking outside of the box”) AND the cafeteria has organic and vegetarian options!

Ex-punks had babies, and brought children into a future that just a few years before they thought would not exist. Back then, they were thrashing in a pit while the Circle Jerks sang “ I went to see a rabbi, but despite his advise, I want an operation I will not father life! Operation, operation, snip & tie, snip & tie!” Suddenly they are getting their musical cues from the bumper music on “All Things Considered” while they haul a van full of brats with food allergies to be coached by some stay-at-home dad, whose liberal arts college degree in humanities and ability to kick a soccer ball has drawn him the short straw while his formerly pink-haired, pierced-nosed wife (with an MBA) drinks single malt scotch in a hotel bar at a conference in Phoenix.

Through it all, a few aging punks keep the faith. They missed the train, or fell off the train, or in many cases, the train ran them over. They were born without the business gene, or they just never gave a shit about money. Some would sell out if they could, but addiction, depression, psychosis or other mental or personality disorders don’t allow it. The DIY spirit keeps them alive. They do for themselves. They still know how to survive without the system promoting their own shit, selling their own shit, scraping by. Times are tough again, but they still know the ropes.

Now, in the era of “austerity,” jobs are scarce and the establishment is once again selling out the American people. But this time there is no youth movement in sight. Surveillance society and digital culture has apparently stolen the punk babies souls. They need to be shown the way. They can’t learn it all from reading Maximum Rock and Roll, after all. It’s time for old punks to rediscover their roots. To re-activate. To take back the mantle of nihilism and rage like there is no tomorrow. What is there to lose? Jump off the train. Before it’s too late, before the anti-depressants, craft-brewed beer and vegan cupcakes take away the last of your will to fight. The punk generation needs to go “senihl”.

So here’s how it’s going to go down...

Political unrest in the Middle East drove up fuel prices and the cost of living. A protracted war against a seemingly undefeatable indigenous guerilla force sucked the national coffers dry. A gutless democrat president was steamrolled by corporatist republicans and downturns in housing and manufacturing dragged the economy into recession and sent unemployment to record highs. And ??? will be elected President.

Time to dig out the Circle Jerks records.
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Want to read more? Check out the free paper at your local hipster hangout. Not there? We can send you a stack to distribute to local coffee houses, book and record shops. Email us at: obmag@feral-tech.com.

At Long Last! ObMag #4 Goes to Print!!!!

2011-08-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

ObMag #4 Preview: The Canadian Tuxedo

2011-07-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

Issue #4 (out in July) features an article on the “denim kit”- also known as the “Canadian tuxedo” or “denim sandwich”. The cheap and functional combo of jeans and denim jacket has been the uniform of cow punchers, construction workers, bikers, punks and metal heads. The timeless favorite of badasses and fashion rejects, ObMag pays homage to the blue suit in our summer issue- due out this month.

R.I.P. Flick Colby- Unsung Hero of Pop Music

2011-06-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

From The Guardian...

When 15 million viewers tuned into Top of the Pops each week during the show's 1970s heyday, the appeal extended beyond the hitmakers on the screen to those who were not appearing, since an absent act's single was interpreted by the show's all-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Their silky routines were choreographed by one of their dancers, Flick Colby, who has died aged 65 of bronchial pneumonia, after suffering from cancer.
Colby, an American with long blonde hair and a megawatt smile, confected slinky, semi-risque and often extravagant Top of the Pops routines for Pan's People for eight years. She continued to work on the show with subsequent troupes, choreographing moves to suit a range of musical styles such as glam rock, folk, soul, disco and punk.

Full Story

Dumpster-Diver Gardening

2011-06-01T06:26:00.000-07:00

from ObMag#1...

We began dumpster-diver gardening sometime in the early 90's, when we came across a vendor at the Brooklyn Terminal Market tossing flats of slightly wilted bedding plants into the trash. Neither Wildgirl nor I were strangers to dumpster diving (a proud trash-picking tradition that is now fashionably know as "Freeganism"), and W.G. immediately hatched a plan for me to distract the shop owner by buying a bag of peat moss while she filled the trunk of her '74 Valiant with rescued greenery. "It wasn't so much about wanting the plants," she recalls- "It was about the waste. It was about the disposable society."

Fast-forward 10 years. We no longer live in New York. We have a small organic farm, and grow a lot of our own stuff. On a blistering July afternoon in Coralville, Iowa, I noticed one of the seasonal garden centers set up in a grocery store parking lot was breaking down for the season and again, they were dumpster-izing flat after flat of sad, leggy, brown and bolting tomato plants, squash, peppers, herbs, and flowers. A lot of the higher-priced organic and heirloom stuff was left behind. I took as much as the old Subaru GL would hold. What I have discovered in the last few years that throughout the Midwest (indeed, much of the country), is that huge numbers of plants get dumped, given away or sold for next to nothing sometime in the last part of June to first week of July. If timed properly, a pickup truck can be filled with blueberry bushes, roses, prairie plants, perennials, and lots and lots of vegetable plants for less than twenty bucks- often for nothing more than the price of gas. If you are a non-driver and really hard-core, you can do it with a cargo bike, shopping cart, hand truck, wheelbarrow or travois. The keys to success are timing, speed, and a modicum of stealth. Despite the fact that the stuff is being jettisoned, employees, particularly middle managers, can tend to flex-out on people who want their trash. In most cases, though, if you time your arrival properly, the peons who got exiled to the sweltering parking lot to haul the stuff to the dumpster are more than happy to have you lighten their load.

A lot of people like to get their gardens in early and planting in July just seems contrary to the American puritan work-ethic. What kind of deadbeat plants a garden in July? This is one of those great situations where being lazy pays off. Your neighbor the foodie-nazi paid 25 bucks for a few Green Zebra tomato plants - you are hauling in a dozen of them for free. If you absolutely must put something in early, you can start the season by tossing some brassica or greens seeds around, just to feel like you are doing something, and you will get some fresh greens to eat after the long winter. By July, your crop of mustard greens, radishes, lettuce or spinach has bolted, you have collected the seed for next year and turned the rest under, and you are ready for the flood of refugee plants.

In my experience, these stressed-out dumpster plants are often already flowering or even bearing fruit. They have been stuck in those pots for a long time, they have become root-bound and they think they are going to die, so they try to make seeds. Once their roots are unbound, they are ready to party! Placed in some decent soil with a little compost tea and lots of water, they come on remarkably fast, and generally produce vegetables only a few weeks behind schedule.

You don't need a huge space to grow your own food, and in the twilight of our empire, there are plenty of empty lots and abandoned properties that can benefit from some guerilla "foodscaping". If you are managing to hang on to your suburban dream-home, I'm bet you are ready to give up some lawn mowing and score some fresh produce from right outside your back door. After all, they don't call Whole Foods "Whole Paycheck" for nothing.

For those working in a very small plot (and even those with more space) I suggest that you find a copy of John Jeavons' classic book " How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine." This book is the bible of "companion planting" or "bio-intensive techniques" and explains what kinds of plants can share space, allowing you to double or triple your food production per square foot.

Some issues have come up over the years of dumpster-diver gardening. Garden center plants are often hybrid varieties, non-organically raised in industrial facilities and after being stressed in poor growing conditions, they can carry pests, fungi or plant diseases. You do need to know what to look for and what to pass up. Also, seeds from hybrid varieties, if saved, may not produce the same plants next year. In some cases this can be fun- we have the weirdest assortment of winter squash growing from years of genetic roulette and cross-pollination.

Regardless of the modest risk, the benefit is huge. Summer is still young- get out there and start diving.

OBSOLETE! is now accepting Bitcoins

2011-05-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard about it already, check out Bitcoins. This is an open-source, P2P currency that is making a very real attempt to do an end-run around the banking industry and create a "people's currency". Can they make the Fed obsolete? Probably not, and if they are successful, I'm sure the government will crush it....
...but for now, why not give it a try? You can find our Bitcoin address in the right-hand column of this page.

Warren Buffett's Radioactive Ronin Pillage Iowa

2011-05-14T05:57:00.000-07:00

Months after massive earthquakes and Tsunamis crushedJapan, the "Fukushima 50" toil on. Crawling through darkened tunnelsdangerously close to overheating radioactive reactors, the remaining nuclearpower plant employees at Fukushima Dai-Ichi struggle to stop the worseningcatastrophe that is spreading deadly toxic pollution across their alreadycrippled homeland. The Fukushima 50 know that they have already sacrificedtheir lives. They know that the exposure they have already experienced willkill them.

Like samurai committing nuclear seppuku, radioactive ritualsuicide, the 50 are driven by a sense of honor and loyalty.

Meanwhile, at the Iowa state capital, lobbyists forMidAmerican Energy continue to push for passage of Senate File 390, a bill thatthey say will send the message that "Iowa is open for business for nuclearpower". They also work from a sense of loyalty, but not like the Fukushima50. They are corporate ronin, political samurai with no loyalty other than tothose who pay them to pillage.

Warren Buffett, who's Berkshire Hathaway Company controlsMidAmerican Energy, has been obsessed with nuclear power for many years. In2007 Buffet made an unsuccessful play to build a nuclear plant in Idaho. Morerecently, Buffett was outbid by French state-owned utility giant Electricite deFrance (EDF) for a 49% share of Constellation Energy's Calvert Cliffs IIInuclear reactor. Now, Buffett hopes that the third time will be the charm forhis nuclear ambitions and he wants to make his nuclear dream come true in Iowa.

Senate File 390 is a bill that seeks to raise MidAmericancustomer's electric rates to cover the cost of Mr. Buffett's dream. Despite thefact that Fukushima now rivals Chernobyl as history's biggest nuclear powerplant catastrophe, Buffet's Iowa statehouse ronin fight on, hiring morelobbyists to fight back the increasing resistance from "the littlepeople".

Before Fukushima, MidAmerican anticipated easy passage oftheir bill, counting on republicans to vote "for" nuclear power(which they generally would do just to piss off democrats) along with a cadreof "pro-business" democrats (re: those who took MidAm campaignmoney). They were confident thatthe tired, gray-haired, granola-eating "no-nukes" enviro-dinosaurscould surely be no match for the giant stick they swing at the Iowa statehouse.Surprisingly though, even since Fukushima, the groundswell of opposition hascome not as much from enviros as from those who object to MidAm's financingscheme.

AARP (American Association of Retired People) state directorBarry Koeppl was quoted in an April 11th article in the Des Moines Register assaying; “We oppose Senate File 390 and House File 961 because those billssubstantially shift the cost and risk for nuclear power construction to ratepayers.Rather than rely on shareholders to finance a new power plant, this legislationshifts the billion-dollar-plus costs to ratepayers for a possible nuclear powerplant, years before the plant is built, or the plant design has even beenapproved.”

Apparently, AARP is not alone. Word has it that MidAm lobbyists are now feverishly countingvotes- including republican votes. It seems that Iowa's new crop of Tea-PartyRepublicans also have problems with state government approving what amounts toa rate-payer funded subsidy for MidAms admittedly sketchy plans. Republicanleadership is finding that some of the tea-partiers may be making good on theirpromise of less government- and the new influx of radical freshmen republicanlegislators may be a knife that cuts both ways.

This new alliance of populists from the far left and rightmay be a harbinger of things to come. Not unlike it the U.S. House wherefar-left Dennis Kucinich and far-right Ron Paul agree in a surprising number ofcases concerning issues of personal freedom, the fight against nuclear power oneconomic grounds may illustrate that there is more common ground to be found inthe future when "the little people" stop listening to corporatistRepublican and Democrats talking points.

In the mean time, elevated levels of radioactivity are beingfound in milk in California. Nuclear experts predict Fukushima may kill as manyas 200,000 from increased cancers in the next 50 years. Spent waste containmentpools continue to fill up at sites across the world. And yet, a majority ofIowa's legislators appear to be willing to charge MidAmerican customersup-front for the privilege of hanging out the "Iowa is open for businessfor nuclear" sign, and making Warren Buffet's dream come true.

Call for Submissions: OBMAG! #4

2011-05-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

We are now accepting submissions for the upcoming issue of OBSOLETE! Short fiction, essays on politics or culture, reviews, poetry, cartoons, photos and other original artwork are all welcome. The theme is The Senihilism Issue: In praise of old punks, cranks and crazies - but your work need not directly relate to that theme.

The deadline for submission is June 1st, so GET IT TOGETHER!

Want to advertise? 1500 free copies of OBSOLETE! Are distributed at indie book stores, record shops and coffee houses from coast to coast, and ad rates are DIRT CHEAP!

Help keep the underground press alive and CONTRIBUTE!

Send submissions or questions to: obmag@feral-tech.com

Issue #3- Now Available Online

2011-05-06T05:29:00.000-07:00

OBMag # 3 is now available to read ONLINE.

OBMAG #3- The Cory Doctorow Interview

2011-05-05T07:08:00.000-07:00

If you don't know who Cory Doctorow is, you may be living under a rock. Of course, we here at OBSOLETE! applaud anyone who chooses the "Sub Silicis" lifestyle. Those of you who choose to spend time in the digital realm, however, have much to thank Mr. Doctorow for.

The Canadian science fiction writer and journalist is an editor of Boing Boing. He is a leading advocate for liberalizing copyright laws and has worked on copyright issues for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His novels, including Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother and Makers are all available as free downloads under a Creative Commons license.

Doctorow's 2009 book Makers is a wonderful story of Feral Technology, a vision of post-scarcity Amerika where hardware hackers battle the Disney empire for the last scraps of the withered economy, and the resources they mine are the detritus of consumer culture.

Cory sat down for an interview at ICON 35 in Cedar Rapids, IA, where he was the special guest author. We spoke as he prepared shots of espresso in his motel room with an amazing portable handheld espresso maker.

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OM: I see that you have a book in your room. What's your feeling about print media? Does it have a future other than nostalgia?

CD: Long-form narrative is particularly well suited to books, because books have no other purpose than to have words in them. There is no temptation to do something else. Reading long-form narrative off a screen, I find that I'm always tempted to "alt tab" and see if I've got any email. Or, you know, to see if anyone is putting a lemon in his nose on youtube. Even the dedicated e-book readers tend to, because of future creep, acquire other networked features. The Kindle's got games, the ipad has email and so on. They are poorly suited to read long-form narrative on. On the other hand, e-book versions of the narrative combined with physical possession of the book is intensely complimentary. If you really enjoy a book, you can loan it to a friend without totally losing possession of it. Likewise, the downsides of an electronic book can be overcome by the upside of having lots and lots of them in one place.

I think that bodes well for the long-term survival of the book. Especially now, when combined with network text. It can be instantiated very close to its demand, both in time and in space. The number of places that a book can be generated out of nothing but a digital file is increasing and having seen some of the Espresso Book Machines I've been really impressed with them. That creates a possibility-space for books to spring into existence when you want them. They are not very expensive- even the print-on-demand books. This way, even if demand is very thin, you can deliver the physical book. The beauty of the networked text is that even if that audience is very geographically dispersed, the network text connects those people- it allows them the find each other.

I think that blended story of the e-book and the physical book is a powerful one, in the way I don't find in other cases, like CDs and mp3s, for example. I have yet to see the huge advantage that CDs have over mp3s. I'm such a low-fi person, that I don't really hear the difference. My friends who are musicians, though, tell me that when you make music to be born into the mp3 format you make very different artistic choices. It's hard to justify giving over a large portion of your home to the storage of CDs or DVDs when all of that music could be stored on a single hard drive.

OM: How do feel about the resurgence of vinyl?

CD: I don't know if you saw that Brian Eno interview this week about how digital technology is changing how we listen to music. Vinyl's characteristics changed the way you experienced music. Vinyl required that you stop what you are doing every twenty minutes, which is really different from a CD or an mp3. It also requires a certain amount of reverence because it's so fragile.

OM: That brings up how I feel about the underground newspaper. Also the way we watch movies. I remember seeing "The Man Who Fell To Earth" in a church basement in Detroit in 1982. It was a very communal experience. Our "tribe" all went to this place and watched a scratchy print and passed joints. Watching DVDs at home seems like a very insular experience. Listening to vinyl is a physical act. Reading an underground newspaper is a physical act. It gets your fingers black.

CD: I don't think that I totally agree that watching movies at home needs to be solitary. The 0-Day pirate trading scenes, no matter what you think of them ethically, that is an intensely social experience. Also, with delayed fertility, my wife and I are part of a cohort who is having kids in their late 30's and our social networks are falling apart. They stay together digitally. My wife worked at the BBC on a thing called "Social Schedule." As more and more of the BBC offerings are going on line, this allows you and your friends to set a time to watch, for example, the latest episode of the East Enders, and there is an IM window at the bottom of the screen, so that you and six of your friends can come together socially. The technology can be isolating, but it doesn't have to be.

OM: It's a different social experience. It lacks the physical space. But I admit, as much as I want people to experience this paper physically, I have to use a blog and Facebook to promote it.

CD: Sure, the demand is spread out geographically. In 1962, putting out the Village Voice, everyone who wants to read it is in the Village. It's pretty straightforward to get it to them....more

Read the full interview in the online version of OBMAG #3 at: ScribD or order your own paper copy at the top righthand side of this page.....

Marina DeBris does her thing- and REPRESENTS!

2011-04-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

Marina DeBris, whose work graced the pages of ObMag #2, shows off a particularly good catch while rocking her OBSOLETE! t-shirt! Check out Marina's work at http://www.washedup.us/. Shirts are hand-screened by Don Rock of http://www.chaoscardcompany.com/. We have a few left of this limited edition shirt, so email us today with your size and get one while you still can (for a $20 donation)!

Preview: How To Use $180 And Social Media To Travel The Country For A Year

2011-03-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

Amy Bugbee wrote a great travelogue for issue #3. This article is from the forthcoming book Politics, Art, Religion, Revolution or the suffering and celebration of life in America, available in November 2011. Look for more info at: http://www.ayearatthewheel.com/

"My husband Shane and I set out on a yearlong road trip with $180 in our pockets. We had no savings account, no credit cards, no back up. Our only safety net was the Internet. With our dog and turtle in the back seat of our Chevy Blazer, we left with a few blankets, a bag of baking gear, a suitcase full of clothes. Most importantly, one lap- top computer, an HD Video camera and a donated digital audio recorder."

Read the rest of Amy's story....http://feral-tech.com/amy_bugbee.pdf

Want to get your own copy of OBSOLETE! delivered to your door? Use the paypal buttons at the right of the page. Do you have a local indie bookstore or coffee house that would like to offer free copies of OBSOLETE! to their customers? email us and we'll send you a stack.

OBMAG #3 Preview- Hoodoo:Open Source Religion

2011-03-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hoodoo: Open Source Religion

Thanks to American popular music, many people have heard the terms “hoodoo,” “juju” and “mojo," but few understand what they really mean. For modern, white, middle class R&B and blues fans, they conjure up exotic images of the Deep South, some shadowy world of African-American spirituality that they don't really "get." Movie fans don't know what “mojo” is, but thanks to Austin Powers, they know they want it. Throughout the history of American popular media, stereotypes abound, ranging from the comical witchdoctor act of Screamin' Jay Hawkins to “Tia Dalma”, the black-toothed, dreadlocked swamp priestess in “Pirates of the Caribbean 2”. But what is hoodoo, really?

In a world of hierarchical and regimented spiritual dogma, hoodoo is a feral cat. It lives wild on the outskirts of American religious culture, thriving and propagating out of sight, right in the back yard of organized religion. Organized religion might catch a glimpse of it from the corner of its eye. Organized religion might fear hoodoo. Hoodoo might even live in the same house, as organized religion - it might let organized religion stroke its tail, but it will never wear its collar. Hoodoo is free.

Hoodoo is not Voodoo. Voodoo is an organized religion. Voodoo and its variants practiced in Haiti and in Louisiana, are descended from the West African Vodun religion. Hoodoo, on the other hand, is an amalgam of African and European folk magic traditions, not a religion, per se. Hoodoo can be a noun or a verb. You can "do" hoodoo or "make" hoodoo.

The iconoclastic writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston wrote extensively on hoodoo. Even with her deep understanding of hoodoo, Hurston herself mischaracterized hoodoo as being synonymous with Voodoo in her 1935 classic Mules and Men:

“Hoodoo, or Voodoo, as pronounced by the whites, is burning with a flame in America, with all the intensity of a suppressed religion. It has its thousands of secret adherents. It It adapts itself like Christianity to its locale, reclaiming some of its borrowed characteristics to itself, such as fire-worship as signified in the Christian church by the altar and the candles and the belief in the power of water to sanctify as in baptism.

Belief in magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started.

The way we tell it, hoodoo started way back there before everything. Six days of magic spells and mighty words and the world with its elements above and below was made. And now God is leaning back taking a seventh day rest. When the eighth day comes around. He'll start to making new again.”

As Hurston states, nobody does know the true origin of hoodoo. There is even debate about the etymology. Some say it is derived from the word “hu'du'ba” (magical retribution), which was brought to America by African slaves of the Hausa tribe. Others claim that it is Irish origin- from the Gaelic Uath Dubh (pronounced h-úŏ doo)- meaning a malevolent being or unlucky person. Perhaps it is a primordial sound, like Om, a verbalization of something common to human experience, transcending etymological pigeonholeing.

Some historical facts are known about hoodoo. The combination of African and European folk magic was born on the plantations of the Antebellum South and later grew and spread among sharecroppers and the rural poor. Later, as the U.S. became industrialized, hoodoo took on a more urban flavor and became more commercialized. According to Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by Catherine Yronwode (pronounced "Ironwood"), many of the Old Testament and Hebrew mystical elements were mingled into hoodoo by the Jewish-owned chemists whose mail order beauty and healthcare businesses served the black community. "Cat" Yronwode, who also owns and operates "Lucky Mojo Curio Company" writes: "... the agents who sold these items for manufacturer-distributors like Valmor-King, Lucky Heart, Hi-Hat and so forth were usually part-time beauticians and hoodoo root workers. They would come to your house to fix your hair (selling you the cosmetics and hair preparations they had bought wholesale) and they would also do psychic consultations and perform rootwork and conjuration, using the curios available from the same sources. They kept a stock of goods on hand, but they also carried their company's retail cosmetics catalogues and curio catalogues with them, and you could order both types of products through them and have the items drop-shipped directly to your home. " This also explains some of the traditional importance of the beauty parlor and barber shops in black and immigrant communities.

For some, hoodoo might be seen as a spiritual pyramid scheme, but in some ways, hoodoo is analogous to open source software- it is a spiritual program that shares common source code but is not proprietary. It can be adapted to run on any religious operating system, and it can add functionality not normally allowed by religious programmers. One church, priest or practitioner does not own it. Hoodoo can co-exist along side Voodoo, Catholicism, Protestant beliefs or other folk traditions. It is a religious “hack”- a tool to modify the source code of religion and make it work for the spiritual hacker. Hoodoo practitioners save prayers to God for big-picture matters of salvation. Day-to-day matters of love, luck and finances are all matters for direct spiritual action through spell casting, spiritual cleansing and “rootwork”.

A December 28^th, 2010, article in the Wall Street Journal brought attention to the recent rebirth in interest in hoodoo, which they attribute partially to tough economic times and partially to the rise of Internet retailing. The article points out that...“Today's hoodoo revival is again being driven primarily by white retailers, and that has some blacks criticizing the commercialization of ancient rituals for a quick profit. “ Historically though, internet marketing is just an extension of the mail-order curio business that supplied practitioners on the early 20th century.

Hoodoo is an interesting combination of ancient traditions and modern technology. The revival has some echoes of the “New Age” craze of the 80's and 90's, but the multi-cultural roots and blue-collar heritage give it decidedly more dynamic character and sense of humor than the crystals and chimes bourgeois-Zen set. It's rituals reflect it's heritage- sweeping and scrubbing floors, growing and harvesting wild plants, preparing charms, known as “mojo hands” or “gris-gris”.

One of the most important elements of hoodoo, like any magical system, is that of personal empowerment through ritual. These rituals, although rooted in tradition, are an art and the practitioners are artists who attempt to take direct action on their spiritual lives. Critics and skeptics may laugh at the idea of burning candles or carrying a "High-John" root to attract money or using magnetic toy Scotty-dogs in a love spell. However, humans live in a semantic and symbolic space, and the reality tunnel of the individual is defined by their belief. One individual may feel better about their life when they buy "Fair Trade" coffee, another may feel safer with a gun in their house. Humans are fetishistic by nature, whether the "Toby" is a crucifix or an iphone.

As technology pushes humans into a more and more Korzybskian realm where the map becomes reality than the territory becomes something conceptual, hoodoo seems more real than ever. In a wooded area outside of Forestville, CA., Cat Yronwode and her crew at Lucky Mojo keep the tradition alive. In strip-malls and bodegas, beauty parlors and back yards, rootworkers and conjurors are hacking reality with all of the human senses.
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The Revolution will televise itself.

2011-03-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

OBSOLETE #3 - Out Now!

Ask your indie bookseller to carry OBSOLETE!

Read Issues #1 & #2 online...

2011-03-09T09:29:00.001-08:00

You can now read issues #1 & #2 online at ScribD....

Download the front page of OBMAG #3

2011-03-09T05:22:00.000-08:00

Download a pdf of the front page of OBMAG! #3 here: feral-tech.com/obmag_inside_cover.pdf

More previews to come....

Please help spread the word about OBSOLETE! and help keep the free, alternative underground newspaper alive!

Do you or your friends run an indy bookshop, record store, consignment shop, infoshop or other business that would like to offer their customers FREE copies of OBMAG!? Drop us a line and we will ship you a bundle.

At Last!! Issue #3 is out!

2011-03-08T19:01:00.000-08:00

Better late than never- OBSOLETE! #3 is on the street, with a great selection of original material.

This issue includes an exclusive interview with Cory Doctorow, a feature article on Kal Spelletich of KalTek and an amazing list of contributing writers, all looking at the idea of "Feral Technology". Writers and artists include:

Alissa Bader has dedicated herself to spending a lifetime hanging out with those people her mother once warned her about. Alissa also purchased her first package of bacon, ever, last May. She lives and works in Denver, Colorado.

Tim Beckett grew up in western Canada, primarily Uranium City, Saskatchewan and Edmonton, Alberta. He fled to Montreal at age 19 and has lived in London and New York ever since. He has been employed as a tree-planter, TV researcher, housepainter, web developer and pretty much anything else he can get. He is working on a novel ‘Uranium City Return’ about going back to his now nearly empty hometown. He is currently managing editor of Sensitive Skin Magazine.

Amy Bugbee was born in a part of Chicagoland that was built by Al Capone. Calumet City was the original Sin City before Vegas came along. She was raised by a fireman and a librarian, so she is morbid and well read. For nearly 15 years she has been married to the biggest trouble maker in the underground, Shane Bugbee, and the two of them have been wreaking havoc ever since. She is a writer, photographer, and baker who lives on the Washington Coast with her husband, dog, and turtle.

Shane Bugbee: “I’ve done a lot over many years and have survived. Recently I was told that I’m intense and a loose cannon. Quite often folks are afraid of me, and for good reason. Presently wrapping up a book and film that combines the year my wife and I spent on the road with the head trip that is being run out of a small minnesota town for siding with school shooters and being friends with anton lavey. Our upcoming book will be in stores this November... it is called, Politics,Art,Religion,Revolution: the suffering and celebration of life in America.

Ray Cathode is an artist/illustrator living on the rocky coast of the great state of Maine (U.S.A.). He studied under Karl Ferdinand Braun, then later on at the Academy of Carlo Pittore. His earlier output of art was very academian; then after a tragic accident severely damaged his drawing hand, his art took on a darker quality that is cruder in execution, yet richer in meaning. He is currently hidden deep beneath the snow, in his underground studio, churning out strange images with his mighty vorpal pen.

MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick was born in the Bronx in 1967. She holds a B.A. in English from Manhattan College. Published in: Make Room for Dada, Mount Vernon Inquirer, Mount Vernon Today, Westchester Times Tribune, Mount Vernon Independent, Contemporary Literary Horizon, and MoonLit. Anthologized in: “Blood Beats in Four Square Miles.” Readings at: The Back Fence, ABC NoRio, Centerfold Coffeehouse, AC-BAW Arts Center, Mount Vernon Public Library, Lola’s Teahouse, and Blue Door Gallery. She lives with her husband and three boys in Mount Vernon, NY.

W. Joe Hoppe grew up the rust belt city of Jackson, Michigan but has lived in Austin, TX for the last twenty years with artist Polly Monear and their son Max. He has published one book-length collection of poetry, _Galvanized_ (www.daltonpublishing.com). Along with teaching English and Creative Writing at Austin Community College, he enjoys writing and wrenching on old Mopars. W. Joe’s 1971 Dodge Truck runs on sweet lady propane--hopefully you’ll read all about that in a future issue of OBSOLETE!

Wister D Lamb III is a (photoshop) stooge for the media priests. Living in North Houston, TX, Working in high fashion and low advertising in NY for 19 years, he has recently escaped into the realm of achieving feral otherness with his personal friends profile pics on FaceBook. His piece is from a series of about 200 people he actually knows personally.

Sean Madden darkly surrealistic paintings and drawings have been exhibited and published throughout the US, Canada, Australia and the UK. His work is reminiscent of the underground comics scene he was influenced by as a juvenile delinquent on the streets of Buffalo, New York in the 60’s and 70’s. For years he provided pen and ink illustrations for horror and sci-fi publishers. Currently, he provides illustrations for the Vancouver- based urban clothing company Die Constant (www.dieconstant.com), and exhibits with a growing list of galleries and private collectors. He has recently published a partly autobiographical compilation of his pen and ink works entitled “Beyond the Sun: The Insane Pen and Ink Art of Sean Madden.”

“Darius “Qojak” Carr is an artist living in Tama, Iowa. Darius writes, makes art, tattoos and takes photographs when he is not trying to make a living working at the casino on the Meskwaki settlement.

Stephen Sweny is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute and a veteran illustrator. Steve’s work has been featured in The New York Times, National Lampoon, Forbes, GQ and many other publications. He is represented by Donna Rosen artists.

Cheap Advertizing in OBSOLETE! #3: Barter for a 1/6th page ad !

2011-01-12T05:42:00.000-08:00

Do you want to advertise your book, comic, zine, album, film, website, art exhibit, book shop, record store, coffee house or other creative endeavor or business in OBSOLETE? We have a limited number of spots for 1/6th page ads that can be yours for a small donation (what you can afford- we will also swap or barter!). We would love to help promote your work- email obmag@feral-tech.com for availability.

Larger spaces are available for a very reasonable rate- 1/4, 1/2 and full page ads are all available.

The first print run of issue #3 will be 2500 copies- distributed free at independently owned businesses from coast to coast.

Mick Farren and the History of Speed

2011-01-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

by Rich Dana

Here is a short excerpt from my article in this month's Little Village Magazine...

In Mick Farren’s latest book, Speed Speed Speedfreak (Feral House Press, 2010), he examines the history and sociological significance of amphetamine and discovers that the use of speed is woven throughout the tapestry of 20th century culture. Invented initially as a bronchodilator at the beginning of the industrial age, it didn’t take long before Benzedrine became the fuel of the burgeoning entertainment industry, the assembly line industrial model and the war machines of governments across the globe.

In 206 fast-paced pages (the book itself is shaped like a giant “black beauty” dextroamphetamine capsule) the author keeps readers engaged with a mix of historical detail and political intrigue, infused with an insiders look at the effects of speed on the psychedelic ‘60s, biker culture and the punk music scene. As the lead singer of the British proto-punk band “The Deviants,” Farren experienced the story first hand and tells it with a survivor’s sense of humor. He was coming of age when the leather-clad Beatles were playing maniacal, speed-fueled marathon rockabilly sets in the strip clubs of Hamburg. He was on the scene when Roger Daltrey was stuttering “fa-fa-fade away,” imitating the speech pattern of The Who’s speedfreak fans (the fashionable teenage “Mods” used “yellow jackets” and “green and clears” to cope with the mindless workaday world of post-war England)..... Read More

Writers, Cartoonists, Poets, Illustrators, Photographers- SUBMIT NOW!

2010-12-29T20:39:00.000-08:00

The submission deadline is January 15th for issue #3 of OBSOLETE!

The loose theme of this issue is "Feral Technology"- what happens when technology runs wild? Or escapes from captivity? Can it be a good thing? Does information really want to be free? The topic is wide open- we are still looking for fiction, essays, poetry and artwork to make this our biggest issue yet.

Want to pitch an idea? drop us a line at obmag@feral-tech.com

E-xquisite Corpse: You are invited to play.

2010-12-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

OBSOLETE! invites you to participate in an electronic version of “exquisite corpse”. We will use this old surrealist parlor game to write a story which will be published on this blog and in a future issue of OBSOLETE!.

Here's how it's going to work:

To participate, send an email with “E-xquisite Corpse” in the subject line to obmag@feral-tech.com. In the body of the message, write how many turns you would like to play (up to 5) and if you would like to be listed as a player or remain anonymous (your email will remain private). You will receive a confirmation email.
When your turn comes, you will receive an email message title E-xquisite Corpse: Your Turn". In the body will be one line of text. This line will be the first line of your paragraph. You may not change the line.
You will complete the paragraph. The length, theme, style and subject are up to you, but there should be a narrative element. It's a story, after all.
After you finish your paragraph, you will write the first line of the next paragraph.
You will email your completed turn back to obmag@feral-tech.com within 24 hours. If you don't send in your turn within 24 hours, you will “lose a turn” and it will be sent to the next player- you will get another chance on your next turn. You can also choose to pass by replying to the email with the word “pass” in the subject line. DO NOT share your submission with anyone but ObMag.
We will forward your last sentence to the next player, who will complete the paragraph, start the next and return.
The process will repeat until all players have played their turns. The last player will be informed that they are writing the closing paragraph.

Why I blame Rush (the Band, not Limbaugh) for the Tea Party.

2010-12-04T06:33:00.001-08:00

By Rich Dana

I read an article this summer that the Canadian rock band Rush was filing a lawsuit against Kentucky senatorial candidate and Tea Party love-child Rand Paul. The power trio's lawyers alleged that the Paul campaign's use of their song "Spirit of the Radio" constituted copyright infringement.

"Oh, the irony," I thought. The band, who have openly promoted libertarian philosophy through their music, credited Rand Paul's namesake- polemical sci-fi writer Ayn Rand - for the inspiration of several of their records.....

READ MORE

EDITORS NOTE:Check it out exclusively in the December issue of Little Village...pick up a paper copy if you are in the Iowa City area....

New Contest: The Julian Assange obsolete pool

2010-12-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

With the most recent “dump” of classified government documents, the future of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange becomes more and more tenuous. In an attempt to paint the egotistical and misanthropic freedom-fighter as an evil genius/super-villain, Interpol has added Assange to it's “Most Wanted” list, and serial grand-stander Senator Peter King of Long Island has called the Wikileaks release “worse than a military attack.” Really Pete? Exposing the moronic and unprofessional behavior of our government is worse than a military attack? I'm guessing that there are a lot of fatherless children of dead G.I.s in this country who would take umbrage with that statement... but I digress.

With the U.S. Government squirming under the bucket-load of cold, embarrassing reality and Assange already threatening to release more documents (this time including info on banks) one has to wonder how long Assange can keep it up. We here at the OBSOLETE! office have speculated that there might be a plane crash or car accident in Mr. Assange's not-too-distant future.

It is in that spirit of extreme cynicism that we announce the “Julian Assange obsolete pool”- a contest in which participants send us the method of obsolescence that they think Mr. Assange will experience, and the date on which it will happen. We will compile these entries, and in the unfortunate event that Mr. Assange IS made obsolete, winners will receive a bevy of special prizes- while the rest of the world loses.

Don't wait to enter- this contest itself could become obsolete any day. Send your entry to: obmag@feral-tech.com

Scanners: The TSA and the false left/right paradigm

2010-11-29T18:19:00.000-08:00

The Opt-Out protest “fizzled”. Yes that is the official term for what happened over the holiday at U.S. Airports. A Google search for “TSA protest fizzle” yields about 169,000 results. Interesting that so many journalists came up with the same term. “Fizzled”.

Meanwhile, twitter-ers from airports across the country reported that the TSA had actually turned off many of the scanners in order, presumably, to avoid conflict, head off the protests and claim victory.

The recent brouhaha over the Transportation Safety Administration's newly implemented invasive search regime shined a light on a growing crack in the facade of our two-party government. Civil rights advocates on the left have been put in the uncomfortable position of taking sides with the “freedom” activists of the far right. They are both opposing the Obama administrations adoption of new airline security measures that include full-body scanners and humiliating pat-downs. The debate has become a semantic snake-pit- utterly dislodged from reality- with Democrats and Republicans switching sides on “security” issues in an attempt to take the political high-ground.

Thankfully, the resolve of the Republican critics was not tested by an actual airline attack over the holiday- we can only speculate on the level of spinning that would take place in the event of an actual incident. Instead, the FBI trotted out the “Portland Patsy”, 19 year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who was arrested for attempting to deliver a a fake bomb that was supplied to him by FBI handlers.

The cold war between the Democrats and Republicans has become so extreme that they have completely thrown away any pretext of honest debate based in fact. An Orwellian hodge-podge of newspeak (“TSA... ensure(s) freedom of movement for people and commerce.”)and pop catch-phrases (“don't touch my junk”) reduces the discussion to just the type of easily parroted wedge-issue pablum that keeps the independent majority divided and confused.

Can activists at both ends of the spectrum wake up, shake off their thread-bare allegiance to the two wings of the ruling class and work together to protect personal freedom?

Call For Submissions!!

2010-11-20T07:06:00.000-08:00

Issue #3 of OBSOLETE! is going to be our biggest yet. Coming out in February, 2011, the theme of the issue is "Feral Technology". I am looking for essays, fiction, poetry, cartoons, photos and other artwork that relates loosely to the idea of setting technology free, unusual or arcane technology, adaptive technology, non-technology, anti-technology, primitivism...

Definition of FERAL

1: of, relating to, or suggestive of a wild beast

2a: not domesticated or cultivated : wild

2b: having escaped from domestication and become wild

Definition of TECHNOLOGY

1a : the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area : engineering 2

1b : a capability given by the practical application of knowledge

2: a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge

3: the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor

So far we have an interview with author and Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow, and I am slated to work on a piece with San Francisco post-industrial folk artist Kal Spelletich. An article on the history of Hoodoo is also in the works. Why not contribute your own ideas?

Deadline: January 15th

Want to pitch an idea? Send me an outline? ricardo@feral-tech.com

Put the "Big O" in National Opt-Out Day!

2010-11-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

Just 6 days left until National Opt-Out Day! On Nov. 24th, indignant holiday flyers across the country will be standing up against the Transportation Safety Administration's latest draconian, rights-smashing policies. Rather than being sent through the new and potentially dangerous "Advanced Imaging Technology" scanners, protesters will be choosing to "opt-out", at which point they will be subjected to "enhanced pat-downs" - a humiliating physical search that includes TSA agents fondling their genital and breasts in a misguided attempt to keep America safe from Terrorists.

There have been suggestions of ways to go one step further on National Opt-Out Day - Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic suggests going "Braveheart" and wearing a kilt to the airport on the 24th. Better yet, Goldberg suggests going "commando", supposing that flying without pants is probably illegal, but flying without undies probably is not.

I suggest going one step further- I propose that November 24th be "National O-Face Day", in which flyers not only opt to receive the advanced pat-down, but show the TSA agents and fellow flyers their best fake orgasm. As they search up your legs toward your "crotchal area", give them a little heavy breathing. "Oh... yeah baby, a little higher... higher... HIGHER... OH YEAH!" I mean, street theatre has always been a mainstay of protest, but you certainly aren't going to get through security with a giant puppet, so why not rock a little personal theatrics? Just imagine the security cam footage- a line of cubicles- in one an elderly grandmother, in one a man in a suit and tie, in one a hipster college student- and as the TSA agents in each cubicle disappear from view below the partition, their subjects each throw back their heads and howl in ecstasy... maybe offer them a tip after?

Okay, a little too much for you? How about reciting the pledge of allegiance or singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic? Reciting the Lords Prayer? "...And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil..."

For those of you gutsy enough to participate in "National O-Face Day", here is a classic scene from the very 80's romantic comedy, "When Harry Met Sally"- a movie that I first saw, ironically, on a plane.... while being served chicken Kiev and a fresh salad...in the smoking section.

And for the fellas- a little reminder of how it's done by the original "O Face" guy...

Free Preview: A Night in the Zone by Jonathan Shaw

2010-11-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

Check out Jonathan Shaw's excellent story from OBSOLETE! #2 at his kick-ass blog, SCABVENDOR.

DISOBEY

2010-11-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

In the era of Total Information Awareness, representative democracy as we practice it in the U.S. is looking more and more quaint and out-dated. The Obama administration continues the Bush post-911 paranoia with increased surveillance of “we the people”. While the government's ability to collect data on it's people (more than 99.9999% of whom have done absolutely nothing wrong) increases so does the paranoia, creating a feedback loop of diminishing civil rights.

As rights-infringing technology has advanced exponentially, the technology of democracy has not. Our leaders make decisions very much in the same manner that they have for the last two centuries. They travel to a central location and meet in committees. They pound the needs and desires of their campaign contributors into a slurry of semantic abstractions. They ad heaping spoonfuls of pork-fat earmarks, appropriations and amendments, obfuscate the intent with archaic legalese, then force-feed the resulting pablum to the public while claiming victory for their party. With any luck, these franken-laws, stitched together from the putrid flesh of dead ideas, rise to zombie-life in the course of several months- but more likely several years.

Despite information technology's rapid advancements, those advancements have yet to be applied to the decision making process but only to the command and control structure. Hyper-specialization within the bureaucratic class has lead to the establishment of an American Apparatchik. These political functionaries desperately fight to preserve their territorial power through the maintenance of the status quo. The resulting Kafka-esque system virtually guarantees that laws are outdated before they are passed, assuring – nothing.

Virtually every “hot-button” issue in the American political discourse right now is an example of lawmaking that is trailing far behind the public. By dropping the anchor of policy, politicians are holding the ship of state in position, trying to hold back the flow of society- but they cannot control the flow- our culture has proceeded far downstream, leaving government behind.

Examples are endless:

“Don't Ask, Don't Tell” - polling among troops show clearly that this is a non-issue. Most people under 30 have grown up in the post “metro-sexual” era and simply don't give a shit.
Gay Marriage- Why is marriage defined in law? By replacing all “marriage” laws with civil contracts, the rights of all people are protected, leaving the marryin' to the preachers.
Cap and Trade Legislation – In the years between Kyoto Protocol (1997) and it's implementation (2005), the renewable energy sector grew exponentially. The push to add a dubious financial market based on carbon trading has gained more detractors to clean energy technology than it has fans.

Because of this growing disconnect between the people and their rulers, more and more citizens are choosing to practice “selective obedience”. By simply choosing not to observe certain laws, boundaries are stretched and eventually they become irrelevant. For example, many (if not most) young people in America today violate copyright laws. They download music and movies from pirate sites overseas, and most never experience any legal issues. It has become the norm. Persecuting a few poorly chosen individuals to make “examples” out of them simply makes the entertainment industry and their friends in the new Apparatchik look that much more foolish. Drug prohibition, clearly a long-standing example of the total failure of policy-making, serves only to profit the prison-industrial complex, while the vast majority of casual users continue to enjoy altering their realities un-hindered by big-brother. Speed limits? They only matter if you get caught. Taxes on barter, trade or cash payments? Yeah right.

The governments response to all of this is to increase the authority of agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. They are using information technology against citizens in order to make up for the governments inability to deal with it's own obsolescence. By collecting information on EVERYONE, they are working under the premise that the larger the haystack, the more needles they will find. But as Cory Doctorow points out in his 2008 article for the Guardian:

“The problem of sifting through vast amounts of data was highlighted by the US 9/11 Commission, which concluded that the American intelligence community knew in advance that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were in the offing, they just didn't know they knew it. The pieces were all there for anyone who knew to look for them, needles buried in a haystack of irrelevancies. “

Today, we are all potential needles. Your anomalous behavior makes you look more and more like a needle. Your donation to a charity, your phone calls to an overseas relative, your purchase of allergy medication, all can potentially add to a profile that makes you look more like a needle. Your commuting habits- tracked by your transit pass. Your regular meals at the neighborhood middle eastern restaurant- noted on your credit card record . Increasingly, any variation from the mainstream is suspect behavior.

As we know from our countries history of locking up non-violent “offenders”, criminalization of anomalous behavior creates criminals. Persecution leads to aberrant behavior. What we need is not to be increasingly surveilled to make sure that we are not violating norms, but to be given the freedom to rise to humanities highest potential. When given the opportunity, people generally choose to work for the common good. Is it any wonder that a recent study shows that people who download pirated music are also 10 times more likely to buy music? This knowledge has lead savvy music business executives to rethink the way they deliver their product and to profit from it, rather than suing their customers. Civil unions and gay marriages, as it turns out, are good for the economies of the states who recognize those unions as a civil right. Decriminalization of marijuana and the use of marijuana as medicine is good for everyone except large drug companies and the prison industry. Opening up the monopolistic electric utility industry to innovation by solar and wind development will bring about emissions reductions faster than a byzantine financial trading scheme.

In the world of computing, operating systems are continually improved. Problems are located, patches written and updates issued. Occasionally, a completely new version of the OS is warranted. In the “open-source” software community, that source code is open to anyone who wishes to work on it, and their improvements can be freely adopted to the benefit of all. This dynamic system assures that the system is constantly improving, and that everyone has the freedom to customize the system, adding new ideas, taking away things that don't work.

In government, fixes take the form of new patches, in a never-ending additive process. Nothing is ever subtracted, no new source code is ever written. Innovators do not go into government, because there is no room for innovation in government. By forcing people into “the middle”, our government is suppressing individuality and grinding off the rough edges of society where innovation lives. They have institutionalized mediocrity, stifling any hope of advancing as a civilization. The fallacy of “the middle ground” is dragging us down. The term “moderate” increasingly refers not to people who carefully consider both sides of an issue, but rather to people without conviction or imagination. The “middle ground” is not where we should choose to live- it should be where we meet to set a few ground rules that allow us all to live and work unhindered as individuals.

Until we agree to addressing the issue of our out-dated government source code, there is no hope for cultural evolution in this nation. It is up to individuals to adopt “selective obedience”, to hack the system and accept the mantle of peaceful dissidence.

“People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.”

-Vaclav Havel

OBMag #2 preview: Review of "Borderland"

2010-11-09T05:24:00.001-08:00

Borderland:

Seven Lives. Seven Stories.

As Told by Victims of Human Trafficking.

by Dan Archer and Olga Trusova

published by Archcomix

www.borderland comix.com

In what artist Dan Archer describes as a "comics journalism project", he collaborates with Fulbright Fellow Olga Trusova to tell the stories of seven of the 12.3 million adults and children forced into bonded labor and prostitution around the world.

Trusova traveled to the Ukraine in 2009 to study human trafficking and returned with stories of the desperate and risky lives of people in a country ravaged by economic collapse. Archer transforms these stories into stark, monochromatic graphics, highlighted in sepia to convey the gray, eastern European atmosphere. At times the drawings almost feel like Soviet Era agit-prop, yet the heroic workers have become grimly ill-defined and the crimson backgrounds has faded to the color of clay, as the hammer and sickle has disappeared from view. The workers paradise has become the workers purgatory.

The introductions to each of the seven stories convey the hard facts and statistics about the situation in the Ukraine. For instance, over 14% of the victims of trafficking have university level degrees. One story tells of an educated, middle aged woman who, desperate for money, took a construction job in Russia and ended up chained in a shed, forced to milk cows until she was too weak to work. Luckily, she escaped, and through the kindness of strangers, made it back home.

Comics have a long tradition as a serious story-telling and news medium in other parts of the world, and Borderland is a fine example of how a serious subject can be addressed in an engaging and graphic format for an English-reading audience. The stories are tightly packed, with interludes with statistics, references, and links to the websites of NGOs working to stop the abuse.

Borderlands is a cautionary tale for those of us in countries with our own "dirty little secrets" and stories of worker exploitation. It's an eye-opening read.

Video: Abandoned Six Flags New Orleans Tour

2010-11-08T05:45:00.000-08:00

A beautiful and haunting video tour of the abandoned New Orleans Six Flags amusement park by videographer Teddy Smith. The park will be demolished and sold for scrap in January, 2011.

Why I blame Rush (the Band, not Limbaugh) for the Tea Party.

2010-11-07T08:22:00.001-08:00

By Rich Dana

"Oh, the irony," I thought. The band, who have openly promoted libertarian philosophy through their music, credited Rand Paul's namesake- polemical sci-fi writer Ayn Rand - for the inspiration of several of their records.....

EDITORS NOTE:
The remainder of this article has been removed temporarily, as Little Village Magazine has chosen to publish it. Check it out exclusively in the December issue of Little Village.... Thanks Everybody!

Issue #2- Intro

2010-11-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

Here is another preview of ObMag #2 - this is the introduction to the "What I did on my summer vacation" issue. I thought it might be a good read for those of you with post-election blues....

What I did on my Summer Vacation

    As I write this introduction, it is fall, 2010. Summer is over. I sit alone in the house of a dead woman, looking out the door toward the Puget Sound. The sun is bright above the thick quilt of fog. I’m waiting for the movers, who missed the ferry.
    Barbara was a journalist, an artist and interior designer; she transformed things and places. Now, her meticulously arranged home is being disassembled- the last pieces carefully packed for their trip to a Seattle auction house.
-------------
    It’s fall and school is back in session. If you had to stand at the blackboard on the first day of school, what would you tell the class? What did you do on your summer vacation? Did you have a great adventure? Did you max out your credit card for a few days of blissful escape? Or did you stay at home and pray the AC kept working and that you might soon find work? Did you fall in love... or did you sit on the couch and watch 24-hour cable news coverage as the US of A declined into a made-for-TV remake of the Weimar Republic? In the current state of the Union, the idea of a “summer vacation” is disappearing over the societal horizon faster than my Dad’s Country Squire station wagon crossing the Badlands. But we still have “The Holidays” to look forward to, right?
-------------
    Barbara understood how things worked. She carefully restored Victorian furniture that she found at Goodwill. She practiced Ikebana, the art of floral arrangement, which she first studied in Tokyo as a G.I. Bride during the Korean War. She understood time.
    She survived a decades-long fight with disease through faith, not in God but in herself. Faith... and just the right amount of denial. She didn’t sweat the small stuff, but she was obsessed with
detail. I wish I could talk to her. I talk to her.

-------------
    The movers arrive. Zack, a skinny 20-something hipster wearing a wool stocking cap despite the
unseasonable heat, and Bob, a down-on-his-luck middle-aged tattoo artist. His tattoo shop was destroyed in arson’s fire, and he has a new baby to feed, so he’s moving antiques.
    Together, we organize and load the truck. I give Bob some of Barbara’s oriental art books, Zack some old vinyl. They are happy, especially Bob, who lost all of his art books in the fire.
    We all shake hands, wishing each other the best. They drive carefully up the steep and winding driveway. I lock the front door and take one last walk through Barbara’s beautiful hillside garden.
-------------
    By the time you read this, we will have completed another painful, pointless election cycle. Americans will have made another desperate attempt to elect the corporate puppet who will most effectively suppress the people they hate. It’s like being asked to decide on which carny we want to run our economic roller coaster. “Hmmm, I think I prefer J-Dog the toothless meth-head’s stand on health care- or should I vote for Cletus the Baptist child-molester? His stand on Rowe v. Wade is more to my liking...” but we go on. We get by. Maybe next summer. Just don’t sweat the small stuff and pay attention to detail. We stand in the garden in the shadows of late afternoon and take a deep breath, and go on. Into the fall, and winter....

In this second issue of OBSOLETE! We play with the idea of “summer vacation” with writing and art by contributors from California, New York, Chicago, Iowa, New Orleans, Colorado, New Mexico, and the U.K. and Brazil. No matter where you go, no matter how the politicos howl and bray, summer days are long and the nights are hot, and it’s the time to get away...

2010-10-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Table of Contents:

Coming Soon: OBSOLETE! Magazine #2- due out Nov. 1

2010-10-27T07:04:00.001-07:00

OBSOLETE! #2 Featured Contributors: Gary & Debra Parky

2010-09-28T06:35:00.000-07:00

OBSOLETE! #2 features a photo essay by New Orleans residents Gary and Debra Parky. Their photos vividly capture to impact of the BP oil spill on the social environment of the gulf.

From the intro:
"...In Larose we found an entire side of a building covered with a protest collage (complete with a rendition of Shepard Fairey’s Obama profile); further down Route One we came upon a piece of plywood painted with relevant images that was somewhat reminiscent of R.A. Miller’s work. As we got into Grand Isle it became apparent that this was were we wanted to take this (article), as there was no shortage of homemade, hand painted protests against BP et al that were basically in people’s front yards…"

About Gary & Debra Parky;

"We reside in New Orleans. Every now and then we do something interesting, like the time we had a band that played obscure R&B and Rock & Roll from the late 50s & early 60s, complete with go-go dancers. We called ourselves the SophistiCats and the SophistiKittens, and we released 2 full length CDs and did a lot of cool gigs. Another time we opened up a store on Magazine St called Sputnik Ranch that sold stuff like Western Wear, cowboy boots, designer vinyl toys, lowbrow art and other fun stuff. That was pretty crazy! Sometimes we even ride around the French Quarter on vintage 1950s bikes dressed up like cowboys (the Roy Rogers/Nudie/Manuel suit wearing kind…yes, we have the suits) with our friends. We also like to drive around our neck of the woods and take photos of cool stuff that we’re afraid won’t be around too long. Unfortunately, we’re often right about our choices. Our favorite dogs are Border Collies; we have two. Their names are Bunny and Lux.

Check us out at SputnikRanch.com & TheSophistiCats.com."

Featured Contributor:Marina Deb Ris

2010-09-21T15:49:00.000-07:00

Marina Deb Ris has been picking up trash along Westside beaches and creeks for over a dozen years. Her mission began when she moved from Bondi Beach, Australia to LA’s Westside. “In the beginning I would just pick up stacks of Styrofoam cups and bring them to the local 7-11, but I soon realized that this wasn’t really attacking the root problem. I needed a creative way to draw attention to it. The whole idea of making beach detritus into art started just over two years ago from the realization that the waste we create always comes back to haunt us."

Her work has been regularly on display in juried shows in the Los Angeles area and often lends her artistic talents to Sustainable Works, Heal the Bay, Friends of Ballona, Surfriders and other environmental organizations.

Trained as a graphic designer at the Rhode Island School of Design, Marina’s interest in the intersection of art and the environment has been a constant. “My first goal is to provoke viewers into thinking about the consequences of our habits, and how we can change them. My second goal is to get rid of all the garbage in my garage! In a responsible way, of course.”
Marina Deb Ris' website: http://www.washedup.us/

2010-09-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

OBSOLETE! #2 Featured Contributor: Jonathan Shaw

2010-09-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Shaw is a many things; tattoo artist, writer, world traveler and "whorehouse philosopher". Son of jazzman Artie Shaw and Hollywood starlet Doris Dowling, he has worked as a merchant seaman and a writer at the legendary underground paper, the LA Free Press in the 60's, where he befriended Charles Bukowski. He is the author of several books, including "Narcisa, Our Lady of Ashes" and "Lovesongs to the Dead." His upcoming release is "Scabvendor: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist."

His writing is tough and edgy, sometimes romantic and often brutal. We are proud to be publishing Jonathan's "Night in the Zone" in OBSOLETE #2, due out in October. Until then, check out Jonathan's amazing blog, SCABVENDOR.

OBSOLETE! #2 Featured Contributor: JD King

2010-09-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

Fond Memory: In 1983, I met J.D. King at a release party for STOP! Magazine at the Park Inn. As a fledgeling zinester I was excited to meet him and co-creator John Holmstrom, two of the punk eras great underground cartoonists and godfathers of 'zine culture. I still have that signed copy of STOP! around somewhere....

I have followed J.D.'s work ever since, and it is a huge pleasure and honor to have him as a contributor to OBSOLETE! #2. We are featuring his illustration and short story, "Just a Mirage".

Check out his website at: http://jdkingillustration.com

J.D.'s Bio:
J.D. King is a freelance illustrator, active for over two decades. His work has appeared in many national publications (The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Forbes, The Village Voice, New York, The Progressive, Business Week), as well as ad campaigns (Master/Visa Card, Absolut Vodka, Seybold Seminars), and CD and book covers. Previous to illustration, he was an underground cartoonist with work appearing in several titles including R. Crumb's Weirdo magazine. His avocations are experimental music (J.D. King & The Coachmen, two albums on Ecstatic Peace) and writing fiction. A collection of short stories is scheduled for Water Row Books, and a novel is completed and searching for a publisher. He lives in Remsen, NY and his interests include jazz, reading, bicycling, hiking and cats.

ISSUE #2 is APPROACHING!

2010-09-16T18:28:00.000-07:00

Due out in October, issue #2 includes original writing and artwork by JONATHAN SHAW, J.D. KING, JOOLZ DENBY, QOJAK, DEB RIS, GARY AND DEBRA PARKY, ALISSA BADER, WILDGIRL, an interview with sci-fi writer and futurist KARL SCHROEDER and a special tribute to the late great illustrator PETER ASCHWANDEN.

CAN YOU HELP US MAKE THIS HAPPEN? A small contribution will help us give our contributors a modest payment for their work and pay for the printing and mailing.

Zero History by William Gibson - T minus 24 hrs.

2010-09-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

Book tour dates are available on William Gibson's Website.

photo by Fred Armitage

Paranoia Magazine now offering FREE Downloads!

2010-08-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

The bad news- Paranoia Magazine has ceased to publish their wonderful conspiracy magazine.
The good news- they are publishing in an expanded "more sustainable" book format. Also, you can now download pdfs of back issues for free!

F*uck Me, Ray Bradbury! NSFW 90th Birthday Tribute...

2010-08-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

Now THAT's what I call a birthday tribute! Ray is 90 on Sunday and word has it, he loves this touching homage......

F*ck Me, Ray Bradbury - watch more funny videos

Visit our E-Bay store today- Great books DIRT CHEAP!!

2010-08-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

Check out our E-bay Bookstore... We've got a great eclectic mix of used books at low, low prices!

Proceeds from this sale will go to covering publishing costs for OBSOLETE Magazine, a quarterly tabloid publication in the tradition of the International Times, OZ, The East Village Other, The Berkely Barb, The Chicago Seed, The Whole Earth Catalog, PUNK! and the other great underground rags of days past.... AS a "special thanks" you will receive a complimentary copy of Issue #1 of OBSOLETE Magazine.

It's time to repurpose our culture, hack our technology, and untether our preconceptions- reality is happening- be there!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/OBSOLETE-Magazine/333173264856
http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com

Download a PDF preview of Obsolete #1! FREE!!!

2010-08-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

    For those of you who haven't already ordered your copy of Obsolete #1, we have a SPECIAL OFFER! For a limited time, you can download a pdf preview of issue #1 and read the ENTIRE ISSUE for FREE!!
Great original fiction by Mick Farren and Bart Plantenga, Poetry by Mali Delaney and Todd Colby, Artwork by Amy Digi, Will Grant, Becky Danielson, Tobey Anderson, Blair Gaunt and Don Rock and photos by Alissa Bader and Chris Schipper- all available for you to check out online for FREE.
    But it's a paper magazine, all about the printed word, right? Yes. But mostly it's about YOU taking the time to slow down and spend some time with a format that allows you to enjoy the material, and digest it. No jumps, no hyperlinks, no popups. If you prefer to read it digitally, hey, who are we to object? If you sample it and like what you see, we hope you will consider ordering a paper copy, or making a small donation through the paypal links on this page. Think of it as a freeware magazine- try it for free, and pay what you can.
    Suggestions? Comments? We want to hear them. Want to support Obsolete with by advertising in the magazine and on the website? We welcome your support. Want to submit and article? The next deadline is coming up on Sept.1.....

Download Issue #1 HERE:

Why the word digital is already obsolete

2010-08-02T17:56:00.000-07:00

As technology reaches saturation point, marketing companies are already looking to the 'post- digital' era. Their evolution will be neither easy nor assured

Imagine a world where billboards recognise your face and serve up some precisely targeted advertising for you as you approach. A thrilling prospect for advertisers, if not necessarily for their customers. Well, imagine no longer, because the railway stations of Tokyo are already hosting the first trials of a "digital signage promotion project" that lays the groundwork for just that possibility.

Full Story

Look for Obsolete at Quimby's!

2010-07-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

For folks in Chi-town, stop by Quimby's and pick up a copy of issue #1!

Quimby's
1854 W. North Ave.
Chicago, IL.
60622

Obsolete #2 - Call for Submissions

2010-07-24T05:45:00.001-07:00

Issue # 1 out and it's time to start planning for the fall issue!! The theme is "What I did on my summer vacation", and the deadline for submissions in Sept. 1st, 2010.

Did your band go on tour? Did your neighbor dump several million gallons of garbage in your back yard? Did you work this summer as a road-repair flagman thanks to the Stimulus Bill? Did you spend the summer in a cubicle fantasizing about...anything?

We are looking for fiction, poetry, essays, cartoons and artwork. Check the submission guidelines below for more details.

Robert Anton Wilson - Free your mind.

2010-07-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

This is great little video- RAW's Greatest Hits!!

Free Copies of OBSOLETE! to celebrate Robert Anton Wilson Day!!!!!!!!

2010-07-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

July 23rd- there is something magical about July 23rd.... It marked the beginning of the high holy days in ancient Egypt- the day the "Dog Star" Sirius ascended from behind the sun. This is the origin of the expression "Dog Days of Summer" and marked the flood season of the Nile River before the construction of the Aswan Dam.

July 23rd is the birthday of Haile Selassie, without whom we would have no Reggae. It was Aleister Crowley's wife's birthday. And, of course, it is the birthday of other great magicians like Pee Wee Reese, Raymond Chandler, Woody Harrelson and Monica Lewinsky. It marks the deaths of Pancho Villa and Vic Morrow.

Most importantly, it is Robert Anton Wilson Day- so declared by the city of Santa Cruz in 2003, to celebrate the life and work of one of its most beloved residents.

I discovered the writing of RAW in 1980 when Jerry Farnsworth loaned me his copies of the 3 volume Illuminatus! Trilogy. Jerry- I'm sorry I never gave them back- but if you are out there, I still have them..... RAW's writing changed my life- The way I look at the world.

There would be no OBSOLETE! Magazine without Robert Anton Wilson, and for that reason, we are celebrating July 23rd by giving away copies of issue #1- shipped to you mailbox ANYWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE- free of charge!! (Some restrictions may apply, see fine print). Be one of the first 20 sentient beings to send your mailing address to obmag@feral-tech.com and we will send out your free copy right away!!

Very Cool- Copies of Dodgem Logic #1 signed by Alan Moore....

2010-07-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Dodgem Logic- the underground 'zine from the UK started by the Amazing Alan Moore - is getting better and better with each issue. You can get a copy of #1 signed by Alan Moore at the Dodgem website! Such a deal!!!

Motor City/Maker City Geekstock 2010! Be there!

2010-07-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

In two weeks, we are headed to the Maker Faire in the Motor City- it's shaping up to be Geekstock 2010!

Introductory price is coming to an end.....

2010-07-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

Hey folks- We are busily shipping out copies of OBMAG #1... unfortunately, we are going to have to start charging a bit more to cover shipping, because paypal is BONING us to the tune of 36 cents on each 2-buck copy!!! Sheesh!

Soooo- if you want to get your copy at the current price, do it this week- I'm gonna bump it up on the weekend. You can continue to send 2 beans in cash or check, but if you wanna use paypal, it's gonna cost more starting Saturday. Sorry gang......

The original "Obsolete Man"

2010-07-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Here is the Twilight Zone Episode that inspired the title of the Magazine...Romney Wordsworth is our patron saint...

part2
part3

The SciFi Network used to run a 4th of July TZ marathon every year, but this year, they changed their network's name to "SYFY" and replaced the TZ marathon with "The Greatest American Hero"... I guess Americans are too stupid to appreciate Serling's genius anymore?

Happy 90th Birthday, Ray Harryhausen!!

2010-06-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

He is the greatest- yes GREATEST- film animator who ever lived... his stop action work from the 60's still has more life and artistry than 99% of the CGI work out there.

The Guardian put it best..."After that it was impossible not to consider how different cinema would be without such an inspiring figure. Just going by the list of acolytes who contributed to the evening alone, we'd have no Star Wars, no Terminator, no Toy Story, no Pan's Labyrinth, no Edward Scissorhands, no Jaws, no Shawshank Redemption, no Wallace and certainly no Gromit. Those are just the collateral damage, without Harryhausen there would be no Jason And The Argonauts, no 7th Voyage Of Sinbad and no 20 Million Miles To Earth. That's not a world I'd want to live in. It wouldn't be much fun."

Order FREE promo copies of OBSOLETE #1 !!

2010-06-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

Do you own or operate an independent bookshop, record shop, infoshop or newstand? Do you know someone who does?

Drop me a line and I'll send you a free promo copy of OBSOLETE #1, due out next week!

OBSOLETE! Preview: Beer Mystic by bart plantenga

2010-06-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

OBSOLETE Magazine #1, which will hit the streets the first week of July, features an excerpt from bart plantenga's new novel, but you can get a sneak peek right now!

Beer Mystic: A Novel of Inebriation & Light is a unique literary adventure that will take you on the longest, rowdiest literary pub crawl ever. Follow the Beer Mystic’s story around the world through excerpts in a global network of host magazines.

" Furman Pivo believes he [plus beer] may be the cause of a rash of streetlight outages. This sense of empowerment transforms him into the Beer Mystic. He has a mission and a mandate. Or does he? In any case, 1987 NYC will never be the same and the rest is history or myth or delusion...."

Download Beer Mystic excerpt 37-38 (pdf)
Prior BEER MYSTIC Excerpt #35-36: Sensitive Skin
Next BEER MYSTIC Excerpt #39: White Fungus

Illustration by Tobey Anderson

OBSOLETE #1 goes to Press!

2010-06-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

OBSOLETE! Magazine #! is going to press tomorrow.... I am really excited to have such a great group of contributors for the premiere issue. Look for previews here on the blog starting next week. You can order your copy now.... hey, It's CHEAP!

Obsolete #2 - Call for Submissions

2010-06-11T04:42:00.001-07:00

Issue # 1 is due out in just a few weeks, and it's time to start planning for the fall issue!! The theme is "What I did on my summer vacation", and the deadline for submissions in Sept. 1st, 2010.

We are looking for fiction, poetry, essays, cartoons and artwork. Check the submission guidelines below for more details.

OBMag #1 update: Feral Technology An excerpt from the Feral Technology column in issue #1:

2010-05-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Dymo Label Maker
If you over 25 years old and live in a country that uses the English alphabet, you probably have used a Dymo label maker at some point in your life. The hard plastic embossed labels have adorned everything from file cabinets to sports equipment, lockers to utility panels, notebooks to foreheads, from their invention in 1958 until the advent of digital labelers in the mid 80's. The daisy-wheeled pistol-shaped labelers and their shiny, brightly colored strips with raised white capital letters may not be as popular now as in their heyday, but they are still available, in new, ergonomic designs. The classic models can still be found on ebay, at yard sales and flea markets everywhere.

The peel-and-stick plastic labels still have many advantages over their modern counterparts- they require no electricity to produce, the plastic labels don't fade when exposed to the elements, in fact, they are virtually indestructible. Not to mention that they just look so damned cool. So cool, in fact, that the look of the Dymo embossed label has been duplicated in several font designs, like “Punch-label” and “Plastique.” The font suggests a low-tech, retro, DIY attitude- and we here at OBSOLETE are down with that.

Clothing Company Trademarks Phrases "Locavore" & "Locally Grown". Really?

2010-05-21T05:13:00.001-07:00

"Locally Grown Clothing Co LLC" was featured in last weeks Des Moines Business Record. Two friendly- looking guys quit there jobs at Polo-Ralph Lauren and Hubbell Real Estate and started an apparel company featuring organic cotton tees and bags featuring slogans like "Urban Farmer" and "Locavore". They are selling through farmers markets and hip, environmentally oriented retail outlets. Nice, right? Local guys start a business promoting the local food movement.

What the article also mentions is that the organic cotton tees (their website states "we place a high priority on sourcing and manufacturing our products in the USA") are printed in Oregon (not Des Moines) and that the owners have trademarked the phrases "Locally Grown" and "Locavore". In the article they refer to it as their "intellectual property." Really? Did you guys come up with those phrases on your own?

As far as I can see, there is nothing locally grown about "Locally Grown Clothing Company LLC" - it appears to be two guys trying to cash in on a movement that was built by farmers and foodies while they were busy selling real estate and flogging Polo corporate sweatshop apparel.

Hey little local t-shirt printers making shirts for your local farmers market- your cease and desist letter is in the mail.

History of Post-Apocalyptic Films Entry #5: The Omega Man

2010-05-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

Before there was "I an Legend", before there was Will Smith, before there was CGI, there was Charlton Heston......

IF YOU READ THIS BOOK THE WORLD WILL END.

2010-05-17T05:52:00.000-07:00

The Hypothetical Library is a wonderful site dedicated to the design of jackets for books that will never be written- the current installment is by Neil Gaiman, and, as you would expect, he has fun with the idea....

OBMag #1 update: Feral Technology

2010-05-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from the Feral Technology column in issue #1:

"The futurist Ray Kurzweil once commented that; “I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.” Throughout history, there have been examples of inventions whose usefulness has long out-lived it's inventor. Here are a few examples of 20^th Century designs of the highest order..... In this new era, when the “Amerikan Empire” is sliding into decline and the only thing we seem to be able to manufacture are high fructose corn syrup, “financial instruments” and porn, it might be helpful to look more closely at gadgets that really work- and work, and work.....

The 3-speed Bicycle

Before the 1970s explosion of japanese road bikes with derailleur gears, the English-style 3-speed ruled the roads. In fact, the 3 speed roadster accounts for more than ½ of the bicycles ever built. The Raleigh DL-1, with it's fully enclosed chain-case, rod and roller brakes and giant 28 inch wheels made it the perfect all-terrain bike of it's time. Designed in 1913 for the British military, it eventually served across the empire as the bike of choice of police, mailmen, couriers and commuters from Kingston to Shanghai. The first manufacturing facility built in post-imperial India was a bicycle factory, which still produces an exact replica of the DL-1. Across Asia, the English-style roadster is the platform of choice for cargo bikes and pedi-cabs.

At the heart of every English-style 3 speed is the Sturmey-Archer 3 speed hub. The fully enclosed hub is nearly impervious to the elements, and extremely rugged. To disassemble and reassemble the planetary gears of a 3 speed hub is a lesson in physics, and some might say a peek into the clockwork of the universe (okay, mostly old hippie bike mechanics say that...). Many variations have been built with up to 7 speeds, and the “DynoHub” includes an AC generator for powering lights. In America, 3-speed bikes built in the UK with Sturmey-Archer hubs were sold up until the late 1970s, labeled as Robin Hood, Sears brand, and even K-Mart. Easily found at second hand stores for $50 or less, these workhorses will still out-ride and out-last any cheap bike bought from Walmart....."

Read more in OBSOLETE Magazine #1 - out July 1st.

Featured Contributor: Mick Farren

2010-05-09T06:02:00.000-07:00

Mick Farren is a legendary poet, musician, author, critic, activist, countercultural icon, and one of the last true gonzo journalists. As lead singer and chief anarchist of the legendary Social Deviants, Farren helped blaze the trail for the advent of punk rock. He has co-written songs for the Pink Fairies, Motorhead and Hawkwind, as well as writing over 40 books, including science fiction novels and non-fiction. Farren served as writer and editor of IT, the International Times, one of the UK’s premiere underground newspapers.

His original story "Hard Times at the Ace High" will appear in OBMag #1- Due out in July. In the mean time, visit Micks amazing Blog, DOC40.

History of Post-Apocalyptic Films Entry #4: The Quiet Earth

2010-05-05T05:43:00.000-07:00

OBMag #1 update: Medical Marijuana in Denver

2010-05-01T04:51:00.001-07:00

OBMag #1 will feature a photo-essay on the Medical Marijuana Clinics of Denver by Alissa Bader. Alissa has documented the growth of the “grass-roots” industry in the city that many call “the Medical Marijuana capitol of America”. Colorado legislators are attempting to clamp down on the growth of the storefront clinics, which now outnumber Starbuck's franchises in Denver by nearly 2-1. For now, local entrepreneurs are showing conservative right-wing policy makers a thing or two about the power of the “Free Market”.

Look for OBMag #1 to hit the streets July 1.

Poem In Your Pocket Day.

2010-04-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

From poets.org....

Celebrate national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 29, 2010!
The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 29, 2010.
Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. Create your own Poem In Your Pocket Day event using ideas below or let us know how your plans, projects, and suggestions for Poem In Your Pocket Day by emailing npm@poets.org.

How about this one? You can print it out and carry it with you- maybe share it with a friend?

Beach Attitudes

by Robert Dana

Blessed is the beach, survivor of tides.

And blessed the litter of crown conchs and pen shells, the dead
blue crab in all its electric raiment.

Blessed the nunneries of skimmers,
scuttering and rising, wheeling and falling and settling, ruffling
their red and black-and-white habits.

And blessed be the pacemakers and the peacemakers,

the slow striders, the arthritic joggers, scarred and bent under
their histories, for they're here at last by the sunlit sea.

Blessed Peoria and Manhattan, Ottawa and Green Bay, Pittsburgh,
Dresden.

And blessed their children.

And blessed the lovers for they shall have one perfect day.

Blessed be the dolphin out beyond the furthest buoy,
slaughtering the bright leapers,
for they shall have full bellies.

Blessed, too, the cormorant and the osprey and the pelican
for they are the cherubim and seraphim and archangel.

And blessed be the gull, open throated, screeching, scolding
me to my face,

for he shall have his own place returned to him.
And the glossy lip of the long wave shall have the last kiss.

The Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo - This Weekend

2010-04-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

S.P.A.C.E. ! This weekend! http://www.backporchcomics.com/space.htm

History of Post-Apocalyptic Films, Entry #3: Soylent Green

2010-04-15T04:49:00.000-07:00

New Feature: Free Haiku Classifieds!

2010-04-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

OBSOLETE Magazine is happy to announce that we will be featuring FREE classified advertising in our first issue! You may submit as many as you like, but they MUST be in the form of a haiku poem.

Some examples might include:

lonely days, blank screen
un-employed graphic artist
will design for food
-Jenny- 685.555.6666

Nineteen Sixty Nine
Volkswagen for sale to a
hippie with wrenches
-bob@teledork.net

please email submissions to ricardo@feral-tech.com

The paper copy of OBSOLETE #1 will hit the street July 1st, but if you have a time-sensitive Haiku Classified Ad, please indicate the date and I will post it on the blog and Facebook fan page.

History of Post-Apocalyptic Films, Entry #2: Hardware

2010-04-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

This morning, I met the devil at the crossroads.....

2010-04-11T06:45:00.001-07:00

Out for my morning run, as I approached the point where I turn around to head home, I spotted a mysterious object in the middle of the road. As I got closer, I recognized what it was.... a box of donuts.

How did it get there? Did some bleary-eyed Lutheran leave it on the roof of the car as they hustled the kids into the backseat - in mortal fear of being late for church? Or was it SATAN?

History of Post-Apocalyptic Films Entry #1: Panic in Year Zero

2010-04-10T06:19:00.000-07:00

Review of "Zones of Chaos" by Mick Farren

2010-03-30T06:41:00.001-07:00

Mick Farren is one of the unsung heroes of the modern "underground" - writer, musician, journalist, anarchist, prankster and unrepentant sinner. A godfather of punk and heavy metal, his bands have shaped the music of two generations - He has worked with The Deviants, The Pink Fairies, Hawkwind, Motorhead and many more. As a writer, his dystopian visions helped lay the groundwork for much of what we now expect of science fiction, yet always with a smirk and sense of humor often missing from most recent books and films.

In "Zones of Chaos", Farren throws down with a collection of prose and poetry (and even cartoons) with titles like "Vinnie wants to sell me Hitler's Brain", "The Aztec Calendar Just Ran Out" and "Just a Poor Dogpoet Who Finds Himself Locked Out Of The Cathouse".

"Zones" is an outwardly chaotic mixture of lyrical storytelling, but each piece in the book is a gem, strung together on a broken guitar string that changes quickly from a charming necklace to a garrote, and back again. In" Jailhouse Rock" he tells the tale of spending the Northridge Earthquake locked in the Van Nuys jail. The story, in seven short pages, has it all- drama, humor and biting social commentary. The poem "Anthropomorphism", a eulogy to cartoonist Edward Barker, is full of sweetness and anger, and "Envy" tears apart rock'n'roll idolatry in a mere handful of words.

Farren is unafraid to show his roots and cultural references- reading his work is like watching a great poker player playing an open hand. No tricks, no secrets, no bluffs- just raw talent, well-honed skills and a lifetime of experience that tells him what to throw out, what to keep in, when to fold early, when to go all-in.

The great Michael Moorcock, in the introduction to "Zones" describes Farren's work best - "Mick Farren is an original. Read him and rage. Read him and laugh. Read him and weep. He still has more energy, more life and more creativity than most of those who have come after him. And He's still ahead of his own game. Doing what comes naturally. Cocking a snoot at convention. Telling it like it is. Living in a present made incandescent by his very existence. Showing just how good it is to be alive. "

Vintage Undergrounds from the Vault....

2010-03-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

Check out these images from the incredible vintage undergrounds that my buddy Ed gave me yesterday! Thanks Man!!!!

Yipster Times, Overthrow, Rural America- All from the early 80's. Reading the articles, it's amazing how much things HAVEN'T changed. The one thing that does seem to have changed is the ability of people to stand up to their government! Prozac anyone? Busch Lite chaser, sir? Enjoy the ball game! SLEEP!

The revolution really won't be televised, and you're gonna need something to read when the internet goes away!

Chicago Comics Symposium

2010-03-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

For you Windy City comic mavens, next week is a big week! Not only is Zinefest happening, but a two day geek-out dedicated to the artform we all love...

From the website:
"The stubborn work ethic of Chicago’s comic scene will be explored in the first ever Chicago Comics Symposium, hosted by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) on March 11th and 12th 2010. Through panel discussions with over fifteen local comic makers, the Symposium will investigate the city’s influence on the comic making process, tackling the sad, serious, and silly topics that reign supreme in the realm of sequential art. All events are free and open to the public. "

image by Sarah Becan

When I.T. was cool....

2010-03-02T19:21:00.000-08:00

The International Times Archive is an amazing collection of highlights from the original voice of the UK 60's cultural revolution. The psychedelic graphics, the dangerous prose, the radical politics - International Times was launched in 1966 and help define a style of publication now known as the "alternative weekly". But it was so,so much more....

Editors have included photographer John Hopkins whose portraits of British Rock'n'Roll royalty have become iconographic, as well as Deviants lead singer Mick Farren, who's work we will be including in an upcoming issue of OBSOLETE Magazine.

Submission Guidelines - Read'em here....

2010-02-22T17:44:00.001-08:00

We are interested in high-quality poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, comics, photography and other 2D art. Submissions can be on any subject; however, we are especially interested in work that voices alternative, non-mainstream, even radical views on politics, technology, the environment and modern culture. Poems can be traditional or experimental, fiction of any genre will be considered, and non-fiction should be fast-paced challenging.

Please submit no more than four poems, one short story, two REALLY stories, or one essay. For visual art, please submit no more than 3 pieces in any one media. Want to pitch a story idea? Contact us at the address below.

Please submit work digitally to:
Ricardo@feral-tech.com

By Post:
Rich Dana
OBSOLETE Magazine
POB 72
Victor, IA
52347

Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with your work if you would like it returned. Do not send your only copy! Please do not send original artwork. We ask for first North American serial rights only. Copyright reverts to the author upon publication.

Thanks for spreading the word!!

2010-02-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

A huge thanks to everyone who became on of the first 100 Facebooger fans of OBSOLETE Magazine, and for spreading the word! We are looking for writers, cartoonists, poets and artists to contribute to the first issue, due out on July 4th- so if you rant, scribble, cut'n'paste or muse, keep watching the blog for more details. Submission guidelines and ad rates will be out soon- drop me a line with questions or story ideas!

Submission Guidelines....

2010-02-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, there will be some! Stay tuned..... shoot me an email with questions or story ideas.

THIS JUST IN!

2010-02-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

Issue one will include a limited edition silk-screened cover wrap by Don Rock of TERROR WORLDWIDE and CHAOS CARDS .... Don's work has graced T-Shirts and concert posters for The Butthole Surfers, Survival Research, CBGB, Psychic TV and others.....

Why Publish a Rag? You ask WHY?

2010-02-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, Brothers and Sisters, it's time- time to KICK OUT THE JAMS with a new, radical, revolutionary and raunchy ZINE! No, not an "E-Zine" - this ain't no blog, vlog or twit... this is a real, turn your fingers black, pulpy paper product! A newsprint tabloid, complete with slapdash layout, smudgy printing and inflammatory rhetoric!

Why a tabloid, you ask? Why an anachronistic throwback in this era in which we each have access to a veritable digital cornucopia of information? Because, Dear Reader, THE TIME HAS COME! It is time to embrace the obsolete! Because, to paraphrase an old saw, "You had better be nice to the technologies you meet on the way UP the evolutionary ladder, because you are sure to meet them on the way DOWN...."

Need more reasons? Try these on for size:

Can you fold a blog and shove it fashionably into your back pocket while waiting on line at a punk show, soup kitchen or welfare office? NO!

Can you read a "Tweet" during take off and landing? NO!

Can you line the cat box with and E-Zine? NO!

Can you roll a website into a fuse for a Molotov cocktail? NO!

Can you watch a youtube video after the utility company shuts off your power? MAYBE.... but probably NOT!

On the other hand...

Can you cut letters out of a tabloid to make a hard-to-trace ransom note? YES!

Can you fold a tabloid into a hat? YES!

Can you sit in the park, or on the train, or on the beach, or on the curb outside a punk rock club and read entertaining and thought-provoking articles in a tabloid without the use of an expensive and environmentally-unfriendly hazardous technology, and can you then turn to a complete stranger and offer them said tabloid as a gift, yes a FREE GIFT, impressing them so much with your hipness and earnest generosity that they seek you out later in the evening, strike up an in-depth conversation on the controversial and thought-provoking content of the aforementioned tabloid and eventually invite you back to their flat for guilt-free casual sex? YES, YES and YES!

These are but a few of the reasons to take part in the OBSOLETE Magazine revolution- Submit you rants, scribbles and revelations today!

OBSOLETE Magazine #1 - Submit to me NOW!

2010-02-20T15:02:00.000-08:00

Are you thinking about life in our big, beautiful strip-mall of a country- Life after the fall? Life in post-industrial, post-imperial, post-prosperity, post-democracy, post-technology AMERIKA?

Submit your essays, artwork, poems, articles and comics TODAY!!!!! Deadline is May 1st for the Summer edition- it will be the premiere issue of this chaotic quarterly, so be a part of it!

Questions? ricardo@feral-tech.com