tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73771537402073345942024-03-04T21:37:43.391-08:00Obsolete PressA Blogspot page? Seriously?Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.comBlogger148125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-26662492153340080022022-06-16T04:54:00.004-07:002022-06-16T05:13:24.030-07:00<div id="paypal-button-container-P-1VJ730314J502613PMKVR4UA"></div>
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Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-373004993621145202021-05-30T06:21:00.000-07:002021-05-30T06:34:01.381-07:00 The Hall Mall: History of a Counterculture Institution
NOTE:
A reprint of a REALLY old story I wrote for Little Village about the history of Iowa City's haven for counterculture businesses. The building owners are ending that history this month.
-r
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEQ61bOczsYSg6yeNHPEhYrIdSh2C6EH7lXkKqlycrFbUWQxheLt_sG-OILY7WUXVVgSFuZaSzfTjIe9RoQuEWVtn4Allz4OqGK77nEy1S29wMzgXe7sdSewHeM5Dd7RLtoMTNQsroxsw/s396/feralcramad.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEQ61bOczsYSg6yeNHPEhYrIdSh2C6EH7lXkKqlycrFbUWQxheLt_sG-OILY7WUXVVgSFuZaSzfTjIe9RoQuEWVtn4Allz4OqGK77nEy1S29wMzgXe7sdSewHeM5Dd7RLtoMTNQsroxsw/s320/feralcramad.jpg"/></a></div>
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.<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizIy-C41NM5Ax3Jfig09mTrq34ZUWgk-iLyAn25S1SYM0bXhj0Fqztacg17dAajx-hJy48bZF8Ulv5VT4e5-oZ9_EEPuuifgwzQVJOmPdZwVnarqnYv86dPp_7WQwaRwdR9tXB9U784XY/s752/Capture.PNG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizIy-C41NM5Ax3Jfig09mTrq34ZUWgk-iLyAn25S1SYM0bXhj0Fqztacg17dAajx-hJy48bZF8Ulv5VT4e5-oZ9_EEPuuifgwzQVJOmPdZwVnarqnYv86dPp_7WQwaRwdR9tXB9U784XY/s320/Capture.PNG"/></a></div>
"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?" Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-8858107787071138692013-08-01T05:08:00.001-07:002013-08-01T05:08:35.956-07:00Mick Farren: The last OBSOLETE! Story.This was supposed to be the first of a series of stream-of-conciousness column/rant/stories that Mick was going to write for OBSOLETE! Unfortunately, it was to be the last piece he will write for us. It's classic Mick Farren.<br />
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WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, AGENT X9?</div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black;"><i>”The very
planet proves to be alive. And very pissed off.”</i></span></div>
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The report on you is filed, my
friend. You, Agent X9, above all others, should realize that the data cannot be
reversed. The algorithms of the Corporate Hegemony are inflexible. The images
are graven. They rule with cool and absolute binary authority. The database may
only be amended and items only added to the labyrinths of detail and the
profiles that stretch to the edge of entropy. The report has been filed Agent
X9. It has joined the endless and ultimately personal catalogues of caprices
and conceits. A major responsibility of the Intelligence Committee of the
Corporate Hegemony is to preserve the minutiae of peccadillo and purchase, intimacies
and indiscretions and store them on the mainframes in those mines measureless
to man. It is a vital foundation of the Sociopath Agenda. You were once one of
our most respected Continental Operatives. As such you should be aware that
absolutely nothing is reversible. All structures are indistinguishable one for
another in infinite reflection, standardized by electric dissection and
quantified by template. You are Damned Agent X9. That’s how they would have
expressed it in the ancient days. What’s that? You want a cigarette? The
general regulations specify this as a non-smoking facility but here in the
white room we might make an exception. Will someone fetch Agent X9 a cigarette
and the means with which to light it?</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
report is filed, Agent X9. Smoke your cigarette and reflect how the requirement
is helplessness. The requirement has always been helplessness. Not only from
the victim but from the victor. Our <span style="background: white;">drones
release death from the above. They fall free from a clear blue sky. They do not
consider the merits of the mission or contemplate its morality. They are merely
machines. The same could be said of the machines air-conditioned operators deep
in their protected bunkers. They perform their assigned tasks. They calibrate
for assigned targets. They are compliant. They obey. They do not question. In
fact they strive for excellence in what they do. They believe the </span>infallibility
of their instructions. Remember the good Colonel Benton? <span style="background: white;">"I feel no emotional attachment to the enemy. I
have a duty, and I execute the duty.” </span>You also believed Agent X9. When
you were sent against the Hello Kitty subversion, the Deathless Men, The Horst
Wessel Brigade or the Ancients of Lhasa you also complied with discussion or
argument. What happened, Agent X9? <span style="background: white;">When did you
develop this philosophical schizophrenia? In former times, <span style="color: red;">w</span></span><span style="color: red;">hen you stood are you
in hall of mirrors</span> and the Lady from Shanghai opened fire, you ducked
the shining shards and carried out your mission. What changed, Agent X9? </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="background: white;">Before the battle of Passchendaele a British general
issued an order, “Maps must conform to plans and not plans to maps. Facts that
interfered with plans were impertinencies.” The </span>Intelligence
Committee <span style="background: white;">may not totally agree with this
concept, but it certainly has its historical merits in that it is plainly a
forerunner of modern thinking by </span>the Corporate Hegemony what would
ultimately find form in the Sociopath Agenda. <span style="background: white;">The
mass must move as one with a driven uniformity. For each to plot an individual
course would create the abject chaos of uncharted anarchy. Law enforcement
fills the prisons. It is their vocation. They are not required to reason why,
just fill their quota. The sick die. The poor starve. The churches preach
insanity. The advertising industry creates impossible desires and implausible
expectations. Tolerance is eliminated and fear is substituted. The pliable iron
is set in the soul of men. You have done your part in establishing that
program, Agent X9. Ignorance has been nurtured and nourished. Pornography is
encouraged. Paranoia is cultivated. The underclass is publicized as the
ever-lurking threat. There but for the grace of consumption go you and go I.
Their internecine criminality and territorial gang violence is tacitly fostered
as a means of intimidation. Their drug traffic is clandestinely regulated and
monitored to keep them within the designated boundaries by psycho-chemical
manipulation. Education has now fully collapsed on itself and the children
remain feral, but eruptions are managed and the destruction is confined to
their own habitats. They burn their own turf. The bodycount is media fodder.
The sub-culture is exploitable. Function is inflexible. Function is always
inflexible.</span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Did
you forget that Agent X9 when you flaunted your new found individualism? Individuality
can only be the prerogative of a tiny and elevated elite and, even then, it
must be subject to multiple and geometric restrictions. Public postures of
leadership and private poses of decadence among this quasi-elite are as
narrowly proscribed as the tailored delusions of the masses. They are permitted
their gaudy party favors, their garish notoriety, and extravagant illusions of
superiority, their deviant sex and their own costly and rarified varieties of
recreation drugs. They are dazzled by their own glitter, their metallic
eyelashes, and the contents of their gift bags. They are encouraged to amass
their toys, their mansions, their yachts and their jets, to consume beyond
reason, and leave their vast carbon tire tracks. They are conditioned to strive
for fortunes so inflated they are abstractions. They are taught a magical
arithmetic and a numerical concept of the elemental self-esteem. They are
reminded how they are bright candles but the wind is always waiting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Even we on the Intelligence Committee
do not attempt to think for ourselves. The very fabric of our society dictates
that all levels adhere at all times to the <span style="background: white;">essential
construction of the </span>Corporate Hegemony and the S<span style="background: white;">ociopath Agenda.</span> But you, Agent X9, have elected to think for
yourself. You have embraced a condition is wholly singular, when, at the very
least only the binary is recognized and only the totality is accessible or
acceptable. You appear to believe you are the recipient of a revelation. You
imagine you have seen the error of our ways. You have attempted to apply logic
where logic is inapplicable. You make the essential mistake of believing that
humanity as a species can be saved. As long ago as 1949, the great Harry Lime
notably remarked, <span style="background: white;">“Nobody thinks in terms of
human beings. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped
moving forever?” </span>You ignore the crucial tipping point after which
humanity became fully viral and its general survival became unworthy of
consideration except in small and carefully selected superior enclaves. As for
the rest, it is unfortunate. As a virus they are a destructive infection of the
overall biosphere and only worthy of elimination. The choice is not easy but it
has been made, and that choice is the core of the S<span style="background: white;">ociopath Agenda.</span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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So you see, Agent X9, any misguided attempts you might make
to save humanity or civilization as we know it are far too little and their
lateness defies contemplation. </div>
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Your sorry
attempt to forge a treasonous liaison with the Daughters of <span style="background: white; color: black;">Gaia only serves to demonstrate your
unqualified misinterpretation of the c</span><span style="background: white;">ybernetic
feedback<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><span style="color: black;">systems operated unconsciously by the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span>biota<span style="color: black;">.
You linger in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. Agent X9. Once upon a time, </span>the
</span>Corporate Hegemony assumed itself a total odds with the Lovelock proposal.
They too saw no alternative to preserving humanity if only as
producer/consumers. It was only when the emergent Intelligence Committee
presented evidence of how human beings in their current numbers were inimical
to the <span style="background: white; color: black;">broad stabilization of the conditions
of habitability in a full homeostasis that the higher thinking began to change.
Our masters accepted that t</span><span style="background: white;">his world of
humans is dying, Agent X9. They accepted it very easily. Parts of it are
already dead. They cannot be resuscitated. Our only option was to maintain a
semblance of order as the systems fail. It was the only alternative with which
to retain power. The </span>Corporate Hegemony was well aware they were <span style="background: white;">the descendants of all feudal lords, warrior
chieftains, violent dictators, and totalitarian butchers of old. In their form
at the time of the tipping point they were opportunists motivated by
self-interest and greed, and inclined to dominate or subjugate those around
them through manipulative means. A new order needed to evolve from the previous
policies of destructive self-interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
have no Cossacks, no pogroms, no purges, and no final solution. The secret
police operate primarily for their own amusement. Humanity will be largely
destroyed but we are not the destroyers per se. Lovelock himself made it clear.
</span>"The Earth System behaves as a single, self-regulating procedure
with physical, chemical, biological, and human components". The <span style="background: white; color: black;">Earth's survival depends on the
interaction of living forms with inorganic elements and one of those living
forms is now too degraded to be part of the interaction. The </span>human
component has grievously malfunctioned and Earth will eliminate it. The Earth
itself will destroy humanity. That makes your failed alliance with the
Daughters of <span style="background: white; color: black;">Gaia all the more ironic.
The very planet proves to be alive. And very pissed off. It will push man to
extinction. </span><span style="background: white;">The </span>Corporate Hegemony
may help speed the process in some small ways. An epidemic here. A famine
there. A withdrawal of aid. A nuclear accident or a toxic cloud. The Earth will
do the rest. It will throw off viral humanity. It will cure itself with
earthquakes and volcanoes, fire and flood, climate shift, and things at which
we can only guess. Our own minor efforts are what might be called
transactional. We sacrifice our own kind in return for exceedingly limited
numbers of us being allowed to continue as what might call living fossils. A
tiny percentage of the former species world given sanctuary in protected
enclaves from which we guarantee we will not spread and cause no more harm to
planet. In this we embrace the largest possible picture. The Sociopath Agenda
is, at root, an acceptance that humanity has outgrows any possible usefulness,
and we are making what we can from its demise. Didn’t I make clear that the Corporate
Hegemony was a coterie of advanced whores and evolved <span style="background: white;">opportunists?</span></div>
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But what of you Agent X9. We on the
Intelligence Committee are not the frivolous or gratuitous torturers of old.
Pain is not our entertainment or distraction. Your life will merely be
concluded as painlessly as possible because, knowing all that you know you
cannot be allowed to persist, world at an end. Would care for another
cigarette, Agent X9? And perhaps a blindfold?</div>
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<span style="background: white;">© Mick Farren, Brighton UK,
2013<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-9650797534154072182013-08-01T04:48:00.000-07:002013-08-01T04:48:02.073-07:00Mick Farren: Do Gooders Suck<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I ran across this article a while back in an ancient copy of the international times that I gought at a flea market. It's a good example of Mick Farren's early writing style. And, it's still relevant! </div>
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoWhEkq216-sKpuQzzgQ73BGGUhyphenhyphen4qQ-YjdJYa-vSWTf_meB-1wcBKvcRb2BtrAcYayyCEjrf1ChtO6oxcIsjuIn0mRNV6qqIcFpEBcnlee48kKjhbkttH5TSuRNR030pcfHgDSnf0InI/s1600/dogooders_suck.jpg" height="640" width="428" /></div>
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<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-32356601022598836502013-07-28T11:12:00.001-07:002013-07-28T11:12:37.114-07:00Mick Farren on David Frost<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-49004580320510530492013-07-28T09:23:00.001-07:002013-07-28T09:23:37.766-07:00RIP Mick Farren: The Obsolete Interview<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIuTee0iRQaHRwB6Ju6u1QhNEOgAbj4mxL-3rHiB_MP7VlgzpPgnyfcC5j2fdQfm4y9FcbdbFV3i4alUdobPiWuMIB92cAlO3E5I65RYrT8qeR68qyMXkGQM6Ttx5lurThENIEn3asPb4/s1600/mick1_opt.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIuTee0iRQaHRwB6Ju6u1QhNEOgAbj4mxL-3rHiB_MP7VlgzpPgnyfcC5j2fdQfm4y9FcbdbFV3i4alUdobPiWuMIB92cAlO3E5I65RYrT8qeR68qyMXkGQM6Ttx5lurThENIEn3asPb4/s400/mick1_opt.jpeg" width="375" /></a>I did this interview with Mick late last year- it appears in OBSOLETE! #7 and "The Best of OBSOLETE!"<br />
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He was so generous with his time and loved the underground paper aspect of OBSOLETE!– he was our single most consistent contributor. His guidance and encouragement was a big part of what kept us going.<br />
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OM: Do you think there is room for a real “underground” in
the age of twitter?</div>
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MF:I think it’s probably a double-edged sword. It’s never
too clear what’s meant when we talk about an underground. If we’re talking
about the psychedelic left – which is how I’ve pretty much always described my
political persuasion – then social networks, blogs, Twitter, and, indeed the
whole of the internet, make a lot of things possible that could never have been
achieved in a time of print, limited access to radio, and even more limited
access to broadcast TV. The internet is impossible to control and almost
impossible to censor. It is a near infinite resource of a vast variety of
information. You want to build a bomb or cook crystal meth? Hell, it’s all
there. The potential offered by instant communication has scarcely been
scratched. Flash mobs? Viral protests like the ones during the BP Gulf oil
spill? They are only the tip of a huge subversive iceberg. Like I said though,
it’s a double-edged sword. It’s a huge resource and if you want to find out
about The Rapture or the Earth being flat that’s all there too. The internet is
also wholly transparent. Any passing troll or secret policeman can see exactly
what you’re doing, and, of course, computers never forget anything. A perfect
example occurred during the recent UK riots. Looters were coordinating their
efforts on iPhones and Blackberries but also had the police listening in, and
then rounding them up later using their call records. You have to keep moving
and keep a low profile. It makes visible leaders like <em><span style="font-style: normal;">Julian Assange</span></em> hopelessly vulnerable. </div>
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OM:I feel like digital technology has knocked some of the
sharp edges off western culture. Does your experience as a writer of science
fiction inform how you feel about the new media environment? Is this the future
you would have expected?</div>
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MF:I guess this is close to the future I expected. It’s not
the utopia I dreamed about, but it also isn’t the glow-in-the-dark nuclear
wasteland that was our worst-case scenario back in the 20<sup>th</sup> century.
I’m not one of those ancient 1960s freaks who whine about the revolution being
a lost boulevard of broken dreams. The gay movement, despite a fatal plague,
has made great advances. Feminism is changing the face of society. We warned of
a lot of current dangers, especially in the area of the environment and the
spread of global totalitarian capitalism, but we were ignored, often ridiculed,
and now the price is being paid. Yes, we told you so, but you chose to believe
the oil baron’s media shills! The current media environment is nothing short of
bonkers since Craig’s List gutted the newspapers – both mainstream and
alternative – by taking away the classified ads. “50 Shades of Grey” is a
bestseller while small independent imprints are publishing any worthwhile
writing and inspired experiments in print. Literature and especially poetry is
rapidly coming a wholly DIY business – only business is hardly the right word
since no money is being made on the web except by Amazon. Sony can’t keep free
Bob Dylan off YouTube; creativity on the internet – that may well be the
repository of most popular creativity – can’t be supported by paid corporate
advertising and t-shirts. Ultimately the web may spawn a form of
cyber-socialism since capitalism can’t really handle it except by constantly
reconfiguring the hard and software to sell us new but hardly improved versions
of the same old shit..<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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OM: In your autobiography “Give the Anarchist a Cigarette”,
you describe your time on the scene in London in the 60's, and it reads to me
as having been ground zero for the “Modern Age”. In many ways it seems more
modern than the present, despite our technological advances. There was an
energy and excitement about the future, and revolutionary changes in all
aspects of life. Where do you think that went?</div>
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MF: In the 1960s, we were on our way to the Moon; we thought
we were going to Mars and Stanley Kubrick told us we’d make it to the moons of
Jupiter by 2001. We took our drugs and believed all things were possible. The
floodgates looked wide open, even as the corporate filters were closing on us.
Obviously I am extremely disappointed that all we’ve now got in the future is
fancy phones, robot drones, CCTV and Twitter. Some developments are nothing
short of bizarre. The Black Panther Party is nostalgic history, but America
elects center right black president. Norman Spinrad predicted in his 1969 novel
“Bug Jack Barron” that, by around 1980, Acapulco Golds<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>– legal packaged marijuana – is sold
across the counter. In reality the War On Drugs drags on into a new century and
is close to destroying Mexico. Where do I think the energy and excitement went?
I think it got hard when it ceased to be just a sex, drugs, and rock & roll
culture war and we hit the real thing. We were taking on the whole concept of
capitalism. It might not look like it, but capitalism is fighting for its life
and capitalism fights hard and dirty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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OM: Are you seeing signs of real revolution anywhere now?</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">MF: I think
it’s all around us. There’s Occupy, there’s the One Percent. But, for the
moment, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for America. A century ago the
Bolsheviks had no trouble motivating a Russian underclass that was starving and
oppressed by Cossacks. How you move a proletariat that weighs 500 pounds, lives
on animal fat and high fructose corn syrup, and is hard wired to Fox News and
the Bible is beyond me. You have to look past the USA and think more
internationally. Kids in the UK went one a mindless instinctive rampage looting
and burning. The workers in Greece and Spain have been pushed much too close to
the edge by the so-called austerity – a racket that’s truly nothing more than a
global scam for the rich to get <i>all </i></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">of the money. They’re mad as hell and not going
to take it much longer. Then there’s the Arab Spring in the Middle East, which
is a real AK47 shooting revolution. The only problem there is it will most
likely be taken over by jihadists who will drag it back into a very nasty
thirteenth century. I hear interesting things coming out of Bangalore, the
Indian DIY Silicon Valley. Indeed, my revolutionary bets are on the “BRICK”
nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and Korea. Pussy Riot may be showing us
all the way of the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">OM: In
addition to being too fat to fight, Americans are too medicated as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the last issue of OBSOLETE! we ran a
story called "Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnoses as Mentally Ill",
in which psychiatrist Bruce Levine lays out how the American medical
establishment is actively engaged in maintaining the status quo by medicating
away dissent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other end,
kids in the Northwest are getting arrested for possession of anarchist
literature, essentially thought crimes. I know that the UK is surpassing even
the US in CCTV use and other high tech surveillance- since returning to live in
the England, do you see that having an effect on the national consciousness?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">MF: This
shit has been going on at least since Napoleon banged up The Marquis de Sade in
the lunatic asylum at Charenton, Let’s not forget that De Sade – aside from
being a world class perv – was also an early utopian socialist. Stalin was very
good at locking away dissidents in mental hospitals. In the US ECT and lobotomy
were 20<sup>th</sup> century favourites for keeping the rebellious in line.
Think of Francis Farmer or the fictional McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoos
Nest. Nurse Ratched is the scourge of though crime. In the Levittown,
production-line conformity of the 1950s, the CIA had a mission goal of creating
what they dubbed the “psycho-civilized society”. Totalitarian capitalism where
conformity would be maintained with speed, barbiturates, and meprobamate happy
pills (Milltowns) a pre-Valium tranquilliser, reinforcing a constant barrage of
anti-Soviet better-dead-than-Red paranoia and massive sexual repression. I
believe Elvis Presley and rock & roll did a whole lot to upset that apple
cart. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I would
venture that a slightly different perspective on the war on drugs is that it’s
a face-off between Ritalin, Adderall, Valium, Prozac and Thorazine on one side
and pot, acid, MDMA, and DMT (if we could get it) on the other. It’s the
lockdown drugs against the liberating drugs. Those are the chemical battle
lines. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I don’t
worry about CCTV too much because I’m so fucking ancient I don’t participate in
street actions any more, I do notice that teen fashions now tend to conceal the
face – masks, hoodies, balaclavas etc. (Pussy Riot), anything to hide the
facial biometrics. I’m hoping we will have a future fad for really elaborate
renaissance-style masks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">OM: At some
point in the 70's you turned from writing for the underground press and song
writing to writing Sci Fi. I first got on board with <i>The Song of Phaid the
Gambler</i></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">in the
early 80's, but then went back to <i>DNA Cowboys</i></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> and other earlier stuff. How did you start
writing Sci Fi- were you a fan as a kid and does that relate in any way to the
political or musical sides of your work? There is a thread of Sci Fi
sensibility in the bands you have written for- Hawkwind, Mötorhead.... <span style="color: red;"></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I really
don’t have a neat answer for this. I was a space cadet before I was a rocker.
It’s like the two halves of my brain and it’s all interconnected. I started at
five years old with a Brit comic Dan Dare Pilot of The Future and Flash Gordon
and just sailed on from there. Sci Fi has such potential for stretching one’s
imagination. The path led through Arthur C. Clarke, Orwell, Phil Dick, Ellison,
Mike Moorcock, (who is a friend) and on to Uncle Bill Burroughs (who was a
mentor), which meshed neatly with the surreal “Gates Of Eden” period of Bob
Dylan. The DNA Cowboys books were really an attempt to set a narrative in a
quasi-Dylan world. And of course, Sci Fi was an essential preparation for
psychedelic drugs. It’s also a perfect medium for satire and oblique political
commentary When I started, I didn’t really didn’t give up anything else, I was
working at the NME and writing songs with Lemmy and Larry Wallis and later Andy
Colquhoun with whom I still work today. I just wasn’t singing in a band right
then which gave me some time on my hands and you can only watch so much
television after the bars close. This all makes perfect sense to me. I don’t
know about anyone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">OM: Sci Fi has been very much
fan-driven since it's earliest days, as was rock and roll. The
"Fanzine" goes back to early 20th century amateur Sci Fi
publications, long before the pre-internet punk rock "zine"
explosion. Now, the blogosphere is like one giant fanzine. As a veteran
of the indie publishing scene, what roll do you see for indie book publishers
in the coming years?</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Whatever
future I might have in print – especially now I’m concentrating on poetry and
experimental fiction – would seem to be entirely in indie publishing. There’s
essentially no longer any point in dealing with the major publishing houses in
NYC or London. They only want to publish Harry Potter, 50 Shades of Grey and
cookbooks. The real question is how much of the work I’m doing will be in
print. I firmly believe that popular art and popular culture always adapts
itself to the prevailing technology. The 1960s underground press – particularly
the very colourful one like Oz (UK) and The Oracle (Bay Area) – got real jiggy
with the web offset printing. Punk zines of the 1970s where make possible by
fairly sophisticated copier machines like the Cannon 500. Now we have all the
ramifications of the internet from Twitter to YouTube, to Pirate Bay. On the
other hand, people still have a need for tangible objects from the past. The
obvious example is music on vinyl. (Or Obsolete) I could see a lot of my
fiction coming out as ebooks. (Although I do see a problem with a lack of
visual reinforcement. Where would all those Conan books have been without the
Frank Frazetta covers?) Other stuff, especially poetry lends itself better to
print. Book will increasingly become object rather than just delivery systems
for information. They will be read but also be treasured, collected, and put on
shelves or left lying around to impress visitors. All in all, I’m open to
anything, open to offers, and riding into the purple sunset to see what happens
next. Right now I’m pushing the novelette Road Movie that is published by Penny
Ante. The UK indie publisher Headpress will be bringing out the first deluxe
hardback edition of Elvis Died For Somebody’s Sins But Not Mine, which is a
mammoth “greatest hits” collection of my essays, commentary, short stories
etc., and I also wrote a learned introduction to a coffee table collection
called Classic Rock Posters. And back catalogue is still up on Amazon. (Mick
has left the computer.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-65171763344936758782013-07-28T08:23:00.003-07:002013-07-28T08:23:21.760-07:00Mick Farren: 3 September 1943 - 27 July 2013<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEtj0Njfc51A3V1Xwt3Tu7c8Wt_vapGy2sn8W2cSYKvp7Du5WRbFRplRHGnTSp0Jg4ZQRsFIKfQagieQKSKRZsBiRQVlqBxmn9lSX-KTCiMdbRuSm_nugWkrGhRd6RSR1MVz7YkwqOnu4/s1600/anarchist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEtj0Njfc51A3V1Xwt3Tu7c8Wt_vapGy2sn8W2cSYKvp7Du5WRbFRplRHGnTSp0Jg4ZQRsFIKfQagieQKSKRZsBiRQVlqBxmn9lSX-KTCiMdbRuSm_nugWkrGhRd6RSR1MVz7YkwqOnu4/s1600/anarchist.jpg" /></a>Sad, sad news in the OBSOLETE! Magazine universe today. The great Mick
Farren collapsed on stage and died last night. He was our most
consistent contributor and our spiritual guru. He was a fucking wildman,
and died with his boots on. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way.<br /><br />Mick Farren was 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. He contributed to three of eight issues of OBSOLETE!, and appeared in "The Best of OBSOLETE!"<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8l9kAhka29EkIAE1P4XGf2CvkCPACOrI4U4lYce6LUZnbfcuLntGiZzW2fMxRQW5isR01ZO6hhXfszkUbVN_KJMAoCvdi1_FZ4pmpiVsgFzp_m7Ca5LaVVVG7h3A-DWrTO63M4nQUE5E/s1600/mick+books.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIlcry3Ohzo2YTBZ8ET8v8frP3cJSKDxgSAzKW_ZJsiDI0YWNXLIcJwCb4zIpkoVq6ZsFsusuVTXH9WoMx2fOor-T1nKc8PQa8Lrefl3uM5GUc52RKPDrIwjHOMY41eVtVyMsYlEP9uIQ/s1600/deviants300513w.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIlcry3Ohzo2YTBZ8ET8v8frP3cJSKDxgSAzKW_ZJsiDI0YWNXLIcJwCb4zIpkoVq6ZsFsusuVTXH9WoMx2fOor-T1nKc8PQa8Lrefl3uM5GUc52RKPDrIwjHOMY41eVtVyMsYlEP9uIQ/s320/deviants300513w.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjocvlKFS4NEfL_GO4EfCmHc24vLi4guTBu8mCYopu89NddfTwJ_qhC2WmenU9Z8Yw7TM4Gpf8f5APBcS-zKyRIW4Xhz8GQcqSOB9yl1QSd5-lhf19nFLyfnF-_kHd2-IXiYAU_qMTnt7o/s1600/Mick+signing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjocvlKFS4NEfL_GO4EfCmHc24vLi4guTBu8mCYopu89NddfTwJ_qhC2WmenU9Z8Yw7TM4Gpf8f5APBcS-zKyRIW4Xhz8GQcqSOB9yl1QSd5-lhf19nFLyfnF-_kHd2-IXiYAU_qMTnt7o/s1600/Mick+signing.jpg" /></a></div>
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<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-60349850843099767532013-07-21T07:28:00.001-07:002013-07-23T04:55:58.735-07:00July 23rd is Robert Anton Wilson Day!!<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQaV7colsvDPBKIbsn8hJwC0ZDm91ovbRY05EjuIk3tjlLIJs7Bck8tctBE9YQE6Tlks8a-wdp7LifvhXmeRscrsxgc2nUSezWFpUuQxSVg9zBMkWW4Brzmh6H-rTn90yERvVhJmWoQSU/s1600/RAW.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQaV7colsvDPBKIbsn8hJwC0ZDm91ovbRY05EjuIk3tjlLIJs7Bck8tctBE9YQE6Tlks8a-wdp7LifvhXmeRscrsxgc2nUSezWFpUuQxSVg9zBMkWW4Brzmh6H-rTn90yERvVhJmWoQSU/s320/RAW.jpg" width="225" /></a><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Please post your favorite Bob Quote on FB, G+ or Twitter with #RAWDay!</i></span></span><br />
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Each year, during the Dog Days of
summer, I get the urge to re-read Robert Anton Wilson.</div>
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It would be easy to dismiss the impulse
as nostalgia- after all, reading Bob was part of my passage to
manhood- stoned, anti-establishment hippy-punk manhood. I spent many
a blistering summer afternoon in crummy, un-airconditioned apartments
smelling of dirty cat boxes, stale beer and Nag Champa, expanding my
mind to <a href="http://www.rawilson.com/bookstore.html">books</a> like <i>The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple,
Leviathan, Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising, Schrodingers Cat and
Right Where You Are Sitting Now</i>. I don't think it's just nostalgia,
however, to re-read RAW. There is something magical about the <a href="http://www.space.com/8946-dog-days-summer-celestial-origin.html">Dog Days</a>, and it always seems like an appropriate time to re-visit the
work of one of the late 20<sup>th</sup> century's most underrated
masters of High Weirdness.</div>
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July 23<sup>rd</sup> was designated as
Robert Anton Wilson Day by the City of Santa Cruz, California in
2003. Wilson had become a beloved resident character in Santa Cruz,
and a political activist for Medical Marijuana (which he used to
treat the symptoms of the post-polio syndrome which was slowly
killing him) and against what he called the “TSOG” (Tsarist
Occupation Government). <a href="http://www.rawilson.com/about.html"> Mayor Emily Reilly declared:</a></div>
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“<span style="font-size: x-small;">WHEREAS ROBERT ANTON
WILSON MAY BE CONSIDERED AS BOTH THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURY'S LEADING
REALITY THEORIST, GUERRILLA ONTOLOGIST, PSYCHEDELIC MAGICKIAN,
STATIRIC OLD CRANK, OUTER HEAD OF THE ILLUMINATI, QUANTUM
PSYCHOLOGIST, SIT-DOWN COMIC/PHILOSOPHER,<br />NEW AGE TEACHER, AND
DISCORDIAN POPE; and...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">WHEREAS ROBERT ANTON
WILSON EMPLOYS WITH AND HUMOR SPANNING FIVE DECADES TO RESIST THE
IMPERIAL SCHEMES OF NATIONAL POLITICOS, THROUGH SUCH ACTIONS AS DAILY
EMAIL TO ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT DETAILING HIS PERSONAL
ACTIVITIES, THEREBY SPARING GOVERNMENT THE EXPENSE AND TROUBLE OF
KEEPING HIM UNDER SURVEILLANCE; and </span>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">WHEREAS ROBERT ANTON WILSON IS A MAN OF SUCH MODESTY
AND PURITY OF HEART THAT HE VIEWS HIS GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT AS HIS
LIFETIME LOVE AFFAIR WITH HIS WIFE, THE LATE POET, ARLEN RILEY
WILSON:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">NOW, THEREFORE, I, EMILY REILLY, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF
SANTA CRUZ, DO HEREBY PROCLAIM JULY 23, 2003 AS" ROBERT ANTON
WILSON DAY" IN THE CITY OF SANTA CRUZ AND ENCOURAGE ALL CITIZENS
TO JOIN ME IN COMMENDING HIM FOR CONSISTENTLY EXTENDING THE
BOUNDARIES OF MODERN THOUGHT AND PROVIDING A MODEL OF COURAGE AND
INTELLIGENCE IN AN AGE SADLY SHORT ON HEROES.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">July 23<sup>rd</sup> is the most appropriate day to
remember Bob, and choosing the date, rather than his birthday,
exhibits the sense of humor of the Santa Cruz city government so
absent among most bureaucrats. For it was on July 23<sup>rd</sup>,
1973, that Bob claims to have been contacted by aliens. Or a Giant
Rabbit from Count Kerry. Bob was also quick to point out that it was
Monica Lewinsky's birthday. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCdKBRAZ05_nqIGsRcOkcN2JdYjFBsPc8SFFPi54NA1c_c8ANZuHnzIe45l46n8vYusJw-JJFS8iAY_ZGf9T2XPE1iywBy7tzF6Bn4oOnehzbTHFceAqywmalbCaol3Pe9TWhL3jTNnsA/s1600/illuminatus.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCdKBRAZ05_nqIGsRcOkcN2JdYjFBsPc8SFFPi54NA1c_c8ANZuHnzIe45l46n8vYusJw-JJFS8iAY_ZGf9T2XPE1iywBy7tzF6Bn4oOnehzbTHFceAqywmalbCaol3Pe9TWhL3jTNnsA/s320/illuminatus.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: small;">July 23<sup>rd</sup> coincides with the rising of
“the Dog Star”, Sirius (the root of the term “Dog Days”)
which has mystical significance for ancient cultures from the
Egyptians to the Romans, to the African Dogon tribe. For me, it is
has always been time for the greatest interaction with the “the
cosmos”. The night skies are spectacular. The days are long, but
getting shorter- garden and outdoor projects take on a greater
urgency. At the same time, the heat, and all of the related
malfunctions both personally and technologically that come along with
it, tend to add to the “weirdness” factor. Cell phones,
computers, cars etc. tend to go “on the fritz”. Animals act
strangely. Insects are in full assault on all fronts. This year,
the Midwestern drought adds to the biblical (or Mayan) “end times”
vibe, while the skies around our little organic compound are abuzz
with crop dusters bombarding the corporate monocrop corn/bean fields
with pesticides, hoping to rescue what they can from the parched
genetically-modified franken-plants.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">But as Bob said, “</span>Humans live through their
myths and only endure their realities,” and so each summer I drag
out some of RAW's books. During a season when the high priests of
technology are locked in a death match with the ghost in the machine,
faieries, aliens and giant rabbits from County Kerry, it helps to
remember that our reality is what we make of it, both technologically
and mythically.<br />
<br />
So each year, we celebrate the life and writing on Robert Anton
Wilson, on this, the weirdest of all days. As you go about your day,
look for the Sirians. They are there. They will talk to you, if you
listen. <a href="http://www.fnord.org/occult/discordia/text/what.is.fnord">FNORD</a>.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“All phenomena are real in some
sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and
meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and
real and unreal and meaningless in some sense. “ - Robert Anton
Wilson<br />
<br />
<i>This article was originally posted in 2012, hence the possibly confusing drought comments... </i></div>
Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-8083542035981503612013-07-11T05:53:00.001-07:002013-07-11T06:09:53.740-07:00LAST DAY! Get your free copy of OBSOLETE! #8!!<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As part of the soft-launch special for
our <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/237843661/obsolete-magazine-the-journal-of-diy-analog-anarch">Kickstarter campaign</a>, we have been offering to mail FREE COPIES
of <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/blog/obsolete-8-is-here/">OBSOLETE! #8 </a>to anyone who requests them. The response has been
phenomenal!
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpD33u7VJRQNqw0cdRDKrBvWrkcROVFdcD42HtjBKYUoAb2jE1b6B5ID-uYvA-Z6uBG6SIkaFnIDws38QAtARaPS4oGipCOa2beWUrnhjAn1HMQMDVXhHSzu4p1-BmE3TCki8rZU7EUfo/s1600/cover8_005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpD33u7VJRQNqw0cdRDKrBvWrkcROVFdcD42HtjBKYUoAb2jE1b6B5ID-uYvA-Z6uBG6SIkaFnIDws38QAtARaPS4oGipCOa2beWUrnhjAn1HMQMDVXhHSzu4p1-BmE3TCki8rZU7EUfo/s320/cover8_005.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Tomorrow marks the official 30-Day
countdown for the campaign, so today is the LAST DAY to request your
free copy of issue #8. I hope you will take advantage of the offer,
and I hope you will consider pledging to our <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/237843661/obsolete-magazine-the-journal-of-diy-analog-anarch">Kickstarter</a>. It's a
quixotic goal, we know– but if we make it, we will be able to
continue to print and ship the newsprint tabloid, this voice of the
analog underground, AND pay our contributors a fair price for their
writing and artwork. That's important to us, and I hope it is to you,
too!</div>
<br />
Send your request (remember to include your mailing address!) through the <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/contact/">contact page</a> at <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/">obsolete-press.com</a>... Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-78984752338478082992013-07-10T10:46:00.002-07:002013-07-10T10:46:37.139-07:00Our new Radio Ad!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Thanks to Stephanie Murphy of <a href="http://www.porctherapy.com/">Porc Therapy</a> for recording this fantastic audio ad for us! I slapped it over a video collage on YouTube to make it easier to share....</div>
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<br /></div>
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Listen for the ad on <a href="http://www.freetalklive.com/">Free Talk Live.</a> </div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/FThEgVIJOtw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-13319079417688735182013-07-06T06:40:00.000-07:002013-07-06T06:40:06.601-07:00Ricardo Feral of OBSOLETE! is now on Twitter.Yes, I'm dipping a toe in the Twitter infostream. Find me at: <a href="https://twitter.com/RicardoFeral">https://twitter.com/RicardoFeral</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsggLdOKTfTeMF0A4ZSjdelrCSfNZnSAjqhoYScQoQJc8kxYnd3lGbVxmj_qv9bfHESF78M1xXzN0avnJk-M0qqun4jlvsHgPFuxOhWn215n8KdYL96UigTTavICagqdbVmhX09od9ek4/s1600/xray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsggLdOKTfTeMF0A4ZSjdelrCSfNZnSAjqhoYScQoQJc8kxYnd3lGbVxmj_qv9bfHESF78M1xXzN0avnJk-M0qqun4jlvsHgPFuxOhWn215n8KdYL96UigTTavICagqdbVmhX09od9ek4/s320/xray.jpg" width="202" /></a></div>
<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-15273210098202720122013-06-26T06:40:00.002-07:002013-06-26T06:40:54.291-07:00 Soft Launch Special Continues...
<br />
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</div>
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<a href="http://obsolete-press.com/contact/" target="_blank"><i><b>Never read OBSOLETE!? We'll mail you a FREE COPY!* </b></i></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdg5DdM64-A8j_svRUl4PxuIstFB92X6uUwtpHs9BkQge1jT8KAbveuktROZ_2P1bRL14ZK8kdoisIX4MOqZMsJ3yszHj9uEx4qJaPlCgRX1CC_eiCExd93xKxIKR6JVZsvyCA-X34jKA/s1600/johannes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdg5DdM64-A8j_svRUl4PxuIstFB92X6uUwtpHs9BkQge1jT8KAbveuktROZ_2P1bRL14ZK8kdoisIX4MOqZMsJ3yszHj9uEx4qJaPlCgRX1CC_eiCExd93xKxIKR6JVZsvyCA-X34jKA/s320/johannes.jpg" width="256" /></a>This week, we distributed over 2000 copies of the new <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/blog/obsolete-8-is-here/" target="_blank">OBSOLETE! #8</a>–
shipping directly to supporters and “guerilla distributors” from coast
to coast, and placing stacks at locally-owned businesses. More copies
will go out this summer through website orders and tabling at cons, book
fairs, zine fests and other events.<br />
Unfortunately, our business
model is slightly flawed. It turns out, you can't pay writers and
artists, and give the magazine away for free, and not go broke. Who
knew? (They never explained this to me in art school....)<br />
So, we
are going to a subscription model, and using Kickstarter because it
provides a platform where there is NO RISK to the subscribers- if we
don't raise enough to continue publishing, you will be charged nothing,
and we will go back to printing zines on a ditto machine.<br />
Would you like a bundle to distribute in your town, and help spread the word about OBSOLETE!? <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/contact/" target="_blank">Contact us</a> and we'll make it happen!<br />
*(supply limited, US only...)<br />
<br />
And Please- Check out the <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/237843661/obsolete-magazine-the-journal-of-diy-analog-anarch">Kickstarter Campaign </a>and pledge if you can! <br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<a class="button small prev-post" href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/237843661/obsolete-magazine-the-journal-of-diy-analog-anarch/posts/516599"><span class="ss-icon ss-navigateleft"></span></a>Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-65326373491056931732013-06-21T07:28:00.001-07:002013-06-21T07:29:43.307-07:00 Soft Launch Special: Get a Free Copy of OBSOLETE! #8 Because <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/magazines/" target="_blank">OBSOLETE!</a>
is a real, get your fingers dirty newsprint tabloid, we opted for a 60
day <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/237843661/obsolete-magazine-the-journal-of-diy-analog-anarch/posts/516599">Kickstarter campaign</a> to give us time to get papers out on the street
and into the hands of our fellow Analog Anarchists. We will go into
full swing with promotions on July 11th, but in the mean time, <b>we are offering to mail a sample copy of OBSOLETE! #8, hot off of the presses, to YOU– free of charge. </b><br />
<a href="http://obsolete-press.com/contact/" target="_blank">Just send us your mailing address with the subject "Sample Copy"</a>, get your free copy of issue #8 and decide for yourself if <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/magazines/" target="_blank">OBSOLETE!</a>
is worth your support. If you decide to pledge at $25 or more (and the
campaign is successful) you will receive issues 9-12 delivered to your
door.<br />
Thanks everybody! And please, share these updates with your friends. Together, we can keep OBSOLETE! alive!!!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhi_4bFpE7rPiLl9NxDzPCXVH_ewLXwRwHAersZOBPyCk_-s8Hzc1Rx0dfCa5ZFqyVT65md9qobOtZbUc3vBNZmGnqQGcLnPA-yOYL_O4LgyeWV1pyhhCeWnWINvPpmDay9ImEcFis5VE/s1600/obs8FBmasthead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhi_4bFpE7rPiLl9NxDzPCXVH_ewLXwRwHAersZOBPyCk_-s8Hzc1Rx0dfCa5ZFqyVT65md9qobOtZbUc3vBNZmGnqQGcLnPA-yOYL_O4LgyeWV1pyhhCeWnWINvPpmDay9ImEcFis5VE/s400/obs8FBmasthead.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-15064643088725007752013-06-17T07:36:00.001-07:002013-06-17T07:36:12.694-07:00Two Iowa Readings By OBSOLETE! Poetry Editor W. Joe Hoppe6/18/13 - Cedar Rapids, New Bo Books: Details at the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/263989083739571/">Facebook Event Page</a><br />
6/19/13 - Iowa City, Fair Grounds Coffee House: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/554925864553051/">Facebook Event Page</a><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl">Please join us for a live reading of new and selected work by Austin, Texas poet W. Joe Hoppe.<br /> <br />
Iowa's Obsolete Press published Joe's second book of poems, Diamond
Plate, and Joe serves as poetry editor for OBSOLETE! Magazine.<br /> <br />
"Diamond Plate is a junkyard sutra, a rock-and-roll dharma, a tattooed
vision of eternity. In the palm of your hand there's a planet, alongside
a sick pet rat, a tree that weeps, and some spilled beer. W. Joe Hoppe
offers us poems of ordinary transcendence, with a child-a real
child-rising out of the rubble." - Nick Flynn, author of Another
Bullshit Night in Suck City<br /> <br /> For more info, visit <a href="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.obsolete-press.com&h=CAQHLvcI8&s=1" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">www.obsolete-press.com</a></span></span> <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvG8qvm15QWkDn67B3i54NAv8yTJaw5_fvtQznDYi2brq06DZevKss3oNwgyyG8sb9k8Ux2ih2ruBRdF01oQEe6bwtyuctL1YtSZlDWFI3aUhDTtD8YSy91RRs1sDa2nCeIuKHAdN21kk/s1600/1000281_4627000723198_794122895_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvG8qvm15QWkDn67B3i54NAv8yTJaw5_fvtQznDYi2brq06DZevKss3oNwgyyG8sb9k8Ux2ih2ruBRdF01oQEe6bwtyuctL1YtSZlDWFI3aUhDTtD8YSy91RRs1sDa2nCeIuKHAdN21kk/s640/1000281_4627000723198_794122895_n.jpg" width="492" /></a></div>
<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-25331601831983555802013-06-17T06:32:00.001-07:002013-06-21T05:56:33.486-07:00OBSOLETE! #8 IS HERE!<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinvbe85Tvek1ZdkJanpSXlUxVvupkskKYlo3VG-nv20OnkhgVCbq_d6DVe5mZs_j1tXCbeQ5kIxBMveHrqum2Ygz18fAvU1VX19Ne5ACbDKpUBBs67U1d1blW7_vyenJpIhI2GOVUNcg/s1600/cover8_005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinvbe85Tvek1ZdkJanpSXlUxVvupkskKYlo3VG-nv20OnkhgVCbq_d6DVe5mZs_j1tXCbeQ5kIxBMveHrqum2Ygz18fAvU1VX19Ne5ACbDKpUBBs67U1d1blW7_vyenJpIhI2GOVUNcg/s400/cover8_005.jpg" width="257" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><b>The latest edition of the OBSOLETE! is
hot off the press!</b> The theme of this issue is “Obsolete Media:
It's Alive!”, and features articles on making art with ancient
computers, low-power FM radio, “Numbers Stations” and the history
of “Dazzle” camouflage. ObMag #8 is also packed with poetry,
comics, art and fiction, featuring original work by <a href="http://doc40.blogspot.com/">Mick Farren</a> and
an exclusive preview of <a href="http://www.christianschoon.com/">Christian Schoon's </a>new SciFi novel <i>Zenn
Scarlett</i>. </span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: black;">Please
help support OBSOLETE!</span></b></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b>OBSOLETE!
Magazine</b> is at a turning point. With the help of supporters like you,
we have given away more than 14,000 copies of issues 1-8 over the
last 3 years. Unfortunately, the “Free Press” model is no longer
sustainable for us. Now, we need to raise some real money to keep the
paper alive, and we are putting it in the hands of you, the readers.
By using Kickstarter and the “All or Nothing” approach, we will
raise the funds to make the next four issues possible– or we will
cease to publish in our current format.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">You
can pledge by going to our <a href="http://goo.gl/2Sou8">Kickstarter page.</a> Rewards include
subscriptions to the next four issues, t-shirts, books, newspaper
carrier bags and more. If we do not reach our goal, you will not be
charged for your pledge.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><b>EARLY
SUPPORTER SPECIAL:</b> For the first 20 people to pledge at $10 or more,
you will receive a free copy of #8 mailed to your door (or pdf if you
prefer). If the campaign is unsuccessful, you will not be charged for
your pledge, but you will still receive your free copy.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span>Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-6764425275393646312013-06-15T05:56:00.002-07:002013-06-15T05:56:19.353-07:0050 years ago today– The First Woman in Space<a href="http://www.space.com/"> <img alt="Find out how Valentina Tereshkova's historic Vostok-6 flight worked in this SPACE.com infographic." border="1" src="http://www.space.com/images/i/000/029/823/i02/valentina-tereshkova-vostok-6-130613c-02.jpg?1371159510" width="575" /></a><br />
Source <a href="http://www.space.com/21558-valentina-tereshkova-first-woman-space-infographic.html">SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration</a>Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-15406537472171562772013-05-28T17:17:00.000-07:002013-05-28T17:17:16.830-07:00New York Times pays tribute to Kim Merker, Letterpress Master<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22v3mgySl-lofKC6Mu6Ftfvi3FC5i5GtCXkqUm_n2lRj2k572oxAnYYulEfdTTwYwSFTPnbCNNUYV84PU43TlVvWNRxIqtkaqBfIAtqxjkXvl7SiuofJVkec0OnUsV3RWZoyS1y9k71I/s1600/subMERKER1-obit-articleLarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22v3mgySl-lofKC6Mu6Ftfvi3FC5i5GtCXkqUm_n2lRj2k572oxAnYYulEfdTTwYwSFTPnbCNNUYV84PU43TlVvWNRxIqtkaqBfIAtqxjkXvl7SiuofJVkec0OnUsV3RWZoyS1y9k71I/s400/subMERKER1-obit-articleLarge.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Kim Merker was a great artist, and a good friend to my family. He published work by my father, Robert Dana, as well as many other great poets of the late 20th century. The New York Times did a nice job of paying tribute.<br />
<br />
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:For four decades, using presses he operated with his own inky hands, Mr.
Merker was a designer, typesetter and printer of some of the most
beautiful books made in America in the late 20th century. Almost all
were vessels for poems that he found promising, interesting or
indisputably excellent — and about which he was usually right: some of
the young poets he published went on to achieve renown. </div>
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Within the artisanal movement called fine press printing, which
celebrates bookmaking as it was practiced before mass production, Mr.
Merker had few peers. "</div>
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More: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/books/kim-merker-hand-press-printer-of-poets-is-dead-at-81.html?emc=eta1&_r=1&">New York Times</a></div>
<br />
<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-46141523978164829662013-04-19T08:19:00.001-07:002013-04-19T08:46:58.772-07:00Pseudo 80's British Alt Pop: The Genre That Never Dies<style type="text/css">P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }</style>
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Maybe it's the passing of Margaret
Thatcher, or maybe it's the constant repetition throwback earworms
(like Budweiser using “Second Chance” by Peter, Bjorn and John)
in advertising, but I've been in the mood for some 80's pop.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
In my search, I happened upon
<a href="http://yourmusicisawful.com/">yourmusicisawful.com</a> and the site's accompanying podcast, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/danger-radio-podcast/id313248720">DangerRadio</a>. I gotta say, I love it. And I hate it. No, I'm confused. But
it makes me happy. And sad.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The writing on the site is funny, and
transcends tiresome hipster irony because it is obviously the work of
real lovers of 80's brit altpop and the current crop of revivalists.
I like listening to the podcasts. I haven't heard some of these bands
in years. The new bands are great- by which I mean that they are
virtually indistinguishable from 4AD or Factory bands of the late
80's and early 90's. That's the bit that I find a little sad.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yes, I guess in the early punk days
there was some nostalgia for the music of our parents- Link Wray,
Gene Vincent and all– but there was still a strong vein of
originality in pop music at the same time. Has rock simply reached
the end? Is it like jazz, where new players are primarily engaged in
an academic exercise, covering old ground and reinterpreting it?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yourmusicisawful.com is aware of this,
it seems, but they don't really know what to do about it. In the
article<a href="http://www.yourmusicisawful.com/2013/04/hey-kids-grow-a-pair-how-music-blogs-neutered-indie-rock/"> Hey Kids, Grow a Pair: How Music Blogs Neutered Indie Rock</a>,
author Kitty Vincent dives into the issue, with complete awareness of
the irony of attacking music blogs from a music blog. Is there any
way of escaping the digital ghetto? Are music blogs to blame, or is
it a broader culture where all music is reduced to disposable
“content”?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I'll lay awake at night pondering that
issue, but in the mean time, I'll choke back my pride and enjoy a
slice of free digital content from so-called "Dangerous Music" Podcast. And by
the way kids- ease up on bashing the “middle-aged new wavers”
okay? We were the ones who made it dangerous...</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
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<object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://img.youtube.com/vi/7EgB__YratE/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/7EgB__YratE&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/7EgB__YratE&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/YxcHS27DuEo?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-72206503771606242602013-04-18T09:50:00.003-07:002013-04-18T09:54:50.631-07:00OBSOLETE! on Sovryn Tech<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://images1-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http://static.tumblr.com/86772b525eb069337eeee418a15ec0a2/pundpbd/i0sml0xwe/tumblr_static_sovryntech_donate4.png&container=focus&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image/*&refresh=31536000&resize_h=150&resize_w=150&no_expand=1" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://images1-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http://static.tumblr.com/86772b525eb069337eeee418a15ec0a2/pundpbd/i0sml0xwe/tumblr_static_sovryntech_donate4.png&container=focus&gadget=a&rewriteMime=image/*&refresh=31536000&resize_h=150&resize_w=150&no_expand=1" /></a></div>
Hey Obsoletians! I was honored to be the guest on a special edition of "<a href="http://sovryntech.tumblr.com/">Sovryn Tech</a>", hosted by anarchist techophile and big-brain <a href="https://plus.google.com/108388484008203119346/posts">Brian Sovryn</a>. We geek out of Feral Tech, Scifi,Transhumanism and alternative currencies, just to name a few of the topics covered. Check it out on <a href="https://soundcloud.com/sovryntech">Soundcloud </a>or <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sovryn-tech/id589973396?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4">itunes</a>.Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-39512223540171307892013-02-04T08:26:00.001-08:002013-02-04T08:27:45.224-08:00The Best of OBSOLETE! Magazine<span class="userContent"><b>OUT NOW!!</b> At long last, <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/products/coming-soon-the-best-if-obsolete-magazine/"><b>The Best of OBSOLETE!</b></a>
is out! Order your copy and use discount code "fnord" for 25% off for a
very limited time! Featuring writing and artwork by 32 contributors,
plus interviews with Cory Doctorow and Mick Farren, and a special
foreword by V.Vale of RE/Search!!</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent"><span class="userContent">You can download a pdf preview <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/bestofobsoleteexcerpt.pdf">here</a>.</span> </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://obsolete-press.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/carouselbestof.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://obsolete-press.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/carouselbestof.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span class="userContent"><br /></span>Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-62498879530153796942013-01-24T07:06:00.002-08:002013-01-24T07:06:43.732-08:00Out Now! OBSOLETE! #7<div class="entry-content">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://obsolete-press.com/magazines/obsolete-7/attachment/ob7cover/" rel="attachment wp-att-486" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="ob7cover" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-486" height="290" src="http://obsolete-press.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ob7cover.jpg" width="187" /></a>Our biggest issue yet! With a full color cover featuring artwork by <a href="http://swtaylor.blogspot.com/">Steve Taylor</a>, the SCIFI/DIY issue is crammed full of original essays, fiction and artwork.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;">
Scifi and DIY are like the
literary and technological chocolate and peanut butter of geekdom. Ever
since For many do-it-yourselfers, tinkerers, makers, hackers, hobbyists,
citizen scientists and other bright and inventive individuals, scifi,
fantasy and other flavors of “speculative fiction” have stoked the
creative fires since before the time of Robert Louis Stevenson, through
the era of H.G. Wells and the adventures of Tom Swift and up to Cory
Doctorow’s “Makers”. OBSOLETE! explores the connections.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;">
<strong>Featuring writing by:</strong> <a href="http://tim-beckett.com/">Tim Beckett</a>, <a href="http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/2012/02/obsolete-5-quasar-gets-car-by-walter.html">Walter Sun Chien</a>, <a href="http://feral-tech.blogspot.com/">Rich Dana</a>, Ric Driver, <a href="http://rachelhaywire.com/">Rachel Haywire</a>, <a href="http://www.lookout.org/riverbendchronicle.htm">Ben Miller</a>, <a href="http://ursulapflug.ca/">Ursula Pflug</a>, <a href="http://alou-randon.com/">Alou Randon</a>, <a href="http://runte.blogspot.com/">Robert Runte</a></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;">
<strong>Artwork by:</strong> <a href="http://ww1.idezin.com/">Blair Gauntt,</a> <a href="http://slavkomali.deviantart.com/">Slavko Mali</a>, <a href="http://swtaylor.blogspot.com/">Steve Taylor</a></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;">
And a very special interview with <a href="http://doc40.blogspot.com/"><strong>Mick Farren</strong></a></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;">
Individual issues are free,
but we ask for $3.00 to cover postage and handling. Want free copies for
your local coffee shop, book store or writers group? Email us at
obmag(at)feral-tech.com.</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://obsolete-press.com/magazines/obsolete-7/"><u><b> Order your here....</b></u></a></div>
</div>
Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-52007547674083886662013-01-24T06:23:00.003-08:002013-01-24T07:03:51.370-08:00Book Review:The Suffering And Celebration Of Life In America<style type="text/css">
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There was a time, before the advent of
“Reality TV”, when people could be shocked. A time when serial
killers were the subject of true crime novels and punk rock songs,
not a series on MSNBC. A time when GG Allin got arrested for things
that now barely qualify as a wild Saturday night on “The Jersey
Shore”. A time when sideshow acts offered real magic, more amazing
than the magic of CGI.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Shane and Amy Bugbee came of artistic
age in those years, in the twilight of pre-digital media. Shane's
exploits earned him a place in the pantheon of shock artists of the
era that includes Allin, Jim Rose, Jim Goad, Lydia Lunch and Boyd
Rice, and he was profiled in the book <a href="http://www.creationbooks.com/creation-titles/ARTTHATKILLS.html"><i>Art That Kills: A PanoramicPortrait of Aesthetic Terrorism.</i></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECC1g6BfvdozScXb_4aCCvwsx-I8LLiSior6MmnqPJAtjYbvcx5_rMwmRm_EVrTiAWeZO3flUpcyY562inNDvPRm_2_FSckeG0qIPGNc-4QA5ZJ3PbMpcBhieiuhYoZdJ9xalvrqACSc/s1600/IMG_2684.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiECC1g6BfvdozScXb_4aCCvwsx-I8LLiSior6MmnqPJAtjYbvcx5_rMwmRm_EVrTiAWeZO3flUpcyY562inNDvPRm_2_FSckeG0qIPGNc-4QA5ZJ3PbMpcBhieiuhYoZdJ9xalvrqACSc/s320/IMG_2684.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
As that movement
fell victim to what <a href="http://www.rushkoff.com/present-shock/">Douglas Rushkoff now describes as “PresentShock”</a>, The Bugbees set a new course, and boldly departed on a
classic cross-country American road trip. Like the adventures of Sal
Paradise and Dean Moriarity, or Capt. America and Billy before them,
the Bugbees trip was unscripted, and took them deep into what is left
of “genuine” America. <a href="http://www.usaodd.com/"><i>The Suffering And Celebration Of Life InAmerica</i></a> is the account of that trip.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">An
early essay from the book, </span><a href="http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/2011/03/preview-how-to-use-180-and-social-media.html"><i>How To Use $180 And Social Media To Travel The Country For A Year</i>,</a> appeared in <a href="http://obsolete-press.com/magazines/obsolete-2/">OBSOLETE! #2</a>. The book
itself is a sprawling 532 page collection of stories, interviews and
correspondences, laid out in a graphics packed style that harkens
back to a zine aesthetic. The book's narrative is strung together
with diary entries, depicting the struggles of life on the road, odd
jobs, sleeping in the van and working out of Kinko's office centers.
But the real meat of the book is the interviews. It could be called
“Life on the Z List”, and the subjects are given their Warholian
fifteen minutes of fame, sometimes kindly, sometimes not. From
struggling artists and writers to the founders of the Baltimore Scifi Convention, the son of the founder of the Universal Life
Church, members of an Austin Black Metal band, ranchers, strippers
and a rum maker- it's a cross section of outsiders and blue-collar
visionaries that remind us that it's time to turn off the mobile
device and check back in with our own local oddballs and characters.
Despite an occasional spiteful tone and some personal axe-grinding, there is a sweet, pure heart to the book- the Bugbees love the little guy.
They may not always like them personally, but they know that the lone kooks and
outsiders with big dreams are what make life interesting and “keep
it real” in the era of “Reality TV”.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Bugbees are making the book
available for free (donations gratefully accepted, of course), one section each week, at their website
<a href="http://www.usaodd.com/">http://www.usaodd.com/</a>, along with a good bit of video from the trip.
The online samples give a good taste, but it is the
kind of book that is fun to leave lying around, to flip through and
discover new bits. It's a good reminder of how truly interactive a
paper book can be.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>MORE</b></span></span></div>
Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-72109819728855091252012-11-30T10:25:00.000-08:002012-11-30T10:25:15.185-08:00New T-shirt and delivery bag designs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8MwT6OMCEjKabJNqM7I3OPQ1wdnAzUBhR3ERzG5ve1U2Ei3PdeCxpwjLA97q68sS_s_0w0Pxg0mhUfs1QN09nKppKEQJXRi06whryTE8tOS28TDSheTO5zMtZbwCy8AQACnjAfsVv01M/s1600/obshirt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8MwT6OMCEjKabJNqM7I3OPQ1wdnAzUBhR3ERzG5ve1U2Ei3PdeCxpwjLA97q68sS_s_0w0Pxg0mhUfs1QN09nKppKEQJXRi06whryTE8tOS28TDSheTO5zMtZbwCy8AQACnjAfsVv01M/s320/obshirt.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-dC4iHq2TrdF4_sA4daevP9zqdg1gnwgft2O4vzRFC8QcSX84jfPkaTAe27nh3fgvHOM40HNFaS8rIDlavgX1QJRQeOl2X8oDWBAyTuEmASjHuVtStdFbbQ8bD0f7IH6Bcf-N8sYafU/s1600/newsie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-dC4iHq2TrdF4_sA4daevP9zqdg1gnwgft2O4vzRFC8QcSX84jfPkaTAe27nh3fgvHOM40HNFaS8rIDlavgX1QJRQeOl2X8oDWBAyTuEmASjHuVtStdFbbQ8bD0f7IH6Bcf-N8sYafU/s320/newsie.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-33753180526961783022012-11-30T10:18:00.001-08:002012-11-30T10:22:26.467-08:00Where does my OBSOLETE! Donation go?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSw4t-FuBNHdkPkTecO0lnvByiDsDddLEcY-MBLtPg_hjNBejBfLc6VmEuJUXYg9bkISrZZaVTW-U_Rs_lffwP_1OzqLqggoiv_MDCNQ1fm4PbXI6DM2NXI6BbP9gin-mEiaN9vKbde8A/s1600/obmap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSw4t-FuBNHdkPkTecO0lnvByiDsDddLEcY-MBLtPg_hjNBejBfLc6VmEuJUXYg9bkISrZZaVTW-U_Rs_lffwP_1OzqLqggoiv_MDCNQ1fm4PbXI6DM2NXI6BbP9gin-mEiaN9vKbde8A/s640/obmap.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />Ricardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7377153740207334594.post-81145270197767278442012-11-29T06:00:00.003-08:002012-11-29T06:01:08.884-08:00Three Days Left to keep OBSOLETE! Alive!Update: Good News! With the money raised outside of the indiegogo
campaign, we passed the halfway way point to our ultimate fundraising goal for the
next four issues of OBSOLETE! BUT... there is still time for you to help
out. Even a couple bucks will get us a little closer to putting out 3,
or even 4 great issues in 2013. THREE DAYS LEFT to contribute!<br />
<a data-mce-href="http://www.indiegogo.com/obsolete?a=1074450" href="http://www.indiegogo.com/obsolete?a=1074450" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.indiegogo.com/obsolete?a=1074450</a><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC0sAEzWrA7ehYhp2weTMWPWwLYwGsbfN-AH_pCBG8w4dSZpvGNIbUu_SeKTVwn9R3BujN0uy1VdhuP9Aj2NUAbQiPH6bniOm6GS6jgI1d5P-b3lIU9je69OUBkxCoJDyLPnwZ8yh3Tdc/s1600/victrola.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC0sAEzWrA7ehYhp2weTMWPWwLYwGsbfN-AH_pCBG8w4dSZpvGNIbUu_SeKTVwn9R3BujN0uy1VdhuP9Aj2NUAbQiPH6bniOm6GS6jgI1d5P-b3lIU9je69OUBkxCoJDyLPnwZ8yh3Tdc/s320/victrola.jpg" width="254" /></a>Over
the last two years, the team here at OBSOLETE! Magazine has worked hard
to put out 6 issues of a real, live, newsprint tabloid arts magazine.
It's not a blog, it's not a twitter feed, it's not a webzine. It's a
real, old-school underground newspaper, distributed through a network
of volunteers who have placed free copies at locally-owned shops,
independent businesses and public libraries from Portland, Oregon to
Portland, Maine. I'm proud to say that we have published work from great
emerging artists and writers, as well as some well-established talents.
Early on, I set a policy of paying for new, unpublished work, unlike
most of the outlets young writers and artists have available to them in
these times of devalued digital content. I am very grateful for the
chance to work with so many talented and dedicated people and support
their work, while they support ours.<br />
<br />
As you can see, we are
bucking the trends in publishing... and literally paying the price.
Thanks to an early online fundraiser and a few loyal and generous
advertisers, we have squeaked by, but paying the talent, printing the
papers at a local printer and shipping them via USPS has taken its toll,
financially. Yes, I know it's a ridiculous business model–create an
expensive product and give it away for free. Yes, I am crazy, naive...
and most likely stupid.<br />
<br />
OBSOLETE! has been a grand experiment - a
meta-zine examining the relevance of print, assessing the pros and cons
of technology and questioning a society that wants artists to work for
free, while happily paying a premium price for drinking water. At the
same time, it's an experiment in equity crowdfunding and gift economics.
By taking small donations from many supporters, we are trying to create
something that is more than the sum of its parts. It's a platform for
social commentary. It's a free gift for customers who support local
businesses. It's a free source of ideas for people with limited
resources. It's a unique way to promote contributors and advertisers.
It's a way to build community in the non-virtual world. It's an outpost
of analog media in an increasingly digital world - an excuse to unplug
and enjoy the physical experience of reading.<br />
<br />
A month ago, we
launched an online fundraising campaign in hope of pulling together
enough money to put out the next four issues of OBSOLETE! Magazine. I
set an ambitious goal of $5600. (enough to cover the per issue costs of
$500 to print 3000 copies, $300 for shipping and $600 to pay
contributors) knowing that it would be tough to reach, but thinking that
if we could at least reach half of that amount, we could use it to
leverage grants or other funds to raise the remainder. Surprisingly (to
me, at any rate), as of today we've reached less than 1/4 of that goal,
and there are only 10 days left to raise the money we need to continue.
There is a very good chance that issue #7 may be the last for OBSOLETE!<br />
<br />
Perhaps
this is just an indication that analog media is truly dying - that
people aren't interested in supporting the non-digital format. Maybe
it's a failure on my part to deliver a product that people really want.
Maybe the model is tragically flawed - after all, distributing beyond
the local community is something underground papers have always found
challenging, even in their heyday. Maybe the people who do support it
are just as broke as we are, and simply unable to afford even a small
donation. I accept that any and all of these are possible. Still, as
much as I hate to beg and spam, I'm going to invite all of you, once
again, to take part in keeping OBSOLETE! alive and free.<br />
<br />
You can help in several ways. First - just drop us a couple bucks. You can take part in the online fundraiser at <a data-mce-href="http://www.indiegogo.com/obsolete" href="http://www.indiegogo.com/obsolete">http://www.indiegogo.com/obsolete</a>
. You can also mail a check, as some folks have - if you don't like the
on-line thing. Even if you can't afford to contribute financially, you
can help us by spreading the word. Let your friends know that you
support OBSOLETE! and maybe they should too. Finally - send us your
feedback. Let us know what you like and don't like about the paper. We
are open to suggestions on content, format, distribution, funding... let
us know what you like - or equally as important, what you don't like
and why you aren't contributing.<br />
<br />
A special thanks to all of you
who stepped up early and continue to support our project. We have
special thank you gifts and perks prepared to send out at the end of the
campaign. We will keep forging ahead, and with your help and input, we
hope to keep putting OBSOLETE! out there in the real, physical world.<br />
<br />
Best wishes -<br />
Rich Dana<br />
Publisher<br />
OBSOLETE! Magazine<br />
POB 72<br />
Victor, IA 52347<br />
obsolete-press.comRicardo Feralhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05913738434915137032noreply@blogger.com0