action figures sold separately

NSA_3

Originally uploaded by Billboard Liberation Front.

oh. the blf is one of the things i miss so about the bay area.

not quite sure what this is about, the votergate “about” page seems to be busted. i recall in the 80’s the sidwalk graffiti near the polling places that said, “if voting changed anything, it’d be illegal.” speaking of the bay area, i know i’ve linked to this before, but i always like checking back in on the list. some of my current faves:

• 16 bitch pileup
• brain police
• dreadful children
• go kart mozart
• maylene and the sons of disaster
• space monkey ganstas

i love the bay area and miss it sometimes for sure, but i’m so happy i now live in this crazy f’ing town. [update: and while we are (trying to get off) the subject of electoral politics, we can agree that “Fox is not a credible news outlet and needs to be stopped.” I’d say duh, but Foxattacks.com has some good stuff there for media activists.

• bodies in the basement
• elephone
• instant asshole
• supermodel suicide

oh i miss the bay area and i miss the list.

it’s happening for real. i just viewed about as much of the yahoo slideshow as i could without bawling.

i don’t think that in general we should have to get hitched to have this kind of recognition by the state, that’s all problematic in it’s own way. but i see this as a move towards real equality. we’ve still got a long way to go, but this feels like such a huge step. salud sf!

if you are in the Bay Area, check it out! tiffany will be exhibiting with other artists at the Backroom Gallery at Adobe Books, 3166 16th street, (between Valencia and Guerrero). the show is open until the end of May and there’s a reception on March 28, 7-11pm. update: tiffany’s poem is also now up.

in the blender-settings for levels of radical direct-action organizing, i think we just jumped from grind to frappé - folks in the old home town haven’t just hit the streets, they’ve taken them over.

If you are like me, you are waiting for the paperback version of Stupid White Men. well, don’t wait to see Bowling for Columbine. such an amazingly well done film. i cannot recommend it highly enough. he deals with gun violence, racism, poverty, and the dominant media in such simple yet effective ways. i was simultaneously floored and energized.

if you were paying attention to underground media in the 80’s and early 90’s, and/or you were an activist in the SF bay area during those years, you likely developed a keen appreciation for the humor and incisive political and social commentary of Processed World. Well, in (the amazing and worth the trip) Reading Frenzy the other day i discovered they put out a special 20th anniversary issue last summer. Wow. a must read.

in the introduction, they remind us of where PW is coming from:

Our social lives are as tightly scheduled as our work lives. A chance to see an old friend and catch up over lunch or dinner can easily take a half dozen communications by email, voice mail or phone tag attempting to juggle schedules. Few of us can drop in on anyone, or easily accommodate anyone dropping in on us. Fewer still have time to stop and remember that we didn’t always live this way. The radical reconfiguration of everyday life over the past generation is what we call “The Great Speedup.”There are so many aspects to this phe-nomenon that it is difficult to quickly sum-marize the changes or to offer a simple or clear explanation of its causes. The great speedup encompasses much more than the greater number of hours we work, both as paid wage-workers and as free humans grasp-ing for meaning and fulfillment.The dramat-ic intensification of work, ostensibly because computers have made us so much more productive, is one example.

then in the opening piece by R. Dennis Hayes, “The Promise of Leisure in the Computer Age,” work and our social relations to technology are broken down in very compelling ways:

Chief among the casualties of computerization is computer literacy. Far from the static category still promoted by policymakers and business leaders, computer literacy is a changling. It presumes continuous training to match the twists and turns of the latest upgrade, training that, for most, is rarely forthcoming and timely. It also demands time, effort and patience to appropriate the arcane, informal knowledge that even seasoned programmers affirm is required to function in computer environments. Computer literacy has become a moving target with which few can keep pace. “You can never master your job because things change so often,” as a 12-year veteran of a large Silicon Valley firm put it. Instead, we are slouching en masse toward a perpetual state of occupational apprenticeship. Compounding the impact of upgrade cycles on the workplace is the astounding lack of reliability of computer software. The uncertainty of chronic, unpredictable change is trumped by the unreliability of tools that resemble prototypes more than products. Never before have so many tools with so many defects been sold to so many workplaces.Technology firms, in their rush to the market, overlook product quality, scale back testing, and routinely ship mischievous software full of “known bugs.” Once a source of pride for American capitalism, workplace tools and technologies have reached historic lows in quality—and, of course, longevity: just as tools get patched and systems fixed, fresh upgrades are issued and a new round of wired alchemy engulfs the workplace. Taken together, rapid technological obsolescence and defective software are leading causes of overwork in the white collar workplace. Those of us who work with computers now have a second job: keeping them patched and upgraded and responding to their intricate cues, messages and glitches. “Each user, an administrator,” lamented the chief net-work officer of Sun Microsystems.

Back issues are available on line. check it out!

about the SF bay area. we put together this little list when we got hitched for all our out-of-town peeps.