Wow, I just discovered this great site,
WhiteHouseTapes.org . An online archive of speeches and other recorded conversations of 6 presidents, from Roosevelt up through Nixon. Wow. What a great resource for samplehounds and researchers.

Two different incidents have made me think "where the hell have you been?" today. Maybe I shouldn't go into it in too much detail, but in general I just am so surprised when people I thought were aware, politically, show themselves to be clueless. Stuff about free trade and neoliberalism that I just sort of take for granted in this little hippie radical bubble i'm in, and someone comes along and says, "oh wow, i hadn't heard of that, gosh, that's horrible." And I'm like.... "ummm... duh!"

On the other hand, I guess people who are against voting or who think there was never really a moon landing probably think that about me. But that's not a valid analogy, because you can point right to the thousands of pages of NAFTA, for example, and it's obvious that some of it is really really bad for humans. That's not theory, it's demonstrable fact. It's much harder to prove we never landed on the moon.

I just wish some people would spend as much time learning about oppression in its many forms as they spend learning new recipes to cook. If all the people who talk about that excellent salmon bisque they had at Chez Disposable Income spent that time and energy and money actually trying to make the fucking world a better place, we'd be a lot further along, I am sure.

In a way, the upcoming election is just a big big distraction, a spectacle that is taking up a lot of attention that would be directed elsewhere.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those folks who is against voting. I've always voted and I think for this election it is even more important to vote, and I've talked to a lot of people who feel the same way, some who have never voted in a federal election who feel that they must this time. But voting is just the base level of involvement in civil society. You gotta do at least that, but you should do a lot more.

Lately it seems like the "a lot more" is eclipsed by watching debates and other election-related crap.

I've been involved with setting up and promoting 2 screenings of a film about the disappeared, murdered women in Juarez, Se

I wrote a few months back about my involvement in Collaborative Technologies. I was so hopeful back then.

Now, well, I'm not quite at "regret mode" yet, but I'm pretty disillusioned and disappointed. The project that was the proof of concept is STILL not done, just keeps stretching on and on. The project management has been dismal, and I have not been paid more than 10% of what I'm owed, in 5 months of work.

My travel plans were dependent on being paid for this by now. So I'm really upset. I'll write more about this later. I can't think straight enough to really analyze what went wrong and why.

I just discoverd this great site about subtitling and other international accessibility issues for radical video. It's called
SubVideo
Couldn't come at a better time, as I have finished adding spanish subtitles to a major video of mine, which makes it my first bi-lingual video. Exciting.

www.BloodForOil.org
is a great repository of anti-Bush, anti-war graphics, for signs, posters, stencils, etc. very cool.

Yesterday I was pointed to this video and song called (didn't know I was) unamerican. It's not the sort of music I generally like - it's sort of folksy, smarmy stuff - but I was suprisingly moved while watching the video. And the "Waking Life"-style animation in some parts was pretty cool.

Excitement in Cascadia - Mount St. Helens is acting up again. According to USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory (CVO), little earthquakes are happening on the mountain at a rate of about 4 a minute!

Cool. Maybe we'll be bathed in ash soon.

In a few weeks I will be on another travel adventure southward. I'm going to try to write about what my rough plans are and what the details and background is.

This time I will not be going quite so far, but I still, again, have this feeling of being about to drop off the edge of the world. Of course it's really just the edge of my little "world as usual," and of course that usuallness is one reason i go on these trips. Read more>>>

Today and the last few days have been full of computers and other machines being difficult. I know nothing about and do not believe in astrology, but once I heard that when Mercury is in retrograde, communication and technology goes wrong. So I always think about that when machines start really fucking up more than usual - and the usual is a lot, actually.

So, yesterday I took my ibook into MacForce. The video cable was frayed, stupid design flaw on Apple's part. This MacForce place is one of those parasitical places that preys on people who are either ignorant, or have expense accounts, or both. I saw one poor guy who was bringing his G5 tower in to have a new harddrive added to it. Dude, you could do that yourself in 15 minutes, don't pay these slobs $90 for an hour of labor!!!

Anyway, they also preyed on me because taking apart an ibook's display is not on my list of desired activities. Luckily it WAS only the video cable, so they do the work and i'm only $190 poorer (that's a month's living expenses for 4 Bolivian peasants). So anyway I get it home and I have almost zero wireless reception. I'd already read about how the Airport antenna is in the display, so obviously the repairdude had fucked up the antenna during his operations. So I'm pretty mad, and then today I take it in and i have to keep coming back cuz they take longer to correct their error than then predict, and it just fucks with my whole day, so finally when they're done I stand up for myself, which I don't normally do, and I say, hey, I think you should compensate me for this, and so I get to talk to a manager and he almost laughs cuz he's apparently so shocked that someone would ask this but i stick to my guns, is say, well, it's your mistake, I'm a consultant, I get paid for my time and i've lost lots of time today because of your mistake. Eventually he reluctantly agrees to knock $25 off the original repair charge.

Might not seem like a big deal but like I said, I don't usually stand up for myself like that. Normally i'd rationalize to myself how it's not really their fault and shit happens and blah blah and then just meekly shuffle off. but not today.

Meanwhile, "indian summer" has kicked in here, it was BEAUTIFUL today and that's great if only i wasn't so damn busy and i could enjoy the sun and the warmth. I'm too busy getting stuff done so that I can go to Mexico and enjoy sun, warmth, and the fallout of globalization. More on that soon...