Tonight I went to see Dr. Cheryl van Daalen give a talk called “Living as a Chameleon: A Feminist Analysis of Young Women’s Lived Experience of Anger.” My wife Susan told me about it and I said I’d go–but it wasn’t to be supportive. Usually when people find out about my interest in feminism they often think that I’m a guilty white liberal, or give me undue credit for being down with the cause. The truth is that I’m self-interested–as someone who feels like there’s systematic injustices going on, their anger validates my own. Their reasoning and different routes to the same destinations strengthens my arguments and my resolve.
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Allies in Anger
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Mmmm-mmm!
While I rarely found myself sitting beside friends in classes where the teacher decided to place us in alphabetical order, I do find myself in exceptionally good company in the “M” section on the bookshelf. Three of my favourite authors are Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami and China Miéville. If you don’t already know them, come meet my neighbours!
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Spacing Out
My favourite new mag is Spacing, the print arm of the Toronto Public Space Committee that is anything but newsletter-ish. By drawing attention to the amazing and oft-ignored public spaces, it’s an antidote to our culture’s fixation on private ownership. From their beautiful subway buttons to their sticker slogans (“Everyone is a Pedestrian”), they’re doing it up right. I’m working on a new article for their past/future issue, but in the meanwhile here’s the article I did for their second issue on Parkouring, the art of street gymastics.
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Tearful Collaboration
My new DVD zine is out, nine weird and wonderful vids on the theme of Tears on the Pie–you can buy it online here [UPDATE: Sold out.]. My most interesting experience with this issue was putting together one of my own shorts with Creative Commons-licenced music. On the excellent Opsound website was an mp3 posted by a fellow in Japan that was perfect for the tone and tension of the piece. After I screened it at Splice This! I sent Yosuke a link of the finished piece, and he wrote back to thank me! Click on to see the two minute short.
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Scrubbing Windows
I gave the best talk of my life to a hall of over 500 programmers this summer. I was the dinner speaker for the Linux Symposium, which is described thusly: “With attendees coming from over 30 different countries, the Symposium is probably the single most comprehensive collection of Linux experts in the world.” What the hell could I have to say to them? Well, Linux programmers created a community-built alternative that rivaled the best that a company can produce–not unlike what’s happening in the indie arts community. In do-it-yourself communities all over, really, often spurred on corporate consolidation. So I was able to share my adventures in the creative commons and many people found it interesting and relevant. It was the inspiration I needed to do something I’ve wanted to for a while–switch to a Linux desktop. I started keeping a diary of my migration, which I’ll be adding to…
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A One Inch Peephole Into My Brain
I love the 1″ button. Really, for the tiny amount of space it takes up it’s such a cheap and efficient communicator. It struck home when I was at the post office and I noticed someone with the Matt B button pictured here, and had a little chat about his cartoons and such. It seemed to me a nice thing to wear your heart on your sleeve, or lapel, and allow for these social interactions to happen. For years I’ve dressed in a non-descript fashion, to a certain extent due to my dislike of marketing. But I’ve let myself be backed into a corner–while I might not be shilling for a brand with my t-shirt, I’m also closing myself off from like-minded people I randomly encounter.
So I started wearing some buttons that people had given me or I’d bought but never worn. I also got a bunch of No Media Kings buttons made, as you may have been able to guess by the site redesign. If you’d like to get one, just let me know your addy–if you’d be OK with me filling the rest of the envelope with promo postcards for you to pass around your area, I’m happy to pop for postage. (UPDATE: Sorry, all out of buttons… sign up for the mailing list if you’d like to hear when I’ve got s’more…)
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RoommateFromHell.com
When Kate discovers that her roommate identifies as a demoness, she figures it’s too sacrilicious a secret to keep to herself: she tells all on her blog, roommatefromhell.com.
This is the basic gist of my new book, An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil, a tale of the urban occult told entirely through Kate’s entries. Starting today, I’ll be posting one a day to the faux roommatefromhell.com blog until all 88 entries (the whole book) are up. [UPDATE: the blog is down.] After that I’ll be writing a spinoff story based on how the poll on the site goes. [UPDATE: This became The Bold Explorers.]
Feel free to add your comments. I’m curious to see how people read this blog version of the book.
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Returning Your Bucks to the Library
I recently gave a talk about indie press to a group of librarians, and I tried to communicate the level of enthusiasm the zine and DIY community have for libraries. They were an essential part of an enriched childhood, allowing us to sate our voracious book nerd appetites — the fact that there was no financial risk to taking out something new encouraged us to read widely and expand our tastes. As adults on a broke artist budget they allow us to research and read while saving our money to produce our next book or CD or movie or zine.A lot of readers first encounter my books through the library. Unlike some misguided writers, I think this is awesome and I want to encourage this. So if you want to support an indie press and the public libraries in one fell swoop, I’ve set up an option to donate a book of mine to the library: I’m calling it the NO MEDIA KINGS, YES LIBRARY BLING Drive.
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Free Money
I wrote an opinion piece for eye last week on arts grants. Feel free to add your comments at the end.That’s what arts grants are, right? Free money. You know this guy who used his grant as a down payment on an SUV. Heard of this other woman who used hers to make grapefruits talk to each other and someone else who made lesbian porn with public money. Taxpayer money! Your money and my money!
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Roadshow, As Seen on TV
Ian Daffern contacted me last year about doing a piece on the Perpetual Motion Roadshow for a new TV show he was producing called Scratch. We bandied about different possibilities, such as sending someone along to document it–I thought the people on the tour might be a bit uncomfortable with that & suggested that the crew take along my Hi8 videocamera and tape each other, then pass along the tapes at the end of it.So the eight minute piece for the “Motion” show was made up of these clips of self-documentation as well as footage the show’s crew shot when they caught up with Jessica, Fred and More or Les in New York. I’ve posted a Quicktime .mov of it as I’m curious to hear comments on the segment from other Roadshow alumni as well as people who’ve attended the show as to whether it reflects their experience.
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Flyboy Lives!
In a few days the No Media Kings 5th anniversary edition of Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask will be back from the printer. My first book has been out of print for the last few years. The idea of pumping money into an old project wasn’t nearly as exciting as realizing a new one, so even though I got the rights back from HarperCollins I held off for a while. But fans of the book and booksellers alike kept asking about how they could get a copy–and they almost always wanted one with the Canadian cover, so I couldn’t just tell them to buy the still-in-print US edition.
So thanks to everyone who enthused this book back into print. “It’d make a great movie!” is something people say flatteringly often, and so I got the idea of promoting the re-release with movie-style trailers for the book. Two groups of indie filmmakers were into the idea and they did a great job, producing very different but intriguing adaptations.
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Free E-book Released
A bunch of people have recently drawn my attention to the product placement
of Ford cars in Carole Matthews’s novel The Sweetest Taboo. My Past Due letters were a response to a similar situation, Faye Weldon getting paid by Bulgari to mention their brand — I proactively invoiced the companies whose brands I mentioned in my novel of a hyper-marketed future, Everyone In Silico.The cover of The Sweetest Taboo has the tagline, “The best things in life are never free.” I’ve decided to retaliate against this smug sentiment by releasing a free e-book version of Everyone In Silico. I’ve distributed thousands of copies of my previous novels in free e-book form since the 2000 release of Angry Young Spaceman, but not for EIS — I was curious to see if it would impact my sales significantly.
It hasn’t.