Dirty Nails, Dirty Wheels

Oh, yes! Artist Jay Shells says “Who it’s for...

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:26:30 -0500

Oh, yes!

Artist Jay Shells says “Who it’s for is… for me. And for people like me: just other hip hop heads that would dig this project,” but I don’t think that gives the project enough credit. It’s for the emcees, as a public declaration of respect and their work’s importance. And it’s for everyone they’ve spoken for, whose lives and history have been ignored and shit on by most of the people who would have the authority to put up more “official” placards drawing attention to sites of cultural significance.

Jay Shells, “Rap Quotes.”

"Isn't that crazy?"

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:51:25 -0500

I’m sitting next to some folks who are talking about Christianity, and they were discussing their belief that once they’ve accepted god as their savior or whatever it is their particular denomination says they’re supposed to do, they’re forever guaranteed to go to heaven. Happily marveling at this, one of them said:

“Isn’t that crazy? Isn’t that crazy?”

Good song—with some totally amazing parts—and a very...

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:52:57 -0500

Good song—with some totally amazing parts—and a very skillfully executed video, too. It combines narrative with scenes of the band playing in a way that feels not just natural, but inventive.

I think I’m going to cover this song.

Semisonic, Closing Time.

knowhomo: LGBTQ* History You Might Have Missed Trans* Religious...

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:11:57 -0500

knowhomo:

LGBTQ* History You Might Have Missed

Trans* Religious History 101

(Catharina Margaretha) Linck - FTM Transgender Person, executed for sodomy in Prussia in 1721

Above Graphics from Words Without Borders

A selection of art from the biography of Catharina Margaretha Linck

by Elke R. Steiner
Translated by Edna McCown

*Note:

At this time the KNOWhomo team is digging deeper into the story of Linck. There have been too many opposing stories to share any accurate information at this time. We wanted to share the graphics above and start a conversation about how we research and compile information for our posts. If you have more information on Linck, please pass it our way.

Keep On, Keeping On!

-Rebecca

CISPA is still fucking kicking. Here's why.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:53:00 -0500

CISPA is still fucking kicking. Here's why.:

Pump up state ability to spy on citizens with no accountability?

FUCK THAT.

This legislation is fucking heinous. It’s quite nakedly about increasing government surveillance powers and includes clauses that make it difficult if not impossible to fight back. Kill this shit dead.

Back in Portland, I was skating home from work, and just as I...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:18:25 -0500

Back in Portland, I was skating home from work, and just as I swept up the ramp back onto the sidewalk after crossing a street, my board threw me and rocketed out to the left, into traffic. It was run over by one car, putting a nasty snap in the deck and flinging it into the air. No joke, it seemed to spin in slow motion, throwing off a swirl of sawdust as it rose. Falling to earth, it bounced with a rude, clattering thock off the hood of a car traveling in the opposite direction before hitting the pavement. A truck stopped short, narrowly avoiding a second run-over. I zipped out into the street to reclaim it before anything more befell my poor dear. I took the bus home, but between stops I found it was still rideable, as long as I stayed off the nose.

That was months ago, maybe nearly a year ago now, but I never did anything with the picture I took, so here it is.

I friggin’ love this song! I don’t really know what...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 20:47:40 -0500

I friggin’ love this song!

I don’t really know what it’s about. But it’s really good!

One OK Rock, 完全感覚 Dreamer. (Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer, which means “Full Sense” Dreamer according to an online translator.)

lillezzie: Emer O’Toole on women, body hair and why she’s...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 19:14:54 -0500

lillezzie:

Emer O’Toole on women, body hair and why she’s stopped shaving

Great to hear this from a femme perspective. This might be the motivation I need to go all in this year!

Well put, Emer O’Toole.

Not be Lazy

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:39:05 -0500

When thinking about some of the major—and specifically, recent—problems our species is facing at the moment—climate change, automated state violence, materialist indoctrination of children, the bleeding stain of electronic surveillance—I often find it easy to feel fairly hopeless, like a bad outcome is inevitable, and trying to push things to a better place is a futile effort. But this is human kind. Anything, truly anything, is possible. A future where politicians wear their sponsors’ logos on their suit jackets as they rationalize security cameras placed inside private homes is certainly a possibility, and if the only factor influencing our path was wealth, then that’s where we’d be headed. But it’s not. There is an untold vastness of influencing factors, and their interplay has so many possible outcomes that I could spend weeks imagining them and not come close to cataloging them all. An honest look at human history makes it clear that wealth and the ability and willingness to commit violence are certainly nothing to sneeze at when it comes to influencing the course of things, but also that they are not the be-all, end-all, not by a long measure, and have in fact been justly and satisfyingly smote many a time. How we live our lives is affected by our native desire for happiness just as it is by our socialized desire for dollars, by our innate compassion and our learned hard-heartedness alike. It’s affected by wanting to spend time with our friends, by being afraid of things, by the weather, by wanting to have sex, by the spirit of adventure, by picking up our families’ hatreds, by the fact that we hurt when someone else hurts, by the things we imagine ourselves to be, by wanting security, by curiosity, and by as many other things as you could imagine. And among those things are many forms of the human drive to make things better for all, rather than easier for a few.

The forces of shittiness are not omnipotent, and to ignore that is lazy. If corrupt governments and corrupting corporate interests have infinite and unquestionable power to call the shots, then no one needs to bother getting off their ass, because there’s no point—phew! Those of us who disagree with them can just sit around and stew in our cynicism, quietly aching with terror and sadness when we think about what we believe to be inevitable, but never troubling ourselves to act, never risking failure by chancing success. The societal worlds we know are the result of myriad human decisions, not any inherent injustice or some missed-chance cutoff point where money and violence asserted their supremacy once and for all.

The deposition of monarchs. Women’s suffrage. Racial equality before the law. The Endangered Species Act. The banning of cluster bombs. Marriage equality. The concept of human rights. These things have not come from nowhere. They have come from a refusal to give in, and a willingness to fight an eye to the long view.

Progress ain’t often fast. But it is every bit as possible as anything else. And it’s a fuckshitload more fun. So I’m not gonna be hopeless: I’m not gonna be lazy.

Get Caught: A letter to scared folks after shit goes wrong

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:10:45 -0500

Get Caught: A letter to scared folks after shit goes wrong:

vastderp:

I lived through 9/11 and it breaks my heart to see anything reminiscent of the panicked atmosphere of that day EVER repeat in my lifetime, this is my advice for you all:

Please be skeptical, cautious and responsible when disseminating news you read on social media. Verify…

The culture of fear, accusation, and militaristic nationalism that took hold after September 11th, and its still-persistent aftereffects, have been among the most repugnant social phenomena I’ve had the misfortune to live through firsthand. In my head, it seems almost inconceivable that such a sickening approach to life could ever be rekindled, as the first time through was so destructive and despicable, fueling contemporary political cynicism and citizen comfort with pervasive state violence and surveillance. It seems a bit like an awful dream that we’ve been slowly trying to clear from our eyes, thus far with mixed success, a dream so bad and so starkly educational that almost no one would for a moment react similarly to any potentially comparable situation.

But this country has certainly scared and disappointed me before.

I hope that the original writer’s post turns out to be unneeded, that no one tries to pick up the thoughtless, frightened, and violent mindset that characterized the American reaction to September 11th. There’s no need to compound one tragedy with another of our own making.

Damage Catalog

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:23:43 -0500

I’ve thought for a while of documenting all the stuff that befalls my body as I live a life where I skate and bike and climb things and jump off of them and generally make a good good mess. So I started!

Yesterday I was an extra in some friends’ web series, Heartless, and it involved getting shot in the back with an energy weapon. On the first take, I just fell down hard. On the second take, I fell down extra-fast, and wound up rolling over myself, yielding road rash!

Figure 1:

Figure 2:

Vegan Butt Day is early this year.

I’ve decided to build myself a single-speed mountain bike for free this summer, plus it’s gonna be consistent skating weather soon, so expect more of this sort of thing. And wear your helmet.

WHOA. I don’t speak anywhere near enough Japanese to begin...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:59:00 -0500

WHOA.

I don’t speak anywhere near enough Japanese to begin to understand the lyrics, but this song just totally blew me away. It’s fucking great.

Also, here’s a thing: I am generally ultra-stoked on women* kicking traditional gender norms in the teeth, particularly when it’s in one of the often male-dominated things that I do/make/like, like skateboarding, hip hop, or metal. It blitzes my mind with happiness. But in watching this video, I tripped over the edge of my successful internal work against socialization. When the first verse kicked in, the first vocalist’s delivery was so brutal that I was actually uncomfortable. Not simply because of the sonic brutality—that’s something I’m well accustomed to—but because I was watching a woman, someone I’ve been pressured to conceptualize as delicate, as not strong or ferocious, as supposed-to-be-“pretty,” deliver something so rough and heavy. I’m generally pretty successful at resisting that pressure—like I said, I get actively hyped when I see people defying it—but the song’s distance from the patriarchal party line was so great that it reached a place in me where cultural norms had done their nasty fucking work. It was a troubling moment, and I tried to intentionally open up my mind and heart as I watched the rest, knowing that some powerful and important shit was going down. Interestingly (and uncomfortably), I found there was less discomfort when I listened to the song while it played in another tab—that is, when I couldn’t see who was performing it, and my brain could be like “Could be a dude.” Ugh. I’ve been listening to and watching it over and over, and the cultural bullshit is getting pulverized, listen by listen. Hopefully with some more times through, some more thinking about all this, and a few good nights’ sleeps, the utter stoke that I get off this track—and this band generally, ‘cause their other stuff is awesome too, and I’ve liked it for years—will be unpolluted by sexism.

ROCK ON.

Missile Girl Scoot, Big Mouth.

*And anybody else, too, but this post is specifically about women.

Double Standards for Whistleblowers

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:50:12 -0500

It’s great that the U.S. government is urging the U.N. to better protect whistleblowers; that is as it should be. But that’s a pretty rich position for the nation currently readying to prosecute Bradley Manning. (I haven’t watched that episode of Inside Story Americas, and can’t speak to its content, aside from that it’s about Bradley Manning.)

On a positive note relating to his upcoming trial, there’s this.

Parts of the Berlin Wall that remain—parts including a...

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:54:00 -0500

Parts of the Berlin Wall that remain—parts including a mural painted to celebrate its coming down—are being removed to make room for condos.

Condos.

This is capitalism.

Fuckin’ happy rap metal with good use of turntables?!...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:31:52 -0500

Fuckin’ happy rap metal with good use of turntables?! Don’t mind if I do!

Radigalhen, Dream Train.

From my hip hop/prog/punk band back in Portland, No One Can Stop...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:48:43 -0500

From my hip hop/prog/punk band back in Portland, No One Can Stop You. Apparently I never posted our stuff here! This song is called Cornflower, and it’s from the best-named EP ever, Sudden Load.

If you dig it, the whole thing is available for stream or way-cheap download here.

"Maybe I should just trust god more."

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:11:54 -0500

There’s somebody talking on their phone in the coffee shop where I’m sitting, wondering aloud to their conversation partner about a decision they’re trying to make, saying, “Maybe I should just trust god more. Maybe I just need prayer.”

I wanna go over and be like, “Dude, trust yourself and the advice of good people who are real.”

But I probably won’t. And maybe what they call god is the same thing I call intuition, and in the end they really will be trusting themself, even if they don’t see it that way. But when I see someone living their life in direct opposition to rational evidence about what the world is and how it works, reducing their own sense of agency, and shifting responsibility for their own actions onto a figment of their imagination, I feel sad for them, and worried for people who trust them.

The way some people practice religion seems like a bad idea to me.

alemonmoonsky: urocyon-littoralis: abbygoround: jwisser: imag...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:59:11 -0500

alemonmoonsky:

urocyon-littoralis:

abbygoround:

jwisser:

image by magnetocurious

This photo of Mike is one of those things that makes me feel incredibly nostalgic about Oberlin.

Ugh now I’m sad.

this picture is literally perfect

Oh Oberlin

Ooh, the good times!

And remember, folks, this is where Finntroll are from;...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:58:13 -0500

And remember, folks, this is where Finntroll are from; something’s being done right.

Raise the minimum wage? Hell yeah! My job itself is great, but...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:16:00 -0500

Raise the minimum wage? Hell yeah! My job itself is great, but $7.25 sucks. Bring the federal minimum into line with reason.