Documentary film-maker Kirby Dick ("This Film is Not Yet Rated") has just released his latest doc, "Outrage," about anti-gay politicians who are secretly gay. These are the twisted lawmakers who campaign against gay rights in public, but who are, in fact, gay (and who generally enjoy the rights they're publicly against, thanks to their power and privilege).

An official selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, OUTRAGE investigates the hidden lives of some of the country's most powerful policymakers - from now-retired Idaho Senator Larry Craig, to former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy - and examines how these and other politicians have inflicted damage on millions of Americans by opposing gay rights. Equally disturbing, the film explores the mainstream media's complicity in keeping those secrets, despite the growing efforts to "out" them by gay rights organizations and bloggers.

Through a combination of archival news footage and exclusive interviews with politicians and members of the media, OUTRAGE probes the psychology of a double lifestyle, the ethics of outing closeted politicians, and the double standards that the media upholds in its coverage of the sex lives of gay public figures. As Barney Frank, perhaps the best-known openly gay member of Congress explains, "There is a right to privacy, but not a right to hypocrisy. It is very important that the people who make the law be subject to the law."

"Outrage" premieres on HBO this week.

OUTRAGE (Thanks, Kirby!)

Boing Boing guestblogger Mitch Horowitz is author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation and editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin publishers.

Parade magazine publishes a new poll tomorrow - with a piece on CBS Sunday Morning that I'm part of - which reveals the fluid and expanding meaning of spirituality in America. Fifty-nine percent Americans polled agree that "all religions have validity" and only twelve percent agree that "mine is the only true religion." To an extent, this reflects an attitude introduced into America by Enlightenment philosophy, Freemasonry, Transcendentalism, and, most recently, Theosophy in the late 19th century. Theosophy emphasized the principle that all religions emerge from a universal source. Likewise, the survey reflects the inroads of what might be considered occult or New Age outlooks in America: Seven percent of Americans believe in reincarnation (a concept that few Americans had heard of a generation ago); seventeen percent report having contact with the dead; forty-nine percent read horoscopes "for fun," whereas twelve percent are believers. The poll reveals many other wrinkles, which readers will find cause for cheer or depression, depending upon their outlook. But consider: Gandhi, whose 140th birthday fell yesterday, was making what was considered a radical statement when he declared that "all religions are true" (to which he also added, "all have some error in them"). Today, a majority of Americans agree.

CBS Sunday Morning runs its piece tomorrow at 9 a.m. EST in which I will discuss "the history of the occult in the United States."

What We Believe (CBS Sunday Morning)

Spirituality Poll results (Parade magazine)

Doctor Popular says,

Today is 24hour Comic Book Day. Cartoonists all over the world will be taking part in the challenge of creating an entire 24 page comic book in just one day. Robots Don't Know Anything About Twitter, which was featured on BB a few weeks ago, was created as part of last years 24HCBDay!

Here are some links: Nationwide, in SF, in Minneapolis, in Albuquerque

Image: snapshot from 24HCBDay in New Mexico in 2006, by baaadasssscomics. Also, here's a Flickr pool.

Bill sez, "Den of Geeks is reporting that 'The IT Crowd' has been green-lit for a fourth season. Details are few and far between, but it looks like Moss, Roy, and Jen will be back for another 6 episodes."

Hurrah! What wonderful news!

IT Crowd and Peep Show get new series orders

Chicago may have lost its Olympic bid due to the insane fingerprints-and-photos regime at the US border: the Chicago bid team was questioned by an IOC member who called the US border "a rather harrowing experience." I've actually found the O'Hare border procedure pretty painless, but God help the foreigner who lands in Texas. At DFW, I was told by a border guard that I wasn't allowed to listen to headphones in the (two-hour-long) line; at Houston, we once stood in line for three hours just to change planes between Honduras and the UK.

Among the toughest questions posed to the Chicago bid team this week in Copenhagen was one that raised the issue of what kind of welcome foreigners would get from airport officials when they arrived in this country to attend the Games. Syed Shahid Ali, an I.O.C. member from Pakistan, in the question-and-answer session following Chicago's official presentation, pointed out that entering the United States can be "a rather harrowing experience..."

"It's clear the United States still has a lot of work to do to restore its place as a premier travel destination," Roger Dow, U.S. Travel's president, said in the statement released today. "When IOC members are commenting to our President that foreign visitors find traveling to the United States a 'pretty harrowing experience,' we need to take seriously the challenge of reforming our entry process to ensure there is a welcome mat to our friends around the world, even as we ensure a secure system."

Chicago's Loss: Is Passport Control to Blame?

The trippy video above featuring the song "Worm Mountain" by the Flaming Lips (feat. MGMT) was created by a DIY electro-gadget maker named darcyklyne. BB pal Tom Osborn (who works at the Lips' label, Warner Bros. Records, when he's not reading our blog) pointed us to the video and adds,

Here's a forum thread talking about how this person built the Tesla Coil. They ended up being a new fan that found out about The Flaming Lips from The Colbert Report and were somehow inspired to make the following video with their newly created Tesla Coil.

Fiddler, composer, singer, music teacher and lovely human being Amy Farris has passed away. I first learned of her work in the context of performances in various lineups with former members of the great punk band X, and their country offshoot band The Knitters: namely Exene Cervenka, and with Dave Alvin, with whom Ms. Farris played in the video clip embedded above (Dave Alvin & Guilty Women / "Abilene"). The Texas native died in Los Angeles on Wednesday of an apparent suicide. More at the LA Times.

Richard Metzger blogs, "I can't wait to see the surreal new British comedy Bunny and the Bull, from Mighty Boosh director Paul King. Although it keeps getting referred to as "The Mighty Boosh movie" (and looks quite Booshian) it's not, the Mighty Boosh just happen to be in it." Video over at Dangerous Minds.

Previously:

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog celebrating the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.



For your Friday, here is a nice video of a spoon box making music. How does the spoon box you work you ask? Well, since it's made by The Books, we'll let them answer it:

This will take a little bit of explaining. I built this prototype of the Spoonbox out of wood, plexiglass, zinc plates, measuring spoons, and closeout radioshack parts. It hooks up to a CD player and small amplifier which cause the spoons to dance. There are small speakers behind the spoons that move in response to the sounds on the CD which I carefully composed using low frequency sine waves and kitchen sounds. The speakers, in turn, blow small puffs of air into the spoons which cause them to bounce/vibrate in rhythmic patterns. It really must be seen to be understood, but this video might give you some sense of what it does.

I just got off the phone with Nick Zammuto, 1/2 of The Books, and will be sharing with you our discussion this weekend. The Books are one of the most important bands of this decade and come this weekend, I will try my best to convince you why.

Until then, here are two tracks from their LPs. Tokyo and That Right Aint Shit both can be found on The Lemon of Pink, released in 2003. Happy Listening and Happy Friday.

666 is a Nigerian film (in 4 episodes) by Nollywood producer Pastor Kenneth Okonkwo. Judging from the trailer above and a "review" in VICE, it's destined to be a psychotronic classic. The VICE writer promised to post the full flick to YouTube. He'd better hurry -- the devil makes work for idle hands. From VICE:

In the first scene of 666, the devil sends two assassins up to earth to kidnap a pregnant woman. They cut her belly open in a tunnel and steal the baby, whom they baptize in the service of Satan. Throughout the movie, Satan terrorizes the people of Nigeria despite the efforts of Pastor Okonkwo (yes, he also stars in the film). Okonkwo often sends lightning bolts down to hell by the power of extreme prayer.

In part two of the quartet, the kidnapped child returns to earth and causes all manner of problems. He seduces a woman in her late 20s by flashing lasers out of his eyes; he goes on a bar crawl and possesses a woman who then kills a priest. Then, when a gang of Christians capture him and attempt to ritually stab him to death, he uses his powers to brand each of their foreheads with a lovely 666.

"Nollywood Omen" (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Audrey Kawasaki says:

REVO LA is putting on a benefit art show to raise money for "Sekolah Dasar Balem Wamena" (SDBW), a model school, which has recently become a light of HOPE in the corrupt regions of West Papua, Indonesia.

Featuring works from Ekundayo, Joshua Clay, Shepard Fairey, Mr. Brainwash and more. The show opens on October 4th sunday at the UCLA Ackerman Grand Ballroom.

I have two prints up for sale there.

Special edition large print of 'Two Sisters' and the Pressure Printing intaglio print 'Okimiyage'.

The Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) is a directed energy weapon (aka ray gun) developed by Boeing under a US military contract. According to an overview document (PDF) about Boeing's Directed Energy Systems program, "In August 2009, the ATL defeated a ground vehicle target from the air, demonstrating its first air-to-ground, high-power laser engagement of a tactically representative target." The video above documents that experiment, in which the laser weapon, mounted on a C-130H Hercules transport plane, was fired at a car. See the Boeing site for more videos, including aerial footage. (via Smithsonian Air & Space)

Rob Cockerham says: "I made a sandwich calculator which will allow people to choose bread, cheese and other sandwich toppings and find out how much it will cost to put it together at home."

Joe Stirt says: "Swiss luxury penmaker Montblanc has just come out with a $23,000 pen to commemorate the austere, ascetic leader of Indian independence's birth on this date (October 2) in 1869."

The limited-edition Ma­hatma Gandhi pen, priced at Rs1.1m ($23,000, €15,800, £14,400), has an 18-carat solid gold, rhodium-plated nib, engraved with Gandhi’s image, and “a saffron-coloured mandarin garnet” on the clip. The pens were unveiled this week, before the national holiday on Gandhi’s birthday.

Dilip R. Doshi, chairman of Entrack, Montblanc’s distributor in India, said the pen embodied Gandhi’s timeless philosophy of non-violence and respect for all living creatures. “We are creating a thing of simplicity and beauty that will last for centuries,” he said.

Fountains of dismay greet Montblanc's 'Gandhi Pen'

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.

The McSweeney folks were going to give us five signed copies, but then Dave Eggers himself loved this Haiku idea so much he's giving us another five. So, we're giving out a total of ten signed copies of Zeitoun. How great is that?

We  had a blast reading all the entries. We went through them three times to make sure none of the 380 entries were missed. A big thank you to Lisa Katayama who also chimed in at the last minute and helped select some of the winning entries.

 It was really hard choosing ten, so in no particular order here are the winners!

Julie Lasky of Design Observer says:

I thought you guys might be interested in minutes I dug up from a 2003 cryogenics seminar, with attendees discussing the design of Timeship, a loopy facility for housing 10,000 frozen dead people. Much conversational chatter about things like "frozen religious leaders" and "vitrified brains." The architect of Timeship, Stephen Valentine, just came out with a book [Timeship: The Architecture of Immortality] about his still-unbuilt design.

Timeship

On her blog, Shelley Rickey shows you how to make Bad Dog Pâté.

The grass is made out of Hummus covered in Parsley with sprigs of Chives sticking out. The Poop is made from Aubergine Pate with lots of Paprika Powder added to give it..uh, a 'nice' poop color. The flies are made out of Olives and Onions. Happy Animal Day Everyone!

Neuroendocronologists report that a nasal spray containing a chemical secreted by the body's own immune system can improve the formation of long-term memories while sleeping. Lisa Marshall and team at Germany's University of Lubeck studied the impact of the substance, interlukin-6, on emotional and procedural memory retention. From the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology:

To make this discovery, Marshall and colleagues had 17 healthy young men spend two nights in the laboratory. On each night after reading either an emotional or neutral short story, they sprayed a fluid into their nostrils which contained either interleukin-6 or a placebo fluid. The subsequent sleep and brain electric activity was monitored throughout the night. The next morning subjects wrote down as many words as they could remember from each of the two stories. Those who received the dose of IL-6 could remember more words.

"You must remember this: Scientists develop nasal spray that improves memory"

New research suggests that a slurry of wood ash and piss makes a good fertilizer for tomatoes. It's the nitrogen in urine and the calcium and magnesium in the ash that does the trick. After promising results in a greenhouse, University of Kuopio environmental scientist Surendra Pradhan and his colleagues plan a real world test in Nepal. From National Geographic:

Human urine and wood ash have each separately been used as fertilizer for centuries. But until now, no one had explored applying them together...

Urine can be collected from eco-friendly, urine-diverting toilets. Or farmers could just collect their pee in cans.

The researchers estimate a single person could supply enough urine to fertilize roughly 6,300 tomato plants a year—yielding some 2.4 tons of tomatoes.

The farmer would just need to give plants ash three days or more after applying urine...

One potential setback may be that pharmaceuticals and hormones excreted in human urine—such as remnants of birth control pills—could negatively impact crops, Pradhan said. For instance, such byproducts could promote antibiotic resistance in local bacteria or get absorbed by the plants.

"Human Pee With Ash Is a Natural Fertilizer, Study Says"

Michael Geist sez, "The Canadian government has introduced Internet surveillance legislation that requires ISPs to disclose customer information without a warrant. Peter Van Loan, the Minister in charge, claims that a Vancouver kidnapping earlier this year shows the need for these powers. I did some digging and shows this to be a lie - the Vancouver police acknowledge that the case did not involve an ISP request and the suspect is now in custody."

Van Loan's Misleading Claims: Case for Lawful Access Not Closed

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we saw the original IBM thinkpad, a lightbulb doorknob, and a crazy man flashed a gun at the Apple store.

Our visit to Mercedes' research lab yielded two more videos: how to pair an iPhone with the console, and the company's plans to create an in-car appstore for its in-dash computers.

Also, Ooma ($250 lifetime subscription to VoIP) has new hardware out, HP updated its Windows Home Server box, and reviewers of the PSPGo nailed Sony on the pricing.

You may also, thanks to Skymall, carry a portable bidet with you.

Jeff Kepner, the first person in England the US to receive two hand transplants, is now home after four months of recovery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. From LancasterOnline.com:

In a strange way, the double transplant was a bit of setback for Kepner, who had lost part of both of his arms and legs in 1999. Doctors amputated the limbs in a bid to save his life after Kepner came down with a strep infection that plunged him into a coma.

After the amputations, Kepner was outfitted with prosthetic hands and feet and forged on with his life.

"He had gotten quite used to his hooks," his mother says of her son's artificial arms. "He could dress himself. He could drive his car. He could do a lot of things..."

Now in therapy (after the transplants), he is learning how to pick up small items, like cotton balls, and catch a ball, but he still has no feeling in his fingers. The nerves grow about an inch a month from where the hands were attached, at the forearm.

"They told him it will be at least until the end of the year before those nerves get down into those fingers," Doris Schafer said. "Then he'll begin to do things."

"Ex-county man ready to go home after double-hand transplant" (via Fortean Times)

This photo-essay at Planet magazine of a purported "new tribe of Ukrainian Amazons," shot by French photographer Guillaume Herbaut, is receiving a lot of attention online. The magazine article is the only source I see for the following background on the women in these photos:

In the Ukraine, a country where females are victims of sexual trafficking and gender oppression, a new tribe of empowered women is emerging. Calling themselves the "Asgarda", the women seek complete autonomy from men. Residing in the Carpathian Mountains, the tribe is comprised of 150 women of varying ages, primarily students, led by 30 year-old Katerina Tarnouska. Reviving the tribal traditions of the Scythian Amazons of ancient Greek mythology, the Asgarda train in martial arts, taught by former Soviet karate master, Volodymyr Stepanovytch, and learn life skills and sciences in order to become ideal women. Little physical documentation existed on the tribe, until recently, when renowned French photographer, met the Asgarda back in 2004 in the midst of the Orange Revolution.

Is this the official Asgarda website? Does anyone know more about them? Are they a cult? A lesbian martial arts club? A planned community? Or manufactured narrative for a sweet series of photos by some French dude in an art magazine? I was inclined to think the whole thing was a hoax, like the "motorcycle ride through Chernobyl" hoax that made the blog rounds years ago, but maybe that's because a tribe of noble Ukrainian girl-warriors sounds too awesome to be true in this cold, cruel world.

Over at LA Weekly, a photo gallery of kits used to slay vampires. This may shock you, but at least some of these are hoaxes. (thanks, Calpernia Addams!)

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.



Many of you may remember my post on Can't Take It With You, a landmark photo exhibit showcasing Muslims in America that's opening next week in New York. Omar Mullick, the photographer of the exhibit, invited me to the gallery space yesterday and we had a little chat.

Bassam: How are you feeling?

Omar: A little tired, a little happy. We've been working around the clock.

Bassam: So, first things first, where did the title for the show come from?

Omar: It's the opening lines of a Radiohead song called Reckoner. It had a pretty strong impact on me when I heard it. I realized that I was as capable of going to Radiohead or The Brian Jonestown Massacre as I was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for the same notes of transcendence....

Aman Ali, a BoingBoing guest blogger, is the co-author of 30 Mosques, a Ramadan adventure taking him to a different mosque in New York City every day for a month.

I'll spare you guys the annoyance of raving about how good the TV show Mad Men is. But now apparently Sesame Street has gotten Mad Men fever. My friend's 3-year-old son saw the clip and said he wants to grow up and be like Don Draper. I said "You and me both kid, you and me both."

Faith Erin Hicks's Zombies Calling is a fun, fast graphic novel about Canadian university students who battle zombies on campus. The protagonist, Joss, is an incorrigible zombie movie nut who argues endlessly with her roommates about the internal consistency of zombie genre films and the rules that heroes must follow when they are confronted by the walking dead. She's also a helpless anglophile who peppers her speech with affectations like "crumbs," which annoys her roommates but is actually very sweet for the reader.

Zombies Calling fits nicely into the Scott Pilgrim mode: rich with pop-culture reference, snappy dialog, and a delightful disregard for the boundary between reality and fantasy.

Hicks has got lots going for her -- great illustration and writing style, funny dialog and likeable characters -- but what I was most impressed by was her cinematic talent for making a zombie chase-scene come alive with real tension through clever panel-layout and illustrations. I didn't expect to have my heart thumping over a funnybook about zombies, but thump it did.

Zombies Calling

Thomas Hawk sez, "I was disappointed after reading about the new Walt Disney Family Museum's opening this week in San Francisco's Presidio via the SF Chronicle to learn that the museum has chosen to prohibit photography. For a cultural institution this is unfortunate. With many public museums moving more recently towards more open photography policies (including the EMP in Seattle just last month) it is disappointing to see a new museum opening with a closed policy. The Walt Disney Family Museum should consider following the lead of most of the other museums in the Bay Area and open their museum up to photographers."

As Thomas notes in his post, the Disney parks have an exemplary open photography policy, too; one that works superbly for Disney, engaging its fans and customers with its products and resorts. It's a real failure of confidence in their own success to impose a policy like this in the museum.

The New Walt Disney Family Museum's No Photography Policy Sucks (Thanks, Thomas!)

Jeffrey sez, "We're getting more and more excellent panoramic photographers uploading their spherical panoramas to our site - but this one made me splutter with delight. Hundreds, or maybe thousands, of yogis with their feet sticking up in the air, as far as you can see, while the sun rises in the distance. I feel more relaxed just looking at it.... If you right-click on the panorama and then select 'little planet' you get a yoga planet of legs...."

Umag Asanas At Sunset (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

Genius: "This small, sixteen-page pamphlet is produced to put inside the postage-paid, business-reply envelopes that come with junk mail offers. Every envelope collected is stuffed with the pamphlet and mailed back to its original company."

The pamphlet depicts (in the style of an airplane emergency card) office workers snapping, destroying their workplace and turning into carnal, hunter-gatherer communards.

Business Reply Mail

The Improbable Movie Trading Cards contain the answer to the question that's plagued us all for decades: "What would the kid's merchandising for Apocalypse Now look like?"

I was addicted to movie trading cards as a kid, especially the stickers that came in the packs, so I'm glad to see that this collection contains a few of 'em.

Improbable movie trading cards (Thanks, Danny!)

Roel sez, "We're a casual gaming company from the Netherlands and we just finished a very big wall painting (containing several game and anime characters) for our meeting room."

Love this -- it's like one of those Sharpie pen murals crossed with the back of my Junior High notebook.

Our awesome meeting room (Thanks, Roel!)

Alex from Worldchanging sez, "It's our sixth anniversary today, so we're running the 70 of our most popular and enduring pieces, in the 7 categories - Cities, Shelter, Business, Politics, Planet, Community, Stuff - we cover. Some great stuff here, which leads on to other great stuff, over 10,500 pieces in all... if you want a quick reminder of the ideas Worldchanging's been exploring these last six years, you couldn't do better than this. It's sort of like How to Change the World, an Overview"

Worldchanging 101: An Anniversary Collection (Thanks, Alex!)

Today's XKCD pays sweet homage to the GNU/Linux user's touching faith in his fellow users' industrious hackery.

xkcd Surgery

Boing Boing guestblogger Mitch Horowitz is author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation and editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin publishers.

(Mitch will be speaking in Los Angeles at the Philosophical Research Society this coming Saturday, October 3 and Sunday, October 4, at 2 p.m. daily on the history of the occult in America. Details here.)

Below is a rundown of books that were unique sources of inspiration to me as I was working on Occult America. Some of these authors are not esotericists at all; others cover topics that I fleetingly reference. But each work represents a carefully researched, keenly reasoned, and pioneering effort at comprehending occult topics and personas without lapsing into the kind of excessive credulity or a knee-jerk nay-saying that often clouds our ability to evaluate fringe movements. Each is a triumph of that rarest of traits: clear thought.

Al-Kemi by Andre VandenBroeck
A window into the intellectual and spiritual world of esoteric Egyptologist RA Schwaller de Lubicz, with an appreciative foreword by Saul Bellow. Posits intriguing ideas about the connections between Ancient Egyptian philosophy and the modern West - and also exposes the ethical failings of this brilliant intellect.

Hidden Wisdom by Richard Smoley and Jay Kinney
A 360-degree survey of modern esoteric beliefs by the editors of the legendary Gnosis magazine (the most fondly missed journal on the planet). Their tone is unfailingly judicious, thoughtful, and shrewd.

The Tarot by Robert M. Place
Perhaps the sole guide to Tarot that synthesizes a scholarly exploration of Tarot's roots in the Middle Ages with an understanding of the mystical allegory of its images.

The Rosicrucian Enlightenment and The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age by Frances A. Yates
Probably the most authoritative works ever written on the occult mood of Europe in the late Renaissance period. Yates was a world-class historian, a tireless scholar, and a uniquely empathic observer of religious/philosophical movements.

The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall
The occult classic published in 1928 by the twenty-seven-year old auteur. This encyclopedia esoterica stands up remarkably well - its passages on Pythagorean mathematics, alchemical symbolism, and the competing histories of Rosicrucianism are especially sturdy.

In the video above, which is making the viral rounds: a San Francisco police officer who IDs himself as "Officer Schwab, (badge number) 2099" arrests a skateboarder identified as Zach Stow, after Stow calls the officer a "fckng dck." Over at metblogs SF, Richard Ault says the officer's understanding of SF skateboarding codes is wrong. An article about the incident is here at the SF Chronicle. My two cents, as someone who is neither a lawyer, nor a skateboarder: taunting a police officer by calling him a "fckng dck" is about as dumb as it gets, but that does not give the officer the right to threaten to break the guy's arms, or arrest him for -- what was it, in the end, failing to carry identification? In any case: viva la video camera. (thanks, Jacob Appelbaum)

My old high school buddy Mitch O'Connell has a new show opening at La Luz De Jesus Gallery in LA. It runs from October 2 - November 1, 2009. Incredible stuff.

Mitch O’Connell’s imaginative, vividly colorful, smart and well executed artwork is undeniably and unabashedly old-school low-brow. As one of Chicago’s most well-known and busiest illustrators, O'Connell’s works have been featured in magazines from Newsweek to Playboy. His tattoo designs are also a fixture on the walls of tattoo shops around the word. His distinctive style fuses cartoony and iconic imagery plus an innate sense of humor to create pop-kitsch masterpieces.

Mitch O'Connell's "Pre-engagement Ring" art show

Eric Spiegelman made this funny video from more than a hundred still photographs of Barack Obama with various visiting dignitaries. Obama's smile is exactly the same in every photo! It's more fun if you watch large size here or on Vimeo.

"Robin Cooper" (whom I know to be the brilliant UK comedy writer Robert Popper of the Timewaster Podcasts) says,

Telemarketers are constantly calling me at home, so a few months ago I decided to get my own back. When a guy called from some satellite TV sort of company thingy (it's always so vague) I had a bit of fun.

"Robin Cooper & family v The Telemarketer"

A quick-thinking farmer's daughter disarmed a man who broke into her home in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. In a phenomenally bad-ass series of moves worthy of a Tarantino screenplay, 21-year-old Rukhsana Kausar attacked him with an axe, then shot him dead with his own gun. The civilians' residence is 20 miles away from the ceasefire line between Indian and Pakistani forces. The intruder was reported to have been a combatant from the other side of the border.

Miss Kausar said she had never fired an assault rifle before but had seen it in films and could not stand by while her father was being hurt. "I couldn't bear my father's humiliation. If I'd failed to kill him, they would have killed us," she said.

"Farmer's daughter disarms terrorist and shoots him dead with AK47" (Telegraph, via Maggie Koerth-Baker)

Video after the jump.

On "Getting Over It," by Lauren over at Feministe:

What does rape do to you? Afterward? It changed me; there is before and after. Before, a child, playing with Barbies, looking sideways at boys, wondering. After, confusion. Depression. A litany of fuck-ups and fuck-its, whatevers, mistakes, trusting no one, least of all myself. Before, sex was mysterious; after, miasma. I was tarred as a Lolita. I was called jail bait.

Rape is not the only assault. Around rape is a large segment of the population that questions the victim, a culture that looks down on victims for allowing themselves to be victimized, or keep them victimized, questions about the victim's credibility, questions about the legacy of rape and how bad it is, because how bad is rape really? Rape, because various levels and forms of sexual assault are systemic and pervasive across all societies, exists alongside one's experiences of unwanted touching, wanted touching, sexual objectification, sexual desire, sexual harassment, incest, love, leering eyes, cat calls, roaming hands, consent, confusion, tits, vagina, rectum, penis, mouth, rape and not-rape, all of it loaded, all of it veering at rape's ugly legacy, co-mingling, the legacy that tells us to be more careful, to dress more conservatively, to BE BETTER AT BEING VULNERABLE, or BE MORE POWERFUL, or BE MORE FEARFUL, or GET OVER IT ALREADY. Rape leaks into healthy, consensual experiences. It lingers. It pervades.

Related: This Smoking Gun archive contains the entire "1977 grand jury testimony of the 13-year-old California girl with whom the director had sex after plying her with Champagne and a Quaalude at the Los Angeles home of Jack Nicholson."

A rape is a rape by any other name.

See also: Polanski's Victim and Me, by the celebrated novelist Robert Goolrick, who is also a survivor of child rape.

Finally, Polanski in his own words in 1979, an unrepentant abuser:

"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But... f--ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f-- young girls. Juries want to f-- young girls. Everyone wants to f-- young girls!"

I don't know about you, but I only watch videos about industrial robotic pancake production if they have an energetic techno soundtrack like this one does. (Via Cynical-C)

“When the Nest’s Beset By Pests, the Babysitters Swift Undressed” - (oil on canvas) 48x36 - 2009

(NSFW thumbnails above: “Dan’l Boone Rescues His Daughter From The Dread Shawnee; July, 1776,” "Goldilocks Rages Against The Fall," “The Bathing Sphinx,” “Werewolf Triptych, #1 - #3” )

A new exhibition by Van Arno will be unveiled at Corey Helford Gallery.

Los Angeles artist Van Arno joins Corey Helford for his second solo show at the gallery entitled “A Change of Skin.” The process of transformation and evolution is no easy task, and Arno skillfully narrates a dynamic collection of Darwinian daydreams in his latest series of oil paintings. Werewolves, centaurs and women shed their original skin, emerging as new breeds of enchanted beings and barbaric beasts. Joining them in the fray are representations of transformation by means of natural selection, cross-species parenting, Black Arts, and even the car crash that altered Montgomery Clift’s famous face. Larger and more ambitious than before, “A Change of Skin” marks a new direction for the artist as Arno introduces multiple characters and a looser, more gestural format to his work. The exhibition will also feature 100 limited-edition silk screen show prints that will be available only at the gallery.

In the loft, guest artist Melissa Forman unveils “Garden of Shadows”, her second series of works at Corey Helford Gallery. Inspired by ancient medicine, Forman’s dark yet delicate paintings study the Four Humours, a medieval method of diagnosing imbalances in patients. Each humour is visually illustrated combining its unique properties such as color, mood, temperament, disposition, and plants. Rich colors and deep black backgrounds add to the ethereal mood and a subtle sense of surrealism in each painting, ultimately sending a message of hope and good things to come during dark times. Open to the public, the reception for “A Change of Skin” and “Garden of Shadows” takes place on Saturday, October 3, and the show will be on view until October 24, 2009.

Van Arno was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and attended Otis parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, California where he supported himself working as a bouncer in nightclubs and adult video arcades. As a young illustrator, his images appeared on album covers, video game box art, and nightclub posters around the city. He has exhibited in galleries worldwide including Jonathan Levine Gallery, Shooting Gallery, Copro Nason, Mendenhall Sobieski and Galerie d’Art Yves Laroche. Several of his works were included in a national survey of Lowbrow painters at the Hollywood Art and Culture Center in Florida along with Mark Ryden, Chaz Bojorquez, Kenny Scharf, Anthony Ausgang and others. For more information about Van Arno please visit www.vanarno.com.

Van Arno Opening Reception Saturday, October 3, 2009 from 7‑10pm
On View October 3 – October 24, 2009

Boing Boing reader/commenter catastrophegirl, commenting in a thread about an enraged hillbilly user of flavored chewing tobacco, points to her Flickr photoset documenting her quest to make DIY kretek (clove cigarettes). These lung-rotting treats are much beloved by goths, and by my inner 14-year-old punk girl. Both catastrophegirl and "skoalrebel," each in their own ways, were upset about the Obama administration's recent ban on flavored tobaccos. The new FDA kibosh makes it illegal to sell stuff like clove cigs, and skoalrebel's beloved Copenhagen whiskey deeyup.

Catastrophegirl commented,

I heard about [the ban] the day it was signed. Now i am back to smoking a pipe at home and smoking homemade clove cigarettes when i drive. Besides the difficulty involved in driving and lighting a pipe, cops for some reason cannot fathom a caucasian woman smoking a briar pipe that doesn't have weed in it.

It's kind of a pain to set up and took me a while to find the right tobacco for my tastes, but aside from my little nicotine addiction, I am going to thoroughly enjoy smoking my clove cigarettes in public. The law is about sales and distribution. it does not cover making your own at home and smoking them as far as i have been able to glean from the law. If someone could point me at the full text of it, that'd be neat - even the FDA site has an abbreviated version.

I remember the taste of cloves well. In my memory, it is inextricably linked with certain songs by Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Damned, and other bands from the last great days of leather, studs, and black vinyl. I've long since become a nonsmoker, and believe that smoking and chewing are horrible habits -- but on this point, I can even agree with skoalrebel: the ban is total bullsheyut. Consenting adults ought to be able to purchase and smoke/chew the stuff if they want. The ban is a reacharound for Big Tobacco.

"Making Kretek" (Flickr)

Dancecult is a new "academic"-style journal about "electronic dance music culture." It reminds me of the kinds of books about technology and postmodernism that I'd impulse buy in the early 1990s. Of course, I'd only make it through three pages before cracking open the new issue of Hate or Eightball. But at least the covers and titles were fascinating! Here are the featured articles in the first issue of Dancecult:

IDM as a "Minor" Literature: The Treatment of Cultural and Musical Norms by "Intelligent Dance Music"
Ramzy Alwakeel

Decline of the Rave Inspired Clubculture in China: State Suppression, Clubber Adaptations and Socio-cultural Transformations
Matthew M Chew

Neotrance and the Psychedelic Festival
Graham St John

Too Young to Drink, Too Old to Dance: The Influences of Age and Gender on (Non) Rave Participation
Julie Gregory

DJ Culture in the Commercial Sydney Dance Music Scene
Ed Montano

Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Aman Ali, a BoingBoing guest blogger, is the co-author of 30 Mosques, a Ramadan adventure taking him to a different mosque in New York City every day for a month.

It sounds like an infomercial. I can already imagine the voice of Billy Mays (RIP) booming through my television set.

"Sick of fighting terrorists the old fashioned way with asymmetrical warfare? Hi, Billy Mays here, to talk to you about the one and only, Mullah Remover!"

I just got done reading Howard Clark's new book "How You Can Kill Al-Qaeda (in Three Easy Steps). He's an ex-Marine and former Homeland Security adviser who says the way to win the war on terrorism is to help empower the mainstream Muslim community, who in recent years has been overshadowed in the public spotlight by fringe Al-Qaeda extremists.

The whole idea of fighting terrorism with ideas and not weapons is definitely nothing new, but Clark's populist tone and foreign policy street cred was a refreshing perspective to have in the discussion.

"Click on the link below in the next 30 minutes and I'll throw in this egg slicer absolutely free! Here's how to order!"

Book's official site.

This week is Banned Books Week in the United States. Sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA), American Booksellers Association, and a variety of other organizations, the week of events around the country celebrates intellectual freedom and spotlights books that have been targets of attempting bannings. According to the ALA, there were more than 500 "challenges" to specific books in schools, stores, and libraries reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2008. And probably many, many more that went unreported. And Tango Makes Three was apparently the biggest target. It's a true story about a same-sex penguin couple in New York's Central Park Zoo who were given an egg to raise. Without further ado, here are the top ten "most challenged titles" of last year. I linked to the Amazon page for each so you can collect them all or buy copies for your local library or school!

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group

2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman

Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence

3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle

Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

4. Scary Stories (series) , by Alvin Schwartz

Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence

5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya

Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence

6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group

7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar

Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen

Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group

9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper

Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group

For more, see the Banned Books Week site and the ALA's Banned Books Week pages.

Fun flash app doesn't do anything but shrink and multiply the dots you pass over with your mouse cursor.

Magic Dots (Via Neatorama)

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.



The good folks at the Monster's Cereal blog are having Fan Art Month counting down the days to Halloween. I'm going to submit a Tin Tin inspired Count Chocula.

Monster's Cereal Blog - Fan Art Month - or email submissions to choculafan@gmail.com

Bassam Tariq is a Boing Boing guestblogger who is the co-author of 30 Mosques. A blog that celebrated the NYC mosques during the Islamic month of Ramadan. He lives in Harlem, NY.



Ghazals are traditional Sufi poems that contemplate life, the meaning of our existence and the countenance of God. Some renowned writers of such poetry are Jalal-uddin Rumi, Bulleh Shah, Mirza Ghaleb, etc.