Silent but Deadly

This is from a "Science by email" from 26 nov... my kids get them.
thought it was funny enuff to chuck here.

News: Silent but Deadly



How many times do you fart a day? It has been previously thought that the average healthy person passes wind somewhere between 7-14 times a day. But a recent survey by ABC's The Lab has revealed that Aussie kids fart about 24 times a day. Almost 1,000 gassy Aussies took part in the survey and the results are startling - 28% of farters can let one rip whenever they want. Most surprisingly, only 39% of participants like the smell of their own farts.

Australia's leading Grossologist, Questacon's Dr Thatsa NastySmell is thrilled by the results, "I am excited that our very own Aussie kids are farting more times per day than other kids around the world. It makes me happy as farting is a fabulous function our bodies perform. "

What causes us to fart? It can be many things; some of the gas we produce is from air we swallow which makes its way to the stomach and continues down, or it could be caused by our diet. But most is caused by bacteria living in our bowel. Dr NastySmell blames flatulence emissions on her large intestine's E. coli bacteria. "When the E. coli bacteria come across foods like beans and cabbage, which have sugars that humans can't digest, the E. coli chew them up and emit them as gases, which can sometimes be smelly!"

Beans and cabbage contain complex sugars raffinose and stachyose that humans are unable to digest, as we don't have the enzymes needed. An enzyme is a chemical that helps a chemical reaction take place. This is where the bacteria come in, as they eat these indigestible sugars and release gas. This type of fart is usually loud and voluminous. The smelly ones are those that occur after eating eggs, meat or other food products. So, if someone accuses you of letting fluffy off the chain, pass the blame onto the E. coli in your intestines as they produce the gas and you are simply a vehicle for it.

Farts are made up of five main gases, they are: oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane. You might be interested to know that all these gasses are odourless. So what causes farts to smell? Scientists have found that the smell of flatus comes from various sulphur-containing compounds. The usual culprits that give each fart its own unique smell are the compounds: hydrogen sulphide, methanethiol and dimethyl sulphide.

Is the study of gross aspects of the body restricted to the experts? In the privacy of their own homes, Dr NastySmell claims all people are grossologists, even the most beautiful people in the world, "It is such a comfort to know that anyone can let one rip or sneak a silent but deadly fart out. One simply has to observe the number of people who sneeze into their handkerchiefs and then sneakily have a peak at what they've produced."

So next time your body does something that you think is gross; like fart or burp or sweat you might be encouraged to celebrate how amazing your body is because usually the "grossest" things are the most important and healthy functions of the body. And as a budding grossologists you might even try to find out why it happens.

To find out more about farts watch Dr NastySmell on next week's episode of Totally Wild, at 4.00pm Tuesday 30 November, where she will explain how and why this bodily function happens. She will also be testing the flammability of the gas produced by one of the Totally Wild presenters to assess its contents.
More information:


Smelly Science and the results of the Great Fart Survey:
www.abc.net.au/spark/smelly/default.htm

How flatulence works:
www.howstuffworks.com/question46.htm

A picture of a whale fart:
dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030825/whalegas.html

CSIRO's Dietary Fibre Information Sheet:
www.csiro.au/index.asp?type=faq&id=Dietary%20Fibre&stylesheet=divisionFa

all yr base belong to us

ALL YR MEANING BELONG TO US

i'm gonna try and write about memes today - and the "all your base belong to us" phenomena

Playboy Bunnies.. WHY?

by the way... be warned - the link above goes to "playboy.com". to illustrate what it represents.

so, i'm on the train to perth the other day and this chick opposite me is busily punching keys on her mobile. i realise she's wearing this cute little toe ring... sorta sparkly. looked really nice. then i realised it was a playboy bunny. upon further perusal - as you do on trains - i realised she was also wearing a playboy bunny around her neck on a chain. its happening all over the joint in our consumer world. but do these women think to undestand what it represents?

got me thinking about this... and i've been talking about it with other people over the last coupla years about how can women wear these symbols of oppression. same thing when i see a 10 year old girl with a "porn star" label tshirt on.

its disconcerting and a retro-leap for feminist progress. the girls who wear these symbols perhaps don't realise what the logo is saying: " Hi - MY BODY IS AVAILABLE FOR VOYEURISTIC INTENT - please stare at me and fantasize"... or "i belong in a pornographic magazine"...

as a student of language culture - i look at the subtextualities of meaning in everyday language - in logos, in advertising copy, in the media etc. and so, i see in our consumer-driven society, that a woman - or feminism - has perhaps two types of empowerment. firstly there's the "equality" issue - where women are as good as men at stuff. and secondly, that women have a sexual power over men - and they can use it to get stuff they want. seems the playboy logo is proliferating on chicks cars, on their tshirts and jewellery - everywhere.

Hugh Hefner would be proud!

anyway, i'm worried, or old - or something!

more later.
al_

installmob

check this out...
a few of us cheeky buggers are trying get this happening...

the first mob is:
bring a coathanger and place on a tree in Hay ST Mall - sometime next week
Time/Place TBA.

al_
heres another nice picture.


its a little trampoline in my backyard that i put some stencils on - the image has been "negatived"

poetry and sex - and insurance

i was gonna write about insurance.

i'm doing a performance poetry workshop next weekend, and if i wanna get paid [its good money btw] i need to have Public Liability [PL] insurance. and this is a stipulation of the Grant Auspicing body - that all artists facillitating the workshops must have PL. theres a group of us at various levels of income. and i am at the bottom of the feeding chain.

personally i do not wish to give ANY money to an insurance company. i am morally opposed to their existence. my workshop is NOT dnagerous. but apparently if somebody trips over and gets a gammy leg on the way to be in my worshop room - well, its MY fault! for fucks sake! are we REALLY that much of a litigious society?

i could understand if i was angle-gringing or chainsawing words as performance. or dancing or anything other than sitting on chairs in a room - mainly talking, and doing a few writing/speaking excercises.

thing is: its gonna cost me around $500 and i'm not getting paid much more than that...

anyway it shits me. and i dunno what to do!

but heres some sexxy poems...




if yr interested in more of this sort of thing,
please go here to see the directory of these images
- and more i'm working on...

oh and thanks to Gempires for the comment on the last sexy stencil! i love that one...

A Stencil I wanna do REALLY BIG

this is A4 size - on the back of a chair in my backyard!
but i hope to tile it and make it human-sized... for an empty.

EMPTY SHOWS

the image below is from an Empty Show

i first became aware of the idea of "empty shows" during my time as an organiser of the This Is Not Art Festivals in Newcastle... the basic idea is to use a derelict space ie: a warehouse, hotel, or any disused building - even an old house, and adorn the walls etc with ART. its appropriating the notion of space and property. theres an anarchist intention deep within the concept.

similar to Squatting - but its the art that squats the vacant space! its an edgey practice because you have to "break in" to the venue in order to make your art. as youre working away [usually in the dark] you are aware of every sound and squeaky door - hoping you're not gonna get busted. its a fucking beautiful concept. the exhibition itself becomes the spectacle as the recipients of the art are also encouraged to "break in". i love the transient notions of the Empty Show concept - and the "giving away" of your product to an empty space that will soon become demolished or refurbished... gorgeous and naughty!

this year we've seen a couple in Perth - including the old Norwood Hotel in East Perth - which was done during Anarcon04. currently theres a Warehouse [ALLWEST] cnr Newcastle n Money Sts, under deconstruction!

i'll try and find some photos of the 2 perth Emptys. and post here...

i just love the one below from a recent Empty in Fitzroy - Melbourne.



[these pics via Nik's blog]

Anarchism is? i'm not an expert... but

ahhh beers n blahblah - yeah i am an anarchist: i reject the institutions of authority... oh and yes i DO have a wedding ring. and so does my partner. sorry!

so, yeah. anyway, we had a meeting at Groovy Space with some extremely excellent fellow indymedia crew yesterday. a couple of "eastern-stater" indykids were in Perth over the weekend and so we caught up for a yabber and a beer on a beautiful warm perth day... cool people. RESPECTA!

we were talking about "smashing the state" etc, as ya do... sprouting the usual anarko slogans over a couple of beers. was a great yarn indeed. its really good to know we have some very articulate and passionate people in the wider indymedia network.

got me to thinking though: indymedia claims at times to be an anarchist network. although this is also disputed at the drop of a hat! but time and time again i read good peoples bastardisations on the subject of ANARCHISM. for example, we've been in discussion as to what to do, as a network, with a hostile Imc in the region. Some think we should ban them from the networks and take away their ".indymedia.org" URL, because pronciples of unity have been busted. others think there should be other forms of punishment...

but underlying this whole argument is the notion of AUTHORITY! perhaps its worth an explanation.

personally i do not support the kind of authority necessary to bash someone out of a group. yet i don't entirely know what to do about it...

however, as an anarchist, you have to ask yourself whether its a valid anarchistic thing to inflict rule over others, rather than offer Mutual Aid, or come to some consensus compromise. For me Indymedia is not about the "policing" of other IMCs. we have Principles of Unity and tons of Affinity, but we don't want to start exacting authority over each other. the debate has raged on a list for months...

So, What IS Authority? The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge... something like that. and so Authority and Anarchism must be incongruous.

are anarchism and authority mutually exclusive concepts? isnt Anarchism at its very base about NO forms of AUTHORITY? noone should rule over me - or others. there has been some talk implying the Regional collectives should "disaffiliate" another IMC. its a difficult decision to make - to effectively BAN one group from the network. the site "seems" to be functioning. the Porn and Nazi spams are being hidden reasonably early, but theres certainly a lack of diversity amongst the few remaining members. *a bitter fight has ensued over the last year or so, involving former members of a local IMC. many have left and the current crew [accused of bullying] are struggling to maintain the integrity of the Open Publishing Newswire

but in terms of Anarchism i am pretty disillusioned as to some peoples distortion of the concept No Rulers, No Hierarchy etc... it just doesnt sit well with me. its a Bastard of an anarchism!

oh shit, i have to do stuff now, but i WILL add more to this draft tonight.

al_ [sunday arvo]

ps for a recent "post-anarko" perspective:
Towards an another anarchism from a Social Forum in 2003... worth a browse.

what he said:

Mar Bucknell is the staunchest anarchist i know. we do a radio show together on RTR each week [News From Nowhere - its perths only Anarchist/Dissident radio. he's been doing it for over 10 years]... this statement was in relation to the vainglorious psycho-blabbering of the post below... i respect his words. many a time he's said something which infuriates me - then a while later i'll go ahhh - of course. his dedication to anarchist philosophy is admirable. his POVs remind me a lot of ChuckOs.

and the older i get and the more i adapt my alignment to the notions of anarchism i accept his philosphy. i have always been one... the philosophy is an aside. authority is fundamentally opposed to human evolution.

but mar is old-skool.. Take it away Buckles...

Mar says:

"...I really feel like saying: How about an ABC of anarchist thought here?
Organised religion is anti-freedom. War is anti-freedom. Nationalism is anti-freedom. People in Iraq who resist the occupation are heroic in their resistance, and I support their resistance. That doesn't mean I have to support their platforms. And to put it a bit more bluntly, let's remember that the Iraqi resistance consists of a large number of different groups, some of which I regard as my enemies. And some of them are fighting each other.

For freedom.
For anarchy.
For community.

Against religion.
Aginst the State.
Against authority.
Against patriarchy.
Against the militarism.

Do the sums,
mar

...

i also posted this here to get some response for the perth indymedia mob to react...

i wish mar had a blog! maybe i can talk him into it...
al_

i saved john howards life last night

in a dream.

i've been having some bizarre dreams of late:

1. travelling on my motorbike
2. plane crashes
3. big brother and john howard...

will flesh these out throughout the day as i get time...

al_


1. a decade or so ago i used to ride a motorbike. i havent for years...

in the dream, i'd been travelling. though now parked and sitting at a rural roadhouse. waiting casually without a care in the world. there were some unknown friends with me. and tonja. she was my pillion. and we were waiting to go to the next destination. the other members of the posse - they had a panel van and a station wagon - left to go their separate ways. tonja and i were deciding where to go next. i didnt care where were gonna end up. it was a very paceful dream. reminding me of Robert Prisig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence"

the thing that sticks out is my travelling pack. somehow i had been carrying an old typewriter case. kinda plastic 60's looking thing. and when i opened it the typewriter had these kinda tubes sticking out of it - i didnt know what they were for. they looked like reticulation pipes, but all mangled. reminded me of the tubes that run into the inkpad thing on an old offset printer. the typwriter inside the case was sorta dislodged from its housing. it was a weird thing - and i was trying to figure out what these tubes were for...

during the sequence of events, which werent many, the roadhouse manager was offering us advice as to what tourist destination would be best for us next. he was talking away - but i couldn't understand the words. but that didnt matter because i knew the normal tourist route would bore me... i think the dream ended with tonja and i riding off into the morning sun.

i think the typewriter was some kinda representation of the internet - and blogging perhaps...

some incohesive, incoherent thoughts...

i've been listening to Paul's argument on this stuff for a few weeks now. theres also an email list we're on where he's hammering away hard at good people, and am really quite taken aback at his zeal to promote the dichotomy of an "us vs them" concept.

it seems Paul, that you want us to become terrorists or we become the Imperialist. c'mon man, isn't there another option. or even many others? life's a pretty broad experience and never one thing or the other...

we've discussed this "terrorism dichotomy" on the News From Nowhere show at length many times over the last few months - on RTR. last night mar and i had a great conversation about the subject... outcome: anarchists, when faced with two options may take the third!

but, i personally feel pretty disturbed by your support for kidnappers and murderous beheaders of innocent human rights workers, and in the way in which you promote their videos across the activist wires - are you supporting them? would you do that YOURSELF? because i think thats what you are saying. but i might be wrong. i hope i am. because you are losing a lot of respect and crediblity round the perth online community. as well as in backstreets and bars!

so, heres a 1am al_ rant:

sure the Coalition of the Killing is really fucked. very very bad. absolutely wrong in EVERY sense.

forced versions of American-style democracy are nothing more than self-serving and vengeful acts of TERRORISM. and that is very clear to pretty much everyone i know. the USA's arrogance [and Australia's for that matter] is fucked. a bunch of greedy warmongers killing thousands of children - to prove a point and get rich. post-modern war is designed to prop up the oil and military industries... and not much else. [well, there are others but thats an aside]

so its clear i am saying: "no no no" to the Bushites okay?

but the behaviour of some of the more "out there" insurgents is also terroristic in the extreme. and i have to seriously ask you man: can you really, deeply, in your good heart, support some of that shit?

have you ever felt fear like that, or experienced severe body damage? bled? been beaten into unconsciousness? lost anyone close to you? i mean imagine if these fellas had done this to your mum? or to you as you area westerner yourself.

hey! i understand where these guys come form. and they have every right to resist and retaliate the US fuckers.

YES: fighting the enemy in the street, undermining the profiteers, fighting for your territory is admirable and honourable and i would do EXACTLY the same if the US came trampling over the hill to my house in suburban perth. kill the americans - yeah i would. no worries. without a moments hesitation.

if the occupation was here in the streets of WA - then yeah - i'm out there, protecting my family, my community, my street. myself - by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. basically if its gonna happen in my backyard - i am gonna fight like fuck... YES! i support that - wholeheartedly.

to use your language: it is absolutely WRONG that the capitalist infidel has desecrated the holy places of Iraq.

but sorry - i am not going to go out and behead good people. i am not going to chop the heads of innocent human rights workers. and if i was in your guerilla cell group i would block that motion. i would leave the group if i could if i knew you were gonna do that shit. its counter productive.

so yes - i would fight in the street and many other things - but i would not and do not support some the extreme tactics of the monority of the very factionalised, incoherent, and lets face it incohesive insurgence. in other words, i cant support the WHOLE resistance. because its too general. yeah USA fuck off. but dont kill innocent people.

so, in that, i really can't get my head around your logic. its all too sterile and polemic. theres a GWB/hoWARdness about all this. where exactly are you coming from? what ARE you reading? or maybe its the lack of articulation... are you actually trying to say something else?

is it possible to:
1. have NO support for the US invasion of Iraq
2. support the Iraqi resistance
3. and still not be fence sitter.

why is it so important for you to force people to take a side on this...?

hmmm does that rant make any sense?
bro_x

paul's response is here...
and a bit more of mine.

anarchism

http://anarchism.perthimc.asn.au/

perth indy attacked - and i thought the nazis were bad

don't u just love the idea of open publishing!

just spent the day responding to a spate of attacks on the perth indymedia site. for a while there we were getting a barrage of blatantly ridiculous shit posts [troll] this morning, one after the other - bang bang bang. complete rubbish. things like: "DIE PERTH INDYMEDIA" and stuff about "ass-raping" us for being gay media fuckers... us. yeah!

we deleted these nusiance posts as they came in - within seconds - and we eventually blocked the ip of the poster - heres one hidden example. but theres more here - all archived on the "ocean girl" list. what a great tool shayne has made there - "og" is an application or code or tool of some sort that monitirs the incoming posts on the perth indymedia newswire. it records the posts in an email list and deposits the link into the perth irc. ocean girl is a great tool and more imcs should use it for maintaining the integrity of Open Publishing...

fuck i love the perth imc geex. they rock fully!


thanks ocean girl!

we were deleting them as they came in - musta been a dozen fuckhead comments and stories. i'm glad we have a small but strong crew of dedicated indymedia activistas online [around 20 hours a day - between us mob].

anyone attempting to maintain the newswire integrity of an indymedia site must realise their absolute responsibility to the media commons [i will write more about this notion of the media commons atsome point] they have helped create. nazi trolls and those with somthing to prove simply kill the notion of what we're trying to achieve. theres a whole other essay tangent on the nature of Open Publishing and "edtitorial police" [more later?] chuck-o has a good yarn on the subject somewhere - and we've done it to death in the perth imc discussion list archives.

so yeah, open publishing needs a degree of moderator responsibility. but more on the situation today - it all goes back to a bitter and verbose dispute between fighting members of the Brisbane Indymedia collective. seems the original members had a massive fallout and the group became completely dissillusioned and factionalised. this forced several of the founding members [some 8 people] from the group. a couple remained and let the open publishing newswire go to absolute shite.

so anyway, the fighting became so bitter the legendary c@t crew geeks wanted the bully faction off their servers. since then some members of the oceania.indymedia crew jumped in to help with editorial stuff. well, that really irked the new skool bimc heavies and they spat a myriad emails at the oceania crew, who had nothing but the best intentions of indymedia affinity. the new guys refused to see this and tookm it as a hostile "takeover"!

since this happened some people in the oceania crew wanted to disaffiliate bris from the regional collective... and some of us blocked the proposal as it all seemed a bit harsh and authoritarian.

god this is gonna take a while to write about...

and there is an oceania regional meeting now - end...

MORE SOON.

al_

CARCRASHFACE - in denial

Richard Eames just asked me about Car Crash Face - one of my noisier collaborations.

we havent played for a while... our last 2 gigs were on the Invasion Day weekend 2004 - at the Anarchist Ball as part of Anarcon04, and the No Fly Zone benefit gig. we usually play at something during Artrage but we didnt this year... i'd say we'll be doing some thing somewhere soon one day! maybe at one of the upcoming indymedia screenings... [or perhaps at a new regular gig i'm hoping to start up in feb - Openmouth Dissent - more on that soon]

car crash face have a recording, which we released a while ago... in 2000 i think. we recorded with Dr Alien Smith at Bergerk Studio - i'm not sure if he has any copies left - its called: "Car Crash Face - There Is No Such thing As A Mistake (Sound Gallery) CDR" catalogue number: "BSG005". Mar Bucknell [fellow CCF noisician] and i were talking the other day about doing another recording soon.

anyway, so i did some googling. beware: car crash face is a dodgy thing to search the internet for! but heres some snips...

"Car Crash Face is more a band, with members who were previously in Magick Trousers. From what I understand a pretty heavy affair. Car Crash Face have four members who operate on a line of casio, toys, pc loops, guitar, moog. Their CDR release is full of weirdness playing, which however didn't make a consistent sound to me. Crazyness at it's best, but it never made any impression on me. (FdW)" found here

"Rising from the ashes of the infamous Magic Trousers, Car Crash Face combine Moog, Audio Mulch, Casios, Guitar, Toys and vocals to create an electronic based mish mash of sound collage and atmospherics. This is in true essence an electronic record, but the best kind, utilizing technolgy and analogue sound sources to deconstruct music and build it up again in new and refreshing ways. With a total of 15 tracks ranging from 10 minute epics to 1 minute bursts of weirdness, this CD sets in concrete the Car Crash Face sound. From: The Sound Gallery Series of Limited Edition Australian Experimental CDR's

the original - now chronically outta date CCF site

Car Crash Face Biography - CCF formed in 2000, the leftover sonic bile from perth, western australia's notorious performance poetry experimental noise-art band, the MAGICK TROUSERS. With the now-redundant legacy of the magick trousers behind them [banned from over 4 venues and hated by many], and only sonic remnants for a canvas, CCF attempt to defy the stifling structures of hegemonic music. Using moog, casio, radios, cds, computer-driven loops, toys, guitars and various found objects, CCF seek to find music in noise and noise in music. The Car Crash Face mission is clear: isolate, deconstruct, destroy the very essence of sonic meaning. Car Crash Face [anti-sonic noise-art] assembled their toys in march 2001and headed into Bergerk! Studios. working with Lux Mammoth/Bergerk! overlord, Dr Alien Smith, these nasty aural deconstructors have created an album's worth of noise gems, unfit for unsonic mothers.

the car crash gang consists of Allan Boyd - PCloops/guitar/shout, Mar Bucknell - casio/toys, Father Abe Dunovits - radios/noisetoys/shoutfeedback, Dr Jon Kirby - MOOG.

"This entire CD-R was recorded in two improvised takes, tweaking only the levels during the mixing process. Not bad, especially considering that the first track is more than 10 minutes of interesting experimental electronics with nice integration of samples and even some live instrumentation. The fact that four people were involved probably helped a lot as far as layering and structuring. Most of the other tracks are far shorter, though also less interesting to me because the instrumentation (guitar/bass) becomes more random and more noticeable. I'm not really fond of noisy music that dwells too highly on haphazardly executed stringed instrument performances, especially when the sound sources are easily identifiable as such.

When they integrate samples and loops, including beats, and let bizarre electronics take control while the guitar/bass fiddling sort of falls to the background (see "360 Degrees in Rehearsal (Owings)" it's far more effective. But I could do with tracks like "Mistake 6 (Reprise in A# Major)" altogether, as there's no real substance. Elsewhere the group displays the ability to create wonderful ambient drones with the bass as well as creating nice electronic layers, so I'm not sure why so many tracks are similar in their minimal, and basically boring delivery.

The CD-R comes packaged in a nice sleeve printed on semi-transparent orange paper with simple text and abstract images. "Support Piracy Copy Burn Distribute" is posted on the back cover, which I'm all for in cases like these. I seem to have the same general feeling about most of the Bergerk! releases that I've heard. All have promising elements, but I guess my personal tastes interfere as I'm not particularly fond of improvised recordings of this nature, so I'd rather hear them pick and choose their strengths and refine them in thoroughly constructed pieces." By Aversionline Zine

i like this one: an Italian Review here at the kathodike website...
especially when translated to english...

and apparently u can get a cd here:
www.kormplastics.nl

or just comment here or send me an email.
allanx--AT--indymedia--DOT--org

cheerio...
X_al

sunday thinking about corporate apathy and the consumer culture...

thinking about the links between GET THE LATEST mobile phone ringtones and toxic spillage - but don't know where to start!

some other ideas for writing:
copyright obedience kills creativity in art and culture;
homogeneous/monoculture representations;
open source is my godhead;
sign>signifier>signified...


hmmm
back later...

making this today:
baxter05.info

corporate thuggery

just spent this evening researching ALCOA for an indymedia feature story. seems everytime i look into a corporation it leads back to the USA Government. when i was looking at the Cable Sands Ludlow Forest desecration, i found the CEOs all fed back into the Whitehouse in some form or another. indeed the Cable Sands executive mob can be traced back to the Bin Laden Group - eg: Cable Sands > RZM > BeMAx > Sojitz > Cristal > Saudi Ti02 Co > Bin Laden Group

Alcoa is a massive corporate global mob... with direct links to the Whitehouse. eg: From December 2000: "On his busiest day of transition announcements yet, Bush also picked the chairman of Alcoa, Paul O'Neill, to be his treasury secretary..." O'Neill has since left the cabinet and has criticised Bush but still - the links are there.

here in WA they operate BAUXITE mines and refineries and other stuff. besides some hideous reports of toxic output from its stacks over the last coupla decades, recently there have been continual reports of spillage from the Kwinanna Refinery - like 8 spills in the last 5 months!
see indy feature here...

ha! and as i'm writing this, during a quick last minute google for more info: there's a sunday times story on the subject of Alcoa spillage.

al_

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

its good to rediscover the "language poets". over the last few years of internet growth, a lot of stuff has been documented and made available for research and contemplation.

i'm gonna use this entry as a launching point for an article on the language poets. did i say Wikipedia rocks? well it does...

language poets?

when i was studying English at Curtin Uni a few years back, one of our tutors, Anne Brewster, introduced us to a group of avante garde poets from the 1970s - The "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E" poets are concerned with the notions of representations in language.

will add more later - this is a draft
b_X

scenes from an animation i'm constructing

i've just started uploading some images from an animation i'm working on. [ See the Directory here ]

these images are random files from the experiment. its gonna be a long slog. i havent even thought about how many i'm gonna need for say a five minute piece. i spose 24 frames per second x 60 x 5 = around 7000 individual pix. woah.

as with most things i do, theres an emphasis on the "incidental guerilla" aspect of art process, of RE-presenting culture in a random manner, yet applying anti-authoritarian structures at times, in an attempt to REappropriate the images of everyday suburban/net culture.

for me, its real art, where the intention is not commodification. indeed a rejection of commodification in art - ie the ideology behind everything in a capitalist existence - is revolutionary, radical and inspires dissent...

with this little film, basically the idea is derived from the notion of Visual Poetry vs Nu Collage. its an experiment okay!

i intend to use these as integrated background for projecting as a visual backdrop during my anarko-poetry, music and sonic performances... and as a web-based file to share.

btw, i just love the wikipedia project... eg: What is Poetry?


---

these images below from "the writer is dead" oct28.04

brother_X - the inside story

i spose i better put up some info about who i am...
[see also: BIO on my antipoet.blog]

me: as at friday november 5 2004

i'm a 38 yr old white man living in perth, western australia.
despite my distate of institutional authority,
i am married to the most excellent person on this planet.
i have 2 crankin kids - boys 10 and 12 yo. they rock my world.

people call me an anarchist. i spose i am. i hate authority. and hierarchical stuctures.
i helped organise an anarchist conference earlier this year - and i hang with anarko crew.

i have no real consumer-culture time commitments, nor a credit card, nor a motor vehicle, nor a mortgage... i critique and resist much of what our cultural myths represent. television for example is not much more than a "product placed between products"; "advertising is killing the planet"... i do not desire to accumulate wealth, nor have materialistic intentions.

for work: i am a treeplanting contractor during the winter months, and since 1998 i've planted around 2 million trees [approx 2000 hectares] in the plantation forests of wa's south west and beyond.

i am a poet - in fact i am the antipoet:
as well as writing the stuff, i do perfomance poetry at various venues in perth, on radio, and have travelled interstate several times to arts/poetry festivals to spit my werd bits on the world. i also do poetry workshops, and make zines too.

here's my antipoet manifesto if you want to read a radical perspective on why poetry is fucked. since 1995 i've been organisng poetry related stuff too, and kinda got into underground community arts projects, such as the Openmouth poetry Readings and the woodwork Zine and developed my anarko radicalistix performance poetry style from there.

theoretically, i am heavily influenced by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets... i love the performance poetry of aussie poets PieO, Jas Duke and ACR.

i am also impressed by current avante garde political/poetic hip-hop and of course, the Last Poets - who say: "When the moment hatches in time's womb there will be no art talk, The only poem you will hear will be the spearpoint pivoted in the punctured marrow of the villain....Therefore we are the last poets of the world..." yeah i like that.

whilst i am not an afro-american, i can fully relate to the sentiment of the Last Poets. and as a student of language culture i understand fully the rhetoric of the time and the necessity for a militant werd. they are the precursors to hip-hop, man!



music: i'm also a musician, guitarist and songwriter - my indie band is called: miteyKo. its a sedate affair with poetic pop lyrics cello guitar drums and swooshes of keys. kinda indie pop style. [theres mp3 stuff here when i find the bloody link! ] we've released 3 independant CDs and recently an animated music video. we don't play a great deal but we get played a bit on cimmunity radio. miteyKo were also in a feature film soundtrack - "Teesh and Trude". [ See: miteyKo review]

i've also been involved with experimental arts since the mid 90s, including an outfit here in perth called The Magick Trousers - which evolved into CarCrashFace. i used to make noise on my guitar and some old tape-decks. then i got acomputer.

i also do laptop key-jay sonic beats, ambience and anarko noise - under the BoZo moniker. i like to compose music and other sonic-art on my PC using Cool Edit and Audiomulch. i play sparodically around the place at benefit gigs and local digi-electro shows like Semikazi.

late last year i made a soundtrack for a short film by WA media-maker Richard Eames called Violent Blue Light Ghosts. its won a bunch of awards. i also have stuff played on local television each week as part of the theme for Stayers on Channel31.

since TINA02 i'm a stencil artist too. i do the occasional bit of street stuff. but i get fully wacked on the Empty Show concept. and generally putting art in places it aint sposed top be...

indymedia: but probly the main thing i've directed a lot of energy and focus over the last year or so, is as part of a group building an online activist-oriented media project: perth.indymedia.org... the Indymedia project is a global network of Open Publishing sites. there are around 160 sites operating independantly and in affinity in an effort to "Reclaim The Media Commons" across the planet. our philosophy is: "Don't Hate the Media - Become the Media". An article about Perth Indymedia here ?

radio: on Tuesday nights i co-present 2 talks-based radio programs on RTRFM 92.1 - News From Nowhere - dissident deconcstruction of the media and political satire; and the Perth Indymedia Radical Radio Show - news, interviews and discussion of activist events.

in a nutshell i am a full-time radical anarchist/activista is deeply interested in human and ecological rights.
and i won't stop. ever...

please contact me for a yarn:
allanxATindymediaDOTorg
or just comment here on this blog.

i wont bite
much.
: )

brother_X

FOUR MORE WARS - a million more dead?

indymedia

so - there ya go. it happened... again. liberal politics fucked up.

four more years of fearless US Bushite neo-conservatism. it had to happen. theres a scary pattern emerging here - its frightening to compare our countries election results.

australia can be considered a reflection of the US a lot of the time and i'm begining to fully realise that both our countries have completely fucked it up. the more they yell about "terrorism" the less safe the world becomes, the more they scream about "democracy" the more our democratic er, "freedoms" are taken away. just need to look at the "ASIO anti-terror laws" to see what the Gov's got planned. the definitions of a "Terrorist" are broadening to include peace activists and bank tellers!

watching the Presidential election results unfold yesterday and into the night, was like watchin the Oz election results on ABC the other week, watching each state counted and declared - then seing the incumbent leader take the mantle of victory - albeit cautiously. bush reminded me so much of howard's wry smile. both howard and bush gained a bit more polotical power - all apparently okayed by the respective democratic populus. it'll be interesting to see if/when bush introduces the Draft/Conscription [Compulsary Military Service] in the US next year...

without going into too much detail, to examine these election results, is evidence of the fearful and credit money-driven monoculture we inhabit. we continuously tread those less fortunate, those with less access to the supposed supportive systems of capitalism, those with out the ability or desire to accumulate wealth, we tread them into the ground as if it were our democratic "right". we've seen here in australia that [around half] the people are fine with a untruthful and misleading leader. same goes for the US now. the "protest vote" is just not powerful enough. some activists are saying its high time for Direct Action - whatever that means. and hey, it always has been. as an objector to hierarchy and government its a duty is to apply energy outside of the parlimentary systems, when they have failed to deliver the aims, when government has completely dismissed the voices of the oppressed and persecuted - u gotta do what u gotta do - when yr entrusted leaders can't manage a humane approach to living.

the older i get, and the more elections i go through, the more i realise that we are becoming an apathetic culture to the extreme. i'm embracing concepts of anarchism more n more. i sort of always meant to be one, and have been discussing and applying the notions of anti-heirarchy since i was a kid. but i've came across anarchism and realise that the ideas Emma Goldman etc were the same ideas i've been having all my life. i didnt discover anarchism - it discovered me!

[regarding the nuances of anarchists, however, i was really affronted the other week when doing the NFN radio show. after reading out a very articulate post-election piece, Mar called Human Rights Lawyer, Julian Burnside, a whinging "liberal" - wow... that really seemed to kick me in the face. especially whilst we were on air. i was fully flummoxed. especially when you realise that Burnside is a brilliant legal head fighting ProBono for the rights of asylum seekers in the High Court etc. he is a true aussie legend. to hear Mar bash him like that was devastating. yet i fully agree with him! go figure...]

i can't stand bush, howard and co. when i think of the 100,000 dead iraqi people, killed within a year by the USA and the global war coalition - i wonder how many more dead there are gonna be... like a few million by the time that fucker is finished. someone needs to take him out for the good of humanity!

its good to see people in the streets though: us.indymedia.org/en

more later.
al

aboriginal nation - yeah bring it orn

Germaine Greer's "Whitefella Jump Up"

'...wants every Australian whitefella and whitesheila to sit down in front of a mirror and say, "I live in an Aboriginal country . She says that this simple declaration could change Australia and its relationship with the rest of the world. "All the trappings of fake Britishness could be ditched" and "with one bound [Australia] could free itself from its spurious identification with the WASP 'axis of evil'". [Greer says that] "If we followed the Aboriginal course, we could follow the Aboriginal precedent and simply absent ourselves from activities that we knew to be evil and pointless." Most important, accepting that Australia is an Aboriginal country could save the environment. "Whitefellas simply look away when I point to the devastation inflicted on the island continent," she writes. "The denial of the disaster continues; the devastation accelerates."'

i'm reading Germaine Greer's "Whitefella Jump Up"... been looking for it for ages. i remember seeing her on Denton and some other tv interview some months ago, and feeling alligned with her fiesty comments - much to the dismay of the interviewers!

its extremely refreshing to read the anarchistic punches of Greer's assault at the spine of aussie culture. aussies have a distinct distaste for the irreverent academic. i love it. Germaine is the sort of person i could sit under a tree and yarn with for days...

all her points are salient and lucid. she cuts to the bone and makes no apologies. her strident ecological views and articulate embrace of a national aboriginality is remarkable in an unforgiving corporate culture now dominated by neo-conservative agendas. hers is an offering of antithesis toward some kind of synthesis to the current malaise. she is postulating a fresh and alternative solution to the horrendous social problems facing indigenous crew in the 21st century. and its not just aboriginal people that are affected by this cultural neglect - its tearing at the heart of aussie culture. its dividing us: we're crying inside - or becoming thicker-skinned.

her notions of the opening up of the aussie "interior" and the failure of whitefellas to adapt to the conditions of this country and its environmental management challenges are apt and cogent. her stark reflections on our use of language - ie: harsh descriptive words to explain the land to ourselves - the "desolation" poetry - is spot on.

personally, over the last few years, studying dissident media, and disecting the mainstream, from talking with all sorts of people [but radical activists in particular] i feel i'm obtaining a broader more succinct grasp of the underbelly of our aussie-ness and its languages of expression. i've been thinking this [what Greer and many others are saying] and attempting to articulate it for ages now. the longer i study and talk about these things the more i realise that its difficult to affect the struggle from suburbia. i wanna take my lil family and go lose myself in the desert - skillsharing the communities... lets go babe!

i'd like to read Greer's take on Refugee Rights. there is a crucial hub between the idea of a desperate indigenous people and asylum seekers in mandatory detention - the litany of inhumanity faced by refugees in this country is certainly worth consideration. in line with the persecution is the similar xenophobia. it's obvious: the perpetual jailing of asylum seekers, the "pacific solution", the treatment of the "other" particularly children; refoulment/forced deportations; an indefinate detention period for many - including children, compared with say, the Stolen Generation or Deaths in Custody or Land Rights etc. hmmm... hard to write about this.

when the rights of the individual - the Basic human rights ie: simple freedom of movement, good food, water, health, education, respect etc - have been threatened, restricted and removed.

[i'm not entirely sure how to articulate this though - might warrant some more research and some help - and a lot more writing and talking.]

one idea is that if the government can do this to a refugee [indefinate detention, deportation, bridging visas] - who has commited NO crime - then perhaps they can do the same to you...

that the struggles and persecutions of the aboriginal people have been perpetuated for over 2 centuries now - and their health is deteriorating further: currently rated "2nd worst in world" is indicative of australia's inability to face up to the aboriginality of this place.

Greer's hinting in her timely essay that if you are born in australia you are by default an aborigine is an interesting concept. if you consider yrself an aboriginie of this land you feel more "at home" here than anywhere else, it gives you a sense of belonging, perhaps an ownership of the "spirit" of this beautiful country. perhaps then we may feel like looking after the sacred places, fixing the environmental degredation, halting the ecocide.

so yeah - i can dig it - i live in an aboriginal nation and i want healing of this place.

one thing is definate though, we really need new ways of approaching the problem of eco-destructo corporate rape profit machines. perhaps Germaine's onto it. i certainly agree with her cogent rants.

i will add more to this rant later.

_________________

Reviews of GG's Article:
Telegraph Kate Chisholm reviews Whitefella Jump Up by Germaine Greer Dreaming it big 18/07/2004

slacker?

yeah i know, i shoulda gone in.

but man i was sooooo tired and headachey... was a late late night the night before. and an early morning - kills ya eventually. sometimes i can go for a week with just a few hours sleep a night, then one day - bang! i crash!

its hard to get motivated, walkin across the suburbs to catch a bus/train/bus when yr absolutely stuffed. especialy when you've got a family to feed and a gorgeous partner to impress. i love my family. more than anything. and so they get principle attention...

doing an hour of independant media radio each week [2 hours every second week with news from nowhere] is quite a daunting task some weeks. you need to be well prepared and have lots of content. and be prepared to factually spill opinionated rants down the mic. love it!

i had the gear, lotsa stories and comments to make. but fuck i was tired. feellin heaps better today though.

i'll be back on the radio next week...

indy show tonight

after going to bed at 3.45am - fuck i'm tired, and i gotta prepare a coupla hours of talks radio for tonight. gonna need a lotta coffee...

[yawns]

interesting to note the 100,000 dead iraqi civillians barely got a mention on the weekend corporate mediascape. didnt expect much more i spose. still, its an indictment of the way the world is represented by mainstream culture.

more to the point its typical. the more media i do, and over the the last coupla years its mounting, with Indymedia and News From Nowhere. its a constant dredging of the anarchist/dissident media networks for fresh content to consume comment and dissect, i come across so much info that never ever sees the nightly news... more on that later. thats what this blog is for!

listening to RTRFM right now: on the Out To Lunch show, Tim's playing William Shatner - "PULP's common people" - fucking wow. its not bad actually!

perth indy media radio RTRFM 92.1 in Perth WA. MIDNIGHT TUESDAY WA time! or www.rtrfm.com.au stream

fucking internet

jeesus the net and all things PC can suck. although in a brilliant outcome way. i've just been trying to upload t's assignment to my space on the indy server. she'd tried last night to send it [10MB] via her email acct. but it never made it. she came to bed last night at around 4.30am, after working solid since 830 yesterday - that grrrrl is a fucking legend, i'm telling ya!

anyway, i keep trying to upload using a very neat tool called "WINSCP" which enables you to move files around on a server - i use the perth indymedia server to store bits n pieces of data. so, i successfully uploaded it - took about 15 mins. [slow server?]. which is strange on a broadband acct. i wonder if uploading is generally slower than downloading?

so there i am - uploaded, trying to figure out the link. my network places all ready to crash, screen flickering under stress.

she also had an empty folder - where i was supposed to find the file! :)

anyway its there now. i hope she finds it. she's so tired i bet.

i know i am.

antipoet2

i am getting better with html skills. thanks to pabs and various googling. theres a good link in the sidebar to a html basics site...

first post

i'm gonna use this blog to add random thoughts, dribblings etc.
i have another blog here: http://antipoet.blogspot.com
but thats poetry. this one i want to speak more. in paragraph/fragments etc.
fleshout a few ideas...

see what happens!