Lori and I are currently stuck at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas for a 4 hours layover because of a delayed US Airways/America West flight, so I decided to shot some photos with the cheap camera and do some bored-in-the-airport live-blogging.

The free, fast Wi-Fi and ample power outlets are helping pass the time. Hear that SFO, FREE WI-FI! Yeah, San Francisco is the center of the internet universe alright. Our airport can’t event get Wi-Fi right.

I think the sound of the slot machines is driving Lori insane.

UPDATE: Well, the 2nd flight was delayed as well and on top of that, our luggage was sent to the wrong city. At this point, I would suggest avoiding US Airways/America West at all costs.

These beautiful Laughing Squid stencils showed up on the sidewalks outside of Mighty just before the start of Laughing Squid: Decade 2.

WorldChanging is coming to San Francisco next week to celebrate the recent release of their new book “WorldChanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century”. They are having a party on Tuesday, December 5th at 111 Minna Gallery and then on Thursday, December 7th there will be a panel discussion at the Commonwealth Club.

Our co-conspirators over at The Church of the SubGenius recently published their 3rd book: “The Subgenius Psychlopaedia Of Slack - The Bobliographon”

The NEW encyclopedia of abnormality — 240 pages of cornea-melting illustrations and newly-released SubGenius writings that will SHOCK those who thought that surely all of everything must be contained within the previous books. This book goes where THE BOOK OF THE SUBGENIUS and REVELATION X could not. Contains all-new revelations re: the Mystery of X-Day; Secrets of Connie Dobbs; Avoiding Subicide; Slack Magic; SubGenius Kooks; “Bob’s” Dark Secrets; a Tour of Dobbstown; The Yacatizma vs. Yacatisma; The Earth- Mars Switch and infinitely more!

THE BOBLIOGRAPHON has a much different look from the first two holy Bobles, and an even broader range of contributors, because it’s our first book since “Bob” took over the Internet in 1995. Hence the illustrations tend to be richly detailed 3D computer graphics by the likes of LeMur, IMBJR and Heart Ignition. Writers include Rev. Ivan Stang, Dr. Philo Drummond, Nenslo, Rev. Dr. Onan Canobite, Dr. G.G. Gordon, Dr. Hal, Rev. Susie the Floozy, and 45 other Doktors and NunSnakes.

Lo-Fi Saint Louis is an excellent video blog produced by Bill Streeter that promotes St. Louis events and culture. I met Bill earlier this month at The Vloggies where Lo-Fi Saint Louis won a Vloggie for “favorite entertainment vlog (non-fiction)”.

Bill just posted a great interview with painter/illustrator/comic artist Gary Panter, shot during the opening of his gallery show last month at the philip slein gallery in St. Louis. Gary talks about his long-running comic Jimbo and working with Paul Reubens as the head art designer of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. The last part of the video features a rocking song by Deke Dickerson at Beale on Broadway.

blasthaus and dorkbot-sf present Device Art Forum this Thursday, November 30th at Rx Gallery in San Francisco. According to dorkbot organizer Karen Marcelo “Sergio Vujicic will be making perfumes from peoples’ bodily fluids during the event”. So come on down and don’t forget your body fluids!

Featuring 10 artists and curators from Croatia, Serbia, Herzegovina, and Slovenia. Presentations by all and special sneak preview of this exciting exhibition of projects at the intersection of art, science, and technology.

Device_art was first initiated by the Croatian independent organization KONTEJNER | bureau of contemporary art praxis in Zagreb in 2004 in the form of a group exhibition, bringing together artists from Croatia and the region (Slovenia, Serbia and Montenegro). This year KONTEJNER started to collaborate with Multimedia Institute from Zagreb which is for some years now investigating art and skills in that field. American partner blasthaus Gallery from San Francisco is also oriented to technology based art, and the goal of this collaboration is to present device art from the region where it is in development most.

Ten years ago in December 1996, several members of the San Francisco Cacophony Society, including myself, put on Santa suits and boarded a SouthWest Airlines flight out of Oakland to Portland, Oregon. Yes, we actually flew in full Santa suits, including beards and hats. Imagine doing that now. In Portland we met up with other Santas from all over the country for the 1996 Portland Santacon, the first ever Santacon outside of San Francisco. This was back in my documentary filmmaking period, so of course I had my video camera with me and made a short (mock)documentary about the event called “You’d Better Watch Out: Portland SantaCon ‘96”.

I realized that many people that I have met in recent years have not seen this video or even know that I used to make documentaries. So, to remedy that, John Law and I will be having a special documentary screening and 1996 Portland Santacon 10th Anniversary Party on Tuesday, December 19th at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. The doors will open at 8pm and we will be showing the documentary at 9pm sharp. The event is free and we are encouraging Santa attire, if that’s your bag. After the screening we will be having a Santa Open Mike, so any Santas or even Elves are welcome to take the stage and do their worst. The event will also serve as a post-Santacon 2006 event for Bay Area Santas and we would especially like the 1996 Portland alumni to join us and tell war stories and show off their scars.

It’s been years since I screened this documentary. It’s been on cable access, in Santa film festivals and I used to sell tapes. So now, for one night only, you’ll have your chance to see it again. At least until I get around to making DVDs. Here’s a review of the documentary written by Jack Boulware for the SF Weekly. Oh and check out the awesome Portland Police Memo that was sent out to warn the citizens of Portland about our impending invasion.

For more on this whole Santarchy thing, check out santarchy.com, especially Santa Melmoth’s write-up on the early history of the event.

illustration by Greg Reynard

In 1992 the Los Angeles Cacophony Society organized one of their most infamous pranks of all time, the “GI Joe Atrocity Exhibit”. They infiltrated a GI Joe Convention at a Ramada Inn in Burbank with a gruesome display that they built of GI Joe soldiers in actual combat. The convention organizer was not at all pleased with LA Cacophony’s “gift”. Check out the hilarious video.

Will Franken, one of the funniest people I know, will be auditioning for The Late Show with David Letterman on Saturday, December 2nd at The Clubhouse in San Francisco. Will will be in good company as several other very talented comedians will be trying out as well, including our old friend, science comedian Brian Malow. See the Squid List posting for more info.

It’s that time of year again. Santarchy is beginning to rear it’s gnarly red-capped and bearded head. Santacon 2006 events are being planned for San Francisco, Tokyo, New York City, Washington DC, Portland, Boston, Houston, Dallas and many other cities around the world. For the latest Santarchy news, check out santarchy.com, now featuring two new guest Kringle bloggers, Santa de Nada & o’Santa Bin Laden!

No force on earth can stop one hundred Santas!

- Klaus Maginrannus (1995)

This is the 13th year of Santarchy. Santa Melmoth has a great write up on how it all began.

My friend Phillip Torrone, senior editor of Make Magazine, just posted a really awesome Open Source Gift Guide. This is a great place to start your search if you hunting around for that perfect gift for fellow open source geeks.

There are hundreds of gift guides this holiday season filled with junk you can buy - but a lot of time you actually don’t own it, you can’t improve upon it, you can’t share it or make it better, you certainly can’t post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that, we’ve put together our picks of interesting open source hardware projects, open source software, services and things that have the Maker-spirit of open source. Some are kits, some are open software projects that you’ll need to build hardware for before gifting, and some are just support for the projects/groups that do open source.

Last Saturday in the middle of the chaotic vortex of our Laughing Squid: Decade 2 party I ran into David Smith, technology correspondent for the UK newspaper The Observer (The Guardian’s Sunday paper). He was in town, pen and notepad in hand, writing a big story on the current internet explosion taking place in the Bay Area. His article “www.thenewrevolutionaries”, which just published, starts out at one of our favorite cafes Ritual Coffee Roasters, then works it’s way through many of the people and companies of the new Silicon Valley. Our anniversary party even gets a quick reference.

The geek crowd runs with the San Francisco arts set in places such as Ritual Coffee Roasters and, on a recent Saturday night, in an urban warehouse turned nightclub under the aegis of a company called Laughing Squid. Partygoers hurtle past the entrance in vintage cars and gawp at a street artist conjuring fire in a sandpit. They are here to drink, enjoy ‘cool stuff’ like a live cabaret and, of course, talk tech.

Roboexotica, an annual “Festival for Cocktail Robots”, takes place December 5th through 10th in Vienna’s Museumsquartier. Roboexotica is produced by SHIFZ, monochrom and Bureau of Philosophy. Here is this year’s full program and photo gallery from previous Roboexoticas.

Until recently, no attempts had been made to publicly discuss the role of cocktail robotics as an index for the integration of technological innovations into the human Lebenswelt, or to document the increasing occurrence of radical hedonism in man-machine communication. Roboexotica is an attempt to fill this vacuum. It is the first and, inevitably, the leading festival concerned with cocktail robotics world-wide. A micro mechanical change of paradigm in the age of borderless capital. Alan Turing would doubtless test this out.

A bunch of artists and technology geeks from San Francisco will be traveling to Vienna for Roboexotica including Jacob Appelbaum (who is doing an artist residency with monochrom), Kal Spelletich, David Calkins, Simone Davalos, Eddie Codel, V. Vale, Violet Blue and Jonathan Moore.

Check out the Geek Entertainment TV interview with Johannes Grenzfurthner where he talks about monochrom and Roboexotica.

“Zombies’ file lawsuit against city of Minneapolis” (KSTP 5 Eyewitness News)

A group of zombies have risen up to claim the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County violated their free rights and discriminated against them.

Who needs The Onion when you have great news like this.

Thanks to Niall Kennedy for the tip!