The Fart Party is online comic by Julia Wertz that is a great snapshot of life in San Francisco as seen through the eyes of a highly sarcastic and sometimes deadly up-and-coming comic artist. Irina Slutsky turned me on to The Fart Party when she interviewed Julia for GETV at the SF Zine Fest back in September. Julia also makes print versions of her comic in zine form, which are available in her online store.

Saturday, March 10th is Xenu Day International, coinciding with the birthday of L. Ron Hubbard. Events are currently being planned for San Francisco and Seattle. Interested in planning something in your town? Contact Xenu.

On Saturday March 10th 2006, all 5000 scientologists across the planet will be celebrating their own version of Christmas. Drunk aliens, stopping traffic, handing out propaganda, preaching the gospel of Xenu the Galactic Overload, will be there to greet them.

Who is Xenu you ask?

Thanks to Jacob Appelbaum for the tip!

Richard Ryan Anderson of Tacoma’s Holistic Forge Works hunted down a Kirby vacuum cleaner, killed it and mounted it on his wall as a trophy.

The plaque reads as follows:

1979 KIRBY VAC. SLAIN BY RICHARD R. ANDERSON IN MEMORY OF HIS BELOVED MOTHER.

via » Make

Ask A Ninja has just signed a major deal with Federated Media.

I just wanted to let everyone know that we have signed with Federated Media to handle all of our advertising.

We’re really excited to be working with John Battelle and the crew over there. They’ve got a great track record and really seem to be author friendly. Most importantly we will still be able to advertise in a way that doesn’t interfere with our show.

Congratulations Kent and Doug. Laughing Squid joined FM back in October and they have been really great, especially they way they support their authors, so that they can continue to do their thing.

Here’s my write-up and photos from last month’s Ask A Ninja DVD Release Party.

via » Robert Scoble via » Podcasting News

This is mainstream media week for Laughing Squid. First one of my photos was used in Time Magazine and now, Laughing Squid is referenced in today’s New York Times (January 30, 2007), Business Day page C4, in the article “Non-Celebrities on the Web, Seeming to Make Non-Pitches” by Patricia Winters Lauro. The story is about vague product advertising by lesser known personalities, including Microsoft’s recent “Clearification” campaign for Windows Vista featuring comedian Demetri Martin.

News of the clearification.com site was released in e-mail messages to influential blogs like laughingsquid.com and on video sites like YouTube.com. The site also lets visitors sign up for an alert to notify them when the latest webisode is released.

Slight correction here. Microsoft did not email me regarding the Clearification campaign like they did when the sent me the Windows Vista laptop. I simply came across the website online and wrote a blog post on Clearification because I thought it was a much more creative marking campaign than what you would normally expect from Microsoft.

Valleywag’s Nick Douglas (yeah, he still writes for them) investigates “What’s On Kevin Rose’s Desk: Insider’s Edition” with an annotated version of my photo of Kevin at his desk from my visit to digg’s headquarters last Friday. Of course Nick’s write-up has been submitted to digg, so now we have a super-meta double digg of my digg’s digs write-up.

A second New York City area RE/Search Pranks 2 book release event will take place on Saturday, February 3rd at The 58gallery in Jersey City, NJ. The first Pranks 2 event is on Thursday, February, 1st at Bluestockings in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Saturday, Feb 3, 2007, 8-12pm

PRANKS 2 Book Celebration (RE/Search Publications’ latest book)

The 58gallery
58 Coles Street
Jersey City, New Jersey 07302
917-349-1693
www.fifty8.com
free

Directions: Grove Street PATH Station
Walk 4 blocks West (Away from NYC) on Newark, turn right on Coles St. Gallery is storefront in middle of block.

PARTY, PANEL and VIDEO SHOWING of excerpts from Ron English’s “Popaganda” and Scott Beale’s “You’d Better Watch Out” documenting the Cacophony Society’s wild “Santarchy” escapade in Portland. (For the past ten years, groups of folks dressed up as Santa Claus have invaded department stores, hotel parties and other events, causing ideological havoc and consumer confusion–anarchic fun! Over the years, the Santas have spread to major cities over the planet.)

Far more than a video show, the Feb 3 evening will encompass a Panel (taking audience Q&A’s) with local New York artists who appear in RE/Search’s newest book, PRANKS 2: Ron English, Julia Solis, the YES MEN (tentative) and JOHN LAW from San Francisco. All interested in RE/Search’s 30 year history, pranks, and cultural subversion in general are urged to attend and meet-and-greet featured pranksters both before and after the show. This is a rare opportunity to engage with prankster pioneers, while supporting the counterculture RE/Search publishing enterprise. PRANKS 2 books available for autographing.

Also from San Francisco, Laughing Squid founder/filmmaker Scott Beale will be present. Special performance by Earl Norman. Listen to Big Empty Ego by Earl Norman and Ron English.

UPDATE: Here are a few photos I shot of the event.

monochrom’s latest project, International Year Of Polytheism, kicked off on Saturday with “Free Bariumnitrate”, where 10,000 sparklers together and ignited all at once at Austria’s Symposion Lindabrunn.

The chemical compound Barium Nitrate is the basic ingredient for so called “sparklers”. Sparklers are bound to various monotheistic rituals, making them, in a certain sense, unfree.

In Austria for example, they play an important role in the local Christmas celebrations, an event celebrating the birth of the supposed son of god, Jesus Christ.

In Great Britain sparklers are used to celebrate the defeat of Guy Fawkes and a Roman Catholic attempt (1605) on the life of the King as representative of the Anglican Church.

In the USA they belong to the ritual celebration of the 4th of July, a holiday in which a seemingly secular nation religiously celebrates the metaphysical establishment of their role in the judaeo-christian value system.

Barium Nitrate thus stands as a representative of all symbols that have been enslaved and abused by the monotheistic world religions.

Check out Jacob Appelbaum’s amazing photos of this awesome pyrotechnic display.

There’s some great video as well.

The “International Year Of Polytheism” (powered by monochrom) wants to overcome the epoch of the monotheistic worldviews (and its derivatives such as “The West” and “The Arab World”) through the reconstruction of a polytheistic multiplicity in which countless gods and goddesses will eventually neutralize each other. Polytheism is democracy, Monotheism a dictatorship, even in its pseudo-secular form.

Xeni Jardin’s new NPR podcast “Xeni Tech” just launched today and will include Xeni’s past and future NPR reports. Today’s launch featured Xeni’s “Day to Day” story “Guatemala: Unearthing the Future”, a five part series based on her travels through Guatemala that begins with Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) efforts using forensic technology to identify the more than 200,000 people killed in Guatemala’s 36 year-long civil war. Xeni has been involved with this project for several months now and it’s great to see the results of all of her hard work.

The first of these reports focuses on a group called the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), a nonprofit comprised of technologists, anthropologists, and archaeologists who unearth mass graves from political massacres. They work to identify the dead and return the remains to their families for dignified reburial. The process begins with the hard work of the exhumation itself, but they also use DNA forensics and software they develop themselves, so they can identify a greater portion of the remains, and preserve evidence that could be used in criminal trials. FAFG staff routinely deal with death threats from those who do not support their work.

Xeni has posted more about this over on Boing Boing and her trek blog.

People often ask me where we have our Laughing Squid t-shirts printed. For the last 6 months we have been using Ape Do Good, a really great, independently owned traditional silk screen print shop located in San Francisco’s Mission District. They do an amazing job and have printed hundreds of Laughing Squid t-shirts worn by freaks and geeks alike. If you need t-shirt or poster screen printing, contact Anthony at Ape Do Good and let him know Laughing Squid sent you. He’ll take care of you.

A few months back I stopped by Ape Do Good to pick up a t-shirt order and while I was there shot a few photos of their shop. In a world of digital printing and publishing, it’s great to see good old silk screen printing in action.

Big thanks to Ted Rheingold for originally recommending Ape Do Good to me.

UPDATE: Valleyschwag has used Ape Do Good to print many of the t-shirts featured in their Valleyschawg shipments and online store.

One of the photos that I shot of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards at Gnomedex 6.0 (Edwards was the keynote speaker) was published on page 38 of the current issue of Time Magazine (February 5, 2007). The article is “8 Keys to the Campaign” and the section that features my photo is “The Blogosphere” by Ana Marie Cox, about how various presidential candidates are reaching out to bloggers.

Maker Faire, produced by Make Magazine and by far one of the best events of the year, has just announced their Call For Makers: Maker Faire Bay Area 2007. This year there will be two Maker Faires, one in San Mateo on May 19-20 and a second one in Austin on October 20-21. Here my photos from Maker Faire 2006.

Organized by the staff of Make and Craft magazines, Maker Faire is a newfangled fair that brings together science, art, craft and engineering in a fun, energized, and exciting public forum. The aim is to inspire people of all ages to roll up their sleeves and become makers. This family-friendly event showcases the amazing work of all kinds of makers–anyone who is embracing DIY and wants to share their accomplishments with an appreciative audience. Last year, we had 20,000 people at Maker Faire.

Mule Design Studio is a great little design company located in the South Park area of San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood. I first got to know Mule back when they designed the website for 826 Valencia, one of our web hosting customers. They’ve done some really amazing work over the years, including the great re-design of Six Apart’s website as well as design work for Federated Media Publishing, EFF and many others.

But it’s not just about the work. Mule has quite a bit of fun on side, with creative director Mike Monteiro constantly creating ironic and meme crushing t-shirts such as “US out of California”, “Webtard” and “Web 2.OH, Yeaahh!!”, just to name a few. One of the things that Mule has in common with Laughing Squid is our shared love of squid. Mike has created squid-themed t-shirt designs like “Welcome Our Squid Overlords”, “Angry Squid” and hopefully some day he will memorialize our fallen comrade with his “R.I.P. Giant Squid” design. He has also threatened to contribute to Laughing Squid’s side project squid.us, a blog about all things squid.

On Friday, Mule had a little shindig to celebrate moving into their new office space. Of course will all the toys and great stuff they have in their office, I couldn’t help but shoot a few photos. Congratulations Mike, Erika and the whole Mule team in your continued quest to make the web a better looking place.

The consistently great online comic The Joy of Tech does it again, this time with a look ahead at next week’s launch of Microsoft Windows Vista.

Today I finally had a chance to visit digg, whose headquarters, like Laughing Squid, are also located in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Eddie Codel and I stopped by digg’s digs and met with Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka and Timeless. Leah Culver was there as well and six of us took a walk in the rain to get some lunch at Axis Cafe. After lunch they gave us a tour of their offices, where we saw the new space that they are expanding into, as well as their building’s rooftop with great views of downtown San Francisco.

Oh and I think Kevin has problems with sweaty poodles.

Here are a few photos I shot from our visit.

UPDATE 1: The illustration of Alex and Kevin is a modified version of the one created by Landon Nordby for a Diggnation sci-fi graphic novel being produced by Jay Santos. Heres more info.

UPDATE 2: The digg hoodie that Daniel is wearing is available through J!NX along with a bunch of other great digg stuff.

UPDATE 3: Valleywag’s Nick Douglas (yeah, he still writes for them) investigates “What’s On Kevin Rose’s Desk: Insider’s Edition” with an annotated version of my photo of Kevin at his desk. Of course Nick’s write-up has been submitted to digg, so now we have a super-meta double digg of digg’s digs.