StinkFight.com

Howdy! This Saturday is me and Debra Jean Dean’s first wedding anniversary. Yay!

We’re celebrating by going to the Podcast Expo (Sept 28-30) in beautiful sunny downtown Ontario, California. I’m hella psyched.

I’m also speaking on a panel on Saturday, called Veterans of the Yahoo! Podcasting Board: What We’ve Learned These Past Two Years With Stephen Eley (bio) of Escape Pod, Matthew Wayne Selznick (bio) of MWS Media, Evo Terra (co-author of “Podcasting for Dummies” bio) of Podiobooks.com.

Debra Jean and I went last year, the day after we got married. While there, I said to her, “Hell, I’ll be speaking at this thing next year”, and like most pronouncements of mine, it came to pass.

I’m also speaking, with Debra Jean, at PodCamp, which happens Thursday, the day before the Expo really starts.

See you there!

MWD

I just finished reading Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson. I love the book. Bill Bryson makes me laugh out loud, and makes me think, which is a good combination.

The wife was reading another Bryson book, “Mother Tongue” (or “English and How It Got That Way”) while I was reading “Neither Here Nor There.” We spent this last week of evenings lying in bed next to each other, giggling and reading various passages out loud to each other.

Here are three quotes from “Neither Here Nor There” that I especially like:

“Isn’t it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?”

“I sat on the toilet, watching the (rusty) water run, thinking about what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a futile effort to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.”

“This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe, and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the Iron Curtain, nobody lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked, and I would have disliked living under it myself, but nonetheless it seemed there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was the one based on self-interest and greed.”

I highly recommend ANYTHING by Bryson, especially this book. I really dug this one, because it’s a travelogue of many places I’ve been myself. I never thought I’d like a “travel writer” book, but this kinda transcends all that.

I give it nine thumbs up.

– Michael W. Dean

It’s that time again…….

So, kitties……More from our new series, “Dirty, filthy blues quote of the week.”

Each week around Sunday night (the longest period before more church, lol…) I’ll post a new quote from my friend Debra DeSalvo’s book, The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu.

I love this book.

The quotes won’t always be dirty and filthy (though sometimes they will), but they’ll always be great. And they’ll always be dirty and filthy in spirit, because it is, after all, the blues

Here’s this week’s quote:

—————-

alcorub

The drink of last resort for desperate alcoholics is alcorub, which is isopropyl or rubbing alcohol. In 1989 Kitty Dukakis, the wife of former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, was rushed unconscious to the hospital in Boston after sucking down some rubbing alcohol while battling alcoholism and depression. If she had been hanging out with certain blues singers during Prohibition, she might have learned to sniff alcorub, or she could have resorted to the marginally less lethal canned heat.

Canned heat is obtained by extracting the alcohol from Sterno “Canned Heat” Cooking Fuel. During Prohibition, impoverished alcoholics also distilled alcohol from shoe polish by straining it through bread, drank Jake (a patent medicine), and sniffed alcorub to stave off the DTs.

Prohibition began creeping across the United States in 1913. By 1916 the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and purchase of alcohol was illegal in 26 of the 48 states. On January 16, 1920, alcohol was outlawed across the nation by the 18^th Amendment, which was ratified on January 16, 1919 and mandated that:

:After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

:Prohibition quickly created a profitable black market as huge quantities of booze were smuggled in from Canada and various Caribbean islands. This smuggling operation provided work and training to a new generation of ambitious young men, as one of them recalled:

:“So I went to work for a friend of the family [in West Palm Beach]. He had two speedboats to go to the Bahamas and bring in bootleg whiskey. Those days the whole country was dry. I would go over to the Bahamas with a black man, Jack, that he had working for him. We would load the boat with fifty or sixty cases of whisky and start back at night. The man would bring the boat into the spot we had picked out by following the stars in the sky. We made at least three trips for Al Capone. He would have his cars at the spot where we would come in at and load the cars. Then they would go off to Chicago.[i] 

“We had to run the boat without lights. One night on our trip after loading the boat, [we were spotted] so we threw all the whiskey overboard. Without the whiskey there was no evidence. The Coast Guard did come up to us and told us to stop. We did. They searched the boat and did not find anything. They asked us where we were coming from.

We told him we had been to the Bahamas to see some girls and have a drink of some good whiskey. I know he did not believe us but it was the best story we could think of. They took the number of the boat, the name, and let us go. We had to tell our boss right away, then we had to go to the spot where the people were waiting for us to come in to tell them what happened. Those days it was understood that if we lost the load of whiskey, they had to pay for it regardless. But on the next load, we would not charge them any profit for us.”[ii]

The cost of enforcing Prohibition was initially estimated at six million dollars, but once the Coast Guard had to begin patrolling the oceans at night for smugglers, the cost skyrocketed. Smugglers bribed officials to look the other way, corrupting entire law-enforcement agencies while Capone and other bootleggers used their Prohibition profits to build organized and well-entrenched criminal empires. The cost of attempting to enforce Prohibition spiraled out of control. Meanwhile, the government was losing some $500 million annually in alcohol-related tax revenue.

In 1933, Congress caved in and passed the 21^st Amendment to repeal the 18^th Amendment.  To appease the more rabidly Prohibitionist states, however, Congress added Section 2 of the 21^st Amendment, which mandated that:           

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

This put control of alcohol into the hands of the states, which over time ceded that power to cities and counties. It is invoked to this day whenever officials are looking for an excuse to yank the liquor licenses of unwelcome establishments. 

Although people with money could get all the alcohol they wanted during Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933 affordable booze was hard to come by for itinerant alcoholics, hence the abuse of canned heat, and, as a very last resort, alcorub. As Tommy Johnson sang in “Canned Heat Blues” in 1929:

Crying canned heat Mama sure Lord killing me

Takes alcorub to take these canned heat blues

Tommy Johnson was just one of many musicians who have had their difficulties with alcohol (and drugs). Bonnie Raitt recalled that when she took time off from college in the early 1970s to go on the road with some artists that Dick Waterman managed, it was her job to keep track of who was drinking what. Of Son House, for example, Raitt recalled, “If he had a couple shots he could remember all his songs and if he had more than a couple he couldn’t remember them. But if he had none, he usually didn’t want to play.

“You get old guys who’ve been farmers and Pullman porters for twenty-five years and suddenly everybody wants to give them everything in any quantity,” said Raitt, who fought her own battle with alcoholism and got sober in the mid-1980s. “It did a lot of them in,” she added somberly.[iii]

Songs:

:“Canned Heat Blues”~~Tommy Johnson

“Jig Head Blues”~~Willard Thomas

“Ramblin’”~~Willard Thomas

[i]From an unpublished autobiography; source wishes to remain anonymous.

[ii]Ibid.

[iii]From an interview with Bonnie Raitt by Debra DeSalvo.

(Excerpted from The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu by Debra DeSalvo. Published 2006 by Billboard Books, an imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications, a division of VNU Business Media. Reprinted with permission. ISBN: 0823083896)

Get “Clone The Homeless” episode 0051-a

Fri, 21 Sept 2007

I am so brilliant!

Michael W. Dean answers interview questions over the Internet with Christian Holmes. Christian runs www.criticalmassmedia.tv and is a $30 Film School fan. He’s a cool guy, and is helping Michael get Stink Fight Radio on TV shown in Hawaii.

Debra Jean Dean asks Michael the questions that Christian sent. Michael records it, edits, adds in Christian’s intros and outros, and uploads both here and to Christian for his Critical Mass Media podcast.

This groovy interview covers a lot of ground. Dig it!:

Questions: In your blog post “How to Work in Web 2.0″ you mention a sleeping habit of waking up at 2 PM in the afternoon and falling asleep at 6 AM the next morning. Is this your true sleeping pattern? If so, what are your reasons or the benefits of having it?
According to Amazon.com, your book “$30 Film School” was written in 2003. What kind of feedback have you received? What seems to be your default demographic?
Your book focuses on Low and No-budget video productions. It features many useful tips and tricks from the weekend video-hobbiest or DIY diehard. Where is the main source for your insights (are they things you learned or taught yourself along the way, are they primarily tricks that were passed down to you from a teacher or mentor?)
Your current blog as I understand it to be is StinkFight.com, where did the name “Stink Fight” come from?
Many new digital media producers turn to blogging (and/or podcasting), what are the rewards or benefits you have found to blogging as an independent artist?
You have written other books besides “$30 Film School” (as a quick author search will tell you), have any of your other books met or exceeded the success of “$30 Film School”?
As your blog states, you were just recently hired at the O’Reilly network! What will this position entail and how will this new exciting job change your lifestyle as it has been recently?
What was (before O’Reilly) your main source of income?
Have you ever experimented with streaming live media online? If so, did you enjoy live-online streaming as a medium?
Obviously, readers should read your book for a copious amount of tips, tricks, and workflows for video production. What singular piece of advice would you offer to a producer just starting out in digital media production?
What is the source of the inspiration behind your art?

And some stuff about SEO, blogs, O’Reilly, how Google may end up running the world, tips for artists who want to make a living at art, and why you shouldn’t always follow your dream.

I love free speech, but “It’s not free speech if you steal it.”

If someone who is as much of a jackass as Andrew Meyer
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HgrFSHZfD1o

interrupted me while I was speaking, I’d taser him myself.

–

Update later: Article that says Andrew brought his own camera to the event, handed to a girl to hold so he’d be sure to get his actions on camera, and then egged the cops on before the part of the clip he uploaded to YouTube. And he has a history of jackassery and of uploading his exploits to YouTube for attention. (But then again, who doesn’t, these days?)

SO….I have a lot of time on my hands, and I also work a lot….on a lot of different projects. I spend many hours a day parked in front of a computer. I turn my laptop on at 2 PM when I wake up and it’s on until 6 AM when I go to sleep. And I’m pretty much on it, on and off, all my waking hours.

It’s sometimes hard to tell which of this time is work, what part of it is just fun, what’s promotion for previous projects and what’s research for future projects. Sometimes it all kinda blends together. I mean who can say that surfing links for three hours on Wikipedia or posting on some blog isn’t work, isn’t part of my job? It’s all good, it’s all learning, and everything I do helps everything else I’ll ever do in the future.

I recently posted some comments on the O’Reilly Digital Media site on David Battino’s post about the new H2 Recorder. (I have an H2 and love it.) David followed some of my links, liked some of my writing on Stink Fight and elsewhere, and contacted me with an offer of work.

I had no idea David was the editor of that site or that they were looking to hire one good, experienced writer with an extensive knowledge of digital audio, digital video and digital still photography, but I guess I fit the bill.

I signed the contract today, and I am now a writer for O’Reilly. The ironic thing is I’ve done work for them before. I edited DV Filmmaking Start To Finish, contributed to Digital Video Hacks and wrote an article for Make Magazine. I also did a presentation at Maker Faire in 2006. And David didn’t know any of this this when he decided to hire me. (O’Reilly is a big company, and there’s far too much going on for everyone to know everyone who’s ever done work for them.)

I really like working for O’Reilly and am psyched about this. They pay well, are respectful of their writers, and have a hip audience. I dig that.

One of the cool perks is that checks from O’Reilly have an etching of a tarsier on them. (Photo of a tarsier below, and also at the top of this post.)

So I guess the way you get a job in Web 2.o is be really good at what you do, but don’t look for a job. Mess around a lot on the Internet, post your thoughts freely, and be at the right place at the right time.

The term “Web 2.0“  was invented by Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media. –Do’h! See comments below)

I used to be a volunteer kitty foster parent for the SPCA when I lived in San Francisco.

I’d get a kitten or two or three and take them home and love them and socialize them for a month, bring them back, and get new ones. (It’s easier if you don’t name them. I called them all “kitty”).

From 1997-1999 I had over 50 kittens in my home, a few at a time. Socizlizing them makes them adoptable. If you don’t do it, they become mean and no one takes them and they get put to sleep. Contact your local SPCA if you want to do this.

Click this link and down for links to several hundred photos of the kitties I have fostered

Many of those pages have links at the bottom to even more of my cat photo pages.

I’m really looking forward to moving to Beijing this weekend. Why? I’m gonna get me a sidecar motorbike! Not to be confused with a popular brandy cocktail of the same name.. (hic!)

Don’t be jealous, You can get one too… Check this out.

The Chang Jiang 750, is popular transport for young trendy Chinese and expat motorbike enthusiasts of all ages. Recalling the on-screen action of WWII in late 1960s and 1970s films such as Where Eagles Dare (1968) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) the sidecar motorbike has rough and ready appeal that clearly defines the real meaning of COOL.

The most important fact about the sidecar motorbike is that its easy to buy in Beijing and it can only be found secondhand - it was last made in 1997 and retails, after reconditioning, for around 1000 bucks.

I am S0 getting one!

http://www.cjsidecar.com/pro4.htm

Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean have a chat with our new little friend, Becky Haycox. (Part 1 of 4) (And yes guys, she is cute and single!)

They all drive around Ventura, California, go have dinner together, talk about the redneck hipsters they see, hipster street homeless junkies, art, the Men’s Movement, the H2 digital recorder, how to get writing jobs in Web 2.0, O’Reilly publishing, Danny Plotnick, Thai Coffee, Crackheads in famous bands, mother/daughter boob flashing, and more.

“Clone The Homeless” episode 0051 on Michael W. Dean’s podcast that remembers when sex was safe and music was dangerous. (Free, and no iPod is needed to listen.)
http://www.clonethehomeless.com

I was in Zanzibar a few years ago for work and met this wild cat. He was pretty cool. Here is an snippet from my book in the making “I put the freq in Africa”:

A wild cat has decided that he wants to be my friend. He is orange and looks like a little cheetah. He meows at me incessantly. I give him some beer and it calms him down. He won’t leave me alone and we talk for a little while. Wild cats are everywhere in Zanzibar. Everywhere. This is the first one that would let me pet him. I dig cats on beaches. Just something extra cool about them. I want to take pictures of him with the setting sun behind him but every time I pose him and back up for the pic he comes towards me. I tell him to stay but he doesn’t listen or he doesn’t understand English and my Swahili is rusty. I now have 20 pictures of his face right in the camera. I give him some more beer and sit down on the beach. He hops into my lap and starts grooming himself. Now I finally get some nice pics of us together. I am happy for the company and the chance to give and receive some affection. The sun is almost all the way down and it is time for us to get moving towards the hotel. I pick up my new friend who I am now calling “Kimba” and go back to my group. We sit at the table while everyone is finishing their drinks. Kimba realizes that we are leaving and that he is not going with us. He gives me a little nip and we dissolve our friendship. No more sitting on my lap. He didn’t draw blood but I realize that it is pretty stupid to be playing with wild animals in a third world country regardless of how bad I miss mine back home.

More pics can be seen here:

Kimba_02
Kimba_03
Kimba_04
Kimba_05
Kimba_06

Fever Dream Fever. Collaborative effort with Scott Ligon, myself and Debra Jean Dean.

FEVER DREAM THEATER is an animated series based on the bad dreams of Michael W. Dean. Staring Michael W. Dean and a whole bunch of monsters, human and otherwise.

Drawing, sound effects and editing: Scott Ligon.
Writing and voices: Michael W. Dean and Debra Jean Dean. Music: Michael W. Dean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcckZbt6cbg

OK, I know that Led Zeppelin is doing some sort of reunion soon, but who cares about those tired old men? This is better:

http://www.hitsofacid.com/SexKissCage/sex_kiss_cage.html

Jay Crawford found a cassette tape of Bomb in the back of his hot steamy closet, Doug Hilsinger cleaned up the audio as best as could be done, and I’ve uploaded it.

It’s a nine-song demo called “Sex Kiss Cage” recorded in early 1991 in our rehearsal studio. Doug engineered the thing on a four-track cassette porta-studio and mixed it that same night.

The guitars, bass and drums were recorded live to three tracks, the vocals were overdubbed to the remaining track, and it was all recorded with relatively cheap SM58 microphones.

It sounds great. This is Bomb at their prime, before we were “Produced by Bill Laswell” (or as we called it, “Reduced by Bill Laswell.”) We should have put this out instead of the Laswell record of the same songs that took a month and 60,000 dollars to make.

This sounds better. It’s kind of like hearing Nirvana’s “Bleach” if all you’ve heard is “Nevermind.”

Enjoy this new Bomb stuff, and share it.

Oh my god! the walls are melting!

I’m having a heroin flashback. This shit is GREAT!

Thanks boys.

Michael “I’m not just the singer, I’m a fan” Dean.

Michael Samstag teaches a class called Pellissippi State Technical Community College in Knoxville, Tenn. My book $30 Film School is the required text. The class is in its third year, and is now part of the full time curriculum at PSTCC. I’m totally honored by this.

Below is a video of a trailer for a horror film called “Hollow Rock” that his class made.

So, I’ve lived out in the sticks for a year now. The day I moved here I was worried “Will I be able to find enough stuff to keep busy?” and noticed on the local cable access channel a repeating ad that said “Get on TV! Make a show for free! Call this number for info!” I told DJ, “If they don’t stop taunting me with that, I just might….”

Well, I ended up keeping very busy with other stuff, but the other day I was bored and I called the number and found out what I needed to do to make a show. 12 hours later, I had a completed show on a DVD, and we delivered it today. I’m supposed to call this weekend to find out when it’s approved and when they’ll start airing it (I’m making one episode a month, and they’ll show each episode once a week for a month.) I’ll let you all know.

The show is called “Stink Fight - Radio on TV”. It’s spoken audio, some from Clone The Homeless, and also original audio created exclusively for “Stink Fight - Radio on TV.” It’s mostly Debra Jean and I, with a few guests. And our cats. The video is just still images of our cats. Many many many still images of our cats.

Our motto is: “Stink Fight - Radio on TV. Because what we say is more important than what you see.”

It will be on Time-Warner cable, and will be able to be seen on channel 25 in these cities: Westlake Village, Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Moorpark, Camarillo, Calabasas, Santa Paula, Fillmore, Piru, Simi Valley and Newbury Park. I don’t know how many people will watch my show, but over a quarter of a million people will be able to if they want.

I’m getting the last time slot available.

I’ll let you know when it airs.

P/S - Anyone can get a cable access show anywhere in America, as long as the show doesn’t contain obscene material, and certain basic technical aspects are met. And you can produce your show at home, or use the facilities at the station for free or very cheaply. There’s cool gear at the facility where mine is going to be cast from. The cool guy at the station gave us the tour. Debra Jean laughed because I was drooling at the racks of gear.

Time is available for members of the community to offset the fact that private companies infringe on the public by routing cables through public and private areas. More info on the program is here.

I’m gonna make the “Wayne’s World of cats!”. (The cats part was partially inspired by the episode of South Park where the kids get high on Nyquil and make a show that just shows puppies, with cheesy music in the background. The show becomes very popular.)

By the way, Australia and Canada also have public access-type TV, also. It’s called “Community channel” in Canada, and “Community television” in Australia.

If anyone is interested in getting “Stink Fight - Radio on TV” shown on cable access in their area, please contact us.

–Michael W. Dean

Because I was trying to help a sick cat the whole time I was there:

From my Fall 2003 tour diaries when I travlled around Europe showing my film “D.I.Y. OR DIE: How To Survive as an Independent Artist”:

This horribly codependent cat followed me all morning. I love her. Belongs to Wilam’s neighbor. The neighbor doesn’t care for the cat. The cat has bad mange to the point of her skin bleeding in patches. Wilam and I tried to catch the cat and take it to the vet. He and I were going to split the cost. We were going to have Wilam blow pot smoke on the cat to calm it down. That was my idea. I usually hate people that get cats stoned, but I felt it was medically indicated in this case. But we never got the chance. We tried everything, bribing the cat with sausage, setting a trap (she did go under it and eat the sausage, but just backed out of it when I pulled the string).

We tried just grabbing her, but pretty soon she knew what we had in mind and ran and hid by the river. I wish you could have seen me and Willam in leather gloves, holding sausage, running around saying “Here kitty!” in English and Dutch for two hours.

I didn’t get to see the city at all, but we thought trying to help the cat was more important. But the cat didn’t think so. I only ended up with cat scratches.

Check out ALL the pix and diaries from my 2003 European tour with DIY or DIE.

Real-video puppet short movie I made on my laptop while in Dublin.

Great computer wallpaper photo I took of a cup of coffee in Germany

After reviewing several cat bath videos on YouTube, I have observed these trends:

Act 1
- cats do not enjoy bathing and produce sounds never before heard by owners
- cats are usually bathed by couples
- cats are usually bathed in kitchen sinks

Act 2
- cats begin with a mania to escape, but within time relax and endure the indignity
- the owners are invariably laughing

Act 3
- cat is swathed and cuddled in towel while owners coo

Denouement (optional)

- wet cat is filmed slinking out of room

View Squeaky’s bath

http://www.squat.net

Site run by European squatters with (albeit small) photos of house squats, car squats, evictions, and more. Interesting resource of people living below the line.

Site is in German and English.

(How’s that headline for meta-nonfiction?)

The very nifty Xeni Jardin blogged today about the blog post I did about the YouTube videos about the KLF burning a million pounds and about their book “The Manual”.

BoingBoing post is here.

(photo from the Infinite Cat Project)

I was messing around with the AltaVista Bablefish program. Bablefish is a Web page that translates from one language to another. It’s especially fun if you take something non-concrete, like lyrics, and put it English to French, French to German, German to Spanish, Spanish to Portuguese and back to English. You’ll be rolling on the floor, laughing.

Computers are amazing with math, but not yet great with language. There are too many variables, to much “human-ness” to it: i.e. logic circuits do not do well with idiom, sarcasm, humor, in-jokes, etc.

I tried AltaVista Bablefish with the lyrics to the Bomb song, “Madness” (link to MP3 of song) and put it through all five languages. Here is the original:

Anna takes me in her mouth and spits me out in catholic guilt. She would like to show me all the pretty things inside her room. But I don’t want to go in there cause all I see is madness. You gave me lies. On that I based a book. You wrote a couple songs for me but I always wrote the hook. You paid my rent. All I see is madness. I fucked your friends. Walking around here with Band-Aids on your eyes? Happiness abounds in cryptic fields where the muse is cheap - she’ll sleep with anyone. And children have nice names. And privates run the wars. Anna your child’s gone unto the Garden of Eden. Anna blast a hole into the Garden of Eden. Anna your child’s gone to the Garden of Eden. Anna don’t you know your secret’s safe with me?

and here is the round-robin Bablefish result:

Ana makes the relative examination the opening me and escupe of the external part in the catholic of culpability. He has wished to the exposure of the inner part to me to all the graceful things of the relative section. But all he has not wished to comprise a cause, that is a verruecktheit of sees. They had given the lies to me it. In me I have created a book. The songs of a connection for me had written, but I have always written the hooks. They had paid my leasing. A lot that the v, are verruecktheit. I have kissed the relative friends. It encircles here with dae (the dispositive automatic rifle of input) of the adhesive tape in the relative eyes? The fortune has the abundance in the hidden zones, where the MUSE is little expensive - when duer me without the material, of that one. And the children have pleasant names. And the those that prevail execute the wars. Ana relative boy IDO to the garden of Eden. Ana interests affinchè perforates in the garden of Eden. Ana relative boy IDO to.

Or “Should We Worry About the Large Hadron Collider?”

A hadron is a subatomic particle. A collider is an underground racetrack that will propel this particle to near-light speeds. Still under construction in Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider is going to be the biggest particle accelerator in the world, with a circumference of 17 miles. Scientists hope to finally isolate the “Higgs boson,” a theoretical particle dubbed “the God Particle,” whose discovery could solve many mysteries of the physical world. Scientists believe this elusive particle could reveal what matter really is.

So why should we be worried? According to the venerable Wikipedia and the Lifeboat Foundation, a technophobe watchdog group, “People both inside and outside of the physics community have voiced concern that the LHC might trigger one of several theoretical disasters capable of destroying the Earth or even the entire Universe.” Apparently, when you energize particles to such high speeds, there are some safety concerns, namely the possibility of creating micro black holes and strange, unstable matter. The chance of this happening is infinitesimal, but not zero. I think the inadvertent destruction of our world would be a major bummer, not just for the Earth, but for the whole Universe. So until the Spring of 2008, we’ll keep our fingers crossed. Whether we unlock the key to the universe or destroy it, I say, “Let the colliding begin!”

By the way, the unofficial particle acceleration competition between CERN and Fermilab is the subject of the upcoming documentary film “The Atom Smashers.”

Hmmmmm……This may be a solution (but not THE solution) to Apple selling stuff that’s either DRM-crippled, or encoded at a lower bit rate.

As Jon Stewart said (and I’m paraphrasing, can’t find the exact quote): “Sure, Wal-Mart is destroying small-town America. But hey! Nine dollars for a refrigerator!”

From the article:

“The retail giant just began selling digital music free from copy protection today, at just 94 cents per song, versus $1.29/song on iTunes. Let the DRM-free price wars” begin!

Link

A number of YouTube.com regulars have put together the first of what they hope will be many issues of a zine related to the website they frequent. The zine is called “56K” and is available for order from their website: http://www.56Kmagazine.com

The “YouTube Community,” as it’s usually referred to, has spawned parties and gatherings from San Francisco to New York to Australia, so why not a zine? The zine is co-written by a dozen - some prominent, some not - YouTubers and covers everything from video cameras and file formats to Furries (people who dress up as animals as part of their sex life) to reviews of new YouTube features. At $5 per issue, it’s a little expensive for the zine format, but none of the 40 pages are wasted.

So, what do those spare components get on about when you’re not looking? What else?

While I do love the girl-on-girl piece (check out the adorable strap-on), my fav has to be the four-way - those filthy, filthy diodes!

Link

OK, this is friggin’ hot.

Michael Buck sent me a data CD of some high-rez scans of photos he took of me and my band Baby Opaque in 1984 (wasn’t I cute? What HAPPENED?)

(Photos are big enough to print, if you click on thumbnails.)

He also included an MP3 of a song called “Decisions” (DOWNLOAD HERE!) that is not on either our EP or LP. It kinda sounds like Joy Division if they were a jazz band from Iran.

Here’s the lyrics:

There are three things I’ve observed common to everyone.
One is a desire to run, far away.
One is a desire to stay. One related thing is not as common but seen occasionally.
It is a hidden hope for newness,
a yearning for a crossroads,
a need for an opening beyond.

I saw this thing in me today in me today in my bathroom mirror.
It caused excitement and terror simultaneously.
I tried to put it on my shelf,
but it simply would not fit.

It simply would not wait
a window had slammed shut on
any other possibility.

I had to run to catch my breath.

CHORUS:
Decisions, revisions,
in my daily
failing routine.
I need a change of things unseen.

I take the trash out of my house.
I take the food out to my cows.
I take the dust out of my brain.
I take inventory of my goals.

REPEAT CHORUS

The end is nowhere in site.
My goals are nowhere near.
I have to fight
to stay happy!

—–

I hadn’t heard this song in 23 years. Funny how I could remember most of what was coming next. I have no memory of recording it, but it sounds like a cassette four-track demo to me.
——

I told Michael Buck, :

> Thanks for being an archivist. I own NOTHING from back then.
> Seriously. I got my current Baby Opaque records one on eBay and one
> from my mother’s attic after she died.

He wrote me back,

I’m really glad that my pack rat tendencies can give
someone else something enjoyable, now and then. That
WTJU/Charlottesville time frame was pretty key in my
life, so I kept as much of anything related to it as I could.
I wish I had created something cool and lasting, like Baby
Opaque, or Happy Flowers, or Landlords, but it is fun to
be able to get you some pictures you haven’t seen, or a
demo track you haven’t heard for a long time. So, I
guess that’s my role.

BO’s last gig (at the C&O in Charlottesville, Virginia) was July 4 1985.

And Bomb’s first gig was July 4th, 1986, at the Farm in San Francisco. (opening for Flipper and Tex and the Horseheads.)

(There’s a saying in China, “Old Cow Likes Young Grass”)

——

Why should you come to China…?

‘Cause I did!

A lot of people become expats, and believe me, we have ALL the fun!

I’m not just talking about sex-tourism, either….
But in fact I too came here 4 years ago, and it may have saved my life, at least psychologically. I’m finally Happy! Who wouldda thunk it?
Here’s the way I see it. America is going to hell in a handbasket , and you know that. Sure, I’m a little out of touch, but over the past 20 years I have seen the quality of life for most people decline, decline, and decline more. So the stresses and struggles tend to escalate while the face of urban amerika becomes uglier, and nastier.
But there is a way out, and you might try it. GO to China! I know;
it sounds way-out , but I can tell you how.

Three letters…ESL. English as a Second Language.

Would you like a part time job that provides a solid middle class lifestyle? Do you want to recieve a great deal of respect that you may not even deserve? Would you like to meet a beautiful young girl that really treats you right? You CAN have it all, and no experience needed.
I was Burnt Out, trying to start a small business while dealing with the heartache of not being upwardly mobile enough for the women that I loved. It was seemingly hopeless, until I simply googled teach+english+china, and soon I was on my way. A few months later I met the girl of my dreams, and she considered me to be a Rich and Handsome Man. Well that worked out just great, cause we are happily married. And my income has only gone UP.

Michael Dean sez 1,000,000 guys wanna be ME! Well I dunno ’bout that, but I sure do wish that more cool folks would do what I did. The other “foreigners” that I know here all feel that this plan dramatically changed their lives for the better. All you gotta do is teach “conversational english”, which involves hanging out in a room and making small talk, for the most part. Kids and adults alike here know some English, but they need to practice it. It’s not so hard, really. You make at least 5 times what a college graduate or even a university professor makes.

On top of all this, I play guitar in a band, and it’s also been a blast…way better than my years of begging for club gigs and playing for jaded punkers in the States.

I told you why, now just ask me How.

Take a stroll with me across the “golden bridge”.
Ah, so….ESL!

–Skip Lunch, China.

Scientists can now drugtest a whole city by testing a spoon fulla municipal waste.

From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070822/ap_on_sc/citywide_drug_test :

“‘Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete,’ Field said….

“…She said that one fairly affluent community scored low for illicit drugs except for cocaine. Cocaine and ecstasy tended to peak on weekends and drop on weekdays, she said, while methamphetamine and prescription drugs were steady throughout the week.”

“‘The EPA will ‘flush out the details’ on testing, Benjamin Grumbles joked.”

(Thanks Debra Jean for that one!)

By the way, I remeber reading where someone (I’m pretty sure it was either Ray Kurzweil, or Alvin Toffler) suggested toilets that analyze your leavings to monitor your health and make a doctor’s appointment for you if there’s a reason to.

Download PDF of “The Manual” by The KLF.

The KLF are two cats from the UK, anarchist pranksters who strategically set about to try, and succeeded at, having a number-one hit. (”Doctorin’ the Tardis.” Horrible video here) This was despite the fact that they had very little musical talent, and even bragged about that fact.

They had their hit back in 1988 under the name “The Timelords” (and borrowed / sampled a few other better hits to do it.)

In 1989, they wrote a book (downloadable above) about how to have a number-one hit, which actually tells you, step by step, what they did, and very comically explains why you’re a friggin’ idiot if you even want to have a number one hit.

They had a few more top-ten hits, some acid house stuff, and the catchy club dance hit 3 AM eternal.

Then they set fire to and burned a million pounds cash (about 1.8 million US dollars at the time), most of their earnings, and filmed it burning for a documentary. Five-part video of that starts here.

I love KLF’s attitudes and ideas. I especially love the quote below, from “The Manual.” I agree with what they say here, a lot, and have talked to many drummers over the years who also agree:

“Black American records have always been the most reliable source of dance groove. These records down through the years have inevitably laid so much emphasis on the altar of groove and so very little into fulfilling the other Golden Rules that they very rarely break through into the U.K. Top Ten, let alone making the Number One spot.

“A by-product of this situation is that gangsters of the groove from Bo Diddley on down believe they have been ripped off, not only by the business but by all the artists that have followed on from them.

“This is because the copyright laws that have grown over the past one hundred years have all been developed by whites of European descent and these laws state that fifty per cent of the copyright of any song should be for the lyrics, the other fifty per cent for the top line (sung) melody; groove doesn’t even get a look in.
“If the copyright laws had been in the hands of blacks of African descent, at least eighty per cent would have gone to the creators of the groove, the remainder split between the lyrics and the melody.
“If perchance you are reading this and you are both black and a lawyer, make a name for yourself. Right the wrongs.”

–

When I showed drummer Michael Bérubé this quote, he replied, “Damn straight. One drummin’ nation under a groove– or, as (Flavor Flav of) Public Enemy once said, ‘Y’all can’t copyright no beats’.”

————————————

(Thanks for turning me onto this, James Jose of Australia!)

John Beers, a.k.a “Mr. Horribly Charred Infant” from the Happy Flowers (I recommend you do NOT click that link, it looks like an AOL homepage from 1929, which, in fact, it probably is) recently broke his leg. Not groundbreaking news, but the Xray looks so hideously painful, I thought I’d share. It’s above.

Below is another pic of John on crutches at a recent WTJU reunion picnic. Damn John has aged well!!!! He looks like a 40-year-old cute teenager.

Here’s what he wrote to me:

“My ankle was broken for me when a kid jumped off the stage feet-first (instead of diving, asshole) when I went to see Daughters back in April. It happened less than 15 minutes into their set. I used to go to shows all the time but I’ve been to just two since that one (Radio Birdman in June and Elekibass last week). For the longest time, I just plain couldn’t go and now I’ve got a phobia or something. It sucks

“As I wrote on the HF MySpace blog, Mr. Anus’s parents were wrong; it was broken but I was not screaming. I didn’t even get painkillers ’til I’d been at the hospital for nearly NINE hours.”

Wow….Both me and DJ have been to the emergency room recently, and it took 6 and 7 hours respectively to get painkillers. And she had a horrible migraine. Next time we should probably just buy heroin on the street instead. (Which would probably involve a drive to the Valley, which, while close, might be less fun than nine hours in pain in the emergency room.)

Gotta love American health care. (And John, DJ and I all have insurance. I’ve been to the E.R. without insurance before, that took 14 hours before I got any pain medication.)

Even though if you remember the 80s, you weren’t there!

WTJU DJ Michael Buck sent me another good one, this close up of his jacket, from 1984, back when I knew him in Charlottesville. Check out the band pins:

Joy Division, The Cure, U2, MX-80 Sound, Psychedelic Furs, Cocteau Twins, Throbbing Gristle, Xmal Deutschland, Adam and the Ants, Cabaret Voltaire, New Order, Depeche Mode.

Dig it.

(By the way, if you’d thrown all these bands in a blender and added John Coltrane and the Ramones, you would have had my band Baby Opaque.)

Well, I was for a minute: Fierce Hurricane Dean batters Mexican resorts.

Tragic, and I shouldn’t make jokes. But if you’re gonna share a name with a storm, make it a good one.

My friend Erin sent me this last week, giggling,
Texas Soaked By Erin, Braces For Dean.

Tried. Mew. Goodnight. Babydoll’s up and getting ready for work, I’m done loving on her for now, and headed to sleep. Yup, we sleep and wake in shifts. We’re both awake and together from about 4:30 pm when she gets home to about 11:30 when she goes to bed. And on the weekends.

MEW!

Hyping a book that isn’t even written yet….

….seems nuts, but I’m gonna do it.

I don’t know if “Hyping” is really the correct word, and I actually have written the first draft of the first six chapters (about 1/4 or 1/5 of the whole book.) And I’ve written the entire outline, and am working on the proposal.

The book is called $30 Life School, and it’s not very much like my other three “$30 School series” books. Except in spirit.

$30 Life School is an extrapolation of everything I’ve ever learned, seen or felt in my life. It will be a long time in the creation, and will be more extensive than any project I’ve done. (Including the Selby movie, on which I spent 60 hours a week for three years.)

The “literary” inspiration for the genesis of this book, in a way, was a book my father had. It was a book published in the 1920s, that his family had owned when he was a kid, during the Great Depression. It was about four inches thick, huge, plain black cover, filled with tiny type. It was a cross between an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a farmer’s almanac, a primer on chemistry, physics and electrical wiring, and a sort of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books-type thumbnail report on all the great religions, philosophies and political histories of the world.

I don’t recall the title of the book, only that under the title it said “The only book, besides the Bible, that any home needs.”

$30 Life School is going to be my version of that book. Look for it sometime in, oh, let’s say late 2009.

The full title of the book is:

$30 LIFE SCHOOL
(How to quit your day job, become a published author, make money working at home, lose weight now, have a great marriage, have more sex, have better sex, find god, travel the world for free, fire your therapist, get a record deal, deal with problem people, learn the secret to life, change the world from your room, live forever and be happy all the time.)

Here’s a description of the first chapter:

CHAPTER ONE - WHAT I LEARNED FROM MY DAUGHTER’S DEATH Michael W. Dean reflects on his daughter Amelia dying of leukemia at age 22. He searches for any kind of positive spin on it, and finds several optimistic ways to look at the most negative experience of his life.

Even with this silver lining view, his faith in life, God and the universe is shaken. He can’t sleep, can’t even cry. This leads him on a path of self-analysis, soul searching, and a desire to contribute something big to the world in the second half of his life.

 

This book is the outcome.

Me and Amelia in Los Angeles in July 2006, four months before her death.

$30 Life School will, of course, be dedicated to Amelia.

The cool part is, I got to do that also while she was alive to enjoy it. $30 Music School is also dedicated to her, and I gave her copies of it.

I’ve gained a bit of spare tire (at least a bicycle tire) with all this non-stop sitting and snacking, working at home in the pixel mines of Web 2.0 and writing books and making films and such.

I usually hate TV diet plan stuff, it all seems like snake oil to me. But I saw one on PBS that wasn’t pushy, and I like PBS, so I checked out.

We found a great diet plan, it’s a DVD, very sensible, not a crash diet. It’s all about nutrition, plus you have to walk a half hour a day, at least six days a week. I’ve lost over ten pounds in two months. It’s called “You on a Diet” and the DVD was 9 bucks used on Amazon.

We had to change a lot of what we eat, but still eat a lot of yummy stuff.

And me and the wife love our nightly walks together. And we have a lot more energy now, for lovin’ and stuff…I feel younger after just two months of this. Yay!

(The author of the book also does the RealAge website, which is cool. Also check out CatAge.com. We did and found out that our older cat, Charlie, is 64 in human, and our new cats are 5! No wonder Charlie hates them! Imagine if you were a cranky 64-year-old woman and forced to room with two five-year-old boys who were not related to you! Yikes!)

must go to bed.

Man…I can see why people blog. But I’m glad I waited this long. I was busy making REAL content. Now I can just spend my days linking it. lol…. (and linking other people’s cool content.)

Fuck yeah!

http://www.rollingscabs.com
is the new site for the Rolling Scabs. The Rolling Scabs were a short-lived punk group fronted by two 13-year-old boys. The group played several gigs in and around San Francisco in 1988. One of the kids later died.

We did a record with 4 songs recorded live at Gilman Street, and they’re all up online on this site now.

Howdy. I’ve been on the Internet 12 hours a day since 1996, created tons of content, changed the world, written books, made records, movies, etc. But I’ve never had a blog. Resisted getting one. Thought blogs were for the unwashed masses. And I wash. But I think it’s time for Michael W. Dean to have a blog.

I’m gonna invite some friends to help, and make this a very popular site. Yup. Mark my damn words. And I figure it’s a good day to do it, because my hurricane (Hurricane Dean) is slamming the world too.

But since it’s a blog, I figured my first post should be cat photos. Isn’t that the standard first blog post?

Here are the loverly pix by my friend Lydia Lam that she took at dinner at our house the other night.

Enjoy!

love, Michael W. Dean