Issue 31
February 1, 2006


Running with Scissors
Since 1999

An e-journal documenting modern culture as it manifests on or near that hotspot on the surrealistic powergrid known as Spokane, WA and/or the known or unknown universe
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Watch My Movies!
The Perfect Haunted House
20:20
RetroViral Village
18:09
Foxxy Moron Show 7/2/05
9:39
Dealing with Evil
1:01
Out the F*** of the Blue
4:07
Pork Brains
3:46

Movies of my Associates
Perfect Haunted House 2
18:04
The Nativity
5:36

Collaborative Accidents
the making of MEAT
6:09

Visit the OtherSpokane
MySpace Site

HELP KEEP THIS SITE ONLINE!

          This issue a special issue I say, because I seem to say 
          that every issue is a special issue, and this is no exception.

 In this issue I'll be recapping the relevant events of the past few weeks, explore some wondrous web finds,  and discuss some future events that might be worthy of your participation and/or scrutiny.  Also, throughout this issue I'll once again be randomly inserting juicy but totally random digital nuggets: unedited shots from films we're working on, outtakes, and stuff we just simply haven't figured out how to use yet. (As well as allowing me to play with some new e-toys.) Such as the following:

Random Clips 1, 2, and 3
BloodWired Jesse is making a short film composed of different segments by our various cohorts. Here's a few shots from my piece of the puzzle - The Internal Dialogue Chef (but without the voiceover).

More Digital Ditties
I keep my shorter digital works (less than 100 mgs) on YouTube, a video repository where literally anyone can store videos - very democratic but very messy. How they keep the porn off is beyond me (they're not totally successful). You have to sift through hundreds of drunk, dancing teenagers to find the good stuff.  Simply do a search for the subject of your interest. Here's a few searches that I've enjoyed:
       Foxxy Moron's stuff
       James the Saint stuff
       My stuff   

Here's some other Tubefinds that are difficult to locate elsewhere:

I keep my longer digital works on GoogleVideo.
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Important Update
My son James (who still doesn't have a job) has opted to venture from our beloved Spokanistan homeland and has found himself in a dusty, Texan field between a herd of sheep and a bunch of rotund good-old-boys roasting large animals on spits. I think it's one of those go-find-yourself things. I give him four or five more weeks before he's sucked back into the Great Spookaloo Vortex. (By the way, change your MySpace photo, dude. It's giving me nightmares.)
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Woman's Love. Man's Hate. Blazing Romance!
"Voice Over" is the latest project of artist Brian Joseph Davis, who created a cut-and-paste text based on lines from 500 different film trailers. Professional voiceover artist Scott Taylor reads. 
Stream here download MP3 here.

Should'a Went to Disneyland 
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. What do you want to do now?
> INVADE IRAQ
No, not yet.
Check out this political parody.
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You Go, Dude
My friend Eli is attempting to circumnavigate the planet. Last I heard he was in waterlogged New Orleans. He's a good writer; you should support his trek by reading his blog at his MySpace page.
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SWAT Teams Everywhere
Are SWAT teams and other forms of "paramilitary" policing becoming much too common in the United States? I ask because in Slate today, Daniel Engber writes as an aside that "By the mid-1990s, more than 80 percent of American cities had active teams, as did more than half of all law enforcement agencies in the country with more than 50 officers." He links to a 1997 study by Peter Kraska, who found that the number of SWAT teams in America has not only risen dramatically since the 1980s, but that they've been used much more frequently:
Continue reading "SWAT Teams Everywhere"
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Make your eyes go wibble wobble
Stare at the center of this spinning pinwheel for about 20 seconds, then look away at something in your room.
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Important Update
I once again have had the reoccurring dream where evil Canadian Mounted Police are laughing maniacally while burning my feet off in a bonfire. I don't think there's anything too awfully psychologically distressful or revealing about this, but I still get nervous when I see husky, well-fed, gay-looking men in red coats and Ranger Rick hats. I'll just deal with it.
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Random Clip 4
The kids and I experiment with maggots 
and fake blood. We're overjoyed when 
the "cast" plays it up for the camera.
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The Proper Responses to the Bush Boys BS

• They have claimed this unauthorized wiretap on phone calls and email was legal because of Congressional resolution.
  Bullshit, Congress has passed no resolution allowing the president to ignore the 4th Amendment and spy on Americans. Moreover, Congress explicitly denied this right to the administration.

• Then they claimed that they did it because they needed to act swiftly.
  Bullshit, Current law allows immediate wiretapping, with up to three days after the tap to get the official court order. 

• They claimed that Congress was fully briefed and knowledgeable on the program.
  Bullshit, Only a handful of Congressional leaders were briefed on the program. Those who attended briefings were ordered to keep quiet about it. When Congressional leaders submitted concerns to Vice President Cheney's office about the program, there was no response.  Now, it also seems that the administration wasn't forthcoming on major parts of the program.

• They argued that the administrative overhead is too high.
  Bullshit, Too much 'paperwork' is not an excuse to break the laws of the land. If it did prove to be too difficult, the president could have sought to fix the law; after all, that's what the Patriot Act is all about.

• They said that the spying program was narrow and limited.
  Bullshit, A New York Times article about the program reports that the data from the eavesdropping program was 'swamping investigators.' "The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month. But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans."

• The president said the person who leaked the spy program to the New York Times caused great harm to our security and now the Justice Department is involved in an investigation to discover their identity.
  Bullshit, Anyone who brings illegal and unconstitutional activity to light is just doing their job—upholding the laws of the land. Our nation has a rich history of protecting whistleblowers—they are heroes who keep our democracy strong.

• The administration is saying the Clinton-Gore White House also engaged in warrantless searches, as in Aldrich Ames' home.
  Bullshit, The Clinton White House never violated the law in its searches. Warrants were not required for physical searches at that time, and Clinton supported and signed legislation changing the law to require warrants.
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Disembodied Spacesuit set to orbit Earth
A very strange satellite is about to go into Earth orbit. It's "SuitSat," an empty spacesuit thrown overboard from the International Space Station. Using a simple police scanner or ham radio, you can listen to SuitSat when it orbits over your hometown.
       source
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Another Foxxy Happening About to Happen
Those Foxxy Moron freaks are slathering the citizenry with more of their  Foxxy love at The Boulevard, 333 W. Spokane Falls Blvd at 9:00 pm, Saturday, Feb. 18 (note the date change). I'll be there with my video camera,  documenting the occurring oddities with moronic relish. Look for me and ask to do an impromptu screen test for my film THE SEVENTH EVE.
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'Bout Time He Spoke Up
Last week, former Vice President Al Gore gave a powerful speech on this issue, co-sponsored by the Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society. Read it here.
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New Site with Some Potential
In 1984, a businessman and a mayoral aide decided that they'd had enough with "how difficult and time-consuming" it was to understand the hot-button issues of our time. So they formed a nonprofit corporation and set about compiling clear breakdowns of the arguments for and against a host of thorny subjects. As you can imagine, this calls out for the Web. And sure enough, in 2003 ProCon.org came into being. Since that time, it has provided overviews, historical summaries, little-known facts, and pro/con charts for such fun dinner table conversations as:

• Should the U.S. have attacked Iraq, with or without the U.N.?
• What are the solutions to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict?
• Is the ACLU good for America?

Random Clip 5
Heeeeere's James...  Jesse and I get a little nervous when James gets into his serial killer part a bit too much to make us feel at ease. 
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Film or ad? Ask Pirelli
Want to catch the new film starring John Malkovich and Naomi Campbell? You will have to log on to the internet. And perhaps 'film' is not quite the right word: the American actor and the British model star in a 10-minute video commissioned by Pirelli, the Italian tire maker, which plans to post it in March on a specially created website, where it will become the feature presentation in a new marketing campaign. The short film is titled 'The Call' and is set in the Vatican. It involves a battle between good and evil, featuring Malkovich as a priest and Campbell as the devil. What does any of this have to do with selling tires - or even telecommunications cables, Pirelli's other main product? Though the film is still being edited and few details were disclosed, Pirelli says the story provides a metaphorical illustration of its long-running slogan, 'Power is nothing without control.' The film is also one of the most elaborate examples yet of the intersection of the entertainment and advertising industries, with the internet and other new media shaping up as the main crossroads.
source
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From the State that Brought You Jesse Ventura
Check out the official website for Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey. "Honesty is very seldom heard nowadays, especially from a politician. So, I am going to break from political tradition. My name is Jonathon 'The Impaler' Sharkey, Ph.D., L.D.D.D. I am a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch." He has an ingenious plan for dealing with terrorists and drug dealers. And yes, he has also filed to run for president in 2008.
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Random Clip
We haven't let James' self-searching get in the way of our digital diversions. Jesse, Karen and I got together the other night to shoot some scenes for one of Jesse's BloodWired productions. We also composed a video letter to send to my wandering child. Click here to see What Yer Missin', James.
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Comedy Relief 



Striving for Two Blinks or More
Internet users can give websites a thumbs up or thumbs down in less than the blink of an eye, according to a study by Canadian researchers. In just a brief one-twentieth of a second, less than half the time it takes to blink,  people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an internet site. The study was published in the latest issue of the Behavior and Information Technology journal. But the results did not show how to win a positive reaction from users.
source
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Random Clips
Here's some old shots from the defunct zombie project. It's me as Steve Striker, broadcast journalist ("How ya doin'") trying to get my big puking scene in the can. The second camera recorded some technical problems. 

        Take One                Take Two                 Take Three

Google Stands Up to the Feds...
Google will vigorously defend against the US government's demands that the search engine giant reveal information about searches, the company said Saturday, in an incident that calls attention to a huge vat of electronically stored data that could be accessible to the government. US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales reiterated his demands in court papers filed Wednesday that Google provide data on search queries as part of the administration's attempt to defend the constitutionality of the Children Online Protection Act, which courts have blocked from taking effect. The act claims to seek to prevent children from obtaining pornography online. The government wants Google to provide a random sample of 1m website addresses that Google includes in its search results and a file containing search queries from an unspecified weeklong period. MSN said it complied with the goverment's request but said it did not provide individual search results.
source

Yet Cowers to the Commies
Leading internet company Google has offered a Chinese-language version of its search engine for years but users have been frustrated by government blocks on the site. So the company is setting up a new site, Google.cn, which will censor itself to satisfy Beijing's hardline rulers. Officials said they planned to notify users when access had been restricted on certain search terms. Its e-mail, chat room and blogging services will not be available because of concerns the government could demand users' personal information. The company argues it can play a more useful role in China by participating than by boycotting it, despite the compromises involve.
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420 Feet High - 120 mph Straight Down
Check out some photos of the Top Thrill Dragster - a new roller coaster in Cedar Point, Ohio.
Click here to pee your pants.
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If You're Not Using It...
Here's a consortium of international companies - including leading financial and genetic research institutions - who have created a product that gives you an actual cash value for your soul. You can receive a guaranteed CASH SUM for life, in exchange for an agreement that entitles WWYS® the rights to your soul from now until all eternity.
Click here to sell your soul.

Trust me on this one...  
Click here, let image load, then enjoy minutes of freaky, whoa dude-type fun.

Next Installment: Huh?