OBSOLETE!
Magazine
Issue #2
Table of Contents:
Steve Walters cover
David Stein Letter to Obsolete 2
Editorial Intro to Issue #2 3
Alissa Bader How I Spent My Summer Vacation 3
Debra & Gary Parky Greetings From Grand Isle, LA 4
Rich Dana Interview w/ Karl Schroeder 6
J.D. King Just a Mirage 8
Rich Dana & Deborah Reade Artist Profile: Peter Aschwanden 10
Jonathan Shaw A Night in the Zone 12
Reviews 13
Marina Deb Ris Pollution Reborn as Art 14
Joolz Denby Not Perfect
Wild Town 15
Qojak Featured Artist Portfolio 16
Alex the Card Weaver The Luddite Cafe 17
Ricardo Feral The Power of Poo 18
Will Grant The Scrounge 3 &18
Special thanks to contributing artists, editors, photographers and distributors, including:
Blair Gauntt, Peg Dana, Ericka Wildgirl Dana, Eric Houts, Don Rock and all of the wonderful
people who donated to our Kickstarter online fundraiser. Thanks to all of those great folks,
OBSOLETE! will be distibuted free for the next year.
is a quarterly tabloid publication in the tradition of the
International Times, OZ, The East Village Other, The
Berkely Barb, The Chicago Seed, The Whole Earth
Catalog, PUNK! and the other great underground rags
of days past....
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------------------------------------------
ob·so·lete (adjective)
Definition of OBSOLETE
1 a : no longer in use or no longer useful <an obsolete word>
b : of a kind or style no longer current : old-fashioned <an
obsolete technology>
2 of a plant or animal part : indistinct or imperfect as
compared with a corresponding part in related organisms :
vestigial
— ob·so·lete·ly adverb
— ob·so·lete·ness noun
Examples of OBSOLETE
1. The system was made obsolete by their invention.
2. <I was told my old printer is obsolete and I can’t get
replacement parts.>
Origin of OBSOLETE
Latin obsoletus, from past participle of obsolescere to grow
old, become disused
First Known Use: 1579
Synonyms: antiquated, archaic, dated, démodé, demoded,
fossilized, kaput (also kaputt), medieval (also mediaeval),
moribund, mossy, moth-eaten, neolithic, Noachian, outdated,
outmoded, out-of-date, outworn, passé, prehistoric (also pre-
historical), rusty, Stone Age, superannuated
Near Antonyms: contemporary, current, mod, modern, new,
newfangled, new-fashioned, present-day, recent, ultramodern,
up-to-date, up-to-the-minute; fresh; modernized, refurbished,
remodeled, renewed; functional, operable, operational, work-
able; active, alive, busy, employed, functioning, operating,
operative
Rhymes with OBSOLETE
aquavit, at one’s feet, balance sheet, biathlete, bittersweet,
booster seat, bucket seat, catbird seat, cellulite, cookie sheet,
corps d’elite, countryseat, county seat, crystal pleat, decath-
lete, drag one’s feet, driver’s seat, easy street, exegete, incom-
plete, indiscreet, latent heat, letter sheet, lorikeet, make ends
meet, marguerite, Masorete, meadowsweet, meet and greet,
miss a beat, Nayarit, off one’s feet, on one’s feet, on the street,
overeat, overheat, Paraclete, parakeet, pentathlete, prickly
heat, rumble seat, saddle seat, scandal sheet, self-conceit,
semisweet, shredded wheat, sliding seat, spirochete, super-
heat, to one’s feet, triathlete, trick or treat, two-way street,
undertreat, up one’s street, winding-sheet, window seat
 What I did on my
Summer VacAtion
As I write this introduction, it is fall, 2010. Summer
is over. I sit alone in the house of a dead woman, look-
ing out the door toward the Puget Sound. The sun is
bright above the thick quilt of fog. I’m waiting for the
movers, who missed the ferry.
Barbara was a journalist, an artist and interior
designer; she transformed things and places. Now, her
meticulously arranged home is being disassembled- the
last pieces carefully packed for their trip to a Seattle
auction house.
-------------
It’s fall and school is back in session. If you had to
stand at the blackboard on the first day of school, what
would you tell the class? What did you do on your
summer vacation? Did you have a great adven-
ture? Did you max out your credit card for a
few days of blissful escape? Or did you stay
at home and pray the AC kept working and
that you might soon find work? Did you
fall in love... or did you sit on the couch and
watch 24-hour cable news coverage as the US of A
declined into a made-for-TV remake of the Weimar
Republic? In the current state of the Union, the idea of
a “summer vacation” is disappearing over the societal
horizon faster than my Dad’s Country Squire station
wagon crossing the Badlands. But we still have “The
Holidays” to look forward to, right?
-------------
Barbara understood how things worked. She care-
fully restored Victorian furniture that she found at
Goodwill. She practiced Ikebana, the art of floral
arrangement, which she first studied in Tokyo as a
G.I. Bride during the Korean War. She
understood time.
She survived a decades-long fight
with disease through faith, not in God
but in herself. Faith... and just the right
amount of denial. She didn’t sweat the
small stuff, but she was obsessed with
detail. I wish I could talk to her. I talk to her.
-------------
The movers arrive. Zack, a skinny 20-something
hipster wearing a wool stocking cap despite the unsea-
sonable heat, and Bob, a down-on-his-luck middle-aged
tattoo artist. His tattoo shop was destroyed in arson’s
fire, and he has a new baby to feed, so he’s moving
antiques.
Together, we organize and load the truck. I give Bob
some of Barbara’s oriental art books, Zack some old
vinyl. They are happy, especially Bob, who lost all of
his art books in the fire.
We all shake hands, wishing each other the best.
They drive carefully up the steep and wind-
ing driveway. I lock the front door and
take one last walk through Barbara’s
beautiful hillside garden.
-------------
By the time you read this,
we will have completed another
painful, pointless election cycle.
Americans will have made another
desperate attempt to elect the corporate
puppet who will most effectively suppress
the people they hate. It’s like being asked to decide
on which carny we want to run our economic roller
coaster. “Hmmm, I think I prefer J-Dog the toothless
meth-head’s stand on health care- or should I vote for
Cletus the Baptist child-molester? His stand on Rowe v.
Wade is more to my liking...” but we go on. We get by.
Maybe next summer. Just don’t sweat the small stuff
and pay attention to detail. We stand in the garden in
the shadows of late afternoon and take a deep breath,
and go on. Into the fall, and winter....
In this second issue of OBSOLETE! We play
with the idea of “summer vacation” with writing
and art by contributors from California, New
York, Chicago, Iowa, New Orleans, Colorado,
New Mexico, and the U.K. and Brazil. No mat-
ter where you go, no matter how the politicos howl and
bray, summer days are long and the nights are hot, and
it’s the time to get away...
How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
This summer, I did not go to Burning Man.
Thank god.
Don’t get me wrong here. I got nothing against
camping, or hippies. Hell, I’ve even got nothing
against people walking around naked— nudity being
something that often happens at hippie camping events
like Burning Man. In fact, this is one of those few times
I’m glad my eyesight sucks – if an unattractive naked
person, or group of unattractive naked people happen to
walk past me, I can just take off my glasses and it’ll be
a giant blur. (Disclaimer: I have yet to be in a situation
where I see groups of fine-looking naked people in real life.
If I did, then yeah. I might think differently.)
I got nothing against self-sufficiency. Y’all want to
build a city in the desert? Fine, go ahead. Truck in a bunch
of crap, put together what you gotta put together, plug
it into whatever giant gas-powered monstrosity of an
generator you brought along with you, and boom! Instant
blinky-lights! And I do admit that blinky-lights in the
desert really are pretty cool.
But then, compound those blinky-lights camps by the
hundreds, mix in the thousands of people, combine it all
with the crappy boom-boom-horrid-techno-oh-my-god-
earplugs-don’t-work-because-you can-feel-the-vibra-
tions-through-the-ground music, and the miserable
excuses for “art” you’ll come across, and the ever-present
dust-storms...and you can’t help but think...”Damn. No
amount of drugs they’ve got available here is gonna help
me escape this.”
And that’s Burning Man. Seven days of what the or-
ganizers call “Radical Self-Expression” in the desert. Oy.
So this summer, instead I lounged around my friend’s
kiddie pool, drank a few beers and reminisced about
crazy 80’s teen idols. I drove up to the mountains a
couple times, ate at a Japanese restaurant in town I
always wanted to try, went to an amusement park and
almost lost my dinner on the twisty turns of a roller
coaster called “The Wild Chipmunk.” That was all. Super
low-key. A time of “self-expression?” Maybe. But much
as I do love me my blinky lights, parties, and being around
the crazy hippies, sometimes you just gots to relax.
-Alissa Bader,
Denver CO
 Greet i n g s F r o m
Gran d I s l e . L A .
by
Gary and Debra Parky from New Orleans. Debra and I sometimes drive around the city and the
region and take photos of old and/or primitive signage. In Larose we
The following photos were taken in early September, primarily in Grand found an entire side of a building covered with a protest collage (complete
Isle, Louisiana. Grand Isle was prominently featured early-on during cov- with a rendition of Shepard Fairey’s Obama profile); further down Route
erage of the Deepwater Horizon oil “spill” (often referred to as “gusher” or One we came upon a piece of plywood painted with relevant images that
“geyser’ in the local New Orleans media) for President Obama’s unconvinc- was somewhat reminiscent of R.A. Miller’s work. As we got into Grand Isle
ing photo ops. It was, at the time, Ground Zero for the media’s coverage it became apparent that this we were in the right place.
of the nation’s largest environmental catastrophe. We had traveled to There was no shortage of homemade, hand-painted protests against
Pensacola, Florida and seen plenty of submerged tar balls while snorkeling BP in people’s front yards. We occasionally saw professionally printed
and we had seen the dead jellyfish washing ashore in Pass Christian, Mis- signs as well, which still had a pissed-off & sometimes humorous local
sissippi. The clean-up crews we saw in both places were mostly not clean- point of view.
ing anything, just sitting under tarps on the beach. Grand Isle residents are clearly frustrated with what was unwillingly
I was still unsure of what direction to go in covering this event for foisted upon them, from the catastrophe itself to how it is being handled
OBSOLETE! We were thinking about it as we drove down to Grand Isle by the government and corporate America.

Gary & Debra Parky reside in New Orleans. According to Gary,

“Every now and then we do something interesting, like the
time we had a band that played obscure R&B and Rock & Roll
from the late 50s & early 60s, complete with go-go dancers.
We called ourselves the SophistiCats and the SophistiKittens,
and we released 2 full length CDs and did a lot of cool gigs.
Another time we opened up a store on Magazine St called
Sputnik Ranch that sold stuff like Western Wear, cowboy
boots, designer vinyl toys, lowbrow art and other fun stuff.
That was pretty crazy! Sometimes we even ride around the
French Quarter on vintage 1950s bikes dressed up like cow-
boys (the Roy Rogers/Nudie/Manuel suit wearing kind…yes,
we have the suits) with our friends. We also like to drive
around our neck of the woods and take photos of cool stuff
that we’re afraid won’t be around too long. Unfortunately,
we’re often right about our choices. Our favorite dogs are
Border Collies; we have two. Their names are Bunny and Lux.”

Check them out at:

SputnikRanch.com & SophistiCats.com.
Detournement and Re-Wilding:
A Discussion with
During the early part of summer, 2010, I stum-
bled across an announcement for a Science
Fiction Convention at a local hotel. Although I’m
a life-long reader of Sci-Fi and full-fledged geek
( I proudly admit that I once worked at Forbidden
Planet, NYC’s largest comic book and sci-fi store),
I rarely venture out to “Cons” these days. Some-
thing on the schedule caught my eye, though.
Canadian author Karl Schroeder was slotted as
a special guest and was scheduled to moderate a
panel on “The Politics of Climate Change.” “This
should be interesting,” I thought. “Can a room full
of people dressed as Klingons, pie-eyed gamers
and Asprergers sufferers have a coherent conver-
sation about the ultimate reality?” I got in the car.
Although the turnout for the session was small,
it was a thoughtful discussion and the group was
extremely well-informed for a lay-audience. The
group included one hard-core denier, but even
he contributed relevant points and despite dif-
ferences, minds were open on both sides of the
argument.
Schoeder lead the discussion with the deft
hand of someone who understood his audience.
He also brought a Canadian perspective on what
is possible when a nation is not yet completely
controlled by a coporatocracy.
Having watched a Youtube video of Schoeder
at OSCON (the O’Reilly Media shindig) in which
his ideas of “re-wilding” were presented. I was
anxious to sit down with the author and talk about
his ideas. Karl was kind enough to oblige. Upon
describing the theme of “Obsolete Magazine, we
immediately dove into a discussion of “Detourne-
ment” the situationist idea of reuse of elements
and William Gibson’s early cyberpunk novels like
Count Zero and Neuromancer, in which Schoeder
pointed out that “... the characters are constantly
cobbling things together out of stuff the street has
abandoned- there is a tradition of that in science
fiction going back at least that far and before...”
R: You come from a tradition of science fiction
that is heavily influenced by the “Science”. Are
there instances where sci-fi has had an effect on
science?
K: Science fiction can’t make things come true,
so it may not have had a huge influence on sci-
ence, but it has had a huge impact on making
people want to become scientists. I often hear
people say that reading science fiction as kids got
them into science. The line between science and
technology gets blurred a lot. Many people went
into computer engineering with the expressed
intention of making their science fiction fantasies
a reality. Gibson’s vision of cyberspace is the
prime example. Computer engineers have been
frantically trying to construct since that book came
out. I don’t think you could find anyone in silicone
valley that doesn’t read science fiction.
R: In the review of Ventus, Cory Doctorow refers
to you as an autodidact. Do you see yourself
that way?
K: In the strictest terms I am an autodidact in that
I’m a high school dropout. I’ve taught myself es-
sentially everything I needed to know about the
science and technologies I write about. I firmly
believe that if you know how to learn, all doors
are open to you. At this point though, I’m pursuing
a masters degree in “Strategic Foresight and In-
novation,”... which, when I tell people that, causes
them to stare at me blankly. It’s a new program,
but not a new idea. The idea of “Foresight” goes
Karl Schroeder
back to the Rand Corporation in the 50’s, and
even prior to that. It’s not about predicting the
future, but it is about minimizing surprises.
For me, it dovetails nicely with writing science
fiction. In writing science fiction, I can be as
outrageous in my predictions as I want. Now, I’m
getting the tools to look at the future in a more
sophisticated way.
R: Do you think that your educational background
or lack thereof sets you apart from your
colleagues in the program? Are they at all bur-
dened by pre-conceptions that you might have?
I’m thinking of Buckminster Fuller, who was
kicked out of college several times before he
went on to be one of the greatest big-picture
thinkers of the 20th Century. He always said that
his best education came from being a supply
officer in the Navy.
K: I’ve deliberately avoided becoming a specialist,
because with that comes a specialists perspec-
tive. I always wanted to be a well-rounded gener-
alist, because of what I wanted to write. This pro-
gram at the Ontario College of Art and Design is
a generalists’ program. The other students come
from a wide range of backgrounds - from advertis-
ing to medical technology to government policy.
They share the characteristic of wanting to have
that big picture view of things. The courses in the
program cast an extremely wide net to broaden
the toolset for understanding the world.
R: I have heard you talk about the idea about
“re-wilding”...
K: I want to write a novel laying out these ideas. I
use “re-wilding” as a metaphor for what we need
to control in the world around us and things we
can let go of, because we better understand the
world around us. In the past we tried to control
everything in the environment around us in order
to survive because we didn’t understand how
the world worked. Hopefully, we understand the
environment well enough now to let go of some of
the systems of control that we’ve developed over
the centuries.
R: You mentioned the “re-sanctification” of the
natural world, and I found that a strangely spiritual
idea in a pretty technical discussion.
K: It’s not if you understand the metaphor I’m
working with here. There is the “re-wilding” of
the physical world, where we selectively un-build
those parts of our industrial infrastructure that we
no longer need and restore as much of the natural
systems around us as we can, but there is a psy-
chological and possibly even spiritual component
that comes from the great revolutionary science of
the Twentieth century, which is cognitive science-
understanding ourselves gives us the opportunity
for the first time to reassert a natural and healthy
relationship with the world around us as people.
R: You are sort of talking about pushing past
technology. How do you think that differs from the
people who originally coined the phrase “re-wild-
ing” who are the sort of Earth First!, Primitivist
types. The Unabomber comes to mind. These
people think that we need to go back to nature,
not forward to nature through technology.
K: There is no going back. The project that we are
engaged in has no reverse setting. But what it can
have is a fulfillment. It’s like water filtration plants
and wetlands. When you don’t understand wet-
lands you have to build the water filtration plant.
When you understand wetlands and integrate
it into your urban setting and use it... that is not
stepping back from technology...that is the highest
technology- the full culmination of technology.
R: It makes me think of John Todd and the New
Alchemist Institute and “Living Machines”...
K: There is always a role for stewardship, but
what we need to do is find our role as equals in
nature, and not fight it as an antagonist.
R: You talk about Ecosystem services and as-
signing monetary value to those. How does this
relate to carbon trading? In the aftermath of the
collapse of the derivatives market, it seems that
carbon trading is falling out of favor as people see
it as another dubious “financial instrument”...
K: In systems theory, you can map out the inter-
relationships between the parts of the system.
One of the things you have to do is draw a bound-
ary and say, “This is the edge of the system.”.
That boundary is often drawn arbitrarily. In busi-
ness, we call things outside of that boundary “ex-
ternalities.” What we are really talking about is a
reform of accounting practices. There are a lot of
ways to do that. We need to account for the cost
of the toxic stuff that you have been dumping for
the last 25 years- we used to be able to dump it
over our neighbors fence- we need a system that
doesn’t allow that anymore.
R: We are in a market system that internalizes
profit and externalizes risk. What sort of societal
change do you see happening that will allow
for this new way of accounting? Why should
they want to pick up their trash if they aren’t
required to?
K: There is a new profession known as a gar-
bage designer. It’s the person that designs the
output of an industrial process- or tunes it- in such
a way that it can be sold as an input into another
industry. Industries can generate an income
stream from what was considered waste.
R: You talked about relinquishing control in your
talk as well... about moving ahead to letting go of
our control over nature. In the short term, that’s
going to leave a kind of void. Are we designing
these systems and setting them free, or are they
overseen by a government agency? Are they a
private endeavor? This gets into the politics – is
this a sort of Green/Anarchist endeavor? What is
our model?
K: I wanted to give a new name to what I’ve
been talking about because it doesn’t fit with the
traditional themes of the modern environmental
movement, or the Greens. I don’t see a clear
distinction between natural and artificial systems.
I think it’s increasingly important not to make
such distinctions, particularly in a highly political
and moral sense. By taking a moralistic stance
toward nature, we are basically condescending
to it and imposing our own prejudices on it. There
have been a number of people in recent years
that have been trying to get beyond the rhetoric
of environmentalism. Bruno Latour, a French
philosopher, wrote books like We Were Never
Modern, and other books like Ecology Without
Nature. They dovetail well with what I’m talking
about. 20th century environmentalism is one of
the things we need to get past to save the planet
and save ourselves. It creates too awkward of a
dichotomy between us and them, humanity and
the natural world.
R: Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame
has a new book out that embraces nuclear power
and genetic engineering as the solutions to the
problem. It’s a very iconoclastic approach and he
is pissing off a lot of old fans that grew up with the
“Deep Green” idea. Patrick Moore, who founded
Greenpeace, is another one who now supports
nuclear, because carbon reduction is what we
are after. It seems like there is an “either/or” thing
happening, either you are on this team or on that
team. People are forced into making black and
white binary choices. You talk about a lot of the
shades of grey...
K: That’s absolutely right. If you want to preserve
the environment, the best place to do it is in a
high-rise. We can’t go back to making our clothing
out of all-natural fiber and hunting and gardening
for our food. Imagine nine billion people trying to
do that. It fails on the simple basis of scale. We
need intensive industrial systems to maintain hu-
man life, at this point. If that is the case, we need
to optimize them.
R: I always love to read John Zerzan – love his
ideas about primitivism, but ironically, of course- I
read about them on his website!
K: There are researchers working on it, and com-
panies in Canada and the US being formed- it’s
still a stealth technology. - Al Gore doesn’t men-
tion this as an option in his new book, but it is one
of the three pillars of climate mitigation, and one
we should be working on it more.
R: There is a lot of talk in this country, and in
the Midwest in particular about using perennial
grasses to create a “carbon sink”.
K: There is a lot of potential there, but it would
have to be done on a global scale. We also need
to increase our food production, and you can’t
tear down one part of the biosphere to prop
up another.
R: What about the idea of vertical farming? Even
here in the middle of farm country, the majority
of our actual food is shipped in from California or
even Central America. We grow animal feed and
high-fructose corn syrup. Is the idea of vertical
farming something we should be looking at?
K: Vertical farming is an idea that has been cham-
pioned by a guy named Dickson Despommier. He
has a website called verticalfarming.com. I don’t
claim to be an expert in that area, but by using
hydroponic technology you can increase produc-
tion by four to twenty percent. The least efficient
thing you can farm is cattle. By stacking your
acreage in a tall building, making it mostly self-
sufficient for water and protecting it from outside
environmental effects like frost and pests, then
you get further multiplying effects. One projection
that Despommier’s group makes is that using one
block square, fourty-seven-story building could
feed 50,000 people on an ongoing basis.
R: It also reduces the transport costs and energy
use...We are working here on increasing the effi-
ciency of local food systems by looking at making
farmers trips to market more than just a delivery-
we (Feral Technology Institute) are working on a
system that would have a someone from the farm
delivering produce and picking up waste grease
and food to return to the farm for composting,
biodiesel and biogas production...
K: That goes back to the idea of a garbage
designer...
R: Hey, I think I’m a garbage designer!
R: So is the original idea of Thalience still rel-
evant in the real world?
K: It is, but it revolves more around arguments
having to do with artificial intelligence. I hasten
to add that I am doing a mashup between AI and
environmentalism in my work right now. On one
hand, treating natural systems as potentially intel-
ligent legal entities and on the other hand, trying
to see the natural or the non-conscious in hu-
man nature and the systems we create. If I could
describe these ideas in a few words I would, but
sometimes you have to spread out the argument
over many, many pages.
R: Do you think that AI and technology is reach-
ing a point that it can start creating itself? I guess
the other vision of that scenario is “Skynet” in the
Terminator movies...
K: Our traditional vision of computers is the Ter-
minator model of intelligent machines taking over.
What I’m talking about is natural systems that
have been augmented with technology. So it’s not
robots that are taking over, but your local aqua fir.
R: Genetic engineering is one nightmare vision
of technology escaping into nature- I’m much
more excited about artificial intelligence escaping
into nature...
K: That’s what Thalience was about...and my
idea of re-wilding is that there is no distinction
between nature and technology. If we replace
nature with technology, technology is our natural
world. It will evolve on it’s own because things do
evolve on their own. To a great extent, control is
an illusion.
R: We had an ice storm here two years ago and
lost power for six days- it really illustrated how
much of an illusion that control is!
K: Events like that are more catastrophic when
you are trying to maintain a state of direct con-
trol. When your systems are optimized to coex-
ist with nature, events like that are not nearly so
catastrophic. When you don’t need to control the
system, you don’t care what breaks down.
Karl Schoeder is the author of nine novels, includ-
ing the Virga series, as well as co-author with
Cory Doctorow of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to
Writing Science Fiction.

K: Yes, the only way we could go to some sort of
neo-primitivist society would be if we reduced our
population by ninety-nine percent.
R: According to a friend of a friend who does
environmental analysis for the CIA, they think that
a likely climate change scenario is exactly that- a
pandemic will probably occur which will reduce
our numbers and our emissions significantly. The
planet will self-regulate.
K: I have spent the last three months studying
strategies for intervention and negation of climate
change. I’ve identified three points of intervention.
I haven’t really heard the discussion framed this
way before, but you can intervene at the origin
of the CO2, you can intervene by removing the
CO2 from the atmosphere, or you can reduce the
temperature change itself, through geo-engineer-
ing activities. I’m currently working on the idea of
carbon/air capture, which involves sequestration
(through plants) but also removing the carbon di-
rectly from the air. It’s a scrubbing technology that
pulls the CO2 out of the ambient air and drives it
into deep strata. Obviously reforestation is one
way to do it, but it’s a slow process. I’m looking
at industrial processes that can take advantage
of the infrastructure we already have in place. I
think an industrial-scale capture process is the
only way we can reduce CO2 levels to a pre-in-
dustrial level in a timely way.
R: Are there companies engaged in this process
now?
------------
K: Yes! In science fiction, Samuel R. Delaney http://www.kschroeder.com/
uses the idea in a novel called Stars in my Pocket
like Grains of Sand which was published in the
mid 80’s- he treats a city as an ecosystem in
which the most valued members of society are
the garbage collectors, called “Tracers” who liter-
ally trace the flow of materials through the sys-
tem.
R: I can’t let you go without asking you to talk
about your concept of “Thalience” – the idea of
science being done outside the sphere of human
influence.
K: My ideas have evolved a lot in the 10 years
since I came up with the idea of Thalience. The
question was whether computers and other tech-
nology just mirror human’s view of the world or
if they can develop their own. What those ideas
have evolved into is my concept of re-wilding- giv-
ing natural systems intelligence through a network
of sensor nets, Internet connections and legal
instruments. For instance, the new constitution of
Paraguay gives rights to nature, and allows indi-
viduals to litigate on behalf of natural systems.
R: So maybe we should be willing to do for nature
what we have done for corporations? Create a
legal persona?
K: Exactly. If a corporation can be a legal person,
there is no reason that a natural system can’t
also be a person. I’m writing a story about that
right now.
by J.D. King
Just a Mirage should join the Marines!” Back in the bathroom, bag of Fritos, a can of Pepsi and two homemade
she turned on the shower, adjusted the temp to cupcakes was a fine free lunch. Just as she
It caught her eye, made her brake, that mailbox: a nice-and-hot, stepped in.  was finished, was slapping her flat but full belly,
little log cabin, its red flag at attention, practically Water blasting, Tammi masturbated, not fan- a motor boat approached, cut its engine. In the
saluting her. Putting down the blue Schwinn, she tasizing about anyone, just getting off on pure surrounding woods, birds chirped. She got up,
walked over, opened the box, pulled out a letter sensation and the danger that, at any second, a behind by the sliding glass door, saw the family
addressed to an APO. From a pocket of her khaki stranger could burst in bellowing, “What the hell’s docking at the pier, towheads hopping out, tying
shorts, Tammi produced a chrome-plated lighter, going on?!” the boat to the landing, just like Pop had
flipped it open, flicked, held a flame to a corner Squeaky clean, she got out. Not bothering with taught ‘em. 
of the envelope. When the burning paper got too the mat, a large puddle spread across the tiles In the bedroom Tammi picked up the .38,
close to her fingertips, she let go, the smoking as shook semi-dry, like a dog, her whipping hair clicked off the safety, padded back to the kitchen,
ash dropping to the roadside.  splattering the walls. She sang, “Bomp! Bomp! slid the door open, stepped out.
She led her bike by the handlebars down a Just a mirage, that’s all you are to me...” Tammi’d From the dock, a family looked up to see a
sandy driveway to the house, a pre-fab log cabin: heard the song yesterday, at her mom’s, and it naked young woman on their deck, her right hand
the mailbox all grown up. Too funny! On the right stuck in her brain like bubblegum to the bottom of on her hip, her left hand pointing a pistol at them.
sat a black SUV with caramel panels, a yellow a movie theater seat. She yelled, “Think fast, motherfuckers!”
Support The Troops magnet on its butt, a tin of In the living room, still undressed, she picked Just before Tammi squeezed off the first round,
Skoal on the dash. The sign in the yard read: up yesterday’s Observer-Dispatch, sat down, add- the older of the two boys thought, “Wow! She’s
The Longs. ing a wet spot to the couch while reading about beautiful!”
No barking. That’s good. Utica’s latest murder trial. 
Up two steps, on the porch. The screen door Bored, she tossed the paper on the floor, went J.D. King is a freelance illustrator, active for over two
was closed, but the real door was wide open. out onto the deck, placed her hands on the railing, decades. His work has appeared in many national
leaned forward, saw the pier below, gazed across publications (The New York Times, Time, Newsweek,
Peering in, blocking August noon sun with hands
The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Forbes, The
cupped to her temples, she could see the living the lake, took a deep breath, held it and thought,
Village Voice, New York, The Progressive, Business
room, the dining-area, sliding doors to a deck, “Lake life is the greatest! Especially during the Week), as well as ad campaigns (Master/Visa Card,
Lake Kayuta beyond. She rapped her knuckles on week when no one’s around...” Then she trotted Absolut Vodka, Seybold Seminars), and CD and book
the doorjamb. Nothing. She knocked hard. around in a wide circle, head bowed and bobbing, covers. Previous to illustration, he was an underground
Still nothing. spanking her ass, mimicking a frisky race horse cartoonist with work appearing in several titles includ-
When she pulled, the screen door opened. with jockey. The sun felt good on her bare hide.  ing R. Crumb’s Weirdo magazine. His avocations are
In the living room, she said, “Hello!” Silence. Returning to the fridge, Tammi rustled up some experimental music (J.D. King & The Coachmen, two
She turned a radio on, then off, proceeded to cheddar cheese, whole wheat bread and a jar albums on Ecstatic Peace) and writing fiction. A collec-
nose around. of red peppers. She made a grilled cheese in a tion of short stories is scheduled for Water Row Books,
black iron skillet on the old propane stove. At the and a novel is completed and searching for a publish-
On the mantle, an array of framed photos:
er. He lives in Remsen, NY and his interests include
perky mom; beefy dad; two young boys; a soldier dining-area table, the sandwich, with a leftover
jazz, reading, bicycling, hiking and cats.
in desert camos, boot on a Jeep’s bumper; some
old folks; everyone smiling for the camera. Say
cheese, douche bags. Looking around the living
room, a flat-screen TV, no books, some maga-
zines: People, Field & Stream, Us.
In the kitchen, Tammi opened drawers, poked
through cabinets, scouted the fridge, grabbed a
bowl, a spoon, milk and a sealed box of Sugar
Pops. She opened the box roughly, like an
animal, poured cereal into the bowl, then milk.
Leaning against the sink, she ate. The kitchen
smelled faintly of spices. She should’ve been ner-
vous, anxious about someone coming home, but
she wasn’t. If need be, she’d feed them a story.
People are dumb, they’ll buy anything.
After the snack, she went down the hall, into a
bedroom on the left: bunk bed against one wall,
Sponge Bob and Harry Potter posters opposite.
Seeing a toy car on the floor, she crushed it
under heel.
Next, the other bedroom, past the unmade bed
to the dresser, she rummaged drawers. Stashed
under dad’s socks, some cash: three twenties,
one ten, a five, four ones. She put the dough in
the same pocket as the lighter. In another drawer,
a loaded .38 revolver. She held it with both hands,
mimed Hollywood action poses, saying, “Pow!
Pow! Pow!” before placing it on the dresser.
Rifling the bathroom medicine cabinet she
found a treat: almost a dozen codeine tabs in a
green bottle. She popped the container in her
other pocket, along with the tube of coral lipstick
she used to gesture a smile face on the mirror, an
oversized version of the ones she drew in place of
the dot over the “i” when signing a love-note. 
Sometimes Tammi sent love-notes to several
guys at a time. It cracked her up. The lugs fell for
that corny bullshit, even older lugs. Especially
older lugs.  
Back in the bedroom, she kicked off her Keds,
stripped off her American flag T-shirt, bra, shorts
and panties. Before the mirror, she held her
breasts, one in each hand, admired herself, then
snuggled into bed, fetal position under the covers,
drifted into slumber, breathing the scent of Mama
and Papa Whoever. 
Close to a half-hour later she rose, did some
stretches, then snapped out thirty pushups. “I
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Whitey, old guy from Brooklyn Ericka Wildgirl Dana

Peter AschwandeN:
Illustrator and Godfather
of the D.I.Y.* Movement *Do It Yourself
By Rich Dana and Deborah Reade
Recently, I found myself perusing the book tables at
a sustainable living fair and came across a copy of The
Septic System Owners Manual. Granted, it’s not a title
that would attract most readers, but if you live on a farm
with an aging septic system as we do, it might. There was
something about the cover of this book, with it’s play-
ful turn-of-the-century fonts and the tightly drawn pen
and ink cartoon that made me pick it up and start leafing
through the amazing illustrations.
I remembered immediately where I had seen this
drawing style before. In the early 80’s, I was living above
George Herget’s bookshop on Magazine Street in New
Orleans. One of my roommates, George
Morrissey, had undertaken a complete
rebuild of his VW Rabbit (to the dismay
of the neighbors and landlord) on the
sidewalk outside, as well as on the living
room floor and kitchen table. Ever-pres-
ent was a copy of How to Keep Your
Volkswagen Rabbit Alive: A Manual of
Step-by-Step Procedures for the Com-
pleat Idiot. The illustrations in the
Septic System book were in the
same meticulous yet quirky,
humorous style.
Peter Aschwanden’s work was ingrained
in my memory - the “compleat idiot” se-
ries of VW repair books were omnipres-
ent among DIY’ers of the 70’s and 80’s,
and were the predecessors to an entire
genre of informal “how-to” books. His
illustrations adorned t-shirts and post-
ers of VW nuts across the world.
With the launch of OBSOLETE!
Magazine earlier this year, I decided
to look into the work of this guy
whose skill with a pen rivaled that of
other better-known 60’s illustrators
like R. Crumb and Spain Rodriguez.
I wanted to meet this guy. Unfor-
tunately, Peter had passed away in
2005. I’m indebted to Deborah Reade
and Francisco Aschwanden, who very
generously helped me put together this
profile of Peter, his life, and his work.
----------
Peter Aschwanden was born in Los
Angeles in 1942. He was drawing and
painting from a very young age and in high
school he illustrated the yearbooks and drew
cartoons for the school newspaper. At Pasadena
City College, he studied under Leonard Edmond-
son, an influential California artist and teacher. During
this time he also worked on floats for the Rose Parade. It
was a period of change in America, with car culture on
the rise and social upheaval on the horizon.
Aschwanden spent the period after Pasadena City
College hitchhiking around the country, living first with
friends in New Mexico, then in a loft on Fulton Landing
in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. His
travels then took him to the center of 60’s counterculture,
San Francisco, where he painted faux finishes in houses
that were being renovated and studied for a time at the
San Francisco Art institute.
Peter returned to New Mexico in the late ‘60s where he
eventually bought land and built a house. While living in
Santa Fe he worked construction, as a barista at the Three
Cities of Spain coffee house,
and as a sign painter. It was
because of Peter’s carved and
painted signs that John Muir
chose Aschwanden to do the
illustrations for the now leg-
endary VW books and many
other Muir publications.
John Muir was a quintes-
sential American icon of the
1960s. Muir, a descendent
of the naturalist with whom
he shares the name, had “dropped out” of his life as a missile T-shirts and posters with Peter’s designs at www.PeterA-
engineer for Lockheed Aerospace to become an auto mechanic schwanden.com. They also maintain a gallery page on
in New Mexico. According to Phil Patton’s book Bug: The the site and a Facebook page, which highlights different
strange mutations of the world’s most famous automobile, “... examples of his art.
His wedding was attended by 500 people, including Wavy In our correspondences, Deborah provided me with
Gravy and the entire Hog Farm Commune.” He became leg- most of the information incorporated into this piece, but
endary for his hippie philosophy and his view of the VW as a in conclusion, I would like to quote her directly- she sums
metaphor for life. up Peter’s work in a way that as a mere fan I never could.
Muir decided to write a how-to book on fixing VW’s that In Deborah’s words:
focused on “listening” and “feeling” - concepts strangely com-
mon to both gearheads and hippies. In 1969, at age 51, Muir
self-published the first spiral-bound edition of How to
Keep Your Volkswagen Alive; A Manual of Step-
By-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot with
illustrations by Peter Aschwanden. Most agree
that it was the perfect chemistry of Muir’s
homespun Zen approach and Aschwanden’s
illustrations that made How to keep you
Volkswagen Alive one of the biggest
selling, self-published books of all time.
Muir publications grew to include not
only automotive books on VW Rab-
bits and vans, Subarus, Hondas and
Datsuns, but also books on midwifery,
greenhouses and the “Peoples Guide”
series of travel books.
Peter spent a lot of time in the
mountains of northern New Mexico
during the late 60’s and early 70’s,
living “off the grid” while illustrating
Muir’s publications by the light of a
kerosene lantern. The drawings for the
Velvet Monkeywrench, Muir’s musings
on subjects both political and philosoph- “Peter absorbed many artistic influences both in formal
ical, were done mostly while Peter was training and also from his wonderful curiosity about the
living in Mexico. world. Black & white line art of the 1880s that developed
Deborah met Peter in 1980 when she into steel engraving and woodcuts and eventually the
arrived in Santa Fe and started working at cartooning of the 1920s and ‘30s were the roots of Peter’s
John Muir Publications as a typesetter and style. Using that 19th-century style but making it mod-
one of three artists working on the Honda ern was what his illustration style was all about. As the
book. Deborah remembers, “We would layout “king” of perspective, he could turn a simple drawing of a
the drawings in pencil carburetor into something that looked like
and Peter would erase them it was flying through space. I think Peter
over and over again until we got was able to incorporate the 60s feel so eas-
them right. Then he would refine the ily into the rest of his influences because
pencils and ink over them--changing he WAS that scene–or at least a part of it.
the drawing again and again until he All the influences that made that scene
was satisfied.” were his influences as well–where he lived,
According to Deborah, Peter never the people he knew, the lifestyle he lived.
actually owned a VW bus or bug The Southwest influenced him because of
himself although he drove a Rabbit the art, the quality of the light, the cultural
while illustrating the Rabbit book. influences and the landscapes–which he
Muir includes a story in that book painted a lot. Art was his life and pushing
about when Peter fell asleep and himself to create the perfect line, the per-
rolled the car and walked away with- fect perspective and in the most beautiful
out a scratch to show how safe the way was what it was all about. “
Rabbit was. Aschwanden was a tal-
ented mechanic and would partially
or completely disassemble
the cars that he was illustrat-
ing. He had a 51 Ford Panel Flathead
Strait 6 after which he named his
company, “Flathead Graphix.” A
friend is currently in the process of
restoring the truck. Starting in the
80s he drove Subarus, which he told
Deborah was “like having a VW with
a water jacket”.
Peter and Deborah have two
children, Francisco and Sophie, who
are attending college in Chicago
and Portland, Oregon. The whole
family works on different aspects
of Flathead Graphix where they sell
Night in the Zone
by Jonathan Shaw
End of the day. Copacabana. Chilly summer
Sunday’s end. Sitting at my regular seaside table
at the end of the beach, observing the crazy mov-
ing beehive hieroglyphic puzzle of early night’s
activity, people walking past the bar here. People,
disjointed illegible figures. They’re all out tonight;
a weird mix of lost dog gringos, fuzzy-looking
mulatta whores, faceless locals and bitter-faced
street beggars with distilled cachaça livers and
deathly shit-brown botiquim patinas; all sharing
the dirty sidewalk with crummy piss-picker pi-
geons -- nature’s answer to rats in this place.  doesn’t even look at her and that’s where she
And I sit here at the end of Copacabana, look-
ing out over world’s edge, a green coconut  de-
scending into my hand, my stomach full of beans
and rice. The good life; watching the waves roll in
peopled by the colorful ant-dots of surfers pray-
ing to the last waves of dusk. A white white cruise
ship disappears over the green to gray post-sun-
set horizon. I reflect on the ho-stroll conversa-
tions raging around my ears here, conjuring up
a fond memory of last night... the warm feeling
of homecoming as I flew through the night air on
the growling black wasp, leaning into the familiar
curve of Prado Junior.
Sugar Loaf Mountain to my back and the
green blur of the Aterro de Flamingo still bounc-
ing around in my nostrils, I pulled up to the curb
and ground the bike to a stop to greet my little
group of curbside hookers. They were all out on
the street, lounging on parked cars like cynical
scrawny crows on a ghetto fence. Prada Junior
whores... hipster legends of the lost spirit nights
of Copacabana. My raggedy pirate-eyed friends. I
get along well with these streetwise coked up old
alkie whores. Better than I ever did with straight
chicks. I especially love their ribald mortuary
humor. Their off-color stories are as dark and
raucous and irreverent as the redlight hallways
they patrol from town to town like a tribe of gypsy
crabs, peddling pussy and personality with that
timeless tough-luck courage that gives them more
balls than the average guy whose tired grunts
they fondly tolerate with their legendary quickwit-
ted cool. Man, if the average woman had a thim-
bleful of these bitch’s class and courage, I think
as I hand a sweaty banknote to Brenda.  BLOG 2
Brenda struts off to buy her and her partner a
couple of doses of cheap white rum. As soon as
she’s out of earshot, my friend Shirley, Brenda’s
longtime neighbor on their curbside perch here,
eases up and leans into the crook of my elbow,
talking out the side of her mouth through crowded
teeth, all flashing black eyes and skinny hair and
pointy angles.    carload of leering young eyes slows down and
“I’m sick of her shit, Cigano,” Shirley drawls.
“Yeh... there goes one useless old ho... lissen to
this: I get us a class trick last night with a high
rollin’ gringo. Fancy hotel, jacuzzi bath, panoramic
view, got the whiskey and the cashew nuts, room
service, the fucking works, hein? The gringo’s
gonna give us 200 each. Sweet deal, right? So
soon as we get up to the room, off comes my
clothes and splish splash, rub a dub, right into the
tub. Sure baby. Cash in the hand, panties on the
land. Whaddya think? Shirley’s gonna get paid!
Fat City gringo trick...”     with their load of shit, talking about, hey ‘little kit-
She cocks a razor-sharp sneer towards the
corner bar where Brenda’s disappeared with
my money to get their booze. “That one, hah,
all she’s good for, gimme a buck here, gimme a
buck there, no, fuck no... go go go--- nada! She’s
just along for the ride again while I do all the
fucking work and then she wants her half. Her
half!?! Some fucking balls! Fucking boozy old
freeloading chicken! Hah! Me and the gringo in
the tub playing hide the salami and ya think she’d
even take her fucking clothes off? Hah! Shit, not
even one shoe came off while she’s hitting the
frigo-bar, and she’s drinking the gringo’s hotel
bill into orbit, munch munch, cashew nuts gone...
at 10 bucks a can! Two cans! Down the hatch!
Whiskey? Gone. Beer? Not a drop left, and it’s
glug glug munch munch chomp while the gringo’s
wearing my fucking pussy out, and he don’t even
get to see the color of her fucking toenail polish...    
“... and just when he’s finally popping his nut
and it’s time for me to get paid, then this lazy old
ho nearly breaks an elbow sticking her hand out.
Hah, well, the gringo ain’t having none of that shit.
No no no. He hands me my 200 sweet as can
be, then he just puts his wallet back in his pants,
starts in. You get me up here and now you won’t
pay me blah blah blah ... now the gringo’s getting
pissed, I can see it coming. And I’m getting pissed
off too. Sure, I’m gonna get clobbered by some
fucking gringo on account of that bitch?! Then
what am I supposed to do? Run to the cops?
Sure, that’d be the deal. All the gringo’s gotta do
is tell em whatever the fuck he wants to tell em
in gringo talk, whatever, like we tried to rob him
or whatever. What am I gonna say? I don’t even
speak a word of gringo! So then I’m off to the
pokey for the cops to pluck my 200 off me and
give me the back of their hand if I talk back? No
thanks, Brenda.    
“...last time I ever go out on a call with that
lazy old bitch. Let her ass collect cobwebs sitting
on this fucking car hood waiting for some sucker
who’s too drunk to fuck, cause that’s the only kind
she goes out with, just a hand job, quick half a
blow job in the car maybe and then she’s out the
door with his money before he peels the fucking
rubber off. Can you believe it? Fucking useless
parasite. The rest of us down here, we get cus-
tomers. That bitch gets victims...”    
Then, without missing a beat as Brenda slides
up with their drinks, Shirley starts cooing like
a horny pigeon”...oiiiii, Brenda dear” with a big
cheery smile. “We were just talking about you,
baby. I was just telling the Gypsy here what a
good friend you are. Best partner a girl could
ever have in the zona... right, Cigano?” she says,
nudging me with a jagged elbow. I nod like a cab
driver’s little doggie dashboard ornament.
Brenda, oblivious to Shirley’s curbside irony, royalty, “is a place of professional prostitution. If
just perches her bony ass back down on the car you’re not down with the programa, better you
hood where she was sitting when I pulled up. She haul your sorry little asses back to Ipanema and
smiles seductively at a car full of rich boys out find some some other kind of fucking ‘party’ Hah!
cruising with daddy’s car while casually reaching And then...” she continues with a self-purpose-
out her hand for another one of my smokes. The ful disgust-building momentum, “then they give
you that hurt little whipped dog offended look and
Brenda slides down off the hood like a drunken roll away, oh, maybe 20 yards down the road to
salamander and slithers over to where they’ve try the same line of crap with the NEXT group of
stopped at the curb. She leans in the window, flirt- hookers... like they never even heard a word I
ing with the driver. Shirley pounds down her glass said! Unbelievable stupidity. Agh! No no no. And
of rum in one go and continues with bitter wit, you think I’m gonna get up and waste good shoe
leaning crookedly against my motorcycle with her leather to stand there talking to a carload of arro-
hand resting on my knee.     gant little slugs like that? No way! Nope. But there
“Playboys!” she spits. “I wouldn’t waste my goes Brenda. God! Only her...”   
fucking spit to get up and talk to those punks. Shirley’s getting really riled up now. Rolling on
Condescending little daddy’s boys, never worked her own steam and the shot of rum I just bought
a day in their useless lives, hah, they roll up here her, she rants on hilariously. “Yeah. Playboys!
Condescending punks. Roll up here and think
ten’,” she squeaks, hilariously imitating the stiff- they gonna pull out a fifty and wave it under our
ass accents of the idle upper-class Brazilians, noses like that shit was even money and they’re
“...and all this ‘you wanna come up to a party at doing some poor little whore a big fucking favor. 
my place, we got whiskey and weed and a nice Arrogant little limp-dick faggots! No thanks! Odeo
kitchen full of food’... Food? Party? Hah! esta raça! I hate that race! Gimme anything but
“Shit!” she snorts, “...only if you’re having a the playboys. Anybody down here looking for a
money distributing party over there! You think little slap and grunt’s all good with me. Crippled
I’m out here peddling my fucking ass for a drink hairlip midget, cross-eyed Chinamen, whatever ya
of whiskey or a puff on some rich kid’s joint? got down here, okay, let’s go! Fat smelly French
Fala serio! If you wanna party, baby, you’re in guy, no problem! Just keep those fucking god-
the wrong fucking place.... THIS PLACE,” she damn Ipanema playboys away from Shirley.”  
announced proudly in a haughty tone befitting As if to underscore her last words, she took a
last deep drag on her cigarette and flicked the
butt in a wide arch, bouncing it off the car’s door her distinctive aristocratic gutter-goddess patois.
and sending a shower of sparks onto Brenda’s
shoe. Brenda looked over at Shirley, her brows
“Hundreds of candles and plastic statues and shit,
all kinda images of every fucking saint and entity
Reviews
arching over her stupid bovine face sadly like a in the book, all this crazy ritual magic stuff. 
pair of confused caterpillars. Shirley, laughing “Vigi Maia...” Maria crossed herself. The other Speed Speed Speedfreak:
riotously, gave her an aloof disgusted look of such hookers did the same. “...so they clean it all out, A Fast History of Amphetamine
regal disdain it nearly moved me to tears on the Cigano, slap a fresh coat of paint on the walls and By Mick Farren
spot. Poetry in a glance.     rent the place again... now, would ya believe...”  Published by Feral House
she paused a moment for emphasis “...not a
Question: What did Judy Garland,
BLOG 3 month goes by... and the new tenant gets up one Baby Face Nelson, JFK, Adolph
night and... chucks himself OUT THE WINDOW! Hitler, Elvis and Charles Manson all
Before Shirley could resume her playboy tirade, Just like that! Boom-ba! Landed right on the hood have in common?
I reached over to fire up the bike. I was feeling the of a guy’s car who was talking to Rosie who used Answer: They were all speed
need of some wind in my face. The Prado Junior to stand over there...”    freaks.
ho-stroll, even being a block from the ocean,  “Sounded like a bomb going off!” one of the
can start to feel somewhat claustrophobic after other girls chimed in. “Fucked that guy’s car up In Mick Farren’s latest book, he
awhile. Before I could take off though, a couple of real good...”  examines the history and sociologi-
the other girls wandered over and started talk- cal significance of amphetamine and
discovers (not too surprisingly) that
ing of ghosts and sinister apparitions that appear “... didn’t do Rosie’s career much good either,”
the use of speed is woven throughout
along the street. My attention hijacked again, I Maria said. “Blood and brains and shit all over her the tapestry of 20th century culture.
cut the motor again and continued sitting there on new white dress. Ugh! Remember she used to Invented initially as a bronchodilator
the bike listening to their macabre recollections. dress up all in white every night like some second at the beginning of the industrial age,
I contemplated the dark side of Copacabana as rate suburban angel? Hah! After that, everybody it didn’t take long before Benzedrine
they all chattered about the man who appeared kept calling her ‘the fallen woman’ and finally it re- became the fuel of the burgeoning
in a window above them one night threatening to ally started getting on her nerves, so she stopped entertainment industry, the assembly
throw himself out from the 6th floor.     talking to anyone down here. Stuck up floozy.... line industrial model and the war machines of governments
“We’re cold blooded down here, Cigano,” one then one day she was gone...”    across the globe.
of the newcomers, a smiling bleached-blond “I heard she married a rich Gringo and moved In Farren’s inimitable gonzo journalistic style, he reveals
the untold history of the one of the most influential forces
mulatta in a sparkly mini-skirt and fuck boots an- to his country,” one said.  
on human development- how amphetamines were invented,
nounced proudly. “...so then we all started shout- “Fat chance with the mug on her! Them big how they found there way into mainstream culture, and how
ing JUMP ASSHOLE, JUMP!”   greasy eyeballs, man... she looked like a lonely they remained legal while other drugs suffered from political
“And he did...” the other one chimed grimly. “It old Chihuahua,” another one guffawed. “Some prohibitions. The history of speed, it turns out, is the history
sounded like a gunshot from down on the corner psycho gringo probably hacked her up and took of power.
when his head hit the fucking pavement. We hear her pussy home in his suitcase...”    In 206 fast-paced pages (the book itself is shaped like a
a lot of gunplay down here, ya know, so I didn’t They all laughed. I knew their tale-spinning “black beauty”) Farren rarely misses a beat and keeps the
think nothing of it... until I saw this big crowd gath- session was just getting warmed up. The long reader engaged with a mix of historical detail and political
ering around, and there was a big puddle of blood night ahead was but a child for these girls. I was intrigue, topped off with an insiders look at the effects of
creeping out on the sidewalk under people’s feet, getting restless again. Finally I gave them a few speed on the psychedelic 60’s, biker culture and the punk
scene. Farren, as the lead singer of “The Deviants” and one
so I went over to see what the fuck... Porra! The cigarettes and kisses. Then I rolled off down the
of the godfathers of punk rock experienced that story first
crash had tore his face right off his head like a beach, knowing that if all else failed I’d be back hand, and tells it with a survivor’s sense of humor.
broken doll or something...”     around dawn to give little Shirley a ride home Mick Farren is the author of 23 science fiction novels and
She scrunched up her nose and the first girl with a quick stop at my place. She wasn’t much 11 non-fiction books, including The Hitchhikers Guide to
cut in excitedly, “yeah, and his shoe ended up a to look at, old Shirley, but she liked to dress up Elvis, The Black Leather Jacket, and Give the Anarchist a
block away, remember? That shit shot off him like like a schoolgirl. With those skinny pasty legs and Cigarette (his autobiography).
a bullet!”   rolled up white cotton stockings peeping out from
 “Yeah. It was pretty disgusting.” the other one the blue skirt, it always gave me an extra thrill to Borderland:
conceded. “He shit his pants and everything... the fuck her till dawn. She’d scream loud enough to Seven Lives. Seven Stories.
works...”    wake up my square neighbors on their workday As Told by Victims of Human Trafficking.
“That didn’t stop all those bums hanging mornings. Good times. When we were done I’d
by Dan Archer and Olga Trusova
published by Archcomix
around on the corner from going though his pock- always grin and hand her a few bucks for cab fare www.borderland comix.com
ets before the cops came though, remember?” home. That was just our little private joke though,
somebody else said.    since Shirley lived only a few buildings down the In what artist Dan Ar-
“Cops, ha!” Shirley guffawed, her hand play- street from me. Then I’d roll over and pass out cher describes as a “com-
ing up and down my leg like a pianist. A penisist, in the rumpled sheets smelling of lust and cheap ics journalism project”, he
I thought, smiling to myself as she talked on, perfume and her cigarette smokey hair as the collaborates with Fulbright
sparks flying out of her skinny pink lips, “...them morning-birds darted to and fro outside my 6th Fellow Olga Trusova to tell
fucking pigs just came and threw some news- floor window.     the stories of seven of the 12.3
paper over all the fucking hamburger and left it After a while I stopped thinking about whores million adults and children
forced into bonded labor and
all sitting there rotting away for hours! Useless. and switched channels. I just sat there quietly
prostitution around the world.
But when they want their ‘protection’ money, by the beach, listening to the graveyard waves Trusova traveled to the
then they’re right here, hein? Protect us from the of approaching night, thinking about my recently Ukraine in 2009 to study hu-
smell? Ha! Those fucking bums are gone!”    deceased father, wondering how he was making man trafficking and returned
“Yeah, and that was a burning hot summer too. out there in the afterlife. Salty old bastard. Maybe with stories of the desperate
45 degrees at midnight... and the fucking humid- he’d even be proud of me, I thought, if he only and risky lives of people in a country ravaged by economic
ity. Ugh! The whole street stunk to hell’s waiting knew anything about my wonderful life. collapse. Archer transforms these stories into stark, mono-
room for days. I had to go all the way up by the chromatic graphics, highlighted in sepia to convey the gray,
other corner to work. Couldn’t stand the fucking Jonathan Shaw is a many things; tattoo artist, writer, eastern European atmosphere. At times the drawings almost
stink...”     world traveler and “whorehouse philosopher”. Son feel like Soviet Era agit-prop, yet the heroic workers have
of jazzman Artie Shaw and Hollywood starlet Doris become grimly ill-defined and the crimson backgrounds
Just as i was about to ride off again, along
Dowling, he has worked as a merchant seaman and have faded to the color of clay as the hammer and sickle
comes Maria, strutting up out of the shadows. Her disappeared from view. The workers paradise has become
a writer at the legendary underground paper, the LA
razor sharp antennas always fine-tuned to pick up Free Press in the 60’s, where he befriended Charles the workers purgatory.
the slightest off-color static, Maria eased right into Bukowski. He is the author of several books, including The introductions to each of the seven stories convey the
the topic like a languid gator slipping into a warm “Narcisa, Our Lady of Ashes” and “Lovesongs to the hard facts and statistics about the situation in the Ukraine.
swamp with her battle scarred gaunt white-trash Dead.” His upcoming release is “Scabvendor: Confes- For instance, over 14% of the victims of trafficking have uni-
pirate face and cool manner.  sions of a Tattoo Artist.” Check out Jonathan’s amazing versity level degrees. One story tells of an educated, middle
blog, www.scabvendor.com. aged woman who, desperate for money, took a construction
BLOG 4 job in Russia and ended up chained in a shed, forced to milk
cows until she was too weak to work. Luckily, she escaped,
and through the kindness of strangers, made it back home.
“The best part is what follows, Cigano,” Maria
Comics have a long tradition as a serious story-telling and
begun, pinning me to the spot with her smiling news medium in other parts of the world, and Borderland
brown intelligent eyes. They peered at me like is a fine example of how a serious subject can be addressed
burning lasers from her drug-ravaged face with in an engaging and graphic format for an English-reading
traces of what was obviously once great beauty. audience. The stories are tightly packed, with interludes
Maria. An old lady at 24.  with statistics, references, and links to the websites of NGOs
“They went up and cleaned out the guy’s apart- working to stop the abuse.
ment and found it was all full of voodoo stuff,” she Borderlands is a cautionary tale for those of us in coun-
drawled between jagged tobacco-stained teeth in tries with our own “dirty little secrets” and stories of worker
exploitation. It’s an eye-opening read.
Marina Deb Ris
Pollution Reborn as art
------------------------------
Marina Deb Ris has been picking up trash along Westside beaches and creeks for over a dozen years. Her mission began when she moved
from Bondi Beach, Australia to LA’s Westside. “In the beginning I would just pick up stacks of Styrofoam cups and bring them to the local 7-11,
but I soon realized that this wasn’t really attacking the root problem. I needed a creative way to draw attention to it. The whole idea of making
beach detritus into art started just over two years ago from the realization that the waste we create always comes back to haunt us.”
Her work has been regularly on display in juried shows in the Los Angeles area and often lends her artistic talents to Sustainable Works,
Heal the Bay, Friends of Ballona, Surfriders and other environmental organizations.
Trained as a graphic designer at the Rhode Island School of Design, Marina’s interest in the intersection of art and the environment has
been a constant. “My first goal is to provoke viewers into thinking about the consequences of our habits, and how we can change them. My
second goal is to get rid of all the garbage in my garage! In a responsible way, of course.”
Marina Deb Ris’ website: http://www.washedup.us/
Not Perfect
by Joolz Denby © Joolz 2009

The days are getting shorter - the nipping cold winds around
Her ankles like a cat asking to be fed and the sky is a dome
Of hard blue crystal wiped over with ragged scrims of high clouds;
She sniffs, and stuffs her balled fists into the pockets of her
Boyfriend’s hoodie, the one with a wiry scribble pattern of guns
All over it, the cheap grey fabric bobbled, snagged and bagged;
She puts the hood up, blinker-style, and turns on her knock-off MP3;
The dirty pods in her ears banging out top-end frequencies that
are destroying her hearing like mice nibbling at a lump of cheese.

In her belly, beating in the hot bloody chamber of her womb

The cells pulse, divide and bloom weed-wild in thick adulterated fluid
Shot through with cocaine, lager, nicotine, vodka, satvia and skunk,
Injections of curdled fat from her three times daily Maccy Dees,
Washes of caffeine and adrenaline, and the gonging thud of electro-pop;
The baby thrashes in her flesh, slung in her soft belly like a promise
Of entanglement and complication, of endless talking and the shouts
Of other generations she can barely comprehend and doesn’t like,
But needs, in her time of panic, of travail and juggernaut metamorphosis.

The baby comes in Spring, he comes like a kiss with the cherry blossom
And the tender warmth of hazy sunshine - the boyfriend is long gone,
She barely remembers him if she’s honest, but she still has his hoodie
And she has his son, who she names for a young TV star she likes,
Bringing him head-first slippery-screaming into a world of grannies
who coo and cluck at his big grey eyes, his dimples and his rosy mouth,
And his mother, chewing gum, adores him with a passion that detonates
In her heart with a vivid nuclear ferocity every time she sees, or smells
Or touches him and you know what? It’s not wise and it’s not perfect, no,

but it’s love;

It’s love;

It’s love.

Wild Town
by Joolz Denby © Joolz 2009

Dogs walk with their flap-slappy ears smacking in the wind

And the smells from the moor-lands jostling in their heads;
Babies shoved along the Leeds Road wriggle in pushchairs
Howling for more more sugar and to get at the dogs and bite them;
Girls stilt along on catalogue stilettos getting cross when
Boys hang out of yellow cars and notice their breasts,
Boys get giddy on traffic bang-ups and lean on the horn
For half a mile of ratcheted cacophony while they roll a blunt
To take the edge off the coke and keep the day at bay.

More shops have shut over night and stolen away with nothing,
Gypsy Poundshops spring up with shelves full of tattered remains
And toothpaste from the Ukraine or baby oil from Saudi Arabia;
The Arndale Café serves the same clientele and the same cakes
That taste of nothing and chew like melting rubber laced with raisins;
The air outside the treadmill mall is dusty with Autumn coming
In sheets of savage gold that wrap the city trees in perfect splendour
And the skies burgeon with a blue more tender than the Virgin’s cloak.

The Council is still corrupt and without redemption hiding

In the dense gothic eyrie of the city hall guarded unwittingly by apathy
And the stoic grind of the peasant mind unable to believe in hope;
The apparatchiks fence their jobs in with barricades of paperwork
And try never to look out of the arrow-slits at the town uncoiling
Into desperation below them in case the virus of despair is catching;
The Great Pit dug for the phantom shopping centre fills with water
And grows its own Dawinless eco-system of aquatic creatures
That roil and bubble in the dim, blind underwater car park caverns.

And roses bloom in cheek-red clusters by the garage while daisies

Jaunt on the verges alongside memorial poppies and butterfly studded
Buddleia with purple cones seedily aromatic and sneezily pollenous;
A columbine coils sexily through the blistered turquoise of the ruined iron
Railings by the sore-shaped demo site and foxes trot russet and oblivious
Through the cool misty morning’s breakfast tumble and yawn;
Ducks pedalo on the lake in the big park where the bandstand
Serves as a nest for spiders webbed in diamonds and leaf-litter;
The city is reverting to the wild; the town is going feral;
And the heather and the bracken will one day soon, cover it all again.

Born in 1955, Joolz Denby is a writer, poet, spoken-word performer, illustrative and fine artist, curator,
photographer and tattooist. Her poetry collections include The Pride of Lions (1994), Errors of the Spirit
(2000), and Pray For Us Sinners, a book of short stories and poems published in 2005. Her first novel,
Stone Baby, won the 1998 Crime Writers’ Association New Crime Writer of the Year, and was shortlisted
for the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger. Her novel, Billie Morgan (2004), was
shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award and the Orange Prize for
Fiction. Her most recently published novel is Borrowed Light (2006). Read more about Joolz at:
http://www.joolz-denby.co.uk/

“Darius “Qojak” Carr is an artist living in Tama, Iowa.
Darius makes art, tattoos and takes photographs when
he is not trying to make a living working at the casino
on the Meskwaki settlement. Look for more of Qojak’s
work in our next issue- until then check him out at:
www.qojak.com
The Luddite Cafe:
A Six-Month Experiment in
Skill Sharing in Chicago
By Alex the Card Weaver
In 2003 a comrade of mine, urban wood carver David
Stein, told me he wanted to start a Luddite Cafe in
response to Internet Cafes and the laptop hell many
coffee shops had become around Chicago (Chi) where
there would be spinning wheels for making yarn and
all sorts of other pieces of pre-industrial technological
equipment.
Fast-forward six years. I had organized a weaving
workshop at a dance hall in Maloy, Iowa. Card weav-
ing is an ancient form of technology for weaving straps
for everything from bracelets to belts that is practiced
all over the world. I had been inspired largely by Da-
vid’s wood carving to pick up my own small craft that I
could practice and share wherever I went in my travels.
I organized the second card weaving workshop with
hopes of making it a part of a series of events teaching
crafts like candle making. I asked David for permission
to use the name “Luddite Cafe” to describe the hap-
penings instead of a place, and he was cool with it.
That fall I returned to Chi and got started in earnest
organizing a series of free, primitive skill “shares” with
David under the name The Luddite Cafe. We issued a
proclamation, The Luddite Cafe Manifesto to promote
the idea and our first two Cafes and similar events.
The first Luddite Cafe was held in November 2009 at
the Lichen Lending Library in el Barrio Pilsen, Chi. We
made a specific point of holding it in a collectively run
community space that was one of the venues of the
Chicago Free Skool because of what we considered a
shared set of values. I taught card weaving, and had
a literature table that included copies of our Manifesto
and Rebels Against the Future and The Right to Useful
Unemployment. That month we also won a micro-
grant from Sunday Soup, a fantastic local grass roots
fundraiser for artists.
In December David and I printed a ‘zine, The Lud-
dite Worker #1 to help promote the cafes and our
ideas. We chose the name because we had met
through participation in the Catholic Worker Movement,
though neither of us were Catholic or had jobs. David
taught urban wood carving techniques at the Luddite
Cafe that month, at the same venue that had recently
changed its name to La Biblioteca Popular.
In January 2010 we started a north side Luddite Cafe
at Mess Hall in Rogers Park, Chi. I taught Card weav-
ing there again and printed a second edition of the
Luddite Worker. In February David taught the Urban
Wood and a student from the School of the Art Institute
in Chicago and Wax Wing ‘Zines taught Paper Making
and Book Binding at the South Side Luddite Cafe at La
Biblioteca.
In March another student from the SAIC taught a
macramé session at the Mess Hall. The Luddite Work-
er #4 also promoted the Free Speech Artists Move-
ment that a number of volunteers from La Biblioteca
had become involved with. The South Side Luddite
Cafe was my first attempt at a Luddite Cafe Crafting
Amoeba where people could just bring any craft project
they were working on, and perhaps get a lesson from
someone there if they were interested. Both events
were total flops.
In April the Mess Hall Luddite Cafe totally flopped for
the second month in a row. The Luddite Worker #5
was a last ditch effort to try to get new teachers and
writers to step up before I left for the summer to farm
in Iowa. Though it wasn’t our intention, it seems to
have turned into the last issue. We had a very special
South Side Luddite Cafe where Richard Flamer from
the Chiapas Project came and talked about his work
in Chiapas, Mexico; farming, working with migrants,
and with the San Andreas weavers. He also showed
pictures and some video footage of the weavers that
showed them shearing wool from sheep, dyeing it,
spinning it into yarn then weaving it.
We also tried to get a Luddite Cafe going on the
Northwest side where we held one Card Weaving Lud-
dite Cafe at Dr. Who’s in el Barrio Humboldt Park, Chi.
We tried to set up a prototype for Luddite Cafe Crafting
Amoebas at the St. Francis Catholic Worker House in
Uptown, Chi. I taught card weaving while David carved
wood, our comrade Alberto drew and our token right
wing community member, Den, made not one but two
excellent meals while we sold our work alongside of
some stuff he had scavenged and buttons our com-
rade Veronika made as a fundraiser for The House.
This was my north side going away party and the last
Chicago Luddite Cafe, at least for the time being.
 The Power of Poo
by Ricardo Feral
Feral Technology Institute
And every Saturday we work in the yard
Pick up the dog do
Hope that it’s hard
Take out the garbage and clean out the garage
My friend’s got a Chrysler
I’ve got a Dodge
We’re just ordinary average guys
-Joe Walsh, Ordinary Average Guy
Does picking up after Rover seem like a
thankless task? Hauling bags of stinky rot-
ten trash bumming your muffin?
Did you know that you might be throwing away
a valuable renewable energy resource? Yes, your
family dog’s doody, along with other biodegrad-
able waste like food scraps and lawn clippings
could be providing you with useable energy (in
the form of “biogas”) and high-quality compost.
Dog and cat poop actually contain more energy
than almost any other organic sources - 40 lbs. of
pet poop contains as many BTUs as a gallon of
gasoline. That’s more energy per pound than low
quality coal.
Using a micro-scale anaerobic digester system
built from salvaged materials, you can reduce your
energy bill and greenhouse gas emissions. Al-
though one family may not create enough waste to
make a large amount of biogas, it may be enough
to cook several meals a day. An apartment build-
ing or neighborhood could build a communal
digester that could provide a significant amount of
gas to heat a greenhouse or community center.
Anaerobic digestion
Anaerobic digestion is one of the most basic pro-
cesses of life on earth. Anaerobic means “in the
absence of oxygen” and anaerobic digestion takes
place when biodegradable matter decomposes in
a closed environment. Anaerobic digestion pro-
duces biogas, which consists mostly of Methane,
Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen. By managing the
digestion process and capturing the biogas pro-
duced, we can use it as an energy source.
Although not widely used in the United States,
small-scale digester systems are used success-
fully all over the world to turn small amounts of
manure, plant waste and food scraps into usable
energy utilizing very simple, low-tech designs. For
hundreds of years, biogas has been used in China
and India (and more recently in Africa and Cen-
tral America) to provide gas for cooking, heating
and lighting. In areas of the world where energy
resources are not as readily available as they
are in the United States, the micro-digester is an
important technology because of its low cost (and
the ability to adapt salvage materials or materials
that are commonly at hand), simplicity, and envi-
ronmental benefits.
Using Biogas
So, once you decide to build an anaerobic
digester, what will you do with your biogas? Wired
Magazine recently ran an article on Conceptual
artist Matthew Mazzotta, who is using dog poo to
power lampposts in a park in Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts. Through MIT funded “Project Park
Spark”, Mazzotta has set up a project in a dog
walking park in which:
“Dog owners collect their dog waste in a special
biodegradable bag and throw it into the digester
–- an air-tight cylindrical container, where the dog
feces are broken down by anaerobic bacteria. A
byproduct from that process is methane, which
can then be released through a valve and burnt as
fuel. In this case it is being used to power an old-
fashioned gas-burning lamppost in a park.”
(http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/ dog-
Can Poo Save the World?
The simple answer is, SHIT YEAH! In fact,
looking at the issue from a broad perspec-
tive, efficiently managing our waste streams
is the ONLY thing that can save the human
living environment on earth. The great 20th
Century designer and systems analyst R.
Buckminster Fuller once stated, “Pollution is
nothing but the resources we are not har-
vesting. We allow them to disperse because
we’ve been ignorant of their value. “ Re-
cycling is not just putting your plastic and
poop-powers-park-lights). glass out to the curb, it’s one of the keys to
Biogas can be used in many cases as a re- personal freedom.
placement for natural gas or propane. It can run a In his 1973 book Methane Digesters For Fuel
gas grill or cooker, gaslights, a generator, or even Gas and Fertilizer, published by the New Alchemy
a propane refrigerator like those used in campers Institute, South African farmer John Fry laid out
and RVs. his integrated farming system in which an anaero-
bic digester system provided waste disposal and
How It Works water treatment, power, and high quality fertil-
izer. The technology is not new. Unfortunately,
There are two basic types of digester designs: we live in a culture where food is manufactured,
continuous-flow and batch processors. In a con- not grown, and the fertilizer is made from natural
tinuous-flow digester, new material is regularly fed gas and shipped from China to the American farm
into the digester. The slurry moves through the belt.
digester, pushing out digested material just like a It’s time for us to stop waiting for permission to
giant intestine. Batch digesters are loaded once institute change. Along with using bio-intensive
and then the material is allowed to digest. When gardening techniques and season extension to
the digestion is complete, the effluent is removed grow your own food at home, building a home-
and the process is repeated. Each type has its ad- scale digester is one of the cheapest ways to
vantages. Continuous digesters produce biogas utilize “living technology”.
without interruption. Batch digesters, on the other
hand, are simpler and less expensive to build. From now on, remember that every time Rover
Continuous-flow designs lend themselves better leaves you a present in the yard, he is giving you
to manure-based systems, while batch processors an opportunity to start changing your world.
may be more appropriate for unprocessed plant-
based substrates.
There are many designs available for small
digesters made from everything from old 55-gallon
drums to tractor tire inner tubes or plastic bags.
The basic idea in all designs is
to maintain an airtight di-
gestion chamber where the
anaerobic process can occur,
and storing the gas produced
in a pressurized collection ves-
sel. A good list of resources
on small-scale digester design
can be found in Micro-Scale
Biogas Production: A Begin-
ner’s Guide, a free publication
from the National Sustainable
Agriculture Information Ser-
vice. It is available free online
at http://attra.ncat.org/publica-
tion.html#energy or by calling
their 800 number (800-346-
9140) for a paper copy.
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