Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey at his Industrial Records studio, 1980. Chris recently tweeted, “WTF! I’ve just exceeded (by quite a margin) ONE MILLION views of my photos on Flickr – this image was tops at 10k+” From his Flickr stream

via Industrial music pioneer Chris Carter with gear, 1980 – Boing Boing.

The Curfew is a forthcoming Channel 4/Littleloud game for kids 14+ that explores issues of surveillance, authoritarianism and liberation in a near-future Britain where a law-and-order party has taken over the country. Meant to be a tonic against sleepwalking into the surveillance state, it’s subversive, thought-provoking and way fun. Due out end of July.

via The Curfew: edugame about fighting the surveillance society – Boing Boing.

Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing sez:

Spanish graphic novelists Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido created their hardboiled, anthropomorphic animal comic Blacksad for the French market in 2000, producing three full-length stories over the next five years (Spanish editions were published shortly after the French market). The individual stories have been published in English, but now, for the first time, Dark Horse has collected them all in a single volume.

In the hands of a lesser writer and artist, Blacksad would be a trite furry joke — anthropomorphic cat/hard-boiled detective solves crime in an alternate America populated by other anthropomorphic animals. But Blacksad is superb: Guarnido uses the animals as totems, to expand the range of expression into expressive realms that make the story more gripping and immediate, despite the fantasy element. And Canales keeps puns and double entendres to a minimum, airbrushing in the faintest references to the animal natures of the players, to excellent effect.

via Blacksad: hardboiled detective fiction about anthropomorphic animals (no, really) – Boing Boing.

Perry and Lester invent things—seashell robots that make toast, Boogie Woogie Elmo dolls that drive cars. They also invent entirely new economic systems, like the “New Work,” a New Deal for the technological era. Barefoot bankers cross the nation, microinvesting in high-tech communal mini-startups like Perry and Lester’s. Together, they transform the country, and Andrea Fleeks, a journo-turned-blogger, is there to document it.

Then it slides into collapse. The New Work bust puts the dot.com bomb to shame. Perry and Lester build a network of interactive rides in abandoned Wal-Marts across the land. As their rides, which commemorate the New Work’s glory days, gain in popularity, a rogue Disney executive grows jealous, and convinces the police that Perry and Lester’s 3D printers are being used to run off AK-47s.

Hordes of goths descend on the shantytown built by the New Workers, joining the cult. Lawsuits multiply as venture capitalists take on a new investment strategy: backing litigation against companies like Disney. Lester and Perry’s friendship falls to pieces when Lester gets the ‘fatkins’ treatment, turning him into a sybaritic gigolo.

Then things get really interesting.

Makers was an incredible book. Cory Doctorowdid a really great job in character building to where I felt I knew the attitude and look of each character. Even characters with relatively small parts to play in the book were interesting to me.  The book has a minor dystopian feel to it but not as drastic as some books describe but it seems realistic. 

It was hard to see an overall theme to this book but I feel that, even though it is a sci-fi book, the underlying theme to the book is friendship. I could feel the connection that each character has for the other. But also I believe that there was a “political” (for lack of a better word) message too in sort of the same way, but not as overtly as, say Fahrenheit 451. I do feel that Doctorow does impart some of his personal views on the business environment and if you read BoingBoing you will know what I mean. But I did not feel he was “pushing his agenda” even though I dig his agenda.

The book is definitely a geeky book but I feel that even a non-geek or a shade-tree geek like myself could enjoy the book overall. Makers is witty and heartwarming too. I love a book that can make me feel the emotions of each character. There were definitely times where I actually laughed out loud as well as wept for the characters.

It is also a great book for those who are interested in economics and the power struggles with the corporate machine and the mom and pop store.  I felt for the struggles that Lester and Perry have throughout the book to be themselves and enjoy life but not get pushed around. 

The dialogue was very effective. Not too simple but not overly wordy. The only negative I can say is the publisher’s description of the book on the dust jacket. I think that it is a little misleading in that it is kinda a pseudo-spoiler. Pseudo in that I don’t think it was quite accurate and it gives you information that I feel either does not fit the overall feel of the book or just does not make since.

I highly recommend you read Makers. You will laugh, cry, get pissed and be thoroughly entertained.

Edition Reuss recently released Black Tattoo Art: Modern Expressions of the Tribal, a photographic homage to a particular genre of skin art. The book is curated by Marisa Kakoulas (lawyer, writer, circus lady, and blogger.) Above and after the jump, Boing Boing’s exclusive peek at some of the hundreds of striking, full-page images you'll find inside.

The 536-page hardcover includes work by tattoo artists from Borneo, Argentina, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Europe and North America. The book weighs nearly ten pounds, and the binding is stitched with silver embossing. It's fat, heavy, and gorgeous.

“There has never before been a book on this style of tattooing in English,” Marisa told Boing Boing over email. “The style is called “blackwork,” where the artists are limited to one color and so they have to stretch their imagination in terms of design elements to create original works, rather than having a palette of colors and shading techniques to chose from as in other styles of tattooing.”

Some of the photos we selected to share on Boing Boing also include the use of a single additional color.

Black Tattoo Art examines how indigenous tattooing has evolved over the years, beginning with a history section, then each of the styles that originate in tribal arts.

Lots more photos from the book after the jump. NSFW-ish warning: one of them is a human hiney.

continue reading @ Black Tattoo Art: Modern Expressions of the Tribal Boing Boing.

Vans with R. Crumb artwork

I’ve been wearing Vans slip-ons since I was a teenager. In recent years, Vans has made shoes featuring designs from pioneering underground artists I really dig like Robt. Williams and Rick Griffin. I was thrilled to find out that they recently added a series of shoes featuring the art of comix pioneer R. Crumb! Seen above are slip-ons emblazoned with Crumb's Fritz the Cat. They're $50. (Mr. Natural appears on a pair of high-tops.)

R. Crumb Slip-On Vans (Amazon)

via Vans with R. Crumb artwork – Boing Boing.

Posted via email from victhortheviking’s posterous

Subject: Graph compares rock music quality with US oil production 1949-2007

Source: Boing Boing

Author: Mark Frauenfelder

From 

GOOD: “The remarkable similarity between the arcs of U.S. oil production and songs in Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” by year is staggering.” (Graph created by Overthinkingit.com)

 

Read more…

Posted via email from victhortheviking’s posterous

If someone wants to die they should have a right to do so.  This idea of someone not being allowed to take their own laugh is based in a Judeo-Christian (a disease on the face of the earth) society and the thought that suicide is a sin.  Fuck that.  I would want to die if I am going to be burden on those around me.  And if someone II love is suffering and asks me to help them move beyond the veil I would do it in a heartbeat because I know deep down in my heart that there is no fucking hell, no judgment, and no god that is going to punish me.

By placing human qualities on god we are limiting the nature of death itself.  Who knows what happens after death.  Certainly not the douchingtons who wrote the bible, because they were not dead!  I only wish they were dead so they wouldn’t written the damn thing to begin with.  Only the dead know what happens after death and I think it is probably beyond our comprehension.

Many Hailz to Terry Pratchett, may he live the rest of days in happiness and die with iPod in hand.

We would not walk away from a man being attacked by a monster, and if we couldn’t get the ravening beast off him we might well conclude that some instant means of less painful death would be preferable before the monster ate him alive…

I am enjoying my life to the full, and hope to continue for quite some time. But I also intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brandy in my hand and Thomas Tallis on the iPod – the latter because Thomas’s music could lift even an atheist a little bit closer to Heaven – and perhaps a second brandy if there is time.

(Image: Terry Pratchett, Powell’s, a Creative Commons Attribution licensed photo from Firepile’s Flickr stream)

via Terry Pratchett on the right to die – Boing Boing.

The 21-year-old, from Harrogate, Yorkshire, was stunned by what he saw in the leftover grease.

He said: “I went back to the kitchen after having dinner to get a drink and I just saw it straight away – the face of Jesus.

“My mate saw it too when I showed him. It blew us both away so we took a picture.”

via Face of Jesus Christ appears in burger grease | The Sun |News.