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artlung.com
artlung.com is the personal site of joe crawford. san diego ca usa november 2001

Folks out of work in tech here in San Diego…

Folks out of work in tech here in San Diego should check out the Layoff Lounge, which happens next week.

This picture captures the spirit of my workplace pretty well…

This picture captures the spirit of my workplace pretty well. Cute as hell.

seen in an email posting: Shalom, Salaam, Peace (nice combo platter)

seen in an email posting: Shalom, Salaam, Peace (nice combo platter)

I’ve got Bruce Sterling on the Brain …

I’ve got Bruce Sterling on the Brain — here’s some big excerpts from CATSCAN 12: “Return to the Rue Jules Verne”

These are the people who invented “la vie de Boheme.” They invented the lifestyle of the urban middle-class dropout art-gypsy. They invented its terminology and its tactics. They brought us the “succes de scandale,” the now time-honored tactic of shocking one’s audience all the way to the bank. And the “succes d’estime,” the edgy and hazardous life of the critics’ darling. The doctrine of art for art’s sake was theirs too (thank you, Theophile Gautier). And the ever-helpful notion of *epater les bourgeoisie,* an act of consummately modern rebellion which is nevertheless impossible without a bourgeoisie to epater, an act which the bourgeoisie itself has lavishly financed for decades in our culture’s premiere example of Aldissian enantiodromia — the transformation of things into their opposites.

The Paris Bohemians were the first genuine industrial-scale counterculture. This was the culture that created Jules Verne. It deserves a great deal of the credit or blame for origination of the genres of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. It has a legitimate claim on our attention and our loyalties.

Professor Seigel’s book is especially useful for its thumbnail summary of what might be called the Ten Warning Signs of Bohemianism. According to Seigel, these are:

1. Odd dress.
2. Long hair.
3. Living for the moment.
4. Sexual freedom.
5. Having no stable residence.
6. Radical political enthusiasms.
7. Drink.
8. Drugs.
9. Irregular work patterns.
10. Addiction to nightlife.

In reality, these Ten Warning Signs are every bit as old as industrial society. Slackers, punks, hippies, beatniks, hepcats, Dead End kids, flappers, jazz babies, fin-de-siecle aesthetes, pre-Raphaelites, Bohemians — this stuff is *old.* People were living a vividly countercultural life in Bohemian Paris when the house in which I’m writing these words was a stomping ground for enormous herds of bison.

I can’t believe how therapuetic it is to listen to Frank Zappa right now…

NP: Andy by Frank Zappa.

Gratuitous Zappa links: zappa.com, St. Alphonzo’s Pancake Homepage

Note: I’m posting this to my blogger account of course also posting this to my livejournal. I doubt I’ll maintain my livejournal though – but LiveJournal is a very interesting community in its own right – much more of a community than blogger – but blogger seems to be more flexible in how you can use the output of the tool. I could be wrong though, I have only a superficial understanding of LJ at the moment.

Is it good, or bad to be the number 3 most highly rated link for a search of batman fetish on google?

Is it good, or bad to be the number 3 most highly rated link for a search of batman fetish on google?

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