Private Police Forces

Private Police Forces

In Raleigh, N.C., employees of Capitol Special Police patrol apartment buildings, a bowling alley and nightclubs, stopping suspicious people, searching their cars and making arrests.

Sounds like a good thing, but Capitol Special Police isn't a police force at all -- it's a for-profit security company hired by private property owners.

This isn't unique. Private security guards outnumber real police more than 5-1, and increasingly act like them. (Schneier on Security)

I don't have to read you Your Rights, for starters...

For Want of a Dentist

You can't make this shit up

Pr. George's Boy Dies After Bacteria From Tooth Spread to Brain
Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find.

If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth. (More...)

Fighting them there so...
I'm trying to stay away from the political, but fuck man!

The Yes Men

I've been of the opinion that while massive marketing campaigns can get an idea about reality into the popular consciousness, by most products very uselessness this idea is short lived. Additionally, popular culture is so easily undermined because its grip on reality is so tenuous. Built on fantasy and illusion of the consumption machine, "mainstream" culture is ripe for pranking and hoaxing. I have a particular penchant for fucking with peoples ideas about "reality" and turning their assumed truths on their head. I actually toyed with bumping over the Psyops while in the service, but it was not to be.
This leads me to the Yes Men. Some folks who have managed to present themselves a corporate types representing companies at some presentation or another, only to take it to absolute extremes to point out the inherent absurdity of the system.
An example:

At the International Payments Conference on April 28, 2005 'Dow representative' Erastus Hamm unveiled Acceptable Risk, the Acceptable Risk Calculator, and the Acceptable Risk mascot — a life-sized golden skeleton named Gilda — to an audience of about 70 banking professionals. (Yes Men at Wikipedia)

There's more videos and fun stuff at their website.

The Yes Men movie (about an hour and a half long).

If you don't have time for that right now, here's a six minute video of "Jude Finisterra of Dow Chemical" on BBC accepting responsibility for the Bhopal disaster.

Printable Cold Sores

A tip from Boing Boing

Take action!

Printable Cold Sores - Geek Grafitti
Nowhere in advertising is the gap between natural beauty and manufactured perfection more apparent than on subway posters. As we wait for transportation, we are unwillingly assaulted by larger-than-life representations of supposedly beautiful salespeople. The large scale of these ads and their extremely close proximity to the viewer offer up more than perceived intimacy, however... they give us the chance to see the mechanical flaws designed to correct their physical flaws.

Links - Nerdcore v. Hardcore

It seems there's a little fashion of music lately called Nerdcore. What is it? The few samples I've heard sound like oddball techno, with some scratching and rapping on top. Nothing "Core" about it. Core is derivative of Hardcore with core being inseparable from the meaning. While core represents something fundamental, it always implied the "hard." Even if one is to say "core" it suggests the Hard part and any music utilizing the term would thus be a derivative of Hardcore. Nerdcore for all its charm, isn't.
I'm not offended by the name. It's just coming across as basing your street cred on the work of others and that isn't too cool. I spent a lot of years as a kid literally fighting for the sake of alternative/sub-culture. You couldn't walk down the street with some clown giving you grief and wanting to do harm. Then maybe we'd fight. Provocation was the point. Now that it's safe, everybody's doing it. Safe isn't core nuthin'.
And for Rap, Hip Hop, whatever...just like today's RnR is corporatized yet packaged to look indi, same goes for most of the urban crap I hear out there. You want some Hardcore Rap/HipHop? Here ya go!
But I wax angrily. No fucking wonder I got an ulcer.

Hardcore came from the 1980's with my rough estimation of it's death to be around DRI's Crossover album in 1987 and the release of Kurt Cobain's Teen Spirit which placed a premium on bands signed to indi labels that THEY bought them all up and regurgitated something called Grunge.
Here's a sample of the Hardcore bands I listened to growing up:
The Exploited
M.D.C
Flipper
The Cramps
G.B.H.
D.O.A.
Dead Kennedy's
Reagan Youth
Decry
Descendants
Bad Brains
Circle Jerks
The Meatmen (Man, I can't think of them and not hear Tesco Vee going "We're the Meatmen and you suck!")
Angry Samoans
Suicidal Tendencies
Black Flag
Agnostic Front
Stiff Little Fingers
Fear
Peter and the Test Tube Babies

And what's up with this emo shit? I haven't heard it that I know of, but it doesn't sound promising.

I'm going to find my records....

A fairly accurate listing of Hardcore at Wikipedia.

A place to buy a lot of the old and new stuff. No recommendations implied by its listing here. Just a link.

2039

Visionary writer/artist Paul Pope presents a futuristic mystery of epic proportions set in a dark, dystopian world devoid of privacy and filled with government conspiracies, psychic police, holographic caller ID and absolutely no room for "secret identities."

Batman: Year One Hundred (warning: will link to Amazon for the product)


It seems that Batman isn't a big fan of Big Brother in this story.

Here's a piece on Paul Pope at Wired.

And the artist's website.






Hattip to Boing Boing

Blank Maxine

As I've envisioned Complex 39 to be a multi-disciplined project of sorts, with multiple feeds documenting, through a retro-future lens, my certainty that things are getting really weird and dystopian, I've recently brought my partner of 20 years on board. I've changed all the references to her to reflect her Complex 39 pseudonym and increase the anonymity. I like the term "partner" as opposed to wife (we're not actually married), or finance, or girlfriend in this forum for obvious reasons. It is our years of collaboration which most reflects our work here.
I hope to actually expand the offerings of Complex 39 as it continues to flesh out and more contributers may be added in time. Any suggestions are welcome, but will be met with close scrutiny, skepticism, and possibly reactionary hostility.

"Look at 'em, ordinary fucking people, I hate 'em." - Bud

If you haven't seen the movie...
Repo Man.

Some of the best lines in any movie I've ever seen.

No kidding

I can't comment any further than this. It speaks for itself.

By Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank
Research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. Bergen is also a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. (More...)

Hattip to NewsTrust

Screw kids

There's no ironic twist coming. I mean I don't like them. Not that much anyway. We worship the little buggers like some sort of sick cult of the child. We've fucking morphed kids into little, Disneyfied, creepy Margaret Keane figures. I think they're unpredictable (like bugs are), they smell funny, and you can't have a decent conversation with them. At least not a conversation that last any more than a few minutes.
And then there's all the patronizing you have to do for their parents and the rest of society. "Oh look at him/her. Isn't he/she so cute."
"No, your kid isn't that cute or interesting. Get over it."
Parents shouldn't expect any particular consideration or quarter from the rest of us because they wanted to boink. It's their choice/their responsibility, they should know what the extra burden entails. I'll treat them with the same civility I would anyone else. If I go out of my way to help, it's because I see you have your hands full and need help, not because the diminutive human you have in your company is somehow imbuing you with special status.
Don't get me wrong. I don't hate kids, I just don't worship the immature little buggers. Sure they're innocent and all (much less than I think many would believe though) but they all grow up to be ordinary fucking adults, quite capable of shitting on his fellow man.
One bit of irony is that a lot of people think I'd be a great dad.
Just keep them minimum 10 or 15 feet away from me and we'll do just fine. More if they're making noise.

Creepy Cult of the Child
Now a substitute teacher in Connecticut is facing 40 years because she walked into a classroom, operated the crappy computer provided, and got a lot of porn pop-ups to which the little shits came gawking at. The jury couldn't imagine getting a flood of pop-ups. They convicted her of running to get help with a machine she was told not to turn off when she came to fill in that day an she didn't turn it off. And it was twelve year olds. I can't even begin to tell you what I was up to at twelve. I wasn't that fucking innocent.
I started smoking at twelve. Fuck the porn, I want fucking 40 years from the executive who fucking got rich off of getting kids hooked.
If kids are so weak and addle minded as to be corrupted by a little bit of porn, God help us all. I'm a little more concerned with the 10000 plus fucking ads they're hit with every year. I guess anything we can do to maintain their innocence, right? Or is it THEY want a breed of fucking ignorant and naive fucking consumption cattle that'll buy any fucking lie the over-fucking-lords jam down our fucking throats?

Protect the Children From Porn
By all means, let's Protect The Children. Because that's what it's all about, right? It doesn't matter whose life gets mowed down in the process, as long as we are clear that it's all in the name of keeping kids innocent. (Wired opinion)

However, I do like Edward Gorey's kids.

Extracts from the Gashlycrumb Tinies

Edward Gorey at Wikipedia