Vice magazine had a comix issue recently.
This interview with Dave Cooper is required reading, so is this autobiographical story, delivered by our best friend, Tony Millionaire.

Or just check out the indexpage. Lotsa must-see stuff.

Quitting smoking
The last week, I've been smoking a lot of cigs. Been finishing off some projects (Bellona is putting together an anthology) and preparing new ones (Nazca DVD, New Fakta compilation, Nazca record, A 110 pages graphic novel).
Anyway, a lot o work and a lot o cigs. The new thing is my lungs have started wheezing. Now that's scary.
So, I'm on my second day without cigs. Just chewing these godawful nicotine gums. Wish me luck, friends.

Nude bikers

These guys deserve all respect coming to them.
World Naked Bike Ride
It's about time someone put attention to this. Biking is fun, healthy and cheap. But the lack of proper bike roads means we sometimes have to share the road with cars. Which usually means if there's an accident, bicyclists are in a pretty vulnerable situation.
To quote their Wiki:
The ride demonstrates the vulnerability of cyclists on the road and is a protest against oil dependency.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Just a bit sceptic about riding naked. You know. Naked butt. Bikeseat. Yeesh.

Hats off to these guys though.

My theory

This is really simplistic, but anyway.

There's three main institutions of power in society.
Church
State
Commerce

Our main task here is to pit them against each others, so no one of them will gain superiority. If they do, they will eventually turn totalitarian. Every one of these authorities will want you to give up your rights for 'the common good'.

Commerce will use the argument about the mythical free market. If we give them free reign, diversity, free consumer goods and fun all the time will occur.
(If the free market really encourages diversity, how come I can't find anything in my local store not produced by Unilever, Leaf or Nestlé?)

The church will talk about dwindling morals. That if we let them take care of things, our society will be as squeaky-clean as it once was in the shiny shiny past, because people need ethical guidance provided by the authorities. Apparently rape or incest didn't happen then. Mostly because it was indecent to mention these things.
(I usually think that outrage over alternative sexualities display a lack of morals, rather than moral superiority. If grown up people fall in love, no matter what skin color, sex or age, it's their own damn business. No, I'm not talking about paedophilia or bestiality, that's not sexuality, it's rape.)

The state will as always talk about your safety. You are in danger, all the time. And only the state can provide for your security. So please stop worrying about people being apprehended in the streets for no reason. It is for your safety and comfort.
(If gestapo methods really works, how come those methods never worked for the REAL Gestapo? No matter how many people they put away, tortured or ditched in a trench somewhere, they still lost.)

Power politics. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I don't usually put on my old anarchy t-shirts, but I still find a lot of truth in the old slogan 'All power to no one'. Not that I think a real anarchy would work that well. My guess it would be pretty fractured and the next world war would be over a can of beans.

Anyway, to repeat, pit the three main powers in society against each others. Create a balance. That way, they will be fighting each others over control, while we reap the benefits, like infrastructure from the state, cheap goods from commerce and umm, free bibles from the church.

Work fun

I had a dream about my old boss last night.
He would come over every hour and ask me what i'd be doing.
I would answer either 'drinking coffee' or 'fixing my portfolio'
Not even in my dreams does he have any authority.
My old boss was a 21 year old alpha male straight outta the army.
He thought authority was the ability to speak really really loud.
His interests were business n careers, sports n celebrity gossip.
I think we had an uh, communication problem.

Like this:
'Whaddya think of this draft?'
'I don't like it.'
'Why don't you like it?' (is it the composition? maybe the font?)
'Because it's ugly'
'Why is it ugly?' (Maybe the colors should be taken down a bit, too contrasty, right?)
'It looks bad'
'Why does it look bad?' (Yeah, the typography can be cleaned up a bit, is it that?)
'I don't like it'
etc, etc.

This thing worked itself out when I found out he liked a lot of black and red. I would just use those colors and he would love it)

He was assigned to fill a managerial position that wasn't there before. Us designers n programmers could well organise ourselves. Suddenly, if anyone had an idea they wanted to try, they were to report to him, if he thought it was a good idea, we could proceed. This was a bit of a contrast to the flat structure we were used to. It caused a lot of resentment towards him.

Not that he cared, I heard him being routinely rude, snappy, threatening and condescending. He was a 45 year old trapped in a 21 year old body. Every time I would feel the smallest tinge of sympathy towards him, he would say something racist, misogynic or just plain stupid that would justify my complete antipathy.

His coup the grace was when the company were having an xmas party. We were going out on one of those cruise boats from Helsinki to Tallinn. Excellent. A bunch of people in their mid twenties aboard a boat with unlimited free alcohol. This was on a thursday. Needless to say, events are a little blurry after leaving Helsinki. When the boat returned to Helsinki, there were some shaky feet stumbling off the boat.

That was when he ordered everybody back to work.

Yeah, nobody had been told. Everybody assumed that the next day would be off, for WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD THINK TWENTY HUNGOVER PEOPLE CAN DO ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE?

I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is:
1. You don't get real authority from business school.
2. Shouting at people is not authority.
3. Being a xenophobic scumbag won't give you the respect of your subordinates.

And of course, that my old boss was a bit of a dick.