ZIP3
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ZIP3: ZEALOUS INSANITY PARADE[edit | edit source]
READ IT ON THE ARCHIVE OR PDF: Issue #3 Editors: User:Torrie, User:Mari
ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE JULY 15TH, 2012, ZIP.3 HAD A DIFFICULT & VERY PROLONGED CHILDBIRTH. IN SHAMEFUL FACT, IT TOOK NEARLY 10 MONTHS TO DELIVER THIS MONSTER BABY. THE OFFICIAL WEB RELEASE ANNOUNCEMENT FINALLY WENT OUT FRIDAY, FEB. 8TH — AS IT HAPPENS, ALMOST EXACTLY ONE YEAR FROM THE RELEASE OF ZIP.1 AT NOISEBRIDGE (VALENTINE’S DAY, 2012).
INTERNET ARCHIVE ROUGH TEXT[edit | edit source]
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lly, sort of electro-organic,
The insides of the tunnelwere otherwor llike being inside a vast computer 8c a whale at the same time. Like being swal- llowed by a computerized whale. Walls, ceiling 8c floor alike were composed of thousands, millions of geometric glass or quartz facets that looked uniform [from a distance, but were actually variously sized 8c shaped when you got clos- her. They glowed 8c dimmed in rainbowy colors in a seemingly random pattern that began to resemble the calm steady rhythm of breathing, the longer you (observed it. I believe I heard "Computerliebe" by Kraftwerk emanating from re in or near the tunne
It stretched many yards ahead, perhaps the length of a football field, rolling 8c 1
jundulating like hillocks, to a portal or exit of some kind from whence issued a celes-
tial light. I couldn't make out any detail because the white light was almost blinding,
]I couldn't look directly at it. Yet I was drawn toward it, crawling on hands 8c knees like I
•a babe. As I drew closer the feeling steadily grew within me that I was approaching a
reat revelation of some kind: access to a new world beyond my wildest dreams, con-
tact with a higher power. Is this what Computer Love feels like? My skin tingled; the
. on my ne ck stoo d on en d. 8c TH E?
orry,
"INSANITY IS FUN!" a f ri zzy-hai red street crone shrieked at me - at least I think it was addressed to me - down- town the other day; and I took her word for it, for her appearance & demeanor quote convinced me of first-hand knowl- edge of the subject.
lenged us to imagine a society in which electronic lifeforms were considered equal to those of flesh & blood. Can we ever be truly free, Danny asked, while our comput- ers & gadgets remain eternally indentured to our callous servitude? This fascinat- ing line of inquiry caused us to ponder & cogitate upon many deep matters, & to ask ourselves, "Is Danny O'Brien crazy as a box of crabs?"
Here in the Mission, ru- mor — and the girl who works at Needles & Pens zine distro at 16th & Guerrero — speaks of a long-haired man who is wont to push a kitten in a stroller down the busy
sidewalks while blasting slayer from a portable stereo, we at- tempted to find this character & interview him for ZiP03, but he eluded us — more's the pity! Next we decided to interview Ted of the SF Tenants union, co-founder of Homes Not Jails (which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary). Ted consented to be in- terviewed, twice: twice, we flaked out. (The Fi rehouse was in its death throes at the time... see Zx00A4.) Brightest of all con- ceits that came to nought was our idea of interviewing Consenso — the robotronic, ar- tificially intelligent (but genuinely well- mannered) icosahedron whom some have dubbed The voice of Noisebridge. This led to an
next
rt
aka "Whimzy'
Alas, we never got around to asking — or CONSENSO, rather (cough) — & so is that we have no interview, save a questions from Zi P zealots on the page that I shall endeavor to answer; & the theme of this chapter of zip is "zealous insanity Parade," which is a fairly good description of Noisebridge, is it not — of one aspect of Noisebridge known to all (present company included) who spend fi too much time there? wethinks it is
which brings me (in a feeble segue sort of way) to my only point: there's Good Crazy, & there's Bad Crazy - Burning Man Crazy & Columbine Crazy - because we use the word "crazy" for so many dif- ferent things, that it practically loses all meaning; & since that's such a solid point, & we can't for the life of us re- member where we were going with that ar- gument anyway, we're actually just going to end this sentence & paragraph right here.
If you want to view Crazi-
ness, simply look around and
view it! You can't skin a dead cat without hittin' some
craycray if you live in Francisco, especially if hang @ Nol$38rldg3 on a regu lar (or irregular) basis. At a certain point craziness be- comes drama, a far more seri- ous charge. (For examples read
you
the "Collected Postings to Noisebridge-discuss, 2009 to Present" on reserve at SF Main Library, or online at https://noisebridge.net. But mad- ness can also be inspiring & liberating (that Hendrix quote on the foregoing page comes to mind): a portal out of the vortex of sanity into the sublime un(i)consciousness , loss of inhibi- tion & merging of self with the cosmic collec- tive, (other routes to achieve this state, we un- derstand, include drug-taking, orgasm & death.)
balmy summe
r afternoon during
Z i P
we are sorry ZiP03 is so late. Cut us some slack, though: finishing this bitch drove us damn near CRAZY.
-wwz
Zx0076
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Photos of 83C Wiese by Brian Ferrell (Creative Commons), unless otherwise noted
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SETHIS PAST OCTOBE 2012, Noisebridge cel-p 'ebrated 3 years @ 2169 Missioned floor. As : Jhe elders & cofoundersl fflknow, however, there was Noiz before Mission: Street. For its first ten-
- der year (2008-2009) the
fledgling hackerspace occupied a modest lofte Studio in a building on lese Street, a one-blocks alley that runs from iSth^^g^^^g^i^ o 16th Streets betweenS
Mission 8c Valencia.-'
9
(Right around the cor -a ner, then 8c npw^Studio-i 0 (S40), aka FooTNot| ombs central.) TakeN a look at these pho-, Stos from 2008 8c mar- el at how quickly that, ittle noisegg grew into'! HACKZILLA!
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posted by Adi to the Noisebridge wiki.
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The Survivor
blackened shoulders thrust forward, side of her face covered with soot, hair scorched to the plastic scalp, chin jutting out like the hilt of a sword, stoic eyes gazing from the unglassed frame, over the heads of the small crowd below. (There had been a fire just last weekend.) A young man & woman walk by carrying grocery bags — "Fierce!" says the young man, pointing. (Three alarms, 6 fire trucks, a 2-hour battle; five families displaced, suddenly homeless; an elderly spinster who had quit smoking 27 years before died of smoke inhalation, survived only by her cat, who leaped two floors to safety.) "The meeting is over," a Latino couple tells the nice white lady who wants to donate — to prove her empathy in the form of dollar bills, shoelaces, food: whatever they need — but she's late, the meeting's over; she can keep her charity & her condescending parasol & her atrocious attempt at Spanish.
(The building was gutted, carnage of a rampaging dragon^ boards & bars in place of walls, allowing passersby an intimate view of the charred tableau, like a morbid museum exhibit.) "Who lives there now?" asks a child peering from the sunbathed sidewalk into the cold burnt void. A stack of mail lies on a well-done table: black envelopes, bills unopened, a vote-by-mail ballot unopened. In the quiet bedroom, amidst a sea of ash, a bed well made, save for the sheets & comforter^ formerly beige, now singed & blackened: hole-y sheets. "Nobody," the boy's mother scolds, "Stop looking in there." (An old lady died inside; it's impolite to stare.) One thin wall away: a living room converted to ashes save for one sofa, curiously untouched, as if it slept through the fire; & a shelf that still holds books, as though in denial; & an analog clock stuck at 10: 12pm, when its cord melted & it lost power: like a fly in amber, preserving for all eternity the moment of its demise. "What are we going to do?" a girl asks, pulling at mother's skirt, from which a , ; vv :--- >' ROSS DRESS FOR LESS tag hangs. M^'-'S-' "Ay, hija mia, I told you, we're staying^;".-, v y " ." ' with your Tija in Oakland for awhile jfl?»?53^iV it's all we can do," replies la madre. (Scene at the corner, a superfluous '. policeman directing traffic; a man JffifffJK seated beneath a dark awning, holding his head in his hands: homeless, drunk, fire-displaced?) "Fierce!" says the young man, pointing to the 3rd floor window, where she stands : arms akimbo,
blackened shoulders thrust forward, one side of her face covered with soot, hair scorched to the roots, chin jutting forth like the hilt of a sword, eyes gazing defiantly out, Thank?
over the heads of the gawkers below,
unfazed by the fire last weekend.
ZkQO
Lo n q s ha nff s
-- - --- -- CONSUMER RETORT — —
BY ADAM ENGELHART
Brand: Pacific Cornetta
Item: Screaming Meanie 220 Alarm Clock
The PC-SM220AC is a cheap, janky-ass piece of gear. The clock is hard to set, the alarm is stupid hard to set, and the fit and finish are only so-so. But there is one cat-, egory where it ranks supreme — volume — and solely on that strength, I recommend it for anyone who has diffi-i culty getting started in the morning or a tendency to press "snooze" too many times, because the Screaming Meanie' 220 is one LOUD bastard. i
Pacific Cornetta designed the SM220 for long-distance truckers — people who work and sleep odd hours and 1 absolutely must be up at a given time, come hell or high water. It is much like other alarm clocks in most respects, except that the buzzer emits 1 20 decibels of rich, chunky homestyle sonic hatred.
1 20 dB is on par with a turbine engine, a chainsaw, or a vuvuzela one meter from the ear. It is very, very, VERY loud. Do not set it off at close range if you want your ears to continue functioning.
As far as adverse stimuli for waking one up, the Meanie ranks a close second to a swift kick in the genitals, and you don't have to rely on another person. A better user interface would be helpful, as the device is tricky to work. For example, as some sort of jeu d'esprit, PC has de- signed the alarm to go off 10 minutes before the time to which it is set. (If there's a Snooze button, I didn't find^ it.) They also appear to have fused an alarm clock and| countdown timer, with mediocre success.
If you're the sort who can sleep through a Northridge/ Loma Prieta-sized earthquake or major storm (my un- dergrad friends once asked me, "Didn't you hear that foot-thick tree limb breaking outside your window?"), the
zx00A9
Screaming Meanie is for you. If it doesn't rouse you at an early hour, you need to visit to an audiolo- gist — or check your pulse. You can find the SM220 many places online; I got mine from a virtual out- fit called Putumayo or Machu Picchu or Tierra del Fuego — some name that's also a place in South America. -AE
Adam Emgrth&wt* /jPj cwtnimcr rcp-vrfer antf
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Earlier this summer, ZiP got to take a complimentary tour of the San Francisco Armory courtesy of our friends at
KIN COM
■ m ■ ■ V ■ W ■ (AKA HOGTIED,
Hi FUCKING MACHINES, PUBLIC DISGRACE, TS PUSSY HUNTERS, HARDCORE GANGBANG, BUTT MACHINE BOYS, THE TRAINING OF 0, ETC.)
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DID YOU KNOW THAT THE SAN FRANCISCO ARMORY— the brick behemoth that dominates the intersection of 14th & Mission Street, a few short blocks from Noise- bridge — is a world-class BDSM porn studio? It's OK if you didn't — I didn't, either, until last year when I happened to be living in a house a block away from it, & someone from Noisebridge clued me in. Sure enough, Cybernet Entertainment/Armory Studios LLC (dba Kink.com) bought the crenellated colossus in 2006 for a reported 15 large. Some Mission neighborhood organizations of a religious bent weren't too keen on the deal, but this being San Francisco, their objections fell on largely laissez-faire ears; and so began a perverse new chapter in the life of the dark brick fortress at 1800 Mission Street, which stretches back to the World War I era. You've got to wonder what its builders would think of what goes on inside those impregnable walls today. And what exactly does go on behind said walls on a daily basis? Plucking up audacity (a commodity in which I invest heavily), I sent a message to Kink.com's PR department identifying myself as the editor of a "megazine [not a typo]" based out of a hackerspace in their 'hood that would like to tour the place for a forthcoming feature. That's all it takes sometimes for make-believe to cross over into reality: wish granted — complimentary tour, plus one! (The general public has to pay $20 or $30 apiece for the same tour.) On the golden afternoon of Sunday, June 10, 2012 myself & resident Noisebridge mycologist Alan Rockefeller stepped inside the forbidding fortress for a look at the inner workin gs of one of the sexiest^leazie.st & most surreal functional/ conceptual art -^ ^^Tft^E^ ^-^ > ' \l ^
spaces in my '^^^^S^^^iL: '^^r^f^^ experience, .^y^^
REPORT BY
ongshanlq t&jPigrel
BEGIN TOUR
BEFORE TH^TOU
I U m3 mm * 1ft 1 ^ e secur ' t Y guard directed us to the breakroom,
continued from previous page ^fwhich had been the officer's mess hall back in the
- day. We walked along spacious corridors well-
' ^^^ri* hung with tasteful black & white photos of the
RFFORF THF^TOI ll^^l^fc \Armory & related sites as they once were, past DCrUKDjITIC ^fcp* rooms full of Kink.com editors sitting in cubicles
At least two Noisebridge luminaries are for- in front of computers preparing the latest foot- mer Kink.com employees, as I learned in the age for public consumption. Alan had just been days leading up to our tour. The hacker who mining rainbow quartz in the East Bay & told me told me— one who had been with Noisebridge about it as a moneymaking opportunity: market since its inception in the 83C days— was one value of good-quality rainbow quartz was in the of them, & he made it clear there was no love $200-per-lb range. There were 9 other folks in lost between him & his former employer. When the breakroom waiting with us— mostly hetero I asked what about Kink.com made him not couples, by the looks of it, & rather conservative want to work for them any longer he replied, & touristy in appearance, to my discerning eye. "They're a porn company trying to be a cor- poration, or a corporation trying to be a porn Our tour guide, Jacqueline Wood (trans female? company. Either way, it doesn't work." I suspect, but am not sure) rushed in about 10
1
poration, or a corporation trying to be a porn Our tour guide, Jacqueline Wood (trans female?
company. Either way, it doesn't work." I suspect, but am not sure) rushed in about 10
minutes after 1pm & had me at hello when she
GMod4Life was going to be my Plus One opened with a quote from Spaceballs by way of
for the tour, because he said he could make apology. "You know the scene where Mel Brooks #
some illustrations to accompany this article, rushes in out of breath & says, 'If I walked the
Note this article lacks illustrations. Long story whole way, the movie would be over by the time
short: he didn't have an ID, our efforts to fabri- I got here!' " cate one fell apart, & in fact the morning of the
tour day itself I still didn't know who was going With that, we began our tour, the dozen of us in- to accompany me. I sent a text to everyone in eluding Jackie W. She has good energy for a tour # my phone that seemed remotely like a good guide: energetic, enthusiastic, no sense of bore-l^ companion for a tour of Kink.com. The first dom from having done this hundreds of times.
response was from someone who normally In fact, as she confides to us, she has just been
never acknowledged my messages & had in promoted to the tour-giving position. I ask her a
fact complained in the past about me sending number of questions along the way she hasn't
too many. Look how quick he was to respond had before & isn't sure how to answer. In fact, I
when an opportunity came his way! I'm an op- seem to be about the most vocal & at ease of our
portunist, too, but I must've been crabby that little group. There are some blushes now & then
morning, because his blatant "I'm not really at the racy subjects discussed & displayed (al-
your friend, but I'll take advantage of you any though we never get to see a scene being filmed
chance I can" attitude rubbed me the wrong or anything all that wild) & most of our tourmates
way. I went with the second to reply, which strike me as the type who will walk out of there
was Alan. He & I met at Noisebridge an hour afterwards saying "gag me with a fork!" & trip-
chance I can" attitude rubbed me the wrong way. I went with the second to reply, which was Alan. He & I met at Noisebridge an hour beforehand, & walked to the Armory together.
IP HSR*.
t>y Gar I I que
Th Firehou was a queer squat in the Mission district
that I got to know pretty well in its heyday. What could be more free
and fabulous than a place to live, without paying rent, in the heart of
the City by the Bay? On top of that, making meals in such an abode
from found and dumpstered ingredients complemented by foodstamps?
Electric cooking! Running water! A working washer. Not bad for a quasi-
condemned, partially burned house. It wasn't paradise (I recall a bit of
a black mold problem, an issue that tends not to go away on its own),
but it was home. More than just a couch to crash on, it was community.
I first chanced upon the Firehouse during my Apocalypse Fare- well Tour needing some rest from the mayhem of Occupy Wall Street in October of 201 1. That's where I met Glamortramp, co-creator of the Zine in Progress you are currently reading. He was taking notes at General Assembly, conducting informal interviews with activists, protestors, disgrun- tled American citizens of every stripe. Our eyes met, we smiled and sparked a con- versation that led to the beautiful friendship we share today. He told me about the Housing Action Collective (HAC), a long-lived squatter circle he'd joined. I attended a Tuesday night HAC meeting with him and volunteered to go house-hunting afterward. Late that night, we gained access to Wheatgrass, another house with working utilities. I'd never done anything like this before, and was tense and nervous; but my sleepy head rested well that night, back at the safe and secure Firehouse: a cozy contrast to the bone-hard sidewalk in front of the Federal Reserve. I even spent another night before going back to OSF camp for the important work I'm happy to see has branched out into many a focalized front of the New American Revolution, and a turning point for the evolution of humankind!
Seven months later, in May, The Firehouse is STILL merrily occupied. I had the opportunity to reside in it for a couple of weeks with my buddy "Captain Caveman," as well as Glamortramp and other fun, fasci- nating housemates. I spent my time being a self-appointed morale officer: something akin to Nelix from Star Trek: Voyager. I cooked, cleaned, feng shue'd, and found all sorts of cool things, like an electric keyboard that I gave to GMod4Life, and a groovy blacklight for the Cave, our dark room in the back, which sorely lacked ambiance. I played guitar and enjoyed the whole shenanigan as much as one can in these situations that have their own particular stresses. Like being rudely awakened, one morning, by construction workers and real estate bankster types invading our house through a broken window to give themselves a tour and order us to vacate. They claimed to represent the bank that had purchased the house at auction months before. We'd changed the locks to avoid such intrusion, but Life off the Grid is full of surprises! (Please note: there are laws against this type of harassment, although if you're a squatter it's a gray area: the San Francisco Tenants Union, Eviction Defense Collaborative and Housing Rights Committee will clue you in.)
My experience at The Firehouse was amazing, challenging, and quite literally, priceless. I am thank- ful for all the dedication and effort of HAC and the rest of the squat squadron that continues to transpire in San Francisco, ensuring that us so-called homeless (we have a planet!) can exercise our right to shelter a human beings in defiance of the capitalist conspiracy.
Here I am now at Nomenus, gardening the shit out of this precious Sanctuary among some other squatters and Radical far-out Faeries. Dismantle the system! Create the template for a new world! The name of my journey now is CNOGAP: the Crusade for the Naturally Organique Golden Age of Peace. Blessed be!
— Spacegirl Garlique, Vegan Vampire, written at Wolf Creek Sanctuary
zx00A8
fact, miraculously, the large high-ceil-
inged front bedroom that had been
mine, briefly, the previous year — the
best room in the house — was up for
grabs.
I grabbed it. Captain Caveman took the dark, moldy room in back we called the Cave (hence his name), the one room of the lower flat damaged by the original fire, with boards covering a large hole in its west wall. And Gar- lique, my Radical Faerie friend that I'd met through Occupy the previous year, was in town on an extended visit, and bedded down in the kitchen, which had a fully functional futon (and a fully non-functional refrigerator). No space in the Firehouse went to waste: Sea- lh o horse's libertarian friend Murk lived in the hallway closet (quite a cozy little * -Jr.^i
"-5^
jrjhook, in fact), and even the garage
/where most of us feared to tread — was 1?
' inhabited by Laramie, a bald Belgian I
curmudgeon who rarely spoke and was ■
a complete hermit, so much so that I 'Sjj^.^- "i
occasionally asked if anyone had seen ^ft^*^^
him recently, and if perhaps we ought
to check the garage to make sure he was
still alive.
So began the Firehouse's last act: a harmonious and magical, but fleeting and bittersweet interlude. It was a much-needed respite between squat- busts for me, as well as a second chance
to appreciate the awesome room I'd taken for granted the first time around. Seahorse and Murk told us repeatedly how nice it was with us — myself, Garlique and the Captain — living there in place of their previous squatmates, who had been no fun at all. For the most part, we got along and peace reigned from that point on, at least internally. But our makeshift Utopia was all too temporary, as we knew from the start: US Bank, which had bought the house at auction the previous December, was going through the legal motions of evicting us. Before I moved back in, the house had received an unlawful detainer and had declined to challenge it, forfeiting their chance to take a stand for squatter's rights in court (which probably would have failed anyway). Still, we who remained vowed to fight to the bitter end.
- END PART ONE** TO BE CONTINUED in the next chapter!
-J
zx00A7
ping out about that freaky shit. (Maybe I'm wrong & the people who look & act normal on the outside are actually the kinkiest & freakiest in private — I've heard that theory propounded before; not sure if I buy it, though.)
My equanimity comes from experience, half a lifetime of exposure to human sexuality in all its polymorphously perverse permutations. When I was 16 years old my older Cousin — who was like a big brother to me, since our family is so small — introduced me to smoking grass & the films of John Waters (namely Pink Flamingos & Multiple Maniacs) in the same night at his apartment in Portland, Oregon (my home for 15 years before I moved to the Bay Area in 2009). I was no slouch, delving into the sex-&-drug-addled underworlds of the Pacific Northwest, though I've always been more of a voyeur than an active player, surround- ing myself (like Andy Warhol) with nymphomani- acs rather than being one myself; in fact, at the I time of this writing, I've been celibate — in the non- clergical sense, meaning self-love not included — for about a decade (10 years), by choice. I add that because people often ask; I believe it to be by choice, but I can't say for sure, since I haven't been propositioning people for sex during that time so as to know what kind of response I'd get.
My last job — for 6 months in 2010-11, before I became homeless for the first time & everything changed — was as the clothing check attendant at a gay sex club in SOMA, here in the City. Before that, I worked 2 months in a clerical position at Wells Fargo headquarters in the Financial District, courtesy of my former temp agency, for which I showed up each morning at 8am in office-profes- sional clothing & did my best to blend in with my strait-laced coworkers. Suffice to say, I've had an interesting life of experience, seeing things from different angles, including some things I never wrote home to mother about. I've already worked through my sexual issues & my celibacy doesn't feel to me like a repression or anything unhealthy, merely a sort of freedom from something that of-
zxOO'
ten felt to me, in the past, like a burden or nuisance, like when ™ you haven't eaten in a couple days & have to put something in your stomach to keep it from
growling. IOW, I'm happy to be freed from my libido, for the most part. Yet I'm perfectly comfortable in the company of porn stars, prostitutes, drag queens, & perverts of every stripe, & even seem to seek out such company, as though experiencing a vicarious thrill of sorts. Who knows? People are strange. I'm a strange person.
The tour was brisk, so that in the space of an hour & a half (maybe less), we covered 12 different rooms/areas/sets of the Armory, give or take a couple. (At certain points my note-taking was distracted; also, some areas of the studio merged or connected in such a way that boundaries weren't rigidly de- fined.) I won't recap them exhaustively here; suffice to say 1) the Kink.com flirty shop is a lot dirtier than Noise- ( bridge's; 2) they go through a 50-gallon ' drum of lube every three months — &
btw, did you know lube comes in 50-gallon drums?
and 3) portions of the original Star Wars were
filmed in the drill court, the acre-sized indoor sta-
dium with bleachers that spans most of the 1st &
3rd floor mezzanine levels of the armory. Kink,
com plans to rent out this court — known as "the
Madison Square Garden of the West" in the days
(1920s-40s) when it hosted prizefights & other
sporting events — as a venue for conferences, par-
ties & expos. (The last Castro County Fair was
held there, JW lets us know.) I asked if there has
been a Star l/l/ars-themed porn filmed in the Ar-
mory yet. JW doesn't think there has been, but
agrees with me it's a great idea. The incestuous
possibilities of the Luke/Leia plotline alone set the
mind racing. (Despite — or perhaps due to — my
celibacy, I am a vile & unrepentant pervert.)
The other questions I asked JW were:
1) In the room with the bizarre floor that felt like leather but looked like wood, I asked, "Do you mop the floors with leather polish?" Ms. Wood directed me to "Olga, the janitor" for that information.
2) In the first room we visited, the wrestling room, Jackie informed us that porn is a major industry that generates $10 to $30 billion a year in the U.S. "Can you name another industry that's about the same size for comparison?" I asked. She wasn't sure, but someone else suggested "the NFL." (Ac-
^^Hjpp^^H (tually, it appears that I Porn stomps football 2 EiPrfflSS or 3 times over.)
3) In the basement, where Mission Creek makes its sole latter- day appearance (hav- ing been buried or otherwise sequestered in the pre-Gold Rush
__zx007D
days) I won- a W* fwnd * «upfc
dered aloud ^-^t, erf Nombridge, whether any ^ &
of the myriad fc^Pi^.ta^J
cracks in the
concrete floor had been caused or exac- erbated by the Loma Prieta quake of '89. "God, these are all such great questions!" JW burst out in a tone that seemed half appreciative, half exasperated — adding that she didn't know, but would make a point to find out before leading her next tour.
4) In the corridor where we saw the 50-gallon drums of lube, I asked Jackie if she knew roughly the retail value of such a vessel. Again, she was stumped. At this point I felt like I was starting to annoy her & kept the rest of my questions to myself for the remainder of the tour. (Thanks to Adam, however, we now know the answer to that question — see the Appendix, next page!)
Kink.com has a "wet set," a room fully immersible in water; also an abattoir, in- spired by the art of Sue Coe, featuring a huge semi-lifelike side of raw beef with protruding ribs. Also in the basement we visited a long rectangular room — once a swimming pool, now filled in — that was used as a set ^J^IJJ" JT
bedroom, but half its floor was perpetually waterlogged
and soaking wet, due to a major plumbing malfunction,
and yucky-looking mushroom spores were growing up
out of the wet carpet. We called it the Shroom Room, kept
its door closed and mostly didn't use it.
Never mind mushrooms growing through the carpet; never mind squabbles and infighting or the stress-laden life of the squatter (whose utter freedom, as I learned, comes at the price of total insecurity and instabil- ity): those were magical days, like dying and waking up in Heaven, in my view, after the grim and grimy urban jungles I'd traversed alone, with nothing but my sleeping- bag and the pack on my back, nothing to my name but a $3-bill and a sense of humor — and the ability to tran- scend it all by writing about it afterward. (Note however: I did not set out purposely to become homeless in order to bolster my street cred, or anything stupid like that; when I first lost my room and had nowhere in the City to stay, I was depressed, devastated, certain my life was swirling down the drain.) HAC and Occupy brought me back to
Above: the "sun charm" artwork that Asterisk gifted the Firehouse
before leaving for Hawaii, which graced the inside of the front
door till the bitter end. Right: a photo of my glow-in-the-dark zine distro box in the midst of painting. Alas, it was lost in the eviction.
life and gave me a home; then I discovered Noisebridge, of all miracles the most dreamlike and inspiring: a 5,200-square-foot utopianarchist hackerspace in the center of the Mission, open 24/7 and free for all, filled with every creative medium, tool, and gadget under the sun. And it was no dream: Noisebridge went on to become my social center and artistic muse, as it still is to- day We live together like family, we fight with one another like family, we sometimes wonder how the fuck we got stuck with these people — like family
There's no space here to recount the whole sordid, splendid saga of my adventures over the ensuing year: suffice to say Wheatgrass led to Froggytoad's Fishbowl (birthplace of ZiP), which led to Possibly Maybe (my "luxury squat" on the hill) and then to Bread & Butter, where I lived alone for the first month, joined in the second by Garlique's friend Captain Caveman (Garlique will have a word to add after this essay). When Bread & Butter blew up at the beginning of June — my 3rd nerve-wracking squatbust in 6 months — I suddenly found myself back at the Firehouse, where it had all begun the previous year in what already felt like another lifetime, so much had my views on squatting and life in general changed in the interim. We were only supposed to stay temporarily as guests, the Captain and I, while we searched out new digs. As it happened, though, the Firehouse was under siege by the bank, and several squatters had already jumped ship, believing doom was at hand. In
zx00A6
Left (far): photo by Anonymous that shows the fire damage and charred wood in back of the Firehouse; (near): drawing by a former Firehouse ten- ant of the front bed- room floorplan, the room I a/so lived in (twice).
Merely to have a roof over my head and four walls around me (damaged or not) and run- ning water on hand (even cold water only) seemed a miracle, especially when the first of the month rolled around and no one came by to collect rent checks. Not long before, I had woken one morning in an alcove near Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park (my home for the two preceding months) laying literally in a puddle of cold water, after a night of heavy rain. (I had no tent, just a sleeping-bag.) Not long into our OTG tenancy, Seahorse got power connected for the house, running extension cords up from the garage. This was luxury, on the house! (I'm still not clear who paid the utilities for all our months there: the shady landlord who seemingly skipped town after the fire and was later sued by several former tenants, or the mortgage servicing company that briefly owned it after the fire, or the bank that bought it for $1.2 million at auction on the steps of City Hall in early December, a month-and-a-half into our squat-occupancy. (Though Seahorse, who attended the auction, denied the bank bought it that morning; he claimed it went un- sold, 8c suggested the bank may have arranged in advance to purchase it after the sale. Such conniv- ing between banks, lenders & real estate spectulators is not unheard of.) Should I feel guilty about someone else paying our water, power and property tax bills for 10 months? I don't.
Fuck the shady landlord who screwed his tenants out of their deposit monies. (They sued him and won a judgement recently; good luck collecting.) Fuck the mortgage companies and dou- ble-fuck the banks they collude with to create the very market conditions that led to the recession and all those foreclosures — thousands of them in San Francisco alone between 2008 and 2012, countless homes wrecked and families displaced — in the first place.
No, I don't feel guilty. Neither should you. This is war, and All's Fair in (Love and) War. My first stint at the Firehouse lasted only a few weeks. Around Thanksgiving, Jorge con- vinced me to move with him into a different squat we'd opened on a HAC field mission, which was slightly superior to the Firehouse, in our estimation, since it had an electric heater in the liv- ing room (mild though San Francisco winter is, compared to the Midwest). Also we'd already been splintered by interpersonal conflicts. Jorge, wily coyote that he was, kept his room at the Firehouse while also claiming the main bedroom at Wheatgrass, the new squat. There was a second, smaller
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r
- I- . F. tr. L_ Stn '■ ■
The armory then.
rp:p:
>sO,
w for the film About Cherry, starring big-name bad^T boy James Franco. In the dirty shop, Jackie ex- tolled the joy of ass-hooks ("they're actually kind ■v^ of wonderful, but you have to be a pain slut") while L— I ogled Van Eck machines, "drilldos" & other cus- ciiL; tomized sex toys reminiscent of Battlestar Galac- ^? tica, & a '50s-looking contraption named "Fischer! Thermolysis Epilator." While no one was looking, I I stole a clothespin. 1
From: Jennifer Martsolf <JenniferM@trigglabs.com> Date: June 26, 201 2 1 5:49:04 PDT To: '"adam@tellumo.net"' Subject: FW: 50 Gallon Drum Quotes
From the sepulchral depths we then ascended to The (infamous) Upper Floor, where we caught a glimpse - of Kink.com founder & CEO Peter Acworth (who shot ^ his first porn videos in his dorm as a college freshman) & a party taking place in the lounge that excluded us, since being on camera requires consent forms. It is m possible to be an extra in a Kink.com film, though, as Jackie told us: "Fill out a 225, create a pseudonym." (Daravinne, author of the feature Geeks & Depression * which starts on zx0088, told me about a party she at- -n tended at TUF where she whipped Katherine, the stern trans woman who was one of Noisebridge's quasi-live- ins when I started hanging there in 2011, but who has since disappeared).
Jackie wraps up our tour with a mention of Margaret, the sultry-voiced female bot who recites aloud com- ments posted by Kink.com fans on the website, with fre- quently amusing results. "We need to hook Margaret up with Consenso," I said to Alan. He loaned me $5 to buy a patch in the gift shop on our way out, which — come to think of it — I still owe him. (It's coming...)
THE END. +11 +
< "I forget new people aren't used to the
'/www.you 3 note that of 55. Th
•■■"^T" " Hi Adam,
It was nice to speak with you. The video link is here: ^ http:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6eks3jRgWY/ ^Please note that the pricing is for 50 gallons instead of 55. Thank you for inquiring. Please let me
Sknow if you need anything else. Best Regards, Jennifer Martsolf, Vice President of Marketing Trigg Laboratories, Inc., 28650 Braxton Avenue, Valencia, CA. 91355 Phone: 661 .775.31 00 Ext. 248, FAX: 661.554.7166. AIM: GigiGotWet, Email: jenniferm@trigglabs.com
t 50 Gallon Water Based Drum: $1 1 55.00 50 Gallon Silicone Based Drum: $4080.00 Both prices include a pump and are FOB Trigg Warehouse, Valencia, CA Thanks Scott Watkins Vice President of Sales Trigg Laboratories, Inc. 28650 Braxton Avenue Valencia, CA. 91355 Phone: 661.775.3100 Ext. 222 FAX: 661.554.7104 www.stayswetlonger.com We create Fun, Quality, Trusted products to Innovate your Intimacy!
screamim
— Our tour guide, Jacqueline Wood
zx007E
Apparently the video is someone swimming in the stuff....
W
ISH YOU COULD DO something about the affordable housing crisis, so you don't have to look at all those ugly, unwashed homeless people on your way to work each morning? Troubled by murmurs of conscience about your own relatively privi- leged situation and the harsh things your evil, social-Darwinist sister says about how those people "just didn't make the cut"? You reek of middle-class guilt! You will never be Oprah, no matter how many cars you own! Now stop that ineffective whinging and
FOR FAR LESS than it costs to
keep a black man barely alive in
orison for selling weed to crooked cops, you can make a real difference in the
life of someone you would probably cross the street to avoid under normal circumstances. Invite one of these needy wastrels into your home & reintroduce them to the joy & disci- pline of civilization! Here are just a few of an ever-increasing array of options :
SHALOMA
Bust outta the ste- reotype of the "sassy black girl" with Shaloma, who will change your ideas about squatters! Hav- ing your own black female nerd in the house is sure to win you points with the bleeding-heart liberal & af- firmative action crowds, & you don't have to worry about wild parties, foul language or poor hygiene with this young queeny: much like a white nerd, she pre- fers a good book to a good lay, & if anything is almost too concerned with her grooming habits & appearance. Don't let her get you down, though, with her spiel about how there are 30,000 vacant housing units in San Francisco vs. 10,000 homeless people. Don't feel bad for those people living in cardboard boxes, pissing in
the gutter & eating out of dumpsters they don't even
have to work!
ADOPT-A-SQI/ATTER!
1
ave to work!
Just Z!D0a Day
AMATO
Amato is an albino Japanese rock n' roller who enjoys cult film, economy- priced pilsner beer (though he is not of age), & wants to start a band. He has no employment history & poor so- cial skills, marked by a dark, under- stated sense of humor. Children repulse him & he has been known to torture cats, but enjoys reptiles. He is be- lieved to be conversational in English, though shy.
GURK
be "Kirk," not really sure — it sounded like Gurk. At 47 years old (accord- to public re- j cords obtained at I the time of his last arrest), this overgrown enfant terrible retains the nosepicking obstinacy of a child, combined with the shrewd malice of a hardened adult criminal. Prior to squatting, Gurk's living situations included benches, beaches, busses, recycling bins, Occupy tent camp, & one week in a porta-potty in lower Bernal Heights. No matter how trashy your house is, he will not complain.
Zx007F
To be continued!
FIREHOUSE:
a retrospective of my first squat by Glamortramp
-fcjvery time I walk by that place — that hollow shell of a house I once called home — I feel a different color of that rainbow of synapse pulses and chemically-induced physiological reactions we humans call "emotion." Each time I pass along that stretch of unswept sidewalk beneath the now-cold- and-curtained window of my former, dearly missed bedroom (the best I've had yet in San Francisco, prob- ably, though it took me twice to realize it), a differ- ent shard of memory gleams out from the cracked- and-spiderwebbed mosaic of all we said and did (and thought but did not say, and said we'd do but didn't) beneath that fire-scarred sagging roof, between those forgive-and-forgetful walls, during the slow-motion shipwreck of our strange, shared 10-month miracle. Firehouse was its name, and it was my first squat: an auspicious introduction to the al- ternative, off-the-grid lifestyles possible (still) in the beguiling, bewitching minimetropolis of San Francisco. We called it the Firehouse because the upper flat was damaged from a fire that started in the house next door, a three-alarm conflagration that totally gutted the neighboring house and displaced the tenants of both. Not the most original name, but the first, longer name we came up with, La casa del fuego rosado ("The House of Pink Fire") never took. Jorge was the one who first squatted it, in October of 2011. I met him at my first meeting of the Housing Action Collective (HAC) in late October, during the height of the Occupy frenzy. A fella named James did a PSA for HAC during general assembly in the Occupy San Francisco camp in Bradley Manning Plaza that evening. I took BART from the waterfront to Van Ness Ave with a barefoot trans girl I'd met in the camp, who stopped along the way to look through piles of clothes, shoes, and accessories left on the sidewalk by persons unknown. I introduced myself at that first HAC meeting by saying I'd spent the last 6 months living on the street for the first time, and was totally new to squatting, but after what I'd been through recently, willing to give anything a shot. Jorge, a boricua (Puerto Rican fella), greeted me effusively and at once invited me to move into the not-yet-named squat with him. Seahorse, another fella I knew through a mutual friend (who was impresario of the late Big Gay Warehouse), was at the meeting as well, and asked Jorge if there might be room for a third. So there was, and the saga began — right before Halloween and the Dia de los muertos.
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"It was late at night: the doorbell rang. There was a discussion about opening it. Someone opened it. This guy Harvey came in. He looks pretty hard luck. Claudia came over and said, 'That guy's kinda weird, I don't think he belongs here, he doesn't look like a hacker.' That is bogus, and anyway, Harvey writes assem- bler for Mac OS. But anyway He put his hand in the change jar and got a handful of coins. Eric yelled at him from across the space. ■ See, that is my criteria for bogus. If a person I is so hard up that he needs to take coins from Fa change jar right in public, then man, he must really need it. I mean, fuck!"
"^Yeah. I have mixed feelings about that one. That was totally pathetic and we ended up kicking him out. I didn't know what else to do, so I stood by in a sort of passive way The bext day Harvey came back and, because I was present at his ejection, he saw me as someone to placate. He had purchased a bunch of mouse- traps. He showed me the mousetraps.
A few days later I thanked him for getting those mousetraps. It was a really nice thing to do. And he said, 'Yeah, they've been disappear- ing and someone's been taking them apart.' And then Jake started cackling madly from the kitchen.
That is my story I'm writing this down because it is an awesome, awesome story"
Great Mouse
< wars
I a dialogue between Za
and Llzzard* In the NB
library (while sweeping up dduu turds)
I "There was a point where Ada was really
into these humane mouse traps she bought and she'd bug us to bring her to Noisebridge every day to check them. She made maps of the mouse trap locations and signs explaining to people how to check for mice and save or relocate them. She wanted to keep them.
Then she was at a meeting where people objected to the traps. They had other ideas. Someone wanted a catapult to launch the mice and Ada went from mouse rescuer to mouse launcher and was going, 'YEAH! And we could have these HAWKS who would FLY UP and wait for the mice like a GIANT HAWK VIDEO GAME and they would catch them in their beaks!' Jake objected to the fear of the im- prisoned mice. It was good for Ada to be in the meeting and see how people had many different ideas."
"Yes, that would be Jake. About all this: maybe it's wrong to say, but — it's not super high stakes. Well, maybe it is; but frankly, I find it fascinating when these things happen because it is such a playing out of the possibilities of what kinds of human interaction are possible."
"Oh wait... is that the tall guy the Ten- derloin Computer Lab sent to us? I think I do know him. Maybe. He sits at that computer over there during meetings, with two speakers held up to his head — one on either side."
- THE END*
No mice were harmed in the making of this page. -WWZ
Zx0080
Reoar^V The Fisher
toy AdairvEngolHart^O^ AG -7
- ': , : ,.^r : ^^T^: N Space Pea
THIS IS THE ORIGINAL— the civilian version
^ of the NASA Data Recording Pen (NASA Part No.
SEB12100051) used on American space flights from
Apollo 7 to the present day.
is a solid apparatus that shows its heritage. This is a pen for people who have work to do. ^ It's a slender but sturdy utensil of brass and chrome, and more than enough to satisfy all your data-recording needs — whether earth- bound or extraterrestrial.
- PEN HACK ALERT!*
Designed by Paul Fisher, patented by same (No. _ *PEN HACK ALERT!*
3,285,228), and manufactured in the United States
of America by the Fisher Space Pen Company, this The AG-7 is not perfect: its most notorious
device is still rated by the National Aeronautics failing is the not-so-ergonomic grip. But you
and Space Administration for all human-crewed can upgrade that quite easily (1NCR34S3 TH3
missions. The traditional joke — that NASA spent S1Z3 oF YoUR P3N!!!) as follows: ^Jr zillions on a space pen while the Russians used a
pencil— is factually flawed: NASA paid wholesale Get some 3/8" or 1/2" heat-shrink tubing at the
like everyone else who bought large lots, and any- hardware store (I spent about $3 for one pack- ^ one who's smart enough to send something into . age) and shrink it over the ridged part of the
space (including the USA and former USSR) will r tip. If you want a bigger grip, give it 2 or 3
know that graphite is a) combustible and b) con- goes, using the larger size for the later coat/s. ductive: both undesirable qualities for anything m I prefer a very large grip, so I used several
that will float around a spacecraft. coats.
The result was the model AG-7 "anti-gravity" pen. It ^ Set your oven to low temperature (200°F or worked from -30 to 250 degrees Fahrenheit; it could thereabouts— check your heat-shrink tubing's write at any angle and at altitudes up to 12,500 feet, ^ package to be sure) is an excellent way to en- thanks to the pressurized cartridge; it could draw a ™ sure an even heat soak for the tubing, line 30.7 miles long. If you were to put it to paper
when you started south from San Francisco, .you'd ^ ^
be in Palo Alto before you ran out of ink. The AG-7
See also: Adam Engelhart's review of the Screaming Meanie alarm clock
^ on ZxooAyl
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Glarnortramp
his. may be the last chapter oFZiP; it will certainly be the last chapter of the Zinc in hYe-gross in its
jjrt'.M'iiL lorn 1. AIiht llnv Lln'n* will \?f. ;k .^pri'ml Trul I hit* Wurld 111 11 1 i
chapter (ZilU't, "Zil' l& rmtretrofuturhik " > rdca'cd on December 20 L 2 — If the world datan 't end [Jul day, as some |wopie bdferoe (Jut the BDoeat Mayans believed that it would. Assuming the ancient M ayans were aan.i^ ui lmlIllj djdi dnjM; pcuph who ImjUuva: Jul the ancient Mj\ d 1 1:- fcH'lit'H Mtl ihi- world wen 1 Id <'inl Dim- ? Ul .ire 1 wrung, /.il J ill llnti **ilhi*r cease to continue (turn into nothing, become zero) or it may become Zero
I ■■ hi 13 i 4 v Fntpt-L [ 01 7.'\m"\ '\L [iLlt lli^L iL? v \*\y.-l or ZigZ.jg hid r^.tl.tc lii
I'aperw^ight nr Zaftig* InebrinlFtJ Prostitute* or maybe somcdung recursive but probably not something spelled the same back* ardi as forw at d> (Zi P isn*t PfllinElrumii-J. \\V meaning myself, Mr, Lsmgshanks nnd Wtimzy (the old wizard-in-chicfj if he make* it anorhcr year, want to radical h transform it from
.1 Noi^l*rinlgK megP-ini" to SuiiHMnicig Fjitireily DilWunl. XchL air* p-juulk wlut
yet, but we've recently discovered — through rcscearchEng potential squats, o-f .1 1 1 1 1 11 iims 1 1 i* raunwmilturjj Itgary of 1 he I J-]iu*rx, in i he form of 1 ha {long- ago discontinued) comnnuia] publication K^HIhm rr .=md the i tf.il I g^in_g> Free Print Sliop- They are inspiring us. W? think it k mar project to resurrect and reimagine them and the Cacophony Soriutv (inspiration for Bur rung Man) and tlic whole radical KHirilL-rLulturu uf the 60s (wjih *ome philosouhk - und ledums kiyi i/al nmmLkiri\i We 11 c inspired by ihc fact thai KaliHower was distribuicfr
by vuLuiiLuLiSh Lu ill-lieIv ydC- liijlluiuui;^ uvti y l liLLLMiay - jiL
the apogee of the counterculture, and that announce- ments were printed on. gold lame: paper. (We need a friend who works at a paper store who can "obtain odd Iota of paper" for usl) We want ZIP to become more formally experimental: loot for origami time, laser-cut covers Jfc other forays off the beaten path in the near future. And wish us luck: we have a date to meet the Kaliflower clan — in les present-day incarnation — lat^r this week.
v-:? icxik tcHYiird the iuture-
Change is in the air! zx ooa2
Above rigfct ascending: fidgsi tifK&fiflimvr.
sch iz o ph ren ia, you can easily finds profound lack of understanding a nd empathy, Statements like JJ Go for a walk, eat some ^egetables p you'll feel better" "OJi f it's not that bad" are common responses from non-deprewed people, to an sdirifttance of depression, even from on& geek to another, Wlien everyone hides their true state of mmd h no one can tell that they aren't truly alone.
IV, Hacker, hack thyself
Hackers hn& the world- We hack networks and systems for vulnerabilities and exploits. We hack our social structure to show inconsistencies and injustices. We hack our brains and bod- and the world around ui, to improve our productivity, creativity f and quality of life. We are exploring how to hack our brains for greater intelligence- We are starting, in little bits here and there,, to hack our society to be more accepting of, and knowledgeable about, our varying states of mind and mood-
We a Iso hack ourselves. People I ike myself, Meredith, jimnile and Mi tch work to de&tigma Ei *e and discuss mental health issues, abuse survival and emotional disorders. The internet allows people everywhere io talk about their conditions anonymously and salcly, lind Ic'low suflerer^ trade stones and information- Groups esist on line and in person for LGBT issues, feminist issues, mental health support, and more. Open source science projects like Mendeley are opening med ica I resea rch a nd study results to the genera I publ ic Handles and alternate identities are commonly used for security or disinformation a I purposes, but they can also provide an internal space to build real self- value to counter the lack of worth felt In another identity or part of life. We are even expiring the idea that non-neurotypicals, such as h igh-fu ncti o -: ir g Aspergers suf- ferers or sensory defensives h are other personality types rather than disordered personalities requiring treatment
The most important first step to hel ping an d hacking ou rsel ves is acceptance, m itch , Meredith, Jirnmie and I all hope that our involvement with Geeks and Depression is a step towards social acceptance or the unhappy states and suboptirnal selves so many of us have, and that knowing that there are others out there who are depressed or struggling can make it even a little easier for each of us to accept our own selves,
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BAIL OUT
Editor's Note: In June 2012, ZiP arranged a test
playdate of an in-development "political satire board
game" in response to a Craigslist ad. Teale Fristoe,
the game's creator, came to Noisebridge from the East
Bay for the occasion; six players participated in the
session. The game, called Corporate America, was
approaching the end of its initial development & had
already gone through a number of test plays. Everyone
who played at Noisebridge seemed to find it enjoyable
& the general consensus was "thumbs up!" We asked
Teale to write something about his process in creating
the game, which led to the following essay. UPDATE: At the time of publication (mid-January, 2013) Corporate America's Kickstarter campaign, referred to below, has successfully raised the target funds & is now seeking a major sponsor to print the game professionally. -WWZ
'Over the past year, I've had the pleasure of working on Corporate America, one of the world's first political satire board games. The game strives to challenge corporate influence over government through humor, with reference to pertinent events such as the landmark 201 0 Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
For those of you unfamiliar with satire, it is the art of taking something to the point of absurdity to ridicule it. A classic example of satire is Voltaire's Candide, in which a naive idealist and his teacher, who insists that they live in "the best of all possible worlds", suf- fer countless gut-wrenching misfortunes. Another great satire is Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which the problems of overpopulation and hunger are both resolved with one elegant solution: eating babies. Modern-day examples of satire include political cartoons and fake news shows such as The Daily Show and the unremittingly satirical Colbert Re- port.
(Now you're getting it!)
Creating a satirical board game is a bit different from crafting satire in a tradi- tional medium. While games involve characters, settings, and a more-or-less linear flow that resembles a narrative, the core element of a game is inter-activity and participation. With all my games, I strive to give the player(s) an interesting, unique experience. With Corporate America, one of my goals was to involve players in the satire — by creating rules that would lead them to act out the absurdity of their situation.
2 I P WEGA
Li Nl.
When playing Corporate America, players take on the roles of corporations. A game
involves several turns, each turn being comprised of four phases: the Wall Street Phase, the
Main Street Phase, the Campaign Trail Phase, and the Capitol Hill Phase.
In the Wall Street Phase, players start businesses they will use to make money. Each business is in one or more industries. Businesses begin to set the satirical tone of the game by spoofing actual businesses. For example, you might start Crapple, a technology and luxury business, or Schitibank, a finance business.
In the Main Street Phase, players get a chance to make money by manipulating the population, and each other. Each player takes a turn revealing consumption cards. The first is free, with each subsequent one costing more. Each consumption card contains an industry, and if a player chooses that card, all businesses with that industry make money. However, players are allowed to use their business chops by bribing one another, trying to convince them to choose a card that benefits them.
Next comes the Campaign Trail Phase, when the game satire really takes off. In this phase, the players will elect a new president. First, a number of legislation cards are re- vealed, which benefit or hurt industries or change the rules of the game. The new president will get a chance to pass some of them. Players get a chance to campaign, trying to convince others why they should be president, and then the players secretly bid to determine who the new president will be. Whoever has the most money pledged to him or her becomes the new president! The president usually wears a silly hat as a symbol of power.
Finally, in the Capitol Hill Phase, the president gets to pass legislation for the turn. He or she can fulfill campaign promises, or simply do what most benefits him or her. It's good to be the president! After passing legislation, the next turn begins.
Corporate America has proven to be incredibly fun — conducive to complex strategiz- ing, interaction and engagement between players, as well as an atmosphere that encourages joking and laughter. However, satire is inherently subtle, which can be dangerous. Players take the role of corporations in the game and have fun in that role; it's possible they will miss the whole critique aspect of the game, instead wishing they were part of the 1 %. My hope is that after playing the game, players will sit back, question its wisdom and how accurately it mimics our society, and think about where they fit in the model of the game.
SitefYBnYF fltBsi im _ lU „
AM* DOM
■
I stopped going to the 5a n Francisco meetings after a while, Several months afterwards, I ran into another former G&D regular at Noisebridge. We found that we'd each taken steps to im- prove our liv-es as a result of what wed talked about, arid heard r in the meetings.
Hl, So what's going on herel
Uu geeks have depression mure than non-geeks? Some studies seem to imply that individu- als who are more disposed to analyze the world around them in depth are also more likely to experience depression . They recognize the myriad errors, failures, injustices, and brutality in the world, but also know that there is no way to fix everything, and often very little that can be done effectively. I hey may also be more likely to be targets for abuse or harassment, sticking out socially or within their own families as "different 11 ! or being unable to fight back easily or bounce back from negative treatment. The high-schoohnerd outcast has been a popular media trope for decades, and many former high school nerds have piles of stories about being bullied} excluded j and harassed by their peer s f until they went to college. It is often said that every "fam- ily has Its "black sheep"; that black sheep can grow up to be a hacker.
The hacker community has a high instance of former high school nerds and black sheepj, as well as non-neurotypicabj, sensitive intellectuals, and general outcasts. Geek communities strive to be inclusive to their kind,, but often protect abusive behavior as a side effect of trying to coun- teract the exclusion and msrginaliz&tioii found in main stream culture. Misogyny, sexism, racism and many other "non-PC" social habits abou nd . Ignoring other p eo pi e's bo undaries or personal space Is regularly excused with the Asperger* dlagno^, or h lamed on the victim's over&#n£ltlv- Hy, Women, gays p and transpeople can face objectifi cation, senual harassment or other kinds of victimization. Geeks who are also abuse survivors may simply don't have any other way of interfacing wHh others than the destructive patterns they have learned,, and continue to act their out socially. Less innocuously people can use the geek community knowingly as a shelter so they can continue socially unacceptable behavior with little to no consequences, vocalizing dissatisfaction with how problems are dealt with P or whether they are dealt with atal! P can lead to accusations of whiniin ess, PCness> or attention-seeking, or even to being targeted for further harassment
Being hurt in what may be the only community you expect to be safe in is, by itself, pretty de- pressing. Geek and non-geek culture alike stigmatizes both having mental health issues, and seeking help or ™ wiving treatment for them. The geek community isn't prepared to teach any- one social snd personal interaction, and often has no effective way of letting someone know they need Lo change their interaction style without corning down on them harshly or ejecting them entirely- Maltreatment or mistrust from community peers, or even just the competition and one-upmanship that suffuses the geek community, can exacerbate negative "feelings and amplify efcl&tlng problems* If you've got a more serious emotional disorder like PTSD a bipolar, or
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tion by itself often creates depression, and those who are already depressed from previous is- sues or experiences often find their problems getting worse.
In Robin's workshop we talked about the importance of creating support networks for yourself before you get to crisis states. Building trust is harder for the hacker, but that makes it even more crutiaL if someone in df stress leans on you for help, it is best to have a few welkhosen,, trusted people to either lean on in turn or to ask for assistance dealing with the distressed per- son. You will then be that much less likely to enter a crisis state yourself, and better able to set appropriate boundaries without harming or abandon fog Eire other person.
ff. Geeks &nd Depression: The Meetings
Mitch Altman started the Geeks and Depression groLp as a semi-regular meeting in response to the double blow of Len Sassaman's and llya Zhltomirskly's suicides. Leu was at hk home in Europe at the time of his passing, llya had been in San Francisco working with a group of people at Nofsebrldge on his project Diaspora,, intended to be the J 'Facebook-killer H ; no one had seen any indication he was less than happy, excited and driven.
Mitch Intended the meetings to provide a safe, non-Judgemental space for any geek or hacker to speak freely about themselves and their feelings of depression or sadness, and to be able to reach ou t for help without fear if they f eh as If they were in dire distress. At the first meeting many people ^red their stories; a few just sat and listened- No one who attended was obli- gated to talk, I chose to speak; I talked a bout my life and experiences in the hacker com m unity h my PTSD, my cunrent therapy arid how I felt about myself.
There was a loL of discussion as Lo what Lhc meetings would be for, whether it was to provide help and tips for tweaking one's mental health (which many were already offering) or to just create a goaHree area where people could express themselves. I became a regular for a while and shifted from talking about myself to listening to others. Some of the same thoughts and siories kept coming up: chronic childhood bully ing h mistrustful isolation from school age into adulthood, dissatisfaction with one's intelligence or abilities h maltreatment for nontradi Lionel seaucil orientation ur fender espre^ion, the j^eek tendency to form complex rationalizations □bout the validity of their negative moods or poor self image, and the firm belief that everyone dsefdt happy and fine rind each of us was- the only person having a had time.
For a. while we met every tveek, then every other week, then only at request from the mailing list. Meanwhile, hsckerspaces ^n several other cities, including Seattle, started their own Geek5 and Depression meetings, A website and ire channel popped up (bluehackers.org .and tfbluehackers
on f reenode).
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is to raise enough money through our recently nd distribute the game widely. You can learn iingsacredgames.com, and find updates on my thingsacredg). I'm always happy to share the fed in giving it a play, feel free to contact me —
CORPORATE AMERICA Development Timeline
201 1 J
bubble.
conception of game in which players create an economic
— Come to terms with the fact that I don't understand economic bubble
enough to make a game about them. Realize that related concepts (corporate influence ove government, manipulating people through advertising, protests) would make an interesting game Start forming rules, creating lists of concepts to make sure there's enough material.
— Ask friends about idea just to make sure the game would be interesting to people and lot crazy.
— Create first prototype (using existing software developed for another card game). Test jame to promising results.
— Playtest as much as possible and iterate game every time, fixing numbers, simpli ing the game, and improving visuals to make it more playable.
mm
Dlify-
— Continue iterating prototypes while working on other proj
ects and preparing to drop out of school.
— Continue iterating prototypes, finalizing rules and cards. Set up a business, website, social media, etc. Begin getting involved with online communities. Explore printing options and begin requesting quotes for self publishing.
— Finalize art. Prepare for Kickstarter campaign to func project: establish web presence, cultivate fan community, create video, researc and finalize rewards. Distribute copies to reviewers.
— Kickstarter campaign. Lots of excitement when I re unding.
WlKfl — Print game. Receive shipment, put in storage, send to su
porters (along with other rewards).
— Sell 2,000 copies of the game to shop owners, convention ga ers, internet users, and whoever else will buy them. See if you can do it again.
I
www.kickstarter.com/projects/77978264/corporate-america-the-political-satire-board-game
ZiP great NAMES IN
Drohn Japer
Mevin Kitnick
Are you too young and/or stoned to know what "phone freaking" is? (No, not really kinky phone sex — good guess though!) Websearch it real quick, while we have a smoke. (Lights up a cigarette; smokes half, then stubs it out.)
So Draper was the Lord of the Phone Phreaks back in those innocent days when a clever hacker-cadet could swindle the phone company for unlim- ited free calls worldwide, using only a child's plastic whistle from a box of breakfast cereal. (It took an adult to figure that out, because children's brains are smaller — that's why kids are so dumb.)
Draper was later sued for identity theft by Cap'n Crunch of Kellogg's cereal fame, but the judge called the Cap'n "two-dimensional" & threw the case out. Also, Noisebridge Mike once told me a long elliptical story about find- ing the iconic Mr. Draper in his hotel bed during a hackercon, due to some sort of mixup. I laughed and felt very confused.
Behold the prototype of the dangerous criminal hacker so demonized (yet so li- onized!) by the mainstream media and the mediocre masses it feeds. Assessing KevMit's rap sheet objectively, one can't help but admire his youthful hacker inge- nuity and see him as a trailblazer, consid- ering how young the fields of Computer Security Fraud and Predatory Social Engineering were in his time. KMit be- gan hacking into networks in 1 979, and by 1 988 had achieved his first convic- tion. It was a rehearsal for his far more dramatic capture by (over)zealous law enforcers in 1 995. (According to a biog- rapher, the feds exaggerated the extent of his crimes.) Mitnick was released in 2003 and quickly impressed the world with a 360° career turnaround: starting up a computer consultancy where he now works for state-approved profit rather than state-mistrusted education and un- restricted adventure. The former FBI Most Wanted pinup boy also publishes books and gives lectures on demand, teaching people all over the world how to stop a cracker like himself from swindling them — in exchange for their money. Call us amoral, but we can't help liking Kevin Mitnick and thinking he's smarter (and funnier) than most Americans. ZX0085
From the sugar-laden innocence of breakfast cereal, to the birth of the tabloid hacker-villain. ...and now on to international espionage and allega- tions of treason. No one better embod- ies the sexy glamor of the scene today than Julian Assange, who could face the death penalty if found guilty of revealing the unsavory truth about the American military, by the American mil- itary. Sought after by loyal comrades and the U.S. Defense Department alike, Assange is so famous he had to request asylum at the Ecuadorean Embassy in England to escape the attentions of his fans. U.S. statesmen have excoriated Assange for Wiki-leaking evidence of shady behavior on the part of the U.S. government, like destroying evidence of human rights violations and abuse in Guantanamo and Iraq. So far, Assange remains defiant. "We will continue our fight against the financial blockade," he stated from asylum in November, "and we will continue to publish."
We now return to our regularly scheduled program, "Geeks & Depression" by Daravinne,
continued from ZxooyB — wwz
and damaged my neurochernistTy overusing the only thing that made me feel happy. The drugs did allow me to access the internal structure of my problems t and after bottoming out and almost choosing sukEde, i sought help arid began the long, slow process of building a seitse of self-worth where there had never been any.
After the talk, the panel host, geek-therapist Robin De Bates, held a workshop called tr How to Help Sen cone Else's Crisis Without Creating One of Your Own". She started oft with some basic silly kebreaker group-therapy exercises. Each of us wrote down something about themselves that they did not want other people to know on a piece of paper, and folded it. Then she told us ia pass ifte roldcd paper <o the person to the left. Some people had nothing they felt had about h a ving ot hers kn o w. Others got very nervous when they had to pass th e paper over, Rob in said this exercise was meant to explore feelings of trust or mistrust of the people around you. A few of us pointed out that since we're hackery we're trained and conditioned to think and act as if we're always in ar untrustworthy environment- Tiguring out how to trust another person is a double^blnd. Vou can't |ust say "hey, I need to figure out If I can trust you or not 11 , or let the other person know you're trying to gauge them, because that gives chern the opportunity to manipu- late their responses to fool your specific criteria. At the same time you also need information f-om th-^ri thrir Ipts v:jm vnv,- f htk! ht:w mm I: you c v rnmt thpin, hnH :liK information h ^ t:s be gathered canef jtly and invisibly.
The meat of the workshop was learning to set a boundary when another person was leaning too heavily on you for support. The hackers pointed out that that's another double-bind. To simply ■set 3 boundary, **$y er i'v*e had enough and vanish on a person who has been either desperate and brave enough to seek help from you breaks the already fragile trust they have placed in you. Everyone in the room kru-w how it felt to be on the receiving end of such a rejection and was very reluctant to do it to another person. When it is already so hard to trust that someone else will not use a vulnerability to hurt you d no on c wanted to put a person in crisii in a possibly more dangerous situation where they feel more alone, abandoned or helpless than they did before „ and may be more likely to harm themselves or take some kind of extreme action. At the same time everyone ^knowledged that it was untenable to be the sole support for someone in dis- tress. We needed another solution.
Tru^t is naturally hard in the hacker community. Deceit and intrusion are our livelihoods, Creat- ing and maintaining person -to-per son support networks is tricky P and very dependent on indi- viduals choosing not to be assholes, if you trust soniM nt: p whether it's with your server or your emotional states, and they break that trust it is that much harder to trust the next person. If your trust is broken after a length of time h it takes longer than Ehat length of Lime Lo trust the nest person. If your trust is broken after a set of actions that were meant to create trust, it takes more and greater trust-building actions to trust the next person. And so on. Eventually you can't confide in anyone or feel that pnyone has your bxK and you feel more and inorc alone* isola-
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1
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• **
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The whole gang
1
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L Hack the (depressed) P/dnet: Geeks and Depresifon at HOPE 9
On July 14th 2012, 1 sat on a psnel in the Sassarnan track of MOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) g h witli Miuii Altmarip ow of th* founder* uf Nuiwbr id^e; Jfnnmte Rodgers, a hardware hacking teacher with Mitch's company; and Meredith Patterson cryptography researcher and widow of the man who this mom was temporarily named after. Earlier that year I and this same group did a 20 minute on-the-% version erf this panel in Germany, during the 2&C3 hackercon. Today we had zin ei'.irc hour and a half to speak to a packed room. I was about to talk about bein^ depressed on a stage at iny former local hacker con; in the city 1 lived and worked in for 7 years but was no longer my home, in front of people who I would never have admitted being depressed to out of fear of being targeted for ridicule or harassment.
Mitch AJtrrwi used to be bullied by his peers En school and sought refuge in watching TV- He dealt with addiction to both distractions and substances. After a long period of depression from trying to be what other people wanted from hircij he came out as gay and pursued a life that brings him joy. He is one of the founders of Noisebridfee B creator of the TV-B-Cone P and travels the world teaching people how to build I - severs paces and solder,
JiTTimie Rodgers has wrestled with depression and feelings of inadequacy since he was a teen- ager. He almost committed suicide at age 16^ but stopped with a gun in his hand upon realiz- ing the effect his death would have on his family and friends. He continues to face significant periods of sadness and cycles through depressed and manic states, and helps teach Mitch's soldering workshops.
Meredith Patterson was married to Lhe late Len Sassaman, a prominent cypherpunk h cryp- tographer and privacy advocate, Len hid his chronic physical arid mental health problems from everyone except his wife and close triendSj and last year chose to end his lite. Meredith vpt-aks (]|H;nly ,i::di.: "is stury, hupin^ ta hdp ri-nmvc thf vti^rriri of mmtril vcM\ prohk ris and depression that contributed to Len's death.
I have post traumatic stress disorder from severe long term abuse as a child, I grew up being beaten, screamed at> isolated, and emotionally manipulated. As an adult I encountered peo- ple j.mr a-, tU n^iJ hi-ic! rhi.MVr ,-:sthe ntrscin w\n: or rul y Ahi:wt\ rre; I n^t rrnny cf the-n in the hacker community. The hacker community helped me find Che tools I needed to stay independent after leaving an abusive home, but at the same time many of thf Mtn-jplt*- hrj< It- ers- I met there abused me emotionally and physically, I didn*t have a lot of the supportive experiences J innmic talked about; as a female in the hacker scene before hacking got "Lrcndy" for women I wa^ targeted fur Mr dement drid slut-b-hdmin^ by men jnd women. I had no cop- ing skrl Is for this kind of treatment except s hutting down and with drawing soc ial I y r Eventu a lly I became a paranoid hermit for several years. I found drugs (psychoactives and ethenogens).
Take some time to absorb what you've already read, check out some visual art for the next couple pages, then resume Daravinne's essay on ZxooyE ~wwz
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s been the capital of Korea since the days ofthejoseon Dynasty (1392 AD), and today
azzling metropolis of 11 million, dubbed "the soul of Asia"; but it has never had a
akerfaire of its own — until now! Globetrotting biohacker FrantisekApfelbeck sends us
Firs
y raire
IT WAS WITHIN the first 2 weeks of my time in Seoul that I was told the first Korean Maker Faire, organized by Make Magazine, would take place in the Hongik University neighborhood the first weekend of June. I quickly signed on with my "experimental incubator" project and started to prepare for an event that would be a "premiere" for both me and South Korea.
The event came way sooner than expected. My project was still "in progress," so I was very glad that I had also signed on to give a probiotics workshop. In this way I could participate and do what I loved while re- taining my honor as a hacker. On day one of Maker Faire Seoul — Saturday June 2, 2012 — I packed my gear at Hacker Space Seoul (HSS) and loaded up as a small "mo-
bile home" set off for the local
jrfHP subway. I had never been to the ^C^*" exposition place, but thanks to good directions from my Korean friends I had to ask for help only once. Our maker faire was hosted
by
or Apfelbeck
by a well-established experimental art space in the city called SE0GY0. It was a very nice venue with an enjoyable atmo- sphere. Of course, in the moment every- one was zooming around like crazy my- self included, since I'd arrived a bit late.
I was given the choice of staying at the Hackerspace Seoul table on the first floor or moving to the roof to carry out my pro- biotics adventures. Since the weather was nice and the roof spot had a nice kitchen corner, I betrayed my fellow hackers on the spot and I can't say I regret it: the roof was just perfect. People used it during the event to hang out, have a chat, watch the quadrocopters demos: it made a nice and cozy social space.
continued next page >
1
2x009
Z i P wega
Frantisek serving at Maker Faire Seoul 2012
I set up quickly and within half an hour the first
guests had arrived. I introduced probiotic bev-
erages made from kombucha-, kefir- and wa-
ter kefir-based cultures with various flavours
ranging from Earl Grey tea, hibiscus and rose
hips to ginger beer classic. Meanwhile, my ex-
periment with a traditional Czech dish called
livance came off well. Livance is a baker's yeast-
fermented version of pancakes, nice and fluffy;
I served it with a bit of strawberry jam and ke-
fir cheese (strained kefir yogurt coagulate) and
people just loved it! With a sip of ginger beer
or a nice honey cooler, blue sky above, quadro-
copters zooming in the background — life was
good!
On that first Saturday we opened to the crowd around 11am, closed at 6pm, and hosted ap- proximately 500 people total: really a nice turnout for a premiere event. The afterparty for the makers came as a really nice surprise to me because I had no clue anything was hap- pening later on. (My Korean is still on the level of "^Donde esta la biblioteca?") We had some beer, barbeque, beer, snacks, beer, and a chance to mingle, which had been impossible during the event. I promised to visit the other makers and check out their projects the next day. Be- fore 10pm I went t pm I went to spend a lovely night in the nearby park so I would be fresh for the next day.
10pm I went to spend a lovely night in the nearby park so I would be fresh for the next day.
Weather on Sunday June 3 was even hotter, so the consumption of beverages increased. I got ready for another day at the faire, preparing some "higher oc- tane" beverages — results from my previous trips to "Seoul Moonshiners educational events" at Su- subori Academy. I managed to spare a half hour to run around and see the other projects, and found I could play my favorite game, Golden Axe, on the "Arduino-based Bluetooth joystick." It was a great nostalgia trip back to my gaming manias of the late '80s and early '90s. Thank the gods they did not have Populous* — that would have been too much!
Another really cool project was a special infrared sensor system, in which you stepped beneath radi- ant LED diodes of various colours placed around you in a circle. This created a "dancing shadow" and continued next page >
- Populous, developed by Bullfrog in 1989, is often re-
garded as the first 'PC God' game.
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GEEKS
and
depression.
or: How I learned to stop worrying and- no, actually,. I never stopped worrying
"Depression \& humiliating.
It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can h t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects fhe ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe valje to your childran, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news,
- =rr -eplace-s it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure no delight, no point in anything
outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can't comport yourself socially r you risk your job n?r^.i^ yg j :an T t concentrate, \r.\. I'vr- r nodprat^ vri.akr her au«e yni. have rr- ^rer^y to staid .in, let alone take out the garbage. Vou become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge- Vou have no perspective, no emotional reserve.*, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamfd of your inability to deal with life lite a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. Depression is humiliating.
If you've never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and: hack off the folks who take 3 pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent nonmal life- rs not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world- It's an incapacity to function. At all- If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing toyou~ If depression h;^ taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. Depression is humiliating.
No one fh-on^s it- No one deserves it- It run^ in families, it ryins families. V0.1 ;.inn^t imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay hills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on band, wtien you art everting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression Is real, Just because youVe never had it doesn't make it imaginary. Compassion is also real ^rd a depressed person may ding desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression, Have a heart, Judge not lest ye be judged/'
Soulier http^hrr^s/romd'arkn^
IS NOISEBRIDGE AN ANARCHIST HACKERSPACE?
continued from previous page
Hackerspaces take the strongest hint of a potential model for real world communities from lessons learnt in dealing with the non- geographical affinity groups of their own backgrounds, and the tools they build collectively to facilitate that growth. Noisebridge, in particular, is an ongoing experiment in how far you can take those principles and ways of living What happens when you open a place as widely as a wiki, where anyone can edit, and no one can revert? What happens when you declare that the only rule is mu- tual co-operation, and that everyone is responsible for the space and well-being of the group as a whole? If we all have a deepset revulsion to enforced surveillance — gleaned from a million dead- end jobs and a shared techno-knack for extrapolating subtle instru- ments of control to their terrifying conclusions — what happens when we deny ourselves those instruments, even as we seek to con- trol our own lives and live-and-work spaces?
These are answers that can't be snappily given. You can write all
the code you want, but the only way to see if it works is to execute
the program, watch it crash, edit, rinse and repeat. The only real
response consists in living out the ideas and seeing what they spell.
— Is Noisebridge an Anarchist Hackerspace? Not until everywhere
else is an Anarchist Hackerspace too! Or at least, that's the plan...
D. O'B
SXbl
■ Am*
[SrkB EH lSs Hi
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continued from previous page
really nice visual effects. The LED started to flicker at various speeds and frequencies. Unfortunately, for a better description you will have to check out one of the videos — http://blog.makezine.com/2012/06/09/ my-video-journal-of-maker-faire-seoul — since my attention wandered to the lovely Ko- rean girl who was demonstrating the system, standing oh-so-close to me.
One project was really funny. Somebody came up with the idea of recording the voice of a willing subject and playing it in stereo through a specially designed set of "origami style" paper lips called Big Mouth. The re- sult was great, with the exception of having to face the unpleasant truth about my talents as a singer. You can see it in action at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryk5a3JFJPE.
After wending my way through various other projects I popped in at the HSS table where people were learning how to solder and as- semble special kits that made horrible sounds based on the amount of light they received. At least I hope that was the principle; it was dif- ficult to stick around long enough to find out the "source of the horror."
At the end of the tour I have to say I was im- pressed. This was the first time I've taken part in an event like this and I really liked it and so, it seemed, did the Koreans and expa- triates who joined us. I think it's a wonderful opportunity to explore the diverse creative endeavors of various people in locations all across the globe at a grassroots level, and an excellent showcase for alternatives to typi- cal modern corporate-consumer product development.
I wish the best of luck to projects like Maker Faire Seoul and hope to participate again in the near future!
Sincerely from Seoul,
Fran tisek Algoldor Apfelbeck
Check out further coverage of Maker Faire Seoul 2012 at http://www.make.co.kr/?page_id=i336
Please also visit Frantisek on his blog at http : //kvaseni. wordpre s s . com/
"Seoul we create together Seoul we enjoy together. "
m\ ¥&l^ *|#
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But if it's all so intertwined, if we're all sisters and brothers, why not wear the label proudly? Why do we dodge the term? Because hackerdom has also been frequently suspicious of po- litical labels, which means a tendency to veer away from self-defining as a follower of any doctrine, even when they are in fact engaged in a free exchange with the ideas that emanate from and pervade said doctrine. And possibly the worst reason you should adopt a label is because some bunch of people way back when tried to label the place you try to work in that way Who failed to die horribly enough, and left them in charge? Founders should never be trusted.
You see a Godel sentence or two in here, I hope. Noisebridge's own inbuilt cultural reticence to let itself be defined is part of that very congeniality to anarchist process.
In my experience, this is a point of commonality rather than contrast with the anarchist project. For all the lurid depiction of anarchists as unrealistic idealists (or anti-social and violent nihilist), most of the engagingly weird and righteous and hard work in the move- ment gets done by people who have insufficent time for doctrine, and an itch, not to watch the world burn, but to build a better society in the shell of the old. "The priority of life and action to theory and system", as anarchist David Wieck described his view of the philosophy in the 1970s. And as David Graeber described it, the supposed founders of anarchy, like the untrustworthy founders of Noisebridge, believed the project to be more a sort of "insurgent common sense" than a theoretical framework.
Of course, the Official History of the Anarchist Project has not exactly been quoted widely for its pragmatic successes; but that is partly because anarchists, like hackers, are not the ones who usually end up writing the documentation (or the marketing brochures). The last thing desired by those in power — whosoever they might be — is a cogent and credible ac- count of social groups cohering and succeeding, without coercion or a dictated plan.
Such possibilities are forever hinted at, though, at the edges of the convenient and conventional story. Some families, happy families, do not live under threat of punishment or a grand and external plan. The nations of the world, proud of their own order, have no one who looks over them when negotiating with each oth- er. And most importantly for hackers, the tools and the processes that they use to create and disseminate their own works rely on co-operation and communication more than coercion and fixed roles.
concluded on next page— »>
Jlnarchafemmist JEj^ackerhi
ve
by Qtzzard
THERE WERE a patently feminist, or womanist, version of Anonymous — an enclave of women working and hacking together — what would it be like? How would our intersectionalities play out? What would a womanist or black women's perspective bring to the hacking table? Latina, or First Nations? What social justice causes would they champion, and who would be the targets of their mischief? What or who would guide and inspire them?
"Mischief," did I say? YES . Feminists can be in it for the lulz. We aren't always noble con- sciousness-raising peace warriors engaged in civil discourse. We are also genius tricksters, un- ruly mobs of angry trolls. Civil discourse is the preferred mode of conduct among equals, but can work against us and in support of oppression when dealing with state and other patriarchal forc- es. Some of us like to mix it up, j keep it fresh now and then with a ittle hackery mayhem.
Feminist hackers might take leaked data — government or cor- porate — and mine it for salary inequity information, chauvinist behavior, sexual harassment, or any other data of particular in-
terest to women that should be brought to light.
What software should we be writing that would be more of a bomb-throw than the usual namby-pamby, "wom- en's safety" iPhone app that checks if you walked home from the bar safely? tools to build for our securi- ty and privacy, as well as to facilitate in- formation gath- ering?
Why doesn't NameThatRapist . com exist already? Imag- ine the backlash: the DDOSing, the legal battles, the defama- tion lawsuits — and what a target it would make of its ad- mins and users ! How would it work? Why hasn't it happened yet, while (natural- ly) Name Your False Accuser has?*
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The Anarchafeminist Hackerhive holds a hivemoot every Wednes- day, 6pm in the Noisebridge li- brary NEWCOMERS WELCOME!
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That's why we don't have leaders. That's why we actively scan for anybody who wants to take charge, and escort them to the door. That's why everybody on the board stands on an explicit "the board should have no power" platform. That's why the first ten minutes of Meeting are devoted to people declaiming against any suggestion that anyone at Noisebridge has privileges beyond anyone else, and then pouring scorn on anyone who seeks to aggrandise it. That's why you're suspicious, already, that the pretext of this paragraph hides some hidden nexus of influence, and have already set upon seek- ing it out and eliminating it when you're next around.
There are some pretty obvious reasons why hackers, makers, and hackerspace makers might be attracted to an anarchistic cluster of institutional ideas. I think it's uncontro- versial to suggest that hacker culture is dis- tinctly anti-authoritarian, and suspicious of centralisation and hierarchies. The culture is not on a mission to unravel or demolish ex- isting structures, but is certainly determined to route around them if problematic. To be amenable to the hacker notion of progress, reality, including political reality, needs to be flexible and relocatable and repurposable and
rational. Monkey power structures, stolid implacable bosses, creeds, credos and violence are the allergenic nuts in the otherwise chewable nougat of the world.
Magic 8-ball says: ANAR
CHIST
HACKER SPACE?
r
(And yes, I know Zuckerberg talked "the Hacker Way" in his SEC IPO documents. Every
generation has its exploits; every Foundation has its Mule.)
Hackers have many distractions and obsessions, some of which make them billionaires and some of which make them homeless, but it's fair to say that most of those behavioural attractors arc their personal histories toward self-empowerment, radical decentralisation, and at least some intent to disintegrate the bonds of power.
There's a shared vector here, then, with the anarchist project. Hacker Uto- pias are rarely ones with the perfect admirable execution of state control or ever-more-svelte technologies of coercion. I don't think that's a coinci- dence. I can bore you on a separate occasion regarding the deeply-buried tendrils that connect, at a distance, the separated tribes of the Late-20th- Century free software/free speech/free thinking hackers, with the WTO- fighting, direct action Zapatistas of roughly the same period.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Back in the ZiFoiX {ays, Danny O'Brien suggested Bound To-l I ether anarchist bookstore in the Haight as i possible distro. We had a phone chat withl fTom Alder of Bound Together duri
m!p^ng which he asked us ifNoisebridgeX was an anarchist space. Mr. Alder'r question led to this essay.
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And nOW, for your mingled entertainment and
edification, DANNY O'BRIEN tackles the question
1 Is NOISEBR1DGE An
- Hackerspace?
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«Jk HE APPROPRIATE ANSWER to the question posed above, as with so many things Noisebridge-related, will be the one that ends up turning into a two-hours-long conversation, wide-ranging but broadly inconclusive, during which the inquiring mind(s) who wanted to know will find themselves cleaning the bathroom, or soldering a PCB, or drinking some sort of odd and possibly poisonous new apple vinegar drink, while the askee — the person burdened (or privileged) with answering the question — changes their mind six times and is quite as surprised (even enlightened) by the final answer as the asker.
Then, exactly 30 years later, Scarcity Economics collapses, and we all find our- selves camped inside an abandoned aerogel Bigelow space hotel as it orbits a Legrange point between San Francisco and the Sun. Together we munch on a shared breakfast designed and dispensed by our bootleg 3D printers — powered by free software, whose code and form have mutated a million times since they were first sketched out until their processes and motives are beyond (present) human comprehension. The same morning, for no good reason, the printers out- put little fortune cookies with the Noisebridge logo on them. Inside the cookies it says, "Do you still care about the answer?"
But I imagine you're a bit pushed for time, and I only have four pages on this, so we'll try a more expeditious approach, eh?
www.teanotprison.com
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The Trial of Oshan Cook
by Tony Long shanks LeTigre
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO I attended the Evergreen State College in Olym- pia, Wash, with Oshan "Anand" Cook, proprietor of the Mission-district oa- sis OmShan Tea (233 14th St., just a few blocks north of Noisebridge). He was far more politically active & up on world events than myself, callow sophomore that I was at the time. He convinced me to vol- unteer for Books For Prison- ers, introduced me to Emma Goldman, & constantly chal- lenged my received wisdom re: everything from anarchy to electronic music to hitchhiking. We were friends until I moved to Seattle in '98 8c we lost touch for a very long time.
Last year during a spell of nos- talgia I was Google-searching old friends 8c discovered that Oshan lives in the Bay Area as well. He invited me to Om- Shan for tea 8c one afternoon in early March 2012 we recon- nected over a fragrant pot of Oshan's favorite pu'er, import- ed from the Yunnan Province. Oshan managed to serve tea, clean up 8c help his other cus- tomers all without losing the thread of our conversation. We
discussed tea, old friends 8c earth- quakes ("I love earthquakes, they're so erotic," he said) but didn't touch on the heaviest subject weighing on my mind 8c surely more so on his: that Oshan had been accused of distributing MDMA 8c LSD by the federal government, with a trial set to begin July 23rd.
I attended the second day of that trial in Judge White's courtroom. The evidence didn't look good, but Oshan pled Not Guilty 8c I believe him, such is his integrity. The jury of randomly selected San Francis-
zx008E
co citizens end- ed up split, with 3 jurors refus- ing to convict. Oshan gained a
reprieve, but it i pf i sun , com was all tQ0 tem _
porary: the feds retried the case, 8c in early November they got their verdict: Guilty. ("Some- thing happened to the judge, he's more hostile now," Oshan IM'ed me at the start of the second trial.) The charges in question carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 to 15 years in federal prison. Immedi- ately following the verdict, Os- han was taken into custody. He is to spend several months in jail awaiting sentencing, after which he will be transferred to federal prison — which it turns out, from everything I've heard, is much preferable to Oakland jail 8c far better than California state prison.
Still, it's hard to find any silver lining in this grim scenario: a young man in the prime of his life, also a community leader 8c one of the most philanthropic, spiritually conscious human beings I've been privileged to know, is going to prison for 10
y
modern digital According to his CV, he from UC-Santa Cruz in 1 990, then spent a couple years skills at the Alhambra in Granada. In 1993 he studied the paper instructor Shuzo Fujimoto in Sasayama-Cho, Japan, from which he developed of crease patterns. Eventually he came up with proprietary techniques for translating patterns into uniquely folded textiles, which he named "shadowfolds." Palmer is now CAD- for the College of Environmental Design at UC-Berkeley, & also teaches summer workshops folding techniques at San Francisco's Exploratorium (3601 Lyon St.) Shadowfolds was co-written Jeffrey Rutzky. Visit them online or inquire about workshops & commissions at www.shadowfolds.com.
continued from previous page years or more due to the stigma attached to substances which, in our opinion, not only should NOT be criminalized, but ought to be studied further for their potential medicinal & psychiatric benefits. Meanwhile, the handsomely decorated teahouse and wellness center, OmShan — intended to provide the community with "an alternative to drug & alcohol abuse" — has closed due to legal fees resulting from the trial. In an open letter posted to his Facebook page 8c website (www.teanot- prison.com), Oshan asserted that federal prosecutors "blatantly lied 8c contradicted one another while testifying" 8c described life at Glenn Dyer Detention Facility in Oakland, where he is con- fined to a 100-square-foot cell 21 hours of every day along with his cellmate (a Mexican gangster), with "one small slit of a window" he can't see out of, allowed just 10 minutes to eat meals consist- ing of "disgusting 8c unhealthy food." Oshan concluded the letter by asking friends to attend his sentencing — now pushed back to Feb. 28th — 8c to write character reference letters on his behalf. These should be emailed to AaronZenStevens@gmail.com. +11+
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YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO VELCRO, BUT THAT DOESN T MAKE ANY SENSE.
mu sequbtUR NEWS
Every so often rumor reaches us of "things" that supposedly ri heppen H in the world outside hoisebridge. We don't really care, but just in cms you do__
DEFCON
SEMI- RECENT EVENTS OF DUBIOUS
WTBREST
Photo of a hacker hacking at DefCon 20, © 2012, Reuters
Jim
space founders
Coast and the South with
traps for hacker spaces , "
summer, Ra- 1 . 0 forwarded NO I SEBR I DGE- SCUSS an ema i I , i g i na I I y posted I to the ACE MONSTER TOYS (AMT) email list, by a hacker attending DEFCON 20. "Notes from a Hackerspace Pan- el 28 July 2012" summed up a dis- cussion by hacker- predominant I y from the East a list of "six common
name I y :
1 . "We don't do that here"
2. Clubhouse/Partying
3. Leader-w i th-a-v i s i on
4. S i ng I e-po i nt-of -f a i I ure
5. Tasmanian Devil Trap
6. OMG Moneyz
"My take is that NB suffers a bit from prob- lem 5, and is susceptible to 1 and 2, but has managed to avoid the rest," Rachel added. "Yay us!" We here at ZiP would add to the list for Noisebridge such perennial threats as:
7. Verm i n/ I nf estat i on (insect, rodent, human)
8. Sleep deprivation
9 . Hippies
10. DRAMA (Justin Doerr — priceless gold!)
11. Rampant Wingnuttery (Cynthia)
12. Sporadic severe general Unexcellence What'd we forget?
M Ihi. H*ru riwr [fh'i mmm m
MAKER FA I RE
We basically didn't leave the Mission for like a year, so we missed Maker Faire, along with everything else that happened outside our socially crippled
iNo i sebubb I e . But we vaguely remember it being Kind of a Big Deal back in May or something, not long after ZiP02 came out. Jake SPAZ used it as a fo- rum to protest DARPA, which is appar- ently a government program that exposes its genitals to children (whose pervy parents actually encourage it!) We re- member because we gave Alan a bunch of print copies of the zine to reprezent at the faire, which was held way out in Ingleview or Crockerwood or Hesitacion Valley or whatnot. Supposedly ZIP02s were going for 10 clams apiece, getting
la good response from Fairegoers includ- ing (according to Casey C.) the online editor of POPULAR MECHANICS, Andrew Moseman. We don't know which is more surprising: that Moseman wasn't turned off by our ANARCHY ENEMA theme, or that, apparently, we didn't give him a copy!
M\ zip
MFGA
- H I'm
continued from previous page
with invisible files that the Finder ig- nored. The next summer I demoed Genie at Mac-Hack 15' s Best Hack contest (provid- ing a counterpoint to the development of Mac OS x). But despite the intensity of my efforts, Genie got off to a modest start. The first revision checked into SourceForge (in March 2001) was a mono- lithic, single-threaded application. The shell was built into the kernel, and ev- ery command was a shell built-in. There was no POSIX API yet; all filing opera- tions used Mac OS routines. I hadn't yet learned about RAII or smart pointers; for memory management, I actually im- plemented NeXTStep autorelease pools in C++, in short, I really didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Yet
PART FOUR: MACRELIX
After more than a decade of development, I finally thought of a workable name: MacRelix. It started with the prefix 'Mac', clearly marking it as a Mac applica- tion. As the name of a Unix-like system, it satisfied the convention of ending in either 'ux' or 'ix'. And the play on 'relics' was just the right amount of self-effacement, as well as a clue that MacRelix was more at home in the 1990s — a prior century (or even millennium) in the software world.
Nowadays, MacRelix has pipes, signals, system calls, TCP sockets, and more, it works on both 68K and PowerPC Mac systems and builds as Carbon to run natively in OS X. It can be used on any Mac OS ver- sion from System 7 to Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" (after which Apple removed the Rosetta PowerPC emulator). I haven't im- plemented fork() yet, but I know how to do it.
in addition to a Unix-like file system interface (which handles long names by storing them in the Desktop data- base comment fields), MacRelix has a /proc filesystem (with human-readable stack crawls) and also maps various parts of Mac OS (e.g. the ROM image i n /sys /mac/rom) .
it even has a virtual filesystem as a portable windowing API, called FORGE (Fi 1 e-Ori en ted , Reflect i ve Graphi cal Environment), which may be the most important feature of all. Eventually I'll set aside MacRelix, along with the rest of classic Mac OS, but FORGE is a concept that you'll see on mod- ern Unix-based systems in the future (and perhaps in the next chapter of ZiP).
-JJ-
Zx0093
MACRELIX ORIGINS
by Josh Juran
PART ONE: CODEWARRIOR
IN THE mid-1990s, I was using Me- trowerks' CodeWarrior development sys- tem for Mac OS. while it was a decent example of an integrated Development Environment, I began to chafe under its rigidity. Like any proper Macintosh ap- plication, it stored data in binary file formats, to which it provided access through dialog boxes and other windows. Aside from one's own source code, there wasn't a text file in sight.
while the project manager metaphor was ostensibly user-friendly, the opaque file containing the details of one's project didn't play nicely with ver- sion control. Not only was generating a diff impossible, but merely opening the project in the IDE would update its modification timestamp, so it always appeared to systems like CVS that it had been modified. MacCVS Pro actually included special logic to detect this situation and ignore it.
Then came target multiplication, where- as the initial CodeWarrior developer releases shipped with each combination of language (C and Pascal) and archi- tecture (68k and PPC) supported in a separate application, a later version of the IDE unified these, allowing the developer to have a single project file per project. To allow the same proj- ect to be built for both 68K and PPC architectures, the project data model
Zx0090
included targets: one target would com- pile for 68K and link against 68K li- braries, another would do the same for PPC. Targets could also be used to se- lect an optimized build versus one for debugging. Combining both dichotomies yields four targets: 68K debug, 68K
Remember when Code was young?
optimized, PPC debug, and PPC opti- mized. Then if your project involves multiple executables — like a code re- source or shared library in addition to an application — you now have eight targets. Or if you support one of, say, 68020 optimizations, profiling, or a third executable, make that twelve. Or, for all of them, twenty-seven.
Even with only four targets, the pro- cess of changing an option uniformly across all four required visiting the Preferences dialog for each target in turn. Besides being tedious, this is error prone. If the project file had used a human readable text format, you could have verified by viewing the diff that (for example) the same new header search directory had been added, in the same order, to each target, instead, you had to just do it right.
Even better, of course, would be the
ability to specify information common to all targets in a single place. And avoiding altogether the need to specify anything covered by default assumptions would be better yet. I realized that if I wanted a system built to my specifica- tions, I'd have to be the one to build it. it was time to leave behind the mass-produced branded erector set and set up a workshop.
PART TWO : MPW
inspired by the example of Matthias Neeracher, author of MacPerl , I in- stalled MPW, Apple's Macintosh Program- mer's Workshop. MPW was an IDE in the sense that a single application, MPW Shell, provided text editing, project management, and a suite of developer tools. But it also loosely mimicked Unix — it featured a plugin interface resem- bling standard I/O (including command- line arguments, filehandles, and envi- ronment variables) and a built-in shell scripting language.
However, very much unlike Unix, the MPW Shell had only a single thread of execu- tion — only one program could be run- ning at once. Not only that, but there was no way for MPW's compiled plugins (called tools) to invoke other tools or scripts — not even via system() (which blocks the calling program until the called program exits). Therefore, Make couldn't actually do anything, but only printed out the commands for the user to run manually. You could code in Perl instead of the built-in language, but then your scripts couldn't run other programs — only MPW shell scripts could do that.
I was incredulous. How could a product whose design was so obviously derived
from Unix end up so far removed from it?
(Allow me to emphasize how starkly this contrasts: In Unix, compiled programs are first-class citizens - they can do anything - with scripts a very close second. A script can name in its first line an interpreter program that will be used to run it. Compiled programs (called 'binaries', since they're not text) and scripts are nearly equal in ability - the only exception being that the setuid flag is commonly ignored for scripts, for security reasons. The Unix equivalent of MPW's restrictions would be an OS with a single shell scripting language interpreter compiled into the kernel and no user-level fork or exec calls.)
MPW's scripting language was strictly imperative, having loops but no means to define functions. If you needed a function, you had to provide it as an executable (and if it needed to call other programs, then it had to be an MPW shell script as well). Arguments passed this way were subject to addi- tional evaluation (again, unlike Unix), so to properly escape them you had to know how deeply they'd be passed. The build tool I eventually cobbled to- gether was a hodgepodge of Perl, dmake fragments (since I didn't touch the built-in Make), and, naturally, MPW shell scripts, including one script whose sole function was to output its arguments doubly-escaped: so that when applied, it would cancel out the one level of evaluation that occurred just by calling it, for a net effect of es- caping once. I could then apply this script to a set of arguments as many times as needed. Of course, each invo- cation had to read the script text from its file: yet another trip through the Continued on the next page >
Device Manager, classic Mac OS' legend-
arily slow I/O subsystem.
The end result was that my build tool took over 30 seconds just to determine that everything was up to date. What. The. Hell.
While MPW was amazingly robust — I'd never seen it crash once — I consid- ered it deeply flawed for its functional limitations, it was unthinkable to me how someone could be inspired by Unix's combination of simplicity, power and elegance, and then deliberately create a new system lacking those very qual- ities. Especially when, given enough time, even a novice like myself could surely do it.
I remained outraged until I realized the truth of my previous thought: I could do it. Sure, it would be a lot of work, and I'd have to figure out how to do system calls, concurrent process- es, vfork() and execve(), signals, and a Unix-like view of the Mac file sys- tem, and fork() was possibly out of the question, but it was definitely doable (given enough time).
The choice was obvious.
PART THREE: GENIE AND LAMP
Having had enough of MPW's limita- tions, I set out to create a replace- ment. The first thing I needed was a name.
Douglas Hofstadter had written in Metamagical Themas how Lisp's REPL (read-eval -pri nt loop) reminded him of a genie, in that you gave it commands, and it performed them (and displayed the results). Aside from needing a Unix shell instead of Lisp, this image was precisely what I had in mind, and I adopted the name Genie for my new project. Then I realized that the name Genie, in addition to being confused with the commercial online service GEnie, conveyed very little informa- tion about the project: even if you did get the reference, Genie was far more than just a shell. My ultimate goal was nothing less than making as much of Unix as possible available in classic Mac OS.
That said, it was unlikely that I would ever achieve standards-confor- mance, and drawing on another Hof- stadter reference (to the dialogue "Little Harmonic Labyrinth" from Godel, Escher, Bach, in which a genie is sum- moned from a lamp), as well as aping the recursive acronym GNU (GNU's Not Unix), I renamed the project to LAMP (lamp Ain't Mac posix). (posix is a standardized specification for operat- ing systems, and is a subset of Unix.) I soon recased lamp to Lamp to ward off yet more confusion with the other LAMP (Li nux/Apache/MySQL/Perl ) unti 1 I could come up with a better name.
I began development in the latter part of 1999. Before the year ended, I had used Genie at my workplace to deal