Sizes: 14MB and 30MB respectively.

Guerilla Drive-In is an outdoor movie theatre under the stars that springs up unexpectedly in the fields and industrial wastelands. Beyond showing great movies and bringing a broad community together, part of our mission is helping reclaim public space and transforming our urban environment into the joyful playground it should be.

…write the organizers. There’s a Tribe.net Tribe, if you’re into that kind of thing, and a mailing list to keep abreast of changes and places on the website. Check it out, it’s worth it.

Meet the Vloggers will happen on Sunday, July 31st 2005 from 7 to 9pm at the San Francisco Apple store. Bring cameras…

Whow, an “Anti-Capitalist” insisting on his skewed idea of copyright. That’s just rich!

When amoeba like these protesters start vandalizing a city, it’s more than just mischief or protest, it’s a declaration of war. It’s my city, as well. I said it past the election, and I say it now — there’s no honor in complacency. Wether it’s an Administration using illegal force in Iraq or a bunch of wannabe hardcore kids using force against buildings and police officers in the city, it’s wrong. And unless we take a stand against it, use all means and approaches legally available to us, we’re no better. Protesting Iraq? Definitely! Letting the attacks on a cop slide, because he somehow represents something we associate with being wrong? Never!

Screwing with my city screws with me. “But you don’t cover the protesters being beaten”, cries the “anarchist”. You know what? I’ll be more than happy to cover protesters being beaten and take a stance against police if I must. Morons who took to destroy parts of my city, and either participated in or stood by tolerating the violence against cops and objects, I fathom need a good beating and more. Walking past someone throwing stones, bottles, colored goo, or other things at houses, cars, and cops, without standing up and confronting the attcker makes you one of them. There’s no difference in complacently tolerating the war by not standing up against it, and tolerating this behavior. You’re no better than them, and your being beaten is perfectly OK in my book. Actually, if anything, I think it’s a bit mild of a reaction.

Join the Webzinesters tonight at the House of Shields for a Drinkup, a glimpse in what will happen during Webzine 2005, and have a beer with me, because it’s my birthday as well. So, you’re coming?

See my weblog for some more details, the Upcoming.org event posting, and the Webzine announcement.

You’re punk. Every morning, you rise and shine from your Select Comfort bed, pass the other 1.4 children’s bedrooms your lawyer/teacher family has produced, heading down to reject a bowl of cereal and see your mother’s worried eyes as you tell her to shove the capitalist shit where it stings. You throw on your “Exploited” leather jacket, the one with the 27 studs you bought from Hot Topic, and grab your “Rancid” schoolbag, which you ordered from a shop in Oakland.

Today is not the day to go to school. Screw school, school is for lame normalos. You’ll be at the mall, with Witch, Sid, and a girl called Spiderbride, who is more Goth than Punk, but Sid, who is 16 and goes by his real name, Abraham, whenever ID showing is involved, loves her and wants to marry her. You’ll be in the food court, looking for guys like me to give you a cigarette, spend your allowance on black lipstick and a bagel dog from Wetzel’s Pretzels. You’re extreme, you’re peak extreme hardcore, and one day you hope you’ll die like Nancy, Sid standing over you with a shotgun. That’s punk.

Fekkin’ eh! It’s not. When I was your age, we skipped school to hang out at the condemned building at the end of town. No way would anyone have caught us dead in a temple of capitalist commerce like a mall. We drank, but few smoked. Smoking was so not us, giving money to the capitalist pigs whose lobbies made more money than all of Africa had to feed her children (or, so we argued). We listened to music, drank beer, and told tall tales of the one day we’d been fighting the Skinheads one town over. Only one of us, Richard, had a band label on his jacket, and he earned it, eloping at age 16 to go tour with KarmaKiller. We read Nietsche and Marx, discussed Pol Pot and then went to pogue out at some club. When we went home, we didn’t respect our parents either, but few of us insulted them. And we weren’t even Punk. We were normal, angst-ridden, teenagers. We had hangovers, sex, and fights with the Skins. We tried drugs, some got it, some didn’t. One guy ODd a few years later, others went on to become cops, lawyers, or surgeons. We had our teenage years, and we’re better people for it, I believe.

You, San Francisco punks, are a lot like the City you live in. A facade, fake and based on your idea of what a Punk is. Substance matters less than style, you wouldn’t dream of reading Marx, and who cares, you have the ‘hawk and the studs, you’re an extreme teenager.

I saw a few of you down south in Santa Cruz, burning a few US flags. That’s hardcore? No, that’s stupid. When you drive home in your mother’s Minivan, think about the hypocrite you are and will most likely stay for a long time. Ask me for a cigarette again, and I’ll tell you what I think of you. Or I might not. After all, I am just an old fart, who’s never been as extremely hardcore as you are.

Now, in theory I agree. I, too, don’t want the BoS infringing on my rights. I, too, feel compelled to stand up and speak up against a climate in which “freedom” is more or less a hollow phrase wrapped around the restrictive climate of “political correctness” and “I’m OK, you’re OK” bullshit.

In practice, however, this means aligning myself with a bunch of rightwingers whose goals include the strengthening of the NRA, a group of gun nuts whose guts I hate almost more than those of the anti-gun lobby. I have the choice between a Klan-springoff and the SF liberals, and neither group makes me very happy.

I support the Brady bill, oppose the sale of firearms at swap-meets without documentation or background check, and am a strong advocate of mandatory gun-safety training and re-evaluations on a timely basis. And, oh, if there’d be a law to send those possessing firearms unregistered to a pound-me-in-the-butt federal prison for all eternity, I’d be all for it, as well. Guess what, the only group fighting for my right to have a gun, however, wants to do away with Brady, kill background checks, sell guns to pretty much any domestic and foreign terrorist, and thinks it’s cool to get drunk and shoot at beer cans.

So, what’s an upstanding Patriot going to do. Stay silent? Not a chance in the world. Align himself or herself with the rightwingers? I’d rather sheer off my left nut with a belt-sander.

Does anyone have a solution? Other than moving to Montana, that is.