Four Minutes to Midnight 03

23:56 ISSUE THREE OCTOBER 1/2 2004

(...)

Via email, you asked a few interested parties, myself included, to summarize the dialogue thus far in relation to your project, claiming that this might result in a dialogue on dialogue. While I see the

value of this exercise, for you and for all of us, I just don’t see that as the result of said exercise. Rather than dialogue, this seems like a collection of monologues for you to then collate and reinterpret.

It’s a continuation of what, to me, has been an itera-

four minutes to midnight

3

KEVIN LO

MAYA DROZDZ

Dear Kevin,

tive collective endeavour with you as the ringleader,

but it hardly seems like a dialogue on dialogue to me.

However, that was your request, so I’ ll t r y to honor it. While I disagree with you on this particu-

O

n the back cover of the previous issue, I printed a question posed online by anonymous(1); who the fuck cares about this shit?, placed over top of an image of an open spread from the first issue that addressed the idea of ‘starting an “art” movement’. I pictured anonymous(1) reading those pages and thinking in his head, who the fuck do they think they are? before asking his question out loud,

JOEL SHANE

I guess the idea is that this would be my response to any dialogue about dialogue, whether it is named radical or not: not engaging in it at all . This little bit is an explanation of what I mean, and the why, of not engaging. It is a small amount of engagement, but I would feel like a jerk if I said, “Just don’t bother” and didn’t explain it. That would be more arrogant than what is coming.

The position is: unless you are affiliated with a university, dialogue of any academic sort probably doesn’t exist for you in any form, and that is not a bad thing, just common sense, function. There is usually no benefit from doing it if you are not enmeshed in the university’s reward/punishment system (course grading, publishing, tenured positions, conference trips etc.) Except, if you are engaged in some ‘radical’ or academic dialogue outside the university, there is perhaps the joy of it which you yourself get from it, rocking out with your friends at what they do best, or whatever you might feel you are contributing to outside of yourself. Just because it’s ephemeral doesn’t mean it can’t be fun! If that’s your art then do it. If theorists are viewed as writers, one could say they are off the hook. Although Edward Said, as an example, was quite explicit of the need to overtly

lar point, I know there is common ground to be found. As I respect and support your project, I will offer whatever assistance a nd i nsights I bel ieve may be helpf ul to you, and also relevant from my own perspective.

ON DIALOGUE The difference between dialogue and debate is that the goal of dialogue is mutual understanding, while the goal of debate is winning an argument. You claim that your project is concerned with dialogue and so, although I know

t h at you h ave s t rong beliefs of your own, I have to see the goal of your project as a synthesis of many voices with this goal of mutual understanding.

This means that you do not, w ill not, ow n the

big, black type streaming from his/her lips.

Then again, it wasn’t really a question, it was a rhetorical statement. It actually ended with a period, and in all honesty, he/she probably never even read those pages.

the Mirror." Though we were also told quite forcefully to "keep your mouths shut, stop looking in the mirror, and just do your thing." hmm... confusing...

anonymous (2) suggested that "we all

The general sentiment in response to the first issue seemed to be that we need to walk the talk —to stop bitching and be on our way. Shoulder to the wheel.

listen to or read again the controversial American philosopher Michael Jackson and his masterpiece Man in

politicize academia as the stakes were high, and he was a living example of ways to do it.

Did he singlehandedly figure out the mess? No, but if there was a wall of activities like his dedicated ones, we might be better off.

But rather than engage in any talk about talking, or design for that matter, it is maybe more appropriate for many people to just do some [design or other] work. In the instance of graphic communication which communicates... say a political message to a general public, rather than design about dialogue, or any single concept or idea one might be subject to in art or philosophy departments, it might be more appropriate to do work that operates at a level most people can read. Is this anti-intellectual? It better be! Is it thoughtful? That’s up to us!

What we already know is that design can happen either for a client that pays you to do stuff you don’t see any good in, except the paying of your rent etc., OR for a cause/group which you can get behind... but probably doesn’t pay much.

product. You may serve as facilitator, and also as the maker/editor/publ isher of an ar tifact, a documentation of dialogue, but the product is shared and owned by its many contributors and, ideally, by your audience as well.

ON TRUST The difficulty I see in this project is that of trust.

Trust that you can ‘do what you want’ while fulf illing your tutors’ ideas of what you ought to do, and also while satisfying the parameters of your degree progra m. Tr ust

An egotistical defense mounts: I’ve made my fair share of anti-war/anti-Bush

posters, anti-design f lash animations, environmental action websites, progressive cultural brochures. I’ve spent time nurturing alternative networks,

accused the government of genocide on late night television, I’ve marched in the street, don’t buy new clothes, don’t own a tv or a car, blah, blah, fucking blah...

that you can make your project known to an audience of strangers who will respect it and who will not publicly humiliate, ridicule, or ignore you. Trust that these strangers will honestly contribute, and that our contributions will be respected as such, not

I’m a good boy. I’d like to think I try to walk the talk.

But honestly what kind of contribution is that to make, 55 cents a day while Baghdad burns?

So stop talking, stop writing, start doing.

We can’t keep blaming them(as opposed to us), and they(the other they) need our help.

Then there is the alternative to client work, that can be self-generated work, where guerilla postering and more inventive forms of visual communications can come in, OR these can be just as obscurely referenced as academic work or art, or like white suburban graffiti or tags in white suburban areas, or layered images of whatever on posters, or huge paintings of colour fields.

When presented to an audience, one of the above approaches might be received with the viewer’s cognition and then result in some change of BEHAVIOR or thought which leads to change in behavior: the goal of much visual communication, whether it’s advertising (feel fear of looking like a wuss so buy this big-ass SUV) or a letterhead (feel free... to write... WITHIN THIS BOX!) or a political poster (feel fear of re-electing the same guy AGAIN, then maybe go and not re-elect him). But when confronted with anything academic, the average citizen — who has nothing to do with anything involving the word “discourse” at any point in their lives — will not register the stuff shown and easily ignore it.

It never even existed: it does not exist. Except for the person who made it. Privately, these works are fun to do and share with buddies. Outside your circle they dissolve.

abused or coopted. Trust that your contributors will not be misrepresented.

F rom my p ers p e c t iv e, this issue of trust means that I w illingly engage in a stranger’s project. I give you a piece of myself and trust that you will use

it wisely. I trust that we are all working for a good cause, working toward a genuine mutual understanding. I have to trust that your request is not opportunistic, that you are not poaching, but are genu i nely seek i ng out contributions because that

But what if what you do IS writing (graphic design can be writing, right?) - what if the only thing you have a shred of knowledge about is designing communication (don’t I wish I could grow my own tomatoes).

Then what’s left to do? A lonely fist raised in the air and the memory of whispered words? more posters, more websites, more catalogues...

is precisely the premise of your project.

ON COMMUNICATION DESIGN I think I am finally coming to understand the critical

difference between graphic design and communication de-

more...

The central concern for me has always been to try to understand the difference

between doing work for ‘radical’ causes and the possibility of doing truly ‘radical’ work. To understand the complementary nature of these activities while trying to imagine alternatives.

eg. Bruce Mau may want to only hire people (or have people pay him to intern) with masters’ degrees and knowledge of the liberal arts and literature which an incalculably small percent of the general population possesses — or can relate to. Yet, he makes things like lettering. For Disney. The academic trade-level knowledge does not exist, and never existed, for all the people who visit the Roots flagship boutique. It’s not part of a shopping experience, or ANY part of most people’s experience, EVER IN THEIR LIVES. This is getting close to the overall point I want to make, which can be unimaginable to students while studying, or tenured instructors etc. ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE UNIVERSITY STAYS THERE, EVEN IF IT IS PUT ON A POSTER IN A PUBLIC FORUM .

Academic writing, design, art, whatever, lives truly in a classroom and is undecipherable to everyone outside the various departments, and that is difficult to remember but important to remember, especially if the university is your trade. At the Nova Scotia College of Art, and from former Yalie instructors I have met in Hawai’i, I can honestly say that I have encountered my fair share of 40-50 year olds, some of who worked for good stretches outside the university in studios, who believe implicitly and explicitly that university is

sign , t wo ter ms t hat are [in US institutions of higher learning, at least] often used interchangeably. Graphic design is the design of graphics, i.e. specific artifacts. Commun icat ion design is the design of communications, i.e. situations that enable

and foster communication.

Seen in this light, communication design can be the manipulation of formal elements on a page, but it can also be the facilitation of dialogue, e.g. being an effective ringleader in a conversation.

Tartakover’s graphic journalism comes to mind, Sheila Levrant DeBretteville’s public interventions, and the wide variety of internet based activity opposing the invasion— for all the good that it did. Punk rock and hip hop tease my ears.

This is what has led me here, and what all this talk is about. One idea is this, that in this day and age, when communication is more

ON BEING A RINGLEADER I have earlier likened you to a host at a cocktail party, or an MC. I have also suggested that your task

in designing these artifacts is that of a DJ, remixing and editing the contributions of others with the goal of creating

and more commodity, simply speaking to each other, openly and honestly, can be a radical act. And for me, the attempt to translate this into the practice of graphic design, amongst all other forms of cultural production, is one of the main goals here.

I mean fuck Damien Hirst and his slaughtered animals and prett y pills,

smart, non-university is dumb, that people who don’t understand, appreciate and are all for what happens in art galleries are just not trying, and that the standard for success is intellectualization: what words you can get behind your work .

Essentially it says: ‘there is an ivory tower, we all know that, but if you are not in it, and playing ball, you are a fucking retard. You are worthless. Your little brain makes you worthless. You had the choice. You could have been like us. But you didn’t. You deserve nothing.

You don’t even exist.’

something that is yours but also actively engaged in a larger context [in a sense, not yours]. We live in a culture that seems so rooted in these ideas of rem i x i ng t hat your task seems very contemporary, very much of the Zeitgeist [and I don’t care

if that carries a deterministic connotation; as an engaged individual and maker your task is not only to shape the future, but also to analyse, interpret, shape, and be shaped by the present moment]. But, what you’re attempting to do is not only to facilitate

fuck Bruce Mau and his beautiful books, fuck Nickleback and... well, just FUCK ’em.

How do we learn to speak to each other again? And how do we make that speech meaningful, powerful?

intangible conversations; it is also to document them so that they are, in fact, tangible.

These zines serve as a form of documentation.

Then again maybe that’s just me, perhaps there’s nothing beyond the barricades, no beach beneath the cobblestones. Worse yet, maybe there are no barricades and I should be grateful for the luxury I have to think about these things while Baghdad burns yet again.

Our words, our weapons. ...

Here again, if anyone can give me the definitive answer on free will and how much

choice a kid from a reserve outside Winnipeg has to grow up and become the first tenured First Nations art instructor at the U of M, you win a free tshirt.

Our words, our weapons.

THEY FIND EACH OTHER// THEY FIND EACH OTHER AND TOGETHER BREAK OTHER FENCES: IN RURAL AREAS AND CITIES, IN THE STATES, IN THE NATIONS, ON THE CONTINENTS, THE REBELS BEGIN TO RECOGNIZE THEMSELVES TO KNOW THEMSELVES TO BE

EQUAL AND DIFFERENT. IT’S 3:30 AM HERE IN LONDON AND I DON’T THE BRAIN TO and theHAVE writing is great, smart, poetic... i feel like its POWER

NOW.

stuck in some kind of paralyzed angsty crap that is just the opposite of the call to action it wants to be...

RESPOND RIGHT

It even seemed a bit of an analgesic, the juxtaposition of celebratory calls of the left with the not-so-ironic (almost deadpan) design. At the point where the political is not personal, there is a problem. I wonder what motivated you to take up this project in the first place.

We love the power we have over pain.

And it is not clear to me which is preferable. And what hapless

human sacrifice ever turned away from his still beating heart? and that sets fatal limits to the real possibilities of this dialogue-design process. Give something hard and tangible for people to react to, since that seems to be the goal, or at least against. GIVE SOMETHING HARD AND TANGIBLE FOR PEOPLE TO REACT TO, SINCE THAT SEEMS TO BE THE GOAL, OR AT LEAST AGAINST many of the problems in relation to society come to the surface where graphic design stands. and I think it suffers.

SILENCE KILLS THE REVOLUTION. and sitting here working to make someone else richer and

trying to get my kids educated...

I WOULD RATHER LOOK TO EXPRESSIONISM AND DADA FOR CUES.

NO LOVE IS POSSIBLE IN AN UNHAPPY WORLD. I would very much like to believe this isn’t true, that it is yet another academic parlour game. But looking around after reading it, and reflecting on the past few months of my life leaves me no options. That we are ultimately alone is no great tragedy or revelation.

That we cannot overcome that alienation is a tragedy. Or rather, that we have convinced ourselves that we can get beyond it is the tragedy. That sex or love, the way so many of us pretend to “communicate” when really we are just looking for ways to mask the emptiness that suffocates us. That we are a culture of Goldie Locks, looking for something in other people, that we essentially lack ourselves. Until we can overcome the tendency to find meaning in the illusory nature of interpersonal realtionships we are doomed, to shifting empty experiences. I thought I had moved beyond that, and in some ways I think I have, what saddens me, is that beyond a few friends, who have embraced this struggle, most are not even aware. Or when you present it, you are faced with accusations, rather than thoughtful reaction, because it cuts to the core of our constructed identities.

THE TRAGEDY OF 1984 AND THE TRAGEDY OF TODAY, IS NOT BIG EVIL GOVERNMENTS OR CORPORATIONS. IT IS THE ILLUSIONS WE ACCEPT & THE LIMITS WE EMBRACE.

At the point where the political is not personal, there is a problem.

nothing to do but speak and speak until our ears bleed into the wee hours of the morning in places we shouldn’t be about all the things

we shouldn’t know.

you need to become real.

We’re walking around like lepers, using our arms as tools and smashing them up, feeling no pain from the misuse of our bodies. The bruises are concealed, instead of revealed. Instead of opening up a situation where we might discover that people are being hurt, we are hiding pain.

They arrive at the crack of dawn, with cardigans and bottles of water; cruising the perimeter like tigers pacing in cages.

The old pressmen have likewise been cajoled from uneasy retirements to tend their former charges.

I told my class about your stories and my teacher said that you’re being morose and sentimental.

I don’t care though, you’re the only person that talks about the past. It’s funny, in a sad way.

Sometimes I think you’re playing with me and I don’t believe you.

7. (or this will make little or no sense.)

WHAT THE FUCK dissonance is not an unpleasant sound.

It is merely unfamiliar to our ears just as legitimacy is hard sought in a system structured tshirts and posters, billboards, the usual, plus things I haven't thought of, mass flyering, airbombing info cards/stat sheets of presidential track records over a city,

THEY CAN'T SPEAK FOR YOU NOW; REMEMBER. PAX.LUST.GOAT.

PAIN IS COMMUNICATION, from one part of the body to the brain. Killing pain is cutting off cellular communication. Social pain (dissent) can be muffled by media-based painkillers, giving autonomy to the ruling class. More and more I feel that autonomy should always be “autonomy from something”. Then we wouldn’t take for granted that autonomy is positive.

I’m confused and I feel cold. I put every image and immediate reminder in a shoebox. All this is so tacky and predictable.

A BALL

this all started from Catalysed by the most obvious and clichéd of hurts: the failure of love, the end of a two year conversation.

Loneliness. Homelessness. And the hypocrisy of saying you can help the huddled masses when you end a conversation with someone you love and leave them to drown.

When you walk away and stop talking. We’re all guilty.

OF PAIN.

MAYBE IT IS SAY OR DO, and the general consensus is the two ARE different, at a macro level, the level most citizens live in. Think of it as trade-based. Many citizens have a trade, and by that I mean whatever you do every day, or enough of so that you know a lot about it. Take Hawai’i for example: some know a lot about selling more expensive menu items to tourists who stumble into the Jimmy Buffet restaurant. Others know a whole lot about how to raise children with next to no money and take care of a billion babies at the same time.

Others know about doing payroll, or filling potholes, or saving pudgy white people in high surf. Some know a lot about being a Marine, others know a lot about doing stripteases. The point is that most people do something to get by, and that something has a language of its own - say the sorting codes known by heart by the postal workers - a language which is not really interesting to those OUTSIDE their field. The possessors of trade-specific knowledge don’t see themselves as doing something that has to be communicated outside their realm: pothole filling technique is useless to those whose job isn’t pothole filling, and the city workers I have known don’t talk TOO much about what they do on the job.

ON ARTIFACTS I have expressed my frustration to you with regard to these ver y designed zines of yours, and you have admitted your own ambivalence toward them.

However, the creation of such an artifact serves as an agent, a catalyst toward

dialogue. It allowed you to have something of yourself to share, something that can be pointed to as ‘what you’re doing,’ even though the real value of what you’re doing [as I see it] is a lot less tangible or specific [or limited] than that. I still see the

Back to the point. On a mist y evening last December, back in Breda, my theory professor, Hugues Boekraad, asked me why I had decided to leave the programme at St. Joost. I told him it was because I recognised my own weakness and that I knew I didn’t have the strength to carry on studying there while my heart and mind were shattered. That I needed a different space with people that spoke my language.

crux of this endeavor as ever y thing around the artifacts; in the end, these ar t ifacts w ill ser ve as passive documentation to be internalized by others, which will perhaps even continue to serve as catalysts toward future action.

But your real accomplish-

He nodded and said it was good that I could recognise and accept my own weakness: “Me, I’ve never had to deal with that, I’m strong of body, strong of mind, I’m smarter than most people I know. Yet, I’ve had friends who were far weaker, far stupider than me, who managed to achieve more because they accepted their own weakness. Remember Kevin, in your struggle against capitalism,

Dialogue itself is the trade one has if one is studying the arts or humanities etc. in the academy. Dialogue at an exclusionary discourse level is the bread and butter, the thing by which you are passed or failed, in the university’s [liberal or other] arts - which also have a certain self-image for being somewhat free-form, interdisciplinary, ‘progressive’. The problem is that this allows for academics’ real-world motivations to be given the illusion, often, that they will be be heard, worked on, flushed out as part of course-work or research.

But then what’s the application? It is still hermetic.

The practicalities are simple: you are not passed by how many people you can get to vote out Bush. This would require a somewhat radical dialogue, whatever that is. I mean this in the sense that all the sudden you have to take a functioning power structure which now exists only to keep itself going and produce more producers (students) of product (papers, design projects, art pieces... or students?) which is produced and consumed only in the university (only intelligible to, and spread amongst those in the circuit). Then you would have to acknowledge there is an outside of the university world. Then you would say to yourself, okay: things are burning outside, we’re taking it easy here,

ment i s t he cont i nual

building of a network of like minded souls who have become engaged in many of the same questions you have been asking.

ON OWNERSHIP But here’s t he k icker: r at her t h a n pr iv ately giving you my feedback, I’ve now published it here (www.visualingual.org/2356) , where the ownership is no longer yours. I’ve been fasc i nated for a wh ile now by the intertwin-

if you can recognise how truly weak you are, how small you are, how impotent you are, then you’ll be able to do great things.”

He was an egotistical, chauvinistic, asshole that smoked too much, and one of the best professors I’ve ever had.

What would acknowledging weakness entail?

ing conversations you have sparked : your own blog, posts on var ious other blogs, which sometimes cross-reference each other, ema il messages, w h i c h s ome t i me s ge t forwarded to others, etc.

The issue of ownership has already been a bit fuzzy,

At the time, it meant leaving the Netherlands and moving to London, giving up on a dream and driving myself into deep debt. Walking with my eyes closed.

Acknowledging weakness could mean accepting the limits of the room from which I can manoeuvre, that graphic design is a dumb fucking discipline, and that talking with it may be all I can expect to ever do.

what can we do? We might have to abandon - radically - the well-trodden path we are on, the nature of the reward/punishment system, start getting people to hook up outside of this place and then reassess how important we think theory is, how important it is to look into the most obscure writing as bread and butter work, and that maybe most students should be built into people with a primary concern for interacting with the outside world, doing things which are life-affirming, interactive, living, and if there are those who obviously are differently organized to the point of not being very good at being involved in real-world issues, but who’s juicy chestnut brains are so primed for one thing - Lyotard and everything after, then by all means give them a spot. We still need people to do heavy research, watch the media, to keep track. But for all those who aren’t doing that, there is the potential with any huge number of people for somehow shifting the mandate from what is essentially a modernist, formalist practice of insular wordsmithing and imagemaking, to one that says: you’re spending 4 years of time and tonnes of money so you may as well get thrown into dealing with people outside the classroom, you might even end up with a job that feels good to do after this is done.

w ith publ ic exchanges turning private and vice versa. Now another artifact has come to exist as a result of all this, and it is not yours. And didn’t I just say before that, if you accomplish your goals, you will not own the product?

Now I have my own soapbox

of sorts, in response to yours. I can continue to support your project, or I can bastardize or coopt your goals. Now you have to trust me and the purity of my intentions, just as I have been trusting you and your intentions.

If dialogue is not owned but exists in the spacebetween, then this dialogue exists somewhere between London

But it also means knowing that if all I can do is talk, I better not shut up...

because what happens when we stop speaking revolution?

It is kind of like the way I was taught in Jewish school how Judaism operates in regards to morality and everyday conduct: the thought may be a motivator, but it is about what you actually do. The thought actually DOES NOT COUNT if you don’t do shit about it. Where is the thought? Can you see it? Did that thought make a difference? It is important in

its potential, in its power to change behavior.

You can love god’s law, but you have to express it by living according to it and treating other people right. Unlike some concepts of grace, predestination and ultimate faith as the only route to salvation - that the only thing you need to do is to think the right thought [essentially that Jesus = messiah] - Judaism doesn’t focus on hell much, as the idea is everyone is going to get to the same place, maybe with a bit of catching up to do en route depending on how nice or lame you were to others when alive. But really, it’s love thy neighbor, do unto others, that’s the core. In a bronze-age dressing from a place that archaeology (no matter what we are told, common sense dictates) simply cannot tell us what the hell was really going on, how people talked to each other, who and how people fucked or played music or what the real slavery scene was.

and

Boston,

between the stranger who initiated and the stranger who responded.

On the day of atonement, a very useful holiday, you ask forgiveness from god for your slip ups that are between god and you, breakings of commandments, victimless crimes so to speak. But the weeks before, you are supposed to have gotten your shit together with everyone else FIRST: god is fine, and will deal with commandment breakings on his own terms, the idea is, but asking god’s forgiveness for things you did to others does nothing concrete. There are no instant Hail Mary’s and self flagellations, no ritual to take away pain inflicted on others. You have to go and talk to those you wronged and set things straight, and until you do that wrong stays open, there’s no clean slate. Adolf Hitler, or some might say Sharon, will have a lot of afterlife trouble according to that schema, whereas I have seen on a televised interfaith panel on some Larry-Kingish show, a priest and a minister both say that indeed if Mr. Schicklegruber, in the bunker as the tanks rolled in, were to confess that he accepted Jesus as his personal saviour and go through the correct ritual proceedings, he indeed could be admitted to heaven... but the Rabbi, who spent his days reading and wrestling with ethical quandaries, was going to spend eternity in hell or whatever, because he did not possess the right thought.

One Jewish perspective might be this: never mind Adolph’s afterlife. It is about the pain created in the LIVING lives of millions. It is about the actions, not the thought that results in a happy afterlife.

Translate this to our dialogue, in and around the university, zine or no: if it is to be radical then it is about the things which we do as a result of the things we see or make or say or hear. A radical paradigm shift is not one that just happens in switching from one flavour of theory to another. It is one that leaves behind the old school, stops talking ONLY for the art of talking’s sake, and says it’s time to talk to each other with plans of careful, concrete motion bound to our hearts, and not the endless sound of our own thoughts as the endpoints. There will be plenty of words and images along the way.

POSTscript

1. Pages 10-11 have been intentionally left (almost) blank not only for the dramatic effect, but for you to fill in with your own ideas, images and words. It's a simple and beautiful concept, just like a kid's colouring book. Likewise, you should make sure to colour outside of the lines.

2. The astute graphic designer or design aficionado might notice a slight resemblance between this zine and issue #34 of Emigre magazine, published in 1995, designed by Rudy Vanderlans. I'll admit that this is no coincidence as I was reading it while I put this issue together, thinking back to that heyday of graphic design that never really existed for me.

This should not be construed as blatant plagiarism, nor as a tribute, but perhaps as an attempt to acknowledge history and progress (?).

3. I'd like to share something that Graham Wood wrote to me in relation to this project, not because I think it is true, but because I think it is smart (and funny); by the way (not advice, just an aside) – marry the next girl you want to go out with. it sorts all the shit out – for a while, if not a lifetime (if you’re . . . lucky) – and you can get on with the things that really matter. a quote i always think of – "i’ve seen too many men driven insane by their distractions”.

4. Please share this zine. or better yet, print out some more to share. or even better than that, contribute to the next issue. this can be done at www.lokidesign.net/2356 or you can email me at kevin@lokidesign.net. at the very least, it would be nice to know that this is in your hands.

5. Finally, heartfelt thanks to Maya Drozdz and Joel Shane (aka. Ham Lancer) for their contributions to this issue. And many thanks as well to the numerous participants in this project who have provided me with invaluable support and textual ephemera. In particular, Tom Gleason, Dirty Baby Jesus, Colin White, Nadine Sinno, and my long standing partner in crime, John Stuart.

6.

and yes... pax. lust. goat.

POSTPOSTscript

THE GOOD SIDE OF GLOBALISATION IS THAT YOU GET TO DEMONSTRATE WITH FRIENDS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. - Maribor, Slovenia