super HD widescreen cultural sensory field organizer

is a miserable failure & i'm not sure if everyone's noticed yet.

sure these things do keep getting higher tech, but the reality they're fronting gets less and less convincing. the arguments for this illusion of culture are flimsier and the self-serving actions of those in charge of it are not even kept off camera. i've already cancelled my subscription on principal, ate the obligatory contract penalties, and started using my plain old eyeballs for input. crazy i know, but real reality is spelling something out for me: the little people are no longer subjects of any real concern, while large entrenched [businesses let's call them] write all the rules and absorb the remaining wealth.

for instance:

these real facts about the US economy crash & subsequent banks bailout are a really good whack in the skull for anyone with their heads in the ideological clouds. print this one up & read it all. banks spent more this year on lobbying congress than anything else. anything else.

Obama's Big Sell Out

then take a look at the following news segment-

another entrenched industry in washington: there's 4 insurance lobbyists for every member of congress. the revolving door between congressperson, congressional aids, and lobbyists has been spotted plainly- and as you might have guessed there'll be no affordable healthcare: americans have been shown that door too.



the climate talks in copenhagen derailed thanks to dealings from the US- who played the liberal card in speech and the entrenched interests card in action. this apparently results in catastrophe:

Copenhagen As Seen By The Numbers
Beyond Ecological Imperialism

drinking water in the US is full of unregulated contaminants. plus this bonus: the bottled water industry is positioning itself to be the next expensive commodity monopoly [re: oil & gas].

What's in Your Water?

Shell Oil is slated to start drilling in alaska-

Environmentalists & Natives Protest Drilling Offshore

blackwater now runs special ops in pakistan [in our name?] with no congressional oversight. they have a huge training base & a fleet of jetfighters etc- some of which are rented to the military.
and oh yeah, we're fighting alongside an afghan president that we handpicked from the Unocal board of directors. [who built that nice gas pipeline during our last escalation there]. and Karsai's brother is heading up the opium crops according to a few reports.

Blackwater Private Army

peaceful protests against the WTO, G20, & Cop 15 are relabeled as terrorist threats and treated to pepper sprays, beating, pre-emptive incarceration. similar tactics [using harsher measures] were used in the past against palistinians who mounted organized civil protests to gaza & west bank invasion so long ago. now you can start to see what my argument is stretching for- we're starting not to matter to 'the greater mechanisms of the world' in the same way palistinians haven't mattered for decades now.

Breaking Palestine's Intellectual Backbone & Organized Dissent



guantanimo is estimated to be open & running till 2011.

patriot act civil liberties power grab still in effect.

new coal fired power plants are online being built.

DOW jones back up to 10000's

state education, social services & highway budgets are being slashed. no money is going to 'green research or green jobs'.

mortgage forclosures are on the rise. empty houses are all over the place. jobs blue collar & white alike are dwindling.



-and in the midst of all this we are encouraged to celebrate the yearly miracle of christmas retail bump. ho ho ho. well party on i say! with your cultural sensory field organizer- in super HD with widescreen-

let's celebrate ourselves- The US Citizenry! -and don't change a thing!! praise for our empirial political policies, our expensive health care, our secure homeland with diminished liberties, and our myopic disconnected worldview propelled by our narrow media monopoly. don't worry about the disconnect between what you vote for and what happens in your name. let's really try to stay distracted through this next year, and keep those catalogs coming! [printed on trees!]

Machiavelli, Bernays, Luntz- you saucy old sluts, i can't believe they still let you in this place. no wait a minute, yes i can..

happy precarious new year everybody. please remember to spend you fortune on custom furniture this year- and as always- support your troubled artist friends!

double our carbon levels by 2020: go copenhagen talks!

well i'm definitely building a more eccentric business model now..

Crunching The Numbers

when all is lost there is always sweet insanity, and that's perhaps the best my little heart has to offer:



in celebration of this realization i've been getting some doses of late night creative energy for transformative graphic design- if there is such a thing. hopefully the fruits of it will roll into some interesting places.

new fightin' rooster logo for hard times

revolt or be revolting. remind yourself to be your own bird: consciousness raising, love espousing humanitarian spirit. lady bugs! kittens! children! planet! get on with it dammit! mutate! are you with me dr. bronner??

liberals are useless

what direct speak. i just turned 40.
i've developed a rather fringe worldview in general,
and stay pretty saturated with current alternative news-
so i guess it's safe to suspect that i could be slipping a little towards the paranoid, going a little crazy.
sure, i can take that. however i still have to ask:

anyone else feel like they're in a philip k. dick novel around here?

Liberals Are Useless

if that doesn't bring you around get a load of this:


sanity is really overrated anyway. now that you're warmed up, my friend:

Climate, Oil, War and Money

good night.

happy thanksgiving everybody-

here's some conceptual tools to help us spend less on things we don't need this [shopping season] fall:

Buy Nothing Day
Buy Nothing Day Facebook Event


my coddled commercial identity will somehow limp along, but it'll definitely be easier with a good solid planet under my feet. there's a blessing to be thankful for. [hopeful for]

us + them = we
transcend > include
bob bob bob bob bob bob bob bob bob bob bob bob bob

another tearsheet from copper house

i know it's only monday night but have a look- you deserve it. i think.

[new] new tearsheet

i just got a disk of new images from John Malinoski of his & Kristen's house in montrose heights. i made a bunch of the fun pieces & parts of the house & was able to contribute to putting much of it together too [in 2007]- my barely younger brother Bruce Schaub [many of you know him better than me] was the builder, and the architect was Camden Whitehead. a memorable project full of great energy. i'll post another sheet soon- also please note the copper shingles: hand made by myself & Edward Gross- the [at-the-time anointed] copper artisans.

the carpenter/fabricator/builder crew:

bruce schaub
chris crane
jeff killen
ed gross
nate knight
& me

all standing perfectly level on Hank Degenaars' [The Perfect Mason] basement walls. seriously: perfect.
for instance: [carpenter-speak]- i hung a cantilevered sink cabinet off of a ground faced cinder block wall of his with no scribe needed on either side.

..and yeah those fellas up there were ok to work with too..

john & kristen were the most fun people to build for & they'd been friends with camden [the architect] forever- the three of them dreamed up the house together over a period of years. great folks & great experience.

dude, goldman sachs is the place to be [or how i learned to enjoy the taste of poor people]

ahh.. i know i'm a furniture designer- i should shut up about this stuff and go make some art, but i still can't stop posting this video-



go ahead & watch it, but remember: a little bit of reality's a dangerous thing.

...mmmmm that's great corn syrup-

i wonder if obama's ears are growing like pinnocchio's nose..? aside from the shocking revelation that american politician's votes and favors are more than a little stilted towards their corporate benefactors- over several decades, americans' health, welfare & viability [not to mention freedoms] have been trampled & with such obvious intent- it seems impossible to me how childishly patriotic so many of us still are- but specifically loyal to a few 'familiar americana' abstract ideals. what we see in our community- of AMERICANS [the people, us] & what we see on the street, in our faces & on our plates is another reality entirely. the crap they feed us, right?



loosely related, this choice headline from Public Citizen & the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Washington is Wall Street's Biggest Profit Center

it's a natural attraction.

you can make extravagence jealous this shopping season

[photo of the top of some recent furniture: lynn crounse]

and why not? this hurrah, of course probably not the last, will be either the first of the 'lowered expectation' hurrah's or the last of the 'totally kick-ass' hurrah's for awhile. either way this holiday shopping season will be a watershed moment for your family, so why not really go out on a limb to make it memorable? vacations you forget, cars lose value, plastic surgery looks weird after awhile: what you want my friend is custom furniture- i'll tell you that for free.. all the kids these days think about is innovative, super-green, hand built heirloom quality, cradle to cradle furniture design.

still have a slot or two open here.

so what do you think about what you think anyway?

you all know me as an eager, suggestible, trusting, experimental type of guy- i'll be the first to volunteer for the hypnotism, exorcism, visitation, cleanse, whatever- bring it, right? perhaps in some sense this wide spectrum of experience- however biased & unscientific- may serve to shake me loose from some of the more obvious mechanistic behaviors that come hard wired through family, education, cultural exposure, languages [physical, visual, verbal], etc.

i'm sorta hooked on the banking crisis right now, so as an example: what do we think of when we think 'criminal'?

The Social Functions of Prisons

this essay is from the nixon era- early 70's- but still a very sharp analysis of what goes on inside the insides of people's heads.

ethically speaking, i stand a very comfortable distance away from any prison sentence compared to many of the composers and willing minions of mortgage backed securities & other exotic financial instruments. socio-economically speaking i am a comparative stone's throw. what does that say about us culturally?

special holiday we're #1 soup recipe supplies are limited

above: one more amazing photo by Lynn Crounse

unrelated: watching the further consolidation, positioning & exploits of the worlds 1% as if in slow motion: the rest of us will wait mute until the official filters, catchphrases & argument frameworks are applied for us to respond within.

No Armistice in War on Poor

oh yeah hey, and also- if you are in the market for some expensive, exotic, everybody-else's-wife-is-jealous, don't-it-class-up-this-joint-like-crazy? custom furniture i can build that stuff for you in spades.
and don't worry about that other stuff up there- movies always turn out better than that, and new movies come out every summer. right? see? all better. good, now get some sleep. you'll thank yourself tomorrow working in the salt mines.

tangential brown rooster referent

schroedenger's rooster-
who is with cumbersome & arduous grace:
both paring the line perfectly
and gouging the surface beyond repair in celebration-
a question is flown:
how does this chicken get into my tools?

gee thanks super wealthy public servant!

..you could have been off richety-richin' this whole time in your other exotic vacation house, but instead you're down there in the trenches mud wrestling for the rest of us commoners and the common good.


Report: 237 Millionaires in Congress

i'm so happy to know philanthropy in practice is alive & well in our very representative body- and i sleep well knowing full disclosure in these matters with no subtext to concern myself with. blessed be.

remote celebrity endorsement

even elizabeth hurley loves redplumjam ['s mascot]. al's chinese astrological sign is brown rooster- [1969]. in case you didn't pick up on that thin esoteric reference there at first.. what, now you think this is wasted space?

banks, bonuses and the americanWayTM

here's a democracy NOW interview with William Black, author of 'the best way to rob a bank is to own one'- published in 2005. it's funny, no matter how loudly or plainly or intelligently one puts it, close to nobody will understand or even hear a word of this because it doesn't follow our prescribed nursery rhyme.

"my baloney has a first name.."

sorta inciteful words if you think about how our understanding of history & current events have been groomed to comb out just the right amount of blind pride & total apathy. here's some words from a man who got killed back in 1969 for not sticking with the program- the context of the struggle here is altogether different, but points to the same perpetrators exerting different methods of control & exploitation -:Fred Hampton's word-jazz bodhisattva vow:-

"...We in the Black Panther Party, because of our dedication and understanding, went into the valley knowing that the people are in the valley, knowing that our plight is the same plight as the people in the valley, our friends and family are in the valley, knowing that our enemies are on the mountain, and even though its nice to be on the mountaintop, we're going back to the valley. Because we understand that there's work to be done in the valley, and when we get through with this work in the valley, then we got to go to the mountaintop. We're going to the mountaintop because there's a motherfucker on the mountaintop that's playing King, and he's been bullshitting us. And we've got to go up on the mountain top not for the purpose of living his life style and living like he lives. We've got to go up on the mountain top to make this motherfucker understand, goddammit, that we are coming from the valley!..."

-excerpt from Fred Hampton's 'power anywhere there's people' speech
olivet church 1969

ok now i'm sorta getting that blind pride feeling..

iWatch our identificaion with civil liberties evaporate

so you can't safely engage with your neighbors for fear of swine flu [mmm factory farm food!]- well it's a good thing you only half hearted those relationships, because now they can all be suspects in your paranoid game of 'stare out the window'. this LAPD PSA looks like a sci-fi spoof on vapid reactionary consumer culture, but instead is actually catering to that demographic- they live among us. be aware everyone..

350.org global climate consciousness action day

yep that's today. get your papier mache dragons, drums, fire batons & throat singers. october 24th is your day to make a public spectacle. Richmond doesn't look very well organized or represented so far in the matter but fear not: you are the one who makes the difference after all, right?

350.org

get out there & save that planet whose gravity has been attracting you all of this time. show it some love.

skated new mini bowl with bubba martin tonight

geez loweez- this little bowl is so much fun. it has me feeling like a wheezing overweight dizzy & wobbly kid again. my now good friend adrian took me for the first time last saturday. having only taken a handful of rides, i was able to hold in the reigns & avoided slamming. to celebrate on sunday i went out and skated my little quarterpipe in chimborazo park- which i recommend despite the tininess- it's got a nice surface on it now. so now top that off tonight with a 10:30pm session back at the mini bowl with bubba & johhny from colonial heights. i feel like the aforementioned wheezing & dizzy king of the world now. i cannot beleive how many of my old friends still ride and still rip at that! [a couple old photos included of me back when i rode well- from bill pickett's collection]. good to meet the new local skate denizens too- and- really nice bowl, guys.

more images from lynn's visit

ms. crounse's handiwork speaks for itself- she makes my stuff looks soooo good. [thanks, lynn!]

of course i am going to work more of these into the website portfolio, i just had to share 'em. more to come.

amazing new images by lynn crounse

lynn came over monday morning and took better pictures than i could have imagined. my kitchen never looked so good. these are straight out of her brain [i mean camera] no cropping, light, contrast, tonal corrections- this is how she rolls..

interesting documentary on copyright

rip: a remix manifesto starts off talking about how girl talk [a fave 'music collage artist' of mine from cleveland] uses published copyrited popular music as raw material for his dope jams. it illustrates how this 23 yr. old needs to pay $4.5mil in royalities to make a typical album of his legally, and then points out how engaging new technology has made each of us the same kind of criminal, and some on a bigger scale:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/88782/rip-a-remix-manifesto?c=News-and-Information/Documentary-and-Biography

there was also reference to lawrence lessig's

creativecommons.org

as well as another old fave band negativeland- who used the term culture jamming to describe how they used commercially familiar audio out of context to sever 'normal' programmed associations as social/political commentary.

which is a great segway to adbusters magazine, though unrelated to the film.

adbusters.org

they've been a longtime fave.

peer recognition is validating- thanks to materialicious design blog for including redplumjam in the ranks. nice turn around on that too:

http://www.materialicious.com/2009/08/redplumjam.html

new arrival

alright- the new redplumjam.com site up & at 'em. thank you for the applause.

if you remember my brief corporate partnership with old friend and cabinetmaker Dave Hooke [may he be employed in peace]- High Q Woodworking LLC is no more. that mean ol' economy never gave it a chance.

i've spent a long time putting together what was supposed to be a simple one page website with some links to tearsheets- there's always something new to learn: this blog is one for instance. a ready made, recognizable, linkable, easy to update way to keep my site relevant. not a bad start- so far i haven't broken anything..

here's some relevancy: i have 4 new big collage-assemblage pieces in the works this week. also, i just painted my living room, where my good friend [and favorite photographer] Lynn Crounce is going to photograph some of my newer furniture pieces & some artwork too- hopefully the fresh work will breathe some life into my business here in Richmond. you can count on me to alert the media too- then i guess at least it will serve to entertain my fellow underemployed designer & builder friends..

excelsior! [aloha dave]

here's a picture

8.25.09

test 123-

wood is pretty.

over-

redplumjam blog

8.25.09

test 123 test.