Social Activism or
If the shoe fits...

Interesting article in the Globe & Mail today about AdBusters, a social activist group based out of Vancouver. The group is going into the shoe manufacturing business in an effort to go toe to toe (pardon the pun) with Nike.

Kalle Lasn, founder of Adbusters says, "I see this as a sort of step up in activism, where instead of just sniping at the heels of these large companies that are not quite living up to civil society's standards, that we are actually competing with them. It could be a major new step with how activists deal these rogue companies, as I call them."

imho - this is one of the most creative approaches yet. Give us an alternative. Give us a solution. Bravo to them. The only thing left to see is whether the shoe is comfortable or not.

Too Much Time on Their Hands or
George Lucas is going to Sue Somebody...

I've seen a lot of strange and mysterious things online, but this particular gem takes the cake. Some enterprising person has taken two AT-ST toys and used them to illustrate the kama sutra. The site may be slashdotted at the moment, and is likely doomed to be attacked by Lucasfilm lawyers, but if you can take a gander before it's gone, it is truly a monument to geekdom.
www.scoutwalker.com

Technical Difficulties or
Did we forget to pay the electrical...?

Out go the lights - down goes the computer - bye-bye go the phones. My boss, wise as she is, declared that there's no sense in anyone staying at the office and that we should all just take off early. Work called on account of power failure - I can live with that. Figured it would give me some time to run and get groceries and a chance to finish off the next installment of Bunny & the Cantelope.

So I'm on my way home and intersection after intersection the lights are out. Ontario traffic laws state that an intersection with malfunctioning signal light is to be treated as a four-way stop. Unfortunately the drivers on the road yesterday decided a malfunctioning signal light means 'woohoo - it's your turn to go, dude.' Gridlock everywhere. My half-hour commute stretched by an additional hour.

Riding the bus home, I began to overhear snippets of conversation.

the whole city is dark
there's a fire at the power plant
Niagara region is dark as well
could it be an attack?
the power company doesn't know what's going on
nobody knows what's going on
almost all the Eastern seaboard is dark

After 20hrs of darkness, the lights are back on and the finger pointing and explanations are about to begin. While I guess this whole situation could lead to a lot of pontificating about lack of resources behind our infrastructure, about our dependance on electricity, or even about how beautiful it was to see the stars again... I think I'll just let it lie, open up Photoshop and finish off this comic. ETA remains tomorrow.

Back Online or
tap tap tap - is this thing on?

Well - we're back online and everything seems to be where it's supposed to be. I've learned that any mail that I hadn't collected in the past day or two was zapped when the server went kerflooey. If you've dropped me a line in the past day or two, I'd appreciate if you could resend - thanks.

Technical Difficulties or
Cancel, Retry, Abort? ummm - eeny, meany, miney, moe...

The server that The Elusive Fish resides on apparently underwent a technical crisis that took the site offline for a day or so. From what I gather, the server died an untimely death and took everything to data heaven with it. My hosts did have a backup, but alas it was a month old so I'm going to have to do some uploading and tweaking to get things back to the way they were at the beginning of last week. So for the next day or so - some links may not work and there is currently no BitPass enabled material available. Please bare with me.

On the good news side of things, the next Bunny and the Cantelope will be available a week from today, Sunday August 16th.

Tragic Blogs or
This is the Land of the Free so Do as We Say and Shaddup

Some of you might have heard about the case of Sherman Austin. This is a young anarchist in the US who had the FBI swoop down on him because he had a website with 'incendiary language and links to other sites that translate such rhetoric into bomb-making instructions'. The teenager had agreed to plea guilty to a single felony count of 'distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction with the intent that such information be used in furtherance of a federal crime of violence' and recieve a month in prison followed by five months in a halfway house.

I know. Crazy - isn't it? In a nation that purports to be the land of freedom, expressing an opinion and providing links to info that's freely available from the news or bookstore is enough to get you six months. Well, it gets even crazier.

You see, District Court Judge Wilson threw that plea out on the grounds that it was too light. "I'm rather surprised", the judge said, "that the government hasn't taken this case seriously." And so the sentence was changed to a year imprisonment and three years of court supervision. I find it interesting that one of the conditions of his sentence is that he's 'barred from associating with any groups espousing violence to achieve political, economic or social change'. I guess that prevents him from backing Bush in 2004?Austin had originally intended to fight the case in court, but quickly decided to take whatever plea was offered when a federal probation consultant informed him that with Patriot Act 'enhancements' he could spend up to 20 years in prison.

This is a guy who has been intimidated into pleaing guilty. This is a guy who's going to prison, not for anything he has done - but for what he has said and thought. That this can happen at all should serve as a warning to all that freedom in America is a thin vaneer, and that in some places it's starting to peel away.

Tragic Blogs or
Why haven't I read this before?

One of the advantages to riding the bus to work every day is that it gives you a few uninterrupted minutes to read. I've made it a point to buy a new book every other month for my commuting pleasure. I was a voracious reader as a child - zipping my way through the stacks of the public library. But I'm astonished at the sheer number of great books that somehow have avoided my attention. Like Tolkein's, Lord of the Rings. Though I'd read The Hobbit several times, I'd never been able to get ahold of our library's only copy of Lord of the Rings. If my father hadn't given me a set as a Christmas gift, I'd likely have gone several more years without reading it. Then there's Orson Scott Card's, Ender's Game. I'd been hearing people mention it for years, but never got around to seeking it out until last year. Now it's one of my favourite reads.

Currently, I'm thoroughly engrossed in Larry Niven's Ringworld. A brilliant book so far. Why didn't anyone tell me this was floating about waiting to be read. If they did - why didn't they shove it under my nose and force me to read it? Really, it's not that it's taken me so long to get to these books that gulls me. It's that I might never have got to them. How many great novels are sitting out there that I've never heard of and will never encounter.

I've got about another week or two before I finish Ringworld. Any suggestions for what to read next are greatly appreciated. Send the name of your favourite reads or authors to tragiclad@theelusivefish.com

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Thanks - by the way - to everyone who's purchased my new comic, 'The Letter O'. Your patronage is greatly appreciated. For those of you without BitPass accounts, the next installment of Bunny & the Cantelope is going to be free of charge so no worries.