The San Francisco Chronicle has reached a new pinnacle of professional journalism this week by giving CW Nevius, sports writer and veteran Rotten Tomatoes film reviewer, a new editorial column on the front page. In a brilliant move to rouse the citizens of our great city to NIMBY extremism, Nevius has been given the noble task of investigating one of the Neo-Con Republicrat party’s most beloved problems: getting rid of homeless people. His new creative style of polling should elevate the discussion amongst fans of Survivor, Fox News, and American Idol.

[Image from Jim Avignon remixed for Pan Optic Radio’s ABCs of Disneyweltschmerz, 2001 ] (Note, this is Part 2 of 3 plog items on Monochrom’s Arse Electronika conference, which begins with prior entry “AE Probes the New Pron World…” ) We are still processing the profoundly messy Arse Electronika conference from this weekend. Ironically it’s (Fuck) Columbus Day, and while this didn’t just happen overnight, we are starting to feel as though this may mark the new era whereupon the latest wave of colonizers began drawing up their company charters inside our pants, having landed on the deepest shores of inner “psychogeography” (an opposite context) with that frothing eye of $cience-cum-plea$ure as their compa$$.

We’re still looking for the quote, but we think it was Roland Topor who once said his worst nightmare would be to have his stomach turned inside-out. But then there’s Pron, that simulated red-lit back-alley bardo of perpetually unfinished business where technology and porn commingle and conceive. And when the marketplace reaches into your sexuality as far as those elongating product-lusting fingers can go, it might very well be that orgasmic fluids come to resemble a new gastric juice served up more horror and fantasy-fresh than anything Topor might have dreamed.

( rev billy, savitri, aaron, and lukas at roxie cinema, 10/2 ) The new Morgan Spurlock produced film about Reverend Billy’s Shopocalypse tour, “What Would Jesus Buy?” - directed by Rob VanAlkemade, now based at the 5lowershop- played at the Roxie as part this year’s SF Docfest, and tonight Billy and partner-in-crime Savitri are being hosted by Chicken John for a serious debate about political party-crashing with a jar full of jams. We will try to get in a full review of the movie before it opens on BUY NOTHING DAY in November ( in SF at the Lumiere Theater ).

Two years ago at the Kesselhaus in Berlin, we were fully entranced by the eastern Romanian masters of Balkan brass, Fanfare Ciocarlia, who ended their roaring set by descending from the stage and playing nearly an entire 2nd show in the midst of the crowd. Last night Balkan Beat Box spliced that frenzied custom into their intro, beginning their percussive and horned assault from the balcony of The Great American Music Hall, and weaving their way through the crowd. When they finally arrived onstage, Tomer Yusef - rapper, percussionist, and frenzy-conductor - declared, “This is not a live show… this is a party!

So much news pouring through this week, we felt an urgency to just throw out as much updating here as possible… Balkan Beat Box afterparty is Not possible this time around but see ya at the Great American Music Hall show ( which may not be sold out Yet) THIS Saturday. This group is on fire, and the latest album Nu-Med has a kind of global solidarity underpinning that feels like it is the new Clandestinos anthem, adding a brass kick and mediterranean-jacked rap to unify the latest rise of smiling warriors on the march !

(Stills from Alfonso Cuaron’s clip for “The Shock Doctrine”: Watch Here.) Making stops in San Francisco 9/26 and Oakland 9/28 , Naomi Klein is on tour with her latest precision analysis “The Shock Doctrine”. Could anyone still sleep through this fire, after absorbing her assessments of free market feeding time in neo-liberal overdrive over the last four decades?! While we haven’t had a chance to get ahold of the book yet, judging from this incredible collaboration with filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, and her recent appearance on Democracy Now this is one of the most disturbing and spot-on critiques of the current nightmares we are living through today.

(image by joe sorren) Dearest Art Organisms, the XLt news + praxis letter v.1 from the XL Terrestrials : global citizens re-sourcing overt intelligence and musical insurrections ( Your email was given to us by a defecting Google ad executive, who decided to share your entire search history with the XL Terrestrials before escaping to Caracas. In other words, we have […]

Voice Of Roma, the organization behind the most important Roma and Balkan music festival on the West Coast brings back Yuri Yunakov & his Romani Wedding Band to play at the Croatian American Cultural Center ( 60 Onondaga St., SF, CA ) on Sept. 21st. Performing for the Herdeljezi Festival in Sebastopol in 2006, Yuri […]

“One of my very, very first memories is of my parents’ house in Los Angeles. In the late afternoon, the light would come through windows […]

In Baudrillard’s theories in “Simulacres et Simulation“, he once wrote with both irony and penetrating critique that Disneyland was created so that Americans would think that the world they live in is real. Is it possible that the Burning Man festival has upped the game? Now a version of sandbox liberation has been created […]

In the 1950s, Wilhelm Reich, the jewish Galician-born scientist – more commonly considered Austrian – ( this is entirely speculative: but does this mean that good ol’ Dr. Reich was mixing up those orgone theories with the love of the Bukowina stylee? Hoopa !! Maybe we’ll have to come back to that thought) psychotherapist and sex researcher attempted a GREENING of the Arizona desert, and his investigations still remain a labyrinth of hidden knowledge. Fast Forward: Some incredible and absurd and impossible parallels may exist with this year’s Burning Man GREEN theme, and we’ll be analyzing the Man on the XL Terrestrial Couch… from a relatively safe distance of … 10 years to be exact.

The XLT story was picked up by Indybay, and today is the last day of fundraising. Here’s a quick follow up to the Parallel Politics story, “The ART of Politics” cont.: Updates: At the time of writing the initial story we were not aware of Dr. Ahimsa Porter Sumchai also running, and there may be others we’ve […]

What exactly are we talking about?? Parallel Politics? Well if you’re in the SF area come to these benefit screenings and learn from the PROs! Included in the program are some very inspiring clips from Rage Against The Machine, who took their Battle for Los Angeles tour to Mexico City. Also note this is a prelude […]

Analysis of the Chicken John vs. Josh Wolf debate at Chez Poulet ( pic from the omnipresent Scott Beale/ Laughing Squid ) …coming soon! [ See Below ] Meanwhile read the current news here: Debate and here: Dear Gavin Newsom The race is on for both of these candidates to raise enough money to enter into the […]