Last night Station 40 hosted a Viral Video Olympics night, which was like a couch potato’s media seppuku ritual. A scene which could have been a gorey cubicle outtake from the 9-5 lunch break with fellow wage-slaves unable to unplug their online umbilical/existenz cords. But this cozy public living room of the old Mission District former post office, a gathered community armed with spontaneous pirate flagging and street-art scalpel smarts, and the panel of expertly odd judges transformed it into a den of hilarious DIY media a few notches past over-indulged, like the amp turned to 11.

“… like so many other things these days, war too seems to be subject to a de- and re-regulation process that radically challenges old certainties and replaces them with new premises that shall not be questioned. DICTIONARY OF WAR sets out to oppose war and, at the same time, calls for “desertion” from a war of words in which facts are created with such force in their communication and propaganda that they can no longer be challenged.” from www.dictionaryofwar.org more coming soon to the guerrilla semiotics Podopolog nearest You!

dearest xtra-passionate terrestrials, In case you haven’t had enough of giving all that Hallmark sentimentality and consumer mentality a good thrashing, Station 40, one of the hottest catalyst collective spaces in SF, has been planning V-day and XYZ-day festivities – as in, THE REVOLUTION AND THE EROTIC OF EVERYDAY LIFE – now set for FEB 16>> at Station 40 3030b 16th street (at Mission ) FEB 16, 9pm – LATE w/dj Podski , Zulah and Many More by donation And YOUR ASs and all Yur tribes’ AsSes are invited !

Grab your sweetheart(s) and take em down to where the Insurrection Landscaping gets HOT!! February 14: Land Grabs San Francisco’s entire history is based on land grabs, within its own borders and far beyond. Sketching this history to the present, we will also look at counter-efforts to grab land and to create open and cooperative spaces in an ever more commercially tyrannized society. (Chris Carlsson, Erick Lyle, James Tracy) At CounterPulse TONIGHT ! AND HEY and he’s organizing another bike tour on somewhat similar topic for the weekend: “… then on Sunday, I’ll be conducting a 4-hour tour on the topic of “Dissent”… meet at 12 at CounterPULSE and bring water and snack, be ready for rain (hard rain cancels, occasional drizzle won’t stop us…).

Well while we are awaiting some visuals from Sunday night’s Monochrom visit at the Exploratorium, we thought we should analyze the burning wreckage left by the prankmeisters of Vienna… Because any traces left by these articulate and transnational leg-pullers may have fair and future use for escaping your own homeland debris and finding/formatting more bricks to throw at the pop culture screens. The McBean Theater was filled to the brim with Squidlisters and Re/Searchers, which made for a ruckus and supportive house to play the live-audience game in this attempted point-blank tv talk show shoot.

Monochrom, a Viennese art-technology-philosophy group known for developing a number of highly controversial Improvisational (Art) Implosion Devices, will be at the Exploratorium in SF this Sunday to attempt to disengage and/or detonate one of the most lethal American mass media forms: The Talk Show. About: ” Among their projects, monochrom has released a leftist retro-gaming project, established a one baud semaphore line through the streets of San Francisco, started an illegal space race through Los Angeles, buried people alive in Vancouver, and cracked the hierarchies of the art system with the Thomann Project.

On Feb.6, Josh Wolf became the longest-imprisoned journalist* who has ever been held on contempt charges in the United States, and it’s time for the solidarity bit to hit high gear! Journalists get your war drums on ! Get your banners up ! Start writing in protest ! Take action ! Use this easy to forward summary of Josh’s story at Common Dreams or this more recent LA Times story also posted on C.D. and mail 10-20-30…friends ,writers, journalists, media activists now !

February 3rd,2007 KAFANA BALKAN @ ARTSF 110 Capp st. @ 16th.st 5 th floor 8PM-1AM Sliding scale $8-15 Come out and support a great cause and listen to some wildly festive music. Boban and Zeljko invite you to our very first installment of KAFANA BALKAN-a benfit for the Bread and Cheese circus that has been making free circus shows and workshops for refugee children in Kosovo for the past 4 years.The international troupe consists of members from Bosnia,Serbia,Canada and United States.

We had a very informal meeting of XL Terrestrials at one of our undisclosed caffeinating locations today to discuss TOC v.3.O. That’s “Transmigration Of Cinema” for all you slackheads just tuning in… Welcome! Slackers ( yes, “praise slack!” even in 2007, minus the xtra retro-cheese and quite possibly all that [se]x-ist wanking ! ) situationists, cacaphonists, jammers, media contortionists and escape artists, future re-writin hacklabbers, and sustainability/realtime tinkerers are all a part of our color palette and calling. So if you have a moment, try this latest version on for size and let us know if you think the XLT Organism can help you bear fruit and proper arms in these troubled times:

This is a pure web teaser! There is no Sons of El Topo project to see in the cinema, the proposed sequel to Jodorowsky’s cult classic El Topo. But both this 1970 oddity-masterwork (which was the beginnings of the midnight movie due in part to Lennon and Yoko Ono) and Holy Mountain are screening at Castro theater this weekend, which means something must have recently occurred in the film’s legal status…having been locked up in a decades-long struggle with producer Allen Klein.

Yep, there’s a magazine dedicated to hactivism and new media which runs a pretty mean gamut from up-to-speed resistance measures to music reviews on the outer limits to cultural oddities that will keep you on your toes… Nueral.it In hardcopy it is supposedly available at Cody’s Books in the Bay Area, but you can also dig in onlne in eng and italian. No. 26 : Disturbing the System has bundles of info that you should be downloading into your consciousness and your toolkit immediately.

Goethe’s 12th “Berlin and Beyond” festival at the Castro looked a little thin and fluffy from the program at first glance, but we are very happy to have our first impression totally dismantled. All of the films we have seen in this year’s selection so far have either proven to be unexpected surprises, engaging, intense, challenging, or in a couple cases, curious fodder for XL terrestrial (propaganda) analysis. And this year’s filmmaker panel session grappled with the complexities of “violence in film”, which reflected a recurring theme from many featured guest directors.

We think it might be important for those who have made the pilgrimage to Macworld this week to get a grip on the fact that unless the new iphone has upgrades to work underwater and/or during the next ice age, withstand ied-s, and/or annihilate the deathstar of the warmongers… there’s not really much social progress that will be made with a phone, an ipod , and a camera wrapped into one ( wow, revolutionary as a latte with xtra foam on valencia street!

Steve Bell

“Join EFF for a birthday bash to celebrate 16 years fighting for your rights.” They are asking for $20 donations , but no one turned away for lack of funds, and proceeds go toward one ofthe most progressive legal teams on the planet. January 11, 7-10 PM at 111 Minna Gallery in Soma, SF. Scott Beal of Laughing Squid will be on hand to donate a generous gift and you can find out about all the raging battles for what’s left of digital freedom…