…One Less Scene

When I got my first job as a bike messenger in Seattle, people were already talking about the end of the industry. That was in 1994, and the fax machine was supposed to be the reason that businesses would no longer need to pay someone to physically deliver small packages, documents, prints, etc…
Leland [...]

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I had an amazing moment of completeness at the Cave Singers show last night. The crowd was packed onto the floor at Neumo’s for the sold-out show, and we all smiled up to Pete on the stage, as he sang his heart out to us. It occurred to me that being alive is pretty good [...]

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Declining ad revenue and dwindling circulation has put newspapers like the Seattle PI and even the New York Times in financial jeopardy, and commentators in the news are wailing about the demise of print journalism. With all of the blogs and alternative news sources out there, asking how we can revive these bloated, corporate propaganda-factories [...]

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I’m not sure what’s weirder: PETA’s lame attempt at connecting sex and vegetables, or the fact that a NBC spokesperson said that the ad ”depicts a level of sexuality exceeding our standards.” Regardless, I love asparagus.

‘Veggie Love’: PETA’s Banned Super Bowl Ad
 

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When I was twelve years old, skateboarding alone provided solace to what I thought was a tortured, miserable existence. I was a dirt-poor new kid at an affluent suburban middle school in Oregon, my parents had just gotten divorced, and I hadn’t yet discovered Russian literature. It didn’t take long for me to make friends [...]

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The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE, have been fighting a civil war in Sri Lanka for 25 years, and as of today are about to be finally defeated by the Sri Lankan military. The leader of the tigers, Velupillai Prabhakaran, has not yet been captured, but the entire Tamil guerilla army is now hiding [...]

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While we were busy swilling Pabst and watching Who Wants to Marry a Real Top Chef House Wife of Orange County, anarchists and labor activists are smashing cops in Athens. I had thought the civil unrest from the December riots had quieted down, and then I read about Konstantina Kuneva, a militant syndicalist of the cleaner’s [...]

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As Seattle’s public school programs are getting cut or relocated, the city’s plans to build a new municipal jail continue. Real Change News executive director Timothy Harris wrote a scathing criticism in this week’s newspaper, and called the idea “a bricks and mortar commitment to racism and economic marginalization”. 
I decided to read the city’s stated [...]

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Ever since I read Leo Tolstoy’s “Hadji Murat“, about a 19th century Chechen folk hero’s last stand against Russian imperial troops, I’ve had a weird interest in the Chechen cause. Isolated by geography, culture and religion, the people of Chechnya have been struggling to resist occupation by Persians, Turks, Russians, then Soviets, and now Russians [...]

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This is a photo my Dad sent me from the Philippines. Amazing. This motorbike and side car are draped with every conceivable kind of item; check out the cluster of four horns on the front, the multiple mud flaps hanging from everything, the heavy-duty rack and bumpers, not to mention the super deluxe side car. [...]

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