Day: September 29, 2007

A German group called Yypasswdd Daemons released the CD-R Cracked in the Year 2000 in 2000.
The music and a Quicktime .mov are on the Mutant Sounds blog. The content is nerdy but more drony/spacy than the 8-Bit Construction Set. Song titles like "Denial of Service," "TCP Packet," "Backspace Virus Networking Transfer Protocol" lay it on pretty thick. Mentioned mostly as a prequel to the current Blipfest scene.

Joe McKay, Wofford, sculpture, 2007. Many of the works in McKay's current vertexList show are made with discarded cell phones. It's hard to escape the usage history of these ubiquitous devices and make them anything but an "artists do crazy things with the tools of the information age" statement but McKay's fuck all attitude almost escapes the Vvorklike. Don't know if this is the one described in the press release as "dog chewed"--in any case, the stuck orange pixel and its reflection makes a nice found Adolf Gottlieb.

A couple of articles on Blackwater, the US mercenary force that is allegedly shooting innocent civilians in Iraq and was recently hired [update: dead link] by the Pentagon "to conduct global counter-narcotics operations":

Jim McDonald, A Blackwater Bouquet

Naomi Wolf , Blackwater: Are You Scared Yet?

From McClatchy news service:

ABOUT BLACKWATER

Founded in 1996 by Erik Prince, a former Navy Seal, multimillionaire and conservative Republican donor, Blackwater began as a training facility for police and the military but began offering security services after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Prince, whose father helped bankroll conservative Christian organizations such as Focus On Family and Family Research Council, has given at least $225,000 to the Republican Party and its candidates.

The Congressional Research Service said that as of May there were 987 Blackwater security contractors in Iraq. The director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq told Congress in 2006 that there were 48,000 contractors from 181 companies providing security in Iraq.