Have you ever been fed up with all the pompous political forums that populate American cable TV and wanted to satiate your hunger for news and design all at once? Look no further for Australian ABC has a three course media meal called Hungry Beast. The program started back in March 2011 and it’s weekly format featured forward thinking news pieces presented with cutting edge motion graphics, such as the above piece on computer virus Stuxnet, mixed in with satirical commentary and a weird looking presenters.

The program is currently off air and it’s website has disabled their great videos but luckily they have a YouTube channel stocked with entertaining informational pieces. One of the main contributors is motion graphics artist Patrick Clair which produced the above segment and many other eyeopening and pleasing pieces.

Upon arriving onto New York soil earlier this summer, it became fairly evident right off the bat that I’d need to familiarize myself with the city’s serpantine public transportation system. As I started to bomb around town a bit, I found myself hopping on the wrong subway trains more often than not, ending up in a number of foreign stops and stations along the way. One of the upsides to my clumsiness, however, was the first hand insight I was given into the handiwork of one of NY’s most prominent current graffiti writers.  Utilizing a trademark curly-cue at either end of his designs, while scrawling the word “moustache” across countless celebrity mugs, no movie or television ad was off-limits to the man native New Yorkers began referring to as the “Moustache Man”.

While we did get to spend a single glorious month together, it pains me to say that the Moustache Man has finally been caught by the fuzz. Known to personal acquaintances as Joseph Waldo, the 26-year-old Manhattan resident was charged this past weekend with felony criminal mischief as well as a number of other counts. Waldo was caught in the act, last Friday, on 8th ave. and 47th St. in Manhattan, right near his current employer, Gray Line Tours. According to the cops, Waldo was released without bail, and eventually caused upwards of 1,500 dollars worth of damage to New York Transit Property when all was said and done. Really, this figure doesn’t seem all that steep, when you take into account the immense number of locations that feature this guy’s distinct scrawl.

Moustache himself had recently begun to take part in interviews with a number of various websites and blogs, including this Q & A with EA Hanks. Authorities claim that these interviews, and overall expanding internet presence, ultimately tipped them off to Waldo’s whereabouts and usual haunts. It seems our boy was getting a little big for his britches.

Waldo’s responses to many of the interviewers queries here were fairly straight forward, but you never really get the sense that the dude took himself too seriously. Afterall, he was really only scribbling the word “moustache” on the celeb elite’s collective upper lip, with a permanent marker. Then again, I’d certainly be lying if I claimed that all the moustache nonsense was a nice change of pace from your run-of-the-mill swastikas and “spunking” dicks.

We here at Мишка HQ like to smash shit up as much as the next guy, but when it comes to the salvation of pick-up trucks, we’re not afraid to get a little vigilant with it. In the midst of the post-Stanley-Cup riot that took place throughout the streets of Vancouver, which we had previously reported on, a single man emerged from the crowd like a knight in shining armor. The man in question just so happened to be wearing some of our gear.

Remaining as cool as a cucumber, kind of like Mick at Altamont, the Cyco Soldier unsuccessfully attempted to quell legions of angry Canucks fans, who aimed to rough up an unsuspecting automobile. Unfortunately for this Мишка supporter, the will of the masses proved a little too great, and the truck eventually got dominated by the furious mob (much to their delight). Our boy stood his ground though, and took some lumps, so we figured his performance at least warranted a quick shout out.

Some Stone Cold Steve Austin-looking motherfucker gets his head bashed in at some point as well, but I think we’re all aware of who the real star of the video is. As footage has been trickling down through the internet this past week, we’ve been paying close attention to late breaking Vancouver coverage. You could imagine our surprise at seeing one of our very own tees pop up in the footage. Мишка is here to clean up the streets, snuffing out one giant Hockey-induced melee at a time!

Thanks to a loyal Bloglin reader known only as “Beef Knuckles” for emailing this in.

“Go to hell black homosexual.” That was the @ (placing an @ in front of someone’s name notifies them of your tweet) I got on twitter when I responded to some fundamentalist Christian anti-homosexual who was harassing my friend @thexdexperience. I laughed about it, and I often bring it up in jest. It’s funny because my picture in my avatar is of me — with white skin — and scrolling back no less than an hour in my timeline will probably reveal a tweet where I’m talking about having sex with women, putting my mouth on their vaginas, or appreciating their distinct anatomy.

The guy’s response though, wasn’t aimed at me, it was aimed at an indiscernible person from #BlackTwitter. I am part of #BlackTwitter. Lately I’ve seen a few people writing about what #BlackTwitter is, but none of them seem to see the bigger picture. The @nerdatcooltable blog has had some posts on what #BlackTwitter is, and while it was written by people who are actually part of #BlackTwitter, it was only written for people who are part of #BlackTwitter. It would be difficult for someone unfamiliar to get an idea of #BlackTwitter from reading the blog posts. The other stuff I’ve read has been by journalists/academics/whoevers, none of whom seem to have any experience with #BlackTwitter beyond the incredibly problematic observations of removed anthropology. It’s not like I woke up one day and decided I wanted to write an article about #BlackTwitter, the need to write this piece grew out of the continued lack of a clear explanation of what #BlackTwitter is.

I never set out to find #BlackTwitter, in fact I had never heard of #BlackTwitter until I was already well within it. I started using twitter at the beginning of 2009 on the encouragement of my friends @jeylance (she’s not on there anymore) and @Ease_DaMan. At the time I was working in New York, for @MishkaNYC and most of the people I was meeting were on twitter, so I figured I’d check it out. It didn’t take me long to find people on twitter whose tweets I enjoyed reading. It started out as that, very simple. I’d follow people I met, and every once in a while I’d find new people to follow via a RT [retweet. Retweets are when you literally re-tweet what someone on your TL (timeline) tweets, and @ the author]. Then, at the end of 2010 I moved to California, came on some tough times and found myself completely uprooted. My living situation fell through and my backup living situation flaked on me, and all of the sudden I was in Los Angeles, alone, with nowhere to stay.

But, with all of my “real life” friends nowhere to be found one of my twitter friends was there for me. Even though we had never met in real life, @kissmydaisy picked me up, and let me stay the night at her house. I’m pretty sure this was the moment when I started to look at twitter differently, and that change in perception is pretty crucial to understanding what #BlackTwitter is and how it works. I joke around a lot on twitter, I answer questions about weed and other things that I know about, I send condolences, I congratulate, I encourage, I laugh, and so on. For me, twitter was never about marketing. Sure, it’s a way to tell people about my music, but the only people I’m telling about my music are people that I’m already friends with. I’m not on twitter making friends to market my music, and I think this is one of the main distinctions of what makes #BlackTwitter #BlackTwitter.

#ThatPlate or #StrugglePlate is a common topic. It is, as you might imagine, a belittling title bestowed upon food.

#BlackTwitter is about generative community that takes place in the moment. It’s a room of people that you populate by your own accord, and whenever you want to you can step into that room. You can step in to pick up on a conversation, start a conversation, rant, report something you’ve seen, ask a question, get some laughs, and whatever else your followers will engage in. The #BlackTwitter that I know—which often refers to itself as #NegroTwitter — is a diffuse community of people around the country, who are all sharing their lives. The fact that we’re thousands of miles apart from each other, haven’t met in real life, don’t really “know” each other, et cetera, was never an issue. The things that put a strain on “real life” relationships, or prevent them from happening, simply are not an issue on twitter. For that reason, amongst others, twitter is a parallel community that speaks of future life moreso than a reduction of real life. It’s not that you are any less who you are on twitter, it’s just that the ways we define ourselves on twitter are very different.

A large part of what defines you on twitter is who you follow/who follows you. Your TL will have a huge impact on who you become on twitter. Follow people who are always engaged and stimulating, and twitter isn’t a distraction from the rest of your life, but a new facet of life that enhances everything else. You can get advice from the opposite sex, get advice from people who are further along in a similar career path, or anything else you might ask for. No matter who you follow on twitter you can ask any question, but who follows you will determine what kinds of answers you get to your questions. But the dynamic of who you follow/who follows you plays out well beyond just asking questions. Follow boring people who simply update on what they’re doing right then, or what they just got done doing, and twitter is just another vapid, well-lit digital cave. The twitter that most people describe when they speak of a twitter that is vapid is just #WhiteTwitter. On #WhiteTwitter there is no dialog, there are no flourishing discussions, there are no ongoing jokes. #WhiteTwitter is just a bunch of one-sided conversations, and one tweet topics. #WhiteTwitter, and every other racially descriptive twitter exist only in their absence, because whatever your race, if you’re using twitter as a robust social tool, you’re on #BlackTwitter.

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Vancouver is wild in the streets, and they are not pleased. After last nights Stanley Cup defeat at the hands of the Eastern Conference’s own Boston Bruins, Canucks fans took to the pavement, and decided to fuck shit up all throughout the scenic metropolis. In a fashion that seemed particularly Canadian, Vancouver devotees decided to riot after they lost the Cup, leaving no cop car unburned along the way.  Check out this and this gallery of these dinguses in action. Being from Buffalo, I’m generally well versed in the sports heart-break department, as well as the drunkenly-smashing-things department, so I can attest to the feelings a significant win or loss can elicit. In a lot of ways, my heart goes out to theses long-suffering Vancouver Canucks fans… in many other ways, however, I couldn’t care less. I kind of hate their team.

Viewing both teams from a purely player-driven standpoint, it’s clear that we should all have been pulling for the Boston Bruins from the outset of this finals series. Most of the players on the bean town squad resemble the type of lunkhead that you probably graduated (or didn’t graduate) from high school with, while the Canucks roster seemed more akin to a veritable all-star team of sorts. Excluding the loathsome giant Zdeno Chara, for whom I will withhold my spirited personal views on, there’s nary a household name to be found throughout the Bruins locker room. Considering the chippy, grind-it-out style of hockey that jettisoned these goons to the top of the NHL heap, I’m assuming all the players kind of like it that way.

In the extended, but never boring, seven game series, the Bruins often found themselves down, but never completely out, due to the erratic-yet-brilliant play of  Tim Thomas (pictured above). If you’re not in-the-know, Thomas is Boston’s American born net minder, who was given a shot at NHL stardom later on in his life, and eventually capitalized on the opportunity when he won the 2009 Vezina Trophy. The Michigan bred Goalie just so happens to seem like the nicest guy ever, and acted as one of the defining factors in the historic collapse of the remarkable Vancouver season, as he could be found standing on his head more often than not. The dude is essentially a walking feel-good story if there’s ever been one, and ya can’t help but root for him.

Anyway, this is about the time where my messy homer mentality, and screwy regionalism starts coming into play.  While I secretly (or not so secretly anymore) love the fact that a Canadian based hockey team hasn’t captured a Cup since ’93, I’m having trouble mentally coping with another Boston sporting title. Within the past decade, a New England team has won a championship in each of our nation’s four largest sports, and done so in the most obnoxious of ways. Whether the Bruins squad deserved this Stanley Cup or not, no fan base should be granted the opportunity this sort of happiness. Now I like an epic meltdown as much as the next Tom, Dick or Harry, but when Boston comes out on top of one, it makes me want to crawl out of my skin… literally.

I feel as though this is some sort of culmination of the increasing weirdness level of shit you can buy on the internet. This morning, the US government started auctioning off many of the more famous possessions of Ted Kaczynski AKA The Unabomber. Sort of want? The guy did some truly terrible shit, but you can’t deny that many of these objects have become nothing less than iconic. Plus, all the profit goes to his victims or their families. So that’s a plus.

The crown jewel of this collection is most certainly the dingy hoodie and sunglasses. I mean, fuck, who doesn’t shiver just seeing those things. Especially mounted up on that weird mannequin. How you think that would look propped up in 350 Broadway? I hope the person who buys it doesn’t wear it. I bet that sweater smells fucking terrible. What a weenie.

Mayday 2011. Barry O ensured reelection in 2012 when he called an impromptu press conference to announce that he smoked that fool! Stoked NYC’ers moshed at ground zero, coal-hearted nerds made memes, clever people internetted cleverly, and network news editors worked feverishly to assemble music videos of Bin Laden’s greatest hits. Props due to Mr. President. Someone forward me the paypal address of the good ol’ boy who actually pulled the trigger, I want to buy him a beer. U-S-A! U-S-A! Bring on some bimbos in bikinis and crank the Godsmack, cuz we’re fuckin’ up yer program Al-Queda!

Right on cue is Alex Jones, asparagus pissing down my Miller Lite vortex bottle and diarrhea’ing all up in the salsa. Damn. Okay, pass the mike to AJ, let’s hear what the brother’s got to say…

Did Council on Foreign Relations member, Stephen R. Pieczenik, really claim that Bin Laden was already dead back in April 2002? Isn’t the burial at sea a bit… FISHY? Was Hitler really killed on Mayday as well? Is there any connection between these historic events and the fact that Adam Weishaupt established the Bavarian Illuminati on May 1, 1776? Really, Alex? Well, shit man. It could be all that Bin Laden weed being passed around, but when you put it that way, yeah. It does sound a bit suspicious. What else you got?

Woah, woah, woah. Dude’s been in deep freeze for the last ten years?!?!?!

Alex Jones was separately told by a high level Republican source that Bin Laden was dead and that his body was being kept “on ice” until Osama’s death could be announced at the most “politically expedient” time. When Jones asked the source if his claim was mere speculation or whether it was actually true, the source re-iterated the fact that he was being deadly serious and that Bin Laden’s corpse was “physically on ice” waiting to be rolled out for public consumption at the most opportune moment.

Many expected that moment to be right before the 2004 election, but after Democrats began speculating about the possibility, Republicans settled instead for a fake Osama video tape that was released on the eve of the election and, according to both George W. Bush and John Kerry, was the deciding factor in a closely-fought contest. Veteran news reader Walter Cronkite labeled the entire farce a Karl Rove-orchestrated “set-up”.

In addition to these sources, a deluge of other heads of state as well as intelligence agency professionals have gone on record over the past nine years to state their belief that Bin Laden was likely dead, after it became clear that the Al-Qaeda leader’s health was in severe decline as a result of kidney disease at the end of 2001.

Way to break up a party, AJ. Real smooth, guy. No, don’t help clean. Just get the fuck out.

I’ve waited a decade now to revel in whatever fantabulous wordplay the NY Post would use for its cover headline if and when Osama Bin Laden was either killed or captured. Now after it’s all said and done they settle on “Got Him!” Got Him? You really shit the bed on this momentous day NY Post. Just shat all over it. I can’t frame and commemorate “Got Him!” for prosperity properly. Did you ever think of that?

You even let The Daily News (heavy handed as it may be) beat you! You couldn’t even just given us “Osama Bin Gotten!” or something? I could live with that. You could’ve at least done a lil photoshop like this…

via A Silent Flute

You know what that is? It’s a very courteous letter that I received from a gentleman whom I worked for. He took the time to write that to me on one of my first jobs in Humboldt County. I fronted about knowing what I was doing, and instead of giving me the boot he gave me the rundown. Pretty cool. So, in the spirit of pretty cool I bring you the first annual Standard Deviance 420 post. No time to waste, let’s get down to it.

First, I have this mix. Recently I’ve done some graphic design work for a collective out here, and they asked me if I would do some DJ mixes for them too. I’m not exactly a DJ, but I’m slick enough with Ableton to impersonate one. So, you’ll notice that there isn’t much DJ stuff happening on here. It’s more like an edited playlist. But, in spite of the fact that I’m not beatmatching I did pick some great tunes, and arrange them in an order conducive to enhancing your mind-state, and put a cover on it. The tracklist doesn’t exist because I got stoned and forgot to add it before I uploaded it. It’s performance art. Start the mix right before you start your mix…feel me? Get it here

BUT! Before you go doing anything today I hope that you’ll take a moment to give this day some actual gumption. California’s Senate is currently getting ready to vote on S.B. 129, which protects the medical cannabis patient’s right to employment. Currently patients can lose their jobs if their results come back positive on a drug test at work.

In order to ensure that medical cannabis patients are afforded the same rights as everyone else, Americans for Safe Access and Senator Mark Leno have organized this bill which has already passed the Senate judiciary Committee, and is now going to be voted on.

This is your chance to make a big difference without making a huge effort. Simply click this link, find your district on the map (which is very clearly labeled), click your district, follow the link on the page that opens in order to send an email. Let your representative know that when they go to vote on S.B. 129 they need to vote yes, let them know that we’re watching. And if you don’t live in California then click here and let Senate President Steinberg know that people are paying attention outside of California too. This is a really important issue because it’s a big step in taking cannabis seriously. It means that we’re not gonna just treat this like a joke, and we’re actually pushing for lasting change in the institution.

Another thing you might want to think about doing is speaking to your grandparents, or any older folks you know about the medicinal values of cannabis, or just letting them know that you use it and you’re fine. A lot of older folks who vote, don’t understand that cannabis is safe because they were subjected to harsh prohibition and wild government propaganda. It’s up to us to help them understand that cannabis is both safe and beneifical. Older folks stand to benefit as cannabis mediates many conditions that affect the aging (fibro myalgia, cancer, neuropathy, et cetera).

And, I’ll leave you with this epic happenstance from a recent twitter conversation:

Toy Tokyo & The TT-Underground Gallery are proud to present a benefit art auction for the Japan earthquake and Pacific tsunami relief. TT pulled out the stops on this one, accumulating an impressive list of artists for this benefit show. The art will be on display from April 2nd-3rd with the opening reception being held on Saturday, April 2nd from 7-11. After the 3rd, the art will go on sale on eBay for 10 days with all proceeds going to support Global Giving.

Opening night suggested donation of $5 goes to the Japan Red Cross. You will receive a raffle ticket and a chance to win some fabulous prizes for your donation. Attendance at the exhibition is not required to bid in the auction.

Saturday April 2nd, 7-11pm
TT-Underground
91 Second Ave, Lower Level
NY, NY 10003
212-673-5424
info@tt-underground.com