So this summer road trip thing is getting more and more real. I just bought two domains for it:

diyusa.org: I'm thinking the .org part of the trip is propaganda, people, the Big Ideas and stuff.

vagabender.com: The .com seems like maybe the place to promote outcomes, like the film we intend to make.

Woo!

The year is underway. 2005, still without a name, but picking up steam nontheless. The rainy season continues here in San Frisco. Cars and trucks on wet road sound like a rushing river when they're steady. I need to do post-christmas gift shopping for my family before heading up to Oregon next week. Must make list; surgical precision-strike shopping.

Other things to do:

• Make a powerpoint presentation/movie explaining ideas for next-gen online organizing
• Start working on reviving axiom, start up an email list or something
• Re-design and transition outlandish to civicspace/drupal
• Start outlining online tools for Road Trip website
• Figure out how to make some more money between now and May to pay for the trip

And how to integrate these things? How to start pushing politics, art, tech and friendplans into the same whirly mix? There's synergy in there someone. It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

I haven't biked in the past couple weeks. It's been rainy. I took the wheels down to the Caltrain depot this morning, riding hard with the Afro-Celt Soundsystem. Lots of spit, phlegm and some cold-lung coughing at the end, but what a feeling! Clarity, focus, a spinning inner gyroscope.

Cooking, biking, telling the truth. I was once going to write a mannafesto based on those ideas. Who knows about the writing, but the ideas. The ideas!

I'll be in Oregon from Jan 8th - 15th, flying in and out of PDX. Static inertia falls away in the face of momentum.

Taking the Muni train home this morning (bowchickawow) I got a regretful feeling about San Francisco. You know, if I hadn't been lonely and commuting and stressed to the gills I might have really had a better time of it. Seems pretty obvious, but rolling out into the early morning light drinking coffee and listening to Coletrain I got a hit of how it's all supposed to work. Coitus, caffeine and closely-packed public transportation -- things that make me feel good.

2005, yet to be dubbed. It will be the year of the ____

I spent the weekend in Berkeley with Oregon peeps and associated friends and housemates. It was good. We cooked three meals. We made predictions. We wrote down some witty things that were said. It makes me want to get more back into writing, performing, making artifacts of culture.

Hope everyone had a good one. I'm off to shower.

Hey, hepcats. This is a public service announcement. If you get a strangely formatted/worded and/or unexpected email from the likes of PayPal, be careful. I just got a bona-fide phishing email. Subject: Notification of PayPal Limited Account Access. It actually links through to a site based out of Taiwan.

Phishing is the natural confluence of Spam and Scam: 1000s of emails go out which are formatted to appear to be legitimate communications from a company which you may be getting some service from. They link through to painstaking mockups of what the legit site actually looks like, but their only purpose is to get you to devulge your logins, passwords, credit card info, etc.

If you want to get smart about this sort of thing, here's a good online quiz which will show you some things to look for.

Remember: watch the URLs. If you click a link and see you're being redirected to something phishy like a numerical IP address or a domain you don't recognize, don't give up your info and contact the legit customer support center to let them know what's up. If you experience this w/paypal, you can forward the scammy email to spoof (at) paypal.com

So seriously, are there many good "fun" websites that I'm missing? I'm pretty burnt out on politics for entertainment, and I already know homestar. I don't really want to turn to the Tube (because lord knows TV is a big disappointment a lot of the time) but I really have an urge to adjust my information input/output balance for a little while. Any good media I'm missing? Any great writing? Any movies? Should I get netflix? Should I look for bittorrents of good TV and video content?

I haven't been much of a consumer, and I'm out of touch. Turn me on to the good shit!

Some bastards tried to steal my bike seat. They couldn't cut the cable-lock (meaning they must have had just a knife and not a serious pair of clippers) but they did manage to break the bold that holds the seat in place, and damage my rear break cable. Nice. Cost me $30 to fix everything, and the theves got zero return. Way to create entropy, guys.

I also read Alex Garland's The Beach which was apparently a crappy movie, but which was an entertaining read for a couple days. Its about a pirate utopia that goes wrong essentially because its constituants are unable to communicate; sort of a more grown-up Lord of the Flies.

Almost done with Polyani and The Great Transformation also. I started discussing it last night with Luke and Nick, but Nick hadn't read it so we didn't get too specific and we also drank a bunch of beer really quickly, followed (with Nick's exception) by getting Way Too High, which pretty much killed meaningful conversation. I communed with the the linoleum (supports my head, gives me something to believe) and we all fell asleep before midnight. It was Luke's 26th birthday. We're not kids anymore. But that's allright.

But it is interesting to think... I feel a little bit of pressure as the days and weeks tick on. I'll be 26 this summer. I still reflexively think of myself as 23 or 24. I suppose its because I really haven't re-evaluated myself since just after turning 24. Pretty much auto-pilot as far as internal affairs have been concerned. The questions of who I was, what I wanted to do, where I was going were all sublimated under bigger inquiries into other people, the country, the world. Again, not that there's anything wrong with that. It' s just that I feel a little navel-gazing coming on.

Back in January/February 2003 I wrote a document for myself trying to outline my purpose in life. Maybe it's time to revisit.

The New York Times Habitats: A Fashion Foursome's Silver Cage

Frank lived for a while next door to these people, subletting a room in a great loft near Chinatown. I stayed with him right after getting out of school. We'd drink french press coffee in the morning and wonder what the people whose apartment we could see into were doing with all their silver walls, flourescent lights and plastic curtains.

Now we know. They were fashion weirdos. I think we realized this at the time; there was some concept that they had gotten recognition in the indie/underground fashion press, but this was at the tail end of When It Was All Changing in New York, the decade when the isle of Manhattan's gentrification was more or less completed. There's so little room now for weirdos without trust funds to do anything, it's hard to get a critical mass together. That's why Brooklyn is so hot. It's where all the boho talent when when it was priced off the island.

Can't wait to get back!

Peace on earth and good will toward humans, yo.

Whether or not this is your holiday, I hope you and yours are well and good.