Octopi Everywhere

Is that a great line or what! I just happened to stumble upon that the other day, no idea why or how. I was searching for something not even vaguely related, so who knows. I can’t even claim I stumbled it…

And who doesn’t love a Cephalopod Tea Party call for publications with a name like this: Suction Cup Dreams: An Octopus Anthology!

 “We are looking for short fiction between 1000-7500 words…which either showcase or are inspired by the octopus as a central theme.”

Sounds pretty cool to me! That’s right, I got to this place when I was looking up a questionable environmental pollsters I am writing about, and somehow stumbled upon the octopi art. And that then led me to Mother Jones and the Vulgar Army, where this image to the right came from.

This isn’t really really related to octopus at all, but also came across this post and had to laugh, mostly cause I love the Popeye reference.

And speaking of Popeye, I Am What I Am and That’s All That I Am. I’m Popeye the sailor man..toot toot.

That’s almost as good as this little ditty, except that the remake with Robin Williams is awful!

In an unrelated note, I also ran across this really interesting site, Fractal Ontology, which has a really great mixture of political theory and philosophical musings, as well as a cool site design. Love the snowflakes–I think they are snowflakes anyway. Definitely check out the Download page for some of the topics of past blogs, like Nietzsche, Corruption, Exhaustion or Culture, Language, and Multiplicity or my favorite one: Warning, Hive Meltdown Imminent!

Then there’s the new launch of Tidal: Occupy Theory, Occupy Strategy, which is a smallish magazine about OWS which was just launched and which I saw a copy of over the weekend. Pieces from Judith Butler, Guyatri Spivak and others. The NYCGA announcement for the launch describes it like this:

“The journal provides a multidisciplinary exposition of the fundamental challenges posed to institutions of the status quo by the organized chaos of human beings relating to each other democratically and authentically.”

I’ll admit, I’m a bit skeptical of a journal on theory and strategy coming from Butler and Spivak, even if they are good writers. After all, if even a political theory PhD student has trouble understanding Butler at times, how is she going to speak to the 99%? Hummm… But since I haven’t been able to track downa copy, and there is nothing digital yet that I can find, all I can do is speculate at this point. If anyone finds a link to a pdf or text, please let me know and I will add it here.

Animal Farm

And in other news, although I couldn’t make it, there was an amazing event over the weekend with farmers and ows folks marching in NYC, a seed swap and more actions in support of food, gardens and communities. Great stuff, and exactly what #OWS needs to really spread and grow as a movement. You can find some photos from screenprinting done in support of the event here. I’m really bummed I wasn’t able to make it, but will definitely be following this and #occupyfood in the coming months!

The Food Justice Group, which was involved in this, is an offshoot of OWS Sustainability. Here’s a little more about them:

The FJG works to strengthen, empower and promote bioregional solidarity within the OWS movement by
1. Promoting and Supporting local-farm to kitchen relationships.
2. Encouraging and facilitating dialogue, education and direct action on the issues of sustainable food production, food justice, food sovereignty and corporate control in our local, regional, national and global food systems
3. Incorporating the principles of food justice and self-sufficiency into the everyday practices of the Occupy Wall Street encampment and the occupiers.

Enter the OWS Occucopter

And then, as if all this wasn’t enough, there’s news about the possible launch of an OWS Occucopter!

AR Parrot Drone (with custom paint job)

This technology is actually something I’m been pondering for a while, even before the amazing Polish footage of the copter in action there, as it offers a way to bypass street blockades. (Other folks have used robots to do similar tactical guerrilla media interventions, in particular check out the Institute for Applied Autonomy) And the Parrot AR Drone, from all that I’ve seen (I haven’t been able to test fly one yet), may just be the coup de grace to finally bypass police cordons and media blackouts like when Zuccotti was raided. If you’re not familiar, you can check out more details here, but basically this is an advanced RC helicopter with 4 props for stability and more in-flight stability. You can pick one up for around $300 at Brookstone here in NYC. How these might shift some small amount of power is unclear, and whether they will be successful if deployed remains to be seen–after all, with a limited range (about 150 ft.) and fly time (12-14 min battery life), it’s unclear how effective this might be as a strategy. But the thought of bypassing police cordons with these, and maybe even doing banner actions directly over the cops, is amazing and worth the experiments in and of themselves.

Until next time…

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