• By ISHMAEL BEAH, NYT Magazine:

    After that first week of going out on raids to kill people we deemed our rebel enemies or sympathizers of the rebels, our initiation was complete. We stayed put at the base, and we boys took turns guarding posts around the village. We smoked marijuana and sniffed “brown brown,” cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on a table near the ammunition hut, and of course I took more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them. The first time I took all these drugs at the same time, I began to perspire so much that I took off all my clothes. My body shook, my sight became blurred and I lost my hearing for several minutes. I walked around the village restlessly. But after several doses of these drugs, all I felt was numbness to everything and so much energy that I couldn’t sleep for weeks. We watched war movies at night, Rambo “First Blood,” “Rambo, First Blood, Part II,” “Commando” and so on, with the aid of a generator or a car battery. We all wanted to be like Rambo; we couldn’t wait to implement his techniques.

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  • NYT:

    In 1932 the young Henri Cartier-Bresson, lately returned from Africa, saw a photograph of African children charging into waves on a beach. “I must say that it is that very photograph which was for me the spark that set fire to fireworks,” he recalled years later. “I couldn’t believe such a thing could be caught with the camera. I said, ‘Damn it,’ took my camera and went out into the street.” What Cartier-Bresson produced during the next few years, as the curator Peter Galassi once wrote, became “one of the great, concentrated episodes in modern art.”

    How much the African photograph actually shaped this work is debatable, but it struck a chord. It epitomized the combination of serendipity and joie de vivre that Cartier-Bresson admired: three naked boys, their silhouettes against white spray and sun-drenched water, making a perfect geometry.

    The man who shot the picture was Martin Munkacsi. Hungarian-born, a star of Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, the leading illustrated German newsmagazine, Munkacsi was then one of the most celebrated photojournalists. He reached a pinnacle of fame and fortune in New York later that decade, claiming to be the highest-paid photographer in the world (he was notoriously self-mythologizing), revolutionizing the American fashion magazine under Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar.

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  • Thomas Hawk:

    Another project I’d like to create is a some kind of a page of portraits that I’ve taken of people with blogs. The page would be a giant collage of thumnails and as you hovered over every small thumbnail it would zooom and pop up a larger portrait of that person with a link to their blog underneath. A pictorial directory of blogs. A way to humanize blogs to some small degree.

    I’d like to fill an entire men’s rest room with images of women, an entire women’s rest room with images of men and a unisex restroom with images of women and men. I’d like to cover interiors and exteriors of buildings with 8×10 photographs. Plastering every inch. I’d like to use my collection of macro images of children’s toys to cover a child’s play room.

    One thing above all that is important in my own personal collection of images is that each image must alone and by itself be interesting. It must be processed and presented with love and care to the world and suitable to exist alongside the other images in the master collection. Anyone can take one million photographs by setting the camera on rapid fire and shooting the same thing over and over and over again and dumping random shots onto the internet. I want to keep the quality of my images consistently high allowing only processed images that I feel meet a high enough quality bar to present.

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  • Dead Time Pacifies:

    I was introduced to Casey maybe 10 years ago and he has been a mainstay in our punk/hardcore scene long before that. He has been in more bands than anyone else I know of. Casey has been known for his bands and his brawls. In recent times, with the advent of ‘his’ crew, The Viking Skins, some amount of controversy has surrounded this man who seems to cast a long scary shadow. I think a lot of people are too scared to ask him questions. I knew he was an interesting dude, so I asked the questions.

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  • Wired:

    When you actually get to the school and begin the attack, things become subtler yet. As you wander through the hallways, the little pixilated victims scurry around in semi-random paths, and any time you cross paths a battle is triggered. You encounter the same six or seven kids over and over again: the “Jock Type,” the “Preppy Girl,” the “Sheltered Girl”, the “Preppy Boy.”

    It’s a neat stab at the mindset of the killers, who, for all their bombast about being objectified by their tormentors, did precisely the same thing to their victims. They didn’t see them as individuals: They were just metaphoric targets for their hatred. Indeed, in the game, as the killers did in real life, you don’t target any particular kids. You just wander around killing randomly. And Ledonne’s aesthetic decision to make Super Columbine so retro-looking enhances this effect: The game’s style evokes the killer’s pared-down, simplistic, self-serving view of the world.

    Ledonne also gets in a few sly jabs at video-game culture itself. When you acquire your weapons, the game announces it with the sort of cheery dialog box that is typical in an RPG: “You acquire a Fire Spell! You pick up a Frag Grenade!” Except here, because the weapons are drawn from real life (“Eric got a Hi-Point model 996 carbine rifle complete with shoulder strap!”), the exuberant tone highlights just how psychotic and disconnected from reality the conventions of video games can sometimes seem.

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  • Washington Post:

    Hours before dawn on the last day of 2006, a gray van pulled up to the ATM housed in a steel shed just outside T.P.T. Supermarket in this run-down township. The store’s security guard, posted about 30 feet away, said he saw four hooded men jump out of the van, stuff something into the front of the cash machine, then run away.

    The blast that followed was so strong it jolted people awake in nearby homes, witnesses said. But before anyone could alert the police, the hooded men rushed back and pulled from the smoldering remains a box the size of a small file cabinet. Together they hoisted it into the van and sped off.

    And so ended the 53rd and final cash machine bombing of 2006, the year a toxic stew of joblessness, criminal ingenuity and readily available mine explosives gave rise to a startling new trend in crime-weary South Africa.

    “Eeesh,” said T.P.T. Supermarket’s night guard, Alpheus Nevhundogwa, 49, as he recalled the attack. “These people, dangerous.”

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  • LA Times:

    Yet such discomfort also provides great fodder for his latest comedy, “Extras,” which has aired in England and returns for its second season in the U.S. on Sunday on HBO. Conceived as a sardonic look at unsuccessful actors trying to make it in the movie business, the series takes a new turn this season when a sitcom script written by the long-struggling Andy Millman, played by Ricky Gervais, is picked up by the BBC.

    Andy’s exuberance is quickly diminished when network executives proceed to dumb down the workplace comedy, titled “When the Whistle Blows.” They make him don a curly black wig and outsized glasses for his part as a dim factory boss. They insist his character utter an annoying catchphrase whenever someone appears to have cracked a joke: “Are you having a laugh?”

    Critics pan “When the Whistle Blows,” which is nevertheless a popular hit, a fact that only further depresses Andy. In one scene, he is accosted at a pub by fans of the sitcom who urge him to deliver his character’s catchphrase, which he does with no small amount of self-loathing.

    “The big theme of it, I suppose, is ‘Don’t compromise,’ ” Gervais said. “Be careful what you wish for. Success without respect is nothing.”

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  • Photographer Joshua Brown:

    Selection from a portrait series of 50 (of about 300 that I have photographed so far) of my coworkers in a conference room.

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  • PDN-

    The White House broke with tradition Wednesday night and refused to let photojournalists shoot still pictures of the president at the podium after his prime-time address on the Iraq war.

    As a result, newspapers and wire services had little choice but to run low-quality frame grabs from the video of the speech. An official handout photo from the White House, which most news outlets rejected, was the only other option. Caught in a bind on deadline, some newspapers ran the official White House photo with no disclosure that it was provided by the government.

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  • WFMU’s Beware the Blog:

    This is one of the best records in my collection. I have a thing for spoken word records, and this is by far the best spoken word record I’ve ever heard. I usually like to play this record for people without telling them what it was intended for, to see if they can guess why anyone would buy it. The idea is straightforward enough: you put this record on in repeat mode while you’re out of the house in order to fool potential burglars into thinking someone’s home. Like those automatically light timers, except for sound. Of course, it would be far easier and more convincing just to leave the TV or radio on, but that wouldn’t be NEARLY as much fun!! Plus, this is in STEREO so you’re sure to get the extra added illusion that the voices are coming from different parts of the room!

    The truly great thing about this record is all in the execution. The couple bantering back and forth here presumably had kind of a rough script they were following, and sort of semi-improvised their banal conversation. It’s actors trying to sound as inconspicuously actor-ish as possible. Add to this the fact that, as per the instructions on the jacket, you’re supposed to play it at a level where someone standing outside the house can hear that there’s people talking inside without being able to make out what’s being said, and to me that’s a recipe for pure performance art! (In fact, I’ve considered staging a performance with two actors, using this LP as the entire backdrop.)

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  • Wooster Collective:

    From Rich Jones comes the photo above of street art in Somalia that depicts the militias that roam Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu.

    Rich says that this article – Doctors Without Borders 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Crises of 2006 – is “one of the most important things you’ll read this year”.

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  • New York Magazine via Alec Soth:

    The artist Dash Snow rammed a screwdriver into his buzzer the other day. He has no phone. He doesn’t use e-mail. So now, if you want to speak to him, you have to go by his apartment on Bowery and yell up. Lorax-like, he won’t come to the window to let you see that he sees you: He has a periscope he puts up so he can check you out first.

    Partly, it comes from his graffiti days, this elusiveness, the recent adolescence the 25-year-old Snow spent tagging the city and dodging the police. “He’s pretty paranoid about lots of things in general, and some of it was dished out to him, but others he’s created himself,” says Snow’s friend, the 27-year-old artist Dan Colen, who—like so many of their friends—has made significant artistic contributions to the ever-expanding mythology of Dash Snow. Colen and Snow went to London together this fall for the Saatchi show in which they both had work. (Saatchi had bought one of Colen’s sculptures for $500,000.) Saatchi got them a fancy hotel room on Piccadilly. They had to flee it in the middle of the night with their suitcases before it was discovered that they’d created one of their Hamster’s Nests, which they’ve done quite a few times before. To make a Hamster’s Nest, Snow and Colen shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs—mushrooms, coke, ecstasy—until they feel like hamsters.

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  • Digital Outback:

    We conducted our first interview with John Sexton. John is a highly regarded master B&W photographer and printer. Bettina and I had the chance to meet John and his wife Anne in his Carmel Valley studio. We add some of John’s pictures to present the interview in the context of John’s masterful images. Of course these small JPEG images don’t do the real prints justice. But at least you get an idea how the real prints may look.

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  • The Onion:

    BURBANK, CA—Despite having announced plans to retire as host of The Tonight Show in 2008, Jay Leno admitted yesterday that he was “having serious doubts” about leaving the TV show after coming across a recent news item in which a Georgia woman doused her philandering husband’s groin in kerosene and set it aflame. The veteran comedian said the incident would provide a wealth of material for “many, many years to come.” “Boy, talk about keeping your marriage exciting,” said Leno, who claimed he had already assigned 19 of his top writers to the story.

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  • Wallspankers:

    ISSUE THREE STICKER CONTRIBUTIONS:
    9.10do, 37 Cents, Air, Alex Robbie, Alexandro Farto, Amy Rice, Blessness, Bloodlet, Capish, Collette Elson, Danny Glix, Deadvolt, Debbie Hill, Demitri Nezis, Dolla Lama, Downtimer, Dres13, Emecuatro, Fabrice D, Fost, Hero, Jamaisvu, Jessica Monster, Jontando, Junichi Tsuneoka, Jurne, Justin G, Lala, Lisenbart, Lococateters, Logan Shirah, Lopez, Michael Metallo, Mike Walshe, Lerk, Angel D’amico, Brandy Flower, 57Even, Andrew Cook, Brian Butler, Chuck Trunks, Destroy All Media, Elider Elizondo, Ipxls, Matt Buden, Mista Breakfast, Munk One, MWM Graphics, Randy Laybourne, Rockabilly, Zoso, Monster Little, Mr. Bluespoon, Mr. Luke, Mr. Snub, Naste, Nevarestin, Nomad, Nuse, Odhill, One Trick Pony, Past, Paul Galaxy, Paulo Arraiano, Pedro Lourenco, Peel, Phlegm, Reone, Ryan North, Stephanie Toppin, Sticky, Street Carp, The Sound Of Drowning, Vhs, WUT Crew, Zerohapi, Ziqi.

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  • NYT:

    Martin Amis’s new novel, “House of Meetings,” tackles the same sobering material his 2002 nonfiction book “Koba the Dread” did: Stalin’s slave labor camps and the atrocities committed by the government during the failed “Soviet experiment.” The novel is everything that misguided earlier book was not. Whereas “Koba” weirdly mixed chilling, secondhand historical accounts of Stalin’s crimes with self-indulgent asides about Mr. Amis’s upper-middle-class life in England, “House of Meetings” is a powerful, unrelenting and deeply affecting performance: a bullet train of a novel that barrels deep into the heart of darkness that was the Soviet gulag and takes the reader along on an unnerving journey into one of history’s most harrowing chapters

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  • Gamespot:

    In addition to all the tracks from the PlayStation 2 version of Guitar Hero II, GHII for the Xbox 360 will include 10 new songs not seen in the PS2 game. While we don’t know the full list yet, Red Octane has announced five of the new songs that will be in the game:

    Pearl Jam — “Life Wasted”
    Rick Derringer — “Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo”
    My Chemical Romance — “Dead!”
    Deep Purple — “Hush”
    Alice Cooper — “Billion Dollar Baby”

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  • SportsShooter:

    Erik Lunsford’s illustrative portraits are next in a series of SportsShooter.com features called “Trade Secrets.”

    The Daunte Culpepper image, “The Office”, was produced through a combination of extensive Photoshop manipulation and physical destructive techniques. After printing, the image was subjected to being run over with a car, getting stomped on with very dirty shoes, and having mud ground into the surface. For the finishing touches, a variety of paper clips, plastic knives, box cutters, and cheese graters were used to give the print that distressed ‘feel’ before scanning it to produce the final product. It was quite humorous watching the newspaper security guards in the employee lot stare in confusion as I drove forward and reverse repeatedly to create the imprint texture.

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  • Wooster Collective:

    We’ve been a fan of Amnesty International’s street campaigns for years. This one, about freedom of speech in Belorussia, was done by Saatchi & Saatchi Poland.

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  • Photo essay by Paolo Pellegrin, Magnum Photos:

    In Afghanistan opium fuels everything from the culture, the politics, the economy and the resurgent Taliban fighters. Paolo Pellegrin went to the remote southern provinces where the war on drugs, alongside that with the insurgency is raging. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) is working in Afghanistan alongside the Afghan National Interdiction Unit, carrying out raids in remote villages. Links are being made between the resurgence of the Taliban and the drug industry, as both have nothing to gain from the area being controlled by central government. With the large amounts of money to be made from trafficking opium, criminality and corruption are rife, programmes set up to wean farmers off of producing the poppies neglected to track down the networks doing the trafficking, an unclear policy towards totally freeing areas from the duel influence of poppy growing and the Taliban shows itself through the presence of the D.E.A and it’s frustration not to be carrying out the two monthly missions that was their objective on arriving, through lack of military support.

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