'TOYLAND' by Al Columbia

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TOYLAND by Al Columbia

Pim & Francie is already receiving advance praise from folks like Spike Jonze.  Jim Woodring’s drawing group, Friends of the Nib, is calling it “book of the year“.

Al’s always working on something new and amazing, whether it’s music, filmmaking, comics, or in this case, painting.  Al showed me a photo of this new painting he was working on and I became immersed in the labyrinth of frayed facade and haunting beauty.  We reprinted it as the centerpiece of the new issue of Diamond Comics, available now!

To commemorate the release of Al Columbia’s new book, Floating World has teamed with the artist to produce a limited edition series of archival prints of this latest painting, Toyland.  The giclee prints are on museum quality paper measuring 18″x24″; the artwork is 15″x20″.

We only made 25 copies of this incredible image, and each was signed and numbered by the artist at his recent book release party at the Fantagraphics store.  Orders will be filled in numerical order starting with number 3 of 25 (#1 and #2 already sold).  They will be shipped securely in a tube.  Head over to Floating World Comics’ website to place your order.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Kurt Vonnegut

vonnegut
NOVEMBER 11 — KURT VONNEGUT
Beloved American novelist, sardonic social critic.
cats_cradle_2[1]

NOVEMBER 11 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
U.S.: VETERAN’S DAY. MARTINMAS, one of four “quarter days” in Old
England when rents were paid. As celebration and consolation there
was feasting and drinking. Was also called “TEAR-STOMACH DAY.”Martin
was the patron of beggars, tavern keepers and wine growers, proba-
bly because his day coincides with the ancient “FEAST OF DIONYSUS.”
Netherlands: ELEVEN ELEVEN ELEVEN DAY.Tradition says
eleven is the number of fools. On the 11th day of the 11th month a
council of 11 begins organizing the next year’s carnival, “so anyone
can be as foolish as he or she cares to be for those three days.”

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 11 IN HISTORY
1647 — First American compulsory school law passed, Massachusetts.
1821 — Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky born, Moscow, Russia.
1831 — American slave rebellion leader Nat Turner hanged, Jerusalem, Virginia.
1880 — American feminist Lucretia Mott dies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1887 — Haymarket martyrs executed, Chicago, Illinois.
1922 — American novelist Kurt Vonnegut born, Indianapolis, Indiana.
1942 — Jimi Hendrix, rock guitar wizard, born, Seattle, Washington.
1989 — Civil Rights Memorial dedicated in Montgomery, Alabama.
2004 — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dies; succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – MIRIAM MAKEBA


NOVEMBER 10 — MIRIAM MAKEBA
“Mama Africa.” South African songstress, anti-apartheidist.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs_CxmMMpW4

NOVEMBER 10, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Lousa, Portugal: ST. MARTIN’S EVE, FESTIVAL OF SANTA BEBIANA, said to be Martin’s sister. The name derives from “beber” (“to drink”). Martin, patron of revelry, presides over slaughter of festival pigs. Torchlight procession with “Bebiana” in wheelbarrow, a flask to her lips. She then delivers a sermon on the evils of drunkenness, a temperance hymn is sung, and everyone gets stinking drunk.
STANK DANCE IN PERPETUAL PEACE DAY.     FESTIVAL OF SPIRITUAL INDOLENCE.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 10 IN HISTORY…
1483 — Anti-Church of Rome reformer Martin Luther born, Eisleben, Germany.
1697 — British satirist engraver William Hogarth born, London, England.
1879 — Patrick Henry Pearse, Irish freedom fighter, born, Dublin, Ireland.
1891 — Gay French gun-runner, poet Arthur Rimbaud dies, Marseilles.
1891 — Polish anarchist Simon Radowitzky born, Stepanesso, Ukraine.
1973 — Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 burned as “tool of the Devil” by school
board, and teacher who assigned it fired, Drake, North Dakota.
1995 — Eco-activist Ken Saro-Wiwa hanged, Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
2008 — South African singer Miriam Makeba dies, Castel Volturno, Caserta, Italy.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

FUTURE SAFETY MEASURES

from : http://spectregroup.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/future-safety-measures/

No Provision Against Acts Of God (Or Future God-Particles)
http://edms.cern.ch/file/342513/LAST_RELEASED/AOC_E.pdf
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-bird-shuts-down-lhc
Bread Dropped By Bird Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really)
“The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine. This incident won’t delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched.”

Retrocausality
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/science/space/13lhc.html
The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate
“More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half. According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass. “It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.” Dr. Nielsen admits that he and Dr. Ninomiya’s new theory smacks of time travel, a longtime interest, which has become a respectable research subject in recent years. While it is a paradox to go back in time and kill your grandfather, physicists agree there is no paradox if you go back in time and save him from being hit by a bus. In the case of the Higgs and the collider, it is as if something is going back in time to keep the universe from being hit by a bus.”

Long Odds
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/09/19/lhc-first-magnet-failure/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/14/spooky-signals-from-the-future-telling-us-to-cancel-the-lhc/
“In their December 2007 paper — before the LHC tried to turn on — they very explicitly say that a “natural” accident will come along and break the LHC if we try to turn it on. Well, we know how that turned out. But NN have an ingenious suggestion for saving us from future accidents at the LHC — which, as they warn, could endanger lives. They propose a card game with more than a million cards, almost all of which say “go ahead, no problem.” But one card says “don’t turn on the LHC!” In their model, the nonlocal effect of the imaginary part of the action is to ensure that the realized history of the universe is one in which the LHC never turns on; but it doesn’t matter why it doesn’t turn on. If we randomly pick one out of a million cards, and honestly promise to follow through on the instructions on the card we pick, and we happen to pick the card that says not to turn it on, and we therefore don’t — that’s a history of the universe that is completely unsuppressed by their mechanism. And if we choose a card that says “go ahead,” well then their theory is falsified. (Unless we try to go ahead and are continually foiled by a series of unfortunate accidents.) Best of all, playing the card game costs almost nothing. But for it to work, we have to be very sincere that we won’t turn on the LHC if that’s what the card says. It’s only a million-to-one chance, after all.”

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – LEO HUBERMAN


NOVEMBER 9 — LEO HUBERMAN
Co-founder of radical U.S. Marxist journal Monthly Review.

NOVEMBER 9, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
CHAOS NEVER DIED DAY. FESTIVAL OF CYBERGNOSTICISM.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 9 IN HISTORY…
1731 — American polymath Benjamin Bannekar born, Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland.
1802 — American abolitionist journalist Elijah P. Lovejoy born, Albion, Maine.
1918 — Berlin workers march on Reichstag during revolution.
1953 — Welsh poet Dylan Thomas dies, New York City.
1968 — Monthly Review co-founder Leo Huberman dies.
1979 — U.S. Air Defense Command computers report that Russia is attacking.
1989 — Berlin Wall comes down, signaling end of half-century-long Cold War.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

'ENSIGN SMURF' pt. 2 by Stanley Lieber

Stanley Lieber is a comics factory, a house of ideas, a bullpen bullet, a Jim Starlin drawing, a Herzog documentary.  Bop over to his Massive Fictions website and take a look at his latest book, The Abandonment of Cruelty.  He’s compiling a comics anthology called FAKE which will contain the secrets of the internet’s true birthday.  It will also contain this space saga, Ensign Smurf.  Again, Pete Toms provides the beautiful colors.  Wanna read part one of the story again so you can know what’s going on?  Do that here.

ENSIGN_SMURF_page_05 Continue reading

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – GEORGE MACIUNAS


NOVEMBER 8 — GEORGE MACIUNAS
Lithuanian-born founder of “Fluxus” radical arts group.

NOVEMBER 8, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
DUNCE DAY. Tunisia: TREE FESTIVAL.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 8 IN HISTORY…
1674 — “Paradise Lost” poet John Milton dies.
1801 — Robert Dale Owen born, Glasgow, Scotland.
1895 — X-Rays discovered.
1897 — Catholic Worker Dorothy Day born, Brooklyn, New York.
1929 — Museum of Modern Art opens in New York City.
1931 — “Fluxus” founder George Maciunas born, Kaunas, Lithuania.
1898 — Surrealist painter René Magritte born, Lessines, Hainaut, Belgium.
1974 — U.S. Freedom of Information Act passed.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – ALBERT CAMUS


NOVEMBER 7 — ALBERT CAMUS
Stylish French existentialist, explorer of the human irrational.
“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”

NOVEMBER 7, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FESTIVAL OF STOLEN FIRE. FEAST OF FREE PAMPHLETEERS

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 7 IN HISTORY…
1837 — Abolitionist journalist Elijah P. Lovejoy dies, Alton, Illinois.
1879 — Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky born, Yankova, Ukraine.
1912 — First appearance of I.W.W. Ernest Riebe’s “Mr. Block” comic strip.
1913 — French existentialist writer Albert Camus born, Mondovi, Algeria.
1917 — Bolshevik Revolution launched, Petrograd seized.
1919 — Palmer’s “Reign of Terror” begins; 3,000 anarchists imprisoned
on Ellis Island in New York harbor.
1978 — Surrealist painter, cultural renegade Giorgio de Chirico dies, Rome, Italy.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

In NYC – Radar Eyes Hallucinogenic Prints Show

Radar_nyc

If you’re in NYC tonite:

RADAR EYES, an exhibition of hallucinogenic prints curated by Canadian printmaking duo Seripop, Chicago gallerist Reuben Kinkaid, and The Space L.I.C. will open Friday, November 6th, 7pm at Fardom Gallery, 25-17 41st Avenue, Long Island City. Around the corner, a secret space will stash many more prints and a new installation by NYC artist Sakura Maku. Gallery goers will enjoy an exciting dual-opening of hundreds of works evoking altered states, perpetual distortions, and outright hallucinations.

Including works by Le Dernier Cri (Marseilles, France), Xander Marro and Lief Goldberg (Providence, RI), Dutch Illustrator Zeloot, Minneapolis-based Danimal, and Seripop (Montreal), this show offers a mind-expanding aesthetic experience for all.

Get the full scoop here.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint – MARIO SAVIO


NOVEMBER 6 — MARIO SAVIO
Youthful Berkeley leader of 1960ʼs Free Speech Movement.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcx9BJRadfw

NOVEMBER 6, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
FESTIVAL OF PARTIAL SUBMISSION. MAROONED WITHOUT A COMPASS DAY.

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 6 IN HISTORY…
1880 — German novelist Robert Musil born, Klagenfurt, Austria.
1931 — Playwright Mike Nichols born, Berlin, Germany.
1971 — Onondaga Nation, NY, protests intrusion of interstate highway.
1986 — Iran-Contra scandal begins to break in U.S.
1996 — Free Speech Movement activist Mario Savio dies, Sebastopol, California. Christian anarchist, novelist of epic and historic scale.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective