I think the DNC (or at least the crazy-fest outside, courtesy of “Recreate 68″) is going to be a hoot and a holler this year.

My personal favorite? “Humanity needs Revolution & Communism, Not a New Face on the Same Brutal Empire”

You can’t make this stuff up.

[UPDATE]

While the “Revolution & Communism” is perhaps the most absurd picture on there (so far), I think this picture of the clenched-fisted tools idolizing Muqtada al-Sadr as some kind of “anti-imperialist” hero beats it for sheer stupidity.

And is it just me, or is that a Coors logo and a small Budweiser logo on the reverse of Muqtada’s picture?

The Olympic Trials are nearly upon Eugene. For many, this means flying in from other parts of the country and renting a hotel room or apartment for a few days and enjoying this spectacle of world-class athleticism.

Indeed, Eugene has gone to great lengths to make the city a fun and welcoming place for people to come and enjoy during the trials. Also practically upon us is the (in)famous Oregon Country Fair, which begins on July 11, a mere 5 days after the Olympic Trials wrap up.

The upshot of all of this is that Eugene’s already-sizeable transient population is set to increase dramatically for the next month or so. In the interest of helping sports-minded hobos find their way around the city during the Olympic Trials and hopefully minimizing the confusion and possible bumfights over stoops and alleyways that might occur when the homeless Country Fair crowd arrives, I thought it might be helpful to post a link to this guide to hobo signs.

Hobo signs can be useful for a transient new to the area who might be wondering where he can get “work for food,” where he can “fake illness” for a place to sleep, which houses are “easy marks” or where “anything goes.” They’re also helpful for warning the wary drifter away from houses where judges live, “men with guns”, or dangerous “brutal” men.

While I do realize the inherent irony in writing on a blog about hobo signs for transients, it is my sincere hope that at least one bum will stop abusing his body while looking at pornography at the Knight Library long enough to find this post. After all, if we can help just one tramp avoid a “bad tempered owner”, then we’ve made the world a better place.

The double feature you’ve been waiting for all year is finally here. 32 pages of Hate + 16 pages of Hack Attack = the apocalypse – if not that, at least one uproarious read. Enjoy.

Shockingly enough, Che Guevara’s kids are tired of seeing their father’s face used to sell products:

Two of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s children said Thursday they were tired of seeing their father’s image used to sell everything from T-shirts to vodka, calling the growth of the revolutionary as a global super-brand “embarrassing.”

Aleida Guevara, the eldest of Guevara’s four children by his second wife, Cuban revolutionary Aleida March, said the commercialization of her father’s image contributed to tension between rich and poor in some countries.

“Something that bothers me now is the appropriation of the figure of Che that has been used to make enemies from different classes. It’s embarrassing,” she wrote during an Internet forum sponsored by Cuba’s government ahead of what would have been her father’s 80th birthday on June 14.

So it’s official: no one likes “revolutionary” posers wearing Che shirts, not even actual revolutionary communists.

After a long three month hiatus, the Student Insurgent has finally published another issue.

I was going to propose, for our Hack Attack issue, that we just publish blank space and have a caption asking, “Where were the other publications this year?” But alas (or maybe hooray) they managed to spew out another amazing issue, featuring gems such as:

Regarding Ants

Ants truly use the motto, “e Pluribus Unum,” out of many one.

Next, you’re going to tell me that ants Trust In God, as well, right?

If you want a better world, you could do worse than having ants as role models.
-Brian Kvenvolden is a prisoner of war (emphasis mine) in the Wisconsin Prison Industrial Complex.

Great, all we need: prisoners telling us to better our world by following ants. (more…)

Need I say more?

Edit: I was very drunk when I made this post originally. Apparently some peoples’ idea of cleaning out Suite One doesn’t involve boxes, several hand-trucks, and a U-Haul, but merely some Simple Green and a recycling tub. To each his own, I suppose.

If you’re interested in assisting with the Suite One clean-up, considering it is “filthy, filthy”, click the link above, or just join the group and encourage my idea of cleaning-up!

P.S. Drew, are you circumcised I’ll ask this at a more appropriate time.

I was recently invited to the Free Speech Parade Facebook group, hosted by the one and only UO Survival Center. What struck me as interesting was the description of the group:

We support free expression, be that: verbally, musically, poetically, artistically, physically, nutritionally, literarily, meditatively, economically (barter) or otherwise.

A perfect example of this “free expression” they support is Cimmeron Gillespie’s (coincidentally the group’s founder) drumming/musical performances that, I’m sure, we’ve all had the pleasure of encountering.

Perhaps a further buried example would be a student’s right to smoke–the act of smoking as an expression. I am hesitant to jump on the freedom of expression bandwagon here, but perhaps we, as a campus, could broaden our freedom horizons a bit and accept smoking as a tool to unite students, similar to say, a FIG class, or Week of Welcome.

Even better, if we can get the environmental lovin’ kids to support smoking on campus. Can you imagine OSPIRG collecting signatures to save your right to smoke? Student dollars at work on campus? Dare to dream, people, dare to dream!

As for me, I’ll see you at the Smoke-in on Monday, May 12th, sporting a large cigar.

In the editorial in the newest issue of the Student Insurgent – which is radically written in first person – it is mentioned that a prisoner “is being denied his right to receive our paper.” (For those of you who don’t know, the SI uses part of its student-funded budget to mail its issues to prisoners across the country. In the Fall, Ted Kaczynski wrote to the SI telling them to take him off its mailing list. See page 30) Kevin “Rashid” Johnson writes:

This is Rashid. While I’m on your mailing list the uniforms here have repeatedly refused to allow your newspaper in. I expect you all have used some of my art and maybe writings.
Anyway, enclosed is a recent cartoon I did which you can use.
Of Course any replies or suggestions are welcome. To ensure that I receive any letters please send them to the following… (more…)

As CJ pointed out to me yesterday, the Student Insurgent featured the ad-hominem letter by Diego Hernandez directed towards me that he submitted to the ODE a few months ago. Coincidentially, this is a part of the process that got me to join the Commentator.

Anyways, I picked up the Insurgent today (and disinfected my hands after touching it, of course) and found out that our dear friends at Suite 1 did not only post D. Hizzle’s letter, but wrote an entire article about the Multicultural Center. They endorsed the MCC, amonst a number of things, as a place that ’serves as a safe and respectful environment’ and ‘promotes leadership development’. I must have missed Respect and Leadership day at the MCC, because it is anything but that for anyone that isn’t far-left liberal. But then again, the article is in the Insurgent, we never expected them to tell the truth, anyways.

I don’t know how proud the MCC should be for being endorsed by the Insurgent like this. It’s like if the LGBTQA were publicly endorsed by the Alliance of Sodomy Supporters.
Featured next to the MCC article in the Insurgent is a very poignant and elegant piece calling for the abolition of prisons due to the ‘mistreatment of transgender prisoners’. What I want to know is how can someone be a misogynist (woman-hater) if they can’t even determine the gender of the person they are hating on?

If you’ll excuse me, I have to go de-louse my hands.

Yeah, like nobody here knows that the Insurgent is a waste of money and effort. It’s an enjoyable read though, and Graf makes the case well. If only he had mentioned the nekkid boobies in the latest issue, we could have had O’Reilly back for a rerun. Meanwhile, over in the ODE comment section, Jethro Higgins has discovered that the Insurgent only does this stuff for the attention. Tune in next week, when Higgins realizes he’s been giving them exactly what they want: legitimation of the tactics of crying oppression, and of course, the attention. I swear to god, there must be something hallucinogenic in that grass pollen, because this campus goes insane every spring.

Well, apparently we got it wrong. According to an angry collective  member, The Insurgent did not reprint the “Aroused Jesus” Issue, but are merely redistributing original issues. Furthermore, the fourth issue of the Insurgent has come out today, and it is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, as the poet said.

Sorry Insurgents, y’all aren’t quite as big of a joke as we thought. Although now my new collection of “Aroused Jesus” issues will fetch even more on ebay, because they are originals, and we also have a new issue to SPEW the hell out of. Oh yes, and there’s even something for the poor, downtrodden campus christians too… page 21 has a picture of a topless young lady from burning man. Oh the oppression! Defund NOW!

The rumors are true. The Student Insurgent must have been feeling a little down for only printing 3 issues this year (incidentally, they get almost $5,000 a year more than us), and have decided to cheer themselves up by reprinting last years infamous “Aroused Jesus” issue. That’s right, the hand-drawn nudity that inspired months of hand-wringing and fist shaking by the likes of Bill Donahue, Bill O’Reilly, Dallas Brown, and Students Of Faith is back in all of its crisp, bright, newly-printed glory. I guess things were just getting too boring, and putting out a new issue was just too much work. Oh well, bring on the caps-lock evangelists, the blowhard pundits and the Christians-as-victims crowd… just, please, everybody read this first.

***UPDATE***

As Sean mentioned, Jethro Higgins has written a letter to the editor over at the ODE, which should be available here. Unfortunately, the ODE has a page and a header for it, but the piece itself is not yet online. Maybe someone’s scared of tripping Bill Donahue’s RSS filter, which scours the web hourly for content with the words “aroused” and “Jesus.” We’d be scared too.

The Committee of Three (ASUO President Jared Axelrod, ASUO Multicultural Advocate Lorena Landeros, and Student Senator Erica Anderson) has heard and rejected the Students of Faith’s appeal of David Goward’s original decision. Appropriately enough, the Committee points out that it cannot evaluate the Insurgent’s compliance with the Student Conduct Code and soundly rejects the claim that student groups themselves must remain viewpoint neutral. A good, fairly well-written decision. (63k .pdf)

UPDATE: I should have pointed out that the Students of Faith appeal (100k .pdf) essentially attempted to attack the Insurgent on different grounds than in their original grievance. To the Committee of Three’s credit, they pointed this out and decided to slap the appeal down anyway.

I thought I should clarify a comment attributed to me in a Daily Emerald article about the Insurgent Town Hall forum.

Several Christian students said The Insurgent’s publication was an attack on Christianity that misinformed readers with false ideas.

“It’s not OK to pay people to attack us viciously,” music major Jethro Higgins said. If it’s not already against the law, “it should be,” he said.

Spencer told Higgins it’s OK to make fun of and offend people.

I told Higgins that it was legal to make fun of and offend people under the Constitution. One of the points I wish I had gotten across at the forum is that something can be idiotic, offensive, blasphemous, or whatever other negative you want to call it while still being legal.

The Students of Faith are making a tactical error by asking the University administration and ASUO to censure the Insurgent by forcing them to make an apology since, by law, that is something the two bodies legally cannot do. (Oh, and there’s something which is lost on various people: censure is a different word than censor.) Instead, as I tried to point out at the meeting, Students of Faith should be arguing that noone should have to pay for any sort of publication on campus, whether it be the Insurgent, the Voice, the Commentator, or the Emerald. The current system forces students to sponsor speech which they disagree with and in my opinion, this is a terrible position to be put in. But the bare fact is that this is an all or nothing proposition, and most people on campus seem to prefer the “all” option. And if that’s how it’s going to be, then I’d love to see a Students of Faith publication. Spew can always use more contributors.

Newly minted ASUO Outreach Coordinator Mike Filippelli announced yesterday that there will be a townhall-style meeting to discuss the Insurgent’s Aroused Jesus issue on Thursday June 1st at 5:30 PM in Columbia 150. I think I’m going to do whatever I can to not be there.

UPDATE: Welp, despite my previous statements I’ve signed up to be on the panel. This was probably a very stupid move on my part, but oh well.

UPDATE x2: Bumping to the top because if it’s just me and Brett Rowlett chatting about sports and hairstyles I’m going to be disappointed (although I suppose he may have superb taste in both.) Also, I’m putting the over/under on total audience members at 35, which may be generous to the under.