This clip of Bush admitting to journalists that he lied to them a few days before the elections about his ongoing support for Rumsfeld is amazing. Have you ever seen him this squirmy?
A couple of nights ago I was strolling around Chinatown and stumbled across the City Lights bookstore which is apparently pretty famous. I picked up a copy of Kalle Lasn‘s 2000 book Culture Jam and grabbed a seat in a cozy little bar called Tosca on Columbus near the bookstore to start reading it.
I’ve been admiring Lasn for sometime. I first heard of him a year or so ago when he launched the Blackspot Sneakers and then I learned about his magazine called Adbusters. He’s trying to get people to wake up to the way that corporate advertising is conditioning us to live lives which are killing us and destroying the planet. I invited him onto the show last year but was palmed off to one of the marketing folks at Blackspot and it was a pretty boring interview so I never aired it.
Anyway, Lasn’s book has really messed me up. It made me remember why I started TPN in the first place – to create a new kind of media that is small, intelligent, passionate, informed, global, viral and for the people. To fight the system. To change the system. To change the world. Now the problem is that these thoughts don’t sit nicely with thoughts about raising venture capital and doing the whole Silicon Valley thing. I’m having an existential crisis. I keep asking myself over and over – “what is my definition of success?”.
I hate questions like that.
Firstly, that dude has a tattoo on the back of his neck like mine! Only mine is smaller…
And secondly, by convincing VCs that your business model will work you would be changing the system. Its perfectly possible to provide intelligent, passionate, informed and all that stuff media AND make money.
Existential crisis can be fun so long as you don’t take them too seriously and remember that its just those little chemicals in your brain playing silly-buggers and trying to confuse you after the nice little happy ride they gave you earlier in the week.
When you get back home Cam, take a trip through the culture jam alleys in the CBD, there is some amazing stuff there, not the least of which is the work of the Space Invader.