Tuesday, August 26, 2008

BIG IDEA

I almost forgot to mention, the Cyberpunk Apocalypse has a small shelf of sci-fi and apocalyptic books for sale the the Big Idea bookstore in Bloomfield. Check it out.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Cyberpunk Apocalypse: the publication

Cyberpunk Apocalypse is putting together a quarterly publication! Feel free to submit your work for the very first issue.
All submissions may be e-mailed to cyberpunkapocalypse@gmail.com with the word “submission” somewhere in the subject heading.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
-ESSAYS: What is this space-time we live in? How is it different from other times and places? What does this mean for the immediate future? These are a few of the broad questions that essays in the Cyberpunk Apocalypse should strive to answer.

-INVENTIONS (preferably illustrated)--If you have an invention that you day dreamed up, and it seems do-able (by someone with more know-how perhaps) you can send it in. This is not for people who want to make money off royalties. This is for someone who just wants to get an idea out there into the world. Or if you have a cool little invention you made with house hold materials and you want to show it off, this is the place to do it..

-FICTION (both illustrated and unillustrated): Cyberpunk Apocalypse seeks short fiction that is both creative and modern. Sci-fi that takes place in the present or the very near future is welcome, as well as anything that is particularly in tune with the present or pushes the envelope.

-NONFICTION (both illustrated and unillustrated): We like DIY How To’s for our fellow citizens. Have advice for individuals who want to learn computer programming? Suggestions for people who want a garden but don’t have any land? Or have soil with lead in it? We also appreciate news items that affect people’s lives now and change the world we live in (however subtly).

If your are unsure whether your piece or idea is appropriate for the Cyberpunk Apocalypse publication, please use this short manifesto as your guide.

Cyberpunk Apocalypse: the manifesto for the publication
People who say, “The future is now” are stuck in the past, but their confusion is understandable. The world today is drastically different than the one into which we were born. Increased developments in technology, a shifting fuel economy, and a change in the way we view our very planet have quietly but absolutely altered our world. Everyone alive today has weathered two-thirds of an apocalypse, a turning of an age; one where information and ideas can travel instantly, relationships can be maintained across oceans, but one where transportation of physical objects is more and more costly. This is a place where creativity may be more valuable and necessary than money.

Cyberpunk Apocalypse is obsessed with the present, especially as it relates to the average citizens (middle-class, working-class, and under-privileged) of the apocalypse.

Cyberpunk Apocalypse is a forum in which we can discuss and reveal what this new space-time is. It is also a place to propose and discuss strategies for living in a new world.

It is a place for inventors without technical skills to meet engineers and programmers in search of fresh ideas.

Cyberpunk Apocalypse does its best to keep its personal opinions of what is good/bad to itself. Cyberpunk Apocalypse tries to maintain a practical and objective outlook; focusing on what is and what that means for the people now and in the immediate future.

Cyberpunk Apocalypse is the Work-as-you-Go guidebook to surviving and understanding “now.”

Friday, August 22, 2008

I haven't been getting a lot done for the project lately since I've been working a lot more than usual at the parking lot, and I'm building my friend Ross (a writer and a good guy) a bike.
The picture is of fish swimming around in the park in the North Side. Todd and I have looked around at properties in Garfield, Lawrenceville, North Side, Polish Hill, and Uptown. Now we have to go back through and contact owners and whatnot. At the same time I need to take care of my taxes so I can buy from the city, and go to a bank to see if I'm eligible for a URA low interest loan and to get pre-approved for a mortgage. Soon Todd should have the submission guidelines revised for cyberpunkapocalypse the publication and we can get that rolling. In the mean time I'm working on doing the drawing for the board game I'm doing with shakes, working on my comic, my novel, and tweaking Ross's bike.

giddiup

Thursday, August 21, 2008

thanks for the invite Dan, i hope to contribute decent
ideas to this forum. I just had lunch with Esther, an old
friend a few years my elder and she asked me what I
was reading ; Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. I related a
few of the ideas in the book which are all hinged on
the alignment of our solar system with
the center of the milky way - the apocalypse.
I knew it would be hard to convey these things
without sounding dumb as shit or bat shit silly, my
feeling was confirmed.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Sometimes I Don't Like Todd's Choice of Words


We did get fleas. But it was a good day cruisin' around Larryville looking at spots that may one day become a home of a new kind of writing community. We got caught in a rain storm and Todd, Sara,and I hung out on the stoop of one of the empty storefronts.
From another angle I've written up a draft of requirements and guidelines for the cyberpunk apocalypse publication, and that should get underway shortly.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

5401 Harrison, You A Bitch


Members of the 5401 Harrison St. Flea Community were evicted today when three Real Estate Tycoons entered unlawfully just after noon...
We were covered in fleas within 30 seconds of entering an abandoned building three blocks from my house. Shoes and socks came off outside in the street; we spent 10 to 15 minutes picking fleas off our legs, shoes and clothing; and then found desperate cling-ons as we walked down Butler St. Dan caught two trying to climb inside him through his navel, I found one near my left nipple, and Sara found a few that switched rails when I put my arm around her and pretended we were dating.
Us boys, with our dangling boy parts (both circumsized and un-), talked briefly of our fear that a few determined fleas climbed our long, pale legs to hang out with our balls. And since no one has showered since the incident, there's a decent chance that our respective homes could soon be infested with jumping black parasites.
But I'm sure we'll be free of all unwanted creatures by the time we find and procure the physical site of Cyberpunk Apocalypse, even if we carry some of their transmitted diseases until they bury us poor, unpublished 'writers.'

Cyberpunkapocalyptically yours,
todd

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Art in Braddock

I biked out to Braddock the other day to see the art of a couple of friends. The gallery was under the flames and billowing smokestacks of the area's last surviving steel mill--next to some public gardens.

It's easy to see why someone in the rust belt would say they live in a post-apocalyptic world.

The show consisted of photos, mostly exhibiting the peculiar beauty of the rust belt: Trees grown around rusted chairs, rotting windows of abandoned buildings, the little things that are so fun to stumble upon when you're coming out the back of that abandoned four-bedroom with a stack of books you found that date to the '50's, or are tromping through the woods that cropped up where the land had too steep a grade for building.

The photographs weren't necessarily mind-blowing, but they were well composed, and they reminded me of why the post-apocalypse is a place for adventurers, amateur archaeologists, scavengers, and children. I biked home a bit warmer for it.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Cyberpunkapocalypse is a mash-up

It's finally happened, it's not just me writing on this thing. We feel good about that.

Another take on the cyberpunkapocalypse

The cyberpunkapocalypse is now. It is not amused or confused by irony. It understands bodily destruction and the transcendence of the physical being. The cyberpunkapocalypse respects destruction, endurance, and temporality.

The cyberpunkapocalypse smokes cigarettes (but not in front of babies), swears (often about not making babies), drinks coffee and kombucha, cut itself maybe, and does yoga, sometimes. The cyberpunkapocalypse prays. It wears stockings when it wants to, shaves when it wants to, read the Beauty Myth and went to see Hair on Broadway. The cyberpunk apocalypse may be in Shanghai by now, it may be under a rock in the Yucatan Peninsula. It is hard to say. It travels like the things that are smaller than the things we know now, but are now.

The cyberpunkapocalypse will, and has already anonymously googled you.

The cyberpunkapocalypse might break up with you on Thursday, and get drunk with you on Friday, and go swimming with you on Saturday. Even though you cannot be together forever, the cyberpunkapocalypse will always love you.

The cyberpunkapocalypse knows it will eventually be “put down,…out of its own misery.” The cyberpunkapocalypse will be pretentious because that means wikipedia-ing everything interesting and reading all abstracts but never the entire texts of Guy Debord, Buckminster Fuller, Daniel Pinchbeck, Christopher Lasch, Tristen Tzara, and Fredrick Nietche. You will be offended, but the cyberpunkapocalypse and you will still be friends and communicate amicably.

The cyberpunkapocalypse acknowledges brand consciousness, colonialism, and antagonism. It neither ignores nor advocates for reconstructive surgery or deconstructive psychology. Bike riding and plane flights to visit its mother are some of the cyberpunkapocalpse’s many hobbies; also gardening, JZ, Lao Tzu, scientific journals and tarot card readings. The cyberpunkapocalypse is neither blown away nor unamused by dissonance, free verse, zombie films, and the advertisements on hot 97. It watches many blockbuster hits and underground movies. The cyberpunkapocalypse has done every assignment on learning to love you more (.com). Knowing the cyberpunkapocalypse can seem affected and frightening.

The cyberpunkapocalypse is stuck in an extended form of childhood in which it is unaware of gender, race, or class divisions between people. But the cyberpunkapocalypse has read about these things. The cyberpunkapocalypse is blood diamonds and rooftop gardens, graffiti, and open space. The cyberpunkapocalypse is “pumping you full of lead.” The cyberpunkapocalypse is reading an informational pamphlet about the side effects and knowing “they” are not telling you everything. The cyberpunkapocalypse is the scientist and the copy editor and the research assistant and the design intern, and the print shop, and the media director, and the stock owners, and the company staff manager that have nothing to do with it. The cyberpunkapocalypse is gaining awareness.

The cyberpunkapocalypse forgot about the atomic bomb, and then learned about it again from a lyric in a Bob Marley song. The cyberpunkapocalypse is done with idol worship. The cyberpunkapocalypse has studied many languages and is fluent in practically none. The cyberpunkapocalypse keeps much of its information outside its corporeal body. Only its phone knows how to get in contact with its most important family and friends. Sometimes the cyberpunkapocalypse feels helpless. In these cases it tries to relearn how to grow its food, sew its clothes, fix its vehicle, and build its housing structures. The cyberpunkapocalypse is privileged. Though for a time, maybe even now, the cyberpunkapocalypse washes dishes at below minimum wage. There are pockets of the cyberpunkapocalypse in the third world and rampant under-utilized parts of it in the first world. Everyone who has enough mind/time space to think, is the cyberpunkapocalypse. The cyberpunkapocalypse feels guilty. The cyberpunkapocalypse is made to feel ashamed.

The cyberpunkapocalypse is trying to be infectious. It thinks it is falsely performing for a child when it plays peek-a-boo, but the truth is playing peek-a-boo really makes the cyberpunkpunkapocalypse surprised and happy. The cyberpunkapocalypse is the sound your digital camera makes when it goes click. The cyberpunkapocylpse lives in a world that is not ready. The cyberpunkapocalypse values the real and public spaces. The cyberpunkapocalypse is hugging you, right now, but you can’t feel it because both of you are too awkward and nervous, or so comfortable it means nothing.

The cyberpunkapocalypse is using a rolodex and Polaroid film, and a phone book to prop up the desk in which it will write its own story. The cyberpunkapocalypse will still break up with you on Thursday. The cyberpunkapocalypse is learning to rationalize hurts, and to buy things off itunes only when it needs too.

The cyberpunkapocalypse pitched a tent in the woods off the highway and got fried chicken and sushi in Bushwich rationally, at the same time that evening, it didn’t come to the event at cyberpunkapocalypse.

The cyberpunkapocalypse is hiding. The cyberpunkapocalypse didn’t mean to go shopping at Bloomingdales. The cyberpunkapocalypse didn’t mean to get featured in a magazine. The cyberpunkapocalypse liked the attention but tried not to.

The cyberpunapocalypse retains the right to cover its hair, face, and forearms in modesty, to be chaste, go skinny dipping, masturbate regularly or never, attend church, maintain traditional customs, break political correctness and formalities. The cyberpunkapocalypse has safe sex and supports roe v wade.

You will think that the cyberpunkapocalypse is white, but that’s because you looked it up wrong.

The cyberpunkapocalypse is being disappointed by everything that is exciting; the cyberpunkapocalypse has an idealistic heart and an argument against everything.

The cyberpunkapocalypse could feel your hatred when you asked if it wanted paper or plastic and then listened to that girl who sings the song about “crying in the isle” of the grocery store. The cyberpunkapocalypse could have looked that song up for you and then mentioned it here by name, but that would have been too easy. The cyberpunkapocalypse is like the sagging old carpet at the UN building that everybody walks on and nobody pays to fix it but it doesn’t mind really. The cyberpunkapocalypse is waiting for when it feels comfortable using a capital letter again. The cyberpunkapocalypse knows that the truth is an illusion but wants to believe it. The cyberpunkapocalypse respects its past, analyses it’s present, and has no idea what is coming.

The cyberpunkapocalypse needs me/you.

The cyberpunkapocalypse is a SPACE in Pittsburgh PA with a:

A storefront

A garden

A residency program

A business

A lecture room

A library

A gallery

An online blog

A monthly publication

Love and Real(ity) Estate

I don't talk to girls, which is kind of why I don't call the numbers on those For Sale signs in the windows of marketable homes and storefronts. Two different levels are on display here, and I fall in love with each of them, sometimes several times a week, by the day, or even hourly.
My cyber(pop)punk apocalypse begins with imaginative speculation: I wonder if this girl wants to hold my hand and listen to MxPx; or, in the other realm, I wonder if this house wants me to strip its lead paint while I look hot in protective breathing equipment.
I fall in love with property now more than with girls. Dan and I go out cruising and perusing through abandoned business districts and the nearby residential areas, but he's got a girlfriend and I don't. He calls all the numbers on the placards in windows; I stalk the properties through their Howard Hanna profiles. We talk about an intimate future that may always be just out of our present reach.
I don't really want to be in love with girls, and if I wait long enough before saying anything to them, then some impossible-to-ignore flaw is always revealed: She has a boyfriend; the roof is made of tarp; she doesn't like chickpeas; there's a basement full of raccoons in this one; she likes Saves the Day; there's an inescapable tax lien from the DPW, $75,000 worth of mortgage leftovers that smell like old lasagna, and an ex-porno theater around the corner.
Every experience urges me onward and embarrasses me publicly at the same time. It's kind of like walking through Frick Park while holding hands with a girl on the right and walking a magnificent, well-behaved Great Dane on leash to the left. We round the bend and the sun drops from the sky like a head from atop shoulders or the tower from Allegheny's Carnegie library. There's now a cold, lifeless manikin hand where once there were callus-free palms and fingers with endearingly dirty nails; and the Great Dane on the other side has somehow morphed into The Devil's Horse, carrying his liquor in full tow, staring you down with a Massive Horse Face that could turn the best Kombucha into a pint of Late August's Dumpster Juice.
I experience unrequited love every time I remodel a superficial storefront with my mind. I fall in and out of love nearly every time I see a new girl. And I think I'm never getting married, for fear of commitment basks through long hours of pointed exploration and on top of longer days of research.
Speculate the market? Get approved for loans? I just wanted to replace the shingles, hold hands, and get high on your roof.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Pick me up


There's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about--people in other cities thinking about the apocalypse we're a part of, awkward communication with the Pittsburgh Arts Council--but I'll talk about that later because I bricked my laptop and I can't spend anymore time in the Library today. I just can't.
But I wanted to post the link that my friend Jenny sent me today. Post-apocalyptic images of Tokyo. You guy's may or may not know that I was living in Tokyo (drowning myself in the essays of Takeshi Murakami, and hand-me-down "learn japanese" CDs) when I first got the idea for Cyberpunk apocalypse. Maybe these images are so resonent with me because I recognize a couple of the places. Either way it cheered me up--in a eerie sort of way.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

To the North!

That property I was talking about in Polish Hill (the one that is owned by the woman next door to it) isn't going to work out. She just isn't ready to part with it, it seems. Also I illlooked at the inside of an old Deli. The people have done a lot of work to the place, and I would say it might be worth 30 (maybe 40) thousand at the current moment--they payed 10, and they're asking for 80. It looks like a meteor crashed into the basement (which i thought was cool, but still) and the top two floors were just wires and pipes (the opposite of usual, but once again still). In short they were shucking me, and Polish Hill is looking less and less likely for me.
On the plus side, Todd is totally in. He'll probably post on here soon, so you won't have to just count on me. Also we're looking at properties in the North Side, and there are a bunch of good leads. It's really exciting.
-CA