Category Archives: Gonzo

Phones for Fearless!

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Originally posted by UncleWeed over at the Fearless City site. The image was done by Kris Krug and posted on Flickr. This is our campaign announcement for the Phones for Fearless drive. And don’t forget about us after Christmas, while you’re all bonding with your shiny new iPhones! The campaign continues into early January.
And lookie! We’ve got WIDGETS!!!


Donate phones to Fearless to help Vancouver downtown eastside artists and residentsDonate your old mobile phones to help DTES artists share stories, and tap into life, jobs & family

How can you help?
  1. Your used mobile phones – preferably with video, camera, wi-fi
  2. Cash donations (* tax deductible) or new phone donations
  3. Conversation – tell your friends on your blog, twitter, etc. – post a badge
Action Plan:
First, Gather phones!
Collect all the unused mobile phones at your office and home – dig into your boxes of stuff, ask you friends! Digital cameras gratefully accepted too.

Next, Arrange Pick-up:

  • Let us know via Twitter: Fearless City, email: info (at) fearlessmedia (dot) ca, Phone/SMS: 604.644.4349, Voice mail: 604.682.3269 xt 8320
  • We’ll come by on purple Yahoo bikes on Tues. Dec. 23rd & 30th to collect your devices
  • We’ll take your photo, bring treats, and thank you publicly with a link

Or, Drop-off (after Tuesday, 23rd) at:

Want to be a drop-off point? Let us know.

Even send by Postal Mail to:
Fearless City
c/o DTES CAN
PO Box 88023
418 Main St
Vancouver, BC V6A 4A4

Notes:

  • Remove your chip, and clear your contacts before donating (all phones will be completely cleared before released).
  • Please include chargers and accessories – used digital cameras also welcome
  • Unusable phones will be donated to FreeGeek for reuse and recycling

Who is Fearless?

Fearless is a Vancouver Non-Profit group providing tools, resources, and cultural outreach to artists and residents in the improverished Downtown Eastside neighbourhood. Fearless is a project of the DTES Community Arts Network (CAN)
More:

Thank you for your support!
Post a graphic on your site with this handy code snippet (and thanks to Hummingbird604 for help with the very fiddly code):

<a href=”http://www.fearlesscity.ca&#8221; target=”_blank”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/3121575464_8a062db061_m_d.jpg&#8221; /></a><br />
<br />
<a href=”http://www.fearlesscity.ca&#8221; target=”_blank”>Donate used mobile phones to help DTES residents and artists at fearlesscity.ca</a>

If it doesn’t work, check your quotation marks. They have a tendency to go haywire when you paste things into your widgets.

Eavesdropping at the Ovaltine

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The Ovaltine, yoSee, this is why I need a laptop. So I don’t have to snarf the last half of my meal and RUN home, desperately trying not to jostle my brain and let all the golden eavesdrops fall out.

More or less verbatim, heard from my perch on the highly prestigious “booth side” of the Ovaltine, coming from the less-prestigious but more collegial Stud Row otherwise known as the “counter side” where all the old men sit.

In an unmistakably Black American voice:

Seventy-three years old. SEVENTY-THREE YEARS OLD! Know what they told me? They told me I have Diabetes. DIABETES! I need diabetes at seventy-three. I need it like I need a hole in the head. I’m gonna die anyway, hell, I’ve been dead for years. Been through four wars, got two bullets in my back. I died twice! Saw the lights and everything. A white South African brought me back last time, which just goes to show.

What? It shows you!

I was in four wars. I was in Vietnam. I was in Vietnam twice. It started back in the 1800’s. The south part of Vietnam is 98% Buddhist. 2% Catholic. The Catholics tried to take over the country.

God? God didn’t have nuthing to do with it. God? What’s God? I’ll tell you. I’ll TELL you what God is.

God is a crazy old white woman!

What wars was I in? I was in Vietnam. I was a Canadian sergeant in Vietnam, I knew who my friends were. I’ll tell you that. I knew. I was in the dirty war in the Congo in… what? … 66. In 66 I was in the dirty war in the Congo. Died there. And I was in the dirty war in Brazil.

I’m a career soldier. Seventy-three years old. I got one foot in the grave and diabetes.
The highly prestigious booth side
Halifax? Hey, no – why would I want to go to Halifax? My people were black Loyalists, we came to this country in 1776. We’ve never been slaves. My mother was a Jew. If your mother’s a Jew, you’re a Jew. It don’t matter who your daddy is. Everyone knows who mama is. Nobody knows for sure who Papa is. It’s smart. I was born in Labrador City. Moved to Montreal when I was eight. I was a bad boy, so my mother sent me off to Chicago to live with my uncle. I was so bad, they gave me a choice of join the army or go to prison, so I joined the army.

I’m the worst kind. A career soldier. Seventy-three years old.

Montreal? MontREAL? No Halifax, I’ve never been to Halifax. Why would I go there? Why would anyone want to go to Halifax. No jobs, no people, no nothing. No, I’m from Montreal.

Ever seen the Fleur de Lis? You know what that is? It’s got six points. It’s the Star of David! I’m telling you, it’s the Star of David. Six points. Count ’em. Three up and thrThe O, yo!ee down. Star of David.

Cuz the first kings of France, they were Mary Magdalene’s people. A Tribe of Israel. They were Jews. So that’s the Fleur de Lis. The Star of David.

Wouldn’t it be something if the coalition government was headed up by the head of the Bloc? That would be something!

Seventy-three years old! I’ve been dead for years.

Fearless City Mobile at the Heart of the City and mobile online!

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cross-posted from FearlessCity, just so you know what I’ve been doing with all my copious spare time recently. And a damn good thing, too, because with all the extra exposure that site is up and down like a toilet seat.

As most of our readers know, Fearless City Mobile was all over the Heart of the City Festival this past weekend, streaming live video interviews and interacting with people all over the Downtown Eastside, incorporating their texted questions into the interviews as they came in.

As some of you also know, interest in our coverage of the closing gala was so intense that it temporarily overwhelmed our servers and our site had to go for a little “time out.” While that’s flattering, it’s also a bit of a problem.

Fortunately, because the internet IS, in fact, a web and not just a series of straight lines, we were able to work around it.

I was at home on Twitter, bouncing between the FearlessCity account and my own (because I have no life) and Irwin was in Ottawa and on Facebook when the site went down.

Irwin had used his phone to take a video of OUR streaming videos on his laptop, and he posted it to Facebook and put that news out on his Twitter stream.

I saw that and immediately emailed him, telling him to put it on YouTube (yes, I know the quality sucks, but at least YouTube is wide open to the public, whereas Facebook is restricted). He did, and once it was posted I put the news out on the Fearless City Twitter stream. Then I signed out, signed into my raincoaster Twitter stream, and re-tweeted it (don’t laugh, that’s what it’s called!) and Irwin put the news out on his stream as well. That makes a total of about 400 people who got the news within a half-hour of the whole thing happening.

The video became, if memory serves, the 68th most viewed Canadian video in the Arts & Activism category, but it only has two comments, so what are you waiting for?

And here it is:

Three scenes captured with Nokia N77 mobile devices streaming to the Mobile Muse 3 platform and projected on a live screen at the Closing Gala of the Heart of the City Festival in the Downtown Eastside. Also streamed to http://live.fearlessmedia.ca/ and archived on fearlesscity.ca.
At the live screen people were able to send txt msgs to the 3 interviewed subjects.
(The audio on this video switches between all three channels.)
Nov 9, 2008

and drink your milkshake, too

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funny pictures of cats with captions

If at first you don’t succeed, lose your temper. Hey, it has always worked for me!

Souls Mobile – Live | Fearless City

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Here is the live streaming video from Mobile Souls at the Parade of Lost Souls. No idea if this UStream video will work, but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Souls Mobile – Live | Fearless City“, posted with vodpod

UPDATE: okay, screw that. Go here on Fearless for the actual streaming video we remixed for Mobile Souls, plus the Digital Shrine video immediately below.