Source: AYYA Wear

This morning I awoke to find that one of my bots alerted me that someone at the Wall Street Journal used the word "Steampunk" in an article in the Fashion section. It was only a brief mention:

A chief executive in the tech business may don Gap chinos and a blazer for work, while investment banking chiefs remain loyal to their Zegna suits. Others dress according to the mores of their own personal tribes: If you don't dress steampunk, you may not even know it's a style (think 19th-century mad scientist in leather waistcoat with goggles and a pocket watch).

However, what really caught my eye was the previous paragraph:

Rather than fuss about skirt lengths or the season's silhouette, people now dress the way they see themselves, choosing looks that flatter their bodies and fit their lifestyles. Most of us dress with our social groups or professions, rather than fashion trends, using clothes to flash messages about who we are.  [Read More . . . ]

Over at Birds Before the Storm Margaret Killjoy tells a disturbing tale of police response to demonstrations at the G20 in Pittsburgh.  One of the people arrested is SteamPunk Magazine author Professor Calamity and he is being held on felony charges for 'tweeting' police movements during the protests.  To be honest I have not been following the protests closely, but on the face of it these charges seem ridiculous and the polices response scarily overblown.

New 10/21: Updates on Professor Calamity and Tortuga House

New 11/3: All charges against the pittsburgh twitterers have been dropped!

[Thank goodness! - Jake.]

The day after I returned from SteamCon in Seattle I got into the car to go to the day job and discovered that my battery light was on in my 2007 Toyota Yaris.  Being an old Volkswagen man I resisted the urge to get out and hammer on the the alternator with a monkey wrench.  Instead I turned everything off and then listened carefully to the engine RPM as I turned on the rear window defroster.  When I pressed the defrost button the engines revs did indeed drop about 100 and the engine lugged for a moment until the ECU gave it a bit more gas to smooth out the idle.  Good. This exercise told me that the alternator was charging the battery and that the problem was with the warning light itself. I could safely drive the car for the rest of the week and figure things out at my leisure.

This morning I started working the problem . . .

Every time I've brought my Toyota Yaris in for it's regular service I was surprised to find a $50 charge for replacing the "cabin air" filter. It always annoyed me, but they assured me it was a pain to change the "special" filter. 

Turns out that's bullshit. It's a cheap paper filter that takes about 30 seconds to replace.  Corporations use proprietary parts and slip through overcharges for simple maintenance to add to their profit, of course. But this is an ultimately dis-honest practice that risks making otherwise satisfied customers, like me, angry and desirous of revenge for being duped.

Well here's my revenge Toyota, a step by step set of directions on how to turn a $5 household furnace filter into two Yaris cabin air filters.  It took me an hour and a half to figure this out and make two filters and another half hour to write this page.  Someone following these direction should be able to make a pair of filters in an hour, saving them (and denying you) $100!

A couple of years ago I sat down and tried to write a description of what Steampunk was as a sub-culture, or more precisely, what I thought it could be.  I filled half a moleskine with my scribblings before I decided the whole exercise was hubris, folly, and not particularly fun.  

However, as part of my research I read a couple of histories of the Punk rock movement as well as several books suggested to me by friends as influential in their lives.  The Punk rock histories brought back fond memories of High School, and while I was more into New Wave and Synth Pop back then, the energy of the Punks infused and informed much of the music and culture of the time. I enjoyed the nostalgia.

But the books suggested to me that had the biggest impact were those from the CrimethInc ExWorker's Collective.  In particular Days of War, Nights of Love.  Without going into great detail, Days is a exhortation to examine your life, to question your assumptions, and to act on the answers. It's about autonomy and anarchy and a large portion of Days is criticism of capitalism and it's negative effects on our lives.  Days is from gut, and you feel that the CrimethInc folks got it mostly right.

Rushkoff's book, on the other hand, is a rigorous history of the origins of the corporation and central monetary systems and how they self-propagate and suborn us to "their" needs.  Whether you view Capitalism as our best hope for prosperity or the greatest evil the world has ever known, Life, Inc. will give you insight into how capital has it's own agenda, and how it affects the ways in which we relate to each other.

Rushkoff is not anti-business, anti-commerce, or even anti-corporation, per se.   But he makes the case, to me at least, that the choice of our particular 'flavor' of money has had deep and lasting effects on society and that there are other ways to represent value and different choices we can make in our daily lives that are practical, beneficial, and compatible.  Ultimately, it is a hopeful book.

Attempting to tie this back into my own particular DIY version of Steampunk, let me remind you that money is a tool.  When wielded with skill and understanding it can do a great deal of good, but wielded incompetantly, with evil intent, or simply because the user see the tool as end rather than means, it can hurt and even kill. RTFM. Here's the manual.

Douglas Rushkoff mixing it up with Steven Colbert: