From Streetcars To Spaceships

We're finally officially looking for interns.

Streetcar Press is looking for an intern for research for existing projects relating to the intersection of art, design, and urban policy.

This intern will be working primarily on one, several, or all of four existing projects though if a project of the intern's creation might work well with our product line and fields of focus, some time may be devoted to such a project as well.

Candidates must be able to document pre-existing interests and some degree of expertise in:

• vernacular culture, including independent and mainstream comics, graffiti, ephemera, and advertising
• semiotics
• mass transit
• other issues of rights of way and public services

Yup, we expect all of the above.

You must be a competent photographer.

We need journalistic and reference images, not artistically striking ones. (Though if you can get those, too that might be fun.) Mostly you'll be taking pictures like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/streetcar-press/sets/72157627804300312/and this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/streetcar-press/sets/72157622827369357/

You'll be expected to keep a detailed log of your work, both for us and to help you get class credit.

You must have some experience with primary research, including use of research libraries, self-initiated phone and in-person interviews, building a bibliography, and successfully tracking down that one goddamn article that everybody keeps talking about but nobody remembers the frackin' name.

You need to be a fast reader. We have a lot of stuff to get through.

This is an unpaid internship though some expenses will be covered, possibly including travel costs for research as far away as, say, Salem or Spokane. There may be chances for paid work at Streetcar Press as well. Some maybe closely related. Some not.

If you're interested, send your resume and some further explantation of what related interests you have and work you've done to:

Streetcar Press

1631 NE Broadway

#254

Portland, OR 97232

Yes, there is a theme here.

In case the previous few blog posts haven't made it entirely obvious, I'm on a real Kill All The Asphalt kick right now. From the weather's way of making it all even more repellant to the news about yet more assumptions that our society should allow itself to be held hostage yet again to all of the space-hogging of so many private cars, I'm just sick of it all. In the gaps between working on production issues and setting up a real marketing/sales effort, I'm finding myself with a relentless vendetta against all those endless square miles of parking lots and highways and "parks" of cement and sterile, anti-ecosystem, flat, pathologically fertilizer-dependent lawns.

If it were up to me we would have a hundred thousand well-paid workfare participants out there with drills and shovels ripping the whole damn thing up once and for all RIGHT NOW.

Welcome to my blog.

What you see below this, what I posted first, is the kind of thing that you can expect to see here. I've been accumulating essays and protoessays on a variety of subjects, mostly technological, political, or both, for quite a few years now. This place is here to provide one central archive for all of them, one that lets us discuss them and, hopefully, make them better.

And then make them happen.

I won't be putting up too many posts about my daily life. I may disappear sometimes for three or four months at a time. Got a lot on my plate, you see. I will probably post about movies and music and all the rest now and again but, hey, I could do that anywhere. It is my intent that this place stay considerably more meaty.

A few more things for you to know:

- I like long comments. As long as you have something to add to the conversation, I'm delighted if folks want to write five page commentaries. Brevity is wonderful but not at the sake of completing a thought.

- I will delete comments I don't like. This is my online living room and people I don't like will be cut off and, if necessary, banned.

- I have no tolerance for rudeness or sloppy thinking. Posts here will be expected to be thought out in every way. Considered, fact-based (you all know where to find Google), properly spelled (by and large), and on topic. I will cut people some slack if they're basically clearheaded and coherent. Or funny. But contentless stream of conciousness will be deleted. I don't care how you feel unless posting about those feelings brings the topic further along.

A few years ago I wrote "Rustin's Rules of Order" on Slashdot. Some time soon I'll post a revised version here.

That's all for now.

I hope you like it.

-Rustin