Probably one of the more despicable leads you’ll read in American news this week, via the Orlando Sentinel:

Bird watcher wrongly arrested for possession of pot had sage in backpack. Deputy thought herb was marijuana; State Attorney’s Office ordered arrest without lab test.

Robin Brown was thrown in a Florida jail on felony charges of marijuana possession three months after sheriff deputy Dominic Raimondi mistook the sage she had in her backpack for pot. A field test had yielded a false positive, and after Raimondi filed his report, the State Attorney’s Office ordered for Brown’s arrest without ever conducting a crime lab narcotics test.

The 49 year old birdwatcher was taken out of her place of work in handcuffs and driven down to the station to be stripped, subjected to a body cavity search, and spend the night in jail. Such was Brown’s punishment for possession of a personal use-sized amount of marijuana plant… that wasn’t actually marijuana plant.

News of this story came to my attention via my friend Stephen, who comments: “Body cavity searches are getting to be a disturbingly common occurrence. Folks complain about sex education corrupting children, but when law enforcement wants to poke around inside your orifices, that’s just patriotic.”

There are many, many different ways in which Robin Brown’s story disturbs me. I’m not even sure what aspect to focus on; I just know that I owe it to myself to think actively and critically about what an increase in occurrences like this might mean, and that reportage of incidents like this should be shared as widely as possible.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yet another wonderful post from our longtime contributor, Jeffrey Wengrofsky! This past year, he’s been keeping busy with all manner of projects, and this Sunday, April 3, his Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers will be screening “The Gospel According to Reverend Billy” as part of the Prison is an Angry Father fundraiser at Goodbye Blue Monday (1087 Broadway, Bushwick, New York). It’s a benefit for a prisoner’s rights project created by the Sanctuary of Hope. The event will include live performances of an almost musical variety, as well as the screening of several more short films in addition the Syndicate’s. Doors open at 8pm. Showtime for “The Gospel According to Reverend Billy” is 10pm. This event is free of charge.

Last year I spent my summer vacation working on a feature film in Detroit.  While creeping around the city, I could not help but notice its mountainous Masonic Temple – the largest in the world – whose muscular shoulders rise above its environs as if Charlton Heston’s urban fortress in Omega Man were carved into Yosemite’s El Capitan.  I was even able to arrange a private tour of the windowless monolith by its hospitable and wily Grand Master, including many meeting rooms and a majestic 4,004 seat auditorium (numerologists take note), all of it a visual feast for anyone with a taste for dramatic architecture, grotesque beauty, or even cryptography for that matter.  While in the lobby, our guide offhandedly revealed three levels of meaning behind a seemingly random painting, and the stately oddities awaiting us in floors above and below nearly exploded with symbolic resonance.  Unfortunately, the photographer I brought with me was so spooked by the whole experience that he ran screaming into the long night, ever since unreachable by phone or email.

And who can blame him? The uninitiated public can never comfortably claim to understand the true raison d’etre and inner machinations of secret societies because any scholar or spokesperson or self-declared defector may actually be a shill for the organization, planting seeds of misinformation and spreading misleading rumors.  Even joining such a society does not entitle one to understanding the ways of its upper circles.  Circles within circles, dear reader.  Are you getting sleepy?  The cinematic accoutrements – vaulted iron doors, masks, handshakes and cloaks – provide the perfect canvas for our fears of the unknown and desires for hidden order beneath evident chaos, conjuring a veil behind which we may never knowingly trespass.   Consequently, it can never be definitely settled as to whether any or all such societies are actually: cults of mystical inquiry; wholesome gatherings of those serving laudable Enlightenment values of science and public service; the core of a dastardly “power elite”; congresses of people who enjoy rituals involving aprons (not that there’s anything wrong with that); or some combination thereof.

Last year, Fantagraphics reproduced Catalog No. 439 of the DeMoulin Brothers– the most extensive depiction of initiation contraptions and ritual outfits used by Freemasons and other fraternal orders, like the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and E. Clampus Vitus. Bearing the title Burlesque Paraphernalia and Side Degree Specialties and Costumes, this wacky book may shed a shred of light into the outer sanctum of these associations – unless, of course, it is actually a hoax disseminated to lead us astray.  Bracketing but never disregarding this notion, the readership of Coilhouse may discover certain Truths regarding these quasi-mystical clubs from perusing its glossy pages.  Even if Enlightenment should, as always, prove ever elusive, the illustrated designs of Edmund DeMoulin and the handiwork of his brothers Ulysses and Erastus, as reproduced in Burlesque Paraphernalia, will still deliver amusing, if sadistic, anthropology.

Um…

via Disinformation

Whaddaya reckon? Real or fake? Either way, it certainly filled my Involuntary Horrified Shrieking Laughter of the Damned quotient for the day. Gah…

You win this round, internet. Walking away now.

The Michigan Theatre. Photo by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Yesterday, having recently seen links about them in a couple different places, I tweeted: “Haunting, tragically beautiful photos of derelict Detroit by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre: http://bit.ly/fwDwPg [from the UK Guardian]”

They really are breathtaking images. A lone copy of Marchand and Meffre’s (rare?) book The Ruins of Detroit is currently on sale at Amazon, if anybody with a whopping $237.94 to spare is interested.

The ruined Spanish-Gothic interior of the United Artists Theater in Detroit, and Light Court, Farwell Building. Photos by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Here’s the thing, though: in American cities like New Orleans, the Salton Sea, and (most vocally) Detroit, frustrated residents who see scores of photojournalists touring their neighborhoods just to take pictures of the sexy devastation and leave again have started calling these sorts of de-contextualized photo series of their backyards “ruin porn”.

“Here in Detroit, we’re sick of how the ruin porn runs rampant around the world, and everybody loves to use it to show how things have degraded here. Know what? There is a big resurgence happening here, and things are getting better.” That’s a quote from Ryan Cooper, a Detroit resident reacting to Dangerous Minds’ coverage of the Ruins of Detroit photobook.

Only I hadn’t read that, yet. I’ll admit it: when I linked out to the Guardian feature, I’d never even heard the term “ruin porn” before. About an hour after I aired that tweet, someone in Australia called datacorrupt responded bluntly with: “Detroit Thrives.” And a link.

Photo by Jon DeBoer. Mural by Philip Lauri, founder of “DETROIT LIVES!“

Clicking through to Palladium Boots dot com, I promptly had my ruin porn-disseminating ass handed to me by the following half-hour documentary featuring not just several of those same sprawling abandoned spaces that captivated Marchand and Meffre, but also a rich variety of local entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, urban farmers and prodigal shopkeepers of Motor City who have been steadily reclaiming and reviving substantial portions of the urban grid, creating robust communities in a crumbling realm that was:

“Once the fourth-largest metropolis in America–some have called it the Death of the American Dream. Today, the young people of the Motor City are making it their own DIY paradise where rules are second to passion and creativity. They are creating the new Detroit on their own terms, against real adversity. We put our boots on and went exploring.”

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Williamsburg anymore…

Product-shilling and Johnny Knoxville-yukkstering aside, Detroit Lives is an inspiring point of entry into the tenacious world of modern DIY Detroit. After watching the doc, I spent several more hours online exploring other links and sites (several of which are listed below). These kids are making and growing and building and yes, thriving. They seem committed, fierce, and in fucking earnest. Check ‘em out.

Any Detroit badasses reading? Please forgive me; I… I still love my ruin porn. Can’t help it. But in all sincerity, I love what you are doing far, far more. I’m surely not alone in that. Long may you thrive. Please come say hello if you like. We would love to hear more from you, and about you.

Detroit revival links:

• Detroit Lives dot org
• I Am Young Detroit
• Handmade Detroit
• NPR: Are photojournalists obsessed with “ruin porn”?
• Detroit Gets Growing
• Maker Faire Detroit 2010
• DIY Video: How the Detroit Music Scene is Seen on YouTube
• 2008 NYT Article about revival/economy
• photographer Trixie Bedlam’s I Got a Good Feeling in a Bad City series

Other Coilhouse posts of possible interest:

• Kowloon Walled City: The Modern Pirate Utopia
• Forest I Carry Inside
• Laura Kicey: Lonelyhearths and Living Rooms
• Deep Down Into Derinkuyu
• The Oakland Crucible

The superbly-designed website SpaceCollective dedicates itself to study of topics such as transhumanism, robotics, experimental architecture, and pretty much anything else that one can equate to “living the life of science fiction today.” Most of the site’s activity centers around blog posts and collaborative university projects, but one of the most stunning portions of the site, dense with complex, inspiring visuals and information, is the gallery.

There are six pages of scienctific psychedelia – a absorbing mixture as varied as Googie architecture, macro shots of hydrozoa, renderings of magnetic structures, jellyfish automatons, microchip embroidery, concept art from sci-fi films, and much more along the same lines. Two random images from this gallery may not have much to do with each other, but all together, they make a surprisingly cohesive whole. Quotes from the likes of Verner Vinge, Buckminster Fuller and Jorge Luis Borges cycle between the imagery, and most images are hyperlinked out to further sources. Enjoy!

If you’re a highly sensitive purist, DON’T bother with On the Bro’d: Every Sentence of Kerouac Retold for Bros. It will only sully your palate and piss you off. If you’ve never actually read On the Road, well, you should experience that first, most definitely. Particularly if you are bright-eyed, collegiate (pre or post) and fulla beans. For while it may retain its verve when read at a later age, the classic Kerouac scroll is, first and foremost, a young adventurer’s screed.

via DJ Dead Billy, thanks.

But hey, all you crabby old culture vultures who eat sacred cow burgers with zeal and favor the thigh bones of vegan Sarah Lawrence humanities majors for your walking sticks, pull up to the groaning board and dig the fuck in. If, perhaps, you remain secretly convinced that young Jack and pals could have stood to be a bit less self-indulgent, paternalistic, or just plain fuckwitted, this satirical retelling may provide you with nourishing vindication.

On the Bro’d is exactly what the title describes. References to beer bongs, pimps, Axe Body Spray, Sparks, popped collars, bottle service and “Wonderwall” abound. From its official press release (yes, apparently it has an official press release, ugh): “On The Road is an American classic and the seminal work of the Beat generation, but much of it’s lost in translation when read by the generation that goes to the club and then beats.” The as-of-yet unnamed author insists that his reinterpretation is both appropriate and relevant, seeing as the original book was goaded by the “stirring unrest and genius of a generation of bros.” Nnnngh.

Profoundly cynical and relentlessly obnoxious, On the Bro’d will make you weep and laugh and barf for the future of American culture as only a seasoned NYC designer/writer/humor blogger can make you weep/laugh/barf. So enjoy. Or not. Either way, you have my love and empathy.

BBC’s Horizon is a philosophical and scientific series that still runs today. Its opening episode in 1964 featured Coilhouse patron saint, Buckminster Fuller, along with the program’s mission statement:

The aim of Horizon is to provide a platform from which some of the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers can communicate their curiosity, observations and reflections, and infuse into our common knowledge their changing views of the universe.

Later that year, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was invited to share his visions of the future. Some are scary, warning us of the world becoming a giant suburb – right up there with the terror of Idiocracy, which still gives my nightmares. Some are encouraging, though yet-unrealized. My favorite speculations include: domed communities on icecaps, holidays under the sea, planetary engineering, and my top favorite remains recording directly onto the brain [please, yes?].

Though we’re running out of time to camp on either of the Poles, who’s to say at least some of us won’t be vacationing on the Moon in a fifty years? After all, Clarke’s prediction of us communicating instead of commuting was dead on, cryogenics are in full swing, and The Replicator exists, if only as 3D printing and spimes, for now. Watch the segment below in two parts, then see also:

• Mark Roth Talks About Suspended Animation
• David Forbes’ All Tomorrows posts
• Ray Bradbury (Reluctantly) Sells Prunes of the Future
• Fashion – 2000 A.D.

[Thanks, Disinfo]

In the past two months, seven clips have appeared on YouTube under a mysterious account titled iamamiwhoami. Two days ago, the first full-length music video appeared – and many are claiming that, based on a few clues in the video, the identity of the author (widely rumored to be Goldfrapp, Trent Reznor, Lykke Li, Lady Gaga, The Knife and, seriously, Christina Aguilera) has finally been uncovered. But first, a bit of background by Leila Brillson to underscore the sheer amount of gematrical/Fortean weirdness packed into this haunting viral endeavor:

In December, a 55-second clip of a hyper-saturated, eerie (Scandinavian?) forest appeared on YouTube. No information was given, just the title “Prelude 699130082.451322-5.4.21.3.1.20.9.15.14.1.12.” The set of numbers following the dash, when matched to their alphabetical correspondents, spell “Educational.”

A few weeks later, a second video emerged, with a dirt-covered blonde girl seductively licking trees to a slow, driving electronic beat – the message this time, “Its Me.” Each video ended with the outline of an animal: a goat and an owl, respectively. The next video, accompanied by a funkier and more cheerful song, featured the painted girl again, up-close, with freakishly large eyes… this time, it spelled “Mandragora.”

The next video (“Officinarum”) increased the count to five (the featured animals, at that point, comprised of a goat, owl, whale, bee and llama). Then, on Friday, [James Montgomery, a music editor] received a package from a messenger service. “It was a thin, brown envelope with my name and floor typed on the front, and no return address.” Inside was a strand of hair from the blonde wig, some bits of wood, and what Montgomery calls a codex.

The project is not without a sense of humor. Each of the videos has a hyperlink in its description to another random but zoologically relevant YouTube clip -  Spit On by a Lllama, Screaming Monkeys, Bumble Bee on a Sunflower, to name a few. The new music video, which you can see below, links to this terrifying monstrosity.

So, yes! Now that the new music video has been posted, people have been started putting together the pieces. The most compelling evidence is here – while it does take a bit of magic out of the whole thing, it’s an impressive piece of internet sleuthing.

Yep, she’s a weird one. Please, please let it be her, and not some overproduced pop star. I mean, look at what she did to Nitzer Ebb. Jonna, if this is you, you have arrived!

To those of you who live in Estonia or are of Estonian descent: please pardon my ignorance. Not only do I know next to nothing about your fine country but I can only fill this void with ridiculous and completely false information such as that your population is 54,640 and your main exports are rocks and sex slaves. This is terrible and I will do my best to amend this grievous lack of knowledge. For example, Wikipedia informs me that you are a Finnic people, which means that you enjoy an unfathomably difficult language. Good luck with that.

Also helpful is this wonderful parody for Estonia tv3, what I assume is one of at least three television channels in Estonia. It incorporates all the hallmarks of modern life in Estonia, like one room school houses, horse-drawn carriages, pigs heads, and toy stick horses. Of course it could all be a big ruse and, in fact, Estonia could be a nearly energy independent country with the most robust economy of the three Baltic states. Only the Estonians know for sure.

via The Daily What

Right around Issue 03, our lovely copy chief Joanne Starer sent all the editors of Coilhouse a condensed document of guidelines based on the Chicago Style Manual. It tells us to spell out whole numbers one through one hundred (unless they are percents), italicize titles of books, newspapers & magazines, omit spaces around our em/en dashes, and many other such useful things. That was all fine and good, until today: the day that FakeAPStylebook on Twitter shook the world of journalism to its very foundations. The feed has amassed over 8,000 new followers in just two days, and it’s no wonder why: all issues of grammar, capitalization & punctuation have finally been revealed. This incredible new resource finally provides clarity to crucial concepts that the heretofore-accepted AP Style Guide completely overlooked. For example:

• Use the quintuple vowel to transcribe the utterances of small children, “Daaaaaddy, I waaaant a Pooooony!”
• Since the 1986 edition, the plural of McDonald’s is officially McDonaldses.
• “Batman” may be used informally (“let’s go, Batman!”) and “The Batman” formally (“Mr. President, this is the Batman”).
• The word “boner” is not capitalized, regardless of size.
• Use a possessive proper noun in front of a movie remake title to convey crushing disappointment. (e.g. Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes)
• In the news industry, an ’80s celebrity sex scandal is known as a “trifecta.”
• Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, “800-lb gorilla in the room.” Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO NOT CHANGE GORILLA’S WEIGHT!
• “Your” and “you’re” may be used interchangeably if you are an idiot.
• Avoid using the letter ‘G’ as it is unlucky.
• The numbers one through ten should be spelled out while numbers greater than ten are products of the Illuminati and should be avoided.

Via Xeni.