No matter when you celebrate it, wishes for a great New Year!

"Philip Morris gave $2 million to domestic violence programs last year and spent $108 million in an ad campaign to let you know about it" read it

Fired right after Christmas, mean, nasty business strikes again.

Two organizations are offering ways you can voice your opinion on SUVs to their owners, mostly harmless - Bay Area Action offers the SUV Ticket and Changing the Climate offers their bumper sticker.

Tis the Season for Overt Overconsumption - the SF Bay Area Independent Media Center highlights some of the Chirstmastime anti-consumer protests here in the Bay Area.

Following up on my post from December 14th... more cynical Christmas-time cheer. I know I'll be stuffing my face this holiday, and so will most other Americans. It's no new news: We've become a nation of over-zealous face-stuffers. Maybe we can blame these people, or maybe this guy (for being a bad influence). But we really need to blame somebody, right?

Sad story from Amsterdam - this resonates for people living around San Francisco as those who have rehearsal spaces, nonprofits and cultural spaces are constantly being evicted to make way for dot com office space.

"Freedom is something you assume - then you wait for someone to try to take it away from you. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free."

Something new: Literät - the repository of creative writing here at Opensewer. Our first contributor: Elizabeth Vassallo.

The Billboard Liberation Front's latest strike was along the San Francisco freeways - you can see the results here - these were billboards thousands of people encountered on their morning commute.

Hmmm... what a surprise this is. And I thought playing Galaxian all the time was good for me when I was growing up. You know, it improved your hand-eye coordination in case you needed to use karate to save your family from muggers or something.

At the Independent Media Center: A Racist Elephant in Our Living Room.

‘Tis the season to be jolly … and what better topic to ponder when you’re in a jolly mood than nuclear disasters! :-) Today, as we near the closing of the power plant that was home to the worst nuclear accident in history, we are again reminded that humans continue to meddle with things that they don’t fully understand. At least, they don’t fully understand the implications of what they're doing when it matters – before a catastrophe. Yes, progress is important and we must work for a better world – one in which the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. But don’t forget about those poor few.

Gee, more recalls on Explorers - this time because they can go too fast. Wonderfully safe vehicles.

ART.COM should change its name to "ART".COM - quotation marks for irony needed when they call crap like this art.

Here are a couple of seemingly smart guys operating under a misguided premise. We can only hope that they see the danger of what they're doing and change their course of action before it's too late.

$45 million? Come on, I can't stand Leonardo DiCaprio either, but a simple misunderstanding isn't worth $45 million. This just shows what pathetic, slothful, ambulance-chasing, disgraceful, brain-dead, lazy, cowardly losers we've evolved into. The fact that I even used enough energy to notice this lame-ass, Jerry-Springer-esque story proves that I, too, am a loser.

"To be blind is bad, but worse to have eyes and not to see." -Helen Keller

This is positively inspiring!

Well this is nice. I wonder what the company is trying to divert attention away from? Oh, oh, right... selling needlessly large machines that destroy the environment, harm people and further the collective awareness class structure. I almost forgot.

Sometimes I get down on life and think things are just really messed up. And then, I see a little feature like this and say to myself, "Maybe, just maybe, everything is gonna be alright." Thank GOD for the W-B. Without it, television would just be one big repository of sensationalism, shallow morals and bad taste.

More wonderful news on the SUV front. They're ignoring the fact that the bigger cars are actually causing more danger to responsible drivers.

Opensewer 7 update...

Since I'm blogging out of turn anyway today, I'll just take this opportunity to link this lovely little tidbit of prose by our friend Michael Moore. Love it... and he even mentions Cleveland.

Today is World Aids Day, and the Day Without Art Web Action, AKA "Day Without Weblogs." Well, instead of being silent today, I'm gonna say something. Being silent is not what Opensewer is about. Being silent is kinda like not voting. So today, like any other day, I will ask a question. I will try to figure out this world. I will try to understand the joy and the madness that is a part of all of us. Today, on a day when we think about the value of human life, I ask a question about life that is not human: Luna, Luna, Luna, why did they cut your trunk? Why does such carelessness and cruelty have to exist in this world? I don't understand.