The Swell Life: Homo Californius And The Return Of The Paranoia-Free Pastoral

Charming graphic designer in Santa Cruz says he doesn't need a manifesto. Most likely because he couldn't write one if he had to, and you must first have an ideology to express in order to pen said, but we love good manifestoes on the Staircase--nay, we long for them.

"Campbell, who lives and works out of a tiny, nondescript house in the hippie surf town of Santa Cruz, Calif., grew up an Orange County punk and has remained true to an eclectic, outsider sensibility that traverses all kinds of media — drawing, painting, photography, film and music. 'I grew up skateboarding in the 70’s and 80’s,' he says. 'Back then it was normal for skateboarders to do graffiti, draw, paint, take pictures, make movies, play music, make a zine. My work is about an aesthetic. You don’t need a manifesto to understand it'."

Link: The Swell Life - New York Times.

We were also alarmed to read about Arthur magazine's rejection of author Daniel Pinchebeck's politically paranoid article on Arthur's own blog, below:

Link: MAGPIE--JAMES PARKER IN THE BOSTON PHOENIX ON PINCHBECK, JENSEN, ARTHUR..

Well, that leaves the ingenious satirical site Rigorous Intuition to write the legendary crazy screeds stitching the whole awful global web of parapolitics together.

Paranoia seems to us an absolute patriotic duty at the moment, and Rigorous Intuition is like the incredibly symbolically twisted and bizarre dream you wake up from to realize that the scenario thrown up from the unconscious is actually the expression of some very simple truth you had been desperate to avoid facing. Mom always liked you best; Bush is using his father's CIA (or "contractors" from the Federal intelligence community, like the ones now passing around an FBI file from when I was 19 and a "communist" in Detroit) for a soft (ish) domestic fascist coup, etc.

We need a Yippie Arthur, more urbane and Jewish, with more sex and violence and humor and PARANOIA. Arthur's homoerotic overtones are cute, though, so we'll keep those in our hypothetical new magazine, tentatively called Lancelot. Or Maid Marion, perhaps, featuring hot girl on girl forest action, with a Glock under each petticoat. Hear me, oh impresarios!