Le Beran Quotidien

I have decided to switch to tumblr because I like it better! Therefore this blog is now old and my new blog is here: http://daleberan.tumblr.com/

Well, this comic is now outdated. As I’m sure you know, Zuccotti Park has been raided in a para-military style assault in the early hours of Tuesday morning. This time around, the city accused the protesters not of harboring suspicious packages, but of possessing an Iraq-like hoard of imaginary secret weapons. According to the city’s legal papers, the city is pretty darned sure the protesters have weapons because the police saw “discarded mace” after 700 protesters were arrested (and some maced) on the Brooklyn bridge on October 5th.

They also alleged that “makeshift weapons… such as cardboard tubes with metal pipes inside” have been observed in the park. To shed some light on this second allegation I’ll quote from the NLG’s Know Your Rights! Pamphlet, “Police will seize signs on wooden sticks, metal and pvc piping; it’s OK to attach signs to cardboard tubing.” In other words, the law has hedged protesters into only using cardboard tubes. But in the terrified imaginations of those writing the legal brief, even the (com)pliant cardboard tubes, if one digs deep enough, must conceal, like all unknowns, hidden dangers. As I write this now, protesters are being unconstitutionally removed from the park for yet a third time.

My friend Jules Bern has a band called Intuitions in Brooklyn. He posted this amazing video:

Here’s a comic I wrote about Occupy Wall Street. It’s drawn by Cricket. There’s a new page of Time Picnickers coming in a few days I just have to uh… draw it.

After I wrote this comic I saw Ted Rall did one on a very similar theme. Ted actually found a better quote in the N.Y. Times to exemplify “Juke-Think”. But you know, after they put up the pay-wall, I just can’t find the heart to Firefox>>Tools>>Private Browsing. That’s right, I said it, the Op-Ed  pages are not even worth turning off your cookies!

Ted also has a good article about generation Y (Is that really what we’re called?) here.

Addendum: How could I forget GM’s hilarious aborted ads and public twitter apology for it’s “reality sucks… but luckily the GM college discount doesn’t” anti-bike campaign from earlier this month?

All of this is via Bike Snob

That’s right, if you’re on a bike, photoshopped women with burnished cheeks will laugh at you. Ready to buy a truck? It’s only um… I can’t read the fine print. I’m sure it’s up there, and of course gas isn’t all that cheap, and well, there’s the financing plan which is like another 5-10% on 20-25K. But it’ll be monthly payments and at least all your friends will know you’re cool now cause you have that sort of enormous truck that GM swore they would stop making when the government bailed them out of bankruptcy a few years ago because the things proved intensely hated and unpopu– Whooops….

At least last time they tried this, America was rich, the auto reigned supreme, and they were clearly high:

 ”I hope we shall take warning from the example [of the ruin of the hereditary aristocracy] and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” -Thomas Jefferson, November 12, 1816 (also quoted in Citizens United)

Last week, Mayor Bloomberg had dismissed the protests in Zuccotti Park as a weather related thing and said the protesters could stay as long as they pleased, assuming in his motherly way that they’ll just sort of get it out their system. Then we could all return to that most sublime of all states, business as usual.

But just three days later Bloomberg changed his mind after receiving a letter from Brookfield Management citing (I swear to god) suspicious packages. He decided to clean out the park using a method that I’ve always found effective for hard to remove embarrassing stains: the pre-dawn raid. He gave the protestors, I think, about 12 hours notice. The protestors could return, he claimed, just not with sleeping bags and camping equipment or what a federal judge might call “their constitutionally protected means of expression”.

I biked down there early on October 14 when the raid was scheduled. All the streets were dark and empty and I wasn’t sure how many people would arrive to stand with the protesters. But a few blocks away from the park, I heard an enormous roar and smiled. The park was jam packed, filled to the brim with supporters.  Unlike previous visits, after entering the crowd, I couldn’t really move from my spot. There were too many people.

Here are the photos:

The General Assembly tells us to all link arms around the perimeter:

But at the 11th hour the mass-arrest is called off. The cleaning has been “postponed” since the management company believes it can “come to an arrangement” with the protesters. This message doesn’t come from Bloomberg but rather from the “deputy mayor”, as if Bloomberg himself is off attending to more important affairs and can’t be bothered with scheduling errors, or really, errors of any sort. Cheers break out, a brass band springs from the crowd, playing raucous celebratory New Orleans style jazz:

Police officers have lined the park with barricades that morning and so it is difficult to move around. It is impossible for all of us to stay in the park and protest. People spread out to march north and south  in celebration. Here officers line the north side of the park. Behind them is “Ground Zero”.  A new office tower rises, half-finished, beside the hole. Behind it, in the mist somewhere, is the equally half-baked “Freedom Tower”.

The threat diminished, immediately a girl falls asleep in a barrel:

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Hey Bros and Broettes,

I’ve made a website for my novel where you can read some excerpts. It is here!

I’ve finished my novel!

It’s called Dates Worse Than Fate. The Premise: terrible dates combined with terrible moments in human history! Would you like to read it? I would also like you to read it. But that requires a literary agent or publisher. Are you one of these people/entities? If so, well, confession: I love you. Please contact me! My info is on this page. I’ve only met one literary agent once. It was five years ago after I did a reading on the Lower East Side. She gave me her card, which I subsequently lost. Are you that particular literary agent? Well, confession: I love you– no, seriously, you were very beautiful!

Are you not a literary agent/publisher? Yeah, me either! But you can still help! I created a Facebook group in the hope that if many people joined it, the published book would spontaneously materialize from our collective desire. Please join it here! If you don’t have Facebook, then you’re a stronger person than I will ever be–  just comment below this post if you would like to see the book in print!

Thank you, by the way, to all the posters in the comments sections who have said kind and encouraging things about my work. And also thank you to all the posters who have just said, like, really insane things that are sort of creepy in that way that only the internet is creepy. Confession: I love you most of all.

UPDATE (4/20/11): I’ve created a site for the book where you can read excerpts!

So Cricket’s been making a six panel comic a day. Eventually, I’ll make a better place for them; but for now they go on the blog. Here are the first five below the cut!

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For those of you who got a Fighting Machine for Christmas and want to do a quick Fighting Machine to hamster conversion, I’ve posted a helpful guide. The original Hamster to F.M. guide is below. I have no idea who made it. Purrington? Also, there’s a crazy amount of snow in New York City. This morning, on an exploratory mission to Starbucks, I had to eat one of my dogs (hot dogs). Also, I’m never drawing a hamster again. I hate drawing them. Their noses defy categorization. What differentiates them from a mouse? How should I know? The careful observer will notice that I drew the hamster differently in every panel. The even more astute observer will notice that this was because I never figured out how to draw a hamster.

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Scientists discover lonely artist bee. Creates work alone and will not conform to boring hive-minded activities or participate in structured bee society.

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