This was our header art for 2007.

Revolution in Mind and Deed doesn’t mean violence. It’s pointing toward a psychological change. Something radical that will change the way we live.

Rififi Nation is explained a bit on our About page.

The new header art was designed by Morris Taub. He’s also responsible for the bug photography. The black gritty grungy stuff at the top is Grunge Grit 2 by Asunder, a very cool photoshop brush/border that you can find here :

http://asunderstock.deviantart.com/art/Grunge-Grit-2-Borders-
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Wishing you all joy and health for this new calendar year 2008. Peace.

Thankfully, this will be the last year ‘we’ have to suffer George W. Bush. One can only hope that the Modern American Dark Age is coming to a close.

Nearlyfreespeech.net is where this blog, Rififi Nation, is hosted. It’s a great web hosting company if you’re looking for one, however the letter spacing for their logo could use some work. They used a version of Trebuchet for the typeface. It’s a simple, clean design, but here’s another case where the letter spacing is just bad. Check it out in the image below.

It doesn’t take much work to do this logo in Illustrator or Photoshop and save it as .gif file. Perhaps it’s just another case of inexperience. Another person who knows little about design doing it themselves. That’s pretty much the case these days. It’s a shame too. Good letter-spacing is an art. I wonder if all those programs that give you ready made templates so you don’t have to hire a designer have any control for letter spacing. I’d guess not. Honest, just because someone knows how to code software doesn’t make them a designer.

Politicians like Nick Sarkozy talk peace but you look and see them selling war. This happened a short time ago. The french government signed a deal to sell arms to Libya. I guess the french government likes profit more than they do saving lives or keeping peace.

“We are going to buy rocket-propelled grenades of the Milan type worth around 100 million euros in France,” Gadhafi’s son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was quoted as saying in an interview published in Thursday’s French daily Le Monde. “There’s also a project for a weapons factory.”

France isn’t alone in selling weapons and arms manufacturing capability to known terrorist regimes. China sells arms, so does the USA. Lots of countries sell arms for fun and profit. I guess it just rubs the wrong way when the political leaders are always talking peace and democracy and how they value human life compared to ‘other’ countries with their ‘prehistoric’ religious beliefs but sell arms they know will be used one day to kill people.

“The deal is part of a defense memorandum of understanding for a nuclear energy agreed to by Sarkozy when he visited Tripoli last week, after helping to free foreign medics imprisoned in Libya.

The French government has denied a direct link between the two countries’ military cooperation and the release of the Bulgarian medics. When asked what France offered in exchange for the six medics’ release Sarkozy answered, “Nothing.”

You can read the whole article here.

So, in time, when Libya starts killing people with french made weapons or with weapons made with french based technology we can point to this transaction and ask why. We’ll wonder how it happened. Fingers will be pointed. The right will blame the left. The left will accuse the right. Humans will say it shouldn’t have happened. The roller coaster of human behavior and human contradiction keeps rolling along. Hmmm, I wonder how much France made on this deal. I wonder how much individual politicians made on this deal.

Life goes on. Pass the croissants.

So I only saw Max Roach play once live, but it was up close and personal. I was living on Staten Island in New York and amazingly, he came to Sailors Snug Harbor. It was a long time ago.

It’s kind of a blur now, how many musicians, what they played, but I’ll never forget it. It was in what used to be an old church, one of the buildings they were renovating at the time. And we (Val, Sue and I) sat on an old pew. I remember Mr. Roach stopping to give us all a lesson in what he was doing. I don’t remember what pieces they played that night, but I do remember him showing us something about his art. It was incredible to see and hear him explain his work to us. It was something totally unexpected.

A few years later I caught him on a PBS special. He was sitting in front of his drums and explaining what he was doing. This part of the show was a lesson in what it was to play the drums. He talked as the things he was doing became more and more complex. He kept talking. He kept playing. Showing. And I never realized how much one person could do until I saw him perform his magic. It was nothing short of that for me and he did it like taking a stroll through Central Park. I’ve never seen anything like that. I had no idea that a drummer could have that kind of control, depth, order, ease, intelligence. I’ll never forget that or him. He’ll be with me till my dying day.

Was up north visiting some friends in Paris at the end of July till August 2nd. It was a great trip except for the TGV rides up north and back home. Major delays both ways. Two hours heading up to Paris because of a fire. Three hours heading south to Montpellier because of a broken cable. SNCF gives no confidence. Honest. I was ready to call the police.
My friend (she’s french) says France is just a little rural country trying to behave like a big modern one. SNCF can’t handle the amount of people traveling and the problems during the busy summer period. It would make an interesting survey, quizzing passengers over a years time to see about delays, problems, angst, and suffering.This is a store window on rue Jean-PierreTimbaud. The Fichier Ethnique portrays Nick Sarkozy as Petain’s son. Not a good thing. People, lots of them, don’t like Sarkozy. Some say he’s becoming Bush’s new lap dog now that Tony Blair vacated the spot.

Going back to Paris, visiting the old familiar neighborhoods, it was just great. I lived in the 12th arrondisment for nearly three years. I really miss it. If I could I’d love to live there again. On our corner there’s an epicerie run by this guy from Morocco. He’s a really sweet, gentle man who we often bought from. He had a close friend working for him, Hassan. He was thin and small with a gentle heart and a drinking problem. Even when we lived there he was often smashed. We went back to the old neighborhood and were sorry to hear that Hassan died two years ago. They found him in his apartment. Seems he slipped in his bathtub or something. Read the rest of this entry »

This image was taken at the Comedie, the largest square in the center of Montpellier. I darkened out the background to black. This was for a fujimugs competition. In the end I didn’t enter the photo. The image was also treated with Dragonizer, an action I used in Photoshop. It isn’t too obvious here at this small size. There is a third person, the one holding the camera, but he was totally blocked by his two friends.

I like this image for how it portrays so many of todays tourists. I like this tender moment frozen in time. If they aren’t using these tiny digital marvels they’re using cell phone cameras in similar manner. Happy holidays.