From temporary181 at stayfreemagazine.org Wed Mar 14 16:10:22 2007 From: temporary181 at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:10:22 -0400 Subject: Big changes for Stay Free Message-ID: Dear subscribers, blog readers, and friends: After over a decade of running Stay Free!, I'm sad to say that I've decided to stop publishing the magazine. We're going to do one more issue and then publish more or less exclusively on the web. There are a number of reasons, but the over-arching theme is burnout -- burnout coupled with financial woes. Selling ads has gotten all but impossible. Indie record labels and small book publishers -- our bread and butter -- are in the toilet. Ditto newsstand sales. No one goes to book stores looking for zines anymore; the nerds are all online. And while I once welcomed the challenge of making things work on a tight budget, I just can't bring myself to beg another distributor to pay us the money they owe -- or to beg more local stores to let us leave out free magazines. Stay Free! has been the world to me; nearly every good friend of mine I have I met through the zine. But I'm no longer a twentysomething eager and willing to spend every waking moment working on projects. I don't know when exactly I got sick of not having a personal life but the weight of constantly working really took it's toll last year. While Stay Free! shall continue on the web (ie the blog), there's not going to be as much of it as there was a couple of years ago. Obviously, there's the matter of owing subscribers for issues they'll never receive. I'm going to look into handing that money to a similar publication (Punk Planet? Mother Jones?), so you will get *something.* The street date for the next and last issue -- architecture and obsolescence -- is still up the air. I was hoping to have it out in April or May, but that's looking unlikely at this point. We are alternately considering publishing a "best of" in book form. If any of you know publishers who'd be interested in working with us, please let me know. With much love and sincerest thanks for your support, carrie From temporary181 at stayfreemagazine.org Thu Mar 22 14:02:39 2007 From: temporary181 at stayfreemagazine.org (Carrie McLaren) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 14:02:39 -0400 Subject: Stay F---! | March 22, 2007 Message-ID: Howdy. Here are some highlights from Stay Free's blog that I've waited way to long to send out. For full text, images, and many more articles, see:http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org. - - - - - SEEKING YOUR FAVORITES FROM SF! MAGAZINE If you have any favorite articles or interviews that you remember from past issues of Stay F---, please let me know. I'm compiling selections for a "best of" book and am incapable of being objective about such things. You can either comment on our blog: http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/03/seeking_your_fa.html Or email Carrie at temporary181 at stayfreemagazine.org. Much thanks! PRANK OF THE MONTH: FAKE GUCCI AD A guy in Switzerland, pretending to be a representative from Gucci, called up a weekly paper and reserved a two-page ad spread. He then sent in a fake ad of himself half-naked, flanked by a bottle of Gucci fragrance. When the bill went to Gucci, as he requested, hilarity ensued.... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/03/gucci_fake_pran.html P&G BUILDS A MARKET FOR EATING DISORDERS Just saw this ad from a new campaign [see blog for image] promoting the laxative Metamucil and nearly lost my lunch. Procter & Gamble, which markets Metamucil, has repositioned the brand and is now pitching it with the slogan, "Beautify Your Inside." Now, I'm not the gambling type but if P&G isn't targeting anorexics, bulimics, and other weight-obsessed women with this campaign, you can have my house... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/03/metamucil_anore.html GAY GAZE Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing us to this amazing study demonstrating that, while both men and women concentrate on faces when looking at pictures of men, men's eyes naturally wander south... just a touch below the equator... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/03/thanks_to_boing.html DOES TV CONTRIBUTE TO AUTISM? The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about a Cornell economist who has done some fancy math linking TV use to autism... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/02/tv_autism_kids.html MURDERERS, BANK ROBBERS AND... XBOX MODDERS? Jason Jones used to run the Acme Game Store out here in Los Angeles. When Acme closed, I assumed it was because Jason simply wasn't pushing enough games to afford his lavish space. But no. Jason was arrested by federal agents for allegedly selling "modded" Xbox consoles. He is now serving time in a halfway house with decidedly more violent offenders. That's your Digital Millennium Copyright Act at work, folks! http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/02/murderers_bank_.html SOLVING NEW YORK'S TRAFFIC PROBLEMS My new favorite blog, Streetsblog, recently posted a fantastic video interview with transit guru Sam Schwartz. Do wider roads create less congestion? How reliant are New Yorkers on cars? How much traffic congestion does closing roads create? Schwartz punctures a lot of myths in just under a half hour. http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/02/new_york_transp.html RECYCLING IN NEW YORK: URBAN LEGEND? At a Super Bowl party yesterday, a highly unscientific poll of attendants revealed that the vast majority of these New Yorkers worked in offices or lived in apartment buildings where recycling was essentially a ruse. That is, offices would have clearly marked bins for paper, plastic, metal, and trash, but at the end of the day the cleaning staff would come and mix everything together. A similar thing was recorded in large apartment buildings... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/02/recycling_nyc_n.html THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM In response to the ubiquitous public advertising in New York City - including illegally posted advertisements - the Anti-Advertising Agency (run by Stay Free! blogger Steve Lambert) and the Graffiti Research Lab have collaborated on a project to appropriately label the MTA's grating video ads. You can read about the project here.... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/01/sabotaged_adver.html ABBOTT TO AIDS PATIENTS: THANK YOU FOR NOT DYING Abbott Laboratories has come up with an ingenius way of screwing AIDS patients. Here's how it works: Abbott sells two AIDS drugs, an older drug called Norvir, and a highly profitable newer med, Kaletra. The older Norvir works only in combination with other protease inhibitors; essentially, it boosts other drugs' effectiveness. Kalectra, however, includes Norvair and therefore works alone... http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2007/01/abbott_to_aids_.html