Chank "Diesel" Diesel
My friend Core went to the Land of the Free 2 days ago. Actually, he went to Minneapolis to hang with Chank and wax poetic about typography, fontographer & the state of the nation. According to an email I just recieved, he had just been with Chank's girlfriend to a gym, where they boxed. Christ on a crutch, holmes!
Friday, March 3, 2000, 11:30 a.m.

Wig Wam Bam
The Gearhead issue I got yesterday came with a great split single: The Donnas & Groovin' Ghoulies doing a Sweet cover each. It's money, baby!
On one of the TAZ's I frequent, one of the members asked why people in movies launder money in laundromats, tossing poker chips in together with the money. The response was fast and so damn deep I got goosebumps, I swear. Can y'all say "illicit", now?
Here goes:
*****begin quote*****
Poker chips have the right shape to properly abrade away sheen on bills.
U.S. currency is printed on Cranes paper. It's very hard to emulate the look and feel of Cranes (which is why it is used). Instead, you have to make bills look old. As bills gain oils and dirt they begin to feel the same regardless of what paper they are printed on. Make your bill old and it passes easier.
Plastic poker chips (because of their shape and the grooves around them) are perfect "tumblers" for aging paper. They also don't make much noise (like coins or keys would).
Some other tricks counterfeiters use:
Soaking paper in tea to age it.
Bleaching $1 bills and printing $100s on them.
Baking bills in the oven.
Some other interesting statistics about laundering:
Laundering first came from the propensity of coin operated laundromats to be used to launder funds. (They are an all cash business).
Some time later two large drug gangs were found to launder each bill to be smuggled out of the U.S. because this substantially reduced the weight of the bills and therefore reduced fuel costs to operate the private jets which smuggled the cash. This continued the "laundry" reference.
$1,000,000 in completely clean $20s would weigh 110 pounds and barely fit in a duffle bag.

About $700 million which are the "proceeds of criminal activity" will enter the global financial system today. of this:
$ 5,000,000 will be tagged as "suspicious."
$ 1,000,000 will actually result in criminal investigations.
$ 200,000 will finally be confiscated.
and
$17,000,000 will be expended to confiscate these funds.

of the Original $700 million:
$500 million will pass through the Cayman Islands.
$300 million will end up in European Trusts.
and of this
$240 million will end up right back into the U.S. Stock Market.
*****end quote*****
How do one learn such things, I wonder...?
Thursday, March 2, 2000, 12:10 p.m.

Murder City Devils
This morning, I showered while listening to Murder City Devils. Thus, I danced in the shower, boom swagger swagger.
Wednesday, March 1, 2000, 09:41 p.m.

Club Massattraction, hell yes!
Gosh! I'm all fucked up and tired. Yesterday, I worked 15 hours nonstop, just because the project management at one of my jobs suxors big time. But last Saturday, as I wrote before, I was at Club Massattraction. Their homepage is really fucken barren, but I assume it will soon be filled with nice nice things. Suffice it to say, saturday rocked and ended far too late. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to film the evening, since my man Frans with the DV was attending some kinda fuck-fest in a nearby burg. I was kind of peeved for a while there, but I soon got over it. All in all, the concert was the same crowd as usual, hardcore stupor, ruckus, baseball bat wielding, but no blood, as far as I know. You can read Miss Lisa Darling's account of the evening at coolgrrrls. Entertaining as usual.
I got a nice package in the mail today, containing some Punk Planet and Gearhead back issues (pronounced is-use, not ish-, just because I'm a li'l prat). LaVella makes a splendid mag, to be sure.
On friday: Supersuckers in Helsingborg.
"You say cliché, I say classic"
Wednesday, March 1, 2000, 08:39 p.m.

Feral House
FH used to be one of my favourite publishers, but has been pretty lax lately. Well. Buck told me that they're gonna release Apocalypse Culture 2 any day now. Looking forward to it, Parfrey.
I'm on my way home from work now, after having traced a logo for a t-shirt that a friend of mine is going to print for my brother & I. I'm going to go directly to Cheb-O, since he's rented one of the latest Hal Hartley films, Henry Fool. I presume it will be OK, at the very least. Yesterday we watched a really shitty Rutger Hauer movie, and a movie called Clay Pigeons, starring Vince Vaughn (from Singers) and Joaquin Phoenix. It was pretty good.
The weekend was pretty good too. Lots of alcohol and nicotine consumed. Fights almost picked. Music watched. D-men rocked, especially their version of Misfits' Astrozombies. I'm off. Damn tired. Not motivated. Irate.
Monday, February 28, 2000, 08:30 p.m.

Strange Songs
My pal and confidante Jim (neé Ulf) got me one of my jobs (the one as an arbeiter drone at the university). He also did this page a couple of years ago. It's pretty funny, yeah. Jim then had to move to Stockholm. Yesterday I erased his account on the Solaris box I run. Fuck knows why. Anyway, today I had recieved an email from one upset character who wondered what had happened. So I put it back online. Please bear in mind that it's 2 years old. The songs on it, however, are totally timeless. Listen, little ones, listen to the sound of history.
Friday, February 25, 2000, 03:39 p.m.

Ghost Dog - The Way of The Samurai
Note: the above link leads to the german homepage, because it's the best looking one. It's really a pity that Artisan don't have a web site for this great movie.
So there you go: I went to the movies with my friends Cheb Oman & Nicke. And we saw Jim Jarmusch's latest piece. And it was a good piece. And we saw it at this little cinema where I and Nicke used to work for free. 48 seats, ey! As always, Jarmusch comes off as being a very European film maker. I don't know why. When he films a park, it looks like the park hasn't been filmed before and as if it is located in Hungary or something. The neighbourhoods doesn't look like the ones you usually see in american movies.
I've been into Jim J. for a long time now. Ever since I saw Stranger Than Paradise back in '85, I think. Since then, he's made an almost inscrutable series of great films: Down by Law, Mystery Train, Night on Earth and Dead Man. He's used really cool & unusual actors, like Tom Waits, John Lurie, Rammellzee, Roberto Benigni, the usual Kaurismäki suspects, Screamin' Jay (God bless his soul!), Tom DeCillo and a lot of more famous ones.
In Ghost Dog, he lets Forest Whitaker do yet another great character, street samurai Ghost Dog (Well, actually, Forest has been doing some downright site, too: Species and Body Snatchers springs to mind.). His acting in Bird is one of my all-time favourites. The supporting cast of Ghost Dog is rite-owan too, with oodles of lard-assed mafiosi. See this movie. It's fun, cool and exciting. The RZA did the music, actually reminicent of the Tom Waits soundtracks that has adorned most Jarmusch movies. I'll personally return your money if you don't like it.
* I got impromptu semi-drunk yesterday, after the movie. At 1 AM I stood gabbing with Little Lord Buck about pornography, righteousness and punk rock. He's a regular gossip columnist re: who's who? in the punk scene. He vented his spleen about subjects as "various" as Mimi Nguyen, Reverend Nörb, Srini@unamerican and Mykel Board. Then he proceeded to hail The Dwarves. That was in character, all right.
* Tonite I mo go see Robert Johnson & The Punchdrunks and them rascals in Dipper. Mmmm good. And tomorrow Club Massattraction will go all country with Buck & Honk shaking their D-Men thang and The Coffinshakers shaking their, um, coffins. Damn my soul, I almost wrote "penises". Juvenile, moi?
"I'm available for children's parties, by the way." (Bill Hicks)
Friday, February 25, 2000, 02:32 p.m.