UNMARKETABLE

Ummm, an interest in eliminating the corporate world from the spheres of art, politics, and culture:

http://wwtdd.com/post.phtml?pk=4853

p.s. also total hotness.

I'm starting a new weekly column at the Anti-Advertising Agency. I'll be ferreting out advertising's presence and impact on culture, and presenting resistance strategies. I'll be posting on Fridays.

My first column went up yesterday, with exciting news! The Great Facebook Ad Debate of November 2007's been resolved! Lookery, the company behind the legal sticky-wicket, racked up its billionth impression weeks early. It seems they've failed to monetize social networks after all. But that doesn't mean they ain't still breakin' the law . . .

Read it here: www.antiadvertisingagency.com and bookmark the column here: http://antiadvertisingagency.com/author/anne.

I'm coming to hang out with you.

On March 8, I'll be doing a quick reading at Bluestockings from Unmarketable, and also show off some fun new stuff from my recent project, teaching self-publishing to girls in Cambodia.

I'm also willing to: answer questions, sign books, and give free but unhelpful advice about that hairstyle of yours. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I'm just not sure it's you.

I hope to see you here:

7 p.m. Saturday, March 8
Bluestockings Radical Books
172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington: 212.777.6028

heart,
aem

Kerry Miller of BUSINESSWEEK recently interviewed me for this story, and I thought the questions were really interesting. They are posted here unedited by Miller, and conducted only as informal background research, but nonetheless, I liked them. Which means: you get to read them.

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A painter turns one of his large-scale works into a series of wallets/tote bags/greeting cards/etc. He's happy that that more people are being exposed to his work and that he now has money to buy groceries, but he still feels a slight twinge of guilt. Should he?

well hello, punk planeteers,

I have some places I am going to go when I get back to the states, which I sort of do not want to do and sort of want nothing more than to do at all. here are the places I will go, and while I am there I will talk about the book of Unmarketable, which apparently is a book that I wrote even though I'm not sure I can remember a thing about it after two months of learning Khmer and living in a college dormitory for young Cambodian women who are inventing feminism for the first time.

more details as I emerge from the haze of rice and silk and dust, but for now here is what I can tell you:

This makes my brain hurt, but as it isn't in Khmer, I can't be bothered with it right now:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/business/Blog-it-but-dont-flog.3616...

(oooh, link sent via steve at the antiadvertisingagency.com!)

p.s. More on consumerism in Cambodia—particularly its most celebrated holiday, Christmas—here: http://camblogdia.blogspot.com/2007/12/i-will-tell-you-about-christmas-n... and here: http://camblogdia.blogspot.com/2007/12/cheung-eck-happy-merry-christmas.....

I was accused recently of not properly cataloging my various things, so here is an interview the really rad Irina Ivanova conducted with me over at the Indypendent.

I'm blogging from the offices of the Cambodian/French comic-book publisher Our Books, by the way, where we're busy preparing to release Flower of Battambang. Order your English-language version today! Or distros: order some to sell!

Tell John I sent ya.

Interesting Fast Company column by Rob Walker in this month's issue (his column there is called Murketing and you can read it here) Unmarketable fans may want to take a look at, that looks at the various strata of brand relationships.

Here in Cambodia, though, branding is a whole different ballgame. Copyright, too. The symbols have all become dissociated from their original meanings in a way I haven't figured out how to explain yet. My T-shirt for the day, for example, shows Tin Tin in the Forests of Cambodia, whereupon he stumbles upon some decomposing bodies. On the front of the shirt, you are urged to avoid landmines (Danger! Mines!!). Which. I mean. Isn't even a useful symbol on a T shirt. Or in the Russian Market a few days ago, I saw a shirt with a Polo label but embroidered with an Abercrombie logo knockoff. A popular video here displays a woman caressing a minivan emblazoned with a Bridgestone logo as she sings about her cheating boyfriend (I think). One of my roommates wears nothing but Playboy paraphenalia, but is the primmest and most proper of all the girls. She would be horrified to find out what the symbol symbolizes. (The last Leadership Resident taught them the devil horns and explained that it meant rock and roll. They asked for more details, about where it came from and who started doing it, and now it's sort of considered too negative for them. They have replaced its use with the high five.)

1. Cough syrup on the bed with Jacinta. Yes that's right, after 9 days of coughing and voice loss, I finally got me some cough syrup. Go ahead and yell at me, K Punk, but the experience of drinking cough syrup while lying on a comfy bed int he middle of the woods in upstate new york really could not be beat.

2. The young New Moon subscriber who came up to me after my talk and told me about this, her favorite magazine, which has no ads. She also admitted that she subscribed to another magazine, American Girl, but that it was kinda boring now and she might cancel it. How do these kids get so smart?

top ten things I didn't have time to do in NYC during my 20 hour visit:

1. this blog
2. interview with steve lambert
3. sleep (although i managed to squeak in the life cafe—more on that later)
4. see any of my regular people
5. meet any of the new people i've been corresponding with for the lsat year
6. tourist attractions
7. food that is not served at the life cafe (still more on that later)
8. properly hang out with the new press people, who are truly awesome
9. spend enough time thanking ad hoc arts, which is a really great space to do stuff — they even painted the place for us!