Ok, this is cool. Full disclosure: I'm working on this site through Trellon, but this is creative and inventive enough to warrant a post.

Ironweed is a progressive film club thats trying to help the growing market for documentary film become a catalyst for social change. That's nice and all (and I'm happy/proud to be helping to build this site), but it's the little things that make something sail. Check it out:

Ironweed Films: Don't Drink The Water

With each issue of Ironweed, we throw in a little special surprise that's somehow connected to our films. This month, we're bringing the border to you in honor of Wetback, our premiere feature.

This film is about undocumented workers - the dire circumstances they face in their home countries, the perils that await them on their journeys northward, and the situation they find themselves in once across the border in the US. We feel that it’s time to "come out" and admit that virtually everyone in America benefits from illegal immigrant labor. From lower prices at restaurants to fruits at the supermarket. We're making a statement that it's time to come out from the shadows -- and that people of conscience should be honest and public about it. So, we worked with the San Francisco Day Labor Program, an organization that makes sure undocumented workers receive fair treatment, to find workers to help bottle our water.

They also used Craigslist to find a family in El Paso to go get the water from the Rio and send to to the Ironweed offices in SF. There's a nice little video that explains it all. Pretty frickin' neat.

It's 46 degrees. All hail Apollo, or something like that. Huzzah for nuclear fusion.

And now I've got to get back to work.

Unless something really interesting happens, I won't be getting professionally involved with any 2006 campaign except through my company. I don't see myself joining up, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to do some work to help Democrats win. Breaking the GOP lock on the Federal Government is important enough in its own right: competative balance is the only way we can hope to stem the tide of corruption and enforce some semblence of accountability on the White House.

Toward that end, there are some possibilities. There are seven GOP senate seats in play at this point. If you happen to live in PA, MO, OH, RI, MT, TN or AZ, there's important work to be done organizing now to help take down some of the most corrupt (DeWine - OH, Talent - MO, Burns - MT) and repugnant (Santorum - PA) members of the Senate. Even if your GOP Senator seems like he/she is maybe allright, think about digging in to help swing the national balance.

On the house side, things are more tricky. Most districts are heavily gerrymandered, but with the national mood turning against corruption and an entrenched establishment -- and with DeLay's scandals making headlines every week -- there's the possibility for the kind of sea change not seen since 1994's "Contract with on America."

Anyway, if you're fired up about stuff, now is a good time to start looking for where to plug yourself in. It's also a good time to start thinking about giving/raising a little bit of money if you're in a position to do so, as "early money" is quite valuable to a lot of campaigns.

I may do some volunteer fundraising later in '06, and will let everyone know what donations I make (not likely anything more than $20 here and there) myself.

Here's a question. What do you think of Hugo Chavez?

I'm not sure. I find I'm favorably predisposed to his notions of using oil revenue to build both physical and human infrastructure in Venezuela, and I also find that a great deal of criticism directed his way is speculative (what he "might" do) or hyperbolic. However, I'm no expert. Any opinions?

What strikes me the most as I try to learn more is just how fucked up Latin/South-American politics really are. I mean, I knew some things from my college studies, but those were sort of broad strokes about military juntas, secret police, people being "disappeared" and the like. Trying to read the news from down there presents a more granular, and frankly more difficult picture. Sort of makes me appreciate our own situation, bogus and screwy as it is.

So as a concession to the bum-killing cold, I stopped off at CompUSA on the Upper West Side -- where I was meeting with the burgeoning Mike Lupinacci Campaign and then having a much-belated dinner with good ol' Yuliya -- and picked up a 512MB shuffle. It's the right thing for me and my style: resistant to rough treatment, lightweight, and ready to be reloaded on a regular basis with whatever's in heavy rotation lately.

Zipping down from Uriveck's spot in Greenpoint (where I hope to move sometime in January) to my current digs in the Slope took about 25 minutes. That's about five minutes faster than usual, and given the inclement conditions I figure under other circumstances I would have been good for a minute or two more of speed. That's about 6.5 miles as the car drives, so I was making maybe 13 mph on average. A respectable speed.

In the new year I'll be getting a new bike with a bike-computer, so expect some statistics.

Last week's snow is still clumped in icy little piles along the sidewalk. It's been below freezing for the past five days, wind taking it down to single-digits. It's not the best time to be a bike rider.

Lots of really fantastic images of what America used to look like three generations ago. Worth looking at in wonder.

A while back I linked to a Doc Searls post about the coming conflict between old-school tellecommunications companies and the market changes being driven by the internet.

The fatbacks have fired their first shot: "AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp. are lobbying Capitol Hill for the right to create a two-tiered Internet, where the telecom carriers' own Internet services would be transmitted faster and more efficiently than those of their competitors."

For the rest of us, thats Verizon (they own AT&T) and SBC (SouthBell Corp's usual brand), and they're basically trying to legislate themselves a position to squeeze money by breaking the end-to-end nature of the internet. They'll get a fight from some other major players who don't want to see their own content under the thumb of the telcos, but the real issue is what happens to you and me and the 50% of teenagers who are content-creators online.

We could very well end up with a cartel of telcos and bigtime content providers (e.g. TimeWarner) who essentially bribe congress into turning the internet in the US into a broadcast medium. That would suck.

I sent Surge-enthusiast Mike Cambell the link to Save Surge. His response is worth posting, I think:

Indeed, I am familiar with savesurge.org. They almost succeeded in bringing Surge back, but Coca-Cola cancelled plans for a limited production run back in March. Never have I felt more cheated. The whole idea of a free market is that I can exchange money for goods and services, and yet Coca-Cola had stuck me with a hearty, "Fuck you, we don't want your money." I was literally filled with rage.

Then it turned out that Coke was releasing a new citrus soda called Vault. According to nerds on the Internet, it's like 95% Surge. Well, nerds on the Internet know squat, because in a side-by-side taste test between a stockpiled Surge and Vault, Surge was at least 400% better. Vault tastes like piss and has no edge, but Surge is fully loaded and in my face at all times. I'm not ashamed to say that I have an eXtreme leisure style, and there is no place in my life for bullshit fakes marketed as "hybrid energy drinks."

He also included this link to an article about Iraqi insurgents dosing up before combat. Interesting Jacob's Ladder type speculation.

The awesome and fabled hand-crank $100 laptop gets a demo at the UN. There may be a $200 version available to consumers by next year. I'll buy one if there is.