Friends of mine will wonder, “Where were you when all this was going on?” I can only answer, “Well, my head was up my ass, you see….”

Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber have launched their first issue of “Underground,” a comic book mini-series about a woman attempting to preserve an ancient subterranean cave from the tourist industry. Things go bad quickly, thanks to hasty dynamiting by eager developers, putting lives in jeopardy. Parker is a witty and smart writer, and Lieber draws action-packed scenes with a strong attention to details, both geological and human. Highly recommended.

Read a preview online or download a PDF of the first issue. And give Steve some love: He and his brilliant author-librarian wife Sara Ryan were burgled of their laptops recently — a loss that I can only imagine feels like a lobotomy.

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Creative Capitalism was formed to produce art and music projects outside orthodox gallery and music industry modes of production and distribution. We are interested in the cross-pollination of disciplines. Artists making music, musicians making art. We started our first project with a 192 page full color perfect bound book/cdrom of contributed art and music called Friends and Friends of Friends. The project was an experiment in social networking as curatorial method. It is filled with imagery and music from contributors from Baltimore, New York, the U.S. at large, as well as artists from international locations….

Our selections, decision-making, editorial is not merely based on aesthetic alignment but rather a belief system. We are interested in propagating art and music throughout and helping artists get their voice heard. We are interested in the social and political effect of artist output.

Creative Capitalism is committed to the creation, production, and dissemination of art and music. Art and music controlled by artists and musicians. We believe that new ideas can not be determined by following stylistic trends or demographics. We are a new capitalism. We are interested in egalitarian enterprises, social networking, invention, and collaboration. What is your function? Long Live Creative Capitalism – Art + Music Action Product!

Naive? Yeah, sure, but c’mon — they’re artists! They’re an interesting bunch, and I support any group of artists who try to do things on their own. It’s not easy, as I can tell you first-hand.

And they’re in a wiki-war with Gates! According to Quinn:

we have contempt for bill gates and his people for trying to take ownership over altruism and philanthropic ideals. although we commend them for their actions, we have nothing but total disgust for someone who promotes their own philanthropy in the form of PR.

we’ve been pushed back into the depths of wikipedia because of gates foundation PR team. In their wiki, they were claiming that he coined the term “creative capitalism” this year in 2008. This is very suspicious to us because we’ve been running an art and music publishing collective for 4 years now called “creative capitalism” and when we brought this to wikipedia’s attention, they buried us deep within the search for “creative capitalism.” They first kept omitting our entry until we complained, and as a result, the gates people took off the claim that he coined the term.

What is infuriating is that WE didn’t even coin the term. it’s an idea that’s been circulating for decades.

And what is even more infuriating is that a “knowledge base” such as wikipedia is letting popularity determine fact. Seems very Orwellian to me, the notion of determined fact or popular knowledge.

Indeed, there is a wikipedia disambiguation page for “creative capitalism” — although that is slated for deletion in five days unless someone creates a wikipedia entry for the collective.

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