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I dig this animated short by Ben Hibon.  Great look. Very Cool. Just found it in my references folder from a few years ago.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT thegauradian.co.uk >

Nina Chamorro runs her finger across the montage of photos of neighbourhood children tacked to the wall of her community soup kitchen in Villa Itatí, a sprawling urban slum on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

“He is dead now. And him. And him,” says the 75-year-old grandmother, her eyes drifting sadly over grinning faces. She points to another photograph. “He was shot by the police last month. That girl disappeared. We have lost so many of our beautiful children. We knew them since they were born. They had their whole lives to live.”

Villa Itatí is only a few minutes’ drive from the more upmarket parts of Buenos Aires. Ask most people here to explain the cause of the grisly gallery in Chamorro’s kitchen and the answer will be a single word: “paco”. A toxic and highly addictive mixture of raw cocaine base cut with chemicals, glue, crushed glass and rat poison, paco is the curse of Argentina‘s urban poor. And consumption of this bastardised, low-grade drug is eating away at the vitality and hope of the most deprived neighbourhood areas of the capital.

——–

? Paco is cocaine base paste, a byproduct of the refining process, cut with chemicals such as sulphuric acid and kerosene as well as glue, rat poison and crushed glass
? Readily available, paco is sold for as little as 10p a hit. The average paco user smokes more than seven doses a day
? Madres en Lucha (a group of campaigning mothers) estimates paco kills two people a week in Buenos Aires
? Drug Enforcement Argentina, an anti-drug lobbying group, says paco trafficking exceeds £600m a year. Cocaine seizures in Argentina doubled between 1999 and 2006
? Paco was smoked in other cocaine-producing countries before it reached Argentina: it is known as kete in Peru, bazuco in Colombia and pitillo in Bolivia

Just tucking in to write a bit.  I was inspired by a link out of io9 to Lightspeed magazine. I can’t wait to read more over there and perhaps submit some short fiction from the Daily Logs. Once again, I’m hiding behind my headphones b/c it’s the only way for me to totally tune out the world and focus. Today I’m listening to di.fm Chillout Station – a little harder than you might think. Works for me.

As I was sitting down to write I was thinking a lot about the documentary film Wasteland by Lucy Walker about artist Brazilian artist Vik Muniz who returns to Brazil to find subjects and materials for a set of work revolving around a community that lives off of recycling waste from the public landfill.  The foundation of the political structure of Palomar City in the Gatecrashers universe is the idea of self-governed, independent sections of a major mega-cities. It is about the people who rise to power and govern the powerless.

WASTE LAND Official Trailer from Almega Projects on Vimeo.

From Designer Justin Van Genderen a collection of travel posters for cities from comic books and graphic novels.

Working on a new story about Hex. The story revolves around Scrubbers. In the world of Palomar City, serious air pollution is a way of life. Those that can afford it get Scrubbers. This is like having an air conditioner filter inserted into your larynx. After the operation you end up with two gill like slits on the side of your throat, for added airflow and for maintenance. The up side: you don’t die from lung cancer or respiratory failure at 28 years old.

I’m not to psyched on the organ harvesting stories. They are horrific but elements could come to play in The Gatecrashers. Here’s a scary one.

The Xinjiang Procedure