Another Post Office Live Blog

I have done several Post Office live blogs on my Twitter and people have seemed to love them so a few weeks ago when I did one I took screen shots of my Tweets and then instead of posting about them I totally forgot about them.  Yesterday I had an actually almost positive experience at the Post Office and it reminded me that I never posted the last live blog.  So guess what? You get to enjoy this shit today.  Hip hip hurray.

Here are a few things you need to know before reading this. One is that my post office is the Williamsburg Post Office. I have never been to a worse Post Office before but I hear that there are actually worse ones in NYC.  I find that hard to believe. Secondly the blog mentions two photos, one of them is a blurry picture of people standing around so you can just imagine that one, the other is a man sitting in a folding chair that he brought with him.  I have uploaded that for your pleasure so click here if you want to see it.  And lastly, remember to read these from the bottom to the top because that’s how Twitter works or something.

Enjoy.

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Mini Post Office Live Blog

Everyone seems to love my post office live blogs via Twitter. I figured I would give you another one.  It was only a few Tweets but I think posting this is a better idea than going outside in this damn snow. I had a big photo shoot canceled today because of the snow so I will be damned if I am going to leave my house any time soon. If models can’t make it to me, I can’t make it out side of my building.

Anyway, this live blog contains two bonus Tweets.  Moments after I left the Post Office I went to the bank and New York Jets fat fuck of a head coach Rex Ryan was at the bank. He was wearing a miss matched Jets sweat suit and an ugly Jets hat. What a mess. I would have talked shit but he was with his family which might explain what the Hell he was doing in Williamsburg. Also when I was at the post office I bought 20 post card stamps so I can mail out some of the extra Christmas cards I made 2 years ago. If you want one, I still have a few stamps left, hit me with an email.

And remember you can get up to the minute brillance like this daily by following me on Twitter.

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Post Office Live Blog

Whenever anyone mentions Twitter to me, they somehow bring up the time I live blogged from the Post Office.  I am not sure what it was about that, but everyone seems to have seen it and remembered it.  Fortunately I was unfortunate enough to have another particularly bad trip to the Post Office today.  They didn’t have the package pick up line open, but they didn’t tell anyone that until 30 minutes after I had waited in that line.  People were pretty much losing their shit from the moment I got there.  The Williamsburg Post Office is honestly the worst place I have ever been and I have spent a lot of time in both Texas AND Delaware.  So, for your reading pleasure I present to you Post Office Live Blog Part 2.  Please keep in mind to read it from bottom to top, and as always, please follow me on Twitter to enjoy things like this in real time. I was on point this morning.

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Post Office Live Blog

One of the most exciting things about Twitter is that you have the ability to live blog so easily.  Twitter really soared in popularity when people started blogging major news stories in real time.  Using Twitter to live blog has been used my media and just everyday people to cover all sorts of exciting events.  My whole life is just a series of exciting events after another so this tool is very useful for me to bring you, the fan, into my wild and crazy life… Why just last week I brought you a live blog of Fast & Furious, just 7 days after it came out!  And today I took live blogging one step further… I live blogged from the post office!!

In case you somehow missed my exciting (and slightly xenophobic) adventures live, I am posting the full transcript for your amusement and education below. Remember to read it from bottom to top… You don’t want to ruin the surprise twist ending…. Get excited!

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Driven By Boredom Turns 18

On Friday Driven By Boredom turned 18. I started the site sitting in my college dorm room at Penn State University. I was bored out of my mind and not really going to classes but I knew how to code basic HTML and I spent a lot of time talking to my friends back home on Instant Messenger. My brother had started a website so I figured I could too. I had built a couple in high school by hand but they were really simple, but Driven By Boredom was going to be something I could update every day. I had never heard the word blog, but on March 1st, 2001 my blog was born. 

Over the years the site has seen a few redesigns (I have had this one since 2007 and it shows) but I have pretty consistently updated it almost that whole time. In 2003 I started managing a band and by 2005 Driven By Boredom was something I was barely ever working on other than to post info about the band. I tried to use Blogspot for a little bit but I only got a few updates in before I sort of abandoned it. In 2006 I moved to NYC and started taking photos in night clubs just because I was going out all the time and I take photos of everything. but party photography had become a thing and everyone was asking me where they could see the photos. So I convinced some friends to help me rebuild the site and we were back in business and I’ve been doing this every since.

Last year I forgot about the anniversary and had this whole plan to do a party or something for the 18th anniversary since my site is now old enough to look at my site, but I totally forgot again until a few days before and here we are days later and I still haven’t done anything for it. Not even an update until now. 

I have spent way too much time trying to organize my life and not enough time out shooting. I guess winter is somewhat to blame, and I  have been working on my new book, but still I have been uninspired recently, and I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been doing anything so long. To combat this feeling I decided to venture outside last night in the middle of a snowstorm and shoot some photos. I wanted to feel productive, but I had already taken my sleeping pills. I figured I wouldn’t be out very long anyway so I said fuck it and went for a walk.

I didn’t shoot right around my apartment because I don’t want you psychopaths knowing where I live but I only walked a few blocks away so I guess you could just wait for me at the south Williamsburg post office or something if you wanted to murder me, so it’s whatever. But it was a lot of fun. I only was out for probably 30 minutes and I didn’t shoot very much but I still got a few nice shots and I figured I could share them with you because honestly I don’t even know what else to post today. So yeah, here’s a few photos of last night in a snow storm including a photo of a ConEd worker who was bored out of his mind sitting in a parked car guarding some sort of electrical problem. He must have had some interest in photography because he had a lot of questions about cameras, but then again he was probably just happy to talk to someone.

Anyway, happy birthday my website. Be back soon with some new April O’Neil photos…

NYC Snow Storm

NYC Snow Storm

NYC Snow Storm

NYC Snow Storm

NYC Snow Storm

 

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Driven By Boredom Turns 17

I had something planned for today but it didn’t work out. Such is life. But the site turns 17 today and I told you guys I was going to do a post so here it is. I figured I could tell you a story about the history of Driven By Boredom.

Before Driven By Boredom was a website it was a motto. I hated being bored and have always needed to be doing something with my spare time. When I was 14 I started a music magazine and when I was 15 I started a record label and then I started taking photos of punk bands for the label and the magazine and punk rock was my entire life. Around my senior year in high school my partner in the magazine and label quit and I didn’t have something to consume my life with anymore. But around that time I also started fucking around with web design.

It was the late 90’s and I had been on the internet since 1992 or something like that. I was a kiddie hacker and for that era I was fairly knowledgeable when it came to tech but it wasn’t until my sophomore or junior when I started my first Geocities site. By the time I was a senior I knew basic HTML and had made a couple little websites and would check the hit counters every day and was blown away when a handful of people would check out my site in a given week.

I went to Penn State University in 1999 and realized immediately I had made a huge mistake. I wanted to run a record label for a living so I was a business major but before I even took my first class I said fuck it and became a photography major. Punk rock was all about DIY and I figured if I was a photo major I could take it easy and figure out the music shit in my free time. The problem was Penn State had no punk scene.

I quickly became good friends with my Penn State roommate but outside of him and a couple other people I didn’t really have any friends. I was a punk kid and I didn’t drunk and I didn’t exactly fit in at a giant party school in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. I spent a lot of time talking to my friends online and meeting new people on the internet, but one day I decided to ride the Loop Bus around campus on a Friday night and it changed my life forever.

The Loop Bus was a free bus that drove around campus from about the time classes started until bars closed at night. During the day it was a way for people to get to class or to get downtown but on Friday and Saturday night it became a way for people to get to bars and parties without having to drive a car.  It was affectionately called “The Drunk Bus” and it was always a complete fucking shit show.

So one night I am with my roommate and a few people and we are trying to figure out what we should do. We didn’t know of any parties and it was way too fucking cold to do much anyway, so I had this idea that we should just ride the drunk bus around. For some inexplicable reason I grabbed this stuffed animal monkey that a girlfriend had given me and we rode around the bus. Before one loop around campus was over I had been approached by a half dozen girls wanting to talk about my monkey and suddenly I had an idea.

The next weekend I went back on the bus. I was by myself this time but I had the monkey and a camera. If anyone talked to me about the monkey I would take their photo with it. I spent a few hours Friday and Saturday taking photos and on Sunday I dropped the film off to get developed. On Monday I picked up the film and started working on a website. A few days later “The Loop Monkey” was born.

Almost instantly the site became a hit. Hundreds of people were visiting the site every day to look for their photos and the photos of their friends. The school newspaper even did a front page story on me. I was getting stopped five times a day by people wanting to talk to me. The problem was that I hated that. I quickly realized I was not cut out for being famous, even on that micro level. I would have someone try and talk to me at 8am and I would kinda blow them off and by the time I got home from class they would have written some post about how awful I was on my message board. The head of the bus company found out about me and had the bus drivers kick me off after one lap around campus. It became a whole thing. I decided to quit and a few months after it started the Loop Monkey was no more.

I wanted to drop out of school but my parents convinced me to give it one more year. The problem was that by the time they convinced me to go back all the dorms were filled up. I got stuck in temporary housing in a study hall with seven other roommates. I had just broken up with my first serious girlfriend (she cheated on me with my first girlfriend and a random dude the day before I left for college!) and I was depressed as hell. My old roommate and his friends moved off campus together so I spent a lot of time in my room.

I started all these dumb projects to keep myself entertained. I was doing photography still and I was making really terrible electronic music with early EDM programs like ACID and Fruity Loops. I didn’t even like electronic music but it was fun to do. I had some terrible site on Mp3.com. I started making these really absurd videos with my roomates where we would lip sync to 80’s pop songs and record these mini music videos using the super early webcam I owned. I started making prank listings on eBay just to entertain myself and my friends.

When I say friends I am of course talking about my friends back home, but I was also talking about my new online friends. There was a scene of people popping up making these websites about their lives. Blog wasn’t a word back then and LiveJournal wasn’t really popular yet. It was mostly just nerds in their parents basement making these sites that were a collection of everything they thought was cool on the internet and nonsense about their lives. The sites were called Everything/Nothing because they were about everything and nothing at all. E/N was also used to talk shit about the sites saying they meant everything to the author but nothing to everyone else.

At some point I got sick of having to email my photos and videos to people and decided I needed to start my own E/N site. YouTube didn’t exist back then and there weren’t many options for sharing photos with people. I wanted to put all my dumb projects in one place so that everyone could see them. I didn’t want to use Geocities or Tripod or any of the other hosting sites back then because I wanted to host all my own content. Fortunately I had friends in the E/N scene running their own servers and I got some space on a friend’s server and bought my first domain name. I bought drivenbyboredom.com because this was going to be central home for all the projects that I created when I was trying not to lose my mind from boredom.

Building the site took months. I did a lot of the HTML by hand but I also used a program called Microsoft Front page. Everyone at Penn State got a bunch of the Microsoft Office type products and Front Page was the web design program. I wasn’t great at it, but I built a separate page for all of my projects. I built a webcam portal into the main page that would refresh every 30 seconds with a new photo if I was online. I built a journal into the site so I could tell people when there would be new updates to the different sections. And most importantly I built a links page.

These days there’s way too much shit on the internet, but back then finding quality content was hard and the way you would do it was by going to a site like mine to find out about other cool sites. I went on mIRC and asked all the webmasters I knew if they would link me and I got a couple girls I knew to pose topless with popular websites written on their skin. I knew how to get people naked and topless fan signs were a prized internet currency back then. By the time Driven By Boredom was ready to launch I had a dozen sites ready to tell everyone about me.

On March 1st, 2001, Driven By Boredom launched…..

If you want to read the rest of the story check out The History Of Driven By Boredom over on Medium

Here’s now some random old DBB related shit to make this post look prettier.

Driven By Boredom

Driven By Boredom

Driven By Boredom

Driven By Boredom

Driven By Boredom

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Juggalo March On Washington – 9.16.17

At 3am on Saturday I got on a train headed for DC. My band had just played and I was wired from the horrifying 5 hour energy and rum cocktail I down 20 minutes before I play a show. I didn’t sleep a wink on the train. It was 7am when I arrived. I ended up getting about 90 minutes of sleep before heading down to the Lincoln Memorial for Juggalo March on Washington.

I have been photographing juggalos since 2010 and in that time I have grown very protective of them. Juggalos are the most mocked subculture on the planet but if you spend a day with a bunch of juggalos you will come away with a completely different opinion of them. They are the nicest, most accepting, down to earth people you could possibly meet and every journalist I have met covering juggalos comes away with the exact same feeling.

So in 2011 when the FBI classified juggalos as a gang I was mystified. It made no fucking sense to me. Yeah of course some juggalos commit crimes but so do fans of every genre of music. The Insane Clown Posse is a horror movie in music form. Should we be locking up the millions of people who watched IT last weekend?

At the Gathering of the Juggalos in 2012 ICP held a talk to discuss the FBI designation. They had their lawyer come out and talk as well. They then set up an area of the festival where people could come and tell their stories about how this bullshit designation had fucked up their lives. Here’s how I covered it at the time.

Eventually the ACLU got involved and it seemed like this was such an easy to fix mistake but the mistake was never fixed. ICP had their lawsuit thrown out two times and even though they won an appeal in 2015 the lawsuit doesn’t even start until October! It’s been 6 years since this started and they still haven’t had their day in court.

When the Juggalo March on Washington was announced it was met with mostly mockery and not much else. Just a couple months ago when I was at the Gathering of the Juggalos even juggalos didn’t seem to be taking it that seriously. It was sort of an attitude of “this won’t change anything”. It wasn’t until the blog Metal Sucks wrote about the Juggalo March being held at the same time as a pro-Trump rally called the Mother of All Rallies (MOAR) that people started paying attention.

Once the Metal Sucks blog came out I saw people on Twitter making joke after joke about juggalos fighting nazis and these (truthfully hilarious) memes about some sort of progressive mob of juggalos rising up and murdering nazis with hatchets in league with Antifa. People kept Tweeting me about these things over and over because they know me as the juggalo photographer, but I wanted to take this seriously.

At the Gathering fellow juggalo journalist Camille Dodero and I were talking about how we thought leftist groups should really get behind the juggalos because it’s a civil rights issue. This FBI think is such bullshit and this feels very important even if you don’t care about juggalos. So when people started making juggalo antifa memes I figured I had to explain to my followers why juggalos were actually marching. They weren’t fighting nazis or protesting Trump… they wanted the FBI (and local law enforcement) to leave them the fuck alone.

I started a thread of Tweets that got a few likes and then nothing, but whenever I would see memes I would respond and link them to my Twitter thread. A couple days later as I was going to bed someone retweeted them, and then a few more and when I woke up my phone had exploded and thousands of people were liking and RTing them. People from both sides of the political aisle were retweeting them and it actually became an official Twitter Moment. It was pretty crazy for me, but the really surprising thing was that the responses were overwhelmingly positive.

For the first time in the history of the Insane Clown Posse people were on their side. (Side note: I am not taking credit for this, I just wanted to talk about my small part in it.) Article after article came out about ICP and editors started assigning the march to journalists. Playboy reached out to me about covering it and DCist interviewed me for a story. Former juggalo clients of mine like Vice and Rolling Stone sent teams of people instead. Time and the Guardian and the Washington Post took notice. People started paying attention to this travesty of justice.

So that brings us to the march and me on 90 minutes of sleep getting out of an Uber 100 yards from the Lincoln Memorial. I get out of the car and see hundreds of juggalos gathering around the stage set up in front of the Reflecting Pool on the Mall. The event hadn’t even started yet and there were juggalos everywhere intermingling with tourists.

But it wasn’t just tourists, there were random punk kids and a sprinkling of Antifa (I didn’t shoot them because they had journalists interviewing them at all times).  I met middle aged people wearing juggalo march shirts who didn’t know anything about juggalos but wanted to support. A big group of Democratic Socialists were out handing out flyers and Faygo Not Fascism signs. There were all sorts of people who were just there to back up the juggalo cause.

As far as the juggalos, I saw so many people I knew from Gatherings and ICP events. There were juggalos from every type of background, color and age. There were babies and old men in wheelchairs and veterans and priests and even cthulhu. I met people from all over the country and everyone was hugging everyone, meeting strangers and having a blast.

After everyone gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial the speeches started. We heard from juggalos across the country who had their lives turned upside down from this FBI gang designation. There was woman who had lost her job as a parole officer and a woman who had been kicked out of the military. It was just story after story of completely unfair consequences all because of this absurd gang list. ICP’s lawyer spoke and read a letter from the ACLU and a bunch of my fellow juggalo journalists spoke. Camille spoke, as did Mitchell Sunderland, Nathan Rabin, Steve Miller and Scottie D. Mitchell has covered juggalos for Vice and Broadly and Nathan and Steve have both written books about juggalos. Scottie is the founder of Faygo Luvers the biggest juggalo blog on the planet and someone who has always spread the word about my juggalo photos.

Finally ICP got on stage. They gave an impassioned speech about the gang designation and brought their families and friends out. The stage was packed with everyone from Psychopathic records and their families. After getting the crowd going they had everyone assemble and we begun to march.

I took a ton of photos as we walked around the mall but at some point I just got really into it. I have spent years of my life trying to explain juggalos to the world and this seemed like this really magical moment where people were actually listening. Random onlookers seemed really interested in what was going on and everyone I talked to seemed to support what the juggalos were doing. I even started leading chants and getting involved in the protesting as much as the documenting.

At some point during the march I ran into Anna Merlan a journalist I know (her work on conspiracy theorists is incredible) and she had left the MOAR event because it was completely pointless and decided to check out the Juggalo March. She said it was a couple hundred people and a total bust which made me really happy. As the day went on I heard more and more about how pathetic the MOAR event was and that contrast with the really successful Juggalo March made the juggalos look even better. It was perfect.

This article is getting really long and I feel like I have so much to say but let me just pause to mention that I grew up in DC going to protests and the DC Police are so good at crowd control and not letting things get out of hand. I have seen protests in other cities go haywire so quickly, but in DC the cops know exactly what they are doing. And I point this out because there were almost no cops at all at the juggalo march. There were a few spread out mostly blocking traffic. They clearly understood what was going on with the march and just left everyone alone. I didn’t see a single police interaction or any negative event at all to be honest.

As the march wrapped up back at the Lincoln Memorial I was pretty much destroyed. I was running all around the route trying to capture everything on 90 minutes of sleep the day after my band had played a show where I had beat the hell out of myself. I chugged a gatorade and chased it with a bottle of water and walked around the Lincoln Memorial with some punk girls I met when we both happened to notice that Ian MacKaye was watching the juggalos. One of them gave me a bunch of stickers with her boobs on them which I appreciated.

As we walked around some bands played and I took it easy waiting until ICP would finally headline the post march concert. After the girls dipped I talked to some more journalists and juggalos and ate some cold McDonald’s cheeseburgers that Psychopathic TV had laying around backstage. All I could think about was passing out but I couldn’t miss this set. Finally around 9PM, more than 8 hours after I got there ICP started to play. I tell everyone who hasn’t seen them that no matter what you think of their music you need to see one of their shows. They put on this wild set and it’s like a religious experience to their fans. That combination makes for an incredible moment even if you don’t like their music, but after all the shows I have seen, it was still surreal to watch them with the Lincoln Memorial on one side and the Washington Monument on the other.

When I finally got back to my parents apartment I was just done with being alive but I had to send images to my clients that night. I dumped the images and took a bath and washed the Faygo, sweat and sunblock off me while they transferred. One of my old friends came over and he and his girlfriend hung out while I edited. He and I liked ICP back in the 90’s when we were kids so it was cool to hang out with him while I worked. I finally finished editing around 3am and got a couple hours of sleep before I headed back to NYC for a hurricane Irma fundraiser I had to host in the afternoon. That night I slept for 10 hours. It was a hell of a weekend.

The best part of this whole thing was that nearly all the press coverage was super positive. I really think this is a big moment for juggalos. Maybe people will finally respect them a little bit or at least just leave them alone. So before I get to my coverage I wanna share with you a couple videos I thought were particularly good. Both of them feature my friend Chris AKA Mankini who to be honest is the perfect subject for a video about the march. He’s from the area so he let dozens of people stay with him, he is super nice and of course he’s a giant dude who wears a bikini all the time. You can’t beat that. So check out the Reason video about the march and then check out the Guardian video which I am actually in the background of a couple of times.

Now finally we get to my coverage…

First check out my Playboy article. I wrote the (heavily edited) intro, and interviewed juggalos and took all the photos. It’s almost as if I am an actual journalist.

I also did a big gallery for Voice Media Group who I always shoot juggalos for. Here’s just the LA Weekly gallery since they are all the same even though it was published via a bunch of alt weeklies.

And now finally here’s my huge gallery:

Click here for all my photos from the Juggalo March On Washington!

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

Juggalo March On Washington

 

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In the unlikely event that we believe that the security of your personal information in our possession or control may have been compromised, we may seek to notify you of that development. If a notification is appropriate, we would endeavor to do so as promptly as possible under the circumstances, and, to the extent we have your e-mail address, we may notify you by e-mail.

In addition to the foregoing, drivenbyboredom.com may share or disclose personally identifiable information about you to other companies or individuals when:

  • we utilize third party service providers to provide products, services or functions on our behalf (such as sending emails or processing credit cards or fulfilling subscriptions), and ask these service providers to agree to maintain the confidentiality of your personally identifiable information and not to use your personally identifiable information for any reason except to carry out the purpose(s) for which we hired them;
  • You have entered a contest or sweepstakes sponsored by a third party, in which case the information may be shared with that third party for their use in their discretion, including direct marketing (Some of our contests and sweeps will ask you at the time of entry whether you would like your personal information to be shared with the sponsor. Other contests will not give you that option and in that event, if you do not want your information to be shared, you should not enter the contest);
  • the entity to whom the information is disclosed is one under control of, or under common control with drivenbyboredom.com (for these purposes, a company controlling 20% or more of the voting stock of another entity shall be deemed to control such entity);
  • the entity to whom the information is disclosed is hosting web sites associated with our magazines or magazines we publish in conjunction with a third party, other than those web sites covered by this policy;
  • the entity to whom the information is disclosed has affiliated with us to publish a website or furnish services associated with a website;
  • you have furnished us personal information with the intent that it be forwarded to a third party for use in connection with a specified service you are electing to participate in (examples include, without limitation, e-commerce partners, services to help old friends locate you online, etc.);
  • we need to protect our legal rights (for example, if we are trying to collect money you owe us);
  • we must comply with applicable laws, regulations, or legal or regulatory process;
  • we have reason to believe that someone may be causing injury to someone or interfering with our rights or the rights of our users, or general public, or using our services in violation of a legal or personal right; or
  • in connection with a sale, merger, transfer, exchange, or other disposition (whether of assets, stock, or otherwise) of all or a portion of the business conducted by the web sites to which this policy applies.

Cookies
drivenbyboredom.com(or third party service providers on our behalf) may set and access cookies and similar technologies on your computer. A cookie is a small amount of data (often including a unique identifier), that is sent to your browser from a web site’s computers and stored on your computer’s hard drive. Some of our cookies may be local shared objects, also known as Flash cookies. drivenbyboredom.com uses cookies to understand site usage and to improve the content and offerings on our site.

We may use cookies to control the display of ads, to track usage patterns on the sites, to deliver editorial content, to record requests for subscriptions and to personalize information.

Our cookies may contain personally identifiable information and such cookies may be shared with others to the same extent indicated above.

drivenbyboredom.com (or third party service providers on our behalf) may also use cookies to collect aggregate information about web site users on an anonymous basis. We may share aggregate demographic and usage information with our prospective and actual business partners, advertisers and other third parties for any business purpose.

Some of our advertisers may serve you cookies as well. We do not have control over cookies placed by advertisers.

If you don’t want cookies, most Web browsers include an option that allows you to not accept them. However, if you set your browser to refuse cookies, some portions of our sites may not function efficiently. You can manage and deleted flash cookies by visitinghttp://kb2.adobe.com/cps/526/52697ee8.html

drivenbyboredom.com users may opt out of behavioral targeting through the opt-out link located at http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp

IP Address
Your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address is usually associated with the place from which you enter the Internet, like your Internet Service Provider, your company or your university. Our server may also record the referring page that linked you to us (e.g., another Web site or a search engine); the pages you visit on our sites, the Web site you visit after this Web Site; the ads you see; the ads you click on; other information about the type of Web browser, computer, platform, related software and settings you are using; any search terms you have entered on this Web Site or a referral site; and other Web usage activity and data logged by our Web servers. We may use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our servers, gather broad demographic information, and administer our website. We may also link this information with your personal information when we feel that it is necessary to enforce compliance with our rules and policies or terms of service or to protect our Sites, customers or others.

Advertising Disclosure
In addition to ads that we serve you directly, we use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our websites. Both we and our advertising companies may use information about your visits to this website and other sites you may visit to serve ads to you. In the course of serving advertisements to you, a unique third-party cookie may be placed or recognized on your browser. In addition, we and our advertising companies may use Web beacons to help manage our online advertising. These Web beacons enable us and our third-party ad serving companies to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits this site and to learn which banner ads bring users to our website and to serve you ads that you may find of interest elsewhere on the internet. Both drivenbyboredom.comand these companies may use information (not including your names, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to these sites and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by other companies, please visit http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp. Ads in our videos may be served by an ad partner. You can find out more about our video ads by visitinghttp://www.yume.com/privacy.php.

drivenbyboredom.com is participating in the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising.  Please visit  the “Ad Choices” link:  http://www.aboutads.info/choices/.

Kids And Parents
The sites covered by this policy are not intended for use by children, especially those under age 13. No one under age 13 is allowed to provide any personal information or use our public discussion areas, forums and chats. To subscribe to newsletters and to participate in other activities where personal information is divulged on our teen oriented sites, you must be 13 or older. Minors between the ages of 13 and 17 should get the permission of their parent(s) or legal guardian(s) before subscribing to any of  our sites. Some areas of our sites require that you identify yourself by age category when registering and in those areas, if you register as an adult, you represent that you are 18 years of age or older.

If your children disclose information about themselves in our public discussion areas, they may get unsolicited messages from other parties. Accordingly, you should tell them not to do so. There are also commercially available tools to help you limits your children’s exposure to material online.

If you’re worried about your children’s activities or their privacy on our site, we encourage you to e-mail drivenbyboredom.com at meinmyplace@gmail.com.

Blogs, Video and other user-generated Postings; Social Networking
If you elect to post material to any blogs, forums, participate in our social networking channels or other community boards that may be offered on our sites, or if you elect to upload any photographs, audio or video, you will be solely responsible for all content, messages, text, files, images, graphics, photos, audio clips, sounds, video or other materials (the “Postings”). You agree and warrant that any Postings you post to the sites will be true and accurate, will not defame any person or invade any person’s privacy, and will not infringe the proprietary rights of any person. You agree not to furnish any Postings to which you do not own the rights. By furnishing Postings, you give drivenbyboredom.com the right to use such Postings in any manner and in any media now known or hereafter invented, including, without limitation, the right to combine your Postings with Postings of third parties in varied combinations. You also acknowledge that visitors to the sites may post comments about your Postings which may be derogatory, and that drivenbyboredom.com has no obligation to monitor or delete any such postings.

Please be aware that drivenbyboredom.com does not and cannot monitor all of the Postings made to the sites, and therefore drivenbyboredom.com will not be responsible for the content of any Postings. drivenbyboredom.com has no obligation to verify the accuracy of any personally indentifying information that is posted to our sites. However, drivenbyboredom.com does reserve the right to delete or edit any material in any Posting that is obscene, harassing, offensive or otherwise objectionable and not in keeping with the community standards of the websites and to terminate access to the sites to offenders of the guidelines. If drivenbyboredom.com elects to edit any Postings, it nonetheless assumes no responsibility for the content of the Postings. Under no circumstances will drivenbyboredom.com be liable for any inaccuracy or defect in any Postings. We also expect our users to adhere to certain rules of the road. Therefore, you agree not to post, email, or otherwise make available Postings:

  • that are unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, pornographic, libelous, or invasive of another’s privacy, or harmful to minors in any way;
  • that harass, degrade, intimidate or are hateful toward an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or disability;
  • that include personal or identifying information about another person without that person’s explicit consent.
  • that are false, deceptive, misleading, deceitful, misinformative, constitute “bait and switch” or impersonation of any person or entity;
  • contain your own or a third party’s advertising, branding or promotional content;
  • that infringe any proprietary rights, including copyright, of any party, or Postings that you do not have a right to make available;
  • restrict or inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the drivenbyboredom.com sites or the drivenbyboredom.com services offered on them;
  • that include your personal information, such as telephone number, street address, last name, URL or email address;
  • that are “cut and paste” private messages from other users;
  • that re-broadcast any posting that violates these terms.

Because drivenbyboredom.com does not monitor the Postings, you agree to use and rely on them at your own risk. drivenbyboredom.com cannot make any representation or warranty about the material contained in the Postings. drivenbyboredom.com likewise assumes no responsibility for any contact you may have with other users of our sites, either online or offline. If you elect to meet in person with someone you may meet on our sites, you do so at your own risk, and under no circumstances will drivenbyboredom.com be liable for any activity or injury that may occur.

California and Canadian Users

California and Canadian residents have the right to know how their information may be shared with third parties who engage in direct marketing activities and this policy explains our practices and how you can opt out of having your information shared for such purposes. From time to time we may make our customer lists available to companies that sell goods and services that we believe would be of interest. We may compile these lists from customer orders placed both offline and online. Customers have the option of having their names and identifying information removed from those lists (subject to certain exceptions and limitations in applicable laws) by contacting us at contact@drivenbyboredom.com, or, in the case of information you have provided to us offline, by sending a current mailing label or exact copy to: Mail Preference Service, 373 S. 4th St. Brooklyn, NY 11211

We may also from time to time make our customer lists available for direct marketing purposes to other entities that are affiliated with us. If you would like to be removed from those lists, contact us at meinmyplace@gmail.com, or, in the case of information you have provided to us offline, by sending a current mailing label or exact copy to: Mail Preference Service, 373 S. 4th St. Brooklyn, NY 11211

If you enter a contest or sweepstakes sponsored by a third party, information may be shared with that third party for their use in their discretion, including direct marketing (Some of our contests and sweeps will ask you at the time of entry whether you would like your personal information to be shared with the sponsor. Other contests will not give you that option and in that event, if you do not want your information to be shared, you should not enter the contest.)

Non-U.S. Users
If you are located outside of the United States, please note that the information you provide to us will be transferred to the United States. By using this web site, you consent to this transfer. You also consent to the adjudication of any disputes arising in connection with this website in the federal and state courts of, and in accordance with the laws of, the state of New York.

Other Terms of Use:

Copyright

Everything you see or read on the drivenbyboredom.com sites is owned by us or used with permission. You may not copy, use, or retransmit anything from or for our site without our permission. Any commercial or promotional distribution, publishing or exploitation of the sites, or any content, code, data or materials on the sites is strictly prohibited. You are not allowed to post or distribute any material you do not own or which you do not have permission to use. You are also prohibited from engaging in any conduct that interferes with the technological operation of the sites or that tampers with any copyright protection mechanisms applicable to content on any sites. Ignoring this policy may result in copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights violations.

Copyright Infringement

In accordance with the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC sec. 512, our site has designated an agent to receive notices of claims of copyright infringement: Nathaniel Smith 373 S. 4th St #3E Brooklyn, NY 11211;. If you believe your copyright has been infringed, you may provide us with notice. To be effective, the notification must be a written communication that includes the following:

  • A physical or electronic signature of person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed;
  • Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site;
  • Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled, and information reasonably sufficient to permit us to locate the material;
  • Information reasonably sufficient to permit us to contact you, including an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address at which the complaining party may be contacted;
  • A statement that the complaining party has a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
  • A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

We may give notice to our users that we have received a notice of infringement by means of a general notice on our site, electronic mail to a user’s e-mail address in our records, or by written communication sent by first-class mail to a user’s physical address in our records. If you receive such a notice, you may provide counter-notification in writing to the designated agent that includes the information below. To be effective, the counter-notification must be a written communication that includes the following:

  • Your physical or electronic signature;
  • Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled, and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled;
  • A statement from you under the penalty of perjury, that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled; and
  • Your name, physical address and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your physical address is located, or if your physical address is outside of the United States, for the judicial district in which our offices are located, and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided notification of allegedly infringing material or an agent of such person.

We reserve the right to terminate access to our sites of any user who infringes the proprietary rights of any third party.

User Names and Passwords
Some areas of our sites require you to select a user name and password. Users will be responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any user name and password, and we will not be responsible for misuse of any user names or passwords by any third party, whether authorized by a user or not. Some of our sites also have a policy of requiring that you not include certain identifying characteristics (such as street address or last name) in your public profile. Please check each site for any such restrictions.

Disclaimers
drivenbyboredom.com is not responsible for the conduct, whether online or offline, of any user of the sites. drivenbyboredom.com takes reasonable steps to protect the security and integrity of all personal information you provide to the sites; however, due to the inherent nature of the Internet, we cannot guarantee that information, during transmission through the Internet or while stored on our system or otherwise in our care, will be absolutely safe from intrusion by others, such as hackers. drivenbyboredom.com assumes no liability for any error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of, any user Posting. drivenbyboredom.com is not responsible for any problems or technical malfunction of any telephone network or lines, computer online systems, servers or providers, computer equipment, software, failure of any email or players due to technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or on any of the sites or combination thereof, including any injury or damage to users or to any person’s computer related to or resulting from participation in any activities on the sites or downloading materials. We make no warranties that the services will be timely, secure, uninterrupted, or error-free. You understand that if you download any material, you do so at your sole risk. Under no circumstances shall drivenbyboredom.com be responsible for any loss or damage, including personal injury or death, resulting from use of the sites, any content posted on or through the sites, or conduct of any users of the sites, whether online or offline. We can, whenever we want, edit or delete any content displayed on the sites. You use the sites at your own risk. Some areas of our sites offer advice from a variety of providers, who may be affiliated with drivenbyboredom.com or member of the user community; such advice is for entertainment only and not as treatment or remedy for an individual circumstance. Everything you see on our sites is provided to you “as is.” The sites are provided “AS-IS” and as available and drivenbyboredom.com expressly disclaims any warranty of fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. drivenbyboredom.com cannot guarantee and does not promise any specific results from use of the sites. drivenbyboredom.com reserves the right to terminate access to these sites for by anyone for any reason, including violation of these terms of service and/or any terms contained in the Privacy Policy.

Limitation on Liability

IN NO EVENT SHALL MEINMYPLACE BE LIABLE TO YOU OR ANY THIRD PARTY FOR ANY INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFIT DAMAGES ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES, EVEN IF MEINMYPLACE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

Disputes

If there is any dispute about or involving the sites, you agree that the dispute shall be governed by the laws of the State of New York, USA, without regard to conflict of law provisions and you agree to exclusive personal jurisdiction and venue in the state and federal courts of the United States located in the State of New York, City of New York. drivenbyboredom.com may demand that any dispute between drivenbyboredom.com and you about or involving the sites must be settled by arbitration utilizing the dispute resolution procedures of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) in New York, New York, USA.

Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold drivenbyboredom.com, its subsidiaries, and affiliates, and their respective officers, agents, partners and employees, harmless from any loss or liability arising out of your use of the sites or from any claim, or demand, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your use of the sites in violation of these terms of service and/or any breach of your representations, warranties and obligations set forth above and/or if any content that you post in Postings on the sites or through the sites causes drivenbyboredom.com to be liable to another.

Terms relating to Digital Applications

In the case of digital applications, the following additional provisions apply:

These terms of use are between you and drivenbyboredom.com. The platform provider for the application is not a party to these terms, but may be a third party beneficiary of them. You will look solely to drivenbyboredom.com for any maintenance and support issues arising in connection with the content of the application and drivenbyboredom.com, not eht platform provider, is solely responsible for any claims that may arise with respect to the content of the application. You are authorized to use the application solely on a device that you own or control, and solely as permitted by the usage terms of the platform provider of the application.

By using the application, you represent that you are not located in a country that is subject to an embargo of the U.S. government or that has been designated as a “terrorist supporting” country and that you are not listed on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

Any questions regarding the application may be addressed to drivenbyboredom.com at 373 S. 4th St Brooklyn, NY 11211

Changes to Privacy Policy and Notice

drivenbyboredom.com may change this policy from time to time in its discretion. Your continued use of our sites indicates your consent to this privacy policy and any amended versions of it.

This policy was last updated on May 1st, 2012.

 

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ICP Vs The FBI

The big news out of the Gathering of the Juggalos is that the Insane Clown Posse is going to sue the F.B.I. I am sure people read some Tweets or saw a headline and laughed and went on with their day, but the truth is this is some weirdly serious shit. The F.B.I. added juggalos to their gang watch list. When I read about that before I kept thinking how stupid that shit was, but in reality it has had some serious impact on peoples lives. Make fun of juggalos all you want but they are fucking people with families and jobs and they are being fucked with on levels I could never imagine.

ICP had a big seminar where they announced the news. They told everyone about new shows they are doing and a couple of documentaries and all the fun stuff going on with ICP. And then at the end they started talking about how the F.B.I. is fucking up their business and their fans. Being on this watch list means ICP shows are gang activities. If they can find a venue to host one of their shows they have to pay extra insurance on it. Their merch is considered gang gear and can be confiscated. Many stores like Hot Topic have stopped selling their stuff. But on a serious, human rights violation, fascist level peoples lives are being fucked with. People are showing up at their parole officers with a little hatchet necklace on and having their paroles violated. Juggalos are getting pulled over 2-3 times a week for having ICP stickers on their car. Soldiers are being dishonorably discharged for having ICP CDs. ICP decided the only way to fight the law was to use the law and they announced they are suing the F.B.I.

After the announcement the seminar tent was electric. People stood up and cheered. It was honestly touching. I felt like I was in the middle of a movie where someone makes this big speech that changes the course of a war or something. It was sort of amazing. ICP introduced one of their lawyers, Farris Haddad, who was actually a juggalo growing up. And he set up a trailer where any juggalos could come tell him their stories. I became friends with Farris over the next few days and he told me some amazing and sad stories about things happening to these people.

After the announcement I went over to Farris’ trailer and talked to some of the juggalos waiting outside. I heard a story of someone who got sent to prison because they had violated their parole by associating with gang members by friending a juggalo on Facebook. I talked to a guy who had been fired from his job in private security for coming to the Gathering. I talked to people who had lost custody of their kids over this and people who had been arrested and had their tattoos documented and added to gang lists. My friend Kev Buc who came to the Gathering with me told me that he was pulled over once for something little and they photographed all his tattoos and added him to some gang list because he has a Twiztid tattoo. Kev is not some redneck drug dealer or something. He runs Mishka’s NYC flagship store and blogs. I assure you he is not a gangster.

Long story short this juggalos as a gang thing is bullshit. They are just kids who like a band. A lot of these people sell drugs and probably do some dumb shit and end up getting arrested, but that’s just cause the music is popular with poor uneducated kids, but this shit is clearly not organized and them committing crimes has nothing to do with ICP. So I really hope ICP wins and gets juggalos off the F.B.I. gang list.

If you have been fucked with by the cops because you are a juggalo go to juggalosfightback.com. If you want to know more better written, better researched info about all of this read my juggalo anthropology partner in crime Camile Dodero’s interview with ICP on the Village Voice.

I also posted the video of the announcement below the photos. I am in it a lot. At one point you can see me picking my nose which is not a good look but in my defense that place is super dusty and all my boogers looked like rocks.

Now click here to see all my pictures from the Insane Clown Posse’s announcement that they are going to sue the F.B.I.

ICP Suing The FBI

ICP Suing The FBI

ICP Suing The FBI

ICP Suing The FBI

ICP Suing The FBI

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwyFjrp8lRY[/youtube]

The Gathering of the Juggalos is a yearly music festival in Cave In Rock, IL created by the Insane Clown Posse that I have now photographed three times. Every year it produces some of the best photos I have ever taken. To see my complete GOTJ archives please click here.

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