Mission Mission

Southern Exposure needs an Associate Director:

Southern Exposure seeks a dynamic individual to fill the position of Associate Director. This is a full time, 40 hour a week, staff position with benefits. The Associate Director works with the Executive Director to manage and coordinate Southern Exposure’s membership program, annual auction, and SoEx’s Alternative Exposure Grant Program. The Associate Director plays a key administrative role in SoEx’s current fundraising campaign and organizing fundraising events. They manage day-to-day bookkeeping, including payables and receiveables. The Associate Director works collaboratively as a member of the SoEx team. This position offers an excellent opportunity for anyone interested in working in a creative and dynamic non-profit arts/arts administration environment at an organization entering into a period of exciting growth and change and an upcoming move to a new facility.

Opening Date: August 14, 2008
Deadline to submit application: September 19, 2008
Projected start date: October 2008

Full particulars here.

*Do* participate in interracial handshakes. But seriously, Barrio Libre seems to be a blog-based effort to clean up the neighborhood. Their mission statement specifically addresses the rise in violent crime we’ve all seen in recent months:

This summer marked a dramatic return of violence to the Mission District with night time gunfire, thefts & assaults and weekly homicides. Violence and hopelessness have become ways of life. People are shot and killed in broad daylight, and nothing is done about it. We will be advocates for this neighborhood. We will challenge the status quo. We work for a Barrio Libre (Neighborhood Freedom).

Link. Photo by reader Jen Boynton, who notes that there’s also a Spanish version of the poster. Which reminds me, shouldn’t we have a Spanish version of Mission Mission?

Today, my epic Midwestern road trip has brought me to Indianapolis. Fearing for my safety, my friend Bri (a real-live Indianan) sent me a link to a post on Take a Breather called “Indiana McCain and the Obama of Doom”:

Two nights ago, a friend (and Iraq War veteran) was walking down the sidewalk wearing an Obama 2008 shirt when a man, eating dinner with his wife looked up and said, “So, you’re a communist?”

That same night, a person in the bar shared this story with my friend: “I was wearing an Obama shirt in here the other night and three guys surrounded me and started harassing me about the shirt. Realizing I was outnumbered, I asked them what they would like me to do. They made me turn my shirt inside-out.”

Another recent evening, I was driving my mom’s car, which has an Obama bumper sticker on it. As I was using a drive-thru ATM, a truck pulled up behind me and began chanting Obama’s name out his window, but not in a good way. More like a tone that invoked the ghosts of the KKK. I didn’t look back, I just pulled away and acted like I didn’t hear them.

And then there’s this zinger, brought to light by an acquaintance: “I hope every racist person in America comes out and votes against Obama.”

Indiana is an interesting place.

Lots more analysis here. So yeah, I guess I won’t be donning the “Fuck Cars” t-shirt I picked up this afternoon in Bloomington until I get back to California. Thanks, Bri!

Everybody’s favorite internet cafe/place to get Mexican Coke, Redtap, has posted special recession hours. Haha. (Thanks, Alexandra!)

Evany, in a post titled Cafe Platitude (ha!), sums up everyone’s (most everyone’s) thoughts on everyone’s (most everyone’s) favorite neighborhood raw-food haunt:

Sadly their food is kind of tasty, jerks. But their whole shitty concept makes me so crabby, I refuse to interact with them. So like a kid getting someone to buy wine coolers at the 7-11, I sent my friend Megan (who speaks hippie) up to the Cafe Gratitude at the farmers market (where of course they have a booth), and she purchased me three I Am Insightfuls as I stood off to the side, trying not to faint from rolling my eyes so hard. As the guy handed back the change, he asked Megan, his face all punch-me-in-the-face-please serene, “So what core value do you care about most?”

Read the whole thing here.

Scott Scotch Wichmann reports:

Suddenly I heard the high-pitched pops of Chinese firecrackers right outside the restaurant’s front window—one, then two more, then yelling, then something in my gut made me whisper, “Get down!” and I grabbed the wife and we hit the concrete floor about the same moment as everyone else. We heard more pops and people running outside. I glanced up and saw women in dresses sprawled flat, men in suits, busboys, waiters, napkins, bits of food…anybody looking in from outside would’ve seen a desolate restaurant full of empty chairs.

See the full story here.

Previously on Mission Mission:

Best Pesto in the World is at Farina?

I saw one of these at the Louisville Zoo yesterday and it blew my mind and I wanted to share. Link to Maned Wolf entry on Wikipedia.

Photo by LoquaciousD

The sound in this video is not ideal, but just watch her throttle the bejesus out of that little hollow-body guitar during the solos. Granted, it’s not the most amazing soloing in the world, but they make it work. They’re called Agent Ribbons and they’re from Sacramento, and they’re playing tonight at the Knockout. It will be good.

Telstar Logistics just uploaded this gorgeous vintage shot. Look how pretty the peak is without so much gear heaped atop it. Link.

So I started following it too. We’ll see what happens. Link.