July 2008

Shit, Piss,
Fuck, Cunt,
Cocksucker,
Motherfucker,
and Tits. Those are
the heavy seven. Those are
the ones that’ll curve your
spine, warp your mind, and
keep the country from
winning the war.

— George Carlin
 eight
Fiddlesticks! As you should be aware,
George Carlin died. While there’s nothing
I can really write that sums up anyone’s
life, George Carlin was amazingly funny
and made more sense in a 1 hour set than
many do their entire lives. I used the
mugshot photo here to illustrate that like
those seven words on the cover, they have
a lot in common with all the so-called laws everyone is generally so uptight about. Simply
put in this instance - they’re just words on paper.

So, let’s face it... up until last month’s bike issue, Lattitude had been pigeon holing itself.
More bitching and moaning than actual relevant solutions or stories of any sort of action.
This is something we are looking to change. We would like to bring you tales from those
out and about interacting with the world in all its various forms or how you might be able
to improve it. Some of this will of course be political, but we hope to have more every day
life thrown in there from this point on. Grant it that this issue isn’t quite there, but for this,
we need your help.

This change comes from feedback received by you, the reader who in turn becomes the
writer. Going back to the beginning, this is what Lattitude was meant to be about in the
first place. Community interaction, a world wide collective of sorts contributing to a
simple dialogue. Opinions are like assholes right? Everyone’s got one. Nobody agrees on
everything and that’s good. Feel free to share your own opinions about anything you’d like
- everyone’s interested... info@lattitudezine.com

Thanks for reading,

Jimmy

Lattitude Zine is published 12X a year, monthly in Louisville, KY. Lattitude is collectively
written and designed with subjects and style that will vary from one issue to the next. The
reader base is the staff essentially. There is no formal organization at work.

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 George
Carlin
1937 - 2008

Contents
3 • George Carlin
Butler Shaffer

5 • Grass Farmin’
Jimmy Flaherty

6 • Triztoons
Bill Trzcinski

7 • Burger and Spies

Eric Schlosser

12 • Anarchy in Your Head

Dale Everett

13 • NYC No-Car Zone

William Nueman & Fernando Santos

15 • Photos
Sarah Davis
 
George Carlin:
A Four-Letter Threat to Authority
Butler Shaffer
When I was in high school, I got into a
discussion with a couple of my classmates
over the role institutions played in our
lives. I had made some comment critical
of government, or organized religion, or
corporations – I don’t recall which – and
was asked if I was opposed to all such
systems. I replied that I was “distrustful of
all organizations, from two-handed poker
on up.” This intuitive insight has stayed
with me all of my life. Many years later,
I would discover a man whose life-work
consisted of using humor to express these
sentiments.
It is difficult to find words that convey the
sadness I felt upon being awakened, this
morning, to the news that George Carlin
had died the night before. He was the
successor to the man I continue to regard
as the most significant dismantler of
authority in my lifetime, Lenny Bruce. To
most people, Bruce and Carlin were noth-
ing more than dealers in four-letter words;
men who loved to shock the sensibilities
of others. But there was a deeper meaning
in their humor, and modern libertarian
thinking would not have been possible
without their important groundwork.
Each man understood, at least implicitly,
that the authority some men presume to
exercise over the lives of others depends
upon the subjugated regarding their man-
03 LattitudeZine.com
agers with an unquestioning reverence
and awe. One ought never to be so bold as
to offer an opinion contrary to that pro-
vided by the authority figure. More than
that, one must always look upon himself
or herself as fundamentally inferior to
this authority. One does not dare to gaze
upon the king, to whom groveling is the
expected position.
Bruce and Carlin understood that there
is nothing that can more quickly under-
mine this aura of obeisance than for those
who command others to be referred to in
vulgar terms. External authority is depen-
dent upon a veneration that is quickly lost
when men and women begin to think of
their masters in the same four-letter
vocabulary more commonly directed
against other motorists or an annoying
relative.
The institutional order has long under-
stood this fact, which is why Lenny Bruce
was driven to an early grave by criminal
prosecutions for his daring to speak,
publicly, of politicians, judges, govern-
ment officials, and other authority figures
as practitioners – if not the personification
– of four-lettered activity. George Carlin
was subjected to a more subdued – albeit
equally insistent – coercive treatment for
even using four-letter words. Such words
can become habit-forming, as easily
applied to the president as to an offending
neighbor. That Bill Clinton and George
W. Bush do not enjoy the kind of respect
accorded George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson is, to a great extent, the erosion
of homage brought about by the likes of
Bruce and Carlin.
The mainstream media will doubtless
refer to Carlin as an “entertainer,” a word
that fails to account for what he truly was.
I prefer to think of him in words that the
late Alan Watts used to describe himself: a
“standup philosopher.” The media will fo-
cus almost entirely upon his “seven words
you can’t say on television,” as though
his work consisted of little more than the
outbursts of teenagers intent on shocking
their parents. I do wish the man had not
over-worked the use of four-letter words,
but I was willing to overlook some of his
language for the content that lay within
it. Like the punch-line of the joke about
a young boy who kept digging through a
pile of manure out of a sense that “there’s
got to be a pony in here someplace,” there
was deep substance to his routines.
There are many so-called comedians
whose works consist of little more than
four-letter words, but whose language is
not a prelude to the kind of understanding
offered by Carlin. Perhaps these younger
people believe that, if they can utter a
string of expletives, audiences will regard
them with the love and respect earned
by Carlin. But without the intellectual
and spiritual depth of a George Carlin,
their “humor” becomes as impotent as an
unexploded July 4th firework: some initial
sizzle, followed by . . . nothing.
Political systems, advertising, organized
religions, corporate practices, school
systems, ideologies, political and social
fashions of all sorts, came in for well-
deserved skewering. Prior to 9/11, he did
a routine on airport security which, if
performed more recently, would doubt-
less have earned him a visit from Michael
Chertoff and his thugs. And what devotee
of the new religion of environmentalism
– and its global-warming sect – could
withstand Carlin’s treatment of this latest
racket for subjecting humanity to the
control of those who fashioned themselves
fit to run a planet? Before the day is over,
I will get out and play part of my collec-
tion of George Carlin DVDs as a reminder
of the state of mind he helped all of us to
develop as an antidote for the insanities
perpetrated by institutionalized thinking.
The last comment I heard George Carlin
make was in a video of a book-signing, in
which a young man asked him if he be-
lieved that 9/11 was an “inside job.” Carlin
did not offer an opinion on the
matter, but only replied – in words I do
not recall precisely – that it was a mistake
to ever accept consensus-based definitions
of reality. What better words to inscribe
upon a tombstone or other memorial to
this remarkable man!
Butler Shaffer (bshaffer@swlaw.edu) teaches at
the Southwestern University School of Law. He
is the author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional
Threats to Peace and Human Survival.
June 2008 • LATT!TUDE 04
Grass Farmin’ This Ain’t
Jimmy Flaherty
There’s food growing in my front yard! I have yet to reap the benefits of my
Well, technically it’s my side yard as we
have a corner lot, but there’s food growing
none the less. It’s amazing the interaction
you have with people when you have a
vegetable garden next to the side walk and
not hidden away in the back yard. That was
actually one of my hopes when starting the
garden. Being that it was out there in the
open I figured I’d have some interesting
conversations when I was out there work-
ing.
The best thing I have discovered in the
garden is the fact that it isn’t so hard. I was
intimidated as hell to begin with, and even
the first month or so was a bit disappoint-
ing as everything seemed a bit stagnant.
Add to that my dad’s garden in his yard of
similar size and plant variety was making
leaps and bounds. Yes he had added the
metal laden weird blue mess if Miracle
Grow to his, coupled with hours more sun
than my garden receives, but regardless
I held my natural ground so to speak, of
water and compost. Now, low and behold,
it’s taking off.
05 LattitudeZine.com
gardening project, but my hopes are high
and I am very much looking forward to the
harvest as we’ll call it. Additionally, we’re
looking to grow our own pumpkins later
this year and who knows what else.
It really makes me sit back and wonder
why I haven’t done this before.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the perfectly
manicured, carpet style lawn. It just seems
weird. I guess it comes from all the time I
spent carving angled patterns into the grass
covering golf courses around Louisville.
The fact that we could all be growing a
significant amount of our food right in
front of our houses is eye opening to say
the least. Maybe with the recent trends in
farmers markets more people start interact-
ing with the people that are growing their
food and start to look at it as something we
can all do. After all, I’ve certainly proven
it’s not that hard. Seeds + water + sun =
food. Not too hard to understand that
equation. It’s a hell of a lot better than
work + cash + store = food.
triztoons@gmail.com
http://triztoonorium.synthasite.com

June 2008 • LATT!TUDE 06

 Burger With a Side of Spies
Eric Schlosser

07 LattitudeZine.com
WHILE the Patriot Act has raised fears
about government spying on ordinary
citizens, the growing threat to civil liber-
ties posed by corporate spying has received
much less attention. During the late 1990s,
a private security firm spied on Greenpeace
and other environmental groups, exam-
ining activists’ phone records and even
sending undercover agents to infiltrate the
groups, according to an article in Mother
Jones. In 2006 Hewlett-Packard was caught
spying on journalists. Last year Wal-Mart
apologized for improperly recording con-
versations with a New York Times reporter.
And now it turns out that the Burger King
Corporation, home of the Whopper, hired a
private security firm to spy on the Student/
Farmworker Alliance, a group of idealistic
college students trying to improve the lives
of migrants in Florida.
The Student/Farmworker Alliance and
an affiliated nonprofit, the Coalition of
Immokalee Workers, have for years been
urging the fast-food industry to accept
some responsibility for the plight of Florida
migrants who harvest the tomatoes for its
hamburgers and tacos. I am a longtime
supporter of their work. The wages of these
farm workers, adjusted for inflation, have
declined by as much as 70 percent since the
late 1970s. And hundreds, perhaps thou-
sands, of migrants have been enslaved by
labor contractors and forced to work with-
out pay. The McDonald’s Corporation and
Yum Brands (which owns Taco Bell, Pizza
Hut and KFC) have agreed to subsidize a
modest pay raise for their tomato pickers
and work closely with the coalition to
eliminate slavery from the fields. Burger
King, however, has pursued a different
strategy.
In March, a woman named Cara Schaffer
contacted the Student/Farmworker Alli-
ance, saying she was a student at Broward
Community College. Her eagerness
aroused suspicions, but she was allowed to
join two of the group’s planning sessions.
Internet searches by the alliance revealed
that she was not a college student.
Ms. Schaffer is the 25-year-old owner of
a private security firm. Her company,
Diplomatic Tactical Services, seems like
the kind of security firm you’d find in one
of Carl Hiaasen’s crime thrillers. Last year
Ms. Schaffer was denied a private inves-
tigator’s license; she had failed to supply
the Florida licensing division with proof
of “lawfully gained, verifiable experience
or training.” Even more unsettling, one
of her former subcontractors, Guillermo
Zarabozo, is now facing murder charges in
United States District Court in Miami for
his role in allegedly executing four crew
members of a charter fishing boat, then
dumping their bodies at sea.
In an interview, a Burger King executive
told me that the company had worked
with Diplomatic Tactical Services for years
on “security-related matters” and had used
it to obtain information about the Student/
Farmworker Alliance’s plans — in order
to prevent acts of violence. “It is both the
corporation’s right and duty,” a company
spokesman later wrote in an e-mail mes-
sage to me, “to protect its employees and
assets from potential harm.”
But the Student/Farmworker Alliance and
the Coalition of Immokalee Workers are
not dangerous, extremist groups. Both are
pacifist, mainstream nonprofits inspired
by the work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. The coalition is supported by the
June 2008 • LATT!TUDE 08
continued from page 8
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation,
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Pax
Christi, the Catholic peace movement.
The Bill of Rights was adopted to protect
Americans from the abusive power of their
government. I’ve come to believe that we
now need a similar set of restrictions to
defend against irresponsible corporate
power. Today companies like Wal-Mart and
ExxonMobil have annual revenues larger
than the entire budgets of some states,
and they employ former agents from the
F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Secret Service to do
security work. Unlike government agencies,
whose surveillance activities are supposed
to be conducted according to strict guide-
lines and court orders, these private firms
operate with a remarkable degree of free-
dom. At the moment, federal laws against
the practice of “pretexting” — using a false
identity to obtain personal information
— apply only to financial and telephone
records.
09 LattitudeZine.com
Congressional hearings on corporate
espionage would be a good place to start
figuring out how to regulate the practice.
A Senate inquiry during the 1930s
prompted companies to disband their
private armies and stop spying on labor
unions. Burger King’s use of an unlicensed
private investigator to spy on the Student/
Farmworker Alliance may have been illegal
under Florida law. John Chidsey, the chief
executive of Burger King, knew about the
use of Diplomatic Tactical Services.
Mr. Chidsey should get a chance to raise
his right hand and tell members of
Congress why he thinks this sort of
behavior is acceptable.
Eric Schlosser is the author of “Fast Food Nation”
and “Reefer Madness.” We highly recommend
these books for your reading library.
Help keep Lattitude Zine alive... advertise!
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June 2008 • LATT!TUDE
11 LattitudeZine.com
Anarchy in Your Head

Dale Everett

I know it’s offensive to a lot of people when someone says that the Constitution is just a
piece of paper. When I say it, it’s not to suggest that it doesn’t matter if we ignore it. I find
it appalling that we don’t honor the rights that it attempts to protect. Saying that it’s just
a piece of paper is simply facing the reality that you shouldn’t put your faith in a piece of
paper to do anything. Each of us has to work to protect our rights. This July 4th, I suggest
you declare your personal independence from the State. It may not be much more than a
statement for now, but freeing your mind is an important first step.

The idea for today’s cartoon was suggested by a Richard Onley. Thanx, Richard.

June 2008 • LATT!TUDE 12

New York’s (temporary) No-Car Zone
William Neuman / Fernanda Santos
It has been a long-held dream of New
Yorkers of a certain (greenish) stripe: the
streets of Manhattan free of cars. Now,
for a few hours, on a few streets, on a few
weekends this summer, that dream will
become reality.
Much of Park Avenue will be closed to
cars on parts of Aug. 9, 16 and 23. Lance
Armstrong joined Mayor Bloomberg to
announce street closings.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced
on Monday that he will create a car-free
zone on three Saturdays in August, along
a 6.9-mile stretch of streets through
Manhattan, from the Brooklyn Bridge,
north to Park Avenue and the Upper East
Side. Cars, trucks and buses will be banned
on the streets along the route from 7 a.m.
13 LattitudeZine.com
to 1 p.m. on Aug. 9, 16 and 23. The mayor
was careful to describe the initiative, called
Summer Streets, as an experiment.
“If it works, we’ll certainly consider doing
it again,” Mr. Bloomberg said, at a news
conference in the East Village on Lafayette
Street, which will be included in the route.
“If not, we won’t. But we have never been
afraid to try new ideas, especially the ones
that have the potential to improve the
quality of life.”
The route will run north-south along
Centre Street, Lafayette Street, Fourth
Avenue and Park Avenue to 72nd Street.
The southern half of 72nd Street from Park
Avenue to Fifth Avenue will also be shut to
vehicles, to link to Central Park.
Mr. Bloomberg and the transportation
commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, said the
idea was to make the streets a haven for
walkers, cyclists and others. Fitness, dance
and yoga classes will be held along the
route, and there will also be places to rent
bicycles. The plan was reported in The
New York Sun on Monday.
“It’s a new way to use a street, using it
more as a park than as a thoroughfare,”
said Paul Steely White, the executive
director of Transportation Alternatives,
an advocacy group promoting walking,
bicycling and mass transit that worked
with the city to develop the car-free zone.
“Everyone around the world knows about
Park Avenue as one of New York City’s
most storied thoroughfares, and to turn
that over to pedestrians and cyclists, even
though it’s just for three consecutive
Saturdays, I think that sends a very power-
ful message that the tide is turning so that
bicyclists and pedestrians are on at least an
equal footing with drivers.”
While the idea seems novel in New York,
it has been tried with success in many
other cities, according to Ms. Sadik-Khan,
including London, Paris and Bogotá. She
said that in Bogotá one of the city’s main
streets was closed to motor vehicles every
Sunday.
The plan got a mixed reaction on Monday
along the route.
“I think it’s a lovely idea,” said Allison
Blinken, 65, a retiree who lives on Park
Avenue at 66th Street. “Anything that
makes the street more pedestrian-friendly.”
Several other residents of the well-appoint-
ed apartment buildings along the avenue
voiced support, although some noted that
neither they nor many of their neighbors
would be around to enjoy the benefits or
bear the annoyances, since the area virtu-
ally empties out on summer weekends as
people head to the Hamptons or elsewhere.
Downtown, however, there was a fair
amount of grumbling over the potential
impact on business.
“He’s got to be crazy,” Pablo Urema, 49, a
worker at a parking lot on Lafayette Street
in SoHo, said of the mayor. “We do a lot of
business every Saturday morning. No cars
for the parking garage means no people
for the businesses.”
Tran Harper, 44, the manager of Canal
Lafayette Store, which sells Chinese teas
and herbal products on Lafayette Street in
Chinatown, was also displeased.
“It’s a big problem because my merchan-
dise doesn’t fall from the sky,” Mr. Harper
said. “How do I get it here? Saturday is the
busiest day. We have a lot of deliveries on
Saturday. Also a lot of customers park their
cars in front and come in to buy.”
At the news conference Mr. Bloomberg
responded with peevishness when asked
about the potential for a negative reaction
from business owners or residents. “I knew
you were going to find something wrong
with it,” he said to a reporter.
“Look, there will be minor inconveniences,”
he said. “There’s minor inconveniences
when it rains, when you have snow, in-
conveniences when it’s hot, when it’s cold,
inconveniences when there are people on
the streets, when there’s not.”
June 2008 • LATT!TUDE 14
continued from page 15

“Anything that makes the street

more pedestrian-friendly.”
– 65 year old Park Avenue resident, Allison Blinken

But the mayor predicted that most stores would see an increase in business and
compared the initiative to his ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, which
met with initial resistance but ended up being popular.

Ms. Sadik-Khan said that the Transportation

Department had worked with the Police
Department to design a route that would
be less disruptive to traffic.

“We’ve been making very careful preparations

on our traffic front to make sure that we’re
dealing with the access issues that residents
have, with the delivery issues that businesses
have and also to make
sure that we’ve got appropriate access for
emergency vehicles,” she said.

Cyclists who were asked about the

initiative on Monday were generally
enthusiastic.

Eric Monasterio, 32, a painter who

lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, said
he regularly battled cars as he rode
his bike in Manhattan.

“If it works out they could have

a rotating system and have one
street open every day,” Mr.
Monasterio said.

Mathew R. Warren contributed
reporting.

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June 2008 • LATT!TUDE
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www.myspace.com/phrogtography

June 2008 • LATT!TUDE 18