Back in 1992, when I was still in short pants and an egg cream cost a nickel, William S. Burroughs put in a guest appearance on Ministry’s then brand new single about heroin addiction. There he intoned: “SMASH THE CONTROL IMAGES. SMASH THE CONTROL MACHINE.” It was an exciting time to be alive. Extry! Extry! cried the newsboy on the corner. Homosexual narcotics fiend records with clown prince of industrial metal! Read all about it!

As always, Burroughs offered sage counsel, but smashing the control machine was easier said than done! In those days, the job required a stickball bat or a ball-peen hammer, and then there were the hazards of the cathode ray tube to contend with. I would have to wait a full decade before a good, wise, industrious inventor named Mitch Altman solved this problem with his TV-B-Gone, a special universal remote control for TVs. What’s so special about it, you say? It only has one button: OFF.
 

 
I don’t think I have to spell out the ways you, the suave and cunning Dangerous Minds reader, might use this device for mischief around the house. Let’s face facts: if you can’t figure out how to irritate friends, bewilder relatives, or enrage enemies with a universal off switch for TVs, pranks just might not be “your bag.”

But it’s the public applications of this device that interest me. Say, friend: how do you like it when strangers bombard your personal nervous system with upsetting lights and sounds, to say nothing of falsehoods and wrong opinions? Because I myself do not care for it. No, when I think of all the times I’ve been stuck in an urgent care waiting room listening to Judge Judy scream, sipping weak coffee from a Styrofoam cup at the mechanic while Dr. Phil takes a word solo, on the treadmill at the gym while Fox & Friends blather on like nincompoops, scrambling the brainwaves of senior citizens, or “eating” “lunch” in Baja Fresh as the National Speed Cutting Chainsaw Championship unfolds on several 65” HDTV screens simultaneously, I want to commit murder. 

Happily for me and the rest of the human family, there is a nonviolent solution. Point this little keychain gadget and CLICK! Darkness. Silence. Peace. At $19.99, the TV-B-Gone is one of my favorite stocking stuffers, but not for long. Last month, Altman’s email bulletin announced: “this is the last holiday season that you or anyone will be able to buy a TV-B-Gone remote control.” Make haste to Cornfield Electronics to buy the last crop of these suckers before they are discontinued. The handy among you might prefer Cornfield’s DIY kit (or Adafruit’s, or Make’s), but all are very close in price to the pre-assembled gizmo.

After the jump, TV-B-Gone inventor Mitch Altman speaks about hackerspaces at TEDx Brussels…

 
A couple weeks ago the most amazing thing started to percolate around social media, but then it was apparently stopped by lawyers from Kellogg’s. The “amazing thing” I refer to is the ultra-elaborate trolling—allegedly orchestrated by the brilliant Finnish anti-capitalist artist Jani Leinonen—of Kellogg’s and their Tony the Tiger mascot.

For generations, kids the world over have grown up eating Kellogg’s sugary, nearly nutritionless breakfast cereal and getting positive reinforcement from Tony’s “They’re GRRRREAT!” catchphrase, but some of the child actors who were actually in these commercials have apparently had tragic difficulties later in their lives.

Each new video that appeared saw Tony addressing the problems—via the use of his simplistic catchphrase basically—of a prostitute, a brutal cop and a suicide bomber.

Here’s the first one, launched on October 7th:
 

 
What Leinonen (I’m pretty confident he’s the mastermind)—whose “School of Disobedience” show is currently on exhibit at the Finnish National Gallery Kiasma—has done is, well, as I said before, ultra-elaborate trolling. Culture jamming of the Banksy or Ron English school and of the highest order, not only in terms of the wit employed, but in how perfectly this prank was pulled off. What you are about to see aren’t some amateurish commercial parodies, they are as professionally realized as something that you might see on Saturday Night Live, or indeed, as any “real” TV commercial for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. I used to work at a commercial production studio in New York that specialized in mixing live action and animation, usually in the employ of selling sugar to children, natch, and lemme tell ya, back then this would have taken a small army to pull off. This guy is a maniac! I really admire his dedication and work ethic. He might want to destroy capitalism—but Jani Leinonen is anything but lazy. He must be the hardest working anti-capitalist around.

More after the jump…

 
This was one of the most impudent stunts in the history of art-noise provocations: in 1986, a Houston, TX band of shit-stirrers called Culturcide released their second LP, Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America. The album consisted of parodic covers of then-recent radio hits by the likes of Springsteen, Huey Lewis and the News, USA For Africa, Pat Benatar, yadda yadda yadda. Some were hilarious, some brutally satirical, a few frankly just kinda dumb. But unlike “Weird Al” Yankovic, Culturcide didn’t re-record the music. Their vocalist Perry Webb simply warbled his own lyrical agitations atop the original recordings. No permission for that usage was obtained, as it was never even actually sought.
 

 
The album never saw and surely never WILL see another issue after that initial self-release. The threat of lawsuits pre-empted any further editions, so once the recording became notorious, it also became impossible to get, which only magnified its legend. According to a 1998 article in the Houston Press:

A blatantly illegal work of manic-dub genius, the album (now unavailable) ransacked 14 of the 1980s’ most vapid radio hits—everything from “We Are the World” to “Ebony and Ivory.” In keeping with its lo-fi, anti-technology stance, Culturcide simply rerecorded the tracks, changing the titles (for example, “We Aren’t the World”) and superimposing nasty, disparaging vocals, jarring cut-and-paste clatter and dizzying loop effects over the original versions—all, of course, without authorization.

Despite the band’s haphazard distribution methods, Tacky Souvenirs managed to find its way to a number of critics, several of whom commended the band for brazenly going where no other indie outfit had gone before. (Some of those same writers commented on the album’s one-off feel—funny, considering the album took the band five years to complete.)

Though Tacky Souvenirs wasn’t always easy for the layman to track down, it did earn Culturcide a kind of cult celebrity. But the costs far outweighed the benefits: Representatives for three artists whose work was desecrated on Tacky Souvenirs threatened legal action, and subsequent settlements emptied the band’s already piddling coffers. The ensuing lull in Culturcide’s spirits, combined with various creative conflicts and substance abuse issues, eventually led to the group’s calling it quits in 1990. Naturally, Tacky Souvenirs is now a collector’s item.

Of course, 1998 was before discogs.com existed, and the album is nowadays findable with a mouse-click, though it ain’t necessarily gonna be cheap. And as you’ll soon see, it’s not really for everyone, anyway. Be mindful, ahead lie naughty words and extreme jadedness:
 

 
More of this shit after the jump…