Night after night, it kept returning to me. That cycloptic, circuit board-punched logo of a squid in mid-chuckle kept reappearing, day after web-scanning day. Based out of San Francisco, Laughing Squid in an independent web-hosting company that doubles as a great alternative or companion to sites like Boing Boing. Art, culture and tech are the usual range of topics covered in their regularly updated blog section. Daily events are listed on the Squid List, and there’s a posting board for artists and performers called the Tentacle list. While the site is California-based, the features it blogs on are hardly limited to the southwest. The burgeoning social media tools like blogs, podcasts, wikis and other innovations in the independent media revolution keeps the site’s updates fairly global. Uber-geek conferences like the MashupCamp at the new Computer History Museum or ETech and SXSW interactive are regularly covered to prevent you from losing face in front of your wired-friends. These days, the popular trend that appears on most of the board is the urban-playground games that seem to be spreading the world over via posting networks like this. The latest San Francisco zombie march is up (February 24-I can’t believe I missed it!), appropriately enough called “round 2.” But the big feature lately is the epic pillow fights that have surfaced onto Canadian soil with the recent Toronto battle. Portland was the latest destination for plush-violence, with pics posted to catch the rage in action. But rage is warring elsewhere, as online encyclopaedic source Wikipedia is currently in a battle in how to define the fights-as a “pillow fight club” or a “pillow flash mob.” As the squid informs me, the first rule of pillow fight club is “don’t argue it on Wikipedia.” (rules up at www.pillowfightclub.org) (James King).
www.laughingsquid.com