Rubi Con 1999

Unrestrained Confusion
or,
Preparing for Rubi Con 1999

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher of military tactics and strategy, said this of the art of deception and confusion: All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.

The people who are putting Rubi Con together realize that organizing a conference is somewhat detached from the art of waging war. However, we all have really small penises, so we like to pretend.

Anyway, what we were trying to do for the first couple of weeks after we really started to promote Rubi Con was to confuse and agitate people to the point that they would be interested in Rub Con and, maybe, try to find out something about it. Our plan was to distribute thousands upon thousands of these simple fliers that said, "Rubi Con, coming in May." We had to hack the hell out of Kinko's to pull off the production we had in mind, but we got what we needed for the most part. The reason we made these fliers so simple was to confuse people to the point where they would either hate us with a passion, or be really eager to find about what we were doing, and what Rubi Con was. The logic behind this was that, having inundated the population of South Eastern Michigan with terribly vague "advertisements" bearing little more than the name of the conference, people would at least recognize the name, even if they didn't know a damn thing about what it was. In the past weeks I've had people asking me if Rubi Con was a new CD, a rave, a breakfast cereal, a club, a band, a zine, a movie, and a computer game. People would see the posters and have no choice but to think about it until they arrived at some sort of conclusion as to what it represented. And even then they had no idea, and in fact, the confusion lingered. Perhaps even stronger.

So our plastering effort went ahead with full force. It's proving difficult to keep areas filled with our propaganda, but we're both diligent and tenacious when it comes to terrorizing populations. Ann Arbor has this thing about tearing down our material, or tapping up some other bullshit right on top of it. We spent more than a few nights trying to keep AA covered, but being a college town there is a lot of competition. Some of our posters lasted as long as 24 hours before being removed or covered, which is one of the reasons that I hate Ann Arbor. Also, given the level of other material that is always being passed around, people can get really pissed off if you do anything to their propaganda. I'm proud to say that the Rubi Con Propaganda Division has only gotten in a couple of fights with people in regards to our advertising policy.

We will be trying to cover most of the other suburbs in the near future. Kinko's might start to wonder why we keep walking out of there with several reams of paper under our arms and only get billed for 12 at a time. I should give them more credit, but we are dealing with Kinko's here...

Currently we are trying to keep most of southeast Michigan covered with our filthy propaganda, and I probably don't need to add that it's a hell of a lot of work. If you would like to become a Rubi Con volunteer and paste up fliers for us you can contact someone at info@rubi-con.org. If you become a volunteer you will be allowed to walk down streets knowing full well that it is you who is making several thousand people mumble under their breath, "Rubi Con? What the bloody hell is Rubi Con?"

Also, if you want to sign up as an official volunteer you can get into Rubi Con absolutely free of charge as well as get all the cool stuff that speakers will be getting for free. There is more information about volunteerism here, and we also have some more pictures up so that you may laugh at my lack of photographic talent. Read my witty description, or click the thumnail to download a bigger version.

They say that the best hackers are the ones who start out early and spend their childhoods playing with computers and learning how to manipulate them... but this is ridiculous. The picture is of a chalk board in a Pontiac public kindergarten classroom, and comes courtesy of my bigum brother, Joe.

This was part of our recent drive back into Ann Arbor, and the meeting we held with a few of our local volunteers. As you can see, pay phones were included. Not that I have anything against Ameritech, but they don't seem to like us very much these days. Do you suppose this has anything to do with it?

I am only 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Not that I'm self conscious of my height or anything, only that I've never been able to comfortably reach the concrete support beams in large parking structures. I won't tell you how we did this, only that this is the last time I'll ever let Ron up on my shoulders. This was also part of our volunteer meeting in Ann Arbor, which if you weren't at, you missed some cool stuff...

For those of you who missed it, we recently laid siege to Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi Michigan. It was part of another gathering we hosted for volunteers and others interested in giving their souls to The Cause. Here we see a certain "Rijilv," standing beside his contribution.

Again we see the large sign at the entrance of Twelve Oaks Mall, rightly defiled with a swell Rubi Con flier. Like I said, this was part of our frontal attack on the complex, and if anyone is interested, the Rubi Con Propaganda Division Commandos won.

As I've said before, Ameritech doesn't really like Rubi Con too much, and as always, this is probably the reason why. Notice the blurry person walking behind the phone in the extreme left side the picture. That, for some odd reason, is Ron. I don't know how he got over there, or what he was doing, but there he is...

We spent our time at Twelve Oaks defiling as many objects and surfaces as our three rolls of duct tape would permit. Here we see one of the many handy locator maps with a certain "addition." This does nothing to compare to the finale of the evening however, which consisted of thousands of individual Rubi Con fliers hurled into a crowded court yard from 30 feet up. As people started screaming and covering their heads in terror, we all decided it was time to get the rock out of there. My boots have never moved so fast, and for some reason we managed to get out of there unscathed.

Again with the Ameritech! Perhaps I just like antagonizing them or something. That may be the case, but if anyone from Ameritech is reading this right now, just know that I attach my filthy propaganda to Media One artifacts with just as much regularity as yours. I should not have to mention that this store front was not located within Twelve Oaks Mall. I get the feeling that I've been banished for life by this point...

See!?

Media One. This is Broadband. This is the Rubi Con.

A new archive of all pervious pictures.

Because the police think it's funny when you record yourself committing crimes.

index

	They say that the best hackers are the ones who start out early and spend their childhoods playing with computers and learning how to manipulate them... but this is ridiculous. The picture is of a chalk board in a Pontiac public kindergarten classroom, and comes courtesy of my bigum brother, Joe.
	This was part of our recent drive back into Ann Arbor, and the meeting we held with a few of our local volunteers. As you can see, pay phones were included. Not that I have anything against Ameritech, but they don't seem to like us very much these days. Do you suppose this has anything to do with it?
	I am only 5 feet, 4 inches tall. Not that I'm self conscious of my height or anything, only that I've never been able to comfortably reach the concrete support beams in large parking structures. I won't tell you how we did this, only that this is the last time I'll ever let Ron up on my shoulders. This was also part of our volunteer meeting in Ann Arbor, which if you weren't at, you missed some cool stuff...
	For those of you who missed it, we recently laid siege to Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi Michigan. It was part of another gathering we hosted for volunteers and others interested in giving their souls to The Cause. Here we see a certain "Rijilv," standing beside his contribution.
	Again we see the large sign at the entrance of Twelve Oaks Mall, rightly defiled with a swell Rubi Con flier. Like I said, this was part of our frontal attack on the complex, and if anyone is interested, the Rubi Con Propaganda Division Commandos won.
	As I've said before, Ameritech doesn't really like Rubi Con too much, and as always, this is probably the reason why. Notice the blurry person walking behind the phone in the extreme left side the picture. That, for some odd reason, is Ron. I don't know how he got over there, or what he was doing, but there he is...
	We spent our time at Twelve Oaks defiling as many objects and surfaces as our three rolls of duct tape would permit. Here we see one of the many handy locator maps with a certain "addition." This does nothing to compare to the finale of the evening however, which consisted of thousands of individual Rubi Con fliers hurled into a crowded court yard from 30 feet up. As people started screaming and covering their heads in terror, we all decided it was time to get the rock out of there. My boots have never moved so fast, and for some reason we managed to get out of there unscathed.
	Again with the Ameritech! Perhaps I just like antagonizing them or something. That may be the case, but if anyone from Ameritech is reading this right now, just know that I attach my filthy propaganda to Media One artifacts with just as much regularity as yours. I should not have to mention that this store front was not located within Twelve Oaks Mall. I get the feeling that I've been banished for life by this point...
	See!? Media One. This is Broadband. This is the Rubi Con.