"He has learned not to let premonitions of apocalypse spoil his good mood." (Image by David Shankbone.)

If you haven’t read it already, the new issue of the New Yorker has a brief article by Mattathias Schwartz about Kalle Lasn, the odd duck publisher of Adbusters magazine who gave Occupy Wall Street its name and vision, though I doubt many protesters see things the same why he does. An excerpt:

“Lasn is sixty-nine years old and lives with his wife on a five-acre farm outside Vancouver. He has thinning white hair and the small eyes of a bulldog. In a lilting voice, he speaks of ‘a dark age coming for humanity’ and of ‘killing capitalism,’ alternating gusts of passion with gentle laughter. He has learned not to let premonitions of apocalypse spoil his good mood.

The magazine, which he founded twenty-two years ago, depicts the developed world as a nightmare of environmental collapse and spiritual hollowness, driven to the brink of destruction by its consumer appetites. Adbusters’ images—a breastfeeding baby tattooed with corporate logos; a smiling Barack Obama with a clown’s ball on his nose—are combined with equally provocative texts and turned into a paginated montage. Adbusters is not the only radical magazine calling for the end of life as we know it, but it is by far the best-looking.”