Contents of S:
ãScamsä are the little thefts which punks Îearnâ by Îputting
one over on the manâ. Widely held as a Îpunkâ means of getting over
on the capitalist society as a whole, scams in fact fit perfectly into the
exploitative framework of capitalism. The
scammer must adopt an underclass lifestyle in order to benefit from scams under
the cloak of anonymity; in essence the scams are nothing more than crumbs -
pleased as punch with his or her Îtheftâ of these crumbs, the scammer is
essentially powerless to demand the real and substantial benefits owed to him or
her. No matter how many 1000âs of copies you scam working at Kinkoâs,
youâre still a wage slave. Do the ãscamsä really steal from the rich
corporations as intended? Of course not - theyâre simply passed off as
increased costs to schmucks like you and me. The real scams are not the domain
of the poor. The richest segment of the population enjoys the true scams -
untaxed corporate benefits, tax shelters and stock appreciation (talk about
getting something for nothing!) - true means of getting on top of the
system. As punks we must advocate a scam-free world, refusing crumbs and
demanding the full loaves we deserve.
Donât
think that I plan to idealistically abstain from all scams; I may still take the
opportunity for free copies, but I wonât mistake it for victory.
Arthur Schopenhauer was absolutely not the philosopherâs philosopher.
The majority of scholars have written him off as an author who should not be
taken too seriously on the grounds of his being too literary, flatly inaccurate,
unwarrantedly pompous, or any combination of these three. Schopenhauer was
much more polemical than the professional philosophers of his time, often wrong
with regard to matters of science, and never forgot to remind us of his
unparalleled genius. I, however, like him very much. I intend to study all of
his published works, mainly his masterpiece, The World As Will and
Representation, and eventually to join the minority ranks of those
professors who help to pass on his ideas in a serious manner. Here, I give you
an aphorism and short passage from his work Parerga and Paralipomena as
it is published in part in a book entitled Essays and Aphorisms. Essays
and Aphorisms is widely available. I strongly recommend this book to all
punks and thinkers alike, for in it Schopenhauer very beautifully articulates
many of our shared concerns in a way that allows us to see them as they really
are:
Dilettantes!
Dilettantes!- this is the derogatory cry those who apply themselves to art or
science for the sake of gain raise against those who pursue it for love of it
and pleasure in it. This derogation rests on the vulgar conviction that no one
would take up a thing seriously unless prompted to it by want, hunger, or some
other kind of greediness. The public has the same outlook and consequently holds
the same opinion, which is the origin of its universal respect for Îthe
professionalâ and its mistrust of the dilettante. The truth, however, is that
to the dilettante the thing is the end, while to the professional as such it is
the means; and only he who is directly interested in a thing, and occupies
himself with it from love of it, will pursue it with entire seriousness. It is
from such as these, and not from wage-earners, that the greatest things have
always come (227).
Did
I mention that Schopenhauer was an animal rights advocate in 1850?·
Nowadays, on the contrary, every little medicine-man thinks he has the
right to torment animals in the cruelest fashion in his torture chamber so as to
decide problems whose answers have for long stood written in books into which he
is too lazy and ignorant to stick his nose.- Special mention should be made of
an abomination committed by Baron Ernst at Nurnberg·: he deliberately let two
rabbits starve to death! ö in order to undertake the totally idle and
useless experiment of seeing whether starvation produces a proportional change
in the chemical composition of the brain! · Have these gentlemen of the
scalpel and the crucible no notion at all then that they are first and foremost
men, and chemists only secondly? How can you sleep soundly knowing you have
harmless animals under lock and key in order to starve them slowly to death?
Donât you wake up screaming in the night?
It is obviously high time that the Jewish conception of nature, at any
rate in regard to animals, should come to an end in Europe, and that the
eternal being which, as it lives in us, also lives in every animal should be
recognized as such, and as such treated with care and consideration. One must be
blind, deaf and dumb, or completely chloroformed by the foetor judaicus,
not to see that the animal is in essence absolutely the same thing that we are,
and that the difference lies merely in the accident, the intellect, and not in
the substance, which is the will.
The greatest benefit conferred by the railways is that they spare
millions of draught-horses their miserable existence (188-189).
· and someone said that punk began sometime in our
century· Ha.
I have been told that appraising your own problems, that assessing your
own health (whether that be mental, physical, emotional, financial - whatever)
is a dangerous practice. I understand the problem: it is not possible to be
objective about yourself. As it is impossible to see much of your own body
without a mirror, it is equally difficult to fully ãsee yourselfä without
the aid of some form of reflection. However, the assumption that others can
be objective in their evaluation of your health is equally faulty; while their
access to your ãoutsidesä may be greater, their understanding of the
ãinsidesä which really frame you is much inferior to your own. So,
self-diagnosis is in the end essential - only you can decide if you are healthy
or not. However, you must take advantage of the perspectives of as many people
as you possibly can, for these are the mirrors which allow you to see yourself.
Self-diagnosis in the absence of response and feedback puts one at risk; do not
become the person who fails to see his or her own ass, and therefore does not
believe that it is there.
Short
on Funds, Long on Inspiration:
Short on funds. Long on inspiration.
Show,
Donât Tell and the Having of Wonderful Ideas:
Sometimes we see something and it just doesnât make sense. Or maybe we
think it makes sense but weâve got it all wrong. And thereâs the idea that
if a message is going to be put forth it should be up front so people Îgetâ
it otherwise whatâs the use of having a message? Isnât a message rendered
ineffective if no one knows thereâs a message to be gotten or everyone
misunderstands the message entirely (e.g. ãStraight Edgeä by Minor Threat -
a song with extremely literal lyrics - and the militant straight edge gangs or
style and the Nation of Ulysses - a band whoâs entire existence was fraught
with ambiguity)? The assumption is that a straight forward message is always
best because it is most clear and no one can misunderstand it. However, how many
people have misunderstood the lyrics to ãStraight Edgeä to mean ãBeat the
shit our of people who smoke cigarettes?ä Iâm not going to make an argument
over whether a covert or overt presentation of oneâs ideas is more effective.
I am suggesting that both are at least equally valid.
Moby Dick
15
basically
ruined Herman Melvilleâs writing career. He had been an extremely popular
writer previous to the publication of this work. However, even though he
received several positive reviews, most people thought he had gone insane. He
died a very poor man after having given up prose writing altogether, not long
after the popular rejection of Moby Dick. The book remained entirely
obscure often filed in the cetology (study of whales) section in libraries as a
work whoâs primary objective was to be a serious study of whales. Not until
the 1960âs (over 100 years after it was written) was it rediscovered and has
since risen to join the cannon of English language masterpieces.
The complexity of this work is to blame for it floundering in obscurity
for so long. It boils down to the fact that Melville created something that very
few people understood. The fault of this lack of understanding does not lie with
Melville in the slightest, rather it is the fault of those who passed judgment
on a work before they understood it. For this reason, the radical ideas in Moby
Dick were virtually lost for 100 years. The following is an example of what
can be found and what was missed by Melvilleâs initial readers.
-A
Reading of Chapter 89, ãFast Fish and Loose Fishä,
in
Herman Melvilleâs Moby Dick-
Melville begins the chapter stating the necessity of explaining a concept
referred to in the previous chapter. This concept is that of ãwaifing.ä A
waif is a long pole that is used to mark dead whales as being the property of a
certain ship. They are used when a whale is killed but the ship cannot bring the
whale alongside as yet; the whale is waifed so that no other whale ships will
come along and steal their rightful property. Melville explains that in the
whaling industry many conflicts arise because of the various situations that
create a question of rightful ownership of a whale. The laws that govern
American whaling ships are unwritten but evidently well known and are these,
ãI. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it. II. A Loose-Fish is fair game
for anybody who can soonest catch it.ä (331) Melville suggests that the
brevity of these laws is the source of much contention, and in his commentary
about it Melville, in keeping with the rest of Moby Dick, is able, in the
space of three and a half pages, to illustrate a fundamental social evil that
governs everyone but that few have been aware of.
Meville first tries to define a Fast-fish, ãLive or dead a fish is
technically fast whenever it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any
medium at all controllable by the occupant or occupants, -a mast, an oar, a
nine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cob web, it is all the
same.ä (332) Melville broadens the saying, ãpossession is half the lawä to
ãpossession is the whole of the lawä and uses this to justify and explain
the notion of fast-fish. He then follows with a slew of examples of
ãfast-fishä that demonstrate possession as the whole of the law:
What
are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish,
whereof possession is the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is
the widowâs last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villainâs
marble mansion with a door- plate for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish? What
is the ruinous discount
16
which Mordecai, the broker, gets from
poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegoneâs family from
starvation;
17
what is that ruinous discount but a
Fast-Fish? What is the archbishop of Savesoulâs income of £100,000 seized
from the scant bread and cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken- backed
laborers (all sure of heaven without any of Savesoulâs help) what is that
globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunderâs hereditary
towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull
18, is poor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What
to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan
19, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And
concerning all these, is not Possession the whole of the law? (333)
In
all of these cases Melville is clearly making a very political statement about
these examples. All of these examples illustrate a case in which something
previously loose was made fast and this fastness demands and justifies an unjust
relationship between the two parties.
Moving forward from the doctrine of fast-fish Melville once again
broadens out using the doctrine of loose-fish.
But
if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the kindred
doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is internationally and
universally applicable. What was America in 1492 but a loose-fish, in which
Columbus struck the Spanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master
and mistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What India
to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All Loose-Fish.
(333-334)
Melville
makes a case for the doctrine of ãmight makes rightä. In all these cases a
loose-fish became fast when a strong entity came along and made it fast
forcibly. In this way, imperialism is a form of whaling and is governed by the
same laws. With this second to last paragraph Melville clearly positions himself
in opposition to imperialism and colonization by exposing what seemed to be
commentary on the whaling as being commentary on the business of nations.
Melville, after making this intense and radical observation, could have
ended the chapter here. However, in the last paragraph he exposes what all this
business of waifing and property has truly been about.
What
are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all
menâs minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious
belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists
are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but
a Loose-Fish? And what are you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?
(334)
Melville
has done away with the distinction between Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. All
Loose-Fish are Fast-Fish not yet made fast. Loose-Fish can be made fast at any
time by an entity powerful enough to make it fast. Property, at first only
referring to whales, and then to groups of people, then countries, finally now
refers to intellectual property and individual minds and thoughts. Everyoneâs
beliefs are Loose-Fish waiting to be made fast by an idea strong enough to do
so. Melville is suggesting that there is no such thing as freedom of thought
because all ideas seek to supplant previous ones and thus minds filled with
ideas are always in a struggle with the ideas that would make it fast. And
finally Melville turns the question on the reader and thus includes himself and Moby
Dick as being a part of this inescapable process.
Melville, in this essential
putschist document, has provided a scathing critique of imperialism of both land
and minds. Throughout Moby Dick Melville repeatedly proves that fiction
can often be a great medium through which to put forth radical politics and thus
destroying the notion that literature is an ineffective or altogether too
abstract medium for specific and powerful criticism.
The chapter dealt with here is a very brief one in a very long book.
Iâve had English teachers, English majors, English Education majors and many
more tell me that Moby Dick isnât worth reading or that theyâd never
read it again or that itâs only worth reading abridged versions of. However,
why is it that Moby Dick is held in such high esteem and has been for
nearly forty years with no sign of itâs popularity and importance diminishing?
Perhaps because the complexity of this document allows it to be a nearly
bottomless well of ideas to be discovered and studied. This allows reader after
reader, generation after generation to ãrediscoverä each metaphor, each idea
and itâs these opportunities that make studying something fun and exciting and
worthwhile. Moby Dick is so teeming with ideas to be discovered that any
serious reader will be forced to read it again and again and this is why itâs
an important work and worth studying. If it was easy, what would the point be?
Skateboarding, as a recently
evolved activity (see Technology), has yet to see its full utility
to humanity. Skateboarding is an incredibly liberating and creative activity,
with the power to bridge the gaps between sport and art, diversion and
lifestyle. And yet the worldwide movement of skateboarding remains paradoxical,
for amongst the participants in this ãrevolutionaryä activity, so many
reactionary attitudes remain. Large portions of the skateboarding community
express an illusory ãfreedomä by supporting objective views of women,
celebrating chemical self-destruction, and advocating a general nihilism that is
antithetical to true progress. Mainstream media have, as expected, focused on
these reactionary elements of the skateboarding culture. I suggest that true
progressives focus instead on the potential for liberation inherent in
skateboarding, speaking out with a consistent voice that celebrates the creation
that is skateboarding so that elements at odds with the true nature of
skateboarding appear as out-of-place as they ought to.
Donât you hate how thereâs always one kid sitting on a couch in that punk dive in every city who has something contrary to say no matter how earnestly you approach him or her?
Snotty
Tissues and New Perspectives:
Today, I went into Famous Rayâs Pizza on 6th Avenue in Greenwich
village. There are hundreds of pizza restaurants in NY named Rayâs, and as far
as I can tell, they all claim to be the Îoriginalâ. This one, however, sells
a cheeseless slice called the Îtaco sliceâ, which is basically a cold,
Înakedâ pizza crust with lettuce and tomato piled on top, and a few slices
of American cheese which the vegan can have lifted off upon request. After
eating my slice, I pulled a napkin from the napkin dispenser and proceeded to
blow my nose, which, due to a disastrous cold, was overstuffed with snot. There
was a womyn standing up, eating her slice of pizza behind me whose face I caught
in a glance. She seemed to be shaking her head at me, and so, I looked at her
curiously. At this, she opened her mouth and said: ãAw, câmon- youâve
gotta go outside to do that.ä The womyn was referring to my blowing my nose in
the restaurant. She was very bothered by this. I said: ãWhy, everything that
came out of my nose went into the napkin- not onto your plate?ä She said:
ãStill... thatâs not right, man.ä I looked at her even more curiously than
the first time, and said: ãYou know... The countryâs about to go to war in a
few hours, and youâre standing up against some guy blowing his nose in a pizza
joint... Gee, do you ever pick your causes.ä I ended this statement, by
walking out and forcing a fake laugh for added spite.
Anyway, Iâm telling you this story because I think itâs sorta funny,
perplexing, and also because I said the things to her that I usually wish I had
said after leaving such encounters behind. But there is actually a moral to this
story: Namely, I think that we all, especially those of us in big, silly cities,
find ourselves commonly frustrated by so many things that can only be called
idiosyncrasies. Things microscopically small and subtle, yet characteristic and
bothersome... like delayed trains and slow-moving traffic· Or people who walk
slower than you on the sidewalk, who unknowingly leave no passing room· Loud
noises, long lines, coughing men, needless honking, doors not held for those
with their arms full, excessive heat, excessive cold, etc., etc. There are so
many incidentals that rub us wrongly, that sometimes it may seem that we know
what it is that warrants our anger. But our world is not the world, and
oftentimes Îour worldâ exhaustively consists of a handful of friends, a
relationship, and 20 square blocks. Meanwhile, in Îthe worldâ, there are
NATO bombs missing their targets, and families of refugees with no welcoming
destinations. In many cases, to tune in to the world at large is the same as to
reconsider your own daily nuisances as petty and ridiculous.
The fact that the womyn in Famous Rayâs felt compelled to spring into
protest against the blowing of my overstuffed nose, really reflects the
dangerously sheltered and egocentric world of obstacles that she has to deal
with daily. But she is not radically unlike the rest of us, who should ask
ourselves more than periodically: ãHow many of our obstacles do we simply
invent as a result of our taking for granted good fortune?ä
Social justice goes way beyond establishing a set of common rules by
which we all abide. Social justice demands that we also establish a means by
which opportunity can be redistributed and equalized throughout a society which
is constantly striving to imbalance the welfare of its citizens. Social justice
does not arise, inherently, from democratic culture - it must be maintained
through the policies and structures of a society. However, a democracy which
cannot maintain social justice cannot stay a democracy for long. In the United
States, we have experienced a rapidly declining level of social justice, and our
democracy in turn is slipping and fading away.
Socrates
- The Ancient Putschist!:
The majority of Platoâs works are dialogues written in play-form. In
them, a figure named Socrates is always found engaging another speaker in
conversation, usually in the city of Athens in ancient Greece. In 410 BCE
Socrates was actively and openly discussing philosophical and political issues
in the common, public space. Now, if I lived in his time I would have been the
biggest Îparty-animalâ in the city. This is because in ancient Greek culture
Îthrowing a partyâ meant partaking in a lively debate and organized
argumentation. The main feast at the parties was the discourse. How cool is
that? All the party-goers knew this and looked forward to the event with the
same anticipation and enthusiasm that the latest college jerk-offs do today on
their way to the hippest frat party on campus. Many historians believe that the
death of dialogue as such was simultaneous with the death of Socrates and the
passing of the era he belonged to. Looking back to study Platoâs works, and
through them, the life of Socrates, it is blindingly clear that Socrates has
gone just about unrivaled in terms of being an outspoken and proactive
revolutionary. Those of you who are familiar with the Platonic texts might react
to this comment violently on the basis of a traditional reading of Socrates
which tends to characterize him in a certain, non-progressive way. One could
also say that modern Western civilization is still very largely founded on the
works of ancient philosophy, within which Plato and Socrates played a major
formative role. This latter point is true indeed, although it may sound a little
peculiar to the unacquainted since philosophy is today disrespected as a popular
recipient of public ridicule. I would like to suggest that a close reading of
the Platonic texts delivers to us a very different Socrates than the one famous
to all.
Let us begin with a simple list of facts. Socrates, in The Republic,
clearly argued against capital punishment. He was arguing for the sake of
progress in 405-401 BCE, a time when the city of Athens was undergoing a steady
decline and political disintegration. He stressed at all times the necessary
connection between thought and action- that one without the other was always
deficient. Ironically, Socrates, with his opposition to capital punishment, was
condemned to death by the city of Athens. He engaged in the dialogue of The
Republic during the decline and decay of the city. A state of social and
political disintegration was the most provocative place for Socrates, and the
place where he was most urgently needed. But obviously, from the stateâs
execution of Socrates, the city was not very grateful for a figure like him. You
see, Socrates was at odds with the Polis (City), and this is why it had to
murder him. He was charged for two crimes. One: a lack of Îpietyâ, and two:
corrupting the youth. What the city meant by a Îlack of pietyâ was that
Socrates did not seem to express enough admiration for the place of the gods and
for the traditional ways of the Polis. What the city meant by Îthe corruption
of the youthâ was that his dialogues often compelled the young to question the
authority of the city, instigating a doubt of the cityâs status as imminently
Îgoodâ. As Allan Bloom writes in his Interpretive Essay on Platoâs Republic:
ãSocrates was accused of doing unjust things- of not believing in the gods
which the city believed in and corrupting the youth. These charges do not relate
simply to the man Socrates who happens to be a philosopher, but are meant to be
a condemnation of the philosophic activity itself- and not on behalf simply of
the city of Athens, but on behalf of the political community as such. From the
cityâs point of view, there seems to be something about the thought and way of
life of the philosopher which calls into question the cityâs gods, who are the
protectors of its laws, and which hence makes him a bad citizen, or rather no
citizen at all. Such a manâs presence in the city and his association with the
most promising young men make him a subversive. Socrates is unjust not only
because he breaks Athensâ laws but also because he apparently does not accept
those fundamental beliefs which make civil society possibleä (p. 307).
And so, he was essentially murdered for planting the seeds of questioning
in the youth. The act of questioning itself stood against Îgoodnessâ in the
eyes of the polis, which would have benefited most from its citizens having
unconditional faith in it. And really, how different are the wishes of the
present-day state from this? In Socratesâ time the pursuit of truth was, very
literally, a matter of life and death. Ask yourself how far we have come since
then. Now consider the first charge: The charge of being a threat to the
sanctity of the polis by openly asking questions that test the validity of
prevailing political powers. In this, Socrates is guilty of the same crime that
Mumia Abu-Jamal, along with all other political prisoners, is guilty of today.
And what about the second charge? Could Dead Kennedys not have also been brought
up on the charge of corrupting the youth with their record ÎBedtime for
Democracy?â Indeed, Dead Kennedys were brought to court on just this account
with their intention to use artwork by HR Geiger in their LP entitled ÎFrankenchrist.â
... Artwork that had already been showcased in respectable museums around the
world. Dead Kennedys address the youth and ask them to question the polis. But
now is a newer era. Socrates is neither Mumia Abu-Jamal nor the Dead Kennedys,
because Socrates was both.
In addition to all of this, Socrates was very consistently angry at a
group of people who were called the Sophists. A sophist was a person who would
travel as far as possible, gathering information and developing great
proficiency in the art of speech. After having done all this, the sophist would
seek out a city wherein affluent members of the elite could hire him to teach
their son the Îart of argumentationâ. The sophists charged exorbitant fees
to their students. Their services were sought after mainly to produce young men
capable of succeeding in politics, which meant, as it still means, that they
were taught how to win arguments using rhetoric. Sophistry was very popular. The
sophists were very much like the teachers today who, very seriously, are in the
business of selling ideas. Socrates felt strongly that to charge any amount of
money for the exchange of ideas was absurd, and in this regard he would be
rather disappointed in every member of this band who is either already being
paid for ideas, or is working his ass off to get a job selling them. To Socrates
this represented the commodification of thought, and the exploitation of
teaching. The sophists popularized an Îart of argumentationâ as a weapon for
purchase. In this way they were the ultimate representation of the downfall of a
culture that had once considered argumentation to be the only way to move beyond
the devices of deception. In Socratesâ opinion the sophist was the complete
opposite of the philosopher. He maintained that the use of rhetoric to achieve
oneâs objectives is the best way to corrupt philosophy. Socrates, even when he
was tired and wanted to go home, would force himself to stand and oppose the
voices that threatened to imperil. He sought to penetrate deeply. And thus,
Socrates sat on Îdeath rowâ for the crime of being the greatest putschist of
antiquity... But he has not left us· For he is still in our prisons, and every
step we press into the earth of the Western world rests firmly, somewhere on the
body of his thought.
Did you know that in many of
the united states the physical act of Îsodomyâ is illegal? Sodomy, for
homosexual men, is precisely analogous to the act of intercourse for
heterosexuals (I specify intercourse here so as to be clear that homosexual sex
acts need not consist of anal sex at all). The act of intercourse between a male
and female is not illegal in any of the united states, so why and how could it
be that intercourse between two men is against any stateâs laws? In our
society, even where sodomy isnât banned, it is often filed away in the
publicâs consciousness with acts like child molestation and rape. Sadly, the
reasons for this are actually quite clear. When you ask a male homosexual, a
fascist homophobe, or almost anyone in between what exactly it is that makes a
man homosexual they will all give you something of the same response: ãA
homosexual man is sexual with regard to his same sex.ä This is the only
tangible material that, by definition and necessity, provides a difference
between homo- and hetero-sexuality. Hence, when it comes to homosexual men,
sodomy is the most tangible activity that the homophobe can sink his or her
teeth into when looking for a grounding for their anti-gay stance. After all,
love and the particular feelings of an individual are very tricky things to
persecute. So, despite the fact that the defining essence of rape and child
molestation is an absence of or inability to give consent, consensual sodomy is
not justified as such. It grates my brain to think that any consensual activity
confined to the consenting participants themselves, can actually succeed in
reducing them to partial-citizenship. The implications of a sexual commitment
between two members of the same sex are so frightening to people in power that
to deter it, they have managed to make same-sex marriages illegal, or just
exempt from the governmental and institutional assistance provided to the
standard, Înuclear-certifiedâ couple.
The illegality of sodomy stems, like homophobia, from at least two
principle sources: 1) A religious or religion-fostered belief that such a union
is sinful and somehow inherently immoral; and 2) The very real fear that the
advocacy of homosexuality is the swan song of civilized society. One of the most
revolting aspects of these violent societal prejudices is that they refuse to
acknowledge the rational capacity of those that they victimize. That is to say,
that police officers can and have walked into a room where two men are engaged
in sodomy, and proceeded to treat the situation as if, by virtue of the act
theyâve chosen, consent is simply impossible. And the victims can concurrently
assert their unanimous consent, while the procession to prison never waivers.
How disgusting and shameful are these scenarios, which have recently been
reported on National Public Radio and are left unattended to by the mainstream
media? Who the fuck are the criminals in this society? What these supposed
Îsex offendersâ are oftentimes doing is taking advantage of their supposed
freedom to communicate intimacy. This, apparently, is something worth fighting
against to both those who are issued guns and to those who issue them. This is
our collective reality, and for as long as the government can tell us how to
love one another, we will remain in the throes of the most hideous oppression·
An oppression maintained for the sake of making a truly petty commentary on the
slowly increasing exposure of an historically persecuted sexuality.
And finally, the nauseating hypocrisy of this imposition is attested to
by the fact that sodomy between a consenting man and womyn goes forever
unsuspected. So, speak out against the Îlove-fascistsâ who support an
institutionalized judiciary system that finds an individual guilty for using
their most natural medium to communicate love. No one can tell us how to fuck
each other, and no one can tell us how to love each other.
If you fail to acknowledge, express and reconcile your sorrows, you are
doing psychological damage to yourself. There is plenty of reason to feel sorrow
in this world; being positive doesnât mean that you must deny this sorrow.
Rather, positivity stems from confronting sorrow and its sources, and striving
in earnest to reduce the amount of sorrow that the next generation must endure.
You
and I, girlfriend·/ Weâre just like sour twists / If you can take the sour,
I can take the twist / If I can take the twist, you can take the sour / Itâs a
conditional statement / Its converse is true / Itâs a conditional
statement·/ What else would it be? / The more you taste the twist, the less
you taste the sour / But if we only wanted one, weâd have stuck to monologues
/ Is difference seen as something threatening? / Can we find complement in
conflict? / (Weâre Just Like Change)·
State-Sanctioned
Lottery, Predatory Nature of:
The lottery is a hunk of crap in theory and practice. Its underlying
theory, that we might fund certain social expenditures through a ãgameä
played voluntarily by citizens, is absurdly distorted. After all, only half of
the revenue actually goes back to the citizenry; the other half goes towards
making a few people impractically rich. The economics of it are socially shoddy:
money is redistributed from the poorer (those who donât win) to the richer
(those made instantly wealthy by winning). Quite literally, everyone suffers a
little so that one person can hedonistically benefit a lot.
In practice, the lottery is far worse. While all kinds of people play the
lottery, studies have conclusively shown that poor people disproportionately
fund the lottery coffers. This is not hard to see or believe; if a rich person
buys four one-dollar tickets, that is still a much smaller proportion of his or
her overall income when compared to the purchase of a single one-dollar ticket
by a poor person. [Ironically, under such a scenario, the rich person, while
risking less, has a greater potential to win] . So, in practice, the lottery is
a tax on the poor. You can self-righteously claim that ãit canât be a tax if
it is voluntaryä, but in doing so you ignore the reality of the lottery: it is
a legal, state-sanctioned activity which is heavily promoted [directly, through
lotto ads, and indirectly, through a media onslaught that glorifies wealth as
the ãAmerican Dreamä]. As such, it cannot be innocently dismissed as a
ãmatter of choiceä. Who can blame the poor for wasting their money on the
lottery, when the odds are so stacked against poor people in all other arenas?
And can the state be blameless for the effects of that which it creates and
administrates? Are we innocent as citizens?
If you play the lottery, win or lose, you support the maintenance of
Americaâs horrifically repressive class system. (see also Regressive
Taxation)
Straight Edge, like veganism or vegetarianism, has a variety of
interpretations. It can be generally defined as the deliberate refusal to
partake of harmful substances, legal or illegal. Obviously, how one defines
ãharmfulä will determine the kind of Straight Edge one practices.
Most people who call themselves Straight Edge agree that cigarettes,
alcohol and narcotic drugs are harmful, so most Straight Edgers donât
use these substances. Some Straight Edge people also include sex in their
list of unhealthy behaviors, although this choice can range from complete
abstinence to avoidance of casual/meaningless sexual encounters. Thereâs no
way to define Straight Edge for everyone, but for me it means rejecting
the principles which underly the substance abuse community which surrounds me at
almost all times.
When I was young my grandfather died. I do not know exactly what caused
his ultimate demise, but it is certain that his alcoholic daily regimen of
continuous gin-and-tonics hastened and worsened his death. I was well aware from
an early age that my family had a propensity for addiction to alcohol, and as I
grew up I saw several relatives grapple with this tendency and its effects.
Strangely, I still experimented with alcohol and marijuana, first in high school
and finally during my first semester of college. It was, in a few words, so
hard to avoid. Which is not to suggest that substance abuse was foisted upon
me; more accurately, its availability enabled me to more easily act upon deep
attractions to use. At a certain point, I was lucky enough to realize ãthis
is so fucking stupidä. The sentiment carried dual meanings, both in reference
to the general idiocy that is the substance abuse community, and in reference to
my own potential for personal disaster at the hands of my addiction
predilection. I stopped. I have not used since... in almost ten years.
A lot of people say to me ãwell, that is fine that you donât drink,
but why put a label on it?ä. They want to know why Straight Edge is
even necessary. It does seem sort of weird, right? - a movement based on not
doing things. It is hard to say exactly what impact the Straight Edge
movement, in its various forms, has had on me. On the one hand, it has been
under many circumstances and in many scenes appropriated by idiots, which might
have actually been a deterrent to my adopting Straight Edge ways. On the
other, its more positive forms - as a community of people who share a philosophy
of living life for its sober reality - certainly have helped me. I cannot
deliver a ãStraight Edge saved my lifeä speech, but I also cannot say
that I would be sober today if it were not for the support afforded by the
presence of my other Straight Edge friends.
I think of it this way: drinking and drug use are socially
pathological. I accept the fact that, relative to the values of the
prevailing culture, this is an extreme stance. I am not a prohibitionist; I wish
no legal resolution to what I consider pathological. But explain this to me: is
it right that those who are physiologically and psychologically capable of
ãrecreationalä (i.e. only moderately self-destructive) substance abuse
maintain such an active, influential and prevalent use community in the
presence of others who are genetically predisposed to addiction (i.e. incapable
of moderation)? Letâs suppose that you do not have a drinking problem, but
that your chief means of socializing revolves around drinking - how do you
justify the pressure that you place on people incapable of your supposed
moderation? Every day, in the face of an overwhelming substance abuse culture,
former and potential addicts have to make a choice: isolation or participation.
We know where participation may lead, but what about isolation? Is isolation
really a choice? Do we expect our addiction-prone friends and relatives to
choose between loneliness and health? It appears we do, and it is obvious that
too many of our comrades are making the wrong choice, spiraling into addiction.
Can you blame them? You, the ãrecreational userä, you helped set up and
maintain the choice structure.... and now you have the fucking gall to fault the
addict for making the ãwrong choiceä of two equally unpleasant options? So
you donât have a drug problem? You are free of a drinking problem?
You are a ãrecreational userä, huh? You can ãhandle itä, right?
Well then FUCK YOU, you privileged piece of shit, because it is people like you
who victimize the rest of us, who cannot participate in your diversionary world.
Your actions donât only affect you and the use community you support;
others, less capable of moderation, are dragged in too, and I hold you
responsible.
If the world was not so decidedly in support of substance abuse, there
would be no need for Straight Edge. But in a world that presents the
false choice between health and comradery, we create a third choice: Straight
Edge. It is not about excluding those who use (as their substance
abuse excludes us) but to provide a community for those few people who choose to
live outside of the dominant and oppressive substance abuse culture. In this way
Straight Edge is just a name for the countless activities which allow
people to seek companionship without having to endure the pressure to drink,
smoke or use drugs. As such, Straight Edge has nothing to do with Xâs
or T-shirts or any other symbol. Going bowling with some friends can be a lot
more Straight Edge than Xing up. The point is that Straight Edge
is a means of breaking the social dilemma, providing that third (and the only
acceptable) choice to our friends and relatives who cannot be moderate users.
Every person who embraces the ideas which underlie Straight Edge
(regardless of whether that person even knows the term ãStraight Edgeä)
strengthens this community of empowerment; every person who turns away from
the ideas which underlie Straight Edge helps ensure that more people will
lose their lives to addiction.
We have made a point of not attributing the entries in this handbook, but
I am going to make an exception for this passage because I am, in part,
dedicating my life to the memory of my grandfather, Norman Jensen - a man who
got the blunt end of this cruel world. For all the addicts who got blamed for
their sad lot, mine is one life on the Straight Edge.
ãThere are those who want an armed Revolution and I am not one of them. Not just now. But I do have a statement to make at this time, gentlemen. Since the First Republic of the United States is one hundred ninety-two years old and I am nineteen, I will give it one more chance. I do not want to fight in Vietnam, of course. But I also donât want to have to fight the draft, or fight the law, or fight anything. Iâm a nineteen-year-old civilian and Iâm tired of fighting. We need good schools and houses for people to live in and it could be done and weâre going to make this country do it. Iâm going to stay mad until things change. You change them, or we change them. I donât care. But the choice isnât going to be yours much longer. One of these days I may fight in earnest and altogether so that I wonât have to fight anymore.ä 20
Youâre
a two-toed, swift-footed, flightless bird.
Youâre
eight feet high and six feet long.
Thereâs
not a single place where I shall grow so big;
So
big in such a place is really rather small.
Youâve
been domesticated, and only for your feathery shell.
If
they want to buy a plumage, then I shall never sell.
Youâre
a two-toed, swift-footed, flightless bird·
Your
music is shit, and that is that (pretty much).
Iâve recently realized that much of my life is spent squeezing in. I squeeze into my tiny apartment, which I pay an outrageous amount of money for even though it is a great price for a ãhugeä space by NYC standards. I squeeze into my place at work as a drone, into my car to visit my family and friends or practice with my bands or travel, into a tiny practice space so my bands can play together, onto the subway, into a lane in the crowded streets of NYC (or Philly or Boston or wherever else I am). My bands will squeeze into my car this summer and travel thousands of miles at which point weâll squeeze all the equipment, ourselves and anyone who comes to watch into a tiny space for 20 minutes while we go off for gas money and maybe someone will say that they were affected by it. The Mountain Cooperative squeezes all the records under a loft bed, all of the members into a room to run meetings and work and the contents of each release into its packaging. We squeeze livings out of mediocre paying jobs. We squeeze friendships out of brief meetings and phone conversations. We squeeze several-thousand-dollar educations out of universities that demand all of our time but instead, they share space with the 90 other high priority activities we have going on. We are told to squeeze our need for time to ourselves into the time left over from a day already filled with 8 hours of work plus commute plus sleep (sometimes) and two weeks vacation a year. We try to squeeze other people into our lives that are already so crowded that there is hardly enough room for yourself never mind a whole other person with whom youâd like to share everything. We squeeze and we squish and juggle and we shuffle and sometimes I think that Iâd rather just stop for a few weeks or a year or forever because Iâm tired of squeezing and shuffling and juggling and thereâs got to be a way to do this without squeezing so much and then sometimes I think that I wouldnât want it any other way.
The
Symmetrical Bipartisan Dungheap:
Maybe
one day, the radical right wing radio shows
Shall
get over those ÎGood Îol Clinton Affairsâ.
Perhaps
Republican (Demublican) jabs would bruise,
And
Democrat (Republicrap) rebuttal would guard·
If
it were ever the case since the Îget-goâ
That the president ran the nation. (think goatscape).