Transmissions

HAPPY HALLOWEEN… This Place Really is Getting Spooky.

Everything I do, I do it for you - Bryan Adams

Look at me Damien, it’s all for you - From the horror classic “The Omen”, where the nanny and disciple of the son of Satan hangs herself in his honor.

Isn’t that us hanging from that rope? The above scene illustrates perfectly the relationship between the ruling elite and everyone else. If you are, say, a miner or a poor third-world union organizer, this death is often literal. For the rest of us, whether we end up pushing paper or pushing a plow, we experience a slow spiritual death from our relationship with this Beast. It’s all for you Damien.

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Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969)

Read about Fred Hampton here.

Check out one of his speeches.

Driving in to work Friday night I ran into about an hour long back up for a commute that usually doesn’t take more than 15 minutes. However, I wasn’t troubled in the least, the traffic was so bad because of road closings due to planned citywide actions against the IMF in DC. Throughout this night there would be revolutionary street parties and carnivals of rage. Fuck Yes! The traffic also made me about an hour late for work. One hour not doing what I hate is OK with me, so I slid in a Strike Anywhere CD and let images of Seattle dance in my head.

Arriving in Georgetown around 8:00pm, I was met with the sight of a boarded up Urban Outfitters. At first I assumed there had been some kind of accident. Once I turned the corner from Thomas Jefferson Street I started to get an idea of what was really going on, these corporate stores knew something I didn’t know: a mob of angry young anarchists could be coming this way! Fuck Yes, Again! When I got to the restaurant I manage, my general manager handed me a flyer handed out by the local police warning of dangerous vandals and hooligans storming through the streets that night. They even had a printout from the groups message board. My boss said to me: “You must be excited, aren’t these your people?” Indeed.

I had actual goose bumps and my adrenaline was up. Would there be some sort of righteous riot tonight in what would otherwise be another boring and humiliating night of making sure the son’s of Senators and media moguls got the their grilled salmon on time? To understand my lip quivering excitement here, you would have to understand this about me: with all of my fiery words of agitation, I’ve actually never participated in a direct action.

These days, when not at work, one is more likely to find me whoring myself on MySpace or playing with my cat than pulling a ski mask over my face in lieu of doing battle with a Starbucks window. I came to my current worldview somewhat later than most radicals and thus kind of missed that phase where you can afford to get arrested and miss work. So sure, I go to protests when I can, but more as a spectator. These events are usually on the weekend which is when I earn my payoff money for the corporate mafia. Therefore, to guarantee I don’t get arrested before my shift I stay as far away for the “black bloc” anarchists as possible, even though my politics are closer to theirs than the “progressive” Democrats I usually hide with.

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Hell really is other people, the existentialists were correct. Whether it is actual others or the constant drone of the corporate television, it is an ache that I can’t shake

I remember the Pacific Coast Highway and the highways through New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California, when I could still feel Kerouac’s pre-drunk era inspiration just as I was entering my own lost era. When I still experienced time as it really was, outlaw culture wasn’t something to be read about yet, but instead an actual lived potential reality.

So why am I spending most of my nights waiting to wear my wife down just hoping to God and the stars she will kill the droning sound of the television and spare me a half hour to glimpse of the divine.

I thought of escaping to Cuba last night, the night before to Belize. Maybe I could have a mango tree and a hut like Bageant. I don’t know. With each ebb and flow of the sea, the great rapist thrusts closer. Everywhere.

Staring out over the few meters of visible sky I realize I haven’t seen Orion’s belt clearly in about a decade. I’ve seen it on TV though, Discovery, where one never discovers anything themselves.

As we slip into the machine will anyone speak? Or at least squeak?

Lying on the desert floor in New Mexico on mushrooms after a four hour bike ride staring up at the universe I think I had a better grasp on life than I do right now in my so-called middle-class “success”.

I think this is my sense of solidarity with Joe Bageant. Coming from the hill-billy countryside, to the subculture of the radicals and then to the middle-class, the first thing I said to myself upon arrival was: could someone get me the fuck out of here?!

max

Dennis, a lover or nature and justice, is from South Carolina and was one of my first myspace friends. I was secretly hoping that a hot, revolutionary, young lady would have won — but I think this is better.

Quick note: He won in two minutes. And now we will begin the honorable mentions.

and the original spell checker . . .

Thanks for playing,

Maxwell Black
A Moving Train

Graffiti from the May 1968 Student Uprising

Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .

Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say, “We will breathe later.”
And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.

We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying
of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.

In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure
the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.

We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy.

It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them.

We will have good masters as soon as everyone is their own.

Don’t get caught up in the spectacle of opposition. Oppose the spectacle.

Quick!

Not this freak. . .

. . . this one! Joe Bageant.

If you haven’t heard of this redneck genius the first thing you need to do is to check him out www.joebageant.com.

Afterwards, you will probably, with quivering lips, mutter something to yourself such as: “Where have you been all my life Joe!”. Next, you’ll want to check out his book:

Lastly, check out our exchange regarding the clash between marriage and beliefs from earlier this year: The Tension Between Love and Awareness.

Like the bible for many, these Situationist pamphlets by Larry Law serve as a source of inspiration for me. There is just something about them that puts me in the mood to write poetry, fuck and punch a cop simultaniously, (figuratively of course Arlington county). See what effect they have on you!