Transmissions

There is much more fun to come from the super “A Moving Train” one year birthday party week (month) celebration! However, I had an interesting night. So here goes:

A Moment of comedy: Due to my job and personal life I went to bed last night at 3:00am, my wife woke me up at 7:30am, I went to the fertility clinic by 11:30am and then to work at 2:00pm; I was sleepy! I’ll spare the rest of the details, because you all live the same absurd American lives.

My big plan for the night was to go to the SleptOn and ISO event in DC. My wife drove me from Arlington and decided to take the Rock Creek Parkway. Here is the comedy…

This two lane road became a one lane road because of about five cop cars in full alert in the right lane. Was there a crisis? A “terror attack?” YES! A RED ALERT! A RICH GUY DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO CHANGE HIS OWN TIRE ON HIS JAGUAER.

Oh goodness. I actually witnessed…a fucking cop…on his knees…helping a “citizen.” And he had a big fucking Officer Friendly smile while doing it! I’ve never seen such public service in my life. After driving by this “anomaly” I told my wife a story where I was in a similar scenario…

My Chevette broke down on route 66 in Virginia when I was like 19. When “Officer Friendly” pulled over to “help” he gave me about four tickets for…shit I don’t remember. However, I do remember that he left me on the side of the fucking road! A Toe-truck eventually came though.

To protect and to serve!

A Moment Of Discomfort: So I arrived at the event…walked into a room of about thirty activists who have never seen me in there lives, the event was called “The State Of Black America,” my comrades from SleptOn were nowhere to be seen, I’m really white, hot and could pass for a cop in about two seconds and…I was literally carrying camera (surveillance) equipment! FUCK! Damn you Billy and Kevin!

Ok, Our comrades got stuck in New York and, whatever. I still love you fellows! Happy hour manana? A cool bonus tonight was that I got to meet Daved Zirin! This Guy:

Making Lemonade: So I still enjoyed the event! Though Billy Buntin couldn’t be there David Thurston and comrades brought it home. It was great being in this kind of environment! It’s like what goes on with us on MySpace but with actual humans in the same room. Did I mention people can come with me to Astoria next week?

Speaking of next week with Zed in NYC and tonight…I bought a video camera this morning for tonight and next Thursday in Astoria. Though I had planned to film the entire event tonight I caught 30 seconds with tonights host David Thursto…thanks David

Exclusive! A Hunky gay dude brought us a birthday cake on his sweet cock!

A smooch from me for my beloved little website!

Now I, Maxwell Black, would like to say thank you…to George Bush

Ah, fucking Bush. It’s sad but true, if Bush hadn’t stolen his presidency there would be no Maxwell Black of A Moving Train. You see kids, once upon a time ole’ Maxie was a strange creature called a Democrat (and a barely committed Democrat at that.) Before the Bush coup came along I was more concerned with terrifying thoughts like “Oh my God, I heard Pavement is breaking up” than with concerns about ecological collapse or the fate of little brown people calling themselves Zapatistas or whatever.

Yes, if Gore had become president I probably would have gone back to sleep until the next election and just tended to my favorite hobbies at the time of collecting indie-rock vinyls and conning young women into giving me head (I was a late bloomer as a feminist!) But no, we got ourselves this little dark prince as Gore Vidal calls it.

Bush unleashed something in me that is difficult to explain, it was like every time I heard his voice I would get the urge to flip over a fucking police car! So, sensing something was terribly wrong with “my” country I started reading everything I could get my hands on to better under stand what in holy shit was going on. And, oh what a metamorphoses! In eight short years I’ve gone from a once every four years Democrat to a guy who mutters to himself each morning–to borrow from Infoshop–”we need to kill Capitalism before it kills us.” So thank you Georgie, because you know what, I suspect I’m not the only one…

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I’m going up to NYC to see a talk with Mickey Z in Astoria, which he refers to as a “Stand-Up Tragedy.” It sounds like a hoot to me! I was going to film it for YouTube myself, however, it seems that I might be getting a helping hand from the gentlemen of SleptOn! Hopefully they can come since, unlike me, they actually know what they are doing. I’ll be taking the train from DC to Manhattan on the 6th. and I’ll be staying in Brooklyn. Anyone interested in hopping on the caravan with me just email me at rejection08@gmail. This could be an exciting opportunity for all of us to make new friends and connections and actually start putting into practice all of our ideas about solidarity and movement building we all talk about. So participate suckas! In other news I’ve got lot’s of stuff planned for next week…stay tuned. Here is the flier for Zed’s event:

W A R N I N G

This event could drastically alter how you perceive

your planet, your country, your life…and your cell phone?

A talk by Astoria’s own:

Mickey Z.

“Myth America: War, elections, & our way of life”

(aka “Stand-Up Tragedy”)

Mickey Z. is the author of five non-fiction books along with the just-released novel, CPR for Dummies. Called “iconoclastic and bold” by Howard Zinn, Mickey’s articles, essays, short fiction, and poetry have appeared regularly in a wide range of online and print publications.

He can be found on the Web at www.mickeyz.net

MUSICAL GUEST: VAL TURNER

(Yes, another Astoria native)

www.youtube.com/user/bodhival

When: Thursday, August 7 at 8:00pm

Where: Waltz-Astoria (www.waltz-astoria.com)

23-14 Ditmars Blvd.

718-95-MUSIC

($10 drink minimum)

Atari Teenage Riot: “Speed”

A Real Teenage Riot: May Day 1999, Berlin…

Also, if you haven’t already checked it out, here is a rough draft of our first new counter campaign shirts. I’m going to do this series on cafe press. If you are interested in one tell me in comments.

Let me know what you think!

Maxwell Black
rejection08@gmail.com

“Alienation as we find it in modern society is almost total: it pervades the relationship of man to his work, to the things he consumes, to the state, to his fellow man, and to himself. Man has created a world of man-made things as it never existed before. He has constructed a complex social machine to administer the technical machine he has built. Yet this whole creation of his stands over and above him. He does not feel himself as a creator and center, but as the servant of a Golem, which his hands have built. The more powerful and gigantic the forces are which he unleashes, the more powerless he feels himself as a human being. He is owned by his creations, and has lost ownership of himself.”

– Erich Fromm

Quote borrowed from Derrick Jensen’s book Endgame.

If you like this site and want to see more consistent material, show some love and pick up a shirt here

PS: The new Rejection08 shirts are almost done!

I’m back home from vacation and it sucks! However, I think I’ve managed to pull my head out of my ass. I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately here and on MySpace. I’m actually in the mood to get back into the mix again. Since I’ve got nothing, I’ll let other people’s fingers do the typing and one last dose of my Debbie Downer phase:

At a certain point in our mental development not even alternative media helps us get to the next level

And it looks like the “Revolution” in Latin America was over before it even got started

The truth is in modern times all of these “Socialist” revolutions seem to end like this:

Back to the thankless struggle tomorrow morning brothers and sisters! It’s actually good to be back.

max

PS: I’ve got new shirts coming for the campaign season in the next few days!

What can I say, I thought being on vacation and having all of this free time would yield all sorts revolutionary text but instead I’m busy staying un-sober and putting aloe on my back! Where I’m at the housing crisis, fuel price crisis, crazy fucking storm crisis and the ecological collapse of the planet simply don’t exist for the people in this lazy beach town. I’m surrounded by the low level victors of extractive Capitalism, they’re the white trash new money idiots of the southeast USA. They made their money with construction , landscape and many other earth destroying companies. Everything is just dandy for them in this hillbilly bubble so zippity do-dah on to the beach!

The funny thing about these people is that if you asked them about their political beliefs you would find they are more or less redneck fascists, but if you talked to them about anything else they are the sweetest people around. I grew up around the poorer version of people like them, while everyone is more or less racist, homophobic and completely Republican to the core, nobody really talks about politics at all. The reason of course is that Capitalism is basically working for them. There is simply nothing to question about the trained assumption that the US is the greatest mother fucking slab of dirt in the universe and that if you just work hard and play by the rules you can have anything. And that you deserve everything.

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I’ve totally sucked this week! I got completely hijacked by my job and also learned about some serious setbacks to the global left that really demoralized me.  However, I’m about to start my vacation and I’ve got a notebook full of rage. I’ll be completely available here all next week. I can be reached at rejection08@gmail.com. Be sure to come here on Monday.

Maxwell Black