Transmissions

Check out my brother The Stimulator doing the right thing with our brothers and sisters in St. Paul!

The Shondes are MySpace buddies of mine, and I’ve been a little slack about promoting their rock n’ roll show here in DC. Tomorrow night go to the Black Cat and rock out with my buds from Brooklyn.

Thank you Dhyana! My fellow class warrior just picked up the above shirt for herself. I just need that to happen 30 more times so I can break even this month. Now follow the crazy green arrows to yesterdays blog, because I’m still on strike!

I hate to be so direct and talking about money is tacky, but I can’t pay the bills with hugs so please start buying shirts! I literally lose money everyday this website exists. While I’ve answered about 300 emails complimenting our shirts I’ve only actually sold shirts to five personal friends, a guy in New Orleans and guy in Seattle. I am contemplating becoming a non-profit so I can maybe survive on small donations but until then I need to be a little amateur Capitalist and sell some freaking shirts.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes this website is a lot of fun and other times it totally fucking sucks cock? Thats because I’m usually at work, commuting to work, getting ready for work or recovering from work. Just like you. But you can help liberate this fellow working slob by buying a shirt right now!

You know how every few months Democracy NOW, LINK TV, Free Speech TV and most of our favorite websites interrupt normal programming to beg for money? This is like totally what I’m doing right now! So I’m going on strike! I refuse to blog again until someone buys a shirt (I’m lying.) I’m freaking serious all 200 of you!

I do have two new shirts that I think might help this slump. I wanted to do something with more broad appeal. These two will be available on cafe press, hopefully, by next week. If you’re interested in one email me at rejection08@gmail.

Hello from your favorite deadbeat blogger. Believe it or not, when I’m not posting stuff here I really am working. I’ve spent the last week trying to teach myself how to manipulate the internet, specifically, how to get more traffic to my YouTube videos. I’ll never be able to fully explain what I went through to get those Mickey Z videos, but they’re there and dammit people will watch them!

In lieu of me actually posting something of actual substance, I want to share something I stumbled across today. It’s a website dedicated to a book called ”Underground History of American Education.” I’m not completely vouching for it–it does have a couple of references to “market solutions” and to early America as a “utopia”–however, it’s certainly interesting. Here is a passage:

“Looking backward on a thirty-year teaching career full of rewards and prizes, somehow I can’t completely believe that I spent my time on earth institutionalized; I can’t believe that centralized schooling is allowed to exist at all as a gigantic indoctrination and sorting machine, robbing people of their children. Did it really happen? Was this my life? God help me.

School is a religion. Without understanding the holy mission aspect you’re certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare. All are present in the equation, it’s just that none of these matter very much—even without them school would move in the same direction. Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist:

Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.

What is “proper” social order? What does “right” social growth look like? If you don’t know you’re like me, not like John Dewey who did, or the Rockefellers, his patrons, who did, too.”

Something I do vouch for is ”Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen. If you liked ”A Peoples History of the Untied States, you’ll dig this.

if you want to support this site you could buy a fucking shirt!

if you haven’t already checked out my Mickey Z videos you can watch and please comment on them here.

and don’t forget about the more neglected area of this website here.

It looks like this:

…and this is a cyclist:

A fun fact about cyclists is that while many wear helmets, all lack an exoskeleton. Here is some logic:

–all humans are mortal

–all cyclists are humans

–therefore all cyclists are mortal

Get it drivers??!!

I thought US drivers might need this spelled out for them considering the number of times we have to cheat death each day on our bikes. To report from the frontlines, last week a car (two car lengths ahead of me) decided it would be a good idea to suddenly slam on the breaks with both of us (and the car behind me) going full speed! After he got out and suddenly realized I was fuming, he snorted, “What’s your problem? You weren’t hurt.” I responded by picking my bike up off the ground and throwing it at him. He decided it would be best to depart!

A bike messenger acquaintance of mine used to carry a sack full of pennies to “gently sprinkle” on the windshields of offending motorist (going full speed!) However, I think that might be too risky: they could swerve and hit other cyclists. I’m thinking the next time a fuck face in a Hummer violently cuts me off to get to Sam’s Club two seconds sooner to buy a 500 pound crate of Velveta shells and cheese I know what to do.

After they go inside I’ll take my keys out and draw a diagram of a bike right on the hood of their death machine. Maybe that will help them remember to watch where they’re fucking going. Take warning suckas!

I noticed a lot of traffic today and figured I should post something. I’m currently working on part two of our A.M.T. one year birthday extravaganza! I haven’t been able to post anything because I’ve pretty much been running around for the last week. If you are new here have a look around the archive and be sure to check out Rejection08 and our shopping cart. Now lets do some linking!

This is my favorite article of the week, check out Paul Street

If this is your first time here (or not) these are my favorite articles by me here and here.

If you’re in a book buying mood why don’t you consider this.

Do you get the funny feeling that Bruce Ivans didn’t do it?

Fun Project: If you have a moment you can find a glaring clue that Bruce Ivans was murdered! If you look for the first Washington Post story about his “suicide” you will find a line buried towards the end of the piece. This line never appears anywhere else as far as I know. The writer mentions that he killed himself with a Tylenol overdose. He then mentions in passing that death from this method usually takes…DAYS! Now I generally shy away from conspiracy stuff, but this seems somewhat absurd. Ivans was a professional scientist and I suspect he might have known this fun fact. His suicide has been painted as an act of last minute desperation, if so, why didn’t he use the gun that the same article mentions him owning? I think the real murder weapon looked something like this:

New material coming soon!

As many of you know I ventured up to New York City late last week to put my new camera to good use filming “Radical America’s Homeboy” Mickey Z in Astoria. I’m so happy I went. I got to meet actual “expendables” Keir and James in the human freaking flesh! I met up and coming folk machine Val Turner (Bonus alert: mega-cute!) And, yes comrades, I met Michele and Mickey Z. I can safely report that Mr. Z is in fact the real deal and seeing the two of them as such a revolutionary, genuine and yet tender duo was an inspiration.

[Warning: don’t ever fuck with Zed in Michele’s presence. Yes, Mickey is like a ninja or whatever, but every time someone got too loud upstairs during his talk she turned into like a mama freaking Grizzly! Viva.]

As goofy as the above imagery is, I request that you watch all of the following videos in there entirety and straight through. It builds nicely. It is funny, tragic, heartbreaking and inspiring, (he didn’t call it “Stand-Up tragedy” for nothing!) So here it is and I’m incredibly proud to be a part of:

“Myth America: war, elections and our way of life”

View part 3-5 by clicking below
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[Note: I’m sitting in an internet cafe in Astoria getting ready to walk down to Mickey Z’s event tonight. Looking through my laptop I found my journal entry from my last train ride home from New York. This isn’t edited and it’s just some loose reflections.]

I’m sitting in a hot cramped Amtrak cafe car just leaving New York City. I was reflecting on the drive out of the city. My friends had called me a “car service” because traditional cabs won’t prowl the streets of Brooklyn. The “service” arrived promptly driven by a young energetic Arab man. As we creaked along in the black Lincoln Towncar I started to despise the city I’ve loved for so long. All of the street art I’ve always viewed as “liberation of the commons” now just looks as pathetic as bringing slingshot to a missile fight. The multiculturalism I once adored looks more like the reality now, which is I’m really looking at global economic refugees; including my driver.

The green and rust bridge bases that once brought to memory Beastie Boys and Beat Street just look like the slow collapse of a really bad idea. All of this centralizing, all of this running around, bridges and tunnels and streets are like the arteries of a giant walking zombie, consuming all life while not being alive oneself.

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[I’m two weeks late on this. I’ll put up the edited full version tomorrow.]

“I want to cut his nuts off”

Oh Jessie! I rarely have any interest in what Jesse Jackson says anymore and I don’t really want to cut anybodies nuts off but, come on, Obama is talking down to black folks! Well certain black folks. You see, Obama is afflicted with a disorder afflicting more and more black Americans. Obama has Cosby Syndrome.

Yes, this is an attempt to enter a new expression into the common political lexicon, however I think it is accurate. I Googled it and found a few other uses of it, but not this detailed or direct. CopyLeft suckas!

Cosby Syndrome: n: A view of race devoid of an acknowledgment of class held by non-white Americans who were either born in the upper classes or who have found a way there. Lacking a class analysis, they view poor minorities with puzzlement and disdain. Those afflicted imagine that because they themselves are non-white and living the “American dream” those poor minorities must just be lazy and members of a despicable “blame white people first” culture. Afflicted persons can be recognized by their frequent references to “bootstraps.”

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