old punks web zine
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General Commentary, Part V

Anarchy Newspaper Roundup

Down the road a piece is an anarchy co-op [2007 update: it was closed a few years back and re-opened as a frat house. Now that’s funny!] occupying a formerly vacant storefront in a busy yet piss-poor intersection for commerce. I doubt they're paying rent and I don't doubt they're gone the next day if a capitalist wants the space. I went in to pick up whatever literature they were giving away, and some kids were on a couch watching Bush's State Of The Union address and making snide comments straight out of the last 200 issues of MRR. It was sarcasm pretending to be irony, but mocking Bush is as easy as convincing a bulimic she's morbidly obese, and maybe it's better to be naive and well intentioned than stupid and cruel [2007: No, these losers were stupid and cruel]. The space was set up like a clubhouse, and the back room had an assigned graffiti wall filled with sock-it-to-me slogans none more clever than "F--k S--t Up!" I wonder if they meant it would be OK for nazi skins to come in and, you know, f--k s--t up. Maybe not. There was also that stupid “A” w/circle that indicates the revolution is on its way so don't make any long term plans besides peace, love and cooperation. Hold your breath starting…. ............now.

I picked up five thin newspapers and a folded, four page A14-size white paper xerox thing. Yes, trees had to die, but they died for the cause. Maybe these trees voted Republicrate, ate meat and discriminated against women and minorities, so they got theirs. While reading these anarchy rags I laughed, I cried, I rolled my eyes and even made Julienne Fries. It's self-indulgent crap and old skool commie propaganda, and for the most part I can laugh this off as the work of snotty kids, idealistic know-nothings and a handful of sociopaths. I hope nobody takes any of this to heart and actually hurts someone to help bring about the end of civilization, as the Green Anarchists call for. It's all stupid fun and games until someone loses an eye.

They all call for the overthrow of government, religion, financial institutions, police, the military, business, schools and parents. It's never clear how this will come about beyond the goofy hope that once the ball of revolution starts rolling average people will rise up and remove the shackles of their oppression. White power groups think the same way. Do anarchists believe that if they torch a Starbucks, Joe Citizen will be inspired to destroy the state? And if the state is destroyed, do they think militias, street gangs and nazis will allow peaceful anarchy to take hold? Do they think gun owners will hand over their rifles, meat eaters will stop eating meat and x,y,z and 1,2,3, all because they're told they have to by Anarchy Joe and his pal Timmy? Maybe anarchy is so perfect they'll just, like, have to! Maybe there's a radio tower that sends out brainwashing capitalist rays to everyone on the planet except magically immune anarchists, and once that is destroyed in a cool battle against the forces of democracy (boo, hiss), everyone will snap to attention, rub their eyes like they've been asleep their whole lives, then immediately assume the true bee and ant functions needed to achieve real anarchy. Like The Matrix or something. Coooool.

The funniest common denominator is an effort to reach out to prisoners as recruits for the cause. Whoever came up with the idea that the only people who go to jail are political prisoners must be in an institution with his or her arms in long wraparound sleeves. Maybe anarchists figure they can exchange with prisoners freedom for cooperation, the cons becoming Brown Shirts for peace. The first thing a lifer would do to Anarchy Joe and his pal Timmy is drill for oil up their asses, then trade them to a guy named Stetson for a carton of cigarettes.

Here's what passes for anarchist journalism these days:

Green Anarchy: Slogan "Where there is no vision, the planet will perish." Out of Eugene, Oregon. It's free, it says so on the cover, but you can buy them to sell for $1, which is pricey for a free four page newspaper. Typical rhetoric, "Specialized division of labor alienates us from each other and creates the hierarchy needed to coordinate production. Hierarchy divides society giving rise to the psychology of domination which creates those who have power and the powerless. The powerless are treated as objects to be exploited..." This heavy, plodding marxist dogma goes on forever. Biggest line of crap, "Humanity lived a peaceful anarchic existence for 99% of our history and civilization was our fall from grace." I could make fun of this in a thousand ways, but instead I'll just mouth some nonsense words and look helpless. They print a "Why Work?" column that states "No one should have to work." Sure, everything does itself and those who do work will provide for those who don't want to lift a finger. I've seen these articles before and they're usually done as half comedy, half serious (oh god I hope). One more quote: "If we are to have any chance of abolishing the state, we must reach out to people of color or we will remain in the white suburban ghetto or as bohemian nonconformists." Black folk don't become anarchists or serial killers. They're both white boheme leisure time activities. Green Anarchists believe that without civilization the earth would revert back to a lush, green unblemished landscape. Of course it will, spoiled rich kid.

Regeneration: Los Angeles Anarchist Monthly: Free, four pages, Xeroxed, out of Cal Tech. Who we are: "Our goal is a libertarian communist society and an end to capitalism, racism, patriarchy, the state, and other bad stuff." Stuff: that's a word used by kids and marketers of products for kids. I don't think libertarianism fits in with the rest, but I'm white and my crotch is fully accessorized, so what do I know? At least Regeneration admits they're communist. The others say everything but. Sample article titles, "The Rich Plan To Bail Themselves Out", "Does Ashcroft Make You Feel Safer", and "Anti-War Movement Faces Dangers From Within", which warns of Trotskyites who rely on celebrity worship to get out their watered-down messages. I'd ask what this means but I don't really care. It’s standard Journalism 101, thankfully not heavy on slogans but it does overdose on parentheses to express irony. Plus exclamation point abuse!!

Turning The Tide: Journal Of Anti-Racist Action, Research & Education: Sixteen pages, all Mumia all the time, and the price is stated as "Priceless". Anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-what else ya got? Big article on combating white supremacy in the anti-globalization movement. According to this it seems Anarchy Joe and hi pal Timmy are klansmen. You can't see this but I'm hitting the Green Anarchy newspaper with the Turning The Tide one, and in one funny voice I'm saying "No justice, no peace, you dumb cracker!", and in another I'm yelling back "I'm from the white suburban ghetto and we're brothers in the cause of Anne-Ur-Key!!!!" This paper is full of tough and unforgiving rhetoric. A feeling of raw hatred shines through. Biggest line of crap: "US and Israel promoted and financed the creation of Islamic fundamentalism as a strategic attempt to divide and divert the Arab masses..." To say that victims of racism are incapable of being racist themselves is specious enough, but Turning The Tide is as hateful and racist as a Louis Farrakhan speech. I wonder if the corner store anarchists realize Turning The Tide hates them no matter what they do for the cause? Another reality: groups who claim to be anti-racist and anti-sexist are in their own way as racist and sexist as those they despise the most.

Change Links: Independent Progressive Newspaper and Community Calendar: Slogan "Don't wait till the Spirit Moves You - Move in the Spirit". Eight pages with a four page community calendar. It has a slight bend towards Central and South American issues. Pro-Palestinian and articles like "By Any Standard, This Is A War Against Afghans" and "The Real Story Behind America's War", which they say is a power grab by the US for the rest of the world. I wiped my ass with this simply because it was the softest of all the anarchist newspapers.

Harbinger: Eight pages, big 14" x 22" format. Brought to you by "CrimethInc." Website at www.crimethinc.com [March 2007 update: it’s a nice looking site but it hasen’t been updated in a year]. This may be to anarchy what The Church Of The Subgenius is to religion. Is this for real or is it performance art? I'm also reminded of cryptic UFO books where all there is on the cover is a black and white alien head. It's vague, new age and goes to great lengths to contradict itself in the name of philosophizing. The layout is efficiently beautiful like Punk Planet. The center fold is a "Definition Of Terms", a huge chart with circles and arrows. It's as complex as the periodic table of the elements, yet it all might be arbitrary. The various parts make sense, and they fit together in a pattern I can see makes sense, but taken together it's fairly meaningless, and I think this is on purpose. A clue as to what they might be up to is the line "Until our most fantastic demands are met, fantasy will always be at war with reality." It's intellectual masturbation, but very nicely written and visually engaging.

A-Million-Archy for you and me!
here's a logo I madefor amillionarchy. Cool!!!

Ca-ching!! Do you hear that? That's the sound of peace, love and amillionarchy! Hi, my name is Tim, but my friends call me Terror Tim, because I'm so fierce and s--t. I'm not huge and tough for my age or anything, but if you get kept back enough times in high school like I have you eventually get to be one of the bigger guys around.

The other day I was hanging around the mall with Malcolm (code name: Malcolmtempt) and Unsightly Stan, whose super power is always having a cloud of dirt around his body like Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoons. We were grubbing for change because we're anarchists and that's what we do. I wanted to call us Crusties but that's all Stan so it's too obvious, ya know? Anyway, we were bitching about Society and Big Brother and Malcolm's mom's new BMW SUV that kills the planet when it's not dropping us off places, when a thought hit me like a billy club on the head of the oppressed masses by the evil capitalist goon squads!

Sure, I guess all it would take for the world to reject civilization and live peacefully in the huge green forest the world would turn back into in a month or two is a few Starbucks being vandalized, but in the meantime, how about stopping inequality, poverty, hunger and all that by giving everyone a million dollars? Everyone's rich and the same and there's no more reason to hate. Capitalism sucks, but so does being broke. Green Doc Marten toe stompin' boots don't grow on trees you know.

Take away all the money from the rich, who've made it all anyway off the sweat of the working class, like I did last summer when I slaved at McDonalds for a week until my parents couldn't handle my complaining anymore so they raised my allowance. I'm sure there's enough for everyone to get a million dollars, and if not just print more money. It’s just paper, right? I made money on a xerox machine once and the clerk at the 7-11 just looked at me and asked what kind of moron I was. I was able to tell him exactly since I've been tested more times than a cigarette smoking monkey. One day he'll be thanking me for making him rich with amillionarchy!

Ok, so you're asking who'll clean toilets and flip burgers and sell donuts and s--t if everyone's rich? Somebody’ll have to do it because that's part of the cooperative spirit of amillionarchy, just like in regular anarchy. That'll be one of the conditions, and maybe they'll have to sign something promising they will.  And then you might ask what about people who spend all their money and are poor again? Aha! Anyone who has more than his or her million will give back the extra money into a communal fund for those with less than a million dollars to take from. It's perfect.

So, to review, everyone will have a million dollars, we'll all be equal and we'll be able to buy whatever we want. Regular anarchy is kinda the same but I don't think I'll be able to buy a new Camaro Z28 that way. My way rocks!

In The Mail This Week

Here’s an e-mail I just received. Some e-mails I post on my letters page, others get a direct reply, and the rest I delete while Apu-ing to myself “Thank you. Come again.” This one I’ll comment on at length because it touches on a number of things about this site and how it both operates and sees the world. My response follows.

Dearest Old Punk person,
Wow, even after reading the entire page of emails from people open to discussion, and the following self-righteous drivel you so kindly call a "reply", I'm still up here trying to have my say. Now I really am punk. I loved the web site in general, its just that you seem to have a real downer on anyone who gives their time to voice their feelings on what appears, at first, to be an open forum. Is it too hard to admit that sometimes we need optimism? Surely a cynical bastard attitude is not going to get anyone motivated enough to do something different?! Instead, the result is a lot of clever people just sitting around arguing why the world is crap and agreeing that nothing will change it for the better. So I want to say, anyone inspired enough to see through the corporate lies and sugar coated images we are force fed through our TV's CAN do something that might change something, or at least get you noticed (and face it, the human ego is one of the most prominent reasons for action). So whatever you do, be it working for a genuine charity, uncovering injustices and helping in a small way to right them or just working hard to raise decent kids in this god-forsaken land, DO IT!!! Don't sit around talking for too long, because the world does not need anymore talkers. It needs doers. So, go on......

Louise

Dearest Louise,

There is nothing in the e-mails I receive to indicate how “open” anyone is to discussion. Most e-mails are written not to me at all, but directed to the letters page itself as a single-minded soapbox of personal opinion. My self-righteous drivel-esque replies, so say a number of e-mails I get on the subject, are the best part of the letters page. Thus, that’s the only reason to have a letters page at all.

The Old Punks Web Zine is not an open forum. It’s whatever I want it to be. I’m judge, jury and executioner. I do this for yuks. I have no agenda. I make no money. I do it mostly to keep my mind from freezing up. If I can make myself laugh, turn a clever phrase or get a free CD in the mail every so often, that’s great. I’m not here to change minds, foster dialogue and promote the scene. I couldn’t care less if punk rock ended tomorrow.

I don’t post pictures of myself or talk about my life. I’m a fictional character. What I write about might be exactly how I feel, or it could be a blown-up comedy rant on something I never think about twice. It’s entertainment barely masquerading as commentary, opinions as an excuse to be goofy or insulting.

I have no idea what your agenda is when you talk about “optimism”, “motivation”, “corporate lies”, force fed sugar coated images, “uncovering injustice”, doing not just talking, and any other piece of rhetoric you’re throwing my way. Your use of language is the same as the groups you probably hate.

The propagandist subversion of words by all points of the political spectrum is manipulative, aggressive, and worst of all to me, condescending. Intent is the sum total of two things only – words and actions. Words and actions can and should be separated from whatever slant you want to apply. White Power asswipes tell the media it’s not that they hate non-whites, it’s just that they love white people. The Rene Guyon Society, a group brought together by a common bond of wanting to f—k kids, coined the catchy slogan "Sex by eight, or it's too late."

I’m not impressed by generic, ill-defined goals such as changing the world for the better and getting off your ass to make something happen. My response to pleas to “reason” is for you to please prove to me you’re not a hypocritical asshole dreamer psycho ideologue on a mission to either save the world or destroy it. Nazis think they’re changing the world for the better by getting off their asses and making things happen too, you know. Should I applaud them for their optimism for genocide?

A long time ago I lost all patience for being screamed at, proselytized to and manipulated by every crackpot with an ego the size of their extreme political agenda. It’s better to do nothing than to do something stupid. Who gets to judge? I do, that’s who. Because I am god here at The Old Punks Web Zine.

The world doesn’t need any more dumb doers or dumb talkers. It doesn’t need any more blind ideologues who stir self-hatred into fascistic dogma. The world needs to calm the f—k down and stop staring at itself in the mirror while it screams. It needs fewer people who think they have all the answers. If the world is a battle between extremists on both ends of the political, social and religious spectrums, I hope they all kill each other off so the rest of us can go about our lives mostly minding our own business.

The most horrific conspiracy assholes harbor is that nobody gives a f--k what they think - and they have no reason to. I'm not calling you an asshole per say since I don't know you, but your logic and rhetoric in this instance are non-specific and not persuasive. I also get a kick out of how you seem to be writing beyond me to whatever readership you feel may have fallen under my spell of cynicism. My minions kill upon my command. Your puny puny e-mail has no effect on my zombie battalions... Moo haa haa ha! HA Ha ha!!! 

If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old
or
Young, Dumb and Full Of Fun

There I was, driving my ‘84 Volvo DL (all original East Coast rust and a recent smog test that concludes I'm personally responsible for the death of the dinosaurs) within all posted speed limits and courtesy rules of the road, both hands death-gripping the steering wheel, NPR squeaking from the one speaker that still works, when all of a sudden one of those neon-colored sub-compact rice buggies with three inch thick tires, two inch road clearance and an exhaust pipe the width of a tuba pulls up at the light. The guy/girl combo inside are your standard issue SoCal idjits - bottle blond, artificial tan, pierced, tattoos who knows where, designer shades, spiky hair, unsmiling and obsessed with looking good because it's important to look good in case somebody looks at you or something. They don't say a word to each other - they can't - because the entire inside of the car had been replaced by a giant set of stereo speakers and the nuclear power plant that feeds it. It’s probably a good thing too because I doubt between them they've ever read a newspaper or experienced life beyond id gratification and consumer culture. These are people who think "Pop-Up Videos" should be a college level history course.

The music they were blasting to advertise their double digit IQs to Newark, NJ was a mix of rap, metal, disco and punk - a sonic Four Riders Of The Apocalypse that made me pine for a simpler time when I feared speed metal was the worst life had to offer. And, of course, they were smoking, a hallmark of independent thought and. I looked over and the guy looked back with a slight sneer. I smiled to piss him off. I wanted to get out, yell "Howdy!" and dance the Old Prospector Dance, but the light changed and off they went, probably to one of the many custom auto shops in O.C. that exist parasitically on the salaries of entry-wage twenty-something lemmings. On the rear bumper of their car was the sticker "If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old".

I don't like waking up at 2 AM to the sound of a bass speaker three apartments down. I think guys who blast music from their cars to impress chicks have ego problems way beyond their small endowments. Women impressed by loud car stereos must love a good...-- they have to be huge fugging... -- oh, you know what I mean. If a love of quiet defines being too old, I'm Bob F--king Hope. Know what's more important to me than rocking out, having fun and living life to its fullest? I want to be left the hell alone. I work too hard and take too much stupidity from assholes I'd rather trip down the stairs. My back always hurts and by 3 PM I'm so tired all I want to do is curl up under my desk and snooze. I've seen enough generations of know-it-all kids come and go (including my own) to know it’s the same bulls--t repackaged in brighter colors and simpler messages to appeal to ever dumber and more gullible kids. I want to be able to crawl into my apartment at the end of another day I thought would never end and not have to experience whatever it is the people around me think is too cool to keep to themselves. It's bad enough when you think your s--t doesn't stink. It's another to force it down my throat and expect me to love the taste. I don't. Turn down your dumb music. F--k you very much.

Choosing To Be A Dick

I miscalculated my gas stops on my last scooter trip to Las Vegas, and nearing Baker, CA I feared I would conk out on the scenic I-15. Luckily I came across an exit with an open station, and all they sold was 87 octane at $2.25 a gallon - fifty cents higher than usual. The lady behind the counter glared at me like she'd rather piss down my throat when I asked as nicely as possible if that was the correct price. The old, stupid pump wasn't working so the owner came out, I'd say to help but that wouldn't be true. I asked him if he gets a lot of business from people who miss the Baker exit and he grit his teeth while telling me nobody has to pay his prices if they don't want to.

Then because of his accent, I ask him if he was from the east coast like I am, and all of a sudden his face lights up and we're best pals. The guy's most recentlyfrom Orange County and he opened his garage in the middle of frickin’ nowhere for "emergency rescue" purposes, and he charges as much as capitalism allows. Here's a guy who's left civilization to live literally on a desert highway, and most of his interactions with customers are negative if not flat out aggressive. He's chosen to be a dick to the world (the venus fly-trap of auto service) and is perfectly willing to take on anyone who doesn't like it.

Sadly, a lot of folks are like that. Many people choose to be aggressive, small-minded, egotistical and arrogant - and they see it as having a positive self image. Advertising promotes that mindset as a way to get millions of people to buy the same product that will make them a distinct individual. Look out for #1, fear me, envy me, check out my clothes/ car/ lifestyle/ brand of deodorant that makes me better than you. Confidence is about how little you care about others or what they think about you. It's the tough facade you build up to protect yourself in a predatory world. Fugg 'em before they can fugg you.

It makes me sick. I wish people would overcompensate for their fears and shortcomings by being considerate and decent human beings, not rabid assholes. We're all born naked and the rest is drag, as the saying goes. At some point, most of us are free to choose from various paths that lead to our adult selves. Is it just easier to choose to be a dick, or are there outside pressures that conspire against civility? Some of it is advertising and the rest is mostly peer pressure, the kind that tries to keep everyone down out of envy and a fear of being left behind or exposed as a loser. Maybe being a dick is how losers express confidence.

Every asshole you deal with at one time was just a little kid who wanted to have fun and make friends. Something happens to turn innocence into meanness. Some of it may be a result of too many lost battles in the real world, while the rest is a pose, a style, a way of recreating yourself in a way you think others will fear, respect or react to. Is worldwide dickishness more of a product of external or internal forces? I don't know and I don't care. I just wish there were fewer assholes who not only think their poop doesn't smell, they want to rub it in your face and laugh about it.

(2007 update: When I wrote this I received a endless stream of emails with virus attachments from a loser in Canada who idolized these guys. He was in a band and wrote a number of unpublished novels. I wish I could remember who he was. I’m sure he was living off a mental disability claim.)

I'm Sorry For His Kids, But The Asshole Deserved To Die Slowly And Painfully

Corrupt cops are making the news of late, especially in New York City. In Los Angeles an anti-gang unit has been exposed as themselves an illegal gang. I know it's punk to hate cops, but I don't. I don't like bad cops and I don't like them when they're behind me on the highway, but I know it's a tough job and I'm glad people crazier than I am have chosen to put themselves in the way of bullets and psychos for my protection. Yes, I am the Status Quo, The Man and The System Of Oppression That Keeps The Peaceful State Of Anarchy From Coming Into Being. I also cause your acne and keep you a virgin.

I hold everyone accountable for their actions, including myself. I don't know what it's like to be anything but white and middle class, so I can only take your word for it if you say cops target you because of your skin color or sexual orientation. The answer is to get rid of bad cops and policies, not wipe out law enforcement. I know anarchists approve, but the day an anarchist is taken seriously by adults is also when the NRA decides all guns are evil and I dance The Hustle in a white polyester jumpsuit.

In what is known as Our Litigious Society, I'm amazed at the volume of trivial lawsuits brought to court. Disputes over $2,000 explode into $500,000 punitive damage awards. Anyone who stubs their toe or gets insulted is led to believe they can become millionaires via a lawsuit brought on by lawyers working on additions to their little corners of hell in Dante's Inferno. Los Angeles lawyer Steven Yagman initiated a lawsuit against the police "on behalf" of the children of Emil Matasareanu, who Yagman claimed was "cold-bloodedly murdered" by police not providing adequate medical attention as he lay bleeding in the street. I hope Matasareanu suffered a horrible, excruciating slow death. The trial against the police ended with a deadlocked jury and I doubt the case will come up again.

Yagman makes a living suing the city and has twice managed to be suspended from practicing law. That's very difficult to do even once, so twice is an insane figure. To quote a website that profiled this case, "To be suspended from the legal profession is the moral equivalent of being ostracized by child molesters." All poor Emil and his pal Larry Phillips did on February 28, 1997 was don full body armor, rob a bank (to buy bread for their starving families!), and then shoot eleven cops and six bystanders in a 35 minute orgy of automatic weapons fire worthy of a Bruce- Dolf- Arnold- Sly movie. Matasareanu shot one civilian in the head at close range while trying to heist a getaway car, and clubbed another in the bank when he poor guy couldn't keep his baby quiet. Poor Emil, why did the horrible cops let him die? He's everyone's child.

Phillips was shot eleven times before taking his own miserable worthless life. Emil took 29 bullets in his armor and body before being cuffed. Yagman accused the police of willingly letting Emil bleed to death. Police waved away an ambulance when they thought there might have been other gunmen involved, then called for another once they secured the area. By that time a stinking pile of s--t named Emil expired. Boo fugging hoo. How sad. How sad his two kids had to have a loser for a dad.  

Screw Emil Matasareanu. He deserved to die slowly and painfully. He willingly initiated a firestorm of bullets that ended and ruined many lives. He was a vicious cretin not worthy of saving. For what, to be given an expensive trial and free room and board in prison? Like Buford Furrow, who gunned down children at a day care center in order to wake up the white race? That's money that could be spent on housing for the poor or, yes, more cops on the street. But no, we'll be flushing millions down the drain giving this guy a forum for his hate and three squares a day. If I was a cop on the scene I'd have taken a dump on Emil's head while he lay there soaking up the sun. However long Emil lingered was way to short. The best thing you can hope for his kids is that they be put in a good home and never be reminded of the father that let them down so badly.

 Teenage Conspiracy Theories

At the last minute, something to write about fell into my lap in the form of a free xerox zine I found. Titled "Tranquilizing Education System", this unintentionally hilarious commentary starts off "The evil system that we so truly hate works in subtle ways. People don't simply spew offspring that automatically believe that money is an ultimate goal, as is the American dream of having a perfect suburban family and the need to fill a specific quota given to you by your community. All of this is taught in a system that you are forced to participate in for 14 years of your life..." Then it gets into specifics like "Systems are bad. When anybody falls into a system, people begin getting molded, and you begin to lack the freedom to go off in any other direction than the one you are guided to.", and "What we don't find in this required curriculum is simple life and social skills. Things like solutions to peer conflicts, co-existence, and channels you can use to filter anger, frustration, and nerves."

The author gets cooking with "What is the point of this (education) system? As taught, their goal is to provide an education to increase our chances of being perfect normal citizens in a competitive society...They just want you to get that job, have two and a half kids and live that boring inactive stagnant irrelevant life in trouble free suburbia.", then hits a crescendo with "It is too bad the current education system breaks people down turning everybody into boring citizens denying the world around them."

The commentary is well written and impassioned, but honestly, what a crock of hippie punk bulls--t. If three year olds possessed the same language skills they'd be speculating on the intent of the Founding Fathers in regards to the life and death issues of nap time, wearing mittens in cold weather and not being allowed to eat ice cream for breakfast. School and suburbia are not conspiracies of anything. And as far as conforming, whoever wrote this conforms as closely to their own set of dogmas as jocks and preppies. The goal of schooling is to give kids well-rounded sets of knowledge they can pick and choose from to make livelihoods for themselves. The goal of teaching is to do this and go home at the end of the day. The leftist view that it’s not what you know but how you feel breeds confident dimwits.

Suburbia is a form of housing. It's the goal of most Americans to own their own homes in areas they consider safe and pleasant. Is this wrong? F--k you for telling anyone they can't buy a home. F--k you for telling anyone how they must see the world and what they must do to conform to your agenda. If you think you're clever because you've realized suburbia isn't perfect, you're not. Your grasp of irony and "the big lie" is on the same level as figuring out Santa is your dad in North Pole drag. Let me humor you for a moment: Yes, your parents force you to live in suburbia in order to turn you into a Stepford Child. The world would be one big happy commune of love, peace and understanding if only there was no suburbia. If everyone was given a million dollars there wouldn't be any poor people.

Shut up. The day whiners stop taking an allowance from their parents is when I'll consider taking any of you seriously. The world of school and the world of work reside in different galaxies, and after a while in the working world it hits you that schools are a breeding ground for idealistic ideals and theories that rarely survive in what is, yes, the Real World. I have nothing against idealism and I encourage it when I can, but the person I am today at 38 knows for damn sure that who I was at 18 had a lot of good intentions but no frigging clue.

If you don't like your "Tranquilizing Education System", drop out and flip burgers. We can always use more unskilled and uneducated minimum wage workers to clean toilets and work drive-thru windows. Tell 'em you're a drop-out from suburbia and I guarantee you'll get the newer mop. The purpose of education is to learn how to read, write and juggle numbers. It would be nice if schools taught coping and community skills, but whose perspectives should be taught? The Christian Right? Communists?

It's funny to claim the education system is a right-wing conspiracy of conformity. First of all it’s heavily unionized and leans left. I also wonder when teachers have the time to conduct strategy meetings to plan the downfall of Timmy and Becky's creative spirit. Is this room poorly lit and filled with smoke? Schools are under-funded, over-filled and under-staffed. This sucks, but parents and kids themselves can make it their own imperative to be creative and free thinking. Schools don't have the time, money and patience to turn every student into what a punk zine considers perfect world citizens.

The only thing school owes you are the tools to help you get a job and not be stoopid. Will you wind up with good job or a bad job? The quality of your school and how much effort you put into your studies will go a long way towards answering that question. You have more control over yourself than you do your school. Work's an unnecessary evil for sure, but I'm not going to pay your welfare because you've wisely opted out of capitalism. People are required to work in communist countries too, and they barely have pots to piss in.

Life isn't fair and it isn't perfect. Nobody ever said it was. I do know that many poor inner city kids would kill you if it meant they could live in what you call your suburban hell of conformity. Just because you buy some clothes at thrift stores doesn't mean you know what it's like to have nothing. 

A is For Idiot

I've wanted to write about anarchy for a long time but I could never figure out what approach would work best on the internet, a medium with a fifteen second attention span limit. To identify and mock all of anarchy's contradictory, utopian, childish, sociopathic and sometimes even genocidal components would take up more time and space than either you or I are willing to commit to. Recently I've spent a lot of time researching anarchy resources on the web, and I've personally experienced most aspects of punk anarchy, from the Sex Pistols to Crass to today's crusty punk carnival of body odors. Here's some non-punk related anarchy rantings presented in one anarchistic mess.... next time, anarchy and punk rock.

Most web definitions of anarchy dwell on the allegedly peaceful philosophy of anarchism, as opposed to the empirically proved "state of anarchy”. My dictionary defines anarchy as "1. Absence of any form of political authority. 2. Disorder and confusion". I, being a bit of a Darwinist and having learned my lessons on human nature from history and 38 years of breathing, believe the absence of authority leads to the worst Darwinist nightmare imaginable, not a utopian new age fantasy land. People are animals on farms and lords of flies. The QPB Dictionary Of Ideas goes out of its way to defend anarchism from its earned reputation as chaotic and violent: "a political belief that society should have no government, laws, police, or other authority, but should be a free association of all its members. It does not mean 'without order'; most theories of anarchism imply an order of a very strict and symmetrical kind, but they maintain that such order can be achieved by cooperation. Anarchism must not be confused with nihilism (a purely negative and destructive activity directed against society); anarchism is essentially a pacifist movement."

In other words, anarchism is the honor system on a national scale. Even one better, because in the anarchist's paradise there is no need for greed, hate, fear, laziness or evil. That's the weird new age aspect of anarchy - it says any authority, no matter how indirect, suppresses the pure, good and loving spirit that exists in every person, and that heaven on earth is as easy as abolishing all religion, government and laws. Some believe space aliens will come to earth and make life super-terrific -- but, like Peewee Herman says, everybody has a big but but you can't let that stop you - only if everyone prays to them as gods. Others think they can bring about the return of Christ by dropping a nuclear bomb in the middle east. Peaceful anarchists think the purity of their vision is good enough (one source says "Anarchists do not have to propose a concrete alternative because that would be authoritarian." Huh? That's as valid as a bible thumper saying everything in the bible is true because it's in the bible) while violent anarchists say violence is the only way to overthrow authority. Dementia is bad enough without violence added to the mix.

Where does the concept of anarchy come from? It's a colonic waste product of socialist theory. If socialism is government for the proletariat by the proletariat, anarchism is the proletariat as ant colony and bee hive. It's the most extreme logical/illogical conclusion of any belief that freedom is all that matters. From an anarchist site, "It is said that anarchism is not socialism. This is a mistake. Anarchism is voluntary socialism. There are two kinds of socialism, archistic and anarchistic, authoritarian and libertarian, state and free. Indeed, every proposition for social betterment is either to increase or decrease the powers of external wills and forces over the individual. As they increase they are archistic; as they decrease they are anarchistic." You might also hear Anarchy referred to as "Libertarian Socialism". Whatever you might call it, it's the most improbable utopian daydream the mind has ever conceived.

In most people's minds, Anarchy means violence. Why, because they see the actions of anarchists on the news and in history. Save the "history is a lie" line for a friend. Modern American anarchy anti-democratic and anti-freedom. A leader of Eugene, Oregon-based Black Army Faction (BAF) wrote that anarchists in the ‘90s were taking on technology and civilization itself as the enemies, in addition to capitalism and the state. Typical BAF graffiti reads "Viva la Unibomber" and "Actualize Industrial Collapse". The rhetoric and code language of mainstream anarchist philosophies are ripped directly from early 20th century socialist propaganda, promoting a violent struggle of the working class to destroy capitalism and replace it with communism. Socialism is the smiling face of communism.

Today's organized American anarchist movement sabotages computer networks and targets retail stores for destruction. In June, Eugene anarchists rioted with police after a rampage. Anarchists turned Seattle into a war zone last week by smashing anything they could get their hands on during the WTO meeting. I doubt it mattered to these nihilistic terrorists who was meeting and for what purpose. Anarchy is to them about violence and destruction. Anarchists know there will never be a society free of laws and government. Their pathologies are violence and vandalism. At the same time it's a war and a game. Anarchists don't care about peace, they don't care about positive results. It's fun to f--k s--t up. No matter how many peaceful anarchist thinkers say "You can't be an anarchist and do the things which anarchism condemns", the proof is in da puddin', and da puddin' is poop.

The words of violent anarchists are backed by violent acts of anarchy. Nobody has time for the daydreams of peaceful anarchists when every application of it is through violence. You can cry all day about what it should be and could be. All I know is what it actually is in the world. I know we should continually strive for a higher, more peaceful, more cooperative level of existence, but let's separate fantasy from reality. When a child talks about how everyone should have a house and a car and a good job and be nice to each other, that's sweet. It shows a kind and optimistic heart. The real world is different. Sorry kids.

Note to anarchists: If life sucks so much, kill yourself. Don't take others with you, and wear a Depends so you don't make a mess. Leave this earth with a shred of dignity. We know you're an asshole. We’ll recycle your corpse into mulch and save the earth.

The language of anarchy is intentionally archaic,  and it emulates the archaic style of early 20th century socialist writings. Here's a good example of how anarchists see the evolution of the anarchist model in action, "... society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent - for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defense of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary - as is seen in organic life at large - harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state."

Gosh, that sounds great, but can anarchy solve every societal problem and whiten my teeth too? Sure it will! "Power will not be corruptive because power will not exist. Neither the majority nor the minority will rule because each person will govern themselves. Class will finally be eliminated forever, and equality will finally be realized. Political and economic slavery will be abolished. A capitalist society would not simply spring up again because the only people who would want to become members of such a society are the rich, and a capitalist society depends on the exploitation of the working class for its survival. Poverty would be resolved. Humanity's full potential may finally be realized if we only stop fighting each other and trying to control one another. Anarchy will solve the problems of the status quo, eliminate the harm, and open up immeasurable possibilities." Hoo-ra!!!!!

Anarchy web sites are hysterical because they feel compelled to have Q&A sections to address the most obvious logical and practical faults associated with anarchy. They read like bad press conferences where PR flaks mumble quick, nonsensical answers and then yell "next question!" (Most answers are quotes) Will people still steal, rape and murder under Anarchy? No, because there will be enough for everyone, and anyway, government is responsible for more rape and murder than citizens commit. The very existence of laws and authority forces people to break laws and defy authority. Remember, if there were no laws there would be no criminals. But what do we do with those who refuse to be peaceful? These local communities would need to develop some means of dealing with individuals who harmed others. Instead of a few thousand professional police there would be 250 million in the US alone. Ultimately, our only protection is each other. Will there be a need for prisons? No. Prisons fail to improve or reform anyone. Local people aware of each others' circumstances would be able to apply more suitable solutions, in keeping with the needs of the victim and the offender. Will there be wars? Government start wars, not people. Without oppressive government there would be no reason to fight. Anyway, if there is an attack, people will volunteer to defend their country. The State does not defend us. It uses us as cannon fodder to defend our rulers, who, if the truth be untangled, are our real enemies. What about lazy people? Capitalism destroys people's natural communal work ethic. But who would do all the dirty and unpleasant jobs? We imagine each community would devise its own rotation system. What is so impossible about that? There are few methods in sight of making collecting rubbish a fun occupation. Everybody would have to take a share and everybody would have to see to it that nobody got away with shirking their responsibilities. A further point worth making is that unemployment is only a problem created by capitalism. In a sensible world there would be no unemployment. Everyone would have a shorter working week, because they would only produce things that were needed. If we were to get rid of the parasitic ruling class, we would be free of most of the economic pressure to work. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their air-conditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them. What about taxes?Anarchy denies the right of any body of people to tax the individual for anything he does not want, but that taxation should be voluntary, such as is now done by churches, trade unions, insurance societies and all other voluntary associations. But people will pay for what is needed because they will know what needs to be done and will take responsibility. Is property really theft? Everything will be shared equally by all members of the community. There will be no intellectual property or patents, but that shouldn't be a problem because everyone will willingly contribute and share without a desire for personal compensation.

One web site that will answer all your anarchy questions is "Andrew's Course In Anarchy". He's pulled together a ton of info. The main page is at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5362/index.html. He lists his own IQ. From there you can read Bob Black's article, "The Abolition Of Work", which begins with "No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working", and then backs it up with pages of quasi-intellectual anarchist/socialist arguments. It reads like satire. Andrew himself is probably the prototype peaceful American anarchist. He attended The Boston Latin School, which describes itself as "The oldest School in America, founded in 1635". They don't take just any Little Lord Fauntleroy. He'll make a great industrialist or lawyer some day. Daddy will make sure of it and Andrew won't fight it too hard. Once you go country club you never go back. Andrew's a fancy lad all the way. God, I mean the atheistic communal collective, bless his little pointed head. 

It's All Fun & Games Until Someone Loses An Eye
WTO Protests In Seattle

This is not an attack on political protest or an endorsement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This is my anger towards rich-kid hippies who think they're immune from discomfort when committing acts of civil disobedience they know will lead to police conflict or arrest. For a bunch of people who deplore the America system and aspire to the perfection of socialism, they sure do cry a river about Constitutional Rights.

This s also an expression of my disgust for anarchists, who by association have destroyed the credibility of legitimate groups gathered to peacefully protest and educate the public via the media. Anarchists are petty terrorists who hide behind a nihilistic political dementia that in comparison makes Pat Buchanan's vision of America a shade to the left of communism. Violent anarchists are sociopaths who have nothing and hate everything. They're the Brown Shirts of the socialist movement. If anarchists helped socialists gain power they'd have to be killed like Hitler did with the Brown Shirts. Why, because anarchists are only good at destroying and can't be controlled. If anarchists managed to overthrow a government they’d rule as a dictatorship. Peaceful anarchists are usually idealistic school kids who attend good schools and will never know real poverty. The peaceful anarchist society they pick up from MRR and leftist teachers is located somewhere between Unicorn Town and Oz. The other group of “peaceful” anarchists are hypocritical hippies who love genocide as long as the right people die.

I laugh at American protestors, at how those who get gassed, pepper sprayed and carried away when they go limp in the street complain they were manhandled and their rights were violated. Dude! If you're taking the fight to The Man, expect The Man to fight back. Try that in Iran or China and see where that gets you. Throw a rock at a cop in Tehran and you won't be making your shift at The Granola Bar, ever. Do rich-kid protesters really think they should be allowed to shut down a major city just because their cause is pure? When a riot cop tells you to move and all you do is foam at the mouth about fascist pigs and rights, expect the possibility of a baton up the wazoo. Believe you me, compared to every other time and place in history you’re getting off easy. Let that be a lesson to you -- Fire Hot!

Don't act indignant. What are you, four years old and your mommy's waiting at home with a bowl of soup and your Mr. Bunny doll? Legitimate protesters knew beforehand where and when they could and could not protest. Hordes of the coffee house unwashed plopped themselves down in the streets like sacks of homeless people's laundry to somehow stop the WTO meeting, and, as a happy bonus, downtown business. I was both blessed and cursed with being born and raised in New York. You block a bridge into Manhattan and it would take the military to save you from commuters who would beat you to death without a second thought. Protest all you want but don't screw up people’s days. That's how it is in the big city. Seattle's not the big city. It's more like a concrete commune.

A huge coalition of labor, human rights and environmental groups gathered to protest a meeting of the WTO, who they see as a burgeoning corporate world government with the will and power to destroy the environment, exploit labor, trample human rights and circumvent all government and civil authority. The work of organized, peaceful groups who work within the system has been flushed down the drain of public opinion by both well intentioned hippies and opportunistic psychopaths. The legitimate protest groups wasted most of the week distancing themselves from the thugs. What a shame.

Granola Heads see their protest as political street theatre. They re-create the photo ops of the Vietnam war and expect their sincerity to change the world. Chanting "Down With Capitalism!", anarchists destroyed a Starbucks, a McDonalds and any other business that got in their way. Of course the media is going to focus on looting and street battles with police. Of course The Sierra Club's rep gets tainted by anarchist terrorism. Anarchists don't care about peace, and they don't care about positive results. It’s all about the vandalism. Don't you know that?

You can't always have it both ways. Anarchy and peace are oil and water. Vandalism and violence moots all legitimate points. Peaceful protesters know this. They may profess to understand the anarchists taking it up a few notches, but deep down they know the cause is lost when anarchy prevails. Legitimate groups spent the week bravely continuing their campaigns, tried to distance themselves from the violent protests, and privately hated the anarchists for ruining it for everyone.

Anarchists know there will never be a society free of laws and government. Their pathologies are violence and vandalism. At the same time it's a war and a game to them. Cretins who can barely muster minimum wage (if they're not living off the welfare state or mom and dad's earnings) smash store windows and liberate valuable items from the retail prisons of capitalism? I'm supposed to take them seriously?

The Great Seattle WTO Protest Of 1999 was to Vietnam what Woodstock 1998 was to Woodstock 1969. Last week was guerrilla theatre, not guerrilla war. Protesters, pat yourselves on the back for a battle well fought, buy a round of double decaf lattes for your comrades and secretly thank god you weren't in Tienemann Square when the tanks rolled in. 

[2007 update: What’s changed since I wrote this around 2000 is that roles reversed and it’s now the Democrats who take marching orders from Maoists and Stalinists. The Republicans are run by the center-right while the left is run by its far-left. Pat is still a neo-neo nazi.]

Pat Buchanan: Asshole

There’s too many things to say and not enough time to say them. Lordy is this man an asshole. He’s also a bully, a fascist, a hypocrite, sexist, racist, utterly phobic and  a neo-neo-nazi. Pat loves Adolf. More on that later.

Pat Buchanan - print journalist, talking head and perennial presidential candidate, is threatening to leave the Republican party and take his isolationist, xenophobic, bible-thumping followers goose-stepping with him. That Republicans court fascist sympathizers like Pat and David Duke because their followers=votes is inexcusable. If the Democrats kissed the asses of rabid Stalin and Mao fetishists there might be some parity, but there isn't. Unions and minorities don't stack up against militias and the klan. The Reform Party needs Pat like they need Ross Perot. If a church-sponsored police state is reform to you, your mind is teetering on the edge of total synapse meltdown. You talk to God, God doesn't talk to you. The difference defines sanity.

Pat's given too much leeway from his media peers who say they like him as a person. They say he's charming. Adolf could dance a nifty jig but that didn't make him a swell guy (even if Pat openly admires him). It's one thing to cut some slack to a friend and colleague, but after a certain point you have to cut loose and label a dangerous asshole a dangerous asshole, and Pat's a case study in Assholery. Pat's first book, Right From The Beginning, is the memoir of a man who never apologizes and never backs down -- both nice traits if you're not a raving prick. For kicks he and some friends beat up other Catholics they didn't think were as Catholic as they were. I'm not making this up. He makes it sound like wacky hi-jinx. The time he assaulted two cops really sends Pat back to better days. The Right's most fightinist fightin' man never fought in a war because of a condition that may have stemmed from a venereal disease. Yikes.

As probably the most ethics-free aide to Richard Nixon, Buchanan wrote a plan to use the I.R.S. to neutralize liberal public-policy institutes. Buchanan's work, in part, led to the Nixon administration's I.R.S. unit that collected intelligence on thousands of anti-war individuals. They then requested audits in hundreds of cases. Pat always led a sheltered upper class life, and has never worked for anyone except the federal government and the media -- while attacking both the whole time.

Pat's an active defender of anything nazi, and his latest opus, A Republic, Not An Empire, once again poops Pat's Hitler-hugging dogma into the open to feed the flies. Buchanan argues that Hitler was not a direct threat to the United States after 1940, and his ambitions for conquest were toward the east, not the west. So, I guess as long as Adolf stuck to slaughtering Jews, gypsies, gays and the handicapped he was a swell dude. To quote Pat, "Hitler's real ambitions lay in carving out an empire in the east ... He had given up the idea of global empire.'" Pat's brand of populist isolationism is the same stink Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and other American friends of the Reich were pushing to keep America out of the war while Adolf went about his ethnic cleansing of well over six million.

Pat Buchanan is a neo-neo-nazi. He doesn't wear the uniform in public but he defends their causes as his own. When Pat throws in the occasional distraction about how horrible it was that so many Jews were killed by Hitler, he does so only to appear balanced. He's winking and smiling the whole time. His soul is ice. Pat dislikes Jews, blacks, women and every other minority that threatens his white male Anglo-Christian theocracy. Here's Pat on Hitler, "Those of us in childhood during the war years were introduced to Hitler only as caricature. ... Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him... Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path." Actually, Adolf was a crappy strategist and he alone pushed the Russian campaign to failure, but don't tell that to Pat! Hitler gives him a woody.

Buchanan's presidential campaigns utilize high-ranking staff members who work with, or are part of, racist and militia groups. This includes Larry Pratt, Rev. Donald Wildmon, Michael Farris, William Carter, Susan Lamb, Samuel Francis and Vincent Bruno. All have or had leadership ties to klan, militia, or nazi groups, but let’s not judge them by such narrow parameters.

Buchanan is America’s prominent defender of accused nazis. The most famous case was that of John Demanjuk, accused of being the infamous death camp guard Ivan the Terrible. Others include Karl Linnas (Buchanan personally appealed to Ed Meese, then Attorney General, to block his deportation to the Soviet Union); Klaus Barbie (Buchanan did not oppose his trial, but argued the US should not have apologized to France for sheltering Barbie after WWII); Arthur Rudolph, a rocket scientist involved in slave labor and severe punishments at a German rocket factory (Buchanan argued his confession was a "lie" while acknowledging he was a "nominal member of the Nazi party and of the SA until 1934"); and Frank Walus.

Buchanan is also a Holocaust denier of first order. In the course of defending Demanjuk, he argued that charges of complicity in mass murder using Treblinka's gas chambers were false because the gas chambers didn't work. In 1990 he wrote that diesel engines, the exhaust from which was used in the Treblinka gas chambers, "do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. ... Demanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill." A well-researched article by Jamie McCarthy identified Buchanan's source as the July 1988 issue of the German American Information and Education Association, a holocaust revisionist group. That issue goes on to say "the German people were 'Holocausted' after WW II, especially by the Bolsheviks, originally a Jewish/Zionist movement." Buchanan also tried to explain away death camp eyewitnesses by saying "Since the war, 1,600 medical papers have been written on 'he Psychological and Medical Effects of the Concentration Camps on Holocaust Survivors. This so-called Holocaust Survivor Syndrome involves group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics."

Buchanan's columns have run in the Liberty Lobby's Spotlight newspaper, a front group for the American Nazi movement. In a column sympathetic to ex-klansman David Duke, Buchanan chided the Republican Party for overreacting to Duke and his nazi "costume":
"Take a hard look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks." This is from a man who defended apartheid by denouncing the notion that "white rule of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did not believe this." He also wrote, "We are in the process of destroying the one working economy [in lower Africa -- South Africa] -- because it doesn't adopt an idiotic 'One man, one vote' regimen." The right to vote is idiotic? Wow!

Here's Pat on women's rights: "Rail as they will about 'discrimination,' women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism." He also enlightens us with, "The real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers, they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer." I wonder if Pat thinks rape is just tough love.

Some conservative politicians and Pat's fellow journalists have shunned his more obvious fascist beliefs, but they fall short of stating the obvious - Pat's a grinning psychopath. People need to be judged by their words and actions, not the excuses we make in the name of objectivity and fairness. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then Pat's a neo-neo-nazi. Pat recently advocated bringing back racial quotas in top law schools to keep down the number of Jews attending. His colleagues in the media brushed it off as typical Pat. Cowards, hypocrites and assholes all. 

Boo Hoo

One of my favorite insights comes from Winston Churchill, who said something like “If you’re not a liberal by twenty you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative by forty you have no head.” I see it to mean that as you grow older your view of the world becomes less blindly optimistic and more pragmatic. This isn’t me saying conservative is better or worse than liberal. Excluding fanatics, our opinions move back and forth between liberal and conservative, depending on the situation. This reminds me of another great insight, "A Liberal is a Conservative who’s been arrested, and a Conservative is a Liberal who’s been mugged." Kids, supported by their parents, have the luxury to see the world as it should be, whereas adults, with bills to pay and kids of their own to take care of, experience life more as it really is. Liberal idealism is great but first and foremost adults are bound to the constraints of their obligations, which leans toward conservatism, which doesn’t mean you automatically become a Republican but my point is made.

I’m 38 and have seen my own politics change drastically, as with most people I know. My beliefs are all over the map and my opinions change as situations change. I’m consistent in the inconsistency of what I believe. I have a core set of ethical beliefs I don’t practice hypocritically. One thing I’ve noticed is that my sympathy for those who mess up their own lives diminishes by the day. There’s too much unfairness, suffering and nihilistic, existentialist bulls—t in the world for me to care if someone meets their doom via something stupid, dangerous or illegal on their part. Everyone has it tough and everyone has a good sob story. Boo F—king Hoo.

I love it when criminals say they’re sorry –only after they get caught. Ass-saving insincerity makes me both angry and amused. Ravers recently took a vehicular flight off a cliff after eating either very good or very bad acid. I’m supposed to find this tragic? I’m sorry for their parents but not for the new dead kids on the block. Sometimes s—t happens when you send your mind on a hippie holiday. A child shot in a drive-by is a tragedy. Drug related deaths are just how s—t happens. Yeah, yeah, not everybody can be strong and it’s a product of their environment. Yadda yadda. You may not know this but it’s tough all over. Children go to bed hungry and the mentally ill are allowed to roam the streets as homeless people.

Last week skydivers jumped off the free-fall cliff at El Capitan to protest a ban that makes it illegal to jump off El Capitan. It’s illegal because it’s dangerous. One fell to her death when her parachute failed to open. As Pee Wee Herman might say, “mmmmm, irony!” She was a grandmother and I don’t celebrate her death, but come on, isn’t that poetic, like the punchline of a good Twilight Zone episode?

In another local story, three Orange County high schoolers stole Halloween decorations from lawns, you know, for laffs, and in the process a homeowner shot one dead in the head. I won’t go into details but let’s just say the old guy should have kept his finger off the trigger and the high school kids were by all accounts belligerent assholes. Were they looking for trouble? Definitely. Did one of them deserve to die? No, but sometimes things go tragically wrong. Sometimes when you look for trouble you find it. In the media, the kid’s friends brought up the load of crap rhetorical point that a human being was killed over a $5 decoration. Everyone I asked had the same response: why was he trespassing and stealing property in the first place?

Common sense turns over in its grave whenever a story appears about a robbery victim killed for the few dollars in his wallet. As if that’s the value of human life. Nonsense. It’s not as if the robber would only take $3 if the wallet was stuffed with hundreds. Criminals steal as much as they can and they’re sorry only when they’re caught, which helps grease the wheels of plea-bargaining.

Yes, I’m a cold, heartless bastard who mocks the weakness and ill fortune of others. One day I’ll get mine and nobody will feel sorry for me. Boo Hoo for me. In the meantime, I’ll just keep on laughing or shaking my head when I hear about dumb stunts that go wrong and acts of self-destruction that go too far. If you can’t or won’t differentiate between those in real need and people who’ll play you for a fool every time, that’s your problem. Boo F king Hoo. 

 Revenge Of The Nerds, Part VII

On Tuesday, the anniversary of Hitler's birthday, two teenage uber-losers walked into their high school outside of Denver and systematically slaughtered thirteen of their classmates with enough explosives and weapons to arm a gang war. Members of a loosely knit group of Goth-Techno-video game geeks calling themselves "The Trenchcoat Mafia", they sought revenge against classmates, especially jocks, for whatever hazing they went through for dressing in long black coats, painting their nails black and acting as socially competent as the Unibomber on a bad beard lice day. Nerd culture has grown increasingly violent in the last decade through shockingly violent video role playing games and easy access to weapons. These two mental defects committed suicide at the end of their spree, which consisted of a lot of laughing as they killed and killed again. I'm so happy they're dead. Assholes. There was nothing we could have learned from them if they lived. Their words would have all been bulls--t. I hope they're frying for eternity in the next life. Buh bye!

Evidence now points to the probability that others helped plan and execute the massacre that was planned for almost a year ago. Give these fuggs a speedy trial and then capital punish their sorry asses. fugg their futures, fugg their pasts, fugg their excuses. There's nothing to be learned from them either. Insane minds yield only nonsense and psychotic, amoral minds tell you anything they think you want to hear.

A while back I wrote about another of these nerd-rage losers. This piece is mostly about how events like this bring out every asshole in the world who thinks they have easy answers to all that's wrong with the world. It's also about how I think we should encourage these zeros to kill themselves instead of taking out their problems on others.

The Right Wing point to this tragedy as proof it's all the fault of Liberals. Their answer is a religious police state. Liberals blame this on the NRA and a Conservative culture that is racist, sexist, homophobic and all the other "ists" & "ics" into infinity. Their answer is the Utopian fantasy of pure Socialism. There are no easy answers. No organization with an office and a letterhead sees shades of gray and they don't want you to see them either. What they have to sell are simple, black & white answers to very complicated issues.

You like simple answers, don't you? You like clearly defined heroes and villains, correct? That's what organized political and religious groups give you - simple answers for simple minds. That's the hook they use to get your money. It's all a game of moving to the edges of extremism in the name or rightness and power. In the long run it's a war against those who don't agree with you while real issues and real people are allowed to rot.

The world is a fugged up place and it's not getting any better. If not for the fanatics on both sides maybe we could come up with workable solutions, but it's not going to happen. Reasonable people can get together and at least try to come up with game plans to make society less of a breading ground for pathetic nobodys who make sport out of murder, but the organized Left and Right would never give an inch and let that happen. For them it's all about money, power and blind ideology. To the Left everyone is a faultless victim while the Right sees a godless sinner in every soul.

I often run out of patience with the naivete of Liberals and am always amazed at the levels of sheer ignorance and hatred on the part of Conservatives. I think the NRA are assholes. I really do. There's no way we can ever live in a gun-free society because they do exist, people want them and in a violent world it is sometimes necessary to carry a weapon. Guns don't cause violence - people cause violence - but the NRA sees as its goal the day when every single person in the country is carrying a loaded weapon. They see the life & death power of guns as something like a god-given right. There's nothing more sick and dangerous than a man who reads into the bible the right to own and use firearms. The NRA is saying the shootings could have been prevented if there were others with guns in the school. My eyes roll around my head like a slot machine when I ponder that Wild West sentiment.

Very quickly, here's some things I think are lacking: Morality - Yes, I think it can be taught in a secular fashion but the Religious Right won't allow anything less than fire & brimstone Christianity. The Left is too afraid to "judge" behavior and that renders them useless. Violent Video Games - Yes, I know, kids have played cops and robbers for generations, but today's games are shockingly graphic and these images are sent into the brain with mind numbing speed. In A Clockwork Orange such violence is used to make Malcom MCDowell's character incapable of violence. I think in reality it desensitizes the soul to the consequences of violence and turns it into a game. Music - I always joke that Techno is Disco for really pissed off white guys. Looks like I was right. Maybe kids shouldn't be listening to music that advocates as much rape, torture and nihilistic violence as it does. In the old days kids had their own things and adults had theirs. Today there's no line and it's having an obviously bad effect on impressionable psyches. The Internet - Letting kids see XXX porn is somehow an issue of "freedom of expression", and recipes for explosives are available all over. How this is not destructive needs to be explained to me.

Did you ever notice that it's white people who become serial killers, and the latest rash of rampages have been by white kids from middle class homes? I think the answers are to found in these kids' entertainment. The military uses games like DOOM to teach soldiers to react instinctively and to also desensitize them to killing. I'm not making this up. Techno culture is similarly mind-numbing, violent and amoral. When I hear a rep from the video game industry blow off any connection between their product and human behavior I yell at the radio, "You lying fugg! You paid shill for a fugging corporation! If someone paid you enough you'd express the exact opposite opinion."

Punk doesn't make people violent. Violent people may find an avenue of self-expression of existing hatreds through Punk music, but for the most part Punks are cowards who talk a good Anarchy but are mostly guilty of vandalism and blind-side punches.

You know, Freedom is great but it can be a means to our own destruction. Control is needed to keep people's worst compulsions in check, but it can lead to fascism. There's not enough money around for the Left to provide everyone with the self-esteem and nurturing they need, and there's not enough resources to effectively enforce the religious police state the Right would love to see in place. I don't have all the answers. Neither does any group out there telling you they do. All they want is your money and your fanaticism. You'll hear everyone and everything blamed for this, and the "warning signs" will include everything from graphic comic books to not smiling enough. Nothing will be learned and nothing will be accomplished.

Excuse me if I sound fatalistic, but we should encourage potential rampaging losers like our boys in Colorado to seek help, or as a last option kill themselves before they it out on others. We should be encouraging nazis, the KKK, doomsday cults, and others to consider the noble suicide option instead of acting out their rage in public. Not everyone can be saved from "society" and their own worst impulses. Does Society fail people? All the time. Can we do better as a society to make people's lives better? Sure we can, but that doesn't turn every hate-filled monster into a belligerent child or a wounded puppy. We need to do what we can and also aggressively discourage those who would take out their problems on others to take it out on themselves instead.

Follow-Up On Columbine High School Hi-Jinks

It's been a few weeks since two stool samples in Colorado took out their problems on their classmates. There's been endless hand-wringing and more stupidity than at a Gnome Crapsky. Let's rehash, shall we?

@@ In what has to be the asshat quote of the year, the lawyer for Mark Manes, the NRA poster boy who supplied a semiautomatic weapon used in the slaying, told reporters his client "...was horrified when it happened. I would like to say he has followed the path of integrity from the beginning." Therefore drug dealers are also horrified when their customers overdose and steal to support their habits.

@@ The S.W.A.T. teams on the scene were faulted for not sweeping in like Batman and Robin taking out the bad guys in an act of surgical precision. If reality came exclusively from movies and TV this might have been a legitimate complaint - but it isn't. I'd like to bitch-slap everyone who asked "Where were the heroes?"

@@ The media filled its diapers with other high school misfits who said they "understood" where the zeros were coming from. If you can see yourself doing the same thing, please, either get help or kill yourself before you take out your defective life on others. Don't ask anyone to relate to these monsters. High School is tough for most everyone, and it’s always been that way. The only thing new is an easy access to guns and a nihilistic, amoral and mind-numbing techno/video game culture that's created a new breed of mutant-nerd, soulless death machines.

@@ A few other teens were discovered to be planning similar slaughters. Put them so far back in jails theyl never see daylight again. Others have called in fake bomb scares to get out of classes and to be funny. Great. Schools should be like airports - mention a bomb or a gun and your ass gets taken out faster than you can cry mommy. Kick them out of school forever. Let them flip burgers for the rest of their clever lives. The world needs underpaid ditch-diggers too, you know. Zero tolerance is fine with me. Freedom's great up until the point it makes victims out of all of us.

@@ One of my favorite punk stereotypes went on display - the guy or gal who dresses and acts like a dangerous freak and then gets huffy when they're treated as a threat. On NPR I heard a "sensitive" youth, whose only crime is that he looks different, lament how nobody takes the time to find out the real person behind the self-mutilations and Road-Warrior accessories. The truth is..... it's nobody's responsibility to look past the outer monster to see the hurt puppy inside. Nobody has to make an effort to prove that what they see is not what they get. Who has the time? Who doesn't have their own lives and problems? If you look and act a certain way to express a political or cultural affiliation, don't beshocked when people accurately read the human billboard they see before them. It would be nice to have it both ways but most of the time you just can't. Boo fugging Hoo. 

 Loud and Proud

This isn’t about how I don’t understand why guys install stadium-sized speakers in their cars and drive around like they’re gods because the Snoopy Diggity Dogg you hear ten blocks away is blasting from their tin-boxes. This also isn’t about how I don’t understand why live music at shows has to be played at volumes that rip apart the inner ear. I assume it’s a macho thing from the more-is-better school. Why have an amp that goes to eleven when you build one that liquefies solid matter? This is about how I don’t understand why loud music is played in social situations where talking becomes nearly impossible.

Parties and bars are where you meet new people or hang out with old friends. The music is often so loud you have to yell to be heard. Why? What law says music has to be played as loud as possible no matter what that means to conversation - the reason you’re there in the first place? Is it the same asshole who mandates headliners at weekday shows can’t go on until midnight? Everybody yells and suffers hearing loss because it’s assumed dangerously loud music is the cornerstone of the rockin’ rock-n-roll lifestyle.

What inspired me to write this grumbling piece of old geezer vitriol? A few weeks ago I couldn’t get to sleep because of loud music from a party four houses down the street. I walked over in my slippers to take a look, and loud thumping Mexican music, which sounds like polka,  was blasting from the house like farts from a vegetarian. Above it all I heard the people inside screaming conversations at each other. They have to scream to be heard and I can’t sleep. Great. Like the line in the play “No Exit” says, “Hell is other people.” Rock on, dudes! Grumble, grumble…

[2007 update: Napster is long dead as a free service. I don’t know how they’re doing now as a pay-for-play service. Free downloading is still going strong, along with iTunes.]

 Napster And The Future Of Music Distribution

I Demand Free S--t !It's My Right !!!!

As expected, Napster had its hat handed to it in court. The judge has not written the final death warrant, and the court will probably allow it to operate until the technology is in place to turn the most popular and easiest to use filing sharing software into a pay service. As a show of good faith Napster will block up to a million songs, which nobody knows for sure if that means a million different songs or a million variations in spelling and request formats for the most popular acts on the Billboard charts. It sounds like an impossible task on a few days notice. Perhaps Napster has been compiling such a list for months, just in case. If so, that's an example of how dumb Napster is. Their service violates copyright law. Their excuse of "we just dig the hole, we don't push people into it" didn't impress anyone with even a week of law school training. 60 million Napster users use Napster because it's an easy way to get free music. There is no community as they claim. It's a free-for-all. It's looting.

The smart (and lucky) thing Napster did was partner with Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG), one of the five labels that control the record industry. Until recently they were united in their opposition of Napster. BMG CEO Thomas Middelhoff surprised even his own staff by breaking ranks and fraternizing with the enemy. What he saw, correctly, was the inevitable future of music distribution and Napster's huge established client base and technology track record. It's a smart recognition of the inevitability of change, and what may be a cheap investment in a company with great technology and bad management.

Napster creator Shawn Fanning is trotted out for the cameras as the poster boy for successful Gen X slackers, but his con-man uncle John Fanning controls 70% of the company and runs it like a boiler room swindle. The L.A. Times ran a great article on this scumbag. If and when Napster becomes a pay service in June, BMG will eat John Fanning and present management for lunch.

Here's how I would like to see music distributed, and how Napster could work as a pay service:

I believe strongly that brick and mortar stores are good for the community and the economy. They pay salaries, rent, and buy all the things you need to run a business, from computers to plastic bags. People love to shop and there's nothing like a real CD with artwork and liner notes on glossy paper. Here's where the old guys gripe about the larger canvas of vinyl LP covers. That war's lost. Sorry. CDs need to be more affordable and give more bang for the buck. The Lillingtons CD I picked up is only 24 minutes long! Hell, max it out with demos, a live show or video. It doesn't make a difference what. Make it something too big of a hassle to obtain on file-sharing programs. Make the product worth buying again. Record stores also need to hire more employees who aren’t pricks.

Major record labels and large record stores focus on top selling artists, and that's great as far as I'm concerned. It's not their place to educate the masses on what you and think is important. 90% of the general population are idiots to begin with, and the majors give them what they want. Supply creates demand and demand creates supply. It's a free country. What alternative music needs to do is present viable options for people who don’t like top-40 music. The DIY community must create and support itself. 90% of the DIY community is also useless, which means the entire brain trust for alternative anything is limited to 10% of 10%.

Indie record stores are run by poor people with dreams, and they need a better way to get more of the product that a hundred zines review and promote. The markup on music in all formats is slim, and a huge amount of product rots in bins and might as well be burned for heat. Indie music should be sold to indie stores on a modified consignment basis, with terms dictated based on the amount of product and length of consignment. If I win tonight's 82 million jackpot I'll set up an exchange between suppliers and stores requiring a bit of escrow from both.

Tower and Best Buy used to carry a decent selection of back catalog titles. They don’t anymore because on a square-foot basis that's not where the money is. That's where the internet can play a big part in educating consumers and making music affordable and easy to buy. Internet retailers list massive catalogs with decent pricing. CDnow.com is decent because you can listen to samples of many CDs. The All Music Guide (allmusic.com) is the internet's best information source on all styles of music. The reviews, cross-references and suggestions of similar bands are invaluable, and Napster should hook up with them if and when they become a pay service.

Major labels should support retailers by not making new and top sellers immediately available via computer download. Napster should service small labels with limited distribution, and the massive catalog of major titles you can't find in any store at any price. If they utilized the thrirty-second sample catalog of CDnow and the massive review and cross-reference library of the All Music Guide, Napster could be a phenomenal conduit of music and history to anyone with a computer.

Just some ideas to make you go "Huh?"  

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