A list of random things coupled with occasional commentary. Perhaps more to come. Perhaps not.
1) Sick Fuck is probably the best band of 2018. Ask around.
2) My computer died mysteriously and I got it running on a Sandisk 120 GB flash drive using Ubuntu 18. I tried for weeks to install Windows, but since my HD apparently doesn’t exist anymore and the box that carried the Installation Key no longer exists, it was an impossible task. Like I said, I tried everything imaginable for weeks. So, if you enjoy this diatribe, thank Sandisk and Ubuntu for making it possible.
3) Boston hip hop may be at the vanguard as far as non-binary artists are concerned – and there is nothing I can do about it – but Krooked P was at it 10 years ago and no one cared. Nothing can be done to change it, except buying the Janeiro tapes from Analog Underground in Providence. & the other punk place which also has a shop in Boston*. I can’t remember what it’s called because they refused to sell any more tapes until the older one’s sold which is why HDCLNR was free…
* Armageddon Shop.
Anyway, if you see a guy with feathers in his hair eating out of the trash pause for a moment to reflect that he is probably richer than you and ask him to spit hot fire. I made his tapes and supported the bum for years the least you can do is acknowledge his existence. But, last I heard he has retired and is living in the deserts of Arizona. Why? “Because 1) I need to be alone and 2) I can’t stand these people. I’m retiring.”
4) Alex Jones getting deplatformed is treacherous, but he doesn’t even care. I started watching Alex in 2006 when he had a black curtain as a backdrop and I was fascinated. Know thy enemy, or something. I wrote to him countless times warning that his shenanigans were going to get him into serious trouble. Then he got in with Roger Stone – Mr. Happy Hands – and all hell broke loose. Everyone said Trump couldn’t get elected. Impossible. A joke. Jedi mind tricks don’t really work, I guess. Overconfidence is a real turn-off. At least it used to be. Or maybe it never was. I don’t know. I like Alex, though. But, I know him. He scares people. But I know a lot of scary people. I try to tell the scary people I know to tone it down. More often than not, they can’t. It’s who they are.
When you spend all your time trying to be an intellectual you lose track of what is actually happening in the world. The world is full of scary people. They aren’t going anywhere. What’s that saying, “There are no strangers, just friends you haven’t met yet.” It’s sort of like that. Scary friends. Ignoring them just makes them angry. People, when they really get to know me and peel back the layers of persona start to realize just how horrifying I really am. And that is where the breakthroughs happen. Anyway, Lady K spent something like $600 on Alex’s products this month and I’m infuriated.
“I said get an iodine and a water purifier!”
“But it’s a 360 win…” She scares me some times.
5) “Artificial Intelligence” is probably monitoring everything we do to tailor culture to what it thinks we want, so be careful. Or don’t. Just be so bizarre that you help introduce the random factor and never repeat anything you hear in spite of the hivemind. As Anton LaVey used to say, “It was said a sucker is born every minute, but now it is probably closer to every second.” He died 20 years ago, and now it’s probably every millisecond.
6) I’ve been listening to a lot of interviews from the 60s with revolutionary types, and the greatest soundbite is definitely the line, “Don’t be a dummy.” Dummy. That isn’t an insult you hear much these days. As a test of 5) start calling people Dummy instead of shithead or asshole, and encourage your friends to say it, as well, and see if it starts appearing elsewhere. A real lame Burroughsian experiment.
7) I don’t have the internet so I’ve had to frequent places with free Wifi a lot. It’s actually wonderful in a really inconvenient, frustrating, way. Sometimes connections are 2 MB/s other times 10 KB/s and there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I’ve gone on Archive.org and downloaded a bunch of interviews and books. I am a fan of subversive, incendiary, material – hence 4) – and archive is a treasure trove:
—Leary’s audio archive. Close to 50 interviews/lectures/spoken word pieces/audio books all numbers with no information. “Leary A-71”, etc. I’ve spent the past month listening to them and giving them titles. For personal consumption, of course. Also, Diary Of A Hope Fiend can be found and it is interesting. Eldridge Cleaver tries contacting North Korea, China and Russia for Leary’s asylum and no one wants Leary. Leary, though sympathetic toward Cleaver, expresses a profound sense of sorrow. Revolutionaries are disposable, according to Bakunin, and must accept this as a necessary facet of insurrection.
— Occult Theocracy; a weird book of obscure secret societies and revolutionary movements of the past. I feel like I heard Sun Ra mention it a long time ago and the bit about Manzini is fascinating. Outdated, but great. Like the Great Controversy Between Christ And Satan. Basically, it says the Catholic Church is the Great Whore of Babylon. Like I said, I appreciate subversive, incendiary material.
— Michael Aquino’s The Church of Satan .pdf. About 1,000 pages of interesting material. I spent a week with it. If you can find his weird Star Wars book it is fascinating. He took it off the internet a few years ago. It was free. Paul Kantner is the protagonist.
— Robert Anton Wilson’s Prometheus Rising. It details Leary’s 8 Circuit Model of Consciousness and has some nice bits. Cosmic Trigger is interesting too. But, Prometheus Rising is great because it has bits about people turning the body into asses – “Move your ass!” – and everything in existence into shit – “Do this shit!”. It will make you think twice about calling someone an asshole or shithead. Try dummy instead…
— Radio Free America. Dave Emory and Nip Tuck. Is that the guy’s real name? Either way, there are some fascinating programs. The stuff on P2, the Nazi-Aerospace connections and MKULTRA are something else. Like Mae Brussel, but recorded in the 80s instead of the 70s. Speaking of Mae, her Frank Sinatra JFK program is great. I never knew Sinatra was married to Rosemary. Maybe it had something to do with why he hated hippies so much. Her Manson program is worth investigation.
— Old skate magazines and porn from 70s. Color Climax 1 has interracial stuff with Beatles posters in the background. I don’t know why I find that so amusing. Something about Ringo with a dove on his finger overseeing the debauchery. You may find a Dali interview in Screw if you’re lucky… I know I was.
— Freedom of Information files on the SDS and Cointelpro/Black Panthers. There are also interviews with Boston Draft Dodgers which are boring but may be of interest to others. The FBI files are, in total, thousands of pages so prepare. An example: For the 1968 DNC protest a lot of people were going to Chicago. People would need places to stay. A call was put out in underground papers and through various groups via posters. The FBI caught wind of these – as if they didn’t have informants – and responded by sending in hundreds of fictional addresses so people would get to Chicago and go to places that didn’t exist. I didn’t come across anything about giving armaments to Panthers, or anything about supplying them with cocaine. I could share my thoughts on this matter, but you’d just think the old man is telling tales.
— Any of these things are better than scrolling through instagram or youtube for 3 hours. Reading is good. Even looking at the weird Beatles porn is good. You’re an anthropologist now.
8) I still need to find information on Mel Lyman. The Trussels site is great but, as far as I know, there is only one interview from the Newport Folk festival and all the group does is insult the cameraman because he doesn’t have the right starsign.
“Oh, a LEO… I knew it…” Something like that.
The History of Rhythm & Blues program must be somewhere. There must be hours of interviews. It’s like Lyman was just swept away. Everyone knows about the Grateful Dead. What about Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. The Kweskin Jugband practically had the same repertoire.
I bought Kweskin records at In Your Ear several months ago. All that they had. I never thought I would find them. Guarded as treasures somewhere. Maybe $20 for 3.
“Why are these so cheap?”
“Because no one cares…”
“No one cares?”
“No one knows.”
“Why?”
“Think about it.”
9) Now that marijuana has been legalized I think it’s time we get down to brass tacks and legalize Euthanasia. Finally a pet cause YOU can get behind. Because, after all, pro-choice goes both ways. Chambers was a visionary when he wrote in “The King In Yellow”; there should be a suicide machine on every block. Imagine a world where everyone is happy and wants to be alive. It would eliminate the “overpopulation issue” and put an end to millions of miserable lives. The greatest boon our society has ever known.
Sure, people are suffering and always have suffered but isn’t it immoral to force them to end their misery in the most traumatic ways possible? By hanging, gunshot, and violently stabbing themselves… They aren’t crazy. They just want to die. They are in pain and it is their right to die. They didn’t ask for this. If that makes them crazy, then I am a madman. And proud to be a madman!
The Legalize Euthanasia Movement is perhaps the only reasonable and humane movement in existence. And if you would accuse me of social darwinism or some nefarious motive I pledge that if we succeed – nay, when we succeed – I will be the first to step into the Liberation Machine. Yes, you read that correctly. Because I am not going away until the fight has been won. And it will be won! I will fight until our cause is victorious Brother and Sisters, or whatever you happen to BE today! Misers of the World! Unite! Untie your noose once and for all! Unite! Liberation is nigh!
Happy New Year!
