Of Import: Punch & Judy

My hero Punch is a deformed, child-murdering, wife-beating sociopath who commits appalling acts of violence & cruelty upon all those around him & escapes with impunity. The terms punchline & slapstick come from the Punch & Judy shows of old. Unlike so many present-day characters, Punch can be taken up by anyone who wants to use him. He is part of our common western culture. Because of this, what might seem like a very simple character is imbued with layers & layers of historical & cultural resonance. Despite having grown up in Oakland, California, i managed to see quite a few Punch & Judy shows. I honestly have no idea how this happened.

"In my opinion the Street Punch is one of those extravagant reliefs from the realities of life which would lose its hold upon the people if it were made moral and instructive. I regard it as quite harmless and as an outrageous joke which no one in existence would think of regarding as an incentive to any kind of action or as a model for any kind of conduct. It is possible, I think, that one secret source of pleasure very generally derived from this performance is the satisfaction the spectator feels in the circumstances that likenesses of men and women can be so knocked about without any pain or suffering." ~Charles Dickens

Punch & Judy & Christmas. My heart is swelling with good thoughts of childhood.

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Planting the Seeds of Revolution

In 1997 i played drums for the Baltimore based Peace Punk band A//Political. Even then, when i was still marginally towing the leftist line, it was a funny mix. Musically it wasn't, i'm a great Punk Rock drummer, faster than anyone out there as far as i know. Lyrically, the whole Peace Punk thing is not where i'm at in any way shape or form. Peace Punks are like Skinheads, in that they are programmed to fight each other. Peace Punks fight with political theory, which is more boring than fighting with boots & chains if you ask me. It's also more frustrating. Anyhow, as far as i am concerned, there is nothing more obnoxious than someone telling you how to think or what to do or any of that stuff, that is my connection to anarchism. You want to tell me what to do? Fuck off. Period. Peace Punks are essentially Stalinists in smelly trousers who don't have the balls to actually create the nightmare state which will insure that everyone is mentally healthy, because they know that a nightmare state is a nightmare, so they end up in this cyclical mind-fuck of depression caused by their undeniable failure as a cultural phenomenon, but they have a fetish for the idea of Peace Punk & so they stick to it. One of my other biggest peeves is people who are always being oppressed by everything. A//Political have a song called "Stop Thinking & Pogo" which i suppose is a criticism of the Punks who are into Punk because they want to try to have some fun. They also have a song called Punk is a Ghetto, which is true, but it's a self-inflicted ghetto. Choice. Anyhow, i just wanted to write a bit about this, because i just saw Angel, the founder & lead-guitarist & co-vocalist for A//Political up in Portland. He doesn't like me anymore because of my views & general demeanor i imagine, as i don't tow the Anarcho Communist line & think all of that politics shit is a waste of time anyhow. They had a song called, It's Not About Politics, It's About Life, a sentiment, which i agreed with completely, but once again, friendships were discarded over doctrinaire disagreements more than i've ever seen in that little world. I've known similar people who i thought were friends over the years, who will choose their political convictions over friendship every time. I think they're cowards & possibly the worst kind of people on the planet.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD & READ MORE HERE... That's a link to the demo i'm playing drums on. I did some song arranging as well.
In the end, it comes down to friendship & character. Here's a lyrical transcription of their song, "Stop Thinking & Pogo", a real anti-fun anti-culture bolshevik call to arms. Reminds of the time we went to go protest a Shriner Circus because it had animals, i was just along for the ride. These black-clad anarcho-commies were handing out propaganda to all these nice little families who just wanted to see the circus. When the head of the circus came out in full clown get-up to plead with them to leave, & i saw the looks of dread on the parents face as the "Punks" handed out PETA coloring books to their kids, i knew i was on the wrong side.

When we went up to Portland to see the Entartete Kunts show & take the boys to the zoo, there was a large mob of PETA people protesting the zoo having elephants. Once again, freakily dressed anti-traditional types trying to ruin the fun of lots of regular old working-class families. These people are the shock-troops of the New World Order, their job is to destroy tradition & to temporarily fill the gap with bureaucratic psychotherapy culture. They are out to weaken us, to take away our traditions, to destabilize the basic organizing unit of tradition, the family & everything else that keeps the general mass from being totally dependent on the state.

The seeds of revolution had definitely been planted in me, i left Baltimore fully understanding that i did not want to have anything to do with the left.

My Anarchist Problem by Bob Black

"Anarchists may make lousy comrades but they're excellent customers."
As i have faced growing up & becoming responsible while at the same time trying to reconcile my own identity or at least leanings as a Punk Rocker & as an Anarchist, i have made many conclusions quietly & to myself. Old Punks & Anarchists can only maintain their involvement in the scene through some kind of role as a merchant. Anarchists sell books. Punks sell music. This then revealed another obvious but strangely profound fact: Anarchists read books, Punks listen to music & these are the central points to both identities. I never got into Bob Black because of my superficial gleaning of his "The Abolition of Work", which i have profound gut reactions against. Even though i essentially agree with the idea, & i appreciate the swipe at Marxists & there are alot of cherry quotes like this, "All industrial (and office) workers are employees and under the sort of surveillance which ensures servility." I have also been exposed to this essay's fruits. Anyhow, this particular essay "My Anarchist Problem" makes some excellent observations on anarchism which i found to be wholly comforting in their agreeability.

MY ANARCHISM PROBLEM
by Bob Black

Anarchism has always been problematic for me. It helped me to arrive at an unconditionally anti-statist, anti-capitalist perspective by the mid-1970's, and yet my first public statement from that perspective explained why I did not identify with anarchism. By dictionary definition, I am an anarchist, but the dictionary is only the beginning of wisdom. It cannot bestow coherence where contradictions abound or reduce differences to a unity by calling them by the same name.

Once an idea is launched into history it takes more and more of its meaning from its experience. Revivalist calls to return to first principles prove the point, for they are history too. And just as no Protestant sect has ever really recreated the primitive Church, no subsequent anarchist fundamentalism ever did or could reenact pure anarchism on Bakuninist, Kropotkinist or any other models. Anything which has entered importantly into the practice of the anarchists has a place in the anarchist phenomenon-in-process, whether or not it is logically deducible from the idea or even contradicts it. Sabotage, vegetarianism, assassination, pacifism, free love, co-operatives and strikes are all aspects of anarchism which their anarchist detractors try to dismiss as un-anarchist.

To call yourself an anarchist is to invite identification with an unpredictable array of associations, an ensemble which is unlikely to mean the same thing to any two people, including any two anarchists. (The most predictable is the least accurate: the bomb-thrower. But anarchists have thrown bombs and some still do.)

The trouble with anarchists is that they think they have agreed on what they all oppose -- the state -- whereas all they have agreed on is what to call it. You could make a good case that the greatest anarchists were nothing of the sort. Godwin wanted the state to wither away, but gradually, and not before the progress of enlightenment prepared people to do without it. Which seems to legitimate really existing statism and culminate in the banality that if things were different they would not be the same. Proudhon, who served in the French national legislature, in the end arrived at a theory of "federalism" which is nothing but the devolution of most state power on local governments. Kropotkin's free communes may not be nation-states but they sure sound like city-states. Certainly no historian would regard as anything but ludicrous Kropotkin's claim that medieval cities were anarchist.

READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!

Manowar - Gloves of Metal

If you want to know what this is all about.

Hear the pounding army of the night. The call of metal summons us tonight
And gather we on this site. To behold the power and the might
We wear leather, we wear spikes, we rule the night.
Off with the lights, hear the screams. See the banging heads awaken to their dreams.
The sound of metal so loud it cracks the beams.
Played by warriors called the Metal Kings.
A hero's welcome for those who heed the call.
We are together, we are all. With hands high fists fill the air
Against the world we stand. Hands high forever we'll be there,
Gloves of Metal rule tonight. Yea. A hero's welcome for those who heed the call.
We are together, we are all. With hands high fists fill the air
Against the world we stand. Hands high forever we'll be there,
Gloves of Metal rule tonight. Yea.
Leather, Metal, Spikes and Chains
Gloves of Metal raised to show the brave.
Into the darkness march the armies of the night. Bound by metal we live the fight.
We wear leather, we wear spikes, we rule the night
With hands high fists fill the air. Against the world we stand.
Hands high forever we'll be there, Gloves of Metal rule tonight. Yea

Apocalypse Punx & Bird-faced Goblin gits.

John the Cook has put together the Apocalypse Punx Guide to Food Preservation. Unlike most Punk oriented cook-books, this one isn't vegan, because after the bomb, no one is vegan, believe you me. I've come to suspect that promoting veganism amongst the punks is a way to keep them weak either way. Anyhow, i knocked out this cover for the pamphlet which i am very excited to see in the fall.

www.myspace.com/apgfpzine
Motörhead - I Got Mine

This is the soundtrack for today! I found a straight-razor at the flea market. Look out! Katie got me Van Halen & Def Leppard cloissoine pins

No Age Can Destroy It

Directions, before reading this post, click on the youtube video below of Emperor doing "I am the Black Wizards". This is the theme music for your visit to this blog. Okay, now you can start reading.

"No age will escape my wrath. I travel through time & I return to the future. I gather wisdom now lost. I visit again the eternally ancient caves."
I turned 33 this June 7th. Jesus Christ was crucified at 33, i imagine that this was because he had fully developed his amazing techniques for being a total pain in the ass & the powers that be decided to get rid of him. Of course, killing Christ transformed him from a man into something much more than a man. Anyhow, i realized at some point recently that i had a major Christ complex when i was in high school... Catholic high school. I most have been possessed. Anyhow, Jesus would have definitely not done well in Catholic school either! But now, now that i'm 33 i think Jesus is quite the foolish fellow. I still suffer from prophetic drives, i have the bizarre urge to travel to the top of a mountain & hole myself away in a little shack scribbling away at my Great Work... but either way, i am always spreading my philosophy wherever i go, regardless of whether it is apparent or not. At 33, all of this is definitely burbling out of me at a greater volume than before & i have made an agreement with myself, or is it my other self, to turn that very volume up to 11 & blow out the fucking amplifiers. Goblinism is in the ascendant. I'm quite sure that i don't want to drive this car off the cliff into symbolic existence, but i'm pretty sure i'm going to be close to the edge this year.
Fun reading on the double-headed eagle.

White Dwarf #1

It doesn't entirely sit right with me that one of my favorite magazines of all time is White Dwarf. This is partially because of the same uncomfortable relationship i have with the world of fantasy & gaming, but these transgressions are redeemed because of WHY i am interested in the world of fantasy & the vehicles that fantasy uses to be expressed in the real world. Just as in the previous Varg Vikernes & John Blanche posts, the world of fantasy is my idealism. It isn't a perfect world, in fact, it is made richer by the types of nasty things that lurk within, but it is a much more romantic & meaningful world than the world in which we live. I spent a while trying to live in the real world, i always try, i'm always making sure i've got a firm footing on the soil of reality, but it is never satisfying. I'm not sure if this is right or wrong, but it's the way it is, & it's the way it has always been for me. The goal is to merge the two, obviously many of the aspects of the fantastic world are impossible, however, alot of them aren't. My dream of having a walled roadhoouse out in the countryside to go drink at & then crash in a simple, unadorned room. Or space travel! Space piracy! These things are all possible. I'm increasingly feeling that i owe it to myself & my sons & you to bring these things into reality. Fantastic games & art & music are the beginning, they are inspirational seeds or tastes of what we could have. Here's White Dwarf #1 in PDF form if you weren't lucky enough to procure an issue for yourself on a raiding mission long ago. Thanks to the characters at The Gnome's Lair for this one!

Entartete Kunts III: Metal & Punk Underground Art show.

ACHTUNG!

ENTARTETE KUNTS returns to Portland in June 2009! The third annual underground art exhibit curated by Dennis Dread explores the intersection of imagery/sound and celebrates the incendiary art of metal and punk without a trace of irony. "Entartete Kunts” is a bastardization of the German term “degenerate art” and a snide reference to the 1937 Nazi purging of all art deemed objectionable by "Der Führer". An unfortunate pun but strangely appropriate for this gathering of unrepentant iconoclasts who stand boldly "outside" in every way. Entartete Kunts is in fact a very special exhibition that assembles some of the most devoted artists from around the world for a rare glimpse into a thriving and still largely renegade culture. Negative space? This is WAR!

SUPPORT REAL UNDERGROUND ART!

The exhibition will be on display from June 4th through June 30th at The Life Gallery in downtown Portland, Oregon with an official Artist Reception on Friday, June 19. Many of the artists will be in attendance and DJ’s will be blasting vintage vinyl into the Witching Hour! Our allies at The Life Gallery have made special arrangements and will not take any percentage of sales from this show. That means if the artists sell their work, the artists keep all the money. This sort of deal is unheard of in the "art world". So come out for the Artist Reception June 19th and BUY ART! You’ll walk away with a piece of history knowing you did your part to support creative resistance in this age of desperate conformity, impotent angst, and just plain old boring decency.

CHECK OUT THE WHOLE KILLER LINE UP INCLUDING CHARACTERS LIKE NICK BLINKO, S. CLAY WILSON, AWAY FROM VOIVOD, NECROLORD, ROB "BARON" MILLER, DENNIS DREAD & A WHOLE LOT MORE! THIS IS THE ONLY ART SHOW THAT I ENDORSE AT THE MOMENT.