I Am the World that Hides...

Still falls the rain,
the veils of darkness shroud the blackened trees,
which contorted by some unseen violence,
shed their tired leaves,
and bend their boughs towards a grey earth of severed bird wings.

Among the grasses,
poppies bleed before a gesticulating death,
and young rabbits,
born dead in traps,
stand motionless,
as though guarding the silence that surrounds and threatens to engulf all those that would listen.

Mute birds,
tired of repeating yesterdays terrors,
huddle together in the recesses of dark corners,
heads turned from the dead,
black swan that floats upturned in a small pool in the hollow.

There emerges from this pool a faint sensual mist,
that traces its way upwards to caress the chipped feet of the headless martyr's statue,
whose only achievement was to die to soon,
and who couldn't wait to lose.

The cataract of darkness form fully,
the long black night begins,
yet still,
by the lake a young girl waits,
unseeing she believes herself unseen,
she smiles,
faintly at the distant tolling bell,
and the still falling rain.

My Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Cacti of the Western Deserts

The Hello Kitty Chainsaw

... and while on the subject of fucked-up artifacts.

Angry Chair

That's just fucked up.

Frozen Niagara Falls, 1911

Radio Pirate Artichoke: I'll Cut Your Pretty Face

I Fell in Love with the Moon

Santa's Little Self-harmers

(Almost) Nobody lives in Kadykchan

Kadykchan was a tin-mining community before the colapse of the Soviet Union and a mining accident that killed some people. A town of around 10,000 people now barely reaches 300.

More heebie-jeebies-giving pictures after the jump.

Radio Pirate Artichoke: The Immaculate Ejaculate

Put a Fence Around This

Okay. Let's get some things straight. This is going to be a rant about intellectual property, copyright, filesharing etc. If you like the first two and have "moral" or otherwise issues with the last, go on, get the fuck out of here.




















Cool, now that we got rid of the retards. I hate the fact that all proponents of intellectual property base their otherwise idiotic and very easily countered arguments on their own cynicism. I read this expose of this dickhead on the website of an artist that I really like going on about how the reason we're downloading free music is because "people want as much free shit as possible". Go fuck yourself dude. This guy claims that the human desire for resonance with the natural world as expressed through music in combination with another deep seated desire, that of not being exploited - because if working to produce shit you can't afford isn't exploitation then I don't what is - is "really" just plain ole greed. Oh you great delver of the human soul, tell me more, tell me why I'm stealing shit I can't afford.
Tell me oh white male privileged one, tell me, why do I do the things I do? Why do I not get a jobby, work all day and then at the end of the month dish it all out for the records I like? Why?
It's true that if you can put a fence around something then you can sell it, and recording music has done just that. It's put a fence around something seemingly elusive, human inspiration. But the insult here isn't the fact that people want to get paid for something they've created, even though we can argue that they are most definitely asking to be paid much more than they deserve (you didn't create that music in a vacuum dickhead, you had influences, are you paying them royalties? no didn't think so). What gets me is the notion that they're special. That somehow, this "artistic and creative" caste of people deserve better than the rest of us "labourers" and clearly their precious gem of creation is worth a significant fraction of our sacrificed time, space and health.
This person then goes on to, in his mind at least, take the piss out of the Pirate Bay because they ask for donations at the end of their documentary after having dissed money and it's corrupting influence or whatever. Goes to show how the privileged middle-class mindset works. "If there's money in there somewhere you are no better than us, come wallow in the pigshit and don't speak out of turn."
Now, I'm not going to try and counter all the supposed arguments he uses in his attack of free sharing of content which is thinly veiled as "starting a dialogue", whatever bitch, the ones I covered are enough for now, and they have all pretty much been countered by people nicer, smarter and bigger than this twat. I will say this though, it has been PROVEN that free sharing of content doesn't harm the capitalist system, which is a shame if you ask me. At best it helps us get some of our lost lives back, it means now we can spend some of our shitty salaries on more creative things than DVDs and records that we will watch adn listen at most once. It means that we can start making content ourselves and threaten this creative elite that trembles at the thought of its precious work exposed in the eyes and ears of someone that DIDN'T PAY.

Let me close with a call for people to continue sharing content and put their efforts, time and money into more creative outlets. Make your own film or record. It can be done. It is done. Everyday. Some of the best movies and records I've seen are results of dirt-cheap, no-budget creative efforts. Fuck the guy who said DIY is dead. He is dead and no-one's told him yet.

And to everyone who thinks that by throwing their two-cents about why "filesharing is bad, m'kay?" they can still change something: The content has been downloaded guy. We don't need justification to make ourselves feel better. I know you like to stroke yourself at night thinking we cry ourselves to sleep, tormented and guilt-ridden about stealing the fruits of your genius, but here's the newsflash. We like stealing from you. We are the happiest thieves alive. The content has been downloaded. It is down and there is nothing you can do about it. So either you can find a new way to be creative under the new circumstances, or you can stay the whiny bitch that you are, crying "my monies, my precious monies!" Either you help make a new world, or you are obsolete.

The clown is down.

Centralia, Pennsylvania (or Amputating Route 61)

Centralia is a ghost town. Isn't that a strange phrase? It surreptitiously makes the admition that it once was alive. A living, breathing organism functioning on a level of self-organisation different than ours. Centralia was built around, if not literally then certainly metaphoricaly, a coal mine.
Around a century after the town was born, a fire started which lit one of the coal veins on fire. Underground. I don't know about you but I think there's something primevally spooky about an underground fire.
The fire burned for twenty years before finally opening a gaping chasm right under a frollicking child which was only saved due to extremely fortuitous circumstances. That, as they say, was the final straw. It was decided that everyone should and would be relocated. All three thousand of the residents. It took forty-two million dollars to do that.
However, some of the residents decided to stay, now technically squatters in their own family houses.

Doreen has an Alligator

Oh creepy child how I feel for you. You just consolidated a new trend. I wonder why this died off. I want to ride an alligator damn it!

(notice the even creepier suited goon in the background, damn!)

Oliphaunt Messiah

This is the Son of the Elephant God, Ganesha. His mum was impregnated by a winged elephant messenger. That's him in the womb. Say hi. One day he will die for the sins of all elephant-kind.

Happy Winter Solstice

You pagan fucking heathens.

Radio Pirate Artichoke: Kinda Funny Lookin'

How to Make a Crop Circle

Instructions found here.

Fuck You! I Am Cat!

Caledfwlch

Dancing with Ghosts: A Memoir of Tribal War

If we are to stand a ghost of a chance of surviving the increasingly imminent catastrophe our culture is hurtling toward, we must learn to adapt to new habitats. We must be able to migrate with the seasons, to intermingle with unlikely allies and long lost cousins, to hunt for opportunities to gather momentum as if our lives depended on it. This is a true story about a time when we did some of these things with a measure of success.

We received a spectral smoke signal of nybbles and bytes requesting our presence in the cold plains of Oneida, New York. Not knowing what to expect, our hearty band of improbable and impermissible white wanderers from the flatlands of the South journeyed to the snowy plains of Oneida. Following directions hastily and poorly translated over an obscure pay phone, we came onto a stone longhouse, the home of the Onyota’a:ka, the traditional Oneida of the Standing Stone. We pried open the heavy wooden doors, and peered inside.

A mighty elder, Clanmother Maisie Shenandoah of the Oneida, greeted us with open arms and a broad smile. A powerful woman, she had seen generations come and go, and she feared that this would be the last to live in freedom. She explained that this thirty acres land we were now on — and the homes upon it — were the last of the sovereign nation of the Oneida people, subject to no law except their own. This proud people and their land were under assault from without and within (as they still are [1]). One of their own had gone to Harvard, gotten himself a business degree, and incorporated the tribe as a corporation, building a financial empire spanning mid-state New York. Oneida Nation Inc. — an independent fiefdom with its own laws, its own taxes, its own courts, its own (mostly white) police, with Judge, Jury, Executioner, God, and State wrapped up in one man: Ray Halbritter.

Known among the locals as “No-Face Ray” for cursing the ways of the Oneida and declaring himself against all sanity and tradition “Chief for Life,” Ray is attempting to develop this pocket of land, the thirty acres of the traditional Oneida, the last remaining sovereign Oneida land. Women have been evicted by Ray’s private “Housing Inspectors,” and seen their houses bulldozed before their children’s very eyes. Shopping malls will soon rise up, following the pattern of twisted and terrible progress familiar to any denizen of Western capitalism and civilization. If you stand on the edge of the thirty acres, you can already see the future — a giant casino, sprawling across the land like a bloated carcass. A call to arms. Soon.

Ray’s private army was patrolling the thirty acres, and we were told that the official explanation for our presence was an invitation to a tribal dance. Dancing it was. One by one, all the Oneida families of the thirty acres piled into the little longhouse, and with them they brought a never-ending procession of all sorts of food and drink. After a rousing meal, one of the older men stood in the middle of the room and began chanting in a tongue my ears could not comprehend, a sound rich with dignity beyond compare. Children lined up behind his booming bass voice, providing a brilliant treble. Soon the entire room, except for us white folk, was dancing up a storm. They absolutely refused to allow us to remain mere spectators, grabbing us hand in hand until we were all dancing side by side, some of us with considerably less skill than others.

When the dance came to an end, an old man with white hair pulled two of our band off to the side. “Did you bring baseball bats?” he asked. We weren’t sure what he meant, so we said that we were “ready for whatever it took,” an equally coded answer. He then started telling us stories, about bingo parlors burning and Mohawk revolts, about the first winter snow and about Ray’s mother’s facelifts. After considerable mystery, he left us with a simple message: “Gringo Windshield.”

Ray Halbritter was going to enter the thirty acres to hold a meeting of his cronies in an ancient longhouse that he had closed to the community long ago. His private army of goons was to be there to strike fear into the locals’ hearts. In the morning the old man’s words rang true. A small line of us in full black bloc regalia surrounded the larger crowd of traditional Oneida, who were for the first time in years going to contest Ray openly. We prayed that our threadbare patches of anarchy and punk would protect us from bullets. Ray scurried into the longhouse at our approach, and his goons tried to arrest one of our burly black-masked friends. I screamed “Let him go!”

Magic.

Ray’s police did let him go. We were shocked. Since we weren’t Oneida, Ray’s police had no legal right to arrest or even touch us. Bristling with badges, guns and clubs, they just told us to leave. We began laughing in their faces and mocking them. “Police? You aren’t even real police! Come on, just touch me!” “So how does it feel to beat up women in front of their children for a living?” “Don’t feel so high and mighty now, do you, boy?”

The traditional Oneida were delighted, and began joining in the taunts. Under cover of the commotion outside, they sent their children through the back door of the longhouse. Inside, Ray and the world he represents found themselves an emperor without clothes, as little children ran around in the meeting openly defying him and giggling at his self-important madness. Soon, the commotion got so out of hand that the local city police showed up, along with reporters — an unheard of event in Ray’s territory. The traditional Oneida took the police and reporters aside, showing them their home videos of Ray’s police beating women and destroying their homes. Smiles broke out on all our faces when Ray turned tail and fled. The ice that separated us from the Oneida began to break.

There we stood, two tribes — one ancient and the other new — united against a common enemy. The ancient tribe was fighting for survival, and, unlike our ancestors at Wounded Knee, we turned our backs on allegiance to race, nation, or any other fiction, to join them in arms. This alchemy released magic — police unable to police, children ridiculing kings. The Oneida’s struggle against extinction goes on, as does ours. Let us hope it goes on together, as we realize the possibilities of tribal alliances that can overcome our loneliest moments and the impossible odds. In the end, we are not ghosts from the past, but ghosts of the future. Let us dance — together.

“Here we are, the dead of all time, dying once again, only now with the object of living. You have to get out of yourself to save yourself.”

— masked spokesperson of the black bloc, Chiapas, Mexico

Footnotes

[1]^ Their struggle continues today. To get in touch with the Oneida, contact:
Onyota'a:ka People of the Standing Stone
PO Box 450
Oneida, NY 13421
315-363-2304 (ask for Maisie)
www.oneidasfordemocracy.org
Source:

Retrieved on November 25, 2009 from http://www.crimethinc.com/tools/downloads/zines.html
Notes:

from Hunter/Gatherer #1

Radio Pirate Artichoke: Stop Hogging All The Stupid

Vodyanoy

Jovial Fatso

He returns to consciousness.
He opens his eyelids carefully, half-expecting someone to be there, standing over him. No-one is there. What a relief, he says inwardly. He contemplates rolling out of bed and then realises that the word fits perfectly, horribly. Roll. Like a marble. A meatball. A four-hundred-pound man-dumpling.
Slowly and with considerable effort, he lifts himself, his eyes tangentially scouting the curvature of his body. He thinks, any more and he'll start looking like a planet. He'll start attracting other masses. He'll have his own gravitational pull.
Every cough an earthquake. Every day a repetitive rotation around his miserable self.
A woman enters the bedroom.Thin, unkempt, with the look of people that look after others. She looks like she's part of the house, a piece of furniture. An old family heirloom.
'Good morning dear' she says in a compromising voice.
Ugh, he thinks. He smiles the smile of fakes and madmen. An imitated smile. 'Good morning love'.
He hates himself. For being a hypocrite. For being forced to be a hypocrite. But most of all, he hates himself because he does it too well. And he pushes it all down with a joke.
She helps him get dressed with the patience of a saint and the efficiency of a retired bureaucrat. His very own Saint Bureaucrat. And for that he can't stand her. But he hides it well behind buffoonery.
She packs him a lunch and kisses him goodbye in the same way she has for the past century and in the same way she will in those still to come. And for that he abhors her. But he drowns it all in light-hearted witticisms.
He gingerly shuts the door, almost sarcastically, and mentally prepares his affable camouflage for the day.

An Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man,
Of whom the world might say
That still a godly race he ran,
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad,
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wondering neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost his wits,
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light,
That showed the rogues they lied:
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died.

Radio Pirate Artichoke: The Pissed-Off Man

Kick it 'til it breaks

they say we are too reckless;
that the world we burn for
can not be born from flame,
that we must plant its seeds.

but we answer them,
with soot on our faces
and clods of dirt in our fists,
“we are making our garden rich with ash.”

Korgoth of Barbaria

As Long as I Still Have at Least One Arm

Radio Pirate Artichoke: 00 Void