cheese it, the cops!

give it up for the spider girls: third story burglars in santiago who are also teenage girls. at seven and eight months pregnant, they were still ascending. women will be free after all.

a good review of events in oaxaca.

so, i've been thinking about addiction, and struggling in its coils. and i've come to a conclusion: there may be profound and complex things to say about addiction, and even more memoirs to write etc.  i've said some of them myself. but essentuially the thing is incredibly simple and common as dirt. once you start, you've got a glitch that will keep you going, even unto death. one thing addiction does seem to do is challenge the notion of natural selection: that so many of us have the self-destructo switch would seem to be incompatible with our eventual evolutionary victory, but addicts keep reproducing. not that you can't tell some kind of darwinian story, but it's not going to a plausible story unless you figure a priori that there has to be a story, and the only question is which. at any rate, i think that evolution is likely a far less systematic process than we might think, that organisms at any given stage are a huge mess of aspects, some of which help and some of which drag you toward extinction.

now that women run the country we can return to the task at hand: enhancing our self-esteem and exploring our sexuality.

watcha listenin to, profcrispy?
been subjecting everyone of late to the mighty yayhoos, possibly the most rocksolid rootsrock barband in the country. it's something of a roots supergroup. it features eric (roscoe) ambel, whom i first saw, let's say, 1981, touring with the amazing joan jett. but you've heard him with steve earle and the del-lords, or if not, start downloading. the bass player, keith christopher, was sort of the occasion for one of my tragic breakups, having shown up in my girlfriend's bed one night (a long story...). this makes me hear songs like "where's your boyfriend now?" a bit differently than i otherwise might. with consummate condescension, i forgive him, and her, and you. he's also an ex-son-in-law of johnny cash (having been hitched to carlene carter) and has played with everyone, and he is as good a rock and country bassist as one could readily imagine. the band's fronted by dan baird, of the georgia satellites. anyway, there is real rock 'n roll out there still. and though i might not be too happy with the values represented ("getting drunk, getting naked, getting laid, getting out" etc), i can sink into the music like coming home. actually i think our boys had better calm down; i don't see how you reach 50 with the lifestyle they're describing; but you gotta admit it's a rock 'n roll thing. i loved their first album, "fear not the obvious," very much, especially the opener "i've got a hankerin" and their "tribute" to hank williams jr: "monkey with a gun." there was also a classic country song: "the bottle or the bible." the brand-new "put the hammer down" is just as strong: unashamedly playing with the cliches of the stones or lynyrd skynyrd. but these are my favorite cliches, actually. the covers ("love train" and  "roam (around the world)") are silly, but fun. and they even try a power ballad or 2. the best song might be "would that kill you": a good substitute for couples therapy.  "put the hammer down" doesn't seem to be on amazon, yet, but it's on itunes (where i obtained it) or on their site.

here's a good interview with an activist teacher from oaxaca. meanwhile there are uprisings in kyrygzstan and rural china.

alex thompson sends me an account of self-immolation  from chicago. the guy had written a remarkable obituary for himself: funny and sad and serious and light.

well, crispy, what think you of the mid-term election?
we are saved! well, perhaps that's a little strong. the democrats are drawing the important lesson that they drew before the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections: we can win by saying nothing, by being, by implication, the republicans' shadow. they of course lost the 2000 and 2004 elections, but that was not enough to beat conviction or definiteness into them, and now they've had their basic sense of themselves as strategic nebbishes confirmed. they won because they faced one the most plainly evil and disastrous administrations and congresses in our history. but they will take this as license to ill: i expect them not to assert anything ever again. in the war of evil against nothingness, nothingness is indeed preferable. but that's not to say it isn't a pitiable and in its own way a deeply dangerous position. indeed, bush himself has drawn the same lesson, and i fully expect to hear nothing at all, for years on end, with incredible repetitiveness and futility. the prospect of any action on anything is likely now to prick the cowardice of everyone concerned.

well, i voted (sorry). please do not take this (as my students - with whom i'm working through hobbes, locke, and rousseau - would like to take it) as me signing the social contract. i, personally, have devastated the social contract theory of the state, one of the most ridiculous and most dishonest theories in the ridiculous, dishonest history of human thought. i voted for emma goldman for senate (santorum/casey) and governor (rendell/swan). there is no one i despise more than rick santorum, but i remember watching him debate casey on meet the press or something: casey's idiotic, disingenuous hemming and hawing on iraq summarized everything i despise about the democrats: feeble, centerless, cringing, profoundly empty and thus entirely amoral. rendell is surely safe. i voted for the democrat phil avillo against our congressman todd platts, because in spite of everything i want a democratic congress; it's the only chance for a moderation of the torture administration, despite the fact that these fucks can't bring themselves to express this clearly and unqualifiedly.

to be a fundamentalist homophobe is a stupid, dangerous thing, while to be a gay fundamentalist homophobe is about as low as our species can sink. but it's worth saying that it must also be one of the hardest things to be, and i can't imagine the self-devourment that must take place. it's amazing how twisted up people can get, how miserable we can make themselves. 

Eric Clapton - layla

eric clapton layla 1984 jeff beck

this, we may speculate, is the reason that many prisoners of the u.s. will never be released: nothing they did before, but the secrets they learned in prison, the details of their own torture, present a security risk. we will not only torment you, we will detain/disappear you for having been tormented by us.

so i heard this reporter on the bbc yesterday who had snuck into n. korea with a group of business types. he was saying that because the government maintains total control of education and media, the people don't realize how bad their situation is. i do not believe it. a situation in which the state controls every aspect of your life is a situation in which you're hag-ridden; you know the people who are causing you problems and you don't believe what they say. indeed, it's easy to imagine that the north korean media, for example, churns out cynics as fast as it can yap its bullshit. anyway, i just have faith that wherever you have the state in its incredibly inefficient continual arbitrary irritation of everyone, you have people rolling their eyes and snickering.

ok, world. no demands:

(1) a constitutional amendment banning both life and choice.
(2) immediate annexation of the united states of america by the democratic people's republic of korea, and dear leader kim jong il.
(3) the return of beloved leader john ashcroft to high office in vichy america.

this is a wikiterroristthreat, so feel free to add demands.

christian conservatives are all such fags.

we're still rocking oaxaca. and not without effect.

too late, beeches! the nihilist organization has the bomb. list of demands will follow.

remember, as always, to vote nihilist organization (no) in the upcoming election. if more people don't vote than do, we will, as always, declare victory. the yippies used to nominate "nobody," but by an hegelian inversion we are enfranchising inanimate objects: we didn't vote for anything, as well as anyone.

it didn't take much to deep 6 john kerry, did it. a botched punch line? the guy is a laugh a minute. maybe he can host a latenight talk show.

oaxaca news

interesting blog from a guy who's participating in protests at the mexican consulate in san diego (there  are protests all over the world).
reasonable ap story, with news from today.
arizona indymedia is translating material from indymedia mexico on oaxaca.