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Ansat looked about, bewildered. He had been on the hunt for three days
now, and still there were no signs of his prey. The grip on his knife slowly
tightened as his eyes scanned the horizon, looking for any clues.
"Where the hell is that bastard?" he mumbled disgustedly.
"Over here, man," said Kilgore Trout, stepping out from behind a tree.
"Ya know, I've been following you for three days now. What are you looking
for?"
Ansat turned, repositioning his beret to keep his long hair out his eyes.
"What am I looking for? You. Just where the hell have you been for the
past four months?"
Kilgore smiled lackadaisically. "I've been here, hanging out. Why, is
something wrong?"
"Wrong? *WRONG*? We didn't know what happened to you. Figured Agent
Williams snatched you or something. You've put us through a lot. And people
want more issues of the zine, too."
"The zine? Oh, whoops. Sometimes priorities change, ya know? Hey,
lemme take you to this wonderful little clearing about five miles due east
where I bathe everyday in this beautiful pond. I'll introduce you to Lilo."
"Lilo?" Ansat inquired. "Who's Lilo, and what's he doing out here?"
"He's a duck. He's also my friend."
"Jesus, Kilgore, you've flipped your gourd. Why'd you come out here?"
"Because it's beautiful, and that's the only reason I need."
"Bullshit. You're lying."
Kilgore glanced down at the ground. "Okay, I just wanted a break. I
wanted to be lazy. You can understand that, can't you?"
"If you don't come back with me, I'm going to cut you." Ansat drew
a huge knife out of his pocket. "Besides, you've got around 200k of
submissions sitting around."
"200k of submissions?" exclaimed Kilgore, his eyes beaming. "Why the
fuck didn't you say so? This forest is so boring. Hey, before we go, let's
kill Lilo. He really pisses me off. Don't ask why."
"Why?"
"Uh, let's just kill the duck. You DO know how to cook duck, right?"
"Sure," Ansat laughed. "Just stick him over a fire and wait a while."
"Sounds good to me."
Ansat and Kilgore took the other's hand and walked off to find Lilo.
Living in such a state taTestaTesTaTe etats a hcus ni gniviL
of mind in which time sTATEsTAtEsTaTeStA emit hcihw ni dnim of
does not pass, space STateSTaTeSTaTeStAtE ecaps ,ssap ton seod
does not exist, and sTATeSt oFOfOfo dna ,tsixe ton seod
idea is not there. STatEst ofoFOFo .ereht ton si aedi
Stuck in a place staTEsT OfOFofo ecalp a ni kcutS
where movements TATeSTa foFofoF stnemevom erehw
are impossible fOFoFOf elbissopmi era
in all forms, UsOFofO ,smrof lla ni
physical and nbEifof dna lacisyhp
or mental - uNBeInO - latnem ro
your mind is UNbeinG si dnim rouy
focusing on a unBEING a no gnisucof
lone thing, or NBeINgu ro ,gniht enol
a lone nothing. bEinGUn .gnihton enol a
You are numb and EiNguNB dna bmun era ouY
unaware to events stneve ot erawanu
taking place - not -number- ton - ecalp gnikat
knowing how or what EIGHTEEN tahw ro woh gniwonk
to think. You are in 09/22/95 ni era uoY .kniht ot
a state of unbeing.... ....gniebnu fo etats a
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
CONTENTS OF THiS iSSUE
=----------------------=
EDiTORiAL Kilgore Trout
LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
STAFF LiSTiNGS
[=- ARTiCLES -=]
iNSiDE JOKES FOR FUN AND PROFiT Mogel
TESTiCULAR TRAUMA: THOUGHTS OF
DESiGNER iMPOSTER BODY SPRAY Andrew Ian Feinberg
THE NEXT FRONTiER -- A CALL FOR ACTiON Hagbard
NEW WORLD ORDER I Wish My Name Were Nathan
THE DOWNFALL OF AMERiCAN CONSCiOUSNESS Hagbard
EVOLUTiON OF A COWARD I Wish My Name Were Nathan
'A TERRiBLE BEAUTY iS BORN':
THE iRiSH EASTER RiSiNG OF 1916 Captain Moonlight
[=- FiCTiON -=]
iNTRODUCiNG SCHMELTFiSCH, THE FiRST SHORT
JEWiSH ANGSTiTHOLOGiST AND SUPERHERO Michael Sussman
FRATER NEMO'S LiBRARY: A MEMOiR Soror Soumis
HAFTLING 141732 Captain Moonlight and Dark Crystal
Sphere Floating Between Two
Universes
PiCTURES OF BOBBi Crux Ansata
THE SEVEN TALES OF SPAM, VOLUME IV Flying Rat's Nostril
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
EDiTORiAL
by Kilgore Trout
Long time, no see, eh? Heh. Go ahead and throw your vegetables. I
deserve it. And *you* deserve an explanation. You're gonna hate it.
This summer I was lazy.
That's the explanation. I almost scrapped the zine at one point to do
something else, but a few side projects did arise (we'll keep you informed
of those Apocalypse Culture Productions as needed) which are looking very
promising.
I know you were hoping for something a bit more dramatic. Well, my
computer DID die, so that did kind of delay the issue by another month after
I finally got my shit back together. We're still working on that.
As for the zine, rest assured that we will continue to publish on a
regular basis from now on. I've had my break, and now just sit back and
enjoy. This issue hits from all different angles. You might notice that
something is missing. Personal decision of mine. E-mail me if you don't
like it.
I figured I'd keep this short so you could get into the articles, but one
more thing. We're closing in on issue 23, so naturally it will be a theme
issue devoted to all that is strange with the world. Metaphysics, magick,
synchronicity, weirdness in general, the paranormal, I Wish My Name Were
Nathan's life -- you get the gist. If you have anything of this type to go
into the 23 issue, send it in, and mark it as such.
Yeah, we're back. Start those submissions in again, and remember, we've
got egos out to here, and body parts to match.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
LETTERS TO THE EDiTOR
People,
I recently read a similar letter in the last issue of SoB and I decided
that Kilgore's request should be honored. I would like to discuss with you
(or anyone who would listen to me) a topic that is very near and dear to my
heart. Throughout the ages (whether they knew it or not) people have been
doing something that can only be described as unforgivably *rude*! This is
more than an epidemic, people all over the world have been doing this and they
need to *stop it*!
I am, of course, talking about movement. Yes, movement! Am I crazy?
Perhaps, I wouldn't doubt it.
But the voices tell me that I make sense. I'm inclined to believe them.
Have you ever stopped and thought about what you're doing when you move?
Callously shoving millions of microorganisms out of your way, perhaps perma-
nently separating friends and family.
And all this breathing! In, Out, In, Out! With not one care about the
feelings of our microscopic neighbors.
Now, I'm sure there are those who disagree with me. To those people I
offer this advice:
Shut up! You're obviously wrong!
You are free to form your own opinion of what I've said, to ignore it if
you wish. Just remember, the day will come when they (you know who I mean)
rise up and seize control. And when they do, you'll be sorry!
Thank you for the use
of your minds,
Flying Rat's Nostril
--SoB--
Oh faithful readers of SoB or something,
Well, as some of you have probably noticed, I haven't submitted anything
in a long while. Well, just to let you all know, I wasn't carrying out bomb-
ing raids in Bosnia. Heh.
Anyway, some of you are probably pleased at absence, and another few
issues that you haven't had to deal with my Socialist Transcendentalist
Democrat (STD) drivel. As for the others of you sitting out in the mountains
in your old BDU's with C-4 and sandbags stacked about, I'll have the next
installment of Blood in the Streets out in a little while. It'll deal with
the tactics of the guerrilla war, a touchy topic which takes a bit of re-
search, and it's not something I want to screw up. So be patient.
In this issue, I have the first part of my "A Terrible Beauty is Born:
The Irish Rising of 1916." I've ranted and raved about the Rising in many of
my articles, and now you finally get know what really went into it. It's a
total of about 30 typed pages. I originally wrote it for a course I was
taking on world history, and I'll be publishing it completely revised in three
parts. It originally had many photographs and a map showing rebel troop
deployment to go with it, but since SoB doesn't have a company GIF scanner,
you're just going to have to do without. Bummer.
For all of you Spam cultists, you should be pleased to know that the
great Flying Rat's Nostril has written the Fourth Tale of Spam, which should
should be in this issue. It is yet another tale about the great King Bubba and
his knights of the Not-Quite-etc. Table. It's longer than any of the previous
tales -- over 30 hand-written pages. This should prove to be quite a task
for the SoB company typist. Heh heh. Just thought I'd tease you with that
tidbit...
While you're waiting, you can check out a new book I saw while browsing
in the New Paperbacks section of a certain large retail book-store chain. It
was entitled _The Silent Brotherhood_, and discussed how the militias were
full of White Supremacist paranoids. Apparently the authors of such works
choose to ignore things like the fact that Mark Bowers, a former artillery
officer and the head of the Montgomery County branch of the Texas Constitu-
tional Militia is a Jew. Ignore the facts and the opinions will follow your
leads. I may not like all of the politics of the militia leaders (many of
which have several different views on how America should be reorganised), but
they're doing what they believe best for America, and they're willing to fight
for what they believe to be right. You have to respect that.
Seriously, I would like to recommend _The Burning Season_, a two-hour
1994 two-hour movie staring Raul Julia and Sonia Braga. It's about the true
struggle of Chico Mendes and the Rural Union in Brazil in the 1980's-1990's to
stop Bordon and local ranchers from building a road through the rainforest and
clearing land for cattle production, and essentially killing the poor rainfor-
est inhabitants. After the killing of the more violent Union President,
Mendes, then Vice President, takes over and organises a non-violent opposition
to the road which is eventually successful, though not until after Mendes
becomes a martyr to the cause. It showed the non-violent, and preferable,
solution still works. It was recently on HBO (a delightful change of pace
from their usual unsavoury programming), and is probably available in video
rental stores for those interested.
There was a suggestion made to me by a friend of mine which I will pass
on to any of you who are interested. She suggested I write an article about
this a while ago, but I don't have any information on the subject, and I don't
have the funds to carry it out myself. The suggestion was that, in order to
provide a transit system for both men and arms that goes throughout the coun-
try, the railroads be bought by those wishing to organise a militia movement.
The railroads are currently falling into misuse, and are now available at
virtually dirt-cheap prices. With the railroads, arms and troops could be
conveyed speedily across the nation in a way that the authorities would be
unlikely to notice. It would be interesting to see someone who knows about
such matters as real-estate and appraisals write an article for a future SoB
about this -- I don't consider myself competent enough to do it.
Well, I would like to take the time to welcome a new Socialist theorist
to the ranks of SoB writers, Lares et Penates, who first published in #17. I
would, however, like to discuss a point he made in his "Automation: Supplant-
ing the Worker." Lares pointed out that Socialists often have a romanticised
version of manual labour, but this is only to be expected. It must be rea-
lised that the lower strata of the working class are made up mainly of manual
labourers. The majority of the middle class, the class set up as a buffer
between the upper and lower classes in order to prevent a class war, are the
ones given what Lares calls the thinking jobs, and the majority of those who
are petitioned to have such jobs. While the leaders of such a movement, for
example Marcos, Che, Castro, Lenin, and Trotsky, are usually from the middle
or upper class, the workers must rise in support, or the movement will be
crushed. Also, a hammer and sickle make much more recognisable symbols of the
labour movement than a pencil and a computer console. The more potent the
symbol the more likely it is to be noticed. I must agree that people should
be saved from manual work as much as possible, but until there is a true
Socialist revolution, automation will be the worker's bane.
Also, we cannot be afraid of hard work. Work is not an evil thing. A
person should be willing to work to further both himself and society. The
Republicans are fond of spouting about "An honest day's work for an honest
day's pay." The problem is when a man is working in the fields and is paid so
little he cannot feed his family and someone like Rush Limbaugh is paid $10
million a year, neither is getting a honest day's pay. There is nothing wrong
with working eight hours a day, playing eight hours a day, and sleeping eight
hours a day. The problem is when a man is not given his due pay or his due
leisure. The influx of youths in the workforce has just made the problem
worse. When a man must find a job on which he must feed his family and anoth-
er man is only doing the job for pocket money and will work for less than the
first, the wages are obviously lowered, forcing the former to forsake the
leisure due him. I believe that in a true Socialist society both leisure and
wages will be considered important, eliminating the overworking of people.
I would also like to complement Bobbi Sands' piece "The Politicization of
the Militias." She points out that each militia must have its ideological
view of how the world should be. However, I believe the militias must work
together to meet a common end, which may mean sacrificing some of their polit-
ical views for the greater good. While none of them must give up their core
values, the militias must be willing to compromise with both each other and
civilians.
Well, I've talked on long enough. This issue I'm sure there's much
excellent material in this issue, following in the SoB tradition of good
articles, fiction, and poetry. Remember: Never give up your core values,
whether they be Socio-Democratic, Communist, Anarchist, or even Capitalist,
even if they with all those around you. As Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said,
"The greatest good of a minority of our generation may be the greatest good of
the greatest number in the long run."
Land and Liberty!
Captain Moonlight
--SoB--
America,
Political Correctness is in fact an epidemic that is spreading through
America like wildfire. This epidemic while not deadly (yet) has an appeal
that draws people to it. Equality, belonging, being part of some greater
whole, but when you chose to belong or be equal by their standards you lose a
very important thing. Your individuality.
The key to this equality is the use of labels. The theory is good.
We'll make categories and put people in them. They don't care if they want to
be put in these groups. The use of labels has worked to a point, like a
police officer or fire person, to hopefully bridge the gab between the sexes.
There are the ones that go further giving titles to others like African-Ameri-
can, Asian, Caucasian, Latino (or Hispanic), and others used for such things
as census and national school tests. But why is there a need to know how many
of each 'category' there is in are country?
It spreads out into more than just the labels. It now seems to be a fad
which is spreading. The fad is being accepted by those people who leave to
gossip, like newspapers, televisions, and mainly talkshows. Where if Mister
Joe said a remark about someone's skin color he's now a racist for life and
probably molests small children.
The worst thing is that the people who use P. C. as a daily routine are
also enforcing it. They're telling you how to live your life; eating meat is
bad so be a vegetarian. It's gotten to the point that no one seems to really
have privacy or the freedom to live their own way.
The people who mostly use political correctness are those it's supposed
to be fighting; they're using it to hide. They use the labels, the health
concerns and other polices to control the populous. They don't care about any
of the people they're supposedly helping. They made the labels to put people
into categories and leave them there. It's an illusion to give false hope to
those so desperate to look for it anywhere.
You want peace, you want the poor to be well off, you want the homeless
to have homes, fine. But you can't solve a world problem when you're too
worried about the label you or other people belong to. Look upon others as
equals and not a race or label and you're starting to solve the world's prob-
lems. But if you have to use labels use only one:
Human.
Wrathful
Prodigy
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
STAFF LiSTiNG
EDITOR
Kilgore Trout
CONTRIBUTORS
Captain Moonlight
Crux Ansata
Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two Universes
Andrew Ian Feinberg
Flying Rat's Nostril
Hagbard
I Wish My Name Were Nathan
Mogel
Michael Sussman
Soror Soumis
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
[=- ARTiCLES -=]
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
iNSiDE JOKES FOR FUN AND PROFiT
by mogel
"mommie!@@!1" you cry out loud into the night as you awake from yet
another one of those nightmares with large hairy men that smell like taco
salads in their arm pits. those dreams are getting more realistic by the
day, aren't they? i think it's time to get professional help. mogel help.
inside jokes. the whole idea of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. a
bunch of people that are in some group have a joke and they're the only ones
that get it. i wonder why people can't make universal humor more often.
something like pure wit, that transcends petty goofiness.
what the hell am I talking about? someone slap me next time I babble
like that. the truth is that making special groups and cliques is wonderful
and very human. it's great to leave people out! it makes my butt cheeks
tingle at the very thought of making someone feel like an outsider. that's
why i've put inside jokes down to a study.
check it out, you wanna be the stud at parties don't you?! you want
all the girlies (with big titties!) to come talk to you right. but you don't
have muscles, a personality, looks, or money. what the hell are you to do?
you have nothing to offer anyone. you'll make no friends except that retard
kid down the street that no one talks to because he beats himself with tree
branches and laughs for hours on ends at the site of any passing blue car.
you'll die a 60-year-old virgin. is that a life?! is that a motherfucking
life!? no, it is not a motherfucking life! so, i ask again in a fit of
redundance, what are you to do?!
enter the 'inside joke'. now you have a chance to tango with the big
boys. when someone walks up to you all you gotta do is say the most goofy,
rude, and asinine thing that comes to your minds.
example:
girlie -> hello. could you move out of the way so I can use the bathroom?
you -> don't you wanna see my 'corpus cavernosum'?
girlie -> oh, only if you wanna out it in my 'posterior commissure'!
see what i mean? here's a good rule to follow: you play stupid -
others will follow. it's as simple as that. on deeper analysis you'll see
that the inside joke is actually a tool to make everyone have something to
talk about, thus there won't be awkward silences that peirce the night like
the rage of a cow being milked.
at this point i'm one hundred percent sure that all of you are saying to
yourselves "this whole thing is all very interesting, eccentric, and boring
at the same time mogel. good job. but how can I make my _own_ inside
jokes?!"
phear no more. making inside jokes are easy. they are invented all the
time. there are two more common types:
type 1 - 'i said something oh-so funny! let's totally ruin it's humor!'
this is the type of inside joke where someone has cracked a joke while a
group of you are hanging out. for example, if a group of guys were sitting
at a 2600 meeting and one of them said "let's make a new type of box for
phreakers - the shoe box!" and the other laughed lots and replied "i'd rather
make the sand box."
bingo, following this "conversation" that me and my pal frannie had
once, you see the invention of an inside joke. later, we proceeded to say
"wow! let's hack it!" whenever we came across any form of electronics or
machinery anywhere. basically the idea behind this type of inside joke is to
take something funny that was said in a conversation and relay it in all its
various varieties over and over again, making the people that know the joke
laugh. this idea is so easy it's a wonder that there's so many losers that
don't get it. just say goofy stuff with a little humor, and if people laugh
go into overkill mode and say the joke until their ears bleed at that
crucial 'this is the right time to say it' time. this type of joke often
dies after a while, but fortunately, it's so easy to create these types of
inside jokes there's no chance of any real conversation with depth or
meaning. yes!@$#!1
type 2 - 'here's something totally random - stick with it forever!'
this is the most interesting type of joke because it makes people laugh,
but (by great irony) it's simply not funny. amazing but true. i'm told that
dead cheese is a master of this fatal special super-natural ability. well,
phear me magical cheese boy - i'm giving away the secret plans!
this type of inside joke is created by letting your mind sit free and
wander. after you wander you drink a sprite and watch some T.V. after you
watch some t.v. and you masturbate to re-runs of _three's company_, your
mind comes up with a completely and totally random idea.
random meaning something with that oh-so insignificant quality. it's
best when it's something that sounds awkward and is a bit silly.
spam. turnip. rubber wallaby. rutabaga. chumpy galoshes. maple
syrup. toaster hacker. blue severed hamster head. red rooster. turtle.
paper clip. rudyard kipling.
getting the idea? find that one object and nail the world with it 'til
they get so sick of you they want to molest you like the psychotic kiddie
porn downloading ansi-artist you *are*. just accept it and move on with your
life. i know for a fact that abigwar will carry his 'wombat' thing to his
grave. cdc has latched on to the awkwardness of the common cow. just use it
or lose it. that's what I say.
at any rate, i hope this article served as a good introduction into the
exciting and profitable career of inside-jokes. go outside right now and
show off your new talents. that's right! go! run into the woods naked tell
everyone. they'll not only approve - it'll be an (*ding!*) inside joke.
don't go to the bathroom for three weeks and then pee the full load on your
grandma. she'll laugh for days. the possibilities are infinite. have fun
my children, and remember:
it's not what you say - it's how you say it!
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"I don't care what anyone says. Call me Chicken Little, but the
motherfucking sky is falling."
--The Trashcan Man
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
TESTiCULAR TRAUMA: THOUGHTS OF DESiGNER iMPOSTER BODY SPRAY
by Andrew Ian Feinberg
I can remember the first time I saw the commercial vividly, for I was
scarred eternally, not unlike the first time I had a woman look me square in
the eye, force a smile, and mumble "Don't worry, I heard it happens to a LOT
of guys." While channel surfing a few months ago, I found myself landing on
MTV. It was The Real World Two that was on, and I couldn't change the
channel because it was my favorite one, where Tammi purposely wired her mouth
shut to lose weight. I was thinking about taking up a collection to keep it
wired shut forever, but alas, I digress. A commercial interlude began with a
Mentos commercial, and I was appalled to find myself mouthing along "Mentos,
the freshmaker!" with my television. That was bad enough, but when I
realized I was actually holding my remote triumphantly, not unlike the girl
holding up her mighty Mentos, I knew I must turn off the television and get
some fresh air. I reached for the "off" button on the remote, but found
myself unable to hit it. Instead, I my eyes were glazed as I heard my RCA
beckon: "The following demonstration has been made suitable for television."
It piqued my interest, I figured I'd watch the commercial. Big mistake.
It was a naked woman prancing around the screen with a spray can,
covered only by two blue bars that followed her around covering her breasts,
and her holiest of holies. Now, seeing an attractive naked woman bopping
around on a television screen, this is not what scarred me. Don't you worry.
In fact, it made me laugh hysterically. A voice-over was explaining "First,
spray Designer Imposter Spray on your arms, and then spray some on your
(beeped out the breasts), and the same time the woman was spraying it on the
described areas. It went on to describe all the different places one could
spray it, while the woman, seemingly in ecstasy, followed suit. It was truly
a ridiculous image, the quasi-orgasmic quality of spraying some cheap-assed
imitation perfume all over herself. She wound up spraying every part of her
body really, as the voice-over told me that spraying this poisonous smelling
fluid all over feels so good "you could spray them everywhere". But this, of
course, is not true. She missed a spot. If she was to spray the faux-spray
in one particular place, shall we say, below the equator, this would not
produce the ecstatic result as it provided elsewhere. I believe the correct
word to describe the result would be "agony". But, thankfully, she missed
that spot, so the commercial, which I thought was over wound up being just
silly, not traumatic. Little did I know that in just ten seconds, I would be
huddled in the corner of the room, rocking in the fetal position, hand
immersed in my pants, a la Al Bundy.
It seemed as though the commercial was over, as they showed a bottle of
the stuff on the screen. But then it happened. Like all horrible things in
my life, I saw it in slow motion, like when Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction
had Zed give him a proctologic exam without the courtesy of a sigmoidoscope.
A nude man appeared on the screen, bottle in hand, blue bar on crotch. The
voice-over triumphantly announced, "Available for men too!" The man, with a
smug as hell grin, SPRAYS HIS CROTCH AND CHUCKLES! He laughs with this smirk
on his face, as if it were the most euphoric and wonderful experience he had
ever experienced. And the commercial was over. It was an overload for my
brain, I believe that was when I went into shock. In my trauma induced
state, my entire life passed before my eyes. Well, okay, not my WHOLE life,
but an incident in particular that involved myself, and my cajones.
I flashed back to seventh grade, I must have been around twelve or
thirteen years old. I remember being twelve quite well, it was when I was a
tiny 5'4 boy, and knew that someday I would grow and grow and finally be able
to conquer that freaking sign that said "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO GO ON THIS
RIDE". Now I'm twenty-five. Hey, it's not that I'm still not allowed to go
on certain rides, I just CHOOSE not to okay?? I could go on any ride I want,
I just don't like waiting in line! Wait, I'm mixing up my traumas. Let's go
back to my being twelvish.
My dream girl, Penelope Horowitz, had asked me whether I wanted to go
over her house on Sunday and study with her for an algebra exam. I could
hardly sleep that night, knowing what would happen when I was alone with her,
perusing the subtle nuances of algebra. I knew in my heart of hearts, that
in the midst of studying, we would look up from the book, stare into each
others eyes, admit our undying love, have a torrid affair, get married, have
children, and happily grow old together. I just had to make sure everything
was right. Sunday morning, I spent two hours getting myself absolutely
perfect for the big study date. When I felt I was ready, I started to leave
the house, but ran back into the bathroom.
As I was singing along to "Islands in the Stream" on my radio, I
realized I had forgotten the key to getting a woman to think of me as real
man. Cologne. So I covered myself with my dad's English Leather, not
thoroughly unlike the naked woman in the Designer Imposter commercial. But
what if Penelope begged me to have sex with her? This was a real
possibility. The prospect of her finding me "not so fresh" was strictly
unacceptable. So in the middle of singing the Dolly Parton part of the
chorus, I pulled out the waistband of my underwear, and did my final spray.
"Islands in the stream...that is what we AREEEEEEEEEEEEGHHHHHHH!"
I had never experienced such excruciating pain in my entire life. I had
to cancel the date. I spent the remainder of the day holding my wounded
huevos and cursing the day I had tried to spray myself "there". Penelope
went on to date and marry my best friend. Oh Penelope, I miss you so... if
you're reading this give me a call, I know I can make you so happy...
Back to the story at hand. The man in the commercial had made the same
mistake I had made, yet suffered no ill consequences. It was the most unreal
and unjust act I had seen since Marisa Tomei had won the Oscar for Best
Supporting Actress. But like the Tomei tragedy, this wrong could be righted,
I knew it. I knew then why I had been put on this earth. It was to get that
commercial modified. I wrote letters. I made urgent phone calls. I
boycotted using the product. Okay, I hadn't really used it in the first
place, but hey, manufacturers didn't know that. Yet every day that blasted
commercial would come on time and time again. Hundreds of times, I saw that
smug bastard spray his crotch. Was there no justice in the world? The
horror, the horror. But just as I began to give up hope, it happened. The
commercial began the same, bimbo dancing around in her Imposter glory. Same
guy, blue bar on privates. But this time, he sprayed his CHEST, smirking
and chuckling. Glory, hallelujah! Can I get an amen? There's no need to
thank me. Just knowing that I might have saved one pubescent boy from making
the same mistakes I made is enough. All I ask for is a page in the history
books documenting my selfless effort to make the world a better place to
live. Or maybe a statue.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"The more things change, the more they suck."
--Butt-Head
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
THE NEXT FRONTiER -- A CALL FOR ACTiON
by Hagbard
"...Most important of all has been the fact that an
area of free land has continually lain on the western
border of the settled area of the United States. Whenever
social conditions tended to crystallize in the East,
whenever capital tended to press upon labor or political
restraints to impede the freedom of the mass, there was
this gate of escape to the free conditions of the
frontier. These free lands promoted individualism,
economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. Men would
not accept inferior wages and a permanent position
of social subordination when this promised land of
freedom and equality was theirs for the taking. Who
would rest content under oppressive legislative
conditions when with a slight effort he might reach a
land wherein to become a co-worker in the building of
free cities and free States on the lines of his own
ideal?"
-Frederick Jackson Turner
_The Frontier in American History_
Often I ask myself whether I have been priveleged, or cursed to have
grown up in such strange times. Many of you are young people like myself,
possibly labeled by the media as "Generation X". There is a heaviness in
our hearts; we all feel a certain aprhension of the future. And not just our
individual future, but the destiny of our entire society, of our species.
I see it in the articles here in SoB, I see it on the news at night, I
see it on the Internet, I see it in books I read. There is this dread of the
fork in the road, the cusp of destiny which quickly approaches our planet.
Hope is fading fast.
I will not depress you with the symptoms of our dying planet, our
stagnant species; you know them all as well as I do. We all sense the
disease, yet no one knows what to do, no one has a cure. Under the weight
of the malady, we continue with our lives as normal and race into oblivion;
we haven't the strength to make this runaway train jump it's tracks.
Or do we? Perhaps we should look to history to solve our problems. Mr.
Turner has outlined our solution perfectly, if only we have eyes and
imagination enough to see it.
Humans are a frontier species. Humans expanded their domain and
explored for several hundred thousand years. About 75 years ago, we stopped.
Humans would settle a region and then a few would leave and go somewhere
else. The frontier spirit fostered the imagination and ingenuity required
for the tremendous advances made by humans in the past hundred thousand
years; but we stopped. We stopped because there was no more land to settle,
no more places to go. Now hundreds visit Mt. Everest every year; who gives a
damn?
History has spelled it out for us: the disease is stagnation, the cure
is expansion. Many will stay, but some must push open the doors to the next
frontier: space. If you disagree with this, or if you have no desire to go
anywhere: fine... stay. Very few members of the human species have the rare
"get-me-the-hell-out-of-here" gene. It is productive for the species if most
members stay put, while a few forge on to new places. If you have this
desire to get things changing and moving, then this plea is for you.
I am offering you the sparkle of hope, the oppurtunity to DO something
which will directly mold your future, your children's future, and our species
future. This article is not written to convince you of the incredible
wonders that await us in space. This article is written to inform you of an
option, a solution to problems which weigh so heavily upon us. If you
explore this option in depth, I am convinced you will see it is the way to
go.
There is a tsunami of support building for the private colonization,
exploration, and exploitation of space. There is a flood of support for
leaving Earth, setting up governments however we choose, living life the way
we want, and for FREEDOM. There are organizations, just getting started,
which hope to achieve these dreams and push humanity to the stars.
If you want to know more about the possibilities that await us in space,
contact any or all of these groups:
NAME: First Millenial Foundation
ADDRESS: PO Box 347
Rifle, CO 81650
E-MAIL: mtsavage@pipeline.com
WWW: http://www.csn.net/~mtsavage/
BOOK: _The Millenial Project_ by Marshall T. Savage
NOTES:
This is the group that I support. They have their complete plan
outlined in the book. They not only support colonization of space, they are
actively trying to do it. They show real promise.
NAME: Space Frontier Foundation
ADDRESS: 16 First Avenue
Nyack, NY 10960-2114
E-MAIL: openfrontier@delphi.com
NOTES:
Request their Frontier Files by e-mail. Claim to be most radical
space activist group.
NAME: United Societies In Space, Inc.
ADDRESS: 6841 S. Yosemite, 3-C
Englewood, CO 80112
PHONE: 1-800-895-META
WWW: http://www.tagsys.com/Ads/USIS/
NOTES:
"The U.S.I.S. is a nonprofit corporation located in Colorado, U.S.A.,
promoting outer space as a societal place to live and work in the third
millenium."
NAME: Space Studies Institute
ADDRESS: PO. Box 82
Princeton, NJ 08542
PHONE: 609-921-0377
FAX: 609-921-0389
E-MAIL: ssi@ssi.org
WWW: http://www.astro.nwu.edu/lentz/space/ssi/home-ssi.html
NOTES:
"The Institute's mission, continuing under the direction of Prof.
Freeman Dyson, is to open the energy and material resources of space for
human benefit within our lifetime. SSI's first commitment is to complete
the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the
abundant resources in space. Its second goal is to promote the formation of
private, governmental, or multi-national programs to use space resources
responsibly and carefully, avoiding environmental damage."
NAME: National Space Society
ADDRESS: 922 Pennsylvania Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20003
PHONE: (202) 543-1900
FAX: (202) 546-4189
BBS: (214) 733-4080
E-MAIL: nsshq@nss.org
WWW: http://www.global.org/bfreed/nss/nss-home.html
NOTES:
"Mission Statement:
We want to promote change in social, technical, economic, and political
conditions to advance the day when people will live and work in space."
NAME: Lunar Resources Incorporated [The Artemis Project]
ADDRESS: PO Box 590213
Houston, TX 77259-0213
WWW: http://www.access.digex.net/~dcarson/Lrc.html
NOTES:
"The Lunar Resources Company is organized to advance and engage in
space flight as a commercial enterprise, to establish and operate a permanent
manned lunar base, and to transact any and all lawful business--on Earth, in
outer space, and on other celestial bodies--for which corporations may be
incorporated under the Texas Business Corporation Act."
NAME: Space Access Society
ADDRESS: 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150
Phoenix, AZ 85044
PHONE: 602 431-9283 voice/fax
E-MAIL: hvanderbilt@bix.com
WWW: http://www.lunacity.com/homepage/sas-info.html
NOTES:
"Dedicated to promoting affordable, reliable access to space for all."
NAME: The Atlantis Project [Oceania]
E-MAIL: welcome@oceania.org
WWW: http://oceania.org/
NOTES:
"The Atlantis Project is dedicated to the goal of establishing a new
country named Oceania. This country will be devoted to the value of freedom,
and will first exist as a sea city in the Caribbean. As no collectivist
nation is likely to sell us the land we need, we will build an island out of
concrete and steel."
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"Never have so many people understood so little about so much."
--James Burke
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
NEW WORLD ORDER
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
The government sucks, right? Isn't that the Gen-X battlecry? Hell yeah
it is! It looks like term limits won't make it through any house of the
Congress, and that the line-item veto is simply a strategic political carrot-
on-a-stick. Shit, this stuff ain't working out.
Well, the problem is huge and complex, and I feel can be attributed to
the makeup of our government. Old fat white guys. Oh, and conservatives too.
The kind of conservative that people don't like, that is. You know, the mean
ones.
So our government's screwed, and these old farts never seem to die off or
lose popularity with the enraged public intent on looking for change. What to
do? Well, we have to imagine a new world order. Here we go.
PACIFISTS
One day, a magic nerve gas or something passes over all the local and
federal institutions, driving politicians apathetic. They all go home to
their estranged wives and mistresses. Quietly, across the nation a movement
for Pacifism In Government forms (and damn, they didn't notice the acronym
until later). Thousands of happy idealistic pacifists from all two political
parties with money are elected.
This new government is chipper motherfuckers. Much like the Contract
with America, they decide to enact a Contract On Peace (once again ironically
missing the acronym). Pennsylvania Avenue is reopened for traffic. Happy
families walk by and wave at the President, who's sitting on the lawn with his
kids and buxom wife, playing lawn darts. Meanwhile, the real work is going on
in Congress.
Hundreds of bills are passed through the Houses, unamended and undebated
(because it's rude to tack on messy amendments, and who wants to argue about
such cool shit?).
One bill has diverted 99 percent of defense spending into the
reconstruction of the nation, a move happily accepted by the masses. In place
of border patrols and Coast Guard are placed the Old World politicians, with
signs reading "I Can't Keep You Out Anymore, World Citizens!" Happy
immigrants walk into the nation, playfully spitting upon Newt Gingrich and
Pete Wilson.
Inside the nation, police and judges and Jesse Helms are summarily
executed to create a truly kinder and gentler nation. Jails are opened to the
public. Ex-cons wander out into the street with their pink slips (because,
hell kids, prison is a job, not a vacation!), wondering what made everyone so
fucking happy and feeling much out of place. Seeing the prison guards strung
up by the balls, they breathe a huge sigh of relief and return home for
rehabilitation.
Huge corporations and monopolies are dissolved by decree of the U.S.
government. Bill Gates stands outside his home peddling copies of MS-DOS 10.0
for Windows. Television and long-distance services disappear. Since the
wannabe 'Net providers like AoL and CompuServe and GEnie had been huge
bloodsucking corporations, they are now gone, and by natural selection the
pure uncentralized Internet remains for the enjoyment of the masses.
Shareware becomes the rule, and e-zines become the source.
Lacking television and long-distance phone services, people wander
outside their homes and meet their meighbors. Politics doesn't divide them,
because both parties run for peace now. Economics doesn't divide them,
because people, working for small local companies, now know their bosses and
can't get screwed out of good money. Religion doesn't divide them, because,
as mentioned before, the corporations and monopolies have been dissolved.
Gun control ceases to be an issue. The elimination of an oppressive
representative-democratic government leads to a feeling of self-worth among
citizens, no longer being beaten like dogs and fed rich junk food, and the
need for self-defense weapons loses importance. Hunters no longer feel a need
to get their aggressions out, no longer haunted by religion and government.
Criminal types hear no more horror stories about police brutality, and are
unmoved by childish impulses to annoy them, leading them to take up lives of
art.
THE DEMISE OF THE PACIFIST STATES OF AMERICA
We are conquered by France.
CONCLUSION
Our current government is militaristic and mean. The pacifist idea above
is the opposite. From the comprehensive study of logic I received in grade
school, these are the only two possibilities; therefore, our current
government is the best way going. So we Gen-X'ers oughtn't be so whiney!
Everything's just fine.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and,
furthermore, always carry a small snake."
--W. C. Fields
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
THE DOWNFALL OF AMERiCAN CONSCiOUSNESS
by Hagbard
The citizens of the United States have often overcome amazing odds,
internal strife and turmoil, and have prevailed in the face of certain defeat.
Americans were at one time the most educated, creative, and technologically
advanced people on Earth. But something has changed along the way. Americans
no longer possess superior educations, America is no longer generating the
technological saviors of the past, and we have the lowest participation in
government of all the industrialized nations.
Over the decades, as Americans became more comfortable with their global
status, they began to take for granted the marvels that their industrialized
standard of living has brought them. Americans have grown complacent with
their lifestyle and our capitalist economic system has generated an intense
desire for material wealth.
In the first century of the United States, the character of the nation
was high in spirit, innovation, production, and optimism. The ideal of the
American Dream is a product of a time when Americans were much more bold than
they are in the present day. This bold spirit can largely be attributed to
the American Frontier, the open territory and resources of the Western United
States. It was this territory that contained open prairies which, in turn,
opened minds. Business and production flourished as rail lines were built,
communications were enhanced, and people moved West. This served as an outlet
for Americans, it provided them with a dream and an adventurous spirit.
The awareness and attention of their surroundings seems to be no longer
present in mainstream American culture today. American values have turned to
those often valued by a stagnating culture: security, comfort, convenience,
accumulated wealth, conformity, power, and control. These are the values of a
culture which has turned inward upon itself, focusing within and on the
present period of time. Attention to those things which truly effect the
lives of Americans, such as the technology that their lives absolutely depend
upon, has fallen by the wayside in light of issues which are less demanding
on educational background. A society is doomed to failure if the majority of
citizens cannot comprehend the underlying principles of the processes by
which they work and live.
A steady stream of media sound bytes, commercials, and advertising, in
less than 50 years, has turned into a method of controlling the public, of
feeding them data which is easily digestible since it is purely entertainment,
hence it requires little or no thought. The American public has been
thoroughly brainwashed, control by the media has become a simple matter
considering the educational level of the majority of Americans. If there is
little power of reasoning to begin with, it takes little effort to convince
people to agree with you. Control of the media means control of everything
in a pseudo-democratic society such as that of the US. As I write this
article, Walt Disney has purchased the rights to ABC and Westinghouse has
purchased CBS. Turner broadcasting may make some rather large purchases very
soon. Power is being focused into a tight elite; an elite which controls the
tools for swaying public opinion to whatever they wish. The issues that
affect our lives are no longer addressed in an academic fashion, but in a
political and entertaining manner, in ways that speak to our ignorant fears
and prejudices and not to our minds. The Media sits back and makes shadows
upon the cave wall, as Americans watch transfixed, willfully bound to their
seats.
The American public must learn to think for itself again, must want to
think for itself again, or it will forever be a slave to the media and those
who control it. A shepherd amongst a herd of sheep is not a democracy.
Unfortunately, it seems apparent that Americans are quite content to be told
what to do, what to think, and what to believe, and would be quite happy if
someone made the hard decisions for them. Lucky for the United States that
the public officials in charge of the government are no more educated than
the average American.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"Information is the currency of democracy."
--Thomas Jefferson
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
EVOLUTiON OF A COWARD
by I Wish My Name Were Nathan
Good Lord.
Nine months ago I prided myself on my maturity and intimate knowledge of
human nature. With these tools, I thought, I'd be able to make rational
conclusions and somehow see things, think them out, in an objective manner,
and come to obvious conclusions about the world. Boy, was I wrong.
Over the past six months, at first against my better judgement, I have
started reading up. About Waco, a well-orchestrated massacre. About prison
conditions. About Congress, and the missing 13th amendment. About police
brutality. About the filtration of the news. This isn't fiction; it ain't
the fucking Illuminatus! Trilogy; it's true. I have barely started my work.
I see myself having high blood pressure at 21.
April 1995. I'd read up on Waco, following Linda Thompson's reports. I
noticed a certain slant, a big fucking slant, in the newspapers after reading
that: "... The Branch Davidian compound went up in flames in an *apparent*
suicide maneuver." The media's lying to me, I thought. I hadn't yet dared
to think: "Are they lying about everything?"
Kilgore and I used to hang out at my college some weeknights, talking and
watching him smoke. Recently he'd been annoying me with talk about the
horrible oppressive government and our lack of rights. Shit, he was peeving
me. Never happy, always foreboding, so fucking detailed too. I knew he
wasn't lying to me, and I was no longer naive enough to pretend that he was.
I burst out one night, yelling at him to shut up, be more positive, just
don't worry about it. "History repeats itself," I said. "So what if the
government is oppressing us? It's happened before. There'll be another
revolution sometime, and then it'll start all over again. It's inevitable.
Why waste your life worrying?" Why waste his life being paranoid and
suspicious? Do we not have the freedom to lay back?
Bobbi Sands sez (SoB #17, "The Politicization of the Militia"):
... If need be, a free people will fight with forks and
spoons for its freedom. Any person who denies that at
times his nation's government might be his nation's enemy
-- for we must oppose all enemies, foreign and domestic --
is either naive, foolish, or a coward. Most likely, he is
a coward -- someone who feels that as long as he can
continue to work and as long as the government hasn't
started to oppress him yet then he can keep on keeping on
-- and a coward can never be a free man. ... The coward
is content with the government -- any government -- that
"keeps the streets safe" and lets him "make a living," and
a government is content with a coward because he pays his
taxes and doesn't start trouble. The coward is happy to
make a living, but he will never truly live a life.
In April I was a coward. Damned proud of it, too. Since then, however,
I've read more. Gobbled it up, still cynically reading between the lines,
hoping that it was all slanted too. But it isn't. It fits perfectly with my
"intimate knowledge of human nature". I just never saw it before.
I still must take exception to Ansat's, er, Bobbi's definition of a
"coward". One key detail was left out: knowledge. At the beginning of this
year how could I, a neurotic short-story writer, be called a coward for
trusting the government? Looks like a fuckload of people do! The simple fact
is, most people, like me back then, do not have access to reliable news.
The AP wire is censored and slanted. I bet even some respected
newscasters out there believe the shit they say. Of course, some of it must
be true; like, I can believe that a man named Bill Clinton is the President.
But I don't believe that what he says is what he means, or even what gets
done. I used to be a Clinton supporter. Rooting for the Arkansas underdog.
But no more. He annoys me, perturbs me, insults me with his rhetoric. And
nofuckinway do I support any Republicans, or other Democrats for that matter.
I'm sure somewhere in Congress is an honest man or woman taken aback by the
shit that's happening. Well, maybe not. Those people aren't real. They know
nothing either. They spend all their time kissing corporate ass and arguing
about money. I guess the only people, other than unfunded unelectable
citizens, who know this are in the CIA or FBI. Sad thought.
June 20, 1995. This morning at three o'clock I was ready to explode. A
good morning's sleep calmed me down a little. I see myself at a juncture
right now. I've not gone so far that I can't go back. What should I do with
my life? Revolt -- or relax?
I'm still sane and I can still lie to myself. I can go get a nice job
after finishing college (two wonderously humorous and ironic topics, I might
add), make nice money, and write nice stories about stupid kids in the
meantime. This idea fucks with my mind. My stomach goes tight and acidic. I
remember lying to myself five years that I was a nice straight boy. A fuckuva
lotta good that did me. I still shudder when I read the stuff I wrote during
that time. It scares me. Currently, I'm lying to my family about writing for
this 'zine. They don't know I write at all. I'm lying to my friends. I'm
lying to my professors. (Well, not during the summer.) I recently went to
the dentist and was told that I appear to be grinding my teeth in my sleep. I
lied to myself, saying I was sure I had no reasons to.
But is it really lying to myself not to fight for what I believe? Should
I try to preserve my thin sheath of naivete and fool myself into happiness?
Shit, I mean there're a lot of obstacles out there, all agents of what I want
to fight against. I can't possibly do it alone. Is it lying to myself to let
myself be happy and immune? It's not lying. It is cowardice. But educated,
calm, collected cowardice. I don't know if that's good enough for me.
I could probably live a nice yuppie life, oh easily. But I would always
know the danger that lurks around the corner. I'd always know that something
isn't getting out. I'd always know that somewhere, people are being beaten
for speaking out, silenced by force, with lawless government justice. Could I
allow myself to be one of those people? Sometimes I tell myself I value life,
my own, especially. Could I live as a schizophrenic with a smile pasted on my
face, and corroding away inside?
When I sit and think about it, I do not see myself in the future. I do
see neither a job nor a revolution. I do not see anything. My future is as
yet unnamed. Maybe it is because I will not live to see my future. Maybe it
is because my future is wide, unrestricted, and vital. Whatever it is, I must
soon make a decision. And I can probably rationalize whatever decision I
make; it's my human nature.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze
long into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes into you."
--Nietzsche
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
'A TERRiBLE BEAUTY iS BORN': THE iRiSH EASTER RiSiNG OF 1916
by Captain Moonlight
"For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse --
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."
-- W. B. Yeats, from "Easter, 1916"
"And I say to my people's masters: "For our part we take our stand
Beware, openly upon the fundamental truth
Beware of the thing that is coming, that Ireland is a subject nation,
beware of the risen people." and that therefore Ireland has no
-- Padraic Henry Pearse national enemy in Europe save
one, and that one is the nation
that holds her in subjection."
-- James Connolly, "The
Slackers", March 1916
DEDICATION
This work is respectfully dedicated to the members of the
ZAPATiSTA NATiONAL LiBERATiON ARMY,
fighting in the true spirit of the Irish Citizen Army.
"A true revolutionist must never count the cost, for he knows that a revolu-
tion always repays itself, though it cost blood, and through it life be lost
and sacrifice made. He knows that the flame of the ideal which caused the
revolution burns all the more brightly, and steadily, and thus attracts more
men and minds, and because of the life-blood and sacrifice becomes more endur-
ing."
-- Nora Connolly, _The Irish Rebellion of 1916; or, The Unbroken Tradition_
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT
BTUC British Trade Union Congress
DMP Dublin Metropolitan Police
GPO General Post Office (of Dublin)
ICA Irish Citizen Army
IRA Irish Republican Army
IRB Irish Republican Brotherhood
ISRP Irish Socialist Republican Party
ITGWU Irish Transport and General Workers' Union
NUDL National Union of Dock Labourers
RIC Royal Irish Constabulary
SPI Socialist Party of Ireland
UVF Ulster Volunteer Force
I. PRE-REVOLT: THE FiRE iS LiT
"Then Jem yelled out "Oh Citizens, this system is a curse
An English boss is a monster, An Irish one even worse
They'll never lock us out again and here's the reason why
My name is James Connolly, I didn't come here to die
"But to fight for the rights of the working man
And the small farmer too
To protect the proletariat from the bosses and their screws
So hold on to your rifles, boys, don't give up your dream
Of a Republic for the workin' class, economic liberty."
-- Larry Kirwan (of Black '47), "James Connolly,"
_Fire of Freedom_
Just as with any armed conflict, the Irish Rising of 1916 was merely the
climax of a series of events, events which spanned several decades, and which
involved not only Ireland and Britain, but also Germany and the United States.
Events in Ireland since the British occupation in 1171 when Henry II invaded
have only fostered resentment against Britain. The Battle of the Boyne, on
July 12, 1690 (July 1 by the old calender), which solidified Protestant rule
in both England and Ireland and Lord Cromwell's ensuing reign of terror merely
increased Irish hatred of English rule, and made the two groups irreconcila-
ble, with the exception of Ulster, which was repopulated with transplanted
British during Cromwell's reign, the original inhabitants being moved to
Connaught or killed. The cultural gap and resentment could only lead to
either the suppression of one culture or the separation of the two. The Irish
were proud of their Unbroken Tradition -- the tradition of a rising each
generation. The growing Nationalism in the beginning of the Twentieth Cen-
tury, increased by such cultural groups as the Gaelic League, only spread the
resentment, making a rising inevitable. One of the major catalysts which led
to the Rising was the Great Dublin Lock-Out of 1913.
The Lock-Out of 1913 was caused largely by the 1909 formation of the
Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU) by James Larkin and the
1912 founding of the Irish Labour Party by Larkin and James Connolly. Larkin
formed the ITGWU on January 4, 1909, when he broke with the National Union of
Dock Labourers (NUDL), forming his union from the Dublin branch of the NUDL.
This union joined the Irish Trades Unions Congress the next year in 1910, and
by 1911 had grown to have 5,000 members, at which time it formed a Belfast
Branch under the direction of James Connolly. The Union's increasing power
became evident to the bosses of Dublin, leading to clashes between the Union
leaders and the bosses, particularly William Martin Murphy, the biggest boss
of them all. In 1911 Larkin asked Murphy and his Employers' Federation,
numbering about 400 by then, to have talks with the Union about working condi-
tions and pay. By this time Murphy had raised enough employers that he had
the power to refuse this demand, and set out to destroy the ITGWU and unions
in general.
By 1913, Murphy became rather irate at Larkin's demands, and organised a
severe blow to the Dublin working class. In August of the year 1913, Murphy
had his employers' union order all of their workers to sign a form forbidding
them to join any unions, including Larkin's. All who refused were fired, and
the Union supported thousands who lost their jobs in these cuts. At this time
Larkin called on the employees of the Dublin Tram Company, the Board of Direc-
tors of which Murphy was a member, to go on strike, a strike which he hoped
would paralyze Dublin's transportation. This was answered by 700 Union mem-
bers in the employ of the Company, leaving some 1,000 still working there.
The Dublin Metropolitan Police, also owned by Murphy, were then used as scabs
to keep the trams, and the company, running. The leaders of the ITGWU were
then arrested, but were released next day on bail. When Larkin gave an
illegal anti-boss speech at the Murphy-owned Imperial Hotel, however, the
Dublin Police began their dreaded baton charges, raiding the meeting and
batoning several attendees into unconsciousness, and beginning their attacks
on Dubliners in the streets. Using such terror-tactics, the DMP successfully
made the streets unsafe for the citizens of Dublin.
On September 2 of that year, the coal companies locked-out their workers,
and on the third, the entire Employers' Federation locked-out their workers,
resulting in a total of about 25,000 workers being locked-out by September 22.
Including their families, about 100,000 men, women, and children, or one-third
of the population of Dublin, were starving in the streets, where they were
batoned to death by the DMP.
By the twenty-ninth things had become so bad that a government inquiry
was started, under the direction of Sir George Askwith. Timothy M. Healy
spoke for the bosses, and Larkin spoke for the Union, with both British and
Irish trade unionists presenting evidence. The Askwith Report, though con-
demning the sympathetic strike (a strike in which workers of different profes-
sions not directly bound but often owned by the same people struck for the
common good), also condemned the employers' use of anti-union restrictions.
The state then turned its back on the issue. The Employers' Federation con-
tinued to heap public opinion against itself by rejecting the report, for
which it was attacked both in Ireland and Britain. George Russell, the Irish
poet and mystic whose pen-name was AE, who earlier had worked with Sir Horace
Curzon Plunkett, uncle of the author Lord Dunsany, for the good of the Irish
farmers, wrote an "Open Letter for the Dublin Employers" ('Masters of Dublin')
on October 7 denouncing their treatment of the Union workers, and gave a
speech on their behalf on November 1 in London at the Royal Albert Hall. Also
on the seventh an editorial appeared in _The Times_ in which the employers
were criticised for their treatment of the strike.
All of this, however, did not feed the workers nor their children. To
take care of this problem, the Countess Markievicz, who had been converted to
Socialism by James Connolly, working on what donations could be mustered from
all over Britain and Ireland, worked the giant kitchens beneath Liberty Hall,
Headquarters of the ITGWU, producing food for the strikers and their families.
Nora Connolly, daughter of James Connolly, said of these kitchens (in _The
Irish Rebellion of 1916; or, The Unbroken Tradition_, p. 2):
Here the Countess de Markievicz reigned supreme -- all meals were
prepared under her direction. There were big tubs on the floor;
around each were about half a dozen girls peeling potatoes and other
vegetables. There were more girls at tables cutting up meat. The
Countess kept up a steady march around the boilers as she supervised
the cooking. She took me to another kitchen where more delicate
food was being prepared for nursing and expectant mothers.
'We used to give the food out at first,' she said. 'But in
almost every case we found that it had been divided amongst the
family. Now we have the women come here to eat. We are sure then
that they are getting something sufficiently nourishing to keep up
their strength.' . . .
In this way the strikers were also clothed. Ms. Connolly said of this (p. 3):
We came to the clothing shop next. Some persons had caught the
idea of sending warm clothing for the wives and children of the
strikers; accordingly one of the rooms of Liberty Hall was turned
into an alteration room. Several women and girls were working from
morning to night altering the clothes to fit the applicants. One of
the girls said to me, "It was a wonder to us at first the number of
strikers who had extra large families, until we found out that in
many cases their wives had adopted a youngster or two for the day,
and brought them along to get clothed." Not strictly honest, per-
haps, but how human to wish to share their little bit of good for-
tune with those not so fortunate as themselves. How many little
boys and girls knew for the first time in their lives the feel of
warm stockings and shoes, and how many little girls had the deli-
cious thrill of getting a new dress fitted on.
Shortly after the criticism by AE and _The Times_, on October 27, Larkin
was imprisoned in an attempt by the bosses to break the Union, serving a sen-
tence of seven months, and James Connolly was sent for in Belfast to come and
take over the union. Connolly is regarded as one of the chief Irish Socialist
theorists, trying to bring about a Republican-Socialism and supporting the
cutting of both political and economic ties to Great Britain. Connolly was
born in an Edinburgh, Scotland slum, the son of Irish immigrants, where his
earliest experiences set his political and economic beliefs. Almost entirely
self-educated, having left school to go to work at age eleven, he gained
military experience while trying to escape poverty in the British Army.
During this time he served some time in Ireland before deserting at the age of
twenty-one and returning to Edinburgh. He founded the Irish Socialist Repub-
lican Party, later renamed the Socialist Party of Ireland after Connolly
emigrated to the US in 1903, where he founded several other Socialist groups.
After his work in the US, in 1910 he returned to Ireland after being guaran-
teed a post in the SPI by William O'Brien, who had taken over the ISRP after
his leaving for America and reorganised it as the SPI. O'Brien later got him
his job with Larkin. Under Connolly a plan was made to take the strikers'
children to Britain until after the Lock-Out. Dora Montefiore and Lucille
Rand, with Larkin's approval, arrived in Dublin to take the children of con-
senting parents to England to be provided with food, shelter, and clothing.
The Archbishop of Dublin, William Walsh, however, upset at this brotherhood
between the British Protestants and the Irish Catholics, condemned this ac-
tion. The DMP then arrested the pair for kidnapping. When James Larkin's
wife, Delia Larkin, tried to take over the venture the Dublin clergy saw to it
that she failed. Walsh did, however, see to it that the clergy helped provide
relief for the strikers. The playwright George Bernard Shaw went to Ireland
in November of that year to work on the strikers' behalf.
Larkin was released shortly thereafter, and he and Connolly took over
joint-control of the Union. Attacks from the police continued to get worse.
Robert Monteith, a British Noncommissioned Officer, who later become a member
of the Irish Citizen Army, had his step-daughter, fourteen at the time, ba-
toned into unconsciousness. He had the power to personally see that the
culprit was repaid, but the majority of Dublin was unfortunately not able to
stop the violence. To protect the citizens from the Dublin Police, James
Larkin and James Connolly formed the Irish Citizen Army, one of the major
combatants in the Rising of 1916, from unemployed workers. This band was led
by Connolly and trained by a former British officer, Captain James Robert
"Jack" White.
The Irish Citizen Army was trained in an area outside Liberty Hall known
as Croyden Park. This park had been taken over by the Union and was generally
used for sports, and upon formation of the Citizen Army was used as the major
drilling grounds, where the Citizen Army often drilled using broom handles due
to the shortage of rifles. Not being one for inaction, Connolly shut-down
Dublin Port. Larkin then went on to Britain on the "Fiery Cross" campaign to
gather food and clothes, as well as support, in England. When he tried to get
the British unions to close docks on their side of the Irish Sea he was criti-
cised by the British Trade Union Congress for dictating to the British unions.
He got into a major fight with the British union leaders J. H. Thomas and J.
H. Wilson, until the only major British union leader for the Irish was Keir
Hardie. Eventually, in December, the British helped him to get talks going
again, but they were short-lived and broke down on December 20th. That
Christmas was the coldest spent by many families in years. In January 1914,
workers petitioned that they be allowed to return to work without signing
their souls and unions away. In February the BTUC decided to cease the Dublin
Relief Fund beginning February 11th. The Lock-Out was ended later that month.
In the end, four labourers were killed during the strike, with many injured.
(James Nolan and John Byrne were batoned to death by the Dublin Metropolitan
Police. C. Byrne of Dun Laoghaire died after ill-treatment in prison, and
Alice Brady was shot by a British "free-worker" or scab.)
Due to the extreme debt the Lock-Out put the Irish Transport and General
Workers' Union in, Larkin left to raise funds in America, where he stayed for
nine years, having become, like Connolly, involved in the American Socialist
movement. With Larkin gone, Connolly became head of the Irish Transport and
General Workers' Union. After the Lock-Out, the Irish Citizen Army numbered
about 200, which Connolly kept drilled and ready to strike for Irish independ-
ence.
Watching the events going on during the Lock-Out were not only pacifists
like Francis "Skeffy" Sheehy-Skeffington, but also such groups as the Irish
Republican Brotherhood and individuals like Patrick Henry Pearse (who used the
Gaelic equivalent of his first name, Padraic) and Thomas J. Clarke -- militant
self-rulers. While all of these groups are usually lumped together under the
collective title of "Sinn Feiners" -- indeed, the Easter Rising has often been
called the Sinn Fein Rebellion -- the Sinn Fein was just one of the many
groups at that time, being a pacifistic self-rule party. The Sinn Fein was
formed between 1905 and 1908 by Arthur Griffith and Bulmer Hobson, based on
political ideals of Griffith's put forward in his 1904 work _Resurrection of
Hungary_, which had the King of England having another position as King of
Ireland, and having separate Parliaments for each country. The Sinn Fein,
Gaelic for Ourselves or Ourselves Alone, tried to go about this by doing such
things as boycotting British goods for Irish and refusing to acknowledge the
British Parliament, instead electing an Irish one. These reforms included the
"establishment of protection for Irish industries and commerce by combined
action of the County Councils and Local Boards; development of . . . mineral
resources; creation of a national civil service; national control and manage-
ment of transport and waste lands; reform of education; non-consumption as far
as possible of articles requiring duty to the British exchequer; non-
recognition of the British parliament." If this were done, and the Irish
people were to recognise the new government, it was presumed that the British
would remove themselves from Ireland's shores. The Sinn Fein had no real ties
to any paramilitary groups until it was taken over by Eamon de Valera in 1917,
after he was released from prison for helping lead the Rising. The Socialist
vegetarian teetotal self-ruler journalist Sheehy-Skeffington, a feminist who
added his wife, Hanna Sheehy's last name to his own to show their equality,
who condemned the bosses' actions during the Lock-Out also was against the use
of violence by the ICA. Only a few groups such as the Irish Republican Broth-
erhood approved of the Irish Citizen Army's actions.
The Irish Republican Brotherhood, formed in Dublin on March 17, 1858, by
James Stephens (with the monetary support of John O'Mahony, who also formed
the New York Fenians), was formed with the intention of overthrowing the
British government in Ireland and forming a Republican government in Ireland.
Their watchword was "Soon or Never". It was denounced by the Catholic
hierarchy in 1863, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Paul Cullen, in 1865, and in
1869, in response to the Rising of 1867, by Pope Pius IX. Despite this, it
continued to grow in ranks, its main recruiters being its founder, James
Stephens, William Roantree, and Patrick "Pagan" O'Leary. (On a side note,
O'Leary was a rather interesting character who, after abandoning studies for
the Catholic priesthood, fought in the Mexican War, in which he is believed to
have sustained a head injury. He later despised Christianity because it
taught to love your enemies. He held in especially low esteem St. Patrick,
for converting Ireland to Christianity, the Pope, whom he called "the boss",
Rome, the seat of the Church, England, for obvious reasons, and Queen Victo-
ria, the Famine Queen, whom he called "Mrs. Brown".) Eccentricities aside,
this was a very serious organisation, and attempts to suppress it simply made
it stronger. In 1898, when such major figures as Arthur Griffith, it received
support by James Connolly, John Redmond, and Maud Gonne (who later married
Sean MacBride), which caused great confusion in Dublin Castle when the British
tried to figure out who was and was not an IRB member. Thomas J. Clarke,
having returned to Dublin from New York in 1907 (after having left Ireland in
1898 when he was released from prison after going on a Clan na Gael mission to
blow up key positions in London), reorganised the IRB, which had fallen into a
state of disorganisation and became their treasurer, using funds provided by
John Devoy, a leading figure in the Clan na Gael, an Irish self-rule group in
New York founded after the Fenian Uprising. Also working to reorganise the
IRB were Sean MacDiarmada (AKA Sean McDermott), Bulmer Hobson, and Denis
McCullough, working in Belfast. Members of the IRB did help found the Sinn
Fein, though the two were distinct parties, each using different techniques to
change the government. By 1912 the RIC was concerned about the RIB, though
Dublin Castle did not take them seriously due to their small numbers of about
1,660 in Ireland and 367 in Britain.
Many of the members of the IRB and other revolutionary organisations,
Pearse among them, were originally members of the Gaelic League, a group
trying to revive the Gaelic language, the original language of Ireland, which
was suppressed by the British. This group, formed on July 1, 1893 by Dr.
Douglas Hyde, Fr. Eugene O'Growney, and Eoin MacNeill, Professor of Early
Irish History, was formed so that all Irishmen of all political and religious
views could work to restore Gaelic as the national language. This group went
so far as to begin sending out traveling teachers, or Timiri, to the more
rural parts of English-speaking Ireland to promote the use of Gaelic. While
not originally having a political stance, it gained one in 1915 under Padraic
H. Pearse, who declared that the primary aim of the Gaelic League was the
political freedom of Ireland. This caused many of the less hard-core members,
Dr. Hyde among them, to resign. Pearse said, in his November, 1913 article
"The Coming Revolution" (Reprinted in _Political Writings and Speeches_, p.
91):
I have come to the conclusion that the Gaelic League, as the
Gaelic League, is a spent force; and I am glad of it. I do not mean
that no work remains for the Gaelic League, or that the Gaelic
League is no longer equal to work; I mean that the vital work to be
done in the new Ireland will be done not so much by the Gaelic
League itself as by men and movements that have sprung from the
Gaelic League or have received from the Gaelic League a new baptism
and a new life of grace. . . . it was a prophet and more than a
prophet. But it was not the Messiah. I do not know if the Messiah
has yet come, and I am not sure that there will be any visible and
personal Messiah in this redemption: the people itself will perhaps
be its own Messiah . . . .
Thus the Gaelic League was used for recruiting even before taking the official
stance of pro-self-rule. Once members joined, they met and became influenced
by not only Home-Rulers such as MacNeill, but also more hard-liners such as
Pearse, the IRB becoming a major influence on Gaelic Leaguers.
The Loyalists, however, were also eager to have their way, and keep
Ireland a part of Great Britain. In order to do this, they formed the still-
existing Ulster Volunteer Force, or UVF. The UVF was formed in January of
1913 by the Ulster Unionist Council in order to prevent Home Rule. This was
seen as a terrible danger to the Ulsterites, who viewed Home Rule as Rome Rule
-- they believed that if it were implemented Ulster Protestants would be
oppressed by the Catholic majority. The Third Home Rule Bill, which had been
introduced by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith in 1912, had by this time had
passed parliament, and the UVF considered this dangerous enough to arm.
However, by this time the UVF was as anti-British government as the Irish
self-rulers. As Padraic Pearse said in his essay "From a Hermitage," pub-
lished in November, 1913 (reprinted in _Political Writings and Speeches_, p.
187):
The Editor of _Sinn Fein_ [Arthur Griffith] wrote the other day that
when the Orangemen fire upon the King of England's troops it will
become the duty of every Nationalist in Ireland to join them: there
is a deal of wisdom in the thought as well as a deal of humour.
The Orangemen are of course the Ulster men -- so called because they supported
the Protestant King William of Orange (who was brought in from Holland to
reseed the Catholic monarchy with the more popular Protestants) over the
Catholic King James of England during the Jacobite Wars, particularly during
the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. By this time both North and South had had
enough of Britain, and both were willing to use force to make Britain follow
their own views, to keep Ireland or to set it free, respectively.
On November 25, 1913, two days after the formation of the Irish Citizen
Army, a new self-ruler paramilitary force was formed -- the Irish Volunteers.
The Irish Volunteers were formed as a result of the formation of the Ulster
Volunteer Force, and, in fact, the Irish Volunteers were formed using the UVF
as a model. The Volunteers were formed after Eoin MacNeill published an
article in _An Claideamh Soluis_ on November 1, called "The North Began,"
suggesting the self-rulers form an Army on the same principles as that of the
UVF. Bulmer Hobson then approached him from the IRB to implement this.
Hobson and the IRB then organised a public meeting at the Rotunda. This
attracted people from several self-rule groups -- from the IRB to the Gaelic
League to Sinn Fein. MacDiarmada joined Hobson as a main IRB leader in the
Volunteers. Padraic Pearse also became a major founding member, and when the
IRB saw how valuable he indeed was he was inducted into the IRB, where he
quickly rose to the Supreme Council. By May 1914 about 80,000 members had
joined the Volunteers. At this time Captain Jack White of the Irish Citizen
Army then quit the ICA in order to become Volunteer organiser for Derry and
Tyrone, where he trained a large battalion of the Volunteer Forces as he had
done with the ICA. He was later dismissed when he tried to make the Volun-
teers an Irish defence force recognised by the British Government. Funds were
provided, as with the IRB, by John Devoy and the Clan na Gael in New York,
where Irish-Americans were all too happy to fund Irishmen willing and able to
overthrow the British.
To call either of the two Irish self-rule armies -- the Irish Volunteers,
or Irish Citizen Army -- supremacists would be, for the most part, untrue --
they were indeed nationalists, but they did not believe in eliminating others
from their lands. These armies were both formed for the same basic reasons as
the American Colonial Forces during the American Revolutionary War -- that is,
to free the country from an oppressive foreign government. For one, the
Socialists, such as James Connolly, the Countess Markievicz, and James Larkin,
were for international revolution with local rule -- all peoples, no matter
their ethnicity or nationality were believed equal. As James Connolly said in
his speech at the outbreak of World War I, while trying to get all the working
class, from all countries including Britain, Russia, France, Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Ireland to unite instead of killing each other for the
governments of those countries (reprinted in _Labour and Easter Week_, pp. 1-
2):
Should the working class of Europe, rather than slaughter each other
for the benefit of kings and financers, proceed to-morrow to erect
barricades all over Europe, to break up bridges and destroy the
transport services that war might be abolished, we should be per-
fectly justified in following such a glorious example and contribut-
ing our aid to the final dethronement of the vulture classes that
rule and rob the world.
And, as his actions show, in his recruiting the Countess Markievicz, both a
Protestant and a woman, as well as a former aristocrat as a main leader in the
Irish Citizen Army, Connolly was not prejudiced based on sex or religion. And
in the fact that he was on the side of the Dutch Boer Settlers of Africa
during the Boer War he does not believe Irish as a race above others, but
rather in a universal revolution and equality of mankind. Also, by reading
Pearse, it is obvious that he was not prejudiced against any one section of
Ireland, Protestant or Catholic. In his "Psychology of a Volunteer" of
January 1914 (reprinted in _Political Writings and Speeches_, p. 106), he
said:
I propose also that we substitute for the denominations Gael [Irish,
usually reserved for the Catholics], Gall [not of Irish descent,
usually reserved for the Ulster Protestants], and Gall-Gael the
common name of Irishman.
And again, as he said in "From a Hermitage" (November 1913) (repr. in _Politi-
cal Writings and Speeches_, p. 185):
It is foolish of an Orangeman to believe that his personal liberty
is threatened by Home Rule; but, granting that he believes that, it
is not only in the highest degree common sense but it is his clear
duty to arm in defence of his threatened liberty.
This shows how both groups' leaders were for uniting all peoples in Ireland
under a common self-ruling government, not in the oppression of a people.
"And how," the reader may well ask, "did all these paramilitary groups
form and drill in public without government intervention?" To understand this
one must look at the history of Ireland prior to the Twentieth Century. Had
such groups formed in Britain at the same time, the armies would have been
broken up and their leaders imprisoned. In Ireland, however, the formation
and drilling of private armies and militias was entirely legal, just as it is
with the various militia groups forming in the US. Though there was tension
between the groups and the government, a strained peace was kept, at least
temporarily. This is thanks to the agrarian secret societies, including the
White Boys, Ribbonmen, Carders, Defenders, Hearts of Oak or Oakboys, Hearts of
Steel or Steelboys, Lady Clares, Peep O' Day Boys, Thrashers, Whitefeet,
Blackfeet, and many others. These groups were led by various individuals
calling themselves such names as Captain Moonlight, Captain Starlight, Captain
Lightfoot, Captain Rock, and Captain Right, while others in the group called
themselves such names as Slasher, Echo, Fear-Not, Burnstack, Cropper, and
others. Ireland owes to these men many a liberty, though many of their meth-
ods were blood-thirsty. These societies were formed mainly to solve the
pressing problem of land-lords. During the time when these groups thrived,
Irish were not allowed to own land, and later, after these laws were repealed,
many Irish were driven so far into debt that they could not afford land. To
make matters worse, the land-lords charged so much that the majority of the
Irish families had to go without eating to pay their rent. During this time,
houses of those who could not pay their taxes were pulled down or burned so
the evicted could not move back in. Fed up with this, the Irish banded to-
gether. The secret societies would hunt down any land-lords who would evict
those who could not pay the over-charged rent. Those methods most often used
by these groups were desperate, as their ways-of-life were threatened, and
included such tactics as crop burning and livestock mutilation, as well as
shooting into houses, assault, rape, and murder. These societies were not
nationalist, but were merely working for the good of the farmers, and did not
take time to decide on elaborate theories of social and political structures,
instead working for what they needed to survive. Notices such as the follow-
ing, which was posted by the Ribbonmen on May 23, 1851, were posted in areas
where land-lords evicted tenants (quoted in Hickey and Doherty's _A Dictionary
of Irish History Since 1800_, p. 506):
To Landlords, Agents, Bailiffs, Grippers, process-servers, and
usurpers, or underminers who wish to step into the evicted tenants'
property, and to all others concerned in Tyranny and Oppression of
the Poor on the Bath Estate.
TAKE NOTICE
That you are hereby (under pain of a certain punishment which will
inevitably occur), prohibited from evicting tenants, executing
decrees, serving process, distraining for rent, or going into anoth-
er's land, or to assist any tyrant, Landlord or Agent in his insa-
tiable desire for depopulation. Recollect the fate of Mauleverer,
on this his anniversary.
Now the landlords were terrified; now the common man had a champion. Some
areas were so bad that only small safe-zones were patrolled by the soldiers,
after that the landlords were left to their own devices. Because of this many
landlords raised mercenary militias to counter the secret societies, which
they armed and drilled in public, while the vigilantes secretly organised.
The government, because it could not cope with the societies, left these
armies legal. Had it not been for such groups, the ICA and the Volunteers, as
well as such groups as the UVF, may not been able to train as well, and the
Easter Rising may not have occurred in the form that it did, and may instead
have been merely small terrorist acts like those performed by the later IRA.
As Pearse said, in "From a Hermitage" (November 1913) (repr. in _Speeches
and Political Writings_, p. 185):
Personally, I think the Orangeman with a rifle a much less ridicu-
lous figure than the Nationalist without a rifle; and the Orangeman
who can fire a gun will certainly count for more in the end than the
Nationalist who can do nothing cleverer than make a pun.
Both armies began to arm in 1914. In January, 1914, the Ulster Volunteer
Force made a night gun-running, during which a British official was killed.
Arms were moved off to various parts of Ulster by the means of private cars,
some even Rolls Royces. This brought 24,600 rifles and three million rounds
ammunition to the Ulster Volunteers. Shortly after the Ulster gun-running,
though it was still legal to have citizens' militias in Ireland, Britain made
the importation of arms illegal. The Irish Volunteers, having weighed the
consequences, decided to arm, disregarding legal laws for the moral laws of
what they believed was right. By this time the Volunteers numbered about
108,000. To arm these numbers, and to prove their daring against the British
government, a daylight gun-running was planned. The arms were bought from
Germany under the pretense of a rising in Mexico. The money was mainly pro-
vided by the Clan na Gael, under the monetary direction of John Devoy, and the
organisation was undertaken by Sir Roger Casement, a former British diplomat,
Eoin MacNeill, Chief-of-Staff of the Volunteers, Michael O'Rahilly, (who was
called The O'Rahilly, being the head of his clan), co-founder and treasurer of
the Irish Volunteers, Bulmer Hobson, a leading member of Sinn Fein, Darrell
Figgis, who also made the arrangements with Germany, Robert Erskine Childers,
a British author and Royal Navy Air Force soldier who went by the name Erskine
Childers, Mary Spring Rice, Anglo-Irish cousin to the British Ambassador to
the US, and Cathal Brugha, born Charles Burgess, second in command to Eamonn
Ceannt, an Ulster-born Volunteer. Off the Belgian coast arms were transferred
from a German ship, the Gladiator, to the private yachts Asgard, under the
command of Erskine Childers, who also helped organise the running, and the
Kelpie, under the command of Conor O'Brien, a Dublin journalist. Due to the
fact that O'Brien was too well known as an agitator to not attract attention,
the arms from the Kelpie were again transferred off the Welsh coast to Dr. Sir
Thomas Myles' boat the Chotah.
On July 26, a group of taxis arrived at Howth Harbour bringing a group of
young men and their girlfriends, apparently for a weekend summer outing.
However, when a ship sailed into harbour action began picking up, and more
people arrived at the harbour. The Irish Volunteers, who until then believed
they were following a routine drill, marched into harbour to have guns put in
their hands. Also helping in the expedition was Connolly's ICA. The Na
Fianna Eireann, the Irish Boy Scouts, which had been founded in Dublin in
1909 by the Countess Markievicz, based on the earlier (1902) group of the same
name founded by Bulmer Hobson in Belfast, including the Girls' Branch, arrived
with heavy wooden clubs to be used as batons, left taking hundreds of rounds
of ammunition, so that none of the Volunteers would decide to revolt then and
there. Rifles and munitions were loaded into the taxis and sped off to var-
ious areas of Ireland. Men appeared from apparently nowhere and guarded the
pier with automatic pistols. When police arrived, the sight of these armed
guards, and having some of the unloaded cargo pointed at them, was enough to
keep them off. The police, being deterred such, notified Dublin Castle, then
the seat of British rule in Ireland.
Dublin Castle, fearing the fact that they now had armed paramilitary
groups on both sides of the Ulster boarder, mobilised the King's Own Scottish
Borderers, then stationed in Dublin. Requisitioning trams, they hurried to
Howth Harbour, which was only a short way from Dublin. The two parties met at
Clontarf, on the way back to Dublin. The commandeered trams stopped and
blocked the Volunteers. The soldiers were ordered by Captain Cobden to load
their weapons, and as the Volunteers halted, the police were ordered by As-
sistant Commissioner David Harrell to seize the Volunteer weapons. A short
scuffle ensued, during which the Volunteers, lacking ammunition, fought off
the Scots and police with their clubs, the Scottish countering with rifle-
butts. When this ended, the Volunteer leaders, Hobson, Figgis, and Thomas
MacDonagh, a university lecturer, began arguing with the British and Scottish
leaders as to whether they were committing a crime *taking charge* of illegal-
ly imported weapons. While this occurred, the Volunteers, under command of
Edward "Ned" Daly began running off across the nearby fields with their
rifles. Finally, when the heated argument ended, the Scots found not only the
Volunteers, but also their commandeered trams, nowhere in sight. The Scottish
Borders then began the long march back to Dublin.
On the way, the Scottish Borders were harassed by crowds about their
attempting to disarm the Volunteers, and about what they had (or didn't have)
under their kilts. As they got closer to Dublin, the crowds became more
violent, throwing sticks and stones, as well as bottles. Major Haigh left the
barracks to take command of the Borders when he heard what was taking place.
In Bachelor's Walk, Dublin, Haigh ordered the soldiers to halt and face the
crowd, not realising they had loaded their rifles at Clontarf. When he raised
his hand for silence, one of the soldiers mistook it for a signal to fire, and
the rest followed, some bayoneting as well. Three were killed, one died as a
result of wounds, and at least thirty-seven others were wounded. One of those
killed was the mother of a Irishman serving in the British Army. These kill-
ings, especially that of the soldier's mother, were snatched up and used as
propaganda for the Irish cause, especially in the US. As a result of this and
the successful gun-running, contributions poured into the Volunteer and Clan
na Gael coffers. Public opinion was raised so much against the Borderers that
they were secretly removed from Dublin.
On August 1, the Chotah, which had had engine trouble, landed the remain-
ing arms without incident. In all, 1,500 rifles, 900 from the Asgard and 600
from the Chotah, along with 45,000 rounds of ammunition, were landed. These
arms were distributed among not only the Irish Volunteers, but also the Irish
Citizen Army, which helped to move the arms once they were landed.
The Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers also armed themselves
with captured British guns, which were of better quality than those bought
from the Germans. On two specific occasions ICA attempts to seize arms proved
fruitless, as described in Nora Connolly's _The Irish Rebellion of 1916; or,
The Unbroken Tradition_. On one of these occasions, the Citizen Army marched
on a British weapons storehouse to seize arms known to be there, but the
British Army heard about this and moved the weapons. Later, the ICA tried to
seize arms from a unionist group called Georgeus Rex (King George). This
group, made up of men past the age to fight in the British Army, would often
march, as did the Volunteers and ICA, in uniforms and armed through the
streets of Dublin. The Irish Citizen Army decided that the weapons these
people owned were too good to be kept by people who would not use them, so one
night they went off to capture them. After the ICA had entered the Georgeus
Rex storehouse, they seized the arms, only to discover they were clever fakes.
About a week after the Bachelor Walk Massacre, Great Britain went to war
with Germany. Recruiting posters went up over the British Empire, including
Ireland, much to the disgust of the Irish, who were deeply upset about the
slayings. At the beginning of the war, very few recruits were made. Prime
Minister Herbert Henry Asquith came to Dublin as the guest of John Redmond to
address an invitation-only meeting on the war, at which a troop of soldiers
were set up on guard. This meeting took place at Mansion House, at Nassau
Street and St. Stephen's Green. A counter-meeting was held outside Liberty
Hall, seat of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, at which several
major rebels, including Sean MacDiarmada representing the Irish Volunteers and
James Connolly. According to Nora Connolly, in _The Irish Rising of 1916; or,
The Unbroken Tradition_, the cheering at this counter-meeting was so great
that at one point the speaker at the Mansion House meeting had to stop and
wait for it to die down before continuing. The Mansion House meeting netted a
total of six Irish soldiers for Britain in World War I. Previously, in the
House of Commons, Redmond had said that both paramilitary groups in Ireland
would defend their own shores. This, however, was taken to mean that Ireland
would defend Britain, which made the meeting's result more of a surprise to
the British. Due to the low turn-out of recruits, Britain wanted to create
conscription in Ireland. This was largely spoken against by all Irish self-
rulers as an infringement on Irish rights. Even the more conservative Home
Rulers vowed to resist this in arms. Augustine Birrell, Chief Secretary of
Ireland and Sir Matthew Nathan, his Under-Secretary highly advised the British
government against this due to the civil upheaval it would cause, and eventu-
ally Ireland was left out of those in the Empire in which the draft was en-
forced.
World War I also had a major affect on the Third Irish Home Rule Bill.
In 1912 the Third Irish Home Rule Bill was brought before the House of Commons
by Prime Minister Asquith. By English law, if this were to have been approved
three times it would become law. The Ulster Unionists were greatly against
the Home Rule Bill, which is the main reason for the forming of the Ulster
Volunteer Force; in fact, Sir Edward Carson, one of the main leaders of the
UVF, called the Third Home Rule Bill "the most nefarious conspiracy that was
ever hatched against a free people." This bill, much like the Israeli-
Palestine Liberation Organization Peace Accord, was really only a nominal
freedom, but it was seen by most as a step forward. It gave Ireland the right
to govern strictly Irish affairs, and guaranteed forty-two Irish seats on
parliament. However, Britain maintained control of the Army, Navy, and for-
eign affairs, as well as administration of the National Insurance Act, old age
pensions, and land settlements. Britain also kept the right to levy taxes,
and the royal veto remained. Free religion was also guaranteed by this act.
However, war broke out in 1914, which was to be the third voting term for the
bill. The bill was approved yet, due to protestations by the Ulster Unionists
it was put off until after the war. After this promise was made, the UVF
joined the British Army as a group, thus removing them from the self-rulers'
way. When war broke out, the Irish Citizen Army and ITGWU proclaimed its
beliefs loud and clear. Connolly hung a great banner above Liberty Hall
proclaiming: "WE SERVE NEITHER KING NOR KAISER, BUT IRELAND!"
During the Great War the Irish Volunteers split, the majority going with
John Redmond as the National Volunteers, and the remainder, numbering some
11,000, went with the Irish Volunteers, now almost entirely in control of the
Irish Republican Brotherhood. After the reorganisation, Eoin MacNeill became
Chief-of-Staff, though this was more of a front position than one with actual
power -- the group needed MacNeill's more conservative reputation to avoid
being immediately suppressed. The poet Padraic Pearse had the real power as
Director of Organisation. Another poet, Joseph Plunkett became Director of
Military Organisation, and a third, Thomas MacDonagh, became Director of
Training, while The O'Rahilly was Treasurer and Hobson Secretary. All of
these except The O'Rahilly and MacNeill were members of the IRB, and all
except these two and Hobson were on the secret War Council of the IRB.
The Supreme Council of the IRB, also had a new Chairman elected at about
this time. Thomas Clarke and Sean McDermott had Denis McCullough elected, as
he lived in Belfast and could therefore be more easily controlled.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Sir Roger Casement, holder of the South African
Medal, was working for the independence of Ireland in his own way. Earlier,
Casement had stopped the abuse of natives in the Belgian Congo and the Puta-
mayo region of Brazil, at that time British-owned. There he found such abuses
as limbs chopped off of those who did not meet the rubber quota, as well as
the Amazonian mistress of one of the British who had been flogged and had hot
fire-brands inserted into her various bodily openings when it was discovered
she had a venereal disease. His reports changed that, and he was knighted for
his services. Later, after his health had begun to fail him, he turned his
interests to Ireland. He had been a main figure in the arms-running in 1914,
and now he was trying to do the same thing again -- and more. He hoped to not
only get about 100,000 rifles for use in Ireland and German officers to help
train the Irish Volunteers, but also to raise an Irish Brigade of PoW's in
Germany. He was unable to raise either of these as he had hoped.
A Rising was planned for September of 1915, and all the leaders had their
hearts set on this. Unfortunately, Casement was not able to get the arms in
time, so the Rising was aborted. Connolly was especially disappointed at
this, as he felt that a Rising, whatever the outcome, was good, if only for
the moral implications. In October of that year, during one of the common
midnight trainings of the Irish Citizen Army, Connolly and the Countess
Markievicz, along with Michael Mallin, Connolly's Second-in-Command, led a
mock attack on Dublin Castle. After accepting the guard's surrender, they
returned to Liberty Hall and celebrated, while the Irish police and intelli-
gence officers stood outside in the rain to observe the actions that took
place. Nothing further went on that night.
?In January, 1916, the Easter Rising was planned for certain. The IRB,
afraid that Connolly would do something to get them all disarmed, invited him
at gunpoint to have a discussion with the leaders. Connolly was determined
that he would have a Rising, even if his band of 200 men only lasted ten
minutes, for it would be a glorious ten minutes. The IRB convinced him to
partake in their planned Easter Rising, he becoming Commandant-General of the
Dublin Division of the Army of the Irish Republic. After this, strategy was
drawn out as to how the Rising would take place both in Dublin and in the
other counties. Connolly began giving lectures on urban warfare, and drilling
of both armies kept up, including mock battles between various battalions of
the ICA and the Volunteers. The National Volunteers, disillusioned with
Redmond, began to split with that group, the majority joining the Irish Volun-
teers. In short, the call to arms was answered.
In Germany, Casement was joined by Robert Monteith, who had stowed away
on a American passenger boat to help Casement. They had many problems with
the German government and the Irish Brigade, the idea of which was based on
the Irish Brigade formed during the Boer War by Sean MacBride. For one, the
Germans would not give up any weapons except 20,000 inferior rifles made in
Orleans, France, which were captured from the Russians at Tannenberg, and ten
machine-guns, which the Volunteers were not trained to use. It was obvious
the Germans merely wanted a distraction rather than Irish independence. The
majority of those who joined the Irish Brigade were untrustworthy, joining not
to help their country but rather to save their own hides and get out of the
PoW camps, and it was eventually dissolved before it was used. Casement and
Monteith did, however, manage to get a manned boat, originally an English
steamer captured at the beginning of the war in a German river and disguised
as a Norwegian ship, renamed Aud, to carry the rifles to the rebels. Unfortu-
nately, however, the ship was told to arrive at the wrong date. A message
from Count Plunkett, father of Joseph Plunkett, was supposed to be marked with
a change of date, for the boat to arrive *after* Easter Sunday, while the note
mistakenly said *before*, and the boat planned to arrive on Holy Thursday. By
the time this was noticed the ship was already at sea, and, as it lacked a
wireless radio, there was no way to contact it. The Irish envoy which was
sent out to meet it on the Saturday before Easter plunged into the sea, kill-
ing several of the occupants. The Aud was intercepted by British destroyers
near Queenstown, in Southern Ireland, and was scuttled by the crew. It had
sat in harbour waiting for the rebels at Tralee for nearly twenty-four hours
until it finally had to leave, by which time it was already too suspicious,
and was followed by the British ship Bluebell. British intelligence knew of
the Rising by intercepting German signals, and decoding them using code-books
captured from the Germans. Apparently the code-books were too big a secret to
tell the British government about, as they only gave hints as to what would
happen.
Casement, hoping to try to stop the rebellion due to his failure to
secure sufficient arms and help, or, if he was unable to stop it, to take part
in it, managed to get a U-20 submarine from the Germans. He planned to ren-
dezvous with the Aud when it landed and convince the rebels to postpone the
Rising. In his last diary entry before he left Germany, Casement wrote of the
Rising (repr. in _Rebels_, by de Rossa, p. 136):
I am quite sure it is the most desperate piece of folly ever
committed; but I go gladly. If those poor lads at home are to be in
the fire, then my place is with them.
Casement's U-20 broke down en route to Ireland, and he was put onto the lesser
U-19, arriving with Monteith too late to stop the rising. He and Monteith
were washed ashore in a rubber boat provided by the submarine, but Casement
was captured shortly after landing at Kerry and shipped off to London on
charges of treason, though Monteith managed to escape authorities.
On March 24, about a month before the Rising, the British government in
Ireland, under General Friend, ordered the suppression of the Irish newspaper
_The Gael_. This was seen as an infringement on the Irish, and the Irish
Citizen Army responded. Connolly was informed by the manager of the Workers'
Co-Operative Society, a small store located in the front of Liberty Hall, that
the Dublin Metropolitan Police were ransacking the store. Connolly burst in
just as soldiers were behind the counter taking old copies of the newspaper --
the newer copy had not yet been delivered. When Connolly asked if they had a
warrant, the officers replied in the negative. Connolly then produced an
automatic pistol and calmly said, "Then drop those papers, or I'll drop you."
The officer then dropped the papers, and after their commanding officer talked
with Connolly, the group left to get a warrant. This was not really neces-
sary, as under the Defence of the Realm Act the Government could do anything
it believed necessary without a warrant, but this bluff gave the ICA time to
mobilise. By the time the DMP returned, ICA men and women guarded the store,
including Countess Constance Markievicz and James Connolly, armed with auto-
matics. The officers produced a warrant, and were told by Connolly that they
could search the store up until the door where it joined with Liberty Hall.
If they tried to pass that point they would be shot. An hour after the first
call 150 guarded the Hall, and, by the end of the day, over two-hundred of the
ICA were garrisoned at Liberty Hall, with more still arriving as they heard
the news. Men left their places of work in the middle of the work day, drop-
ping whatever they were doing to help the Union. At the docks, one supervi-
sor, having heard the Union workers called out by messengers, and believing it
a strike, shut the doors at the Dublin Bay-facing warehouse. Undaunted, the
workers jumped in the Bay and swam across to land, heading to Liberty Hall.
The Women's Ambulance Corps and the Na Fianna Eireann also mobilised and
joined those at Liberty Hall. Dubliners returning from lunch, seeing men
running from work, rifle in hand, feared an uprising, and Dublin Castle was
barraged with phone calls requesting news. After this incident, Liberty Hall,
with Connolly in residence, was under armed guard night and day until the
Rising, and the Volunteer leaders went into hiding, only each other knowing
where they were staying. They were determined not to be arrested before the
Rising went on, as the Fenian leaders of 1867 had been.
A week before the Rising was planned, one of the Volunteers leaders,
Captain Liam Mellowes (also spelt Mellows), organiser for South Connaught, was
arrested and deported to Britain. Rumours of the planning of other deporta-
tions spread. Connolly, believing Mellowes to be vital to the Rising, ar-
ranged for his daughter Nora to go with another ICA member to Britain to bring
Mellowes back. The act was successful, and Mellowes was brought back dis-
guised as a priest, retaking his command in County Galway.
During this time the leaders of the Rising, particularly the IRB members,
needed to make the atmosphere more favourable for a Rising. In order to push
more moderate Volunteers, such as MacNeill, towards favouring the Rising,
Joseph Mary Plunkett and Sean MacDiarmada forged the Castle Document, claiming
it had come from an informer in Dublin Castle. This document outlined the
plans of the British to make arrests of many of the rebel leaders, including
Plunkett himself, as well as Pearse and Connolly, and more conservative lead-
ers like MacNeill and The O'Rahilly, and to occupy areas which were known to
harbour pockets of subversives. It was published on April 19, 1916 in Volun-
teer newspapers in order to gain the support of all the Volunteers for the
Rising. It was partially successful in its aims, gaining support of many
Volunteer leaders outside Dublin, as well as pushing moderates such as Mac-
Neill to favour the Rising, and giving the Volunteers the self-defence card.
It was not discovered that the document was a forgery until it was too late to
matter.
By April 1916 Ireland was ripe for a Rising, though it lacked arms. Many
supported the politics of a Rising, though they may not support the Rising
itself. The national spirit had been held down for seven centuries, and the
rebels did not want it remain that way for an eighth. With the Castle Docu-
ment, even more moderates were seeing it as them-or-us, and were preparing for
a Rising. With the stunt the rebels had just pulled with the attempted gun-
running, it was only a matter of time before the British really did crack down
on the rebels: It was soon or never. Ireland would indeed see a Baptism by
Fire at the time of Christ's Rising in 1916.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
[=- FiCTiON -=]
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
iNTRODUCiNG SCHMELTFiSCH,
THE FiRST SHORT JEWiSH ANGSTiTHOLOGiST AND SUPERHERO
by Michael Sussman
In my strip, there's a bust going down. All executed in the most
tasteless manner. Officer Overbound is badging and badgering, hassling and
amassling; he's wreck & flexin for an audience of his peers. The harried
bureaucrats of the underground economy stoically endure the procedure.
I'm in tights and a cape, and I pop on the scene [to fanfare].
Announcing: The First Short Jewish Angstithologist and Superhero... at
your service.
The players are puzzled, which buys me time.
"Have you gentlemen considered the weight of your crime?"
Next frame shows me pointing, not at the accused, but at the stunned
gaggle of law enforcement officials.
"But Schmeltfisch," -- (thus was I for eternity dubbed by Officer
Overbound on page 12) -- he says, "But Schmeltfisch, what the hell are you
talking about?"
"Clearly the curse your 'Ethics of Monotony' has cast on our young
civilization is at fault, not these innocents. Imposition of a hostile
moral code in an inflexible and wrongheaded manner. Let's get down to the
sloppings, Officer Pignut: If you can convincingly argue the case for human
free will on the repentance-and-salvation model upon which your legal system
supposedly rests, why then I'll shut down shop without taking up a minute
more of your precious time."
Mute disbelief and incomprehension. I don't even know what the fuck I'm
talking about.
"I didn't think so. Hand over the guns. That's right, the big ones,
too. My sidekick Boony requests a small peace offering from the illicit
goods in question. He's in the hall. Oh, Boony! Chill out, you dopey-
spaced hippie, there'll be time enough for that back in your cage. Kidding,
kidding, you dreary sourpusses!"
These people are now so hopelessly absorbed in their private existential
crises that I can float off without having to worry about that miscarriage of
justice ever taking place. I'm sure Officer Overbound is already on his way
to the nearest 12 oz. self-help seminar and has forgotten all about his duty
to a drug-free ghetto.
Thanks to my placid nature, I sometimes project a false image of easy
leisure. My time, however, is dear. Surely you will excuse me so that I may
write more adventures for your reading pleasure.
INTERLUDE: SCHMELTFiSCH ORDERS A BURGER
All this crime fighting has left me famished. Boony, more mentally
fragmented than ever after all the excitement, pulls up in the temporary
Schmeltmobile, the 1986 Toyota Tercel, adoringly referred to as "Yota."
You'll have to imagine any Batgadget-type accessories because there are none;
Yota is essentially a glorified go-cart with a tape deck and one working
speaker. The whole Jewish anarcho-syndicalist superhero gig takes a while to
get on its feet, you understand.
I'm rapping at Boony as we Toyodell over to the Grease Pit for a quick
bite of corporate swine.
"Been trying to get back into that topical singer-songwriter shtick that
was bringing home the bank circa '71, you know. Our most recent adventure
still fresh in mind, I'd imagine something like this: (of course I'll tighten
the rhyme scheme after some revision)"
I've got a semi-automatic shotgun,
Woh, I got a night stick,
I got a computer that knows all about you,
Talking 'bout a Peace Officer, George,
Talking 'bout a public servant-- and furthermore:
I got tear gas for your comrades
I got handcuffs and pepper spray...
Now Boony is appropriately modest about his critical appreciation of
poetry (and post-Dylan folk rock, for that matter), but perhaps this time his
coarser instincts were just. My muse is momentarily silenced by Boony's
philistine brawn as he swerves us into the drive-thru lane at Crapburger.
"Whaddya want?"
"Gimme a minute, you grouchy shit. You're just my fucking sidekick, you
intolerable bitch."
"Two Burgerdaddy Combos with Root Beer! Say boss don't look at me that
way. How many times you gotta tell me that you're 'ethically and
systematically opposed to the notion of human choice?' I always gotta sit in
the fucking drive-thru lane at McAssholes with four hundred deranged rush
hour bureaucrats leaning on their horns while you meditate on the issue of
causality."
"Boony, that's why I keep you around, pal. Hours of lethargy and self-
indulgent compulsion broken up by lightning flashes of eloquent genius. Your
toned monstrosity of a body doesn't hurt in tight situations, either. I say,
old chap, bring on the Burgerdaddy combos! Let's go out there and fight some
fucking crime."
"Pitch in $2.20, boss; I ain't spotting you no Burgerdaddy."
SCHMELTFiSCH TAKES ON CORPORATE SCUM AND WiNS
His Benevolence Razorslash will see you now. No easy task to get an
audience with a CEO at a major conglomerate, even for a short Jewish
angstithologist/superhero wearing tights. Luckily I was able to convince the
temp tending the front desk that his paradigm needed shifting and so he
scurried off to the spa for a vision quest at my recommendation. I have that
effect on people.
I had to leave Boony back in the car with all those drugs we stole from
the cops this morning. A good heart has Boony... an open, generous nature...
an excellent vocabulary (thanks to his S.A.T. compulsion--more on this later);
but dumb as Montana before the Ice Age, and lusty like yer uncle's German
Shepherd! Good Lord! It's like leaving a Republican congressman in a room
with hot insider stock tips and a bad hair piece! And this stoner is
supposed to be ready to tear out of here in the getaway vehicle at a second's
notice!
"Ah, Mr. Schmeltfisch, or, pardon me, Lord Schmeltfisch" (I had to do
some, er, exagerrating to get Mr. Razorslash's attention), "Lord Schmeltfisch,
what can I do for you?"
"Your Benevolence Razorslash: May I speak frankly with you?"
"Sure chum; for a Harvard man? We're family already."
"What if I told you that I can take care of your little 'indigenous'
problem in Ecuador?"
"Those stinking Spic Injuns won't give up an eensy little bit of their
precious forest and now those goddamned tree hugging, hairy-assed feminist
greeny-assed muthafuckers got all their goddamned Jewish banker money fucking
me up the ass, goddamitalltohell!"
"Right on, white man! Have I got a bacteria for you!"
"Oh, you vicious fuck! I love it! How much will it cost me?"
"I only request a small cash donation, preferably in the million
range."
"I'll have one of my temps run to the bank while you wait."
"A pleasure doing business with you."
When I get outside, Boony is snorting lines of a dexterity-enhancing
designer drug off the hood of my car. He fucks around with his nose, looks
at the briefcase, nods, looks at me.
"I'm gonna make Yota do things you never before thought possible."
Had the driver's side door worked when Boony pulled at the latch,
this would have been a forceful and terrifying declaration; instead the
gesture approximated low comedy. Humiliated and starting to max out on all
that shit he'd been snorting, Boony rips the door off its hinges and
miraculously starts the car with sheer willpower.
What the fuck do I care? I got Herr Razorschmuck's million bucks and
possibly the most dextrous and high-strung chauffeur this side of Paradise.
I buy myself a new door, send the remainder to the Ecuadorian People's
Liberation Movement, if there is such a thing, and call it a wash.
"I hope you're ready to hug some trees like you're hugging those
shoulders, Boony. To the Earth First compound! We've got some industrial
sabotage to coordinate!"
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"The most terrifying thing in the world is your own life, the fact that
it's yours and nobody else's."
--John Updike
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
FRATER NEMO'S LiBRARY: A MEMOiR
by Soror Soumis
Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who
is vile continue to be vile... -Revelations 22:11
"...of course, you are free to indulge of any of the books around, or
just to get some sleep. There are only so many hours until nightfall...."
I was not quite sure how to take the admonition about watching the
approach of nightfall, but neither could I ask as it had been called back over
his shoulder after he had seen me to my room. In a building of this size one
would assume that a servant of some kind would be assigned to show a guest to
her room, but then the place appeared to not be a common site of visitation,
and I had been specifically invited. I did not expect this special invitation
would simply get me filed away into a back room, however.
The contents, as far as furniture and the like were concerned, were
Spartan, but what was there was lavish. Wall hangings in deep shades of
burgundies and maroons hung all around, and the queen sized bed, too, was
decked out in violet sheets -- already pulled down -- under maroon blankets.
The bed itself was in hardwood, and the head was a sort of nightstand with a
couple of candles -- lit when we entered -- and a single shelf of books.
I gave the bookshelf a tired, cursory glance. An eclectic collection of
titles covered at the same time an immense range of subjects, yet all
apparently were related save a few odd fictions and such intermingled with the
scholarly works. Hence, beside Unausprechlichen Kulten and The Golden Bough
were the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Dr. Robert Anton Wilson.
I was slightly sleepy from the journey here, but by no means exhausted.
I had some time before nightfall, and even if he did intend for me to nap
before whatever festivities he had planned, I by no means needed to. And my
short friendship with my poet had taught me the value of books. And
opportunities.
Almost at random, then, I selected one book, noticing only after it had
leapt into my hands just how different it was from the others. Unlike most,
this was a hand bound book. Alone it was also in its relative youth. It
seemed to have just recently been placed here -- the strata of dust had not
yet claimed it -- and appeared to have been both bound and written by hand.
Still wondering at such an anomaly, I opened the text's heavy leather
binding to be greeted by a frontispiece that, if memory serves, appeared
somewhat as follows:
The Confessions
Excerpts from the Early Magickal Diarys
of Frater Nemo est Sanctus
Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven.
For nothing hidden will not become manifest,
and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered.
Christ, Thom. 6
It did not become less erudite. I suppose that, as the note I would find
in later flipping said, the text was quite allusive -- the note in particular
mentioned one book called Lolita. To any extent, it was quite dense.
I delved into the text, at a more or less random location, and more or
less again towards the beginning, until I happened upon an interesting entry.
As with the rest, the date was not even marked, unless it was removed from
this transcription or those numbers marking each entries beginning and end had
some occult meaning, and even then I could not be expected to recall them now.
Suffice it to say that, as far as these Confessions went, the entry was bound
towards the front. I now recount what I can recall of the text, liberally
supplemented with my own prejudices and imaginings; I do not trust my recall
except so far as I can verify with historical documents.
* * * * *
... all I could say was that I was in need of a new affection, and my
selected effecter was the pretty and intelligent Lorilei, speaker and,
unfortunately, sister of a friend whose friendship I was not in a desire to
hurriedly end. I had at least to feign the motions of consent.
Let me now take a moment to, retrospectively, love Lo with my mind; so,
speak memory. She was one of those that was still innocent in her visage.
Her hair was not the false blond of the old whore, but rather the true golden
blond of the Aryan princess, as pure in blood as in spirit. Her flesh and her
body were the pinnacle of any race, and were among the most beautiful I had
ever seen or would ever see again until I had begun to transcend this plane
visually as well as spiritually. Her eyes were deep and blue, but I am afraid
that despite their beauty -- and their beauty was simply not comparable, let
alone describable -- her eyes were the sole mar on her beautiful body. If one
had the fortune to gaze into her eyes, provided one had the eyes to see, one
would have seen the age and sadness contained therein. To this day I cannot
say with any certainty whether this layer of filth that separated her soul
from her body was the scarring of the life she had led, the sights she had
seen, or if it was simply the sadness of a goddess cast down from Olympus into
this hell in which we, the damned, are forced to dwell and toil.
But this is not an elegy. I digress from my narrative where, gracious
reader, you will recall I was seeking a new -- and consensual -- love.
To the end, then, of feigning consent, I had fresh in my mind, fevered
though it was, the teachings of the Master Therion (Specifically "There is no
need to knock the girl down when she will easily do as you wish if you only
speak a few nice words to her," although I confess the traditional epigrams
sprang too among the mushrooms 'rooting,' in my psyche.), as well as a de
Sade-ian, although hardly Sadistic, method of approach adequately sketched,
though still untried. To this test I then went.
Any highly charged emotional scene can bond the individuals ringing up
that charge to meld together as a result of this, even frictionless, heat.
Thus the concept, however misguided, of taking a young, impressionable girl --
or the most reasonable facsimile still available on this continent -- to a
'horror' film. (I put horror in quotes as there is little horrible about
today's cinematography save its quality and its budget. The slasher is far
from horrifying, although I do discover new levels of nausea each one I am
subjected to.) Thus, too, the concept of hostage bonding, of which the so-
called Stockholm Syndrome is an example. (The emotional bonding, it should be
noted, not the physical bondage.) (NOTE: Write an essay on the concept of
emotional friction -- generalized -- and bonding.) [Transcriber's note: The
alluded to essay is affixed after this entry.] With this in mind, I set out
to set a highly charged emotional scene.
As effective as a natural disaster would have been, I'm afraid such acts
of God were a bit out of my price range at this time, and hence I set out for
a disaster every bit as unnatural as the result which I sought. With my
selections thus limited, I chose the most blunt and direct of choices; I set
out to begin a frivolous and inexplicable fight with the angelic wench, with
the aim that with the flames thus stoked, they could then be directed towards
the parts I wished to enflame of her delicate anatomy. Entering her
classroom, then, I began.
The latest theory among women's assault prevention classes is that most
assailants begin with a barrage of obscenities, and women, being the delicate
and eternal waifs we all know them to be, should learn to be unfazed by such a
verbal assault. I don't really know why the women's assault prevention
theorists have suddenly taken such a view of women, but I would say their
practice, however well intentioned, is misguided. We hardly need to drain the
last remnants of softness our fair folk still possess, for how then would they
we? Still, I took hardly such an indelicate approach. I waited until she
went to the back room, a foreplanned path played out previously in my plotting
psyche, and followed, closing the door and lighting into a series of assaults,
undeserved by the delicate girl, I am sure, about how she and some cabal of
plotting public speakers had launched an unprecedented assault against the
debaters of the area by intercepting information, dragging out all that they
had placed in, and stealing it for her and hers' personal files. The best
offense is to defend aggressively against an imagined attack, for then the
defender is placed in the awkward position of having to strike back by
defending an assault, improper, that never occurred. If you can't defeat them
with the facts, confuse them with the frictions. Fictions. I meant fictions.
Humbert the Horrible, then, pressed his little butterfly further against
his glass, with every intent to nail, I mean pin, her right there and then.
Towering to full height over the girl, even I was able to overshadow her, as
she withdrew into herself still in shock from this most uncharacteristic of
moves. As my voice rose -- in intensity, not volume, as I knew full well we
were beside a classroom full, well, sparsely inhabited, by teenagers whose
hormones were sensitively positioned to alert the individual at any hint of
sex or violence by the electronic programming device installed in every living
room, and not a few kitchens, bedrooms, cars, etcetera ad nauseum -- her
defenses did the inverse, and with an electric charge of joy indescribable,
yet, I assure you, as pure as a virginal admiration of a sunrise and as
intense as the smell and taste of clean sea shells, I saw her eyes begin to
moisten.
With this watery grave opening up, though not, I suspected, for me, my
epee was thrust into the must vicious position possible: rest. I opened an
ambushing opening for her to retreat into my arms, and the violence of our row
was redirected into our lips, our arms, our tongues -- even the ambrosia of
her mouth seemed intent in entering into me, and, for my part, I embraced her
in ever way possible in such an abrupt about face. My arms were about her
shoulders, crushing her bulk, or her lack thereof, to press our heaving
breasts together, and to feel her plush yet developing ones against my chest,
wishing that even the few -- three? four? -- scraps of cloth separating our
torsos could be withdrawn. My lips and tongue were all across her face and
ears and beautiful porcelain neck, and she was pressed against me, whimpering
her release from this noose that only I knew I had never intended to tighten.
Amidst laps and nips I whispered meaningless lies into her elegantly
sculpted ears, the kind of ears that would make one believe, truly believe,
that if God was not a carpenter, he was certainly some kind of artist. "I am
so sorry, ma cheri." "Can you forgive me?" "Oh, ma chara, ma chara, I could
never admit such a thing as love. Not to a friend's -- nay, a veritable
brother's -- sister." Evil or no, and I should have words with any person
selecting the latter, it worked, and soon we had developed a reciprocal
infatuation of days, or even years, firm and real in her memory. What a foul
mouth that titan has! What a foul sense of humor!
Memory is not alone, however, and our eternity of passion, oh so soon
entered, was rapidly invaded by our own Goths, with McFate leading the way
into the sack. No sooner had I begun to maneuver our somas to the couch,
trying to alleviate the previously noted difficulty of over clothing, the
carefully closed door was no longer so and our intimacies were made less so by
the introduction of a new element into our fair universe. Had our arms and
our tongues been slightly less entwined, she may have ended up unceremoniously
released as any inanimate burden, but fortunately for her, and perhaps for me,
let future memory pass judgment, she simply ended resting between a knee and
an arm -- although only the former was mine -- and the furniture did the rest.
My leg strained under the luscious pressure of her weight, and her body arched
invitingly back as her arm pressed her body against mine in an attempt to
stabilize our position. She had the dignity to hide her tear-stained face,
and I turned to deal with the invader. Oh, the curses of vassopressin!
There was real danger here, for to avoid at the least a morals charge or
perhaps a quite nasty attempted rape trial, I knew I had to enter firmly both
of her precious hearts, or else all was lost. This so, I knew I must keep the
intensity up. Fortunately, the invader was more concerned at his inelegant
reception than was she who I hoped would provide mine, and was only too glad
to stumble out without whatever it was he had hoped to have. This provided
the impetus to lead the girl bodily out of the school or risk having her
withdraw her favor altogether and forever. I was pressed against her
immediately.
Fortunately, for me, her body was less jaded than mine, and her mind less
vicious. She was still flushed despite her almost intimate introduction to
the throw rug, so to speak. I and my mouth made sure there was no opportunity
for her intensity to lessen.
The delicate shell of her dry, hot mouth pressed against my lips, my
face, and I maneuvered my own to propose in romantic, covert whispers that we
relieve this particular school a little of its over crowding problem, and go
somewhere else. When a girl is in that state, you can propose anything from
marriage to suicide and get little more that a raspy "Yes, my love" and a
thoroughly enjoyable rush of kisses. We left. ...
* * * * *
I let slip the text and only when looking back for the title, "My Lovely
Lorilei, or Good Deeds (Almost) Well-Chastened," did I realize just how far I
had gotten in the narrative. Hand copied in an elegant, spidery hand, I
rapidly leafed forward and verified that indeed when this episode ended, an
essay, "The Creation of Love in the Alchemist's Furnace, or a Practical Guide
to Seduction," was appended, scribed in the same hand. From the cut of the
episodes it was clear that this was a portion of another work, and I suppose
it consisted of the relevant portions of the diary previously mentioned.
I looked on a few pages to both sides and confirmed that, indeed, all
were about the rapes, seductions, and other erotic abuses of women, and, if
the few photographs inserted here and there could be the base for
generalization, Nemo has a taste for the destruction of innocence. The name
looked oddly familiar, though I supposed it was in a foreign tongue.
I resolved to read more, and too look into the identity of this Nemo, if
I could only remember on the morn. When I undressed for bed, putting on one
of the long silk dressings draped across the high backed chair alongside the
bed, I secreted the text in my discarded clothing, swearing I would study it
at the first opportunity. In the meantime, I didn't even seem to have time
for my normal, daily prayers, as sleep stole over me almost as soon as I was
free of the spell of that tome.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees
Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes."
--Bertrand Russell
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
HAFTLING 141732
by Captain Moonlight and Dark Crystal Sphere Floating Between Two
Universes
The personages in these pages are not men. Their humanity is
buried, or they themselves have buried it, under an offence received
or inflicted on someone else. The evil and insane SS men, the
Kapos, the politicals, the criminals, the prominents, great and
small, down to the indifferent slave Haftlinge, all the grades of
the mad hierarchy created by the Germans paradoxically fraternize in
a uniform internal desolation.
-- Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
There is a point which no man can pass and still be a man. He becomes
some creature, less than human. In a word, he becomes a Haftling -- he is
just as the Nazis wish people to believe all we Jews are -- a hollowed shell.
We thought we had reached that point with the invasion of Poland. My father
couldn't take the sight of the grey swarms descending upon the city and, Masa-
da-like, rather than live under the Nazis, he died in the cellar a free man,
with a bullet in his head.
However we learned we could go still lower when we were forced into the
ghettos, with the pogroms running like wild dogs through the streets, the
streets running with the blood of those who opposed them and those who simply
were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remember young Rosina, young
thirteen-year-old Rosina who used to sell the matches in the courtyard outside
my house, young Rosina who was found raped and murdered by 'persons unknown',
dumped by the road-side wearing nothing but her red hair-ribbon. Rose red.
Blood red.
But I have learned, and those who lived to see what I have seen have
learned, that a man can go lower still. I learned it after we passed through
Mengele's selection, as Sarah and I were directed to the right, Mama and young
Isaac, just turned ten, to the left, with those unable to work. Sarah pleaded
to go with Isaac, but despite her protests, Mengele persisted in sending her
to the right. When we passed through the disinfections and walked past the
sign proclaiming in large letters Arbeit Macht Frei -- 'Work Makes Freedom' --
and learned from fellow inmates just what that sickly smell and black smoke
was which came from the other nearby camp, we thought we were the lucky ones.
Now I realise how wrong we were.
I remember I asked the young men near the gate how long we would be
there. It is the question all new prisoners ask, that which has but one
answer, though it is often phrased with different words -- sometimes it is
answered with a mere look of despair. That answer is always this: Until you
leave through the chimney.
I learned what happened to Sarah about a month after we had arrived, and
it had to come from that bastard green-triangle Heinrich. He came back from
the Frauenblock, the camp's brothel, to tell me of what he did to my wife. I
broke his nose for that; kept hitting him until his face was bathed in blood.
If the Kapos had liked him better they may have hit me harder.
When he came to tell me how she had been gassed when she got syphilis, I
was already a sub-human. I merely gazed at him with my empty eyes; I barely
heard what he said. Now the tears course down my cheeks for the loss of her,
and for the shame of not feeling anything when she died, but here death is the
only thing one can look forward to, the final escape from Auschwitz. I had
thought that our love would overcome all, that I would never forget her,
though I have since learned that this may be true when *humans* are concerned,
but the Haftling has no feelings beyond the constant pain and the constant
hunger.
I remember what was probably the crowning physical display of my inhuman-
ity, the forsaking my wife being the final confirmation that I indeed was no
longer human but rather had become a true Haftling. One night almost half a
year after my arrival, I followed a group of fellow prisoners from my block
who, during evening meal-time, quickly devoured their rations and crept to-
wards the morgue, bidding me follow. Having snuck into the morgue, Jan, a
non-Jewish Pole from Breslau, pulled out his spoon-knife (made by prisoners
and often necessary for survival, though technically illegal in the camp), and
began to cut the fleshy buttocks from one of the nearby corpses. Horrified I
gazed on but, by degrees, my horror was blotted out by my growing hunger, and
I quickly consumed my portion of the bounty. Hearing a noise in the nearby
infirmary, we scampered out and managed to escape with our prize. It was best
not to think about from whence it came; best to accept it for what it was:
meat; meat which could keep the body alive for longer than the watery slop
they called food here, meat which was a rare delicacy here, uncooked and
festering though it was.
Very few people still think in this Sheol, this dark pit of despair. We
all have rituals to help keep us from thoughts -- whenever we start to remem-
ber we immerse ourselves in them to forget the pain. I used to think great
thoughts, I used to contemplate and build great castles in the air, only to be
smashed by Fate. Heinrich, though he would have everyone think he can with-
stand the camp, goes to the Frauenblock to escape the camp and his thoughts of
the home and wife he left behind. Jeremiah, the young Dutch Jew, scarcely
older than fifteen, collects old cigarette wrappers. He shows them to none
but me -- he trusts none but me. But, when he starts to remember the old
windmills he used to tend, or his mother, killed during the Nazi invasion, he
takes them out and goes off where none will see him, and sorts and resorts
them, helping himself sink into that comfortable numbness which we all go into
to escape the camp.
There are, however, a few who have something to cling to, and thus are
able to still think and in thinking keep the Nazis from having their wish to
kill the mind and soul and then the body. The old Rabbi Isaiah Schwartz has
his rituals, and yet still thinks. I remember hearing him reciting Psalm 102
one night, when I awoke from yet another nightmare, and heard his rich voice
softly reciting in the bunk next to mine:
. . . Listen to my prayer
and, when I call, answer me soon;
for my days vanish like smoke,
my body is burnt up as in an oven.
I am stricken, withered like grass;
I cannot find the strength to eat.
Wasted away, I groan aloud
and my skin hangs on my bones. . . .
He used to have long conversations with the Gypsy Roman, one of the others who
still managed to remain sane, if Roman could ever be called sane. I remember
one day when he was given an egg by one of the civilian workers at the Buna,
the factory we built, (a great crime had he been caught) and, having smuggled
it back to the camp, rather than eat it as so many of us would have longed to
do, he broke it open and stared at the yolk. I think he never sank because he
was insane to begin with. The good friends Isaiah and Roman have long since
fled through the chimney-stacks: they both were taken in the great selection
of October '44, their bodies being burnt in the nearby ovens; their souls
escaping to the Beyond.
I think much now. I think enough to know how to escape this 'land of
gathering shadows, of deepening darkness'. I learned it from our martyr, our
'last one'. That day when we returned to the camp to find the scaffold set up
for a hanging, merely one of many we had seen before. This one, however, was
for a true man, one of the rebel Sonderkommando Zwolf, who had blown up one of
the nearby crematories, a feat the likes of which the camp had never known.
He stood there before us, bleeding and tattered, showing the effects of the
torture inflicted on him by the SS and, though dressed in rags, showed himself
for the man that he was. The SS man's long speech meant nothing -- their
'example' merely showed us what a few true men can do against the insane
butchering machine, men who died and won by dying. The condemned's five
simple words, however, pierced through the shell which the Nazis had forced
upon us and struck the men buried within us; the men the Nazis would have
destroyed. "Kamaraden, ich bin der Letzte!" -- "Comrades, I am the last one!"
The next day in hushed voices we told the civilians at the Buna of the
events of that day, of the heroic struggles of this handful of men who brought
down seventy SS soldiers. We told them of this just as we had told them of
the atrocities of their rulers, and of the hardships of camp life, and of camp
death. We told them because we knew that it could happen to any group of
people anywhere that one group could pretend to be superior to another. For
us all is over, but for them it has just begun. The thing we knew they must
all learn from us, the damned, is that they must fight to keep this from
happening to them or anyone else, and that a handful of brave men can make a
difference, though it costs their lives. Even that one man whose limp corpse
was suspended from the gallows that day in our camp tore through the veil of
darkness which had surrounded us here and, with his death, showed us the truth
of our lives.
We needed a martyr, and his blood washed away the shells of many of us
who stood around him that day. Now I think. I think of his lifeless body
hanging from the gallows, the death which returned thought to so many of us.
And now I know how to escape. It is the light I had been deprived of for
these years past, which I now see before me. However, without him, I never
would have seen it at all. Tomorrow, I will be free from this 'land of gath-
ering shadows'. It's so easy, so simple, just a touch and that is all.
Tomorrow I will touch the fence; I shall feel the electricity ripping through
my flesh, searing my hands as I escape to the Beyond. I shall touch the wire
and see the face of God.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it
goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the
finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing
and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of
our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may
forget altogether to live them."
--Alan Watts
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
PiCTURES OF BOBBi
by Crux Ansata
It must have been another rough day. You can't tell it from the way she
looks, so much. She always manages to look beautiful, whether she is high and
ready to deal, rolling you in the bed, or flat out exhausted. But you can get
the feeling of it if you've been with her long enough. Something about the
deflated way she sits. Something in the way she slouches in the chair once
she sees it's just me coming home and not some pig who got a tip off from a
turncoat. Something in the way she just sits there, glazed, staring at some
hip hop band bumping and grinding on the telly. Or maybe it's just that all
her days have seemed rough these days.
"Give me a smoke."
"They're bad for you."
"Give me a goddamn cigarette. You know I could take them from you, if I
weren't so tired."
"Eight minutes off your life, my love. And anyway; I don't smoke."
"Give me a fucking cigarette." Even calm and monotoned she can sound
furious and ferocious. "I know Kevin gave you a pack. I'm out."
I toss her one, and drop the pack on the table. "Rough day?"
"Fuck off." If she weren't so beautiful, I don't know if I could put up
with all the attitude. I mean, I wouldn't leave her. No one could, so far as
I can see. I'd just have to be away a lot.
It isn't really her, though. If she could be her, she wouldn't be like
this. Not at all. But she cannot be her. She cannot be Alison Kelly, Irish
girl from the streets, just getting by getting by. She has to be Bobbi Sands,
political revolutionary. Why? Because she can. Because she will. Because
if she left, there just wouldn't be anyone to take her place.
That's the funny thing about the revolutionary. When it comes right down
to it, they are just like the rest of the world, except for two things. They
have a heart and they have guts. They have a heart, meaning they really care
about the world, and they have guts, meaning they know there is something that
can be done and they are willing to do it. They are dead from the day they
realize this. I don't just mean that they will die. Everyone will die. And
I don't just mean they will die soon, or they will die violently, or that,
unless something goes pitifully wrong, they will kill, too. I mean that they
have to die as much as a magus, as much as the Master of the Temple. From the
day she put on her beret, Alison Kelly died, and Bobbi Sands was born in full
armor from the head of the State.
Killing the self is what keeps the revolutionary sane, but remembering
that this person, killed but still alive as we all are, is what keeps me sane.
* * * * *
I never knew Alison Kelly. Not really. I came in to this picture much
later. The pictures of Alison I have I culled from hints and comments that
she could tell me because I am her lover, and in that I am her. She would
probably have lost her mind much earlier if she didn't have someone to put the
skeletons in, because our closets can only hold so many. And so I remember
the stories, and I hold on to these pictures and memories as viciously as if I
lived them myself.
When I'm alone, or when I'm depressed, I pull out these pictures and I
remember the way she was. I think about how we would have been if I had been
there, and I think about the way she was when I wasn't.
Don't get me wrong; I have a lot of pictures of Bobbi, the revolutionary,
and I think of them. I think of the way she looks, her natural pallor accen-
tuated by the glow from her computer screen and a haze of smoke wafting around
her like it is now, as she carries out some job or other from one of our hotel
rooms dressed in a black lacy bra and some red skirt, and somehow pulling off
a beautiful image even half clad and face au natural.
Or I think of her the way she was when I first met her that Thursday
night at a coffee shop, surrounded by hangers on who only managed to enhance
her beauty through their sad attempts to match it. That day there had been no
computer and no real hacker business. There had just been her. Her personal-
ity, her body, and her face with the power that only a feminine beauty can
manage. I think of her in the height of fashion that even her close hangers
on could only hope to match months from then.
There is something different, though, about thinking about the way she
was. There is something different about Alison.
* * * * *
One picture I come to a lot, for example, is from many years ago. It may
not seem a lot of time to some people, but then she has lived more in these
last ten years than some people manage to drag out of an entire meaningless
life. She doesn't like to talk about it, those early teenage years in the
ghetto. I've had to piece it together from scraps and hints almost like a
jigsaw puzzle. But this picture of this fourteen year old victim-predator is
well worn and well loved.
It is odd, but in America -- the America of the Midwest, of shopping
malls, of trailer homes and the middle class -- the word "ghetto" has become
some kind of caricature. The ghetto, or the 'hood, or whatever it is being
called that week by the word mongers on Madison Avenue, is a glossy place
where crack dealers dwell and shootouts happen as often as in the fifties'
"Wild West". This is a world of hip hop videos and middle class black fellows
who act as if they came from this mythical land that their audience believe is
true as much as a Fellow Traveler believed in the two dimensional workers'
playground the Soviet Union was said to be. It is sick, but this is what the
ghetto is said to be, as stripped of meaning as "cyberpunk" or "hippie".
There is another ghetto, though, and you don't have to be black to live
there. There is a ghetto which means just a place where you are too poor to
leave playing the games the middle class people do, and so you play the games
the middle class imagine you do. The twisted thing is they are the same games
the middle class mavens' sons and daughters play, and the same games they
played when they were children, only for them it is a choice as they claim
they are getting in touch with the "real world", as if their reality isn't
real, and drugs and sex will make it so. Sometimes I wonder if it is more
sick that these people live the lives they live, or that they actually seem to
believe the fronts they put up to other people. And the fronts they put up to
themselves.
Alison grew up in this ghetto. Hers was in Belfast, and it was mostly
white, mostly Irish, and mostly Catholic. That didn't make it any less squal-
id, or any less bleak, and they were still in danger of being killed either by
rival gangs -- hired by the British government -- or occupying pigs -- also
hired by the British government, and specially imported for the mission. On
the other side, the "terrorists" -- the IRA -- at least tried to keep the hard
drugs down.
Bobbi says in another few years, everyone except the Bushes and Pete
Wilson will be living in this ghetto. Oh yes, and except for her. She says
she will never go back to the ghetto. She will die first. If she continues
in her mission she is right, because if this ghetto becomes as global as she
fears, she will have failed. And if she fails, she dies. She is fighting to
keep those idiotic middle class mavens who are voting for the Bushes and the
Pete Wilsons and unknowingly financing their baby boys' crack habits and baby
girls' abortions out of the ghettos their tax dollars are building. She
believes what she is fighting for is more important than her life, and I
believe her. If she and the people like her lose, none of us will really be
living.
This particular photo has her laying down in a bed. She is not asleep,
but neither is she awake. She just is. She lies there, and the ceiling lies
above her, and the vacuous space between them holds the utter attention of her
vacuous stare.
The whole room is gray, if you can imagine such a thing. It is a gray
tinged with beige. It is the gray of grit and grime, of the accumulated dirt
of poverty and desperation. The floor is hard gray cement, and the grime
covering the only window makes the very light turn a shade of gray. The only
thing in the small room is one bed -- the bed on which she is lying -- and of
course her lovely bare body, half covered in the dirty sheets. No blankets
are to be had.
She was thin then, even more so than she is now. She had the bony thin-
ness that generally only junkies can achieve. She had, though, because she
was so young and didn't have much of her time occupied with eating. Back then
she was barely getting enough to survive, and the time she could afford away
from managing that much was spent on the rifle ranges or wherever the rebels
and so-called terrorists -- so called by the tellys in the middle class homes
over in Britain or even further over in the States -- could be found. It was
that culture she was trying to get into, using whatever leverage she could
bring to bear.
I picture her there with the white gray of the bedsheet meeting the white
gray of her flesh just above the waist, cutting her body into two halves, one
visible and one invisible but for the reverse impression in the bedsheet. I
picture her small, teenaged breasts rising and falling with the heavy heaving
of the crushed.
She wasn't, though. Crushed, I mean. Sure, she had been used. Sure,
her young body had been used for someone else's pleasure. It wasn't the first
time, but it was no less important than that first time had been. She tells
me that when she began to feel again, it wasn't regret or depression she felt.
Not any more than she usually felt regret or depression. Then again, is there
a thinking man anywhere who does not feel a constant regret and depression?
"I do not think they were asking why they were dying, but why they had ever
lived."
No, she was feeling victorious. She had been used, but she had been the
victor. To her mind, at least. This was the first time she had used her body
to further her political goals, by getting in with the people who could get
her in with the terrorists.
* * * * *
Sometimes it bothers me to think about how much she has used her body to
further her goals. She doesn't, and she claims not to understand why it
bothers me. (She does, but she cannot admit it to herself, much less to me.
It is a subtle system of self-deception and illusion that keeps the revolu-
tionary sane intruding on her world again.) It isn't even that Alison is
dead, because even long after, even now, Bobbi uses the same tactics when it
can advance her mission. She tells me I fell in love with Bobbi. Bobbi was
never born. Bobbi has no body. Bobbi is an idea.
Maybe that's why I can never imagine what went on before, or any of the
times she has been used like that. I don't mean this in a fetishist way, like
I want to fantasize about her with other men, or I want to fantasize about her
being raped as a child. I mean I am emotionally incapable of imagining what
went on before this picture was taken.
This picture itself, though, is very valuable to me. As valuable as any
of the snapshots of her I keep in my mind and in my journals. Perhaps it is
because in that scene another part of the Bobbi I love was born. This is not
it entirely, because I love the Alison, as well. But maybe.
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
"Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?"
-- Joseph Heller, _Catch-22_
--SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB-SoB--
THE SEVEN TALES OF SPAM, VOLUME IV
by Flying Rat's Nostril
Prologue
Once again (for medicinal purposes only, I assure you) we will figura-
tively travel back in time. Back one thousand Glocklyn Spam-months (that
would be 999 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes) to
the age of Spam, and to the court of King Bubba. The royal court of Spam,
affectionately called...... Slothalot. (Ha! you thought it was going to be
Spamalot! didn't you!) Anyway, we're traveling back to the court of King
Bubba (whether you want to or not). Why, you ask? Well..... do you have
anything better to do? No? I thought not. Besides, the following words will
be the tale of King Bubba's search for the:
Very *holy* and prestigious
(Not to mention nifty, keen, and swell)
SPAM