Road Runner, Road Runner

Boston Marathon.

Here comes the finish line.

Gatorade, congratulations and successive, dual explosions greet the runners.

Bloody spectators are dragged from the debris.

Mile marker 26 is dedicated to the victims of the Newtown massacre.

26 for the number of dead.

Twitter erupts.

@so_and_so tweets: “I saw people’s legs blown off. Horrific. Explosions.”

Two IED’s were placed near the finish line.

Each explosive device, believed to be a type of pressure cooker bomb, packed with metal ball bearings.

BB’s.

Vine, a social video service depicts an 8-second loop of the finish line.

Silent explosion. Runners in motion. Grand stands pushed into the street.

Concussion displaces people to make room for air.

A thin, bandy-legged marathoner turns his head in mid stride. Mid-explosion. And I’m instantly nauseous watching his legs buckle.

I can’t comprehend the sequence of images without the sound. Seems hyper-real.

By the third viewing my stomach has settled but I remind myself not to click on it again.

Later, having picked my daughter up from childcare we navigate residential roads to our home, I hear “dual decapitation.”

Legs missing below the knees.

I curse loudly, abruptly as we pass the park.

The emergency room in Boston is inundated with hundreds of injured.

Shards of glass, metal embedded in flesh.

Areas around the mouth and nose are blackened with soot from breathing searing hot air.

Victims need immediate attention before the soft tissue swells.

Fuck! I say aloud, waiting for the light to turn.

Checking the rearview mirror, I see the question in my daughter’s eyes.

We go to park?

Yeah, lets!

At the park kids occupy swings, climb stairs, mount the slide.

Chase each other.

Sitting on a bench, a Dad scours the screen of his smart phone.

Is he consuming all that data?

Two mom’s sip from paper Starbucks cups.

A horn prompts me through the now green light.

I scan the street for parking.

An old trauma begins to fester and slither its way to the surface.

Police and FBI query passengers flying out of Logan International for photos and videos of the scene.

This will be a crowd-sourced investigation.

Earlier in the day, scanning Facebook, Reuters, and Twitter I see what will become the iconic image.

In the foreground, a sidewalk is heavy with spectators, craning their necks, peering down the street as marathoners in sneakers and numbered jerseys run toward a ball of orange flame.

Boylston Street.

At the park we climb the play structure.

The entire thing is made of form-molded plastic.

Steel frame encased in thick coated, rubberized paint.

They’ve done away with bark, gravel and concrete at parks.

No more rail ties, chain-link or sheet metal.

Engineering a safer, risk-free environment for play.

They take the piss out of everything.

Here, recycled tires are shredded and turned into a buoyant surface for kids to run, spin, jump and skin their knees on.

Together we ride the dual slide.

Hold hands and laugh.

Several nights ago, I try watching the Falling Man documentary about 9/11.

Streaming on Hulu.

How can you watch this shit?

My wife asks, visibly angry as the opening sequence shows flight 175 disappearing in the South Tower.

Five minutes into the doc.

Suddenly, I’m standing in the Lakewood Library.

I’m twenty-four.

Several librarians I’ve become acquainted with while working for Jefferson County  sob audibly.

I enjoyed my work there. Mowing lawns. Planting flowers. Fixing sprinklers.

On the doc I see flight 175 burrowing into the tower on live television.

Simultaneously I smell the 2-cycle fuel and fresh cut grass.

Taste the Camel Light on my tongue.

There, back in that room (that space and time) of the library, we watch both towers crumble.

I turn off the television, disgusted.

With whom?

Myself.

Weeping quietly on the couch I gaze at the blank screen.

Standing, I move across the floor to the hallway and do something I haven’t done since she was a newborn and open the door to my daughter’s room, peering in, eyes adjusting to the dim green glow of the turtle nightlight, I see her, fawn legs curled beneath, breathing steadily.

Back at the park, fortified by the laughter of children.

The sound offers relief from the bombardment of the newscast.

Other parents seem to smile too easily.

Is every reaction scripted?

My stomach tightens. Heart contracts.

At bedtime I read Green Eggs and Ham.

My daughter talks to the characters as I read.

Sam, Seuss’s persistent interlocutor/pusher gets a SoCal inflected surfer dude accent.

The nameless character hounded by Sam, “That Sam I Am, That Sam I Am” sounds like Tom Brokaw.

Rolling off the inflection at the end of each denial.

My daughter’s imagination astonishes me.

She pretends to drive the train into the sea.

Asks to ride in the boat with the goat.

Kiss goodnight.

Hug?

Hug.

My wife is glued to her phone.

Mine is sitting on the couch.

I pick it up. The weight reassuring. Finger the screen to life.

Why am I angry?

Shouldn’t I be documenting this?

Writing everything down as it occurs?

The few pieces I’ve had published deal almost exclusively with technology and terror.

Killer drones.

IED’s.

Violence.

This kind of extremity is in my wheelhouse.

Instead of writing I flip through the channels.

Each episode features a woman—actress—in middle age with a Botox-plastic-surgery face, crying.

In the morning, nothing new is discovered.

No suspects.

Nor claims by a terror organization.

But the story has taken on a patina.

Speculations abound.

Challenges: be a hawk, not a dove.

Platitudes are issued.

“Thoughts and prayers…”

Polite xenophobia.

“Please, don’t be Arabs or Muslims.”

The death toll in Boston is 3, including an 8-year old boy.

Many say that is low considering.

Tilt their heads, you know, in that way people tilt their heads when faced with mortality or drink cup sizes.

Venti or Grande?

More victims listed in critical condition.

Meanwhile, 9 are confirmed dead in Peshawar, Pakistan, killed in a suicide bombing during a political rally.

Syrian MiG-23’s bomb the Qaboun neighborhood to rubble.

It’s morning in America.

A bipartisan commission convened by the Constitution Project finds members of the Bush administration complicit in allowing and sanctioning the practice of torture.

Soon, a library will be named in honor of former President George W. Bush.

I’m sure he’ll weep at the ceremony.

Violence in America is idiosyncratic.

Cognitive Dissonance – 10 Years Later

This was initially posted on Facebook in a civil discourse with a friend.

Out of context. Disembodied. Mutilated.

It appears to resemble some sort of complete thought. Concept.

If you pay attention to the world, our plight worsens daily.

Pollution. Famine. Violence. Societal malaise.

What will cure us of our collective trauma? 

 

Facebooking Discourse

Certainly a disconnection of a fabricated moral standard is a symptom of the American/Western hegemonic structure, as such those symptoms—9/11, profligacy, security—are the easiest-to-digest for invasion, preemption and occupation of a resource rich country.

9/11. An asymmetric rationalization of a moment embedded in the collective consumption of reactionary culture.

Falling Man >|< Fall in man

Reactions equate to rhetoric, i.e. “we have to fight the terrorists wherever they may hide,” or worse, apathy “It’s a fucked up world altogether.”

SO GIVE UP 

As a corporatocracy, America’s interests are purely profit: oil, private security contracts, construction etc, not to usurp the post-Soviet Islamist rule of the Taliban (yes they were awful, just look at the pictures of civilized Kabul! Some of the Afghans have blue eyes!). Record profits abound. The apparatus of control is gilded in perpetuity. Crisis’ increase exponentially even after public discovery of fraud “#nowmd” and manipulation of information. Still, as our warrior brothers and sisters return home from the global conflict, damaged and exposed to a domestic nightmare of ghost towns and economic decrepititude, we can be assured that somehow, enexplicably, the effort was worth the risk and sacrifice.

We exacted our revenge on the enemy who was living comfortably in a palatial estate miles from Islamabad, surrounded by Pakistani military elite. By using extrajudicial execution “while condemning the practice by other nations, we succumb to our own hubris. Of Afghans, disconnection from people suffering works much better (sells much better) on paper (or Facebook/Twitter/Huffpo/FauxNews/Obama&Bush teleprompters) to a public increasingly less interested in truth.

The difficult realization is that we’ve apparently succeeded and simultaneously failed.

“Mission Accomplished-ish”

[right, right, left, left, up, down, up, down, A, B, to start all over right?]

We can’t withdraw, pullout, mid-coitus, we’re vested in making the best of the situation, finish on the backs of main street and the shrinking middle class.

We can’t sustain the approach much longer either, unless Afghanistan will serve—and this is mere speculation—as our proxy staging area for a war with a nuclear armed Pakistan. More automated combat. Reliance on computers to determine hostiles.

America is indeed exceptional. In our military and security spending. In our continued pollution of third world countries via proxy manufacturing for cheaper labor and the unregulated environmental legislation of those countries and by extension, our governments massive military and budgetary support of an Israeli neo-apartheid.

This system enabled us to supplant democracy plant pliable leadership in North Africa and the Middle East for the past four decades. But as we’ve witnessed, through our mediated American perspective, people often tire of being served the same meal for too long. We are idle and conveniently diplomatic while Assad murders Syrian’s indiscriminately.

Perhaps, to “see it from both sides” detracts from the complexity. There isn’t necessarily a discernable side when faced with the ultimatum of “you’re either with us or with the terrorists.”

Post-Obama HOPE conspiracy election buzz, do we embrace the new normal?

Drones. Disposition Matrix. Targeted Killing and other euphemisms for the tactics used in our perpetual global war on terror.

Reading [slash] Performance at San Diego State

They’ve given me a stage and a microphone. I’m going to share my insights with those gathered. My findings are inconclusive, volatile and arguably, worthy of note.

Permit Yourself to Imagine

Permit yourself to imagine.

Once accomplished, travel is unrestricted, borders nonexistent, walls breached.

How? Slingshot.  Molotov. Spray paint. Lines of code. Guitar. Microphone.

Crisis or socially activist art offers the possibility of a crucial narrative, which is not new but suppressed.

We’ve been locked into a singular system, which serves official culture.

We are flummoxed by thinking alternatively. Any alternative.

Art must penetrate this numbness. Subvert the official narrative, cut through the advertising and propaganda. Negate marketing. Opening the between space.

Temptations are everywhere. In fact, you’ve likely accepted most without reading the service agreement. We relinquish control for convenience and security: freedom in exchange for a superficial sense of belonging.

But there is this: “One was born into this life to share the time that repeatedly exists between moments: the time of Becoming, before Being risks to confront one yet again with undefeated despair.” – John Berger

As a writer, art critic and political activist, John Berger offers a point of reference in the relational dynamic that artists have to the world around them. More importantly, Berger is representative of the type of progressive writer whose work is driven by a desire to confront the status quo. Refusing to participate in prescribed ideals of marketplace and authority, the artist/writer/revolutionary creates new methods of engagement.

Situational art is confrontational, “the immoral subversion of the existing order.” It informs the discourse with immediacy. Artists are in a unique position to engage directly with the established value system, call it into question and mobilize against it.

If a distinction between commercial and activist art no longer exists than the medium(s) an artist uses no longer need to be relegated to a single surface or conversation. The subversion happens while viewing.

The Molotov cocktail is the canvas. The canvas is our body, the inner city, barrio. ‘Hood.

Courage of the imagining mind.

 

The proceeding manifesto was a response to a series of art pieces produced by Enrique Lugo, AKA Chikle–a long time friend and collaborator–to be included as a text for his group show at the San Diego Repertory Theater. This is simultaneously a reaction of a reaction to both the art presented there and to the musical A Hammer, A Bell, and a Song to Sing, now playing at the Rep inspired by the life and work of Pete Seeger. The show will be up January 10–29, 2012 on the Lyceum Stage.

Official, Collective Statement from the Occupy Movement

The World is going to change. I can’t wait!

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
• They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
• They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
• They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
• They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
• They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
• They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
• They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
• They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government ontracts.*

To the people of the world, We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

Unkind – Harhakuvat (Review)

Somewhere along the approximate trajectory of Integrity’s convincing mastery of gallup-beat hardcore with Guitar World magazine quality solo action dressed in hoody-and-trainers thrash vis-a-vis Systems Overload and the monolithic riffage of Souls at Zero era Neurosis lies the album Harhakuvat by the Finnish band, Unkind. In some alternate dimension, this might have been the record writer and social critic John Berger might have made had he grown up in the 80’s in Finland listening to Discharge. Released by Relapse records, Harhakuvat combines pummeling syncopated mic-in-fist vocals–language barrier not withstanding, the style of music has never been known for clearly annunciated verses or tonal choruses—and though they seamlessly adopt many of the genre’s cliches, Unkind displays an uncanny authenticity.

I have no idea what they are saying. Instead, I can only intuit their unbridled passion. Making music to rail against things like corruption, injustice and disappointment in not just THE system but any system is paramount. The disruption that this music creates in the listener is immediate, visceral and poignant. Not unlike a poem by Nazim Hikmet; painting by Francis Bacon or film by Werner Herzog Harhakuvat sets a new precedent for revolutionary music. Czech band LVMEN’s watershed album Mondo or Japanese hardcore band Envy’s Insomniac Doze are comparable achievements in the hardcore-around-the-globe category. I don’t get paid for these and if I did the pay wouldn’t be enough to buy a Tecate tall boy anyway.

Though the review is nostalgic, hyperbolic, and filled with ridiculously obscure references and five-dollar-words, Harhakuvat will be on constant rotation in the cube, iPod, car etc.

Please tour the US soon. Maybe with Fucked Up.

Here is a cut from Harhakuvat:

Journal of Experimental Fiction: 39 (War Splicing)

I’m very happy to announce that my piece War Splicing has recently been published in the Journal of Experimental Fiction: 39. You can grab a copy on the old Amazon. I don’t get any cheddar or royalties for copies sold. JEF is published by Depth Charge and Civil Coping Mechanisms. Lots of great and innovative writers have appeared in the Journal. I’m thrilled to be part of it!

 

Black Gusher Action!

Below you will find information for a series of protests centered around the Seize BP movement. I’ve copied and pasted info from their site and included demonstration information for San Diego (oceanside), Los Angeles and San Francisco. There are actions taking place all over the country and even though this took nearly a month to organize there are ways to protest (though I’m still in favor of drowning Tony Hayward in a vat of crude).

In case the current disaster isn’t enough to inspire some sort of boycott or action, here is a reminder of BP’s storied history (courtesy of wikipedia):

Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline

BP has been criticised for its involvement with Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, due to human rights, environmental and safety concern

Colombian pipeline

In July 2006, a group of Colombian farmers won a multi million pound settlement from BP after the British oil and gas company was accused of benefiting from a regime of terror carried out by Colombian government paramilitaries to protect a 450-mile (720 km) pipeline.

Mist mountain project

There have been some calls for BP to halt its “Mist Mountain” Coalbed Methane Project in the Southern Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. The proposed 500 km² project is directly adjacent to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.

Canadian oil sands

BP is one of numerous firms who are extracting oil from Canadian oil sands, a process that produces four times as much CO₂ as conventional drilling. The Cree aboriginal group describe BP as being complicit in ‘the biggest environmental crime on the planet’.

Refinery safety violations

Under scrutiny after the Texas City Refinery explosion, two BP-owned refineries in Texas City, Texas, and Toledo, Ohio, were responsible for 97 percent (829 of 851) of safety violations by oil refiners between June 2007 and February 2010, as determined by inspections by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.^[70]

For those who wish to protest silently or with “wallet.”

here is a list of BP products you can justly avoid:

BP
AMPM
Arai
Arco
BP Travel Centre
BP Connect
BP Express
BP Shop
BP 2go
Castrol
Air BP and BP Shipping

Seize BP: Campaign Statement and Petition

The government of the United States must seize BP and freeze its assets, and place those funds in trust to begin providing immediate relief to the working people throughout the Gulf states whose jobs, communities, homes and businesses are being harmed or destroyed by the criminally negligent actions of the CEO, Board of Directors and senior management of BP.

Take action now! Sign the Seize BP petition to demand the seizure of BP!

200,000 gallons of oil a day, or more, are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico with the flow of oil growing. The poisonous devastation to human beings, wildlife, natural habitat and fragile ecosystems will go on for decades. It constitutes an act of environmental violence, the consequences of which will be catastrophic.

BP’s Unmitigated Greed

This was a manufactured disaster. It was neither an “Act of God” nor Nature that caused this devastation, but rather the unmitigated greed of Big Oil’s most powerful executives in their reckless search for ever-greater profits.

Under BP’s CEO Tony Hayward’s aggressive leadership, BP made a record $5.6 billion in pure profits just in the first three months of 2010. BP made $163 billion in profits from 2001-09. It has a long history of safety violations and slap-on-the-wrist fines.

BP’s Materially False and Misleading Statements

BP filed a 52-page exploration plan and environmental impact analysis with the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service for the Deepwater Horizon well, dated February 2009, which repeatedly assured the government that it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities.” In the filing, BP stated over and over that it was unlikely for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill causing serious damage to beaches, mammals and fisheries and that as such it did not require a response plan for such an event.

BP’s executives are thus either guilty of making materially false statements to the government to obtain the license, of consciously misleading a government that was all too ready to be misled, and/or they are guilty of criminal negligence. At a bare minimum, their representations constitute gross negligence. Whichever the case, BP must be held accountable for its criminal actions that have harmed so many.

Protecting BP’s Super-Profits

BP executives are banking that they can ride out the storm of bad publicity and still come out far ahead in terms of the billions in profit that BP will pocket. In 1990, in response to the Exxon Valdez disaster, Congress passed and President Bush signed into law the Oil Pollution Act, which immunizes oil companies for the damages they cause beyond immediate cleanup costs.

Under the Oil Pollution Act, oil companies are responsible for oil removal and cleanup costs for massive spills, and their liability for all other forms of damages is capped at $75 million—a pittance for a company that made $5.6 billion in profits in just the last three months, and is expected to make $23 billion in pure profit this year. Some in Congress suggest the cap should be set at $10 billion, still less than the potential cost of this devastation—but why should the oil companies have any immunity from responsibility for the damage they cause?

The Oil Pollution Act is an outrage, and it will be used by BP to keep on doing business as usual.

People are up in arms because thousands of workers who have lost their jobs and livelihoods as a result of BP’s actions have to wait in line to compete for lower wage and hazardous clean-up jobs from BP. BP’s multi-millionaire executives are not asked to sacrifice one penny while working people have to plead for clean-up jobs.

Take Action Now

It is imperative that the government seize BP’s assets now for their criminal negligence and begin providing immediate relief for the immense suffering and harm they have caused.

Seize BP Week of Action
Thursday, June 3 – Thursday, June 10

Los Angeles, California
Saturday, June 5 at 12 noon
Palisades Park at Ocean Ave. & Colorado Ave., Santa Monica (near the Santa Monica Pier)
Contact: 213-251-1025 or la@seizebp.org
Click here for a map.

Oceanside, California
Saturday, June 5 at 2 p.m.
Bp station, 160 Davison Ave
Bring signs and loud voices for a peaceful protest.
Contact: nfkut2001@gmail.com

San Francisco, California
Tuesday, June 8 at 5 p.m.
BP Offices
90 New Montgomery St. (near Mission St.)
Contact: 415-821-6545, sf@seizebp.org