"Forcing prisoners to wander in an infinite labrynth, living in fear of being torn limb from limb, may seem harsh to some people now, but..."

Barney Frank Rocks (sometimes)

Time Capsule

The only friend of mine who was "gainfully" employed (Jeff H., as a mailroom clerk at the GE plant in Louisville, KY) purchased PIL's Metal Box in 1979. At the time, there were 5 of us who hung out together (me, Bob V., Jimmy T., Andy C. and Jeff), all in our late teens, early 20s, unhappy and living on the cusp of the Reagan era.

We were disillusioned in an existential way, anxious about what was next in our undefined lives and generally pissed about it all. We had embraced punk rock because musically it was satisfying, but also a clear "fuck you" to the people around us (high school acquaintances, family, etc.). At this point, through music and literature (William S. Burroughs, etc.), we tried to whittle away at the things that appeared to tie us down. We didn't have another place to go, I think we just wanted to cast off with the dark hope that something else would turn up.
My memory of listening to Metal Box at Jeff's apartment (the rest of us uncomfortably lived with our parents) was that its move away from "rock" was both thrilling and a bit terrifying. We all dug it, but it was an uneasy pleasure. There was madness in the music.

At the time, we regularly flirted with a kind of lunacy that was part of the un-tethering process that we had begun. In addition to a wreckless love of drugs and alcohol, we would play games that involved sitting around in the wee hours drinking beer and smoking weed while we tried to chip away at each other's already fragile identities. The goal was to find psychological weak spots, examine them and test whether the other guy's sense of self was strong enough to acknowledge his own flaws and hidden anxieties. I believe we called these "truth" games.

Good times.

Gog and Magog

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

h/t Clive Hamilton, CounterPunch.
http://www.alternet.org/authors/10693/


The murderous narcissism of those malignant dickheads is almost impossible to grasp...but there it is. I'm certain the cable news outlets will program their newscasts around this earth shattering revelation...no?...ah, maybe the NYTimes or the Washington Post, no?...(crickets)

I Hate These People.

"The goverment would rather kill babies than pay for my penectomy!"

Holy Crap!

Should we alert the Teabaggers, Birthers and Deathers?