It has recently been brought to my attention, by people I both love and respect no less, that my decidedly salty choice of language on this sight and others is somehow beneath my abilities as a writer. These aren't the first people to bring this issue up. My mother has been harping me about it for longer then I can remember. My response to this constructive criticism? A kind and respectful, Butt the fuck out! Followed by a courteous, mind your own motherfucking business!
I don't use the language that I use to be 'cool' or to get attention. I use the language I use because I love words: Big words, small words, 'good' words, 'bad' words- I like them all, so I use them all. The result is a strange hodgepodge of Gore Vidalian high grammar and blaxploitation grade gutter-slang. This has kind of become the signature of my writing style but it's actually the way I fucking talk and I've always strived to give my writing a down to earth, conversational feel. Call me an egomaniac but I find it to be rather charming. Apparently, once again, I'm in the minority.
I haven't exactly made a secret of the fact that I'm a struggling writer. I've been at this blogging thing for over three years now and I've only managed to publish a single fucking piece. Even worse, I still get less traffic on this site than a whorehouse in a leper colony (RIM-SHOT!). I now feel compelled to ask- Is it really the fucking language thing? Really!? Most of the sites I submit to bill themselves as being libertarian and/or anarchist in nature. What the fuck kind of anarchist/libertarian gets their goddamn panties in a bunch over a few little four letter words? Sometimes I fear that libertarians in particular have lost sight of the fact that they were founded as an anti-authoritarian movement, not a stuffy social club for bow-tie wearing Republican dope-smokers. Do you motherfuckers seriously believe that Karl Hess would give a flying fuck about my use of the word cunt? You people have to be fucking kidding me.
I may be trans but I'm no fucking lady and I don't intend to be. Who wants to be a fucking lady when you can be a bitch? All my heroes are fucking bitches: Frida Kahlo, Lou Reed, Courtney Love, Angela Keaton. Can you imagine where any of these fine fearless cunts would be if they minded their manners and acted more ladylike? I haven't the slightest idea but they wouldn't be my fucking heroes, I can tell you that. A lady is just a fancy word for a femme who knows her place. Well this femme fatale's only place is up in your motherfucking face and if that makes me persona non grata then so be it. I'd rather be ignored for who I am than praised for putting on airs.
And if any of you dearest motherfuckers got a problem with my big fat fucking mouth then you've clearly picked the wrong fucking blog. Choke on my man-clit. Comrade Hermit out!
Hate, Rage and Apathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
* Femme Fatale By The Velvet Underground
* Jesus Don't Want Me For His Sunbeam By The Vaselines
* Slack Motherfucker By Superchunk
* Rockstar By Hole
* Just Like A Woman By Bob Dylan
* Where Eagles Dare By The Misfits
* Mama Said Knock You Out By LL Cool J
Monday, July 31, 2017
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Confessions Of An Anarchist Welfare Queen
I'm an anarchist welfare queen. I'm a lot of seemingly contradictory things, I'm a bearded lady for fucks sake, but I'm pretty sure being an anarchist on welfare takes the fucking cake. I mean, I quite literally survive on money from an institution that I don't even believe should exist. But what am I supposed to do? I may be an anarchist but I'm also an agoraphobic basket-case who pops more pills than Elvis. I'm working on evolving but its going to be a long slow journey before I can even hold down a part time job. My family helps out where they can but they're not rich either. Sponging off the system I despise is the only way I can make ends meet.
That doesn't make it any easier though. I've generally come to see the welfare state in its current form as a way for the state to pay poor people to look the other way while they bomb the shit out of the Third World and enslave our own people in the ever-expanding Prison Industrial Complex. They're freebies to keep us invested in a system which is inherently un-free and they rapidly disappear the moment those cunts feel like they've got a stranglehold. Put simply, welfare is the carrot, tyranny is the stick and please believe me when I tell you that the stick is coming, sooner than you know.
I'm also not too crazy about the idea of the income tax, at least not from a philosophical stand point. I despise the rich and I'm not ashamed to say so. It is quite literally impossible to be a billionaire without exploiting other peoples labor. The super rich minority in this country can only exist with a poor and oppressed majority to bleed dry. But that still doesn't change the fact that involuntary taxes are essentially theft. Giving any institution the right to kill and/or steal is by definition tyranny. I've struggled against this logic for a long time as a badge carrying leftist but I find it harder and harder to ignore. I guess you could call me the worlds first Voluntaryist Marxist. That's another one to chock up to my Walking-Contradiction Syndrome.
In a perfect world I would have a mutual-aid society or a democratic syndicate to fall back on. Back before that gimpy twat FDR integrated the radical left into the state and defanged it, we use to take care of our own that way. Every union worth its weight in shit had its own single-payer program. We didn't go around asking the state for favors. We developed complex and totally voluntary institutions to provide working people with the security to fall down and the tools to get back up again. The left in this country doesn't work like that anymore. We've become domesticated house-pets of the federal government. I'm fully committed to changing that in my lifetime but right now I need help and I literally can't afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if that gift horse also happens to be a war horse.
This dicked up society we've cobbled together from an ugly hodgepodge of big government, big business and organized religion doesn't make it easy to be queer or mentally-ill, let alone both. It's pretty much set up to fuck us, imprison us and suck us dry, which is probably the one reason I don't feel terrible about being a leach on said societies nut-sack. That and the fact that otherwise your tax dollars would just go to more prisons and more bombs. I still feel bad about living off your tax dollars but I can promise you one thing. That when I'm well enough to stand on my own two feet, I'm gonna use them to stomp this putrid jack-o-lantern we call a state into fucking bits and you'll never have to pay another tax again. And you can quote my batshit tranny ass on that.
Just consider it an investment in a truly democratic society, dearest motherfuckers, and call this post an I.O.U.
I owe you one revolution.
Catch you on the flip side.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
* Soul To Squeeze By Red Hot Chili Peppers
* Shut In By Strand Of Oaks
* Little Green Bag By The George Baker Selection
* Time Is On My Side By The Rolling Stones
* Suck You Dry By Mudhoney
* Mayonnaise By Smashing Pumpkins
* Original Fire By Audioslave
* Nothing To Be Done By The Pastels
* Revolution By The Beatles
* Flipside By Bleached
That doesn't make it any easier though. I've generally come to see the welfare state in its current form as a way for the state to pay poor people to look the other way while they bomb the shit out of the Third World and enslave our own people in the ever-expanding Prison Industrial Complex. They're freebies to keep us invested in a system which is inherently un-free and they rapidly disappear the moment those cunts feel like they've got a stranglehold. Put simply, welfare is the carrot, tyranny is the stick and please believe me when I tell you that the stick is coming, sooner than you know.
I'm also not too crazy about the idea of the income tax, at least not from a philosophical stand point. I despise the rich and I'm not ashamed to say so. It is quite literally impossible to be a billionaire without exploiting other peoples labor. The super rich minority in this country can only exist with a poor and oppressed majority to bleed dry. But that still doesn't change the fact that involuntary taxes are essentially theft. Giving any institution the right to kill and/or steal is by definition tyranny. I've struggled against this logic for a long time as a badge carrying leftist but I find it harder and harder to ignore. I guess you could call me the worlds first Voluntaryist Marxist. That's another one to chock up to my Walking-Contradiction Syndrome.
In a perfect world I would have a mutual-aid society or a democratic syndicate to fall back on. Back before that gimpy twat FDR integrated the radical left into the state and defanged it, we use to take care of our own that way. Every union worth its weight in shit had its own single-payer program. We didn't go around asking the state for favors. We developed complex and totally voluntary institutions to provide working people with the security to fall down and the tools to get back up again. The left in this country doesn't work like that anymore. We've become domesticated house-pets of the federal government. I'm fully committed to changing that in my lifetime but right now I need help and I literally can't afford to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if that gift horse also happens to be a war horse.
This dicked up society we've cobbled together from an ugly hodgepodge of big government, big business and organized religion doesn't make it easy to be queer or mentally-ill, let alone both. It's pretty much set up to fuck us, imprison us and suck us dry, which is probably the one reason I don't feel terrible about being a leach on said societies nut-sack. That and the fact that otherwise your tax dollars would just go to more prisons and more bombs. I still feel bad about living off your tax dollars but I can promise you one thing. That when I'm well enough to stand on my own two feet, I'm gonna use them to stomp this putrid jack-o-lantern we call a state into fucking bits and you'll never have to pay another tax again. And you can quote my batshit tranny ass on that.
Just consider it an investment in a truly democratic society, dearest motherfuckers, and call this post an I.O.U.
I owe you one revolution.
Catch you on the flip side.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
* Soul To Squeeze By Red Hot Chili Peppers
* Shut In By Strand Of Oaks
* Little Green Bag By The George Baker Selection
* Time Is On My Side By The Rolling Stones
* Suck You Dry By Mudhoney
* Mayonnaise By Smashing Pumpkins
* Original Fire By Audioslave
* Nothing To Be Done By The Pastels
* Revolution By The Beatles
* Flipside By Bleached
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
The Arabian Candidate
I really hate to admit it, dearest motherfuckers, because god knows I've been a critic of the theory but I can no longer deny the fact that the Trump regime is colluding with a subversive foreign power. Over the last half year I have fretfully witnessed my so called president acquiesce in every way imaginable to this rogue state. He has defended their numerous crimes both in public and in private. He has accepted their filthy blood money and surrounded himself with their loyal quislings. He has even gone so far as to support their flagrantly illegal occupation and annexation of a smaller, weaker neighbor.
No I'm not speaking of Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Putin's Russia. The DNC has yet to find a smoking gun on that Grassy Knoll, that is unless you count Donald Jr.'s games of footsie with low level Russian scum bags (Rachel Maddow does, I don't). No, I'm speaking of the Trump administrations borderline homoerotic love affair with their bros in Saudi Arabia, the world's third most diabolical terror state, after America and Israel, naturally. In stark contrast with his icy indifference towards the dreaded Kremlin, the orange bastard has done somersaults through his own pinched asshole to please the Kingdom of Saud. He's gone balls deep on militarily supporting their genocidal war on Yemen. He's promised them $350 billion dollars in military hardware. He's even vociferously supported their strange little tiff with our alleged allies in Qatar, even while members of his own administration rush to put out the fire. All the while, the Donald calls for the absurd premise of a Gulf State NATO, charged with fighting the very terrorists they helped create headquartered in sunny Riyadh.
What all this tells me is that the Trump regime is making a YUUUGE! investment on making Saudi Arabia the future face of American imperialism in the Middle East. Too all this I can only ask: Why? I mean, for the Donald himself and his creepy little predator-Zionist son in law, Jared Kushner, it's obvious. The Saudis are the kings of easy money, especially when it comes to the gaudy real estate the Trumps and the Kushners specialize in. But why the H.R. Mcmasters'? Why the Mad Dog Mattis'? Why are these Deep State veterans that Trump has surrounded himself with so gun-ho about jumping into bed with these blood-sucking sheikhs. The Saudis aren't the only regime on the block with a price tag but they're rapidly becoming the most unstable.
With King Salman a cunts hair away from his thousand thread count death bed, the last few years have played out like a backroom grudge match between contestants for the top spot of heir apparent to the throne in the Royal Kingdom. The latest Crown Prince, the third since 2015, is by far the most dangerous. King Salman's 32 year old son, Crown Prince Bin Salman, has made a name for himself as his pitiless nations Defense Minister with his letting of oceans of blood vis a vis the ethnic cleansing of Zaydi Muslims in Yemen and his less than subtle support for the head chopping maniacs turning Syria into a black hole of endless sectarian violence. He's also been the main force behind the GCC's blockade against Qatar, which I suspect has more to do with his predecessor, Mohammed Bin Nayef's chummy relationship with the tiny little monarchy than anything Al-Jazeera related.
Long story short, the Crown Prince has already stretched his desert empire paper thin before he's even reached the throne. All with a dwindling oil supply and rising discontent among the nation's long oppressed Shia population on the gulf coast. It doesn't take a political scientist to tell you that the Kingdom of Saud is ripe for a well earned civil war.
So once again, I have to ask: Why Saudi Arabia? If your looking for a reliable client state in the Middle East, the obvious choice to me is Iran. Look beyond all the Western/Zionist propaganda and what you have is essentially a stable, reasonably moderate, semi-democratic republic founded on the bedrock of a popular revolution. With it's mixed economy and front row seat to the Eurasian theater, Iran is strategically perfect for quisling-hood. It's oil rich but not oil dependent, It's been a consistent allie in the wars against both Al-Qaeda and ISIS and it's bent over backwards for western approval with the P5+1 nuclear deal. A deal to fix a problem that only existed in the syphilitic minds of neocons and Israeli expansionists, I might add.
Obama appeared to grasp the premise of an Iranian collaboration for the future of American imperial intrigue. At times he even seemed to be on the brink of reaching out to the Islamic Republic but the elites in both parties, including the rag-tag Trump team have totally rejected this opportunity out of hand. Choosing instead to align themselves with Iran's mortal enemy, a bloodthirsty corporatist theocracy that begs Uncle Sam for money with one hand and openly funds violence on our very shores with the other. In case you've forgotten, dearest motherfuckers, it was Saudi Arabia who bankrolled the attacks on 9/11 and paid off the Pakistanis to hide Bin Laden. Which brings up another interesting question: with their clear hatred for Western "values", why does Saudi Arabia allie with the United States? After all, we're no longer the only viable superpower on the block.
China would seem like a much more reasonable alternative. The United States may still be far more powerful but we're also clearly an empire in decline. The election of a grabby circus clown like Trump makes that fact almost painfully clear. With multiple military quagmires in multiple countries on multiple continents burning out of control not to mention the worlds most ass backwards welfare state, America is in debt up to its fucking eyeballs and China is the loan shark with our cojones in a vice. Saudi Arabia wouldn't be the first American "allie" to turn to the Red Dragon for patronage. Many former Yankee client states in Africa and Latin America have chosen this route. So why not the Saudi's? China is a conservative illiberal republic founded on Confucianist values with one of the worlds fastest growing middle classes. Sounds like a perfect match to me.
My point here is that unlike Saudi Arabia and the United States, Iran and China are reliable partners. So why are both the Saudis and the Americans who have lowered themselves to doing their bidding so allergic to reliable. The answer is as simple as it is ugly: Because Saudi Arabia and America are empires founded on plunder and empires thrive on chaos. America doesn't want stability in the Middle East even if it means one-upping the Russians and the Chinese. They want the Middle East broken and dependent so they can justify their existence to both their own citizenry and the world at large. What good is the United States without a war or five to fight. In that context it makes perfect sense for them to allie with a nation that exports jihad like a raw commodity.
Similarly, the Saudis don't want a stable papa nation keeping tabs on them and telling them how to burn their money. They want a surrogate who is bleeding and desperate. They want an empire that throws around weapons like Mardi Gras beads as it crashes and burns. In short, the Saudis want a sponsor as fucked up and reckless as they are. So it's little wonder that they became the one establishment order to welcome the Donald into the fold with open arms once their prize stead (S)Hillary busted herself lame on the election hurtle. After all it doesn't get much more fucked up than Trump. It's the perfect match. A marriage made in hell. A bloated, discolored, greedy old scam artist farting his way through one last con and a budding, swarthy, young psychopath on the cusp of despotism. Donald Trump and the Crown Prince are like the Sid and Nancy of international violence. Nicholas Sparks couldn't come up with a grander romance. Call it, The Arabian Candidate and sell it at the airport for ten bucks a pop.
Ain't love grand, dearest motherfuckers.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
Head Like A Hole By Nine Inch Nails
Losing My Religion By REM
Chainsaw Gutsfuck By Mayhem
Rock The Kasbah By The Clash
Violet By Hole
Reign In Blood By Slayer
Everyone Wants To Live Forever By The Flaming Lips
Pleasure By Feist
Peace Sells By Megadeath
Just Like Henry By Dressy Bessy
No I'm not speaking of Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Putin's Russia. The DNC has yet to find a smoking gun on that Grassy Knoll, that is unless you count Donald Jr.'s games of footsie with low level Russian scum bags (Rachel Maddow does, I don't). No, I'm speaking of the Trump administrations borderline homoerotic love affair with their bros in Saudi Arabia, the world's third most diabolical terror state, after America and Israel, naturally. In stark contrast with his icy indifference towards the dreaded Kremlin, the orange bastard has done somersaults through his own pinched asshole to please the Kingdom of Saud. He's gone balls deep on militarily supporting their genocidal war on Yemen. He's promised them $350 billion dollars in military hardware. He's even vociferously supported their strange little tiff with our alleged allies in Qatar, even while members of his own administration rush to put out the fire. All the while, the Donald calls for the absurd premise of a Gulf State NATO, charged with fighting the very terrorists they helped create headquartered in sunny Riyadh.
What all this tells me is that the Trump regime is making a YUUUGE! investment on making Saudi Arabia the future face of American imperialism in the Middle East. Too all this I can only ask: Why? I mean, for the Donald himself and his creepy little predator-Zionist son in law, Jared Kushner, it's obvious. The Saudis are the kings of easy money, especially when it comes to the gaudy real estate the Trumps and the Kushners specialize in. But why the H.R. Mcmasters'? Why the Mad Dog Mattis'? Why are these Deep State veterans that Trump has surrounded himself with so gun-ho about jumping into bed with these blood-sucking sheikhs. The Saudis aren't the only regime on the block with a price tag but they're rapidly becoming the most unstable.
With King Salman a cunts hair away from his thousand thread count death bed, the last few years have played out like a backroom grudge match between contestants for the top spot of heir apparent to the throne in the Royal Kingdom. The latest Crown Prince, the third since 2015, is by far the most dangerous. King Salman's 32 year old son, Crown Prince Bin Salman, has made a name for himself as his pitiless nations Defense Minister with his letting of oceans of blood vis a vis the ethnic cleansing of Zaydi Muslims in Yemen and his less than subtle support for the head chopping maniacs turning Syria into a black hole of endless sectarian violence. He's also been the main force behind the GCC's blockade against Qatar, which I suspect has more to do with his predecessor, Mohammed Bin Nayef's chummy relationship with the tiny little monarchy than anything Al-Jazeera related.
Long story short, the Crown Prince has already stretched his desert empire paper thin before he's even reached the throne. All with a dwindling oil supply and rising discontent among the nation's long oppressed Shia population on the gulf coast. It doesn't take a political scientist to tell you that the Kingdom of Saud is ripe for a well earned civil war.
So once again, I have to ask: Why Saudi Arabia? If your looking for a reliable client state in the Middle East, the obvious choice to me is Iran. Look beyond all the Western/Zionist propaganda and what you have is essentially a stable, reasonably moderate, semi-democratic republic founded on the bedrock of a popular revolution. With it's mixed economy and front row seat to the Eurasian theater, Iran is strategically perfect for quisling-hood. It's oil rich but not oil dependent, It's been a consistent allie in the wars against both Al-Qaeda and ISIS and it's bent over backwards for western approval with the P5+1 nuclear deal. A deal to fix a problem that only existed in the syphilitic minds of neocons and Israeli expansionists, I might add.
Obama appeared to grasp the premise of an Iranian collaboration for the future of American imperial intrigue. At times he even seemed to be on the brink of reaching out to the Islamic Republic but the elites in both parties, including the rag-tag Trump team have totally rejected this opportunity out of hand. Choosing instead to align themselves with Iran's mortal enemy, a bloodthirsty corporatist theocracy that begs Uncle Sam for money with one hand and openly funds violence on our very shores with the other. In case you've forgotten, dearest motherfuckers, it was Saudi Arabia who bankrolled the attacks on 9/11 and paid off the Pakistanis to hide Bin Laden. Which brings up another interesting question: with their clear hatred for Western "values", why does Saudi Arabia allie with the United States? After all, we're no longer the only viable superpower on the block.
China would seem like a much more reasonable alternative. The United States may still be far more powerful but we're also clearly an empire in decline. The election of a grabby circus clown like Trump makes that fact almost painfully clear. With multiple military quagmires in multiple countries on multiple continents burning out of control not to mention the worlds most ass backwards welfare state, America is in debt up to its fucking eyeballs and China is the loan shark with our cojones in a vice. Saudi Arabia wouldn't be the first American "allie" to turn to the Red Dragon for patronage. Many former Yankee client states in Africa and Latin America have chosen this route. So why not the Saudi's? China is a conservative illiberal republic founded on Confucianist values with one of the worlds fastest growing middle classes. Sounds like a perfect match to me.
My point here is that unlike Saudi Arabia and the United States, Iran and China are reliable partners. So why are both the Saudis and the Americans who have lowered themselves to doing their bidding so allergic to reliable. The answer is as simple as it is ugly: Because Saudi Arabia and America are empires founded on plunder and empires thrive on chaos. America doesn't want stability in the Middle East even if it means one-upping the Russians and the Chinese. They want the Middle East broken and dependent so they can justify their existence to both their own citizenry and the world at large. What good is the United States without a war or five to fight. In that context it makes perfect sense for them to allie with a nation that exports jihad like a raw commodity.
Similarly, the Saudis don't want a stable papa nation keeping tabs on them and telling them how to burn their money. They want a surrogate who is bleeding and desperate. They want an empire that throws around weapons like Mardi Gras beads as it crashes and burns. In short, the Saudis want a sponsor as fucked up and reckless as they are. So it's little wonder that they became the one establishment order to welcome the Donald into the fold with open arms once their prize stead (S)Hillary busted herself lame on the election hurtle. After all it doesn't get much more fucked up than Trump. It's the perfect match. A marriage made in hell. A bloated, discolored, greedy old scam artist farting his way through one last con and a budding, swarthy, young psychopath on the cusp of despotism. Donald Trump and the Crown Prince are like the Sid and Nancy of international violence. Nicholas Sparks couldn't come up with a grander romance. Call it, The Arabian Candidate and sell it at the airport for ten bucks a pop.
Ain't love grand, dearest motherfuckers.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
Head Like A Hole By Nine Inch Nails
Losing My Religion By REM
Chainsaw Gutsfuck By Mayhem
Rock The Kasbah By The Clash
Violet By Hole
Reign In Blood By Slayer
Everyone Wants To Live Forever By The Flaming Lips
Pleasure By Feist
Peace Sells By Megadeath
Just Like Henry By Dressy Bessy
Sunday, July 9, 2017
Summer Flicks For Snobs & Pricks
I love movies. I'd say they're probably my fourth favorite thing after the three P's: Punk, Politics and Pussy. And there are few things that I love more than going to the movies. I love everything about it, the dangerously over buttered popcorn, the glow of the big screen in that deep dark room, even the unwinnable arguments I get into with my brother over the meaning of what we just witnessed on the moonlit drives home. There's really only one thing I don't like about going to the movies these days and, ironically enough, it's the fucking movies themselves! Especially in the summer when that putrid cesspool called Hollywood (America's second undrainable swamp!) unleashes a tidal wave of the dumbest, safest, tackiest, money-grubbing horseshit that their pea sized lizard brains can fart out. It's all green screens, CGI and wisecracking, jingoistic superheroes pimping the lowest common denominator out of their hard earned walking change. I know, I know, I'm a film snob and a total fucking prick. Nothing gets my unwanted, chubby little pecker harder than a good old fashioned bugfuck art flick or a pretentious, Euro-trash, soft-core fuck-fest: Vaseline, subtitles and all. I would love nothing better than to gorge myself sick on this strange vice before the silky glory of the silver screen but sadly there aren't too many faggy revival houses out in Amish country, so I have to settle on watching Netflix in my parent's basement.
I can't be the only one, can I? There has to be at least a few other weirdos out there hungry for something new and strange this summer and maybe even a few curious rubes brave enough to watch on the wild side. Well, never fear, dearest motherfuckers, Comrade Hermit Productions is proud to present the first annual list of Summer Flicks For Snobs & Pricks. A small collection of some of my favorite of-the-beaten-path cinematic gems for you fine fucks to feast on in the cool comfortability of your own basement. You probably won't find any of this shit at Redbox and you definitely won't find it at your local megaplex but as long as you have access to an old-school, snail-mail, Netflix account, you should be able to get your grubby mitts on all that lies below. Just pace yourselves, dearest motherfuckers, especially the more bourgeois among you. This is the kind of shit that Hollywood doesn't want you to see. But if you keep an open mind, it might just get blown. You're welcome.
The Doom Generation (1995) Directed by Gregg Araki
Gregg is by far the most underrated director to come out of the Queer Cinema movement, largely because he's it's most dangerous alumni and The Doom Generation is his blood soaked magnum opus: The nihilistic saga of a shiftless teenage couple, Amy and Jordan (played by the equally gorgeous Rose McGowan and James Duval) who hook up with a mysterious bisexual drifter who involves them in a convenience store robbery gone gruesomely wrong. Together, the triad flees the dystopian sprawl of the Los Angeles suburbs, only to be stalked by an endless procession of queer bashers and Amy's irate ex-lovers. Hollywood hated it because they didn't get it. It's a grotesquely humorous analogy for the culture of random chauvinistic and heterosexist violence that women, girls and queer kids have to live with every fucking day. Araki never sugarcoated it for the breeders or the squeamish (or do I repeat myself) which is precisely what make him and movies like The Doom Generation so fucking vital.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Rose McGowan's Amy Blue instantly became one of my idols upon watching this movie back in high school. With her fuck-you attitude and her Gothic Lolita swagger she was everything little girls weren't supposed to be and everything that I secretly wished I was. Her foul mouthed one-liners are still fucking priceless: from " You're like a life support system for a cock!" to " If bullshit were music, you'd be a big brass band" and, of course, the instantly classic refrain "Eat my fuck". Amy's filthy mouth made me wanna be a girl.
Visitor Q (2001) Directed by Takashi Miike
Note to dearest motherfuckers: NOT FOR EVERYONE. Takashi Miike has made some fantastically fucked up cinema over the last twenty-something years: masterfully mixing the awkward dreaminess of David Lynch with the grotty body horror of David Cronenberg in cult classics like Audition, Ichi the Killer and Gozu. But I believe the mad genius of J-Horror hit his peak with this little known, direct-to-DVD black comedy which may very well go down in history as the most fucked up family movie ever made. Incest, heroin addiction, necrophilia, domestic violence: The Yamazaki family shatters every taboo in the book before a nameless stranger injects himself into the madness and brings them back together through the magic of casual violence and erotic lactation....like I said, not for everyone, but if your just the right kind of fucked up you might just find a strange bitter-sweetness in Visitor Q that's, dare I say, almost heartwarming.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The scene where the Yamazaki's gleefully hack their son's bullies to bits should bring a smile to the face of anyone who grew up weird and was forced to suffer for it by vicious square kids or any parent who's ever had a day dream about fucking gutting some teenage psychopath for calling their kid a faggot. Here's your moment, beautiful people. Soak it in.
Shortbus (2006) Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
Mitchell, that beautiful creature who gave us the gift of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, once stated in an interview, "Sex...is to interesting to leave to porn." He proves this maxim in spades with this groundbreaking erotic comedy that follows the denizens of a weekly queer happening known as the Shortbus as they try to find themselves and each other through the tangled web of their sex lives. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but you probably wont come. That's not the point as Mitchell shows us that even explicit sex doesn't have to be pornography. It can be something even cooler. It can be art.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Nothing can beat the final scene, where Shortbus' host, the brilliantly vivacious Justin Vivian Bond, playing herself, sings to the love battered collective, joined together under candlelight during a blackout, a wistful lullaby which explodes into an anthem as she's joined by a marching band, uniting the room with the refrain "We all get it in the end!" It's downright orgasmic.
Sonatine (1993) Directed by Takeshi Kitano
Murakawa is a depressed Yakuza sent down to Okinawa to broker a peace deal between warring clans, only to find himself and his men caught in an ambush. They escape to a secluded beach house where they rescue a mysterious rape victim and lose themselves in childish pranks, firecrackers and rainy day bullshitting only to have the violence of the adult world they escaped come crashing in on them. Takeshi Kitano is nothing short of phenomenal: writing, directing and starring in one of the most refreshingly original gangster films ever made. Watch it on a rainy afternoon and fucking lose yourself. I promise you wont regret it.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Murakawa's revenge on the bosses who slaughtered his men is one of the most haunting shootouts in cinema history. Kitano stalks the darkened hotel boardroom like a panther with an M-16. His expressionless face, still as a stone mask. His quiet rage, silent but palpable like a phantom pulse set to the beat of the gunfire, flashing in the darkness like a strobe light. Just like the movie itself, it breaths madness like a strange kind of magic that makes perfect sense to no one but Murakawa and the audience that he holds captive.
The Dreamers (2003) Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Thirty years after Last Tango In Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci returns to the City of Light with this beautiful erotic love letter to youth, cinema and rebellion. During the build up to the May '68 Paris Uprising, American film student Matthew (Michael Pitt, brilliant, gorgeous) shacks up with local twin cinephiles, Isabelle (Eva Green, equally brilliant, doubly beautiful) and Theo (Lois Garrel, meh?) at their stately chateau while their bourgeois parents are on holiday. Matthew quickly discovers that the twins have zero sexual mores, even between each other, and he quickly finds himself sucked into their private world of sex games, classic cinema and revolutionary Maoism, all culminating in the break out of the revolution they've been waiting for.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
As shallow as it may sound to a cinematic laymen, the sex scenes really are a work of art. Every three way is more like a four way with Bertolucci's camera playing the role of the fourth, silent lover. It delivers a level of intimacy to the audience that makes mainstream pornography look like a sad and lonely joke. Matthew's passionate but ultimately doomed attempt to convince the twins that love is far more revolutionary than violence during the final scene is another highlight, still as poignant and tragically unheard today as it was in 1968. C'est la vie.
The Killer (1989) Directed by John Woo
John Woo's high octane masterpiece is nothing short of a triumph of Hong Kong cinema. The operatic tale of an assassin with a heart of gold who agrees to do one last hit in order to pay for the eye surgery of a nightclub singer he accidentally blinded in a previous job, only to be double crossed by his Triad boss and befriend a detective fascinated by the criminals valor. I know, on paper it sounds melodramatic and it is but it's also the greatest action film ever made. Trust me, skip the latest Vin Diesel abortion and watch this instead. If your disappointed then please kill yourself, your hopeless and I can't help you.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
No action sequence will ever beat the epic final shootout in the abandoned chapel: Beretta's flashing, bodies falling, doves flying, candles flickering, blood spurting. John Woo turns unspeakable carnage into a bullet ballet of near biblical proportions. What more can I say? It's fucking beautiful. Shakespeare would be humbled.
Gummo (1997) Directed by Harmony Korine
Gummo isn't a movie. Gummo is an experience. One that will mark you and forever change the way you look at cinema and the world around you. It's a strange, terrifying, beautiful thing to behold. In the dystopian wasteland of tornado ravaged Xenia, Ohio, an odd collection of aimless misfits eck out a strange existence on the wreckage of their former lives. At times it feels almost like a Jacques Cousteau film only with people playing the parts of the monsters only found at the bottom of the sea. These bizarre, seemingly random and largely improvised vignettes are rendered even more surreal by Harmony Korine's use of gritty, voyeuristic, cinema verite style of camera work and a soundtrack comprised almost entirely of left-field extreme metal bands like Burzum, Absu, Spazz and Sleep. It's one hell of a fucking trip. Do yourself a favor, buy the ticket, take the ride.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
During the final vignette, when Chloe Sevigny emerges from the dirty water in the vacant above ground swimming pool and kisses Bunny Boy surrounded by a pounding torrential downpour while Roy Orbison's Crying plays in the background has to be one of the great indelible images in the history of avante garde cinema and it's an image permanently fried into my frontal lobe like a cigar burn, at least I hope so. Maybe I should watch it again just to make sure....
Love Exposure (2008) Directed by Sion Sono
Clocking in at just over four hours, you would think that Sion Sono's epic black rom-com would be fucking exhausting but if you have an afternoon to kill, Love Exposure is your weapon of choice. The story starts with Yu, the earnest son of a widowed Catholic Priest who only seems to have time for him in the confessional booth. Yu's solution to this problem is to start committing sins to confess, the more perverse the better. This sends him down a strange and twisted path that leads him to petty vandalism, uspkirt photography, cross-dressing, finding true love and battling a deadly cult for her heart. It's insane. It's beautiful. it's Japan in a nutshell. A love story that could only exist on that wonderful, volcanic archipelago where everything seems to be both sacred and perverse all at the same time.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Yu's ultra-violent, Tarantino-esque siege of Zero Church headquarters as his drag queen ultra-ego, Miss Scorpion, plays like Kill Bill meets Rocky Horror. It's the queerest jihad since Stonewall and it's all for love. Absolutely perfect in every single way.
Together (2000) Directed by Lukas Moodysson
Lukas Moodyson's bitter-sweet period comedy about a bored house wife who leaves her alcoholic husband with her children and crashes at her idealistic brother's floundering hippie commune in 1975 Stockholm earned a very special place in my heart during a very dark time in my life. It would have been very easy just to make this movie a tasteless parody of '60's/'70's counterculture but even Together's most seemingly irredeemable hippie brats are treated with a degree of love and compassion that only a self-proclaimed fellow socialist like Moodyson could deliver. Only a true egalitarian could skewer his own fellow comrades with such tenderness. It's a movie about sensitive idealists coming to terms with the fact that though the revolution may be over their love for each other still makes them family. Call it the charming side of self-criticism.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
It's strictly personal but the awkward relationship that develops between Lena's shiftless, bookish daughter and the schlubby neighbor boy really got me deep. Probably because the two ugly ducklings bare more than a passing resemblance to me and my first middle school crush. Caitlin, wherever the fuck you are, someone weird still loves you.
The Edukators (2004) Directed by Hans Weingartner
A menage a trios develops between the three members of a non-violent leftist cadre after they're forced by circumstance to take a wealthy businessman hostage. Together, the four of them hide out in the picturesque Austrian Alps, where the rebels with a cause realize that their prisoner use to be one of them back in the seventies. What results is a beautiful meditation on love and revolution that will stay with you years after watching this brilliant indie gem. I was heartbroken to learn that Hollywood planned to remake The Edukators but overjoyed to learn it had crashed and burned in development hell. What can I say? Some people never change.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The final sequence, in which it's revealed that Hardenberg has gone back on his promise and presses charges against the trio after all, who it turns out predicted his hypocrisy and already escaped, unveils like a dream sequence beautifully set to the score of Jeff Buckley's flawless cover of Hallelujah. It's nothing short of cinematic perfection and it makes me cry every fucking time. The kind of magic those greedy hacks in Hollywood could never remake in a million years with a billion dollars.
Well there you have it, dearest motherfuckers, another pretentious list from your favorite asshole. I can just see you rolling your eyes right now but if I can get just one of you to watch just one of these criminally underrated masterpieces then I can breath easy and live with the chorus of sighs and snickers that seem to follow my snarky ass everywhere I go, watch two and they might just sound like music to my ears. Just remember, dearest motherfuckers, safe art is bad art and life's too goddamn short to waste on bad art.
Peace, Love and Eat My Fuck- CH
Soundtrack: Music from or inspired by theses flicks
* Alison By Slowdive
* The Hardest Button To Button By The White Stripes
* Boys Of Melody By The Hidden Cameras
* Wave Of Mutilation By The Pixies
* S.O.S. By Abba
* Hey Joe By Jimi Hendrix
* Nightswimming By REM
* Dunkelhelt By Burzum
* Somebody To Love By Queen
* Hallelujah By Jeff Buckley
I can't be the only one, can I? There has to be at least a few other weirdos out there hungry for something new and strange this summer and maybe even a few curious rubes brave enough to watch on the wild side. Well, never fear, dearest motherfuckers, Comrade Hermit Productions is proud to present the first annual list of Summer Flicks For Snobs & Pricks. A small collection of some of my favorite of-the-beaten-path cinematic gems for you fine fucks to feast on in the cool comfortability of your own basement. You probably won't find any of this shit at Redbox and you definitely won't find it at your local megaplex but as long as you have access to an old-school, snail-mail, Netflix account, you should be able to get your grubby mitts on all that lies below. Just pace yourselves, dearest motherfuckers, especially the more bourgeois among you. This is the kind of shit that Hollywood doesn't want you to see. But if you keep an open mind, it might just get blown. You're welcome.
The Doom Generation (1995) Directed by Gregg Araki
Gregg is by far the most underrated director to come out of the Queer Cinema movement, largely because he's it's most dangerous alumni and The Doom Generation is his blood soaked magnum opus: The nihilistic saga of a shiftless teenage couple, Amy and Jordan (played by the equally gorgeous Rose McGowan and James Duval) who hook up with a mysterious bisexual drifter who involves them in a convenience store robbery gone gruesomely wrong. Together, the triad flees the dystopian sprawl of the Los Angeles suburbs, only to be stalked by an endless procession of queer bashers and Amy's irate ex-lovers. Hollywood hated it because they didn't get it. It's a grotesquely humorous analogy for the culture of random chauvinistic and heterosexist violence that women, girls and queer kids have to live with every fucking day. Araki never sugarcoated it for the breeders or the squeamish (or do I repeat myself) which is precisely what make him and movies like The Doom Generation so fucking vital.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Rose McGowan's Amy Blue instantly became one of my idols upon watching this movie back in high school. With her fuck-you attitude and her Gothic Lolita swagger she was everything little girls weren't supposed to be and everything that I secretly wished I was. Her foul mouthed one-liners are still fucking priceless: from " You're like a life support system for a cock!" to " If bullshit were music, you'd be a big brass band" and, of course, the instantly classic refrain "Eat my fuck". Amy's filthy mouth made me wanna be a girl.
Visitor Q (2001) Directed by Takashi Miike
Note to dearest motherfuckers: NOT FOR EVERYONE. Takashi Miike has made some fantastically fucked up cinema over the last twenty-something years: masterfully mixing the awkward dreaminess of David Lynch with the grotty body horror of David Cronenberg in cult classics like Audition, Ichi the Killer and Gozu. But I believe the mad genius of J-Horror hit his peak with this little known, direct-to-DVD black comedy which may very well go down in history as the most fucked up family movie ever made. Incest, heroin addiction, necrophilia, domestic violence: The Yamazaki family shatters every taboo in the book before a nameless stranger injects himself into the madness and brings them back together through the magic of casual violence and erotic lactation....like I said, not for everyone, but if your just the right kind of fucked up you might just find a strange bitter-sweetness in Visitor Q that's, dare I say, almost heartwarming.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The scene where the Yamazaki's gleefully hack their son's bullies to bits should bring a smile to the face of anyone who grew up weird and was forced to suffer for it by vicious square kids or any parent who's ever had a day dream about fucking gutting some teenage psychopath for calling their kid a faggot. Here's your moment, beautiful people. Soak it in.
Shortbus (2006) Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
Mitchell, that beautiful creature who gave us the gift of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, once stated in an interview, "Sex...is to interesting to leave to porn." He proves this maxim in spades with this groundbreaking erotic comedy that follows the denizens of a weekly queer happening known as the Shortbus as they try to find themselves and each other through the tangled web of their sex lives. You'll laugh, you'll cry, but you probably wont come. That's not the point as Mitchell shows us that even explicit sex doesn't have to be pornography. It can be something even cooler. It can be art.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Nothing can beat the final scene, where Shortbus' host, the brilliantly vivacious Justin Vivian Bond, playing herself, sings to the love battered collective, joined together under candlelight during a blackout, a wistful lullaby which explodes into an anthem as she's joined by a marching band, uniting the room with the refrain "We all get it in the end!" It's downright orgasmic.
Sonatine (1993) Directed by Takeshi Kitano
Murakawa is a depressed Yakuza sent down to Okinawa to broker a peace deal between warring clans, only to find himself and his men caught in an ambush. They escape to a secluded beach house where they rescue a mysterious rape victim and lose themselves in childish pranks, firecrackers and rainy day bullshitting only to have the violence of the adult world they escaped come crashing in on them. Takeshi Kitano is nothing short of phenomenal: writing, directing and starring in one of the most refreshingly original gangster films ever made. Watch it on a rainy afternoon and fucking lose yourself. I promise you wont regret it.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Murakawa's revenge on the bosses who slaughtered his men is one of the most haunting shootouts in cinema history. Kitano stalks the darkened hotel boardroom like a panther with an M-16. His expressionless face, still as a stone mask. His quiet rage, silent but palpable like a phantom pulse set to the beat of the gunfire, flashing in the darkness like a strobe light. Just like the movie itself, it breaths madness like a strange kind of magic that makes perfect sense to no one but Murakawa and the audience that he holds captive.
The Dreamers (2003) Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Thirty years after Last Tango In Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci returns to the City of Light with this beautiful erotic love letter to youth, cinema and rebellion. During the build up to the May '68 Paris Uprising, American film student Matthew (Michael Pitt, brilliant, gorgeous) shacks up with local twin cinephiles, Isabelle (Eva Green, equally brilliant, doubly beautiful) and Theo (Lois Garrel, meh?) at their stately chateau while their bourgeois parents are on holiday. Matthew quickly discovers that the twins have zero sexual mores, even between each other, and he quickly finds himself sucked into their private world of sex games, classic cinema and revolutionary Maoism, all culminating in the break out of the revolution they've been waiting for.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
As shallow as it may sound to a cinematic laymen, the sex scenes really are a work of art. Every three way is more like a four way with Bertolucci's camera playing the role of the fourth, silent lover. It delivers a level of intimacy to the audience that makes mainstream pornography look like a sad and lonely joke. Matthew's passionate but ultimately doomed attempt to convince the twins that love is far more revolutionary than violence during the final scene is another highlight, still as poignant and tragically unheard today as it was in 1968. C'est la vie.
The Killer (1989) Directed by John Woo
John Woo's high octane masterpiece is nothing short of a triumph of Hong Kong cinema. The operatic tale of an assassin with a heart of gold who agrees to do one last hit in order to pay for the eye surgery of a nightclub singer he accidentally blinded in a previous job, only to be double crossed by his Triad boss and befriend a detective fascinated by the criminals valor. I know, on paper it sounds melodramatic and it is but it's also the greatest action film ever made. Trust me, skip the latest Vin Diesel abortion and watch this instead. If your disappointed then please kill yourself, your hopeless and I can't help you.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
No action sequence will ever beat the epic final shootout in the abandoned chapel: Beretta's flashing, bodies falling, doves flying, candles flickering, blood spurting. John Woo turns unspeakable carnage into a bullet ballet of near biblical proportions. What more can I say? It's fucking beautiful. Shakespeare would be humbled.
Gummo (1997) Directed by Harmony Korine
Gummo isn't a movie. Gummo is an experience. One that will mark you and forever change the way you look at cinema and the world around you. It's a strange, terrifying, beautiful thing to behold. In the dystopian wasteland of tornado ravaged Xenia, Ohio, an odd collection of aimless misfits eck out a strange existence on the wreckage of their former lives. At times it feels almost like a Jacques Cousteau film only with people playing the parts of the monsters only found at the bottom of the sea. These bizarre, seemingly random and largely improvised vignettes are rendered even more surreal by Harmony Korine's use of gritty, voyeuristic, cinema verite style of camera work and a soundtrack comprised almost entirely of left-field extreme metal bands like Burzum, Absu, Spazz and Sleep. It's one hell of a fucking trip. Do yourself a favor, buy the ticket, take the ride.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
During the final vignette, when Chloe Sevigny emerges from the dirty water in the vacant above ground swimming pool and kisses Bunny Boy surrounded by a pounding torrential downpour while Roy Orbison's Crying plays in the background has to be one of the great indelible images in the history of avante garde cinema and it's an image permanently fried into my frontal lobe like a cigar burn, at least I hope so. Maybe I should watch it again just to make sure....
Love Exposure (2008) Directed by Sion Sono
Clocking in at just over four hours, you would think that Sion Sono's epic black rom-com would be fucking exhausting but if you have an afternoon to kill, Love Exposure is your weapon of choice. The story starts with Yu, the earnest son of a widowed Catholic Priest who only seems to have time for him in the confessional booth. Yu's solution to this problem is to start committing sins to confess, the more perverse the better. This sends him down a strange and twisted path that leads him to petty vandalism, uspkirt photography, cross-dressing, finding true love and battling a deadly cult for her heart. It's insane. It's beautiful. it's Japan in a nutshell. A love story that could only exist on that wonderful, volcanic archipelago where everything seems to be both sacred and perverse all at the same time.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Yu's ultra-violent, Tarantino-esque siege of Zero Church headquarters as his drag queen ultra-ego, Miss Scorpion, plays like Kill Bill meets Rocky Horror. It's the queerest jihad since Stonewall and it's all for love. Absolutely perfect in every single way.
Together (2000) Directed by Lukas Moodysson
Lukas Moodyson's bitter-sweet period comedy about a bored house wife who leaves her alcoholic husband with her children and crashes at her idealistic brother's floundering hippie commune in 1975 Stockholm earned a very special place in my heart during a very dark time in my life. It would have been very easy just to make this movie a tasteless parody of '60's/'70's counterculture but even Together's most seemingly irredeemable hippie brats are treated with a degree of love and compassion that only a self-proclaimed fellow socialist like Moodyson could deliver. Only a true egalitarian could skewer his own fellow comrades with such tenderness. It's a movie about sensitive idealists coming to terms with the fact that though the revolution may be over their love for each other still makes them family. Call it the charming side of self-criticism.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
It's strictly personal but the awkward relationship that develops between Lena's shiftless, bookish daughter and the schlubby neighbor boy really got me deep. Probably because the two ugly ducklings bare more than a passing resemblance to me and my first middle school crush. Caitlin, wherever the fuck you are, someone weird still loves you.
The Edukators (2004) Directed by Hans Weingartner
A menage a trios develops between the three members of a non-violent leftist cadre after they're forced by circumstance to take a wealthy businessman hostage. Together, the four of them hide out in the picturesque Austrian Alps, where the rebels with a cause realize that their prisoner use to be one of them back in the seventies. What results is a beautiful meditation on love and revolution that will stay with you years after watching this brilliant indie gem. I was heartbroken to learn that Hollywood planned to remake The Edukators but overjoyed to learn it had crashed and burned in development hell. What can I say? Some people never change.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The final sequence, in which it's revealed that Hardenberg has gone back on his promise and presses charges against the trio after all, who it turns out predicted his hypocrisy and already escaped, unveils like a dream sequence beautifully set to the score of Jeff Buckley's flawless cover of Hallelujah. It's nothing short of cinematic perfection and it makes me cry every fucking time. The kind of magic those greedy hacks in Hollywood could never remake in a million years with a billion dollars.
Well there you have it, dearest motherfuckers, another pretentious list from your favorite asshole. I can just see you rolling your eyes right now but if I can get just one of you to watch just one of these criminally underrated masterpieces then I can breath easy and live with the chorus of sighs and snickers that seem to follow my snarky ass everywhere I go, watch two and they might just sound like music to my ears. Just remember, dearest motherfuckers, safe art is bad art and life's too goddamn short to waste on bad art.
Peace, Love and Eat My Fuck- CH
Soundtrack: Music from or inspired by theses flicks
* Alison By Slowdive
* The Hardest Button To Button By The White Stripes
* Boys Of Melody By The Hidden Cameras
* Wave Of Mutilation By The Pixies
* S.O.S. By Abba
* Hey Joe By Jimi Hendrix
* Nightswimming By REM
* Dunkelhelt By Burzum
* Somebody To Love By Queen
* Hallelujah By Jeff Buckley
Monday, July 3, 2017
Red Line Fever
I had every intention of taking this week off and reserving my creative juices for barbecue and blowing up mail boxes, you know, patriotic shit. But a couple of very peculiar and very disturbing things popped up in the news last week and the idea of not putting my thoughts out on paper in regards to these events feels like a heavier burden on my anxiety ridden skull than cranking out another post during my vacation so, fuck it, here we go.
The first story to stick in my brain like an errant popcorn kernel was Seymour Hersh's brilliant piece on the Kan Sheikhoun gas attacks in Syria and the bombing that our petulant president, Donald Trump, launched against the Syrian airbase in Shayrat in response. The only thing more shocking than the lies old Seymour debunked with this top notch piece of investigative journalism is the fact that he had to go to fucking Germany to get it published.
Long since banished from the land of fake news that has become this sad country, Hersh's piece was originally commissioned to be released by the London Review of Books who had published his equally incendiary piece on the equally facacta Ghouta chemical attacks of 2013 (we'll circle back to this later). But the Limey twits chickened out like those bitches across the pond, forcing America's greatest living journalist to go to the Germans (the goddamn Germans!?!) for freedom of the press. Thank god for Die Welt. If it wasn't for those wonderful Krauts, we, the few woke Americans, would have to once again go to Russia Today to find out that our life is a lie.
What Hersh revealed with this piece is basically what the Russians have been trying to tell us all along: Khan Sheikhoun wasn't a sarin gas attack, it was a standard bombing of a known jihadist meeting sight that contained dangerous chemicals in the basement, where said jihadists stashed their weapons and sundry loot. This isn't particularly shocking to anyone who actually took the time to read into the story. The shocking part was that the Russians had informed the US Military of this attack days before hand in order to give our spooks a chance to pull out any double agents we may have had working out of the target. Trump was repeatedly informed of this fact and pulled the fucking trigger on the illegal bombing of a Russian occupied airbase anyway.
Hersh and his sources theorize that the cloud of toxic fumes that happened as a result of the Kan Sheikhoun bombing were the product of chlorine and manure stored at the sight. Very possible, but the paranoid side of me can't seem to shake the sneaking suspicion that this site was intentionally loaded with toxic chemicals by one of the CIA's al-Nusra rats, who had been tipped off indirectly by those poor over trusting Russians themselves, in order to deliver the Donald the red line crossing tragedy that would goad him into embracing the Agency's beloved regime change schemes and wiping his ass with the last shred of hope left for detente with Russia. Sunrise. Sunset.
The second news story that ruined my holiday coincided, perhaps not uncoincidentally with the dropping of Hersh's story. Early last week a number of weird threats began to emanate from the White House. Sean Spicer, Washington's second finest drag king after Lindsey Graham, made cryptic claims that unidentified sources had identified plans for "another" Syrian chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime and that, if this happened, The Syrian president would pay a heavy price. Neither the Pentagon nor the State department backed up this narrative but that didn't stop Snarling Nikki Haley from stoking the flames of war before congress the next day: speaking of the necessity for sending not only Assad but his allies in Russia and Iran a message. After another day passed with no telltale chemical attack, Secretary of Defense and Tobin Bell stunt double, Mad Dog Mattis made the absurd assertion to reporters that the only reason the Syrians didn't launch the attack was because of the White House's mercurial threats. "That showed them!" What the fuck, right?
The whole weird affair seemed like a failed reenactment of Obama's 2013 red flag fiasco, when the then-president nearly went to war with Syria over another chemical attack that Seymour Hersh revealed to be a jihadist false flag in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. I have long posited the unpopular theory that Barack Obama had actually set the red line on chemical attacks as a kind of dare, knowing full well that his minions in al-Nusra were the only ones with both the means and the motive to cross it thus giving Obama the green light to finally destroy Assad with the international support necessary to please his pseudo-liberal base. The only reason this didn't work out was because Trump's former man-crush, Vladimir Putin stole Obama's thunder with a peace deal that made his NPR friendly dream war impossible.
Last week's red line drawing threats feel like a characteristically clumsy attempt by Trump's regime who couldn't shoot straight to goad another false flag attack. As Hersh proved in Die Welt, the administration has full knowledge that Assad isn't in the business of committing these kind of attacks and it's practically common knowledge that the floundering jihadists of al-Nusra have the goods. So what does this mean? In the wake of the Russian witch trials and his plummeting approval ratings, President Trump has a bad case of red line fever, and aside from an increasingly unlikely Russian miracle, there is only one known cure for this disease: all out war.
Go ahead, dearest motherfuckers, call me paranoid and I hope you're right, but I couldn't bomb my neighbors private property with a clean conscience if I didn't at least warn you of my suspicions.
Happy Fourth.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
* Fourth Of July By X
* Your Life Is A Lie By MGMT
* Townie By Mitski
* Flagpole Sitta By Harvey Danger
* Oblivion By Grimes
* Saints By The Breeders
* Human Behavior By Bjork
* Where Is My Mind By The Pixies
The first story to stick in my brain like an errant popcorn kernel was Seymour Hersh's brilliant piece on the Kan Sheikhoun gas attacks in Syria and the bombing that our petulant president, Donald Trump, launched against the Syrian airbase in Shayrat in response. The only thing more shocking than the lies old Seymour debunked with this top notch piece of investigative journalism is the fact that he had to go to fucking Germany to get it published.
Long since banished from the land of fake news that has become this sad country, Hersh's piece was originally commissioned to be released by the London Review of Books who had published his equally incendiary piece on the equally facacta Ghouta chemical attacks of 2013 (we'll circle back to this later). But the Limey twits chickened out like those bitches across the pond, forcing America's greatest living journalist to go to the Germans (the goddamn Germans!?!) for freedom of the press. Thank god for Die Welt. If it wasn't for those wonderful Krauts, we, the few woke Americans, would have to once again go to Russia Today to find out that our life is a lie.
What Hersh revealed with this piece is basically what the Russians have been trying to tell us all along: Khan Sheikhoun wasn't a sarin gas attack, it was a standard bombing of a known jihadist meeting sight that contained dangerous chemicals in the basement, where said jihadists stashed their weapons and sundry loot. This isn't particularly shocking to anyone who actually took the time to read into the story. The shocking part was that the Russians had informed the US Military of this attack days before hand in order to give our spooks a chance to pull out any double agents we may have had working out of the target. Trump was repeatedly informed of this fact and pulled the fucking trigger on the illegal bombing of a Russian occupied airbase anyway.
Hersh and his sources theorize that the cloud of toxic fumes that happened as a result of the Kan Sheikhoun bombing were the product of chlorine and manure stored at the sight. Very possible, but the paranoid side of me can't seem to shake the sneaking suspicion that this site was intentionally loaded with toxic chemicals by one of the CIA's al-Nusra rats, who had been tipped off indirectly by those poor over trusting Russians themselves, in order to deliver the Donald the red line crossing tragedy that would goad him into embracing the Agency's beloved regime change schemes and wiping his ass with the last shred of hope left for detente with Russia. Sunrise. Sunset.
The second news story that ruined my holiday coincided, perhaps not uncoincidentally with the dropping of Hersh's story. Early last week a number of weird threats began to emanate from the White House. Sean Spicer, Washington's second finest drag king after Lindsey Graham, made cryptic claims that unidentified sources had identified plans for "another" Syrian chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime and that, if this happened, The Syrian president would pay a heavy price. Neither the Pentagon nor the State department backed up this narrative but that didn't stop Snarling Nikki Haley from stoking the flames of war before congress the next day: speaking of the necessity for sending not only Assad but his allies in Russia and Iran a message. After another day passed with no telltale chemical attack, Secretary of Defense and Tobin Bell stunt double, Mad Dog Mattis made the absurd assertion to reporters that the only reason the Syrians didn't launch the attack was because of the White House's mercurial threats. "That showed them!" What the fuck, right?
The whole weird affair seemed like a failed reenactment of Obama's 2013 red flag fiasco, when the then-president nearly went to war with Syria over another chemical attack that Seymour Hersh revealed to be a jihadist false flag in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. I have long posited the unpopular theory that Barack Obama had actually set the red line on chemical attacks as a kind of dare, knowing full well that his minions in al-Nusra were the only ones with both the means and the motive to cross it thus giving Obama the green light to finally destroy Assad with the international support necessary to please his pseudo-liberal base. The only reason this didn't work out was because Trump's former man-crush, Vladimir Putin stole Obama's thunder with a peace deal that made his NPR friendly dream war impossible.
Last week's red line drawing threats feel like a characteristically clumsy attempt by Trump's regime who couldn't shoot straight to goad another false flag attack. As Hersh proved in Die Welt, the administration has full knowledge that Assad isn't in the business of committing these kind of attacks and it's practically common knowledge that the floundering jihadists of al-Nusra have the goods. So what does this mean? In the wake of the Russian witch trials and his plummeting approval ratings, President Trump has a bad case of red line fever, and aside from an increasingly unlikely Russian miracle, there is only one known cure for this disease: all out war.
Go ahead, dearest motherfuckers, call me paranoid and I hope you're right, but I couldn't bomb my neighbors private property with a clean conscience if I didn't at least warn you of my suspicions.
Happy Fourth.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
* Fourth Of July By X
* Your Life Is A Lie By MGMT
* Townie By Mitski
* Flagpole Sitta By Harvey Danger
* Oblivion By Grimes
* Saints By The Breeders
* Human Behavior By Bjork
* Where Is My Mind By The Pixies
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Getting Old Sucks
" ....Some things you do for money, some things you do for fun, but the things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one...."
-Love, Love, Love by The Mountain Goats.
I've gotta be real with you, dearest motherfuckers, I'm not really in a blogging kind of mood today. Not that there's nothing going on, quite the contrary. The Russian Witch Trials are still chugging along with the mainstream media working themselves up into a near masturbatory fuhrer, the likes of which this foul country hasn't experienced since the height of the Monica Lewinsky fiasco. The Saudis are currently engaged in some kind of bizarre "Mean Girls" style tiff with their former flunkies in Qatar for reasons no one seems to fully comprehend. And the United States Military is once again openly committing crimes against humanity by gassing Raqqa with white phosphorous.
No, there's plenty to write about but my heart just isn't up to covering the rest of the worlds problems today. I've got me a serious case of white-people-problems this week. Stage 4 white-people-problems. This week we slapped my grandmother in a home, to put it colorfully and I can't help but to feel like the whole damn world is inside out.
My grandmother was a complicated person. On one hand, she was a Marine Corps officer's wife, a Boho folkie, a tireless civil rights supporter and a Kennedy Democrat. On the other hand, she was also a Marine Corps officer's widow, a rabid Fox News junkie, a casual racist and a Reagan Democrat who practiced passive aggression like a martial art. Truth be told, she could be a real bitch, I suspect that's were I get it from. Our arguments are still the stuff of family lore and our relationship hit the skids on more than one occasion but she always took the high ground and buried the hatchet when I needed her most.
More than anything, though, my Nana (call her grandma at your own risk) was a brilliant artist. Just google Janet Sullivan Turner if you don't fucking believe me. She could do it all: Impressionism, Abstract, Pop Art, painting, sculpture, installation. She could do shit with trash and rusty car parts that would blow your fucking mind. She was a respected figure in the prestigious Philadelphia art scene for over forty years and for good goddamn reason, she did things her way.
I say 'was' because my Nana has dementia, which is why we had to move her out to a home in the sticks, where me and my folks live, from her house of more than four decades in the crumbling Philadelphia suburbs. She's still her but she isn't. Part of her is missing and that part grows a little bit bigger everyday. The home we moved her into is nice but it isn't hers and it never will be. She looks lost there. Defeated. Like a wild tiger in a cage at the zoo. She may be safe but there will always be a faint glimmer of the wilderness in her eyes. A tiny flickering light that screams freedom. It doesn't feel right but it's the best thing we can do for her. It's the only way we can be sure that she's safe. But that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking.
Getting old sucks. There's no way around that brutal truth. I've already been through this once before with my other grandmother which makes the statistical odds of me facing the same fate higher than I prefer to contemplate. It feels tragic that we're all more or less damned to leave this world as helpless as we come into it. But if we're truly lucky, the love that we give to the people who mean the most to us will be payed back in full when we need it most and we'll find it somewhere deep within, from a place even dementia can't reach, to be big enough to let go of our pride and except this gift.
Me, personally, though. I'd rather got out like John Dillinger or Che Guevara, in a blaze of glory. Shot down in the streets by the state I've devoted myself completely to annihilating with a laptop, my weapon of choice, in my hands. And the last words I type will be....
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
....Somewhere on the other side, my Nana will ask why I had to go out that way. My response: I learned it from you bitch. I learned it from you....
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
The Times They Are A-Changin' By Bob Dylan
The Suburbs By Arcade Fire
Landslide By The Smashing Pumpkins
Both Sides, Now By Joni Mitchell
Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying By Belle & Sebastian
Hurt By Johnny Cash
Love, Love, Love By The Mountain Goats
My Way By Sid Vicious
Note to dearest motherfuckers- With my birthday next week and the Fourth on the next, I'm going to take a brief sabbatical to play video games, eat Thai food and blow shit up. All things considered, I feel like I kind of earned it. But I will be back in July with an anti-Hollywood Summer movie list so stay tuned and blow something up for 'Merica, goddammit!
-Love, Love, Love by The Mountain Goats.
I've gotta be real with you, dearest motherfuckers, I'm not really in a blogging kind of mood today. Not that there's nothing going on, quite the contrary. The Russian Witch Trials are still chugging along with the mainstream media working themselves up into a near masturbatory fuhrer, the likes of which this foul country hasn't experienced since the height of the Monica Lewinsky fiasco. The Saudis are currently engaged in some kind of bizarre "Mean Girls" style tiff with their former flunkies in Qatar for reasons no one seems to fully comprehend. And the United States Military is once again openly committing crimes against humanity by gassing Raqqa with white phosphorous.
No, there's plenty to write about but my heart just isn't up to covering the rest of the worlds problems today. I've got me a serious case of white-people-problems this week. Stage 4 white-people-problems. This week we slapped my grandmother in a home, to put it colorfully and I can't help but to feel like the whole damn world is inside out.
My grandmother was a complicated person. On one hand, she was a Marine Corps officer's wife, a Boho folkie, a tireless civil rights supporter and a Kennedy Democrat. On the other hand, she was also a Marine Corps officer's widow, a rabid Fox News junkie, a casual racist and a Reagan Democrat who practiced passive aggression like a martial art. Truth be told, she could be a real bitch, I suspect that's were I get it from. Our arguments are still the stuff of family lore and our relationship hit the skids on more than one occasion but she always took the high ground and buried the hatchet when I needed her most.
More than anything, though, my Nana (call her grandma at your own risk) was a brilliant artist. Just google Janet Sullivan Turner if you don't fucking believe me. She could do it all: Impressionism, Abstract, Pop Art, painting, sculpture, installation. She could do shit with trash and rusty car parts that would blow your fucking mind. She was a respected figure in the prestigious Philadelphia art scene for over forty years and for good goddamn reason, she did things her way.
I say 'was' because my Nana has dementia, which is why we had to move her out to a home in the sticks, where me and my folks live, from her house of more than four decades in the crumbling Philadelphia suburbs. She's still her but she isn't. Part of her is missing and that part grows a little bit bigger everyday. The home we moved her into is nice but it isn't hers and it never will be. She looks lost there. Defeated. Like a wild tiger in a cage at the zoo. She may be safe but there will always be a faint glimmer of the wilderness in her eyes. A tiny flickering light that screams freedom. It doesn't feel right but it's the best thing we can do for her. It's the only way we can be sure that she's safe. But that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking.
Getting old sucks. There's no way around that brutal truth. I've already been through this once before with my other grandmother which makes the statistical odds of me facing the same fate higher than I prefer to contemplate. It feels tragic that we're all more or less damned to leave this world as helpless as we come into it. But if we're truly lucky, the love that we give to the people who mean the most to us will be payed back in full when we need it most and we'll find it somewhere deep within, from a place even dementia can't reach, to be big enough to let go of our pride and except this gift.
Me, personally, though. I'd rather got out like John Dillinger or Che Guevara, in a blaze of glory. Shot down in the streets by the state I've devoted myself completely to annihilating with a laptop, my weapon of choice, in my hands. And the last words I type will be....
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
....Somewhere on the other side, my Nana will ask why I had to go out that way. My response: I learned it from you bitch. I learned it from you....
Soundtrack: Songs that influenced this post.
The Times They Are A-Changin' By Bob Dylan
The Suburbs By Arcade Fire
Landslide By The Smashing Pumpkins
Both Sides, Now By Joni Mitchell
Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying By Belle & Sebastian
Hurt By Johnny Cash
Love, Love, Love By The Mountain Goats
My Way By Sid Vicious
Note to dearest motherfuckers- With my birthday next week and the Fourth on the next, I'm going to take a brief sabbatical to play video games, eat Thai food and blow shit up. All things considered, I feel like I kind of earned it. But I will be back in July with an anti-Hollywood Summer movie list so stay tuned and blow something up for 'Merica, goddammit!
Friday, June 9, 2017
More Summer Reading for Freaks and Radicals
For me, if its summer, that means three things: The Jersey Shore, yard-sailing and phoning it in on my blog with easy breezy posts like my second annual summer reading list. Your average summer reading list is typically equal parts bourgeois banality and elitist snobbery which is a fancy way of saying they're fucking shit. Nobody reads the books on them or at least nobody wants too. They just feel an obligation to so they can brag about being an intellectual without the inconvenience of actually trying to fucking learn something you're not told to learn by an authority figure, be it your fifth grade teacher or Time magazine.
So this years list is all short, sweet and weird. That doesn't mean everything here is for everyone. But if you consider yourself to be a freak and/or radical such as myself then I'm pretty sure I got you covered. None of this shit is new. I don't really give a fuck about new. But it's all still relevant and its all still fun if your fucked up enough to enjoy it.
Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell
The amazing thing about George Orwell's 1949 sci-fi classic about doomed lovers in a dystopian police state isn't that it's still relevant after all these years. The amazing thing is that it seems to become increasingly relevant with each passing year (Samsung recently came out with the first Telescreen). It's also the first novel I ever loved and it just gets creepier every time I read it.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The only thing more revolting than the horrors of Room 101 is how happily its victims assimilate to their imprisonment once they've been rat-caged. Even our dear hero Winston Smith comes to love Big Brother in the heady afterglow of wartime. Sound familiar? If not, your on the wrong blog.
What Uncle Sam Really Wants By Noam Chomsky
This little book was the first thing that really ripped the wool from my eyes in regards to America's roll in the universe. In only a few dozen pages the venerable MIT Professor systematically decimates the premise of America as the benevolent superpower. Using an exhaustingly sourced patchwork of documents, NGO reports and eye-witness accounts, Noam Chomsky proves without a shadow of a doubt that American foreign policy is dictated by an overwhelming preference for death squads, dictators, torture and genocide. If your not a card carrying, bomb throwing, enemy of the state by the last page then congratulations! You're a psychopath! You should fit right into this fucked up country.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
More of a lowlight than a highlight, but the harrowing first hand story of an American nun, raped and tortured by a death squad in El Salvador, only to be released after the squads unseen, American English speaking Commander realized she wasn't a local still fucking haunts me. Absolutely soul Shattering....Having fun yet! Were just getting started.
Fight Club By Chuck Palahniuk
" I am Comrade Hermit's yammering larynx." Chuck Palahniuk's twisted tale of an insomniac who starts an underground boxing club with his enigmatic split personality that evolves into an anarcho-primitivist terrorist organization is often snubbed by uptight literati as little more than a Gen-X Catcher in the Rye. As usual, the snobs in the straight world couldn't be farther from the truth. It's actually a brutal, homoerotic, satire on what passes for masculinity in Post-Modern America and it's also one of the funniest books you'll ever read if you don't make the common mistake of taking it too seriously.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Everything that comes out of Marla Singer's vile mouth is priceless, "You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night then you throw it away. The condom, I mean. Not the stranger." But my favorite bit is the back and forth between the nameless narrator and god in the mental institution " across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him" ending with the classic one-liner "Yeah. Well, whatever. You can't teach god anything." Ain't it the truth.
Against Empire By Michael Parenti
An excellent companion piece to What Uncle Sam Really Wants. America's finest Marxist historian, Michael Parenti, makes a quick and compelling argument against the empty promises of hyper-interventionism and corporate globalization.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Parenti's analysis of George H.W. Bush's '92 campaign visit to a supermarket, where the incumbent presidential candidate is shocked by the "new" technology of the check-out price scanner, as being emblematic of America's vast class divide is as prescient today as it was then. When a man who clearly hasn't even had to shop for his own groceries in decades can still tax a pauper you know we're ripe for revolution and that was Nineteen fucking Ninety-Two. Our current president could fucking buy Bush Sr. like a goddamn bicycle on Craig's List.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas By Hunter S. Thompson
If it's a novel then it's my favorite novel. If it's a work of non-fiction then it's my favorite work of non-fiction. Either way, whatever the hell it is, the late, great, Doctor Thompson's savage, drug fueled journey into the dark heart of the American Dream aka Las Vegas is the number one reason why I write anything....You know, aside from the war and oppression and shit.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Thompson's rightfully sainted Wave Speech halfway through the book is not only the finest thing he ever wrote but is quite possibly the finest thing ever written. A poetic requiem for the promise and tragedy of the counter-cultural revolution that was the Middle Sixties in California. It's enough to bring a tear to even the most jaded anarcho-punk's eye.
Hard Boiled By Frank Miller
Frank Miller's bug-fuck nuts, ultra-violent, dystopian, shooting fest is basically one long, excruciatingly detailed, gun fight and one of my all-time favorite graphic novels. It's basically like Where's Waldo with blood, guts, skyscrapers, flying cars and homicidal cyborgs. I can't honestly tell you much about the story-line other than it involves an insurance investigator named Nixon who discovers that, unbeknownst to him, he's also a robotic hitman for a major corporation, but it's one wild fucking ride regardless.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The whole goddamn thing! Like I said, it's basically just one long bloodbath and it's fucking perfect. The kind of illustrated madness that could only come from the early Nineties.
The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
I know, I know, not exactly a crowd pleaser, especially with some of my more libertarian minded dearest motherfuckers, but just try reading the first section aloud on the Fourth of July, surrounded by bombs and stale jingoism, and tell me it doesn't give you chills. No? Well maybe it's just me but on the right night, in the right light, it sounds like a godless prayer for the damned classes of a late capitalist society. You can almost hear the Internationale playing from the smokey abyss like the Karaoke music of a distant haunted cruise ship. Still nothing? well, fuck you guys then.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The first section, the finest and most bombastically poetic analysis of class struggle ever committed to pulp, is really the only section worth reading. The other two are sadly little more than sniping bitch-fests lobbed against Marx's former allies in the libertarian left. Just think Mean Girls with a bunch of bearded, old, European socialists and you basically get the picture.
Less Than Zero By Bret Easton Ellis
"Everyone's afraid to merge in L.A." Bret Easton Ellis is probably my favorite novelist and the fact that he wrote this book, his best selling debut, at twenty-one never ceases to blow my mind like a job. Nothing captures the soulless hedonism of the Beverley Hills elite like Less Than Zero, Where every character comes across like a board sociopath out of ants to burn. It's like Keeping Up with the Kardashians directed by Werner Herzog. You'll never merge again.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Clay's flashbacks to his summers spent in the lonesome desert surrounding his grandparents Palm Beach mansion read like ghost stories of a haunted childhood. I don't think anybody has come closer to capturing the grief of burgeoning adulthood better on the written page. The humanity revealed beneath his nihilistic facade only in the past tense make the increasingly heinous events in his current life all the more harrowing.
Addicted to War By Joel Andreas
American Imperialism has never been this much fun! Joel Andreas' classic adult picture book on America's long and bloodthirsty history of hegemonic conquest, from Manifest Destiny to the War on Terror, comes across like Schoolhouse Rock for anarchists. It's the funnest way to learn that you live in a monster.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The first edition of Addicted to War came out in 1991 in response to the first Persian Gulf War and it's stinging coverage of that often glossed over desert bloodbath is second to none and more relevant now than ever considering that that bloodbath continues to this day, 26 years later.
Howl and Other Poems By Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg's obscenely beautiful tribute to all the freaks, fags, junkies, commies, hustlers and basket cases who crashed and burned during the grey flannel drudgery of the Forties and Fifties in order to make the liberation of the Sixties possible. Forgotten martyrs in an invisible war. Ginsberg lays their bodies blemished and bare and anoints them with the sacrament of the finest poetry of this or any other century. Bow to the master, dearest motherfuckers, for if you consider yourself to be among the freaks and radicals that make this world worth fighting for, then Mr. Ginsberg is your shaman, the only priest you'll ever need, and Howl is your Apostles Creed.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
As exquisite as Howl is, my personal favorite work of poetry is actually America, which can be found in the Other Poems section. A Hilarious one sided conversation between an irate malcontent and a mute and remorseless nation state, America is one of the single biggest influences on this equally irate blog and the genderfuck malcontent who writes it.
Well that's it, dearest motherfuckers. That's my list of fantastically deranged and totally inappropriate books. The kind your teachers fought to ban and your finest fake news outlets do their damnedest to ignore. If ten books in one summer is to few for you then your clearly either smarter than me or you have more free time. Either way, I hate you and you can go fuck yourself....Or just check out last years more exhausting and obscure list. I would talk more but I still have a chapter of a book on the Weather Underground that I've been trying to finish for three weeks now.
Happy reading and Merry Summer.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Albums to listen to while reading these books.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Greatest Fits By Ministry
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Bedtime For Democracy By Dead Kennedys
Fight Club
Doolittle By The Pixies
Against Empire
Raw Power By The Stooges
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Clouds Taste Metallic By The Flaming Lips
Hard Boiled
(Album) Generic Flipper By Flipper
The Communist Manifesto
Pink Flag By Wire
Less Than Zero
Pretty Hate Machine By Nine Inch Nails
Addicted to War
Combat Rock By The Clash
Howl and Other Poems
The Velvet Underground By The Velvet Underground
So this years list is all short, sweet and weird. That doesn't mean everything here is for everyone. But if you consider yourself to be a freak and/or radical such as myself then I'm pretty sure I got you covered. None of this shit is new. I don't really give a fuck about new. But it's all still relevant and its all still fun if your fucked up enough to enjoy it.
Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell
The amazing thing about George Orwell's 1949 sci-fi classic about doomed lovers in a dystopian police state isn't that it's still relevant after all these years. The amazing thing is that it seems to become increasingly relevant with each passing year (Samsung recently came out with the first Telescreen). It's also the first novel I ever loved and it just gets creepier every time I read it.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The only thing more revolting than the horrors of Room 101 is how happily its victims assimilate to their imprisonment once they've been rat-caged. Even our dear hero Winston Smith comes to love Big Brother in the heady afterglow of wartime. Sound familiar? If not, your on the wrong blog.
What Uncle Sam Really Wants By Noam Chomsky
This little book was the first thing that really ripped the wool from my eyes in regards to America's roll in the universe. In only a few dozen pages the venerable MIT Professor systematically decimates the premise of America as the benevolent superpower. Using an exhaustingly sourced patchwork of documents, NGO reports and eye-witness accounts, Noam Chomsky proves without a shadow of a doubt that American foreign policy is dictated by an overwhelming preference for death squads, dictators, torture and genocide. If your not a card carrying, bomb throwing, enemy of the state by the last page then congratulations! You're a psychopath! You should fit right into this fucked up country.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
More of a lowlight than a highlight, but the harrowing first hand story of an American nun, raped and tortured by a death squad in El Salvador, only to be released after the squads unseen, American English speaking Commander realized she wasn't a local still fucking haunts me. Absolutely soul Shattering....Having fun yet! Were just getting started.
Fight Club By Chuck Palahniuk
" I am Comrade Hermit's yammering larynx." Chuck Palahniuk's twisted tale of an insomniac who starts an underground boxing club with his enigmatic split personality that evolves into an anarcho-primitivist terrorist organization is often snubbed by uptight literati as little more than a Gen-X Catcher in the Rye. As usual, the snobs in the straight world couldn't be farther from the truth. It's actually a brutal, homoerotic, satire on what passes for masculinity in Post-Modern America and it's also one of the funniest books you'll ever read if you don't make the common mistake of taking it too seriously.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Everything that comes out of Marla Singer's vile mouth is priceless, "You know, the condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip it on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night then you throw it away. The condom, I mean. Not the stranger." But my favorite bit is the back and forth between the nameless narrator and god in the mental institution " across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him" ending with the classic one-liner "Yeah. Well, whatever. You can't teach god anything." Ain't it the truth.
Against Empire By Michael Parenti
An excellent companion piece to What Uncle Sam Really Wants. America's finest Marxist historian, Michael Parenti, makes a quick and compelling argument against the empty promises of hyper-interventionism and corporate globalization.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Parenti's analysis of George H.W. Bush's '92 campaign visit to a supermarket, where the incumbent presidential candidate is shocked by the "new" technology of the check-out price scanner, as being emblematic of America's vast class divide is as prescient today as it was then. When a man who clearly hasn't even had to shop for his own groceries in decades can still tax a pauper you know we're ripe for revolution and that was Nineteen fucking Ninety-Two. Our current president could fucking buy Bush Sr. like a goddamn bicycle on Craig's List.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas By Hunter S. Thompson
If it's a novel then it's my favorite novel. If it's a work of non-fiction then it's my favorite work of non-fiction. Either way, whatever the hell it is, the late, great, Doctor Thompson's savage, drug fueled journey into the dark heart of the American Dream aka Las Vegas is the number one reason why I write anything....You know, aside from the war and oppression and shit.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Thompson's rightfully sainted Wave Speech halfway through the book is not only the finest thing he ever wrote but is quite possibly the finest thing ever written. A poetic requiem for the promise and tragedy of the counter-cultural revolution that was the Middle Sixties in California. It's enough to bring a tear to even the most jaded anarcho-punk's eye.
Hard Boiled By Frank Miller
Frank Miller's bug-fuck nuts, ultra-violent, dystopian, shooting fest is basically one long, excruciatingly detailed, gun fight and one of my all-time favorite graphic novels. It's basically like Where's Waldo with blood, guts, skyscrapers, flying cars and homicidal cyborgs. I can't honestly tell you much about the story-line other than it involves an insurance investigator named Nixon who discovers that, unbeknownst to him, he's also a robotic hitman for a major corporation, but it's one wild fucking ride regardless.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The whole goddamn thing! Like I said, it's basically just one long bloodbath and it's fucking perfect. The kind of illustrated madness that could only come from the early Nineties.
The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
I know, I know, not exactly a crowd pleaser, especially with some of my more libertarian minded dearest motherfuckers, but just try reading the first section aloud on the Fourth of July, surrounded by bombs and stale jingoism, and tell me it doesn't give you chills. No? Well maybe it's just me but on the right night, in the right light, it sounds like a godless prayer for the damned classes of a late capitalist society. You can almost hear the Internationale playing from the smokey abyss like the Karaoke music of a distant haunted cruise ship. Still nothing? well, fuck you guys then.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The first section, the finest and most bombastically poetic analysis of class struggle ever committed to pulp, is really the only section worth reading. The other two are sadly little more than sniping bitch-fests lobbed against Marx's former allies in the libertarian left. Just think Mean Girls with a bunch of bearded, old, European socialists and you basically get the picture.
Less Than Zero By Bret Easton Ellis
"Everyone's afraid to merge in L.A." Bret Easton Ellis is probably my favorite novelist and the fact that he wrote this book, his best selling debut, at twenty-one never ceases to blow my mind like a job. Nothing captures the soulless hedonism of the Beverley Hills elite like Less Than Zero, Where every character comes across like a board sociopath out of ants to burn. It's like Keeping Up with the Kardashians directed by Werner Herzog. You'll never merge again.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
Clay's flashbacks to his summers spent in the lonesome desert surrounding his grandparents Palm Beach mansion read like ghost stories of a haunted childhood. I don't think anybody has come closer to capturing the grief of burgeoning adulthood better on the written page. The humanity revealed beneath his nihilistic facade only in the past tense make the increasingly heinous events in his current life all the more harrowing.
Addicted to War By Joel Andreas
American Imperialism has never been this much fun! Joel Andreas' classic adult picture book on America's long and bloodthirsty history of hegemonic conquest, from Manifest Destiny to the War on Terror, comes across like Schoolhouse Rock for anarchists. It's the funnest way to learn that you live in a monster.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
The first edition of Addicted to War came out in 1991 in response to the first Persian Gulf War and it's stinging coverage of that often glossed over desert bloodbath is second to none and more relevant now than ever considering that that bloodbath continues to this day, 26 years later.
Howl and Other Poems By Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg's obscenely beautiful tribute to all the freaks, fags, junkies, commies, hustlers and basket cases who crashed and burned during the grey flannel drudgery of the Forties and Fifties in order to make the liberation of the Sixties possible. Forgotten martyrs in an invisible war. Ginsberg lays their bodies blemished and bare and anoints them with the sacrament of the finest poetry of this or any other century. Bow to the master, dearest motherfuckers, for if you consider yourself to be among the freaks and radicals that make this world worth fighting for, then Mr. Ginsberg is your shaman, the only priest you'll ever need, and Howl is your Apostles Creed.
Highlight (spoiler alert)
As exquisite as Howl is, my personal favorite work of poetry is actually America, which can be found in the Other Poems section. A Hilarious one sided conversation between an irate malcontent and a mute and remorseless nation state, America is one of the single biggest influences on this equally irate blog and the genderfuck malcontent who writes it.
Well that's it, dearest motherfuckers. That's my list of fantastically deranged and totally inappropriate books. The kind your teachers fought to ban and your finest fake news outlets do their damnedest to ignore. If ten books in one summer is to few for you then your clearly either smarter than me or you have more free time. Either way, I hate you and you can go fuck yourself....Or just check out last years more exhausting and obscure list. I would talk more but I still have a chapter of a book on the Weather Underground that I've been trying to finish for three weeks now.
Happy reading and Merry Summer.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Soundtrack: Albums to listen to while reading these books.
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Greatest Fits By Ministry
What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Bedtime For Democracy By Dead Kennedys
Fight Club
Doolittle By The Pixies
Against Empire
Raw Power By The Stooges
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Clouds Taste Metallic By The Flaming Lips
Hard Boiled
(Album) Generic Flipper By Flipper
The Communist Manifesto
Pink Flag By Wire
Less Than Zero
Pretty Hate Machine By Nine Inch Nails
Addicted to War
Combat Rock By The Clash
Howl and Other Poems
The Velvet Underground By The Velvet Underground
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