Saturday, September 25, 2010

Bambu x Muggs x immigration

"Why not be aggressive? They aggressive on us. They pass bills, try and kill me, so I don't give a fuck about that life you live. Every breath you give is spent trying to lock me up. Man, I should kill that pig."



"... that pig didn't stand a chance"

I can't wait for this mixtape to come out!!

Friday, September 24, 2010

First as tragedy, then as farce

"The real aim is to try & reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible!"

Monday, September 20, 2010

The Living Room

THE LIVING ROOM IN SANTA BARBARA

We would like to keep you updated with what's going on with The Living Room. My intent is still to reopen the club as soon as possible and I don't plan on giving up. We still face the same obstacles (lack of funding, finding a location, acquiring nonprofit status, etc.) but fortunately, there are people working on solving all of those problems. Knowing that we have your support makes a huge difference!

YOUTH ADVISORY COMMITTEE
We are working to build a Youth Advisory Committee. This may be one of the most important components of our organization. We want young people to have the opportunity to influence what happens with the club and participate in operating the facility. If you know anybody (a sibling, a neighbor, a friend, etc.) who is between the ages of 13 and 18 please encourage that person to contact us and get involved with the club. This is for the kids, and we want it to be by the kids too!

WE HAVE A STAGE!

Unfortunately, our friends over at Mainstage, hosted by Jensen Guitar & Music Co. in Santa Barbara, are closing their doors this month. Their music store in the Ralphs shopping center will stay open for business but they will no longer be hosting shows and other events for the youth.
Fortunately, I have been able to strike a deal with Jensen Guitar and, in the long run, we will be acquiring the stage. The stage will be used temporarily at Ventura Charter School and when we reopen The Living Room VCS has agreed to pass it along to us.

Thank you for your continued support. If you think of any other ways that you can help out please get in touch. If you think there's something that we should do that isn't being done already, we are open to suggestions.

For the kids,
Allan Viscarra

If you would like to join the email list please contact thelivingroomftk@gmail.com

The Freebie: Hollywood can't stand open relationships



I saw the trailer for The Freebie and it intrigued me. Here it appears we have a romantic comedy dealing with a couple venturing into an open relationship. The trailer even gave realistic looks into what brought the situation about and the couples' apprehensions. I was excited but also worried. I was worried that Hollywood would fall into the usual tropes of dealing with polyamorous love; that is it unrealistic and unacceptable. I still planned on seeing the film... Then I read this:

(SPOILERS AHEAD)


they have a huge fight in which they agree to violate their previous agreement and tell each other what happened. She says she did have sex with someone, he says he didn't and calls her a "slut" (which makes no sense to me). He takes off, she follows him and says she didn't really have sex, she would never do that (even though they agreed it was OK and he's the one in the wrong at this point). They seemingly reconcile. Then, we see a moment that may be a flashback moment in which they agreed to the freebie concept or which could be interpreted as a sort of alternate reality where they talked about the freebie but never went through with it, thus saving their relationship.

Bummer. The feelings that this couple experience that lead them to consider opening their relationship are average healthy feelings that I would wager all longterm monogamous couples deal with. Why can't the option of polyamory be explored in a healthy fun mainstream movie? I'm not suggesting that couples don't try it (which this fictitious couple did not do) and run into difficulties or even decide it isn't for them. Relationships whether monogamous or polyamorous are never simple and easy. I think we could find more than enough hilarious and heartwarming instances in a couple opening their relationship.

Link Roundup

Art is apparently The Weapon

It might come as a surprise, but I am not afraid to admit I am a HUGE fan of My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. There were reportedly recording a follow up heavily influenced by The Stooges. Well, I feared a boring stripped down album lacking The Black Parade's epic scale/tone (and I am a Stooges fan!). Recently Rolling Stone reported that MCR ditched the "Stooges" effort and got synth. Hmm... I do like synth but...
Then I saw this:


WTF?! They look like 90's wanna-be alts from a cyber movie starring Angelina Jolie! Yikes!
The music isn't too great but it is also too short to tell much. The one pretty fuckin awesome thing about this video is GRANT fuckin MORRISON!




the pigs won't quit

the future is bulletproof

Thursday, September 16, 2010

brb

Monday, September 06, 2010

Fighting in the New Terrain

CrimethInc. have put out Fighting in the New Terrain which is a sort of self-crit as well as being one of the best things put out under the CrimethInc. banner in a very long time.




Once, one could speak of a social and cultural mainstream, and subculture itself seemed subversive. Now “diversity” is at a premium for our rulers, and subculture is an essential motor of consumer society: the more identities, the more markets.

Now every aspect of existence is becoming “work,” in the sense of activity that produces value in the capitalist economy: glancing at one’s email account, one increases the capital of those who sell advertisements. In place of distinct specialized roles in the capitalist economy, we increasingly see flexible, collective production of capital, much of which goes unpaid.

In the era of capitalist globalization, the interests of state power transcend national boundaries, and the dominant mode of conflict is not war but policing. This is occasionally employed against rogue nations, but continuously implemented against people.

instability, decentralization, and anonymity have come to characterize our society without bringing the world of our dreams any closer.

resistance is the motor of history: it drives social, political, and technological developments, forcing the prevailing order to innovate constantly in order to outflank or absorb opposition. Thus we can contribute to tremendous transformations without ever achieving our object.

The state increasingly relies on the same do-it-yourself ethic that once animated the punk underground to offset the deleterious effects of capitalism.

The cultural landscape is different today; subculture itself seems to function differently. Thanks to new communications technology, it develops and spreads much faster, and is replaced just as quickly. Punk rock, for example, is no longer a secret society into which high school students are initiated by classmates’ mix tapes. It is still generated by the participants, but now as a consumer market mediated via impersonal venues such as message boards and downloading. It’s no surprise if people are less personally invested in it: as easily as they discovered it, they can move on to something else. In a world composed of information, subculture no longer appears to be outside society, indicating a possible line of escape, but rather one of many zones within it, a mere matter of taste.

our wishes have been granted in form rather than content. Free distribution, once thought to demonstrate a radical alternative to capitalist models, is now taken for granted in a society in which the means of material production are still held hostage by capitalists.

The 21st century may show us how supposedly non-hierarchical means can produce hierarchical ends.

In the panopticon, power is already based in the periphery rather than the center, in that control is chiefly maintained by the inmates themselves.[6] Workers compete to be capitalists rather than establishing common cause as a class; fascists enforce oppressive relationships autonomously, without state oversight. Domination is not imposed from above but is a function of participation itself.

Now, it’s increasingly obvious that global capitalism has no center, no heart through which to drive a stake.

In fact, this development is a boon to anarchists, in that it closes the way to top-down forms of struggle. There are no shortcuts now, and no justifications for taking them—there will be no more “provisional” dictatorships. The authoritarian revolutions of the 20th century are behind us for good; if revolt is to break out, anarchist practices will have to spread.
They must somehow refuse and interrupt the forms of participation essential to the maintenance of order, both the ones predicated on integration and the ones predicated on marginality. They have to provide for people’s immediate needs while giving rise to insurgent desires leading elsewhere.

If we permit proponents of hierarchy to monopolize opposition to the prevailing order, anarchists will simply disappear from the stage of history.

Every riot has to be followed by an even broader outreach campaign, not a retreat into the shadows—a tall order in the face of backlash and repression.

our struggle is a pursuit of joy—to be more precise, it is a way of generating new forms of joy. If we lose sight of this, no one else will join us, nor should they. Enjoying ourselves is not simply something we must do to be strategic, to win recruits; it is an infallible indication of whether or not we have anything to offer.

Link Roundup

Happy Labor Day

May 1st was claimed by the workers of the world.
America's Labor Day was offered by the state as a token act of reconciliation.

No thank you.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

Wolverine Is Stupid

Marvel is apparently planning to launch a whole family of Wolverine books (because he isn't in enough titles already and they haven't done this before). To get everyone ready for these books, Marvel put out a free "All-New Wolverine Saga" book that is basically a primer for Wolvie, X-23, and Daken. Reading this free one-shot, I realized how fucking lame Marvel made Wolverine.



Did you know that the first proposed Wolverine origin was going to make him a mutant wolverine? Silly, huh? Luckily, the then-powers-that-be at Marvel rejected the idea. So then we had a Wolverine with no known past for quite a while. It was a major part of what made him so popular. He was an fierce peculiar mystery. As much as Marvel would like, you can't really manufacture that type of enigma... Just look at Gambit.

In 2000, when Marvel decided to flesh out Wolvie's origin with 'Wolverine: Origin', I boycotted it. I didn't even want to know the story. I felt like there was no way they could do the mystery justice. Almost 10 years later, I read the book and actually enjoyed it. Of course, I am not prepared to read the seemingly endless titles Marvel puts out making Wolverine into some Forrest Gump character that seems to have met everyone in the Marvel universe all prior to him joining The X-Men somehow.

So, catching up on all the details of Wolverine's past via this free book made me want to vomit. It must have been the drive to milk the character's origins until the well runs dry (and then keep milking) or perhaps they went to 5yr olds for ideas. It is so convoluted and bizarre! He makes a sword that can kill anything (!?), has a stupid xtreme son and psuedo daughter (both who pop out claws in places other than their knuckles), and is part of some masterplan designed by the king of wolf-people. WTF?!

Unless Marvel retconned the whole thing, I can't think of a storyline that would redeem Wolverine's character. Give up, Marvel.