False starts aside, I hope to start up  cabbage again. This time out the blog will be a bit more focused in a couple of ways. Topics will include radical action, radical aesthetics, and the current conjuncture. I’m quitting my union job on July 31st to work on my dissertation, and to work for the same union on a volunteer basis. The union is at work negotiating its second contract. In the fall, when the bargaining team gets to meat and potatoes issues like wages and healthcare, things are going to heat up. This blog will be my place to muse about tactics and to compare notes if you’re inclined.

Work on the dissertation continues. I’ll defend it next spring. So, there will be a fair number of posts that worry questions about American Literary Naturalism. I’m trying to convince myself that work on the Jack London chapter is finished. Straw poll: next chapter should be on Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, H.G. Wells, or Herman Melville?

And finally, I’ll also be writing about the state of the struggle outside of my backyard. I hope you’ll join me.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner visually articulates class struggle in fascist spaces. The plot is concerned with Colin Smith, a working class everyman from Nottingham,

whose mistake is failing to run fast enough. As he puts it,

Running’s always been a big thing in our family, especially running away from the police.

Not running fast enough gets you in these spaces:

where you might encounter these types:

That last is the governor, who notes Smith’s athletic ability and desires that Smith win the long-distance cup when the school for delinquents meets up with a public school for a field day.

This occasions Smith’s freedom to run about the grounds, and a lot of picturesque shots:

Smith clearly wins the race, but stops short of the finish line, letting the public school boy beat him. At this moment the viewer gets a beautiful but fleeting glance at a working class victory:

By withholding his labor at a crucial moment, Smith beats the governor. But the machinations of the fascist state, its plans for boys of Smith’s class, continue unimpeded.

What then is the loneliness of the long distance runner? The answer is compulsion, running to escape slaving my guts out so the bosses get all of the profit and finding no place to rest.

How can I, you ask? Why it’s as easy as visiting Vivarium Review of Books and considering a contribution.

What’s it about?

Vivarium is a new, semi-annual magazine from the Foundation for Innovative Writing, dedicated to reviewing and promoting new books of innovative, experimental, subversive, radical, visionary, or otherwise undervalued writing.

We are interested especially in showcasing new books of poetry, although we are also interested in unusual prose works, as well as cross-genre or hybrid works

Good people are at work on this. You can help:

* Pre-order the first issue

*Make a donation ($24.99 or more) and get your name in the first issue, a 1″ Vivarium pin, and a pre-ordered copy of that first issue.

*Join the Street Team

The world will be better for your support. You will feel better. And cool will blossom upon your lapel. (see that 1″ button)

Cross post from Atmospheric Black Metal Kitchen:

But for you, the truly elite metalheads, I am here to bestow the darkest secrets of Laundromancy upon thee. I have consulted tomes of ancient wisdom (i.e., I asked my mom) in preparing this guide. May it serve you well… in darkness:

1) WOOLITE IST KRIEG. Your precious metal shirts are meant to be handwashed, so as to preserve the ink prints and the integrity of the fabric. Woolite is expensive, but it is an investment in your metal cred. In recent years, WOOLITE DARK has been introduced, formulated for dark clothes exclusively. USE IT! Immortal would endorse no less.

2) COLD WASH ONLY. Allow your clothes to soak in waters as cold as the rivers of Blashyrkh itself, without agitation. HAND WASH, or use the “hand washables” cycle on your washing machine. Your precious metal shirts get enough violent agitation when you’re wearing them in the mosh pit.

3) NEVER USE FABRIC SOFTENER ON METAL SHIRTS. “Softener” on a metal shirt? Are you kidding? Does the Snuggle bear really look like he knows the difference between Iron Maiden and Iron Angel? Not only should true metalheads welcome and relish Unsoftness, but fabric softener works by expanding the fibers of the fabric, thereby subjecting your battle armor to undue wear and tear. There’s time for that later.

4) AIR DRY ONLY. Dryers are false metal. The cold north winds will serve you well. But keep them out of the sun’s rays! The sun, as always, is the enemy of darkness.

Libertarians come in two flavors: Sociopath and Confused. With the latter, it is possible to argue; the former should best seek professional help.

What is a Libertarian? A person who believes that a so-called free market will cure all of the world’s woes. Government, and in particular, taxation, is wasteful and prevents the fruition of individual merit and recompense.

If our Libertarian is clear thinking about his or her position, and thus a sociopath, she will be ready to admit that because she is economically comfortable, or would be without those pesky taxes, everyone else can go to hell. She’ll say things like it’s the victims of hurricane Katrina’s own fault that they chose not to leave. Certainly she would have left… And will be quite clear in asserting that she matters more than other people because she is more competent than other people in some way that is particularly valuable to her. While it may be diverting to question her moral culpability, the argument doesn’t have legs to move forward. You’re starting from too divergent a base premise: that people do owe something to each other and should use the government toward that end, or, everyone can go to hell.

The Confused class are more salvageable. They’re uncomfortable (on a sliding scale) with writing other people off. This tortures their argument. For example, this afternoon I was arguing with an acquaintance from undergrad who has since gone IT Libertarian. J. is well intentioned but believes, amongst other things, that without taxes we’d have no FEMA, and without FEMA there would be no one to bungle New Orleans. All you have to do to beat a well intentioned Libertarian is follow their logic.

Okay, I’ll admit, obviously, that FEMA was a disaster in New Orleans, but, would the absence of any government help be preferable? Here our soft libertarian will dodge, and offer something like “well the people in New Orleans knew in advance and should have gotten out. It’s their own fault if they didn’t.” And for the poor without cars? “Well…we still don’t need FEMA, it was the other states that really helped.” This is where you pin him: And where did the other states get the money to do that? The answer: taxes.

It’s likely your libertarian will have begun by complaining about taxes, and may even have said something with which you generally agree, like: your taxes are being spent to fund genocide in Gaza. Here too suggest that they’re right about Gaza/Iraq/Afghanistan/whatever, but it doesn’t logically follow to abolish all taxes because taxes also fund education, medicare, social security. All of those services, however inefficient and in need of repair, are preferable to their absence. If our well intentioned Lib is to be honest with himself, he’ll see that his argument is either sociopathic because he has to write off caring for others, or leads back to the need for taxes and a government.

If, on the topic of Katrina, he mentions Blackwater taking away peoples guns (another Libertarian no-no) you can point him to this article on vigilante lynching in New Orleans. And anyway, isn’t Blackwater the free market in force? They don’t get to complain about that one.

The people’s flag is deepest red,

It shrouded oft our martyr’d dead

And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,

Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.

Then raise the scarlet standard high,

Within its shade we’ll live and die,

Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,

We’ll keep the red flag flying here

What is more beautiful than revolution? Revolution. It’s a word we don’t use enough, an idea whose time is always now. With embarrassment some on the left shy from bold pronouncements of faith. “To the streets? An anachronism! A new world? Already bygone!” Folly is the fear of past failures. Revolution is the world made new.

Is it an individual? No. Is it a leader? No. Where does it live, what its visiting hours? I tell you it lives here, now, in the soil, the air, a word born upon it, on a picket, in taking what is rightfully public and demanding peace. It is the romance of justice in practice. And it can be ours if we name it, talk about it, nerve ourselves for the fight.

We write about it, sing about it, by all means show up and make it. This is our calling, but we don’t own it. And our earnest, joyful endeavor for it, for revolution, is all that will stand. Revolution is love shorn of the very possibility of cliché.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Saying that “our ideals give us the strength and moral high ground” to combat terrorism, President Obama signed executive orders Thursday effectively ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret interrogation program, directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year and setting up a sweeping, high-level review of the best way to hold and question terrorist suspects in the future.

Finally, the end is in sight. Now for turning Bush and his cabinet over to the Hague! This justice thing is infectious.

If you enjoyed the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s Call of Cthulhu, you’ll perhaps agree that the trailer for the upcoming Whisperer in Darkness looks quite promising.

Had I seen this prior to the election, I could, no doubt, have rested much easier.