It's been quite some time since I pulled out Miranda Sex Garden's 2000 swan song Carnival of Souls. Last night, prompted by nothing in particular, I noticed its spine on my CD shelf and was moved to give it a spin.
Wow! I've missed this one. My go-to albums with MSG will always be Fiarytales of Slavery and Suspiria. That said, this one has a much more polished feel, but it really works, playing out as a perfect cap on their short-lived career.
And bonus track, because while looking for a video of this one to post, I found this:
This is the first live footage I've found of the band, and it definitely doesn't disappoint. I really wish I could have seen them live.
**
What a NCBD we have this week! Holy cow am I excited! Why?
A 36-page One Shot, the proceeds go 100% to the comic stores selling it! That is awesome. Robert Kirkman can do no wrong in my eyes - he's helping out comic shops and giving us a new dose of one of my all-time favorite characters. Win win.
If that weren't enough:
The second issue of the new series following characters from Garth Ennis and Darrick Robertson's The Boys - with Russ Braun taking over penciling - Dear Becky looks as though it will reveal some interesting things about Butcher's character, while also giving us a glimpse into Wee Hughie's life twelve years after the events of the original series.
I picked up the first issue of this a while back and really liked it, so I'm glad to see the series continue. A weird little take on a horror story, plus, I really like supporting Action Lab. They are forever in my good graces after 2015's Night of the 80s Undead.
Over the weekend I just completed a re-read of The Plot 1-4, I can definitely say I LOVE this book. Ancestral Horror is a thing that needs to make a comeback. After the brief hiatus for the book, I'm psyched to get more answers and, I suppose, inevitably more questions.
**
Playlist:
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Lustmord - The Dark Places of the Earth
Pale Dian - Narrow Birth
Atrium Carceri - Cellblock
Kohler Playlist: Week of 6/29/20
Kohler Playlist: Week of 4/27/20
White Zombie - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1
Ennio Morricone - The Thing OST
Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls
**
Card:
"Inspired from Above." Not entirely sure how that applies, but when I think about this card now, I reflect on the fact that this is the highest mark in the cycle of cups, where emotional maturity helps understand the path through Malkuth, the world. There's a harmonic resonance that feels reassuring, even as much of what's outside my window feels like its falling apart, and many of this world's denizens appear to be anything but emotionally mature.
You had me at "Cosmic Body Horror." The Beach House one drops on Shudder July 9th. That means I'll have two days of anticipated premieres, as on the 10th, Relic hits VOD. These last few years have been such an amazing time to be a Horror fan, and despite a segue into real-life Horror, 2020 appears to continue the trend.
**
Via Brooklyn Vegan (article HERE), the Sacramento Music Archive has made a Slayer concert from 1986 available on youtube. This is HUGE in my opinion; I saw Slayer a handful of time, but not before 1994's Divine Intervention, an album I pretty much despise based on what I feel are some pretty lackluster vocals. That said, my love of Slayer is primarily based on their two live albums - Live Undead and Decade of Aggression - both of which I consider among the finest live albums ever released. It's nice to hear something that kind of splits the span of those two records in half, as Live Undead was released in 1984 and DoA 1991. Admittedly not a huge temporal stretch, but in the evolution of arguably the greatest Thrash band of all time, an entire epoch of change spans the divide.
Thank you to the Sacramento Music Archive, whose website you can visit HERE.
**
Playlist:
Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
Van Halen - Eponymous
Phil Collins - Hello, I Must Be Going
Soundgarden - Down on the Upside
Soundgarden - Super Unknown
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R
Cocksure - Operation C.O.C.K.S.U.R.E.
**
Card:
A solid foundation is what I'm working with on this current short story. That's not the issue. Pulling all the elements together into a cohesive whole is.
I wanted to do something new to break up the regular posts, which will continue under the 'isolation' banner for the foreseeable future because, yeah, COVID is back on the rise. No kidding, huh? I guess all those fucking idiots who thought they could just say, "This has gone on long enough," are realizing that you can't use god or cuntry to boss around a microorganism. I've started to think that maybe, just maybe, this is all going to be a good thing, and that the virus will wipe out all the stupid people. No disrespect to those who have died or gone through the trauma. Hell, I fully realize we're all at risk, but when I see footage of these Orange County and Florida town halls with people demanding their civic leaders relax the mask ordinances, so full of narcissistic and oft-times religious fervor, I understand that these are - hopefully - the people we will lose the most of.
We're probably not going to be that lucky, though.
Anyway, so here's the first installment of Sunday Bandcamp. Andy Fosberry has composed something of an 'extended universe' soundtrack to Paul W. S. Anderson's 1997 classic Event Horizon. I love this album, even if repeated viewings of the film have never quite lived up to the experience I had the first time I watched it, way back when. Event Horizon is still a classic and I love it, despite its flaws, and this OST slots in nicely with the tone and texture of space crazy Anderson achieves with his film.
You can buy Mr. Fosberry's album, titled Death Ship 2047 from the Spun Out of Control label's bandcamp HERE.
**
Playlist:
Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
David Bowie - Low
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
The Paper Chase - God Bless Your Black Heart
Pale Dian - Narrow Birth
October Language - Belong
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Gang of Four - Return the Gift (Disc 1)
Team Sleep - Eponymous
Full article on Bloody Disgusting, Legion looks like it will be one hell of a ride. I love the visual allusions to Evil Dead, I love the links to Shamanism and Sorcery, and, well, I guess I love everything about this trailer.
**
Playlist:
C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough, Vol. 1
Belong - October Language
Psychetect - Extremism
Andy Fosberry - Death Ship 2047
**
Channeling the Will to forge new goals. As usual, on the nose with my creative endeavors. The novel is finished, I'm palate cleansing with a short story, and then it's back to Shadow Play.
Speaking of writing, here's a situation I find myself in need of help with.
I'm running a poll on the Horror Amino at the moment, but I'll post my quandary here as well. Any readers who are able to post a reply with their opinion on this matter, it would be much appreciated. That said, I generally do not comment on other sites due to an aversion to elongating my online fingerprint, so I will absolutely understand if no one does.
Here's the deal:
The current title for the new novel is The Secret Life of Murder. I'm having doubts about that name, primarily based on friends' who read this back when it was finished in 2008 and didn't take to the title.
Some background:
This is not the second book in the Shadow Play trilogy, which is completely outlined. And when I say outlined, we're talking detailed to the point that the word count of the outline may very well rival or best the eventual word count on the actual novel. That said, I am refraining from actually writing Book Two until Book Three's outline is complete. Three was about 50% outlined as of February, however, two things made me push both of these back so that Book Two will now release in 2021 and Book Three 2022. Those two things were A) Realizing I would not be able to finish outlining Book Three and write Book Two this year, and B) the onset of COVID-19, Shelter-in-Place, and borderline mass hysteria seemed too in-line with The Secret Life of Murder, which follows a small group of characters trapped in Seattle, Washington as a "Murder Virus" the press has nicknamed MV-3 works its way through the population. MV-3 turns everyone infected into rampaging murder drones, and the resulting wave of chaos appears unstoppable. The virus is introduced into the population by way of a book written by a shadowy ex-hippy guru names Abremlin Harvest.
Being that this one was already finished but has sat for over a decade, the work I set out to do was fairly straight forward: I knew there would be a lot of grammatical/syntax issues I needed to edit, because, simply put, I am a much better writer now than I was thirteen years ago. I also knew the timeline of events that make up the plot would need to be sharpened, and I wanted to work the emotions, situations, and socio-political elements occurring in our own world into the story, making it more parallel to what we've experienced so far in 2020. This was not difficult to do, although I did end up changing an entire layer of the final act to better reflect the character arc of the Earth, which figures in as a sort of character when you take into account that, much like I believe with COVID-19, the planet is employing the virus as a medicinal reaction to the overpopulation currently choking the life from it. Taking all this into account, I still feel as though The Secret Life of Murder is the best title, however, after living with this one for so long, I'm unsure if I feel that way because it is a good title, or if it just feels that way to me because it has stood as the uncontested 'placeholder' for it in my head for thirteen years.
The question then is, without having read this novel, is The Secret Life of Murder a title that you would scroll past on amazon or - if you're lucky enough to have one - the shelf of an actual book store. Is its not-so-subtle play on all those non-fiction books from the 00s (The Secret Life of Bees, The Secret Life of Lobsters, etc) cause for an eye roll? Or is it intriguing enough to make you want to at the very least read the synopsis?
Killer track from the upcoming album Shame, out September 11th on Sacred Bones. Pre-order HERE.
**
Today is the day! The first three episodes of Doom Patrol Season 2 drop today, with the remaining six to follow weekly from here out. Season One was easily my favorite show of 2019, and thus I'm expecting a similar reaction to Season Two. Will the show draw more madness from Grant Morrison's infamous run? The Scissormen? Albert Hoffman's Bicycle? Mr. Nobody for President? I can't wait to find out.
Speaking of Grant Morrison, the wonderful folks over at Sequart have released Patrick Meaney's Our Sentence is Up: Seeing Grant Morrison's Invisibles. I snatched a copy on Kindle for a meager $3.99, and even after only glancing through it, I can tell you this volume is worth about ten times that much.
It's been quite some time since I last read The Invisibles, and while I have experienced an increasing pull toward re-engaging with it, at the moment, that seems like a misstep.
**
Playlist:
Various Artists - The Void OST
Powerman 5000 - Black Lipstick (pre-release single)
Alice in Chains - Eponymous
C-Building Kids - Shitting in the Urinal
Uniform - Delco (pre-release single)
The Birthday Party - Live 1981-82
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Apparat - Soundtracks: Dämonen
Perez - Les vacancies continent (single)
The Knife - Deep Cuts
The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
The Knife - Silent Shout
**
Card:
Catharsis and the end of confusion. Globally? I doubt that. Personally, speaking from a mindful perspective at the moment, I don't feel confused per se, unless I broaden that perspective to my place in the world in its current state. Several plates I had spinning are in limbo, leaving a vague sense of, "Well, is that still a thing?" In that regard, an epiphany of any proportion would be most welcome.
Maybe the fact that I happened across this and liked it is proof I'm getting old and complacent. I don't know. I've never cared for pretty much anything about Powerman 5000 before, and I certainly wasn't expecting to dig this. But I kinda did. Are Spider and his bandmates simply latching onto the nearly omnipotent 80s/synth nostalgia that permeates our culture? Probably. Should that piss me off? Well, it would have younger me, but at this particular moment, there's a part of me - the tired, nostalgic part scared by the turns the world has taken - that's just hungry AF for more of the aesthetic from my childhood, when times were simpler and all we had to worry about was Nuclear War, AIDS, and razor blades in candy bars. Ahhhh, childhood...
New album is out on Cleopatra Records in August, HERE's the link to pre-order.
**
After looking for it off and on for the better part of twenty years, I am psyched to say I recently found a copy of Dante Tomaselli's debut film Desecration on DVD for $11.00. This one never made the jump to Blu, and previously I've seen the DVD listed for upwards of $100, so I guess this underrated Italian Director's brief time in the indie horror spotlight has faded. In re-watching Desecration's trailer for the first time in years, I can't help but wonder if this will be one that doesn't live up to the expectations I've slowly been building in my head ever since a good friend turned me onto Tomaselli's work back in 2003, with his feature Horror. While I haven't seen that one in a while, 2006's Satan's Playground remains my favorite of his films to date, and one I rewatch every few years around Halloween.
The mix of imagery employed here is so insane, I'm really hoping the plot doesn't just disintegrate into webbing to hold them all together. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
**
Playlist:
Various Artists - The Void OST
The Veils - Not Vomica
Lingua Ignota - Caligula
Helms Alee - Sleepwalking Sailors
Helms Alee - Night Terror
Helms Alee - Noctiluca
John Carpenter and Alan Howarth - Prince of Darkness OST
Jeff Grace - House of the Devil OST
Misfits - Collection Two
Ritual Howls - Rendered Armor
The Darts - I Like You But Not Like That
**
Card:
Love this card. From the Grimoire: Skill and/or Wisdom. Like yesterday, this feels appropriate. I hit one of those moments last night while reading the finished draft of the book to K where I actually made myself laugh. Always a good sign, because it doesn't happen often, so when it does, it tends to be genuine. As though I'm reading something someone else wrote.
A few days ago, Doves released the first track from what will eventually be their looooong awaited fifth album. "Carousel" is the first since 2009. I'm a huge fan of these guys, in particular, 2000's Lost Souls. The song "Rise" from that album has somewhat of a recurring role in the novel I just finished writing, which will be out later this year, and which I still don't have a title for. Serendipitous then, that this new music drops when I'd gone back into something of an extended Doves mood.
**
Already primed for another narrative podcast to listen to via The Magnus Archives - which I mentioned here a few weeks ago - my good friend Missi recently turned me on to Qcode's Borrasca. Cole Sprouse stars and produces - you might recognize the name as the actor who plays Jughead on Riverdale. While I've never been able to get into that particular show - despite my curiosity about its second season having what I've read described as a 'Giallo' thread in the plot - I'm extremely impressed by everything about Borrasca. At first it seemed a little too "Young Adult" for me, but that isn't the case at all as I've gotten through the first five weeks of what I'm assuming is the first season that's dropping now, new episodes every Monday.
**
NCBD - nice to have this back, eh? I've got some books this week, and one from last week to grab. Here is what's going to be my haul tomorrow:
So nice to get back into this one. There was a moment a few issues back where I thought Gideon Falls might have lost me. No dice. I'm so ready to go deeper into this world:
A new one with art by Jacob Phillips, son and collaborator of one half the dynamic crime fiction duo Brubaker and Phillips. Very much looking forward to this, and I'm hoping for more of that substantial backmatter that makes these books well worthwhile reading month-by-month.
Waiting four months or so since TMNT 104 has been difficult. That issue set up such a rich new world for the brand that I'm even more excited than before with where this title could go. Also, mutant metal bands? Fuck yes!
**
Now that Joe Bob Briggs' The Last Drive-In is over for another year, what the hell will I do with my Friday nights? Well, I recently signed up for HBOMax, and despite my annoyance that it does not work with my firestick, K and I decided to make Fridays Turner Classic Movie night, because TCM is one of the properties lumped in with the sub. There are a lot of movies on there, and being that K is a HUGE fan of old Hollywood, this is perfect.
**
Playlist:
Perez - Les vacances continuent (single)
Deafheaven - Black Brick (single)
Deafheaven - From the Kettle Onto the Coil (single)
Apparat - Soundtracks: Dämonen
Baroness - Gold and Grey
**
Card:
Seems about right, as since I have hit the beta reading phase of the new book, I've already spent an hour or so this morning dusting off something new-ish. Just a short story as a palate cleanser before I dip back into the outline for Shadow Play Book Three!
Well, I know what I'm doing on July 10th. This looks breathtaking.
One of the things I began working on last year is a collection of short horror stories all based around the horrors of aging. Nice to see kinship in a major motion picture. From all accounts director Natalie Erika James is going to be a force to be reckoned with. That's awesome. Good to have another voice along the lines of Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers to look forward to hearing from. James' shortfall Creswick is a Master Class in the craft, from the acting to the camera to the sound. I'd expect with a larger budget, someone this good will give us a powerhouse.
**
New Jaye Jayle out August 7th on Sargent House. Here's the latest single. Pre-order HERE.
**
Playlist:
Baroness - Gold and Grey
Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Crystal Castles - II
Lead into Gold - The Sun Behind the Sun
Slayer - Reign in Blood
Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
Doves - Lost Soul
Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline
Opeth - Blackwater Park
Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower
Public Enemy - State of the Union (Single)
Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough, Vol. 1
KRS-One - Return of the Boom Bap
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Nexus 6 - Too Late to Tease EP
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
Alio Die and Lorenzo Montan á - The Threshold of Beauty
Van Halen - Eponymous
Sault - Untitled
War On Women - Capture the Flag
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Doves - Carousels (pre-release single)
Zeal and Ardor - Stranger Fruit
Zombi - Shape Shift
Calling it now: RTJ4 will be my album of the year. Everything surrounding this one is perfect. The digital form of the album dropped months early on Wednesday, June 3rd. The physical is still slated for September, so you know the boys saw the opportunity to issue their statement when it was most needed, in the midst of the Protests and Riots that surrounded George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. This particular song directly references Floyd's death, leading me to believe RTJ was recording lyrics up until only a few days or possibly even hours before they dropped the album. That is legendary in my eyes.
I've never been a huge fan of the previous three RTJ records. They're good, and I may grow to like them more in the wake of the impact 4 has made on me, but all my qualms are shattered here. The instrumentation and arrangements are amazing; bombastic, interesting, and weird. Catchy to boot. The lyrics, too, are a level up. As are their delivery, there's a new urgency on this album, one that I can only equate to Chuck D of Public Enemy fame, for my money still the best rapper ever.
**
I should offer a small explanation on my continued use of the "Isolation" moniker for these posts. While a large part of the rest of the world have shrugged off Science's warnings about the continued threat of COVID-19, I am not so cavalier. K and I will be continuing to practice isolation for months to come. Especially after the spike we're already seeing in local microcosmic environments, rising numbers it seems most of the population is content to ignore because they have, "had enough."
Whatever. Thin the population - it does nothing but help the planet and those who will remain.
**
New season of Dark arrives in just two short weeks. That means K and I have to re-watch seasons one and two soon. Nothing like the anticipation that comes from being invested in a series that is not only fantastic, but that has been finite and perfectly plotted from the jump.
**
Jesus, talk about watch list overload. Here's a trailer for the new season of Doom Patrol. Luckily, I won't have to waste my time and resubscribe to the DCU app, as I recently signed up for HBOMAX. That said, after subscribing I realized Max does not work on Firestick, so I have to figure something else out. Either way, this is a MUST.
**
I finished reading Laird Barron's Worse Angels (Fantastic) and Cliver Barker's Books of Blood Volume One, and now I'm on to a book my good friend Chris Saunders (DwC, The Horror Vision) gave me recently. Mark Frost's The List of 7. I've known about Frost's Arthur Conan Doyle novels since their publication in the early 90s thanks to Wrapped in Plastic magazine, the David Lynch/Twin Peaks magazine I subscribed to in the wake of discovering Twin Peaks as it aired. I always knew I'd get around to reading this and the sequel, 6 Messiahs - which Chris also gifted me - and now is as good a time as any.
Here's an awesome website entry about this book that I found while looking for a picture of the cover.
Chris's gifts came at a most opportune time, because the Al Jourgensen auto is proving difficult to get through. A lot closer to what I would expect from a Tommy Lee auto, all braggadocio and not a lot of believable substance at this point (granted, I'm still pretty early in the book). Of course, I expect sex and drugs from any rock star auto, but Al spends a lot of time jerking himself off - metaphorically, in the book there's plenty of random folks to do that for him - and I can't help juxtaposing this with Chris Connelly's auto Concrete, Invisible, Bulletproof, and Fried: My Life as a Revolting Cock, which I read well over ten years ago now, and which is both eloquent and humble. None of that in Uncle Al's early days thus far, and I can't help but wonder if his depiction of ages 13-16 is this filled with conquests and little else, what will the Ministry years be like? I'll get back to this eventually, but I'll probably have to ramp up my Ministry rotation in order to inspire myself to do so.
**
Playlist:
Alice Donut - Dry Humping the Cash Cow
David Bowie - Outside
Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Flying Lotus - Flamagra
Jawbox - For Your Own
Old Tower - The Last Eidolon
Black Magic - Alastor
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
NIN - Ghosts VI: Locusts
Underworld - 1992-2012
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Run the Jewels - RTJ3
Hi-Lo - Poseidon (single)
Kendrick Lamar - Damn.
Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars
DAF - Die Kleinen Und Die Bösen
Amon Düüll II - Vive La Trance
Makaveli - The 7 Day Theory
Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Zombi - Breakthrough and Conquer (pre-release single)
Zombi - Earthscraper (pre-release single)
Allegaeon - Apoptosis
**
Card:
Explosion of energy/creativity. Fits perfectly, as over the last 48 hours, I have doubled down on finishing the book. By the end of the weekend, I'm hoping to be in a position to begin reading it aloud to K - one of my most important QC steps, as well as pass it off to two friends who I pay as beta readers. SOON.
There is a slew of things I could talk about that have come out since I posted last, but I'll save those for a later date. Instead, I decided to lead with Yoko Kanno's Space Lion, from the Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack. This is one of the most beautiful, calming compositions I have ever heard, and I've been using it every day on the way to and from work to try and induce a state of peace. This is, of course, an uphill battle at the moment. My resting heart rate is up an average of 10bpm a minute, and it's already high due to my constant caffeine intake. My baseline has become "Terrible Anxiety," inspired by the frustratingly hopeless state of things at the moment, along with what I can only describe as the first thing in my life that legitimately terrifies me: four more years of this come November.
It would be so easy to abandon my "Common Sense" approach to world affairs and politics; just lose my shit and go off on a crazy anti-trump, anti-conservative bender.
I will not.
This is an extremely difficult stance to take at the moment, because since February I have gone from staunchly saying, "In November I am voting for a third party. I am NOT voting to replace one of the big two parties with the other." I held onto this ideal not because I harbor anything but disgust for our current president, but because until this past March, his horrible decisions did not strike me as all that different from horrible decisions made by most presidents. I have long believed both parties have essentially the same goal: Perpetuate the Institution. When we did have a man who charged into office with a sense of altruism, with an actual desire to change things, the system absorbed and neutered him. For all Obama's lofty goals, the US government ate him alive, rendered his most lasting legacy a further blending of politics with celebrity, which, I still believe, helped set the stage for someone like trump to make it into office.
As for how I could endorse not voting Democrat simply to remove our current celebrity from office, it doesn't help that the the most vocal elements of the left have become as radicalized and ridiculous as the right. Cries that equated our president with adolf hitler are, I still believe, disrespectful to victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Refusal to rationally discuss any perceived aspects of the man's "accomplishments" do nothing but further entrench those who defend him. By pointing to the economy's resurrection, trump's defenders may only be seeing what they want to see, but by putting our hands over our ears and screaming we're simply adding to their refusal to listen to us. I'm not a fool, even if these rising economic numbers aren't the product of manipulation - unlikely - what is the cost of this supposed recovery? I speak of the cost to our Planet, our people, our reality. All of these concerns, however, are now moot points, because trump has become more dangerous than any human being on the planet. Not just because of his motives, but because of his platform. We have to get him OUT, and the contemplation of four more years of this is the single most terrifying idea I have ever encountered. Hence my anxiety, and what may come across in the following paragraphs as a muddled ability to properly express myself. But I'll try.
All my old arguments are gone. Come November, I will be voting Democrat JUST to get trump out of office. My breaking point? His cover-up and absolutely malevolent handling of COVID-19 in those first, initial months. You can't argue this. There's documented proof that up to and including the day before the president made the now infamous comment, "I've said it was a pandemic all along," he was claiming the exact opposite. I've said this before, but let me repeat it again, so it weighs in on what has become a much larger-scale argument: based on this alone, I believe trump should be brought up on charges of crimes against humanity.
I also believe there's a decent number of talking heads from fox news that should be brought up on the same charges, but that's an argument for a different time.
Add to this the fact that in the wake of the mayhem he helped perpetuate by his malevolent handling of COVID-19, we've now escalated into a division in our society that harkens back to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. And division? Division is where trump shines. As former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said recently, "donald trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not ry to unite the American people - does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us."
And it's working. A large part of trump's constituency seem to have wiped the slate clean on the progress from the Civil Rights Movement. And how could we expect them to do anything but? In an era of 'alternative facts,' deep fakes, and facebook news, everyone on both sides is guilty of denying facts and perpetuating their own preferred version of reality. Facts are no longer sacred, but we'll get to the ignorance that lies at the heart of that problem in a bit. Back to the abolishment of Civil Rights, George Floyd's murder at the hands of Officer Derek Chauvin while Officers Tou Thao, Thomas K. Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng stood by and watched proves that, as the news outlets are now so fond of saying, the bigotry and malevolence that corrupts US Police Departments is most definitely systemic. I do not believe all cops are hostile, malevolent entities, however, the ideology permeates the police as an institution, and as I've heard police say on several occasions, "If you speak up, you become a target." I'm not saying that is a stand that isn't worth taking, but when the system is against you, your sacrifice will almost definitely be in vain.
The "Defund the Police" initiative is intriguing, but as with everything in our two-party system, taken at face value, it's reactionary and unrealistic. There has been a lot of theorizing from civic leaders on this of late - multiple members of the Minneapolis City Council, including Ward 11's Jeremy Schroeder and Ward 3's Steven Fletcher have begun what appear to be earnest discussions on how to 'disband' the city's police. See also the MPD150 Movement. The idea of shifting funding from armed response units to highly specialized domestic, narcotic, and mental health response units is absolutely part of the solution, however, all of the scenario examples I've seen used to illustrate this idea leave out more extreme scenarios, seemingly to further their argument. Here's one for you: You're with your loved ones at the premiere of a blockbuster Hollywood movie when a heavily armed active shooter walks into the room and begins killing people. Who do you call? A mental health counselor? A crisis negotiator?
The examples in favor of a complete dissolution of the police break down when you introduce examples such as the above. This is why I don't believe we can completely do away with some iteration of armed, militaristic response. But do they belong responding to domestic, homeless, drug, or any number of other potentially non-violent situations? No. What about a situation like Mr. Floyd's? How Chauvin and his goon squad even ended up involved is something I can't comprehend; I've been in retail situations where customers have tried to pass bad bills. I never even thought about calling the police. It's not a definite the person with the bill in question is the origin of said bill. It's not even likely. As an employee, you explain why you cannot accept the bill and that's that. If they argue, you call a manager. If they continue to argue, you turn your back on them. If they escalate, the manager calls the police, and then you have a situation that is already nothing like the one in question.
So, if we need to have some version of the police, how do we combat that systemic attitude of untouchability and violent dominance, that hateful bigotry that has sullied the organization in a way that is, I think, untreatable. How do you treat the untreatable?
Not easily, but let's look deeper into these issues for a moment.
Racism is learned. In example, I knew someone very briefly in High School who would make comments about a member of our group who was of Filipino descent. Behind his back, of course. These comments that were obviously learned behavior from his father, who was a Veteran of the Vietnamese Conflict. That's where his racism came from, and likewise, all racism takes its first seeding in a similar manner. No one is born with intolerance, bigotry or hatred. These traits are passed down. But seeds need nutrition to grow, and the nutrition that feeds racism is another learned ideology, one this country continues to celebrate: Ignorance.
To make another example from my childhood, when I was in fourth grade and transferred to a new school, I received a social beating based on the fact that I was a 'reader.' Nerd, egghead, whatever. It was much cooler to be ignorant than to be academic or bookish. I never relinquished my love of reading, but I definitely began to hide it. To act stupid. How does this happen? I mean, think about any toddler you have ever interacted with. They are veritable sponges for new experiences and information. Learning is what young children do. So how does that get truncated, removed, and perverted so that by the time these kids get to fourth grade, they turn off that initiative to learn and adopt its antithesis? The answer, like the installation of the racist paradigm, is they are taught ignorance is cool and knowledge is an undesirable trait. Whether by their parents, older siblings, babysitters, aunts, uncles, whatever. ALL of the problems that infect, gestate, and blossom into the systemic moral crisis that corrupts the people in our world is learned behavior. I ask you again, and with more emphasis on the arduous nature of finding the solution to the problem: How do we combat the ideologies of bigotry and ignorance when they are planted at such early development stages?
Not through penduluming from one extreme to the other, that's for sure.
And the problem exists on both sides. I was shocked to see people on social media this past week saying things like, "If you have a problem with the riots, you're part of the problem."
Oh, really? I guess that means George Floyd's family is part of the problem, because this past Monday, George's brother Terrence made a public speech calling for an end to the violence.
"First of all, first of all, if I'm not out here wilin' out, if I'm not over here blowing up stuff, if I'm not over here messing up my community - then what are y'all doing? What are y'all doing? Y'all doing nothing, because that's not going to bring my brother back at all. It may feel good for the moment, just like when you drink. But when you come down, you're gonna wonder what you did. My family is a peaceful family. My family is god fearing. yeah, we upset. But we're not going to take it, we're not going to be repetitious. In every case of police brutality, the same thing has been happening. Y'all protest. Y'all destroy stuff. And if they don't move, you know why they don't move? Because it's not their stuff, it's our stuff. They want us to destroy our stuff. They not going to move. So let's do this another way. Let's do this another way. Let's stop thinking that our voice don't matter and vote."
Terrence knows what any rational person should be able to take a breath and deduce: violence on the side of the protest only exacerbates the tension. Peaceful protest is the right of all Americans, however, when you're already dealing with A) A bigoted, malevolent system of armed enforcer/responders, and B) you have ineffectual civic leaders and a president that cares nothing but himself and how he can shape the country's economy to his and his cabal's best interests, all it takes is one tiny action to set off a crescendo of violence. I'm not saying the violence is solely the protestors' fault. The violence we've seen in the last week is a simple 2+2=4 equation: violent cops + violent rioters = violence on an exponential scale.
Imagine if no one had reacted violently to the police? Think about one of the most iconic images of the Twentieth Century, that of Vietnamese Mahayana Monk ThÃch Dúc's self-immolation. Immortalized to my generation as the cover to the first rage against the machine album cover, you'd think people who love a band that much would have at least learned a little something about the imagery the band uses (definitely not the case, as evidenced by the band's fans misunderstanding of the symbolism surrounding Che Guevara). I'm not calling for anyone to set themselves on fire, but it seems to me we already have our inciting incident. It's easy for me to say, because I'm not out there on the front lines, but if looters hadn't intervened and protestors had remained peaceful, had gone out of their way to avoid organzing protests around retail locations so as to distance themselves from the criminals seeking to exploit their platform for their own nefarious agenda, then any violent response on the part of the police would have been undeniable for what it was: Uncalled for. That would have rendered it nearly impossible for the media or trump's ministry of propaganda to spin these events as anything but police brutality. Dúc's self-immolation was a direct response to a similar situation, an altruistic recognition that he had the power to decide what the world would see. In our case, escalating violence on both sides - granted begun by the police - ended up making the rioters the figureheads for what should have been a message of change. As always, careful consideration from afar leads to twenty/twenty hindsight, but the point is we've been here before. I have a problem with police, but I also have a problem with criminals using a peaceful protest to set off a war, or to masquerade their looting. Protest is legal, burning shit down is not, and it simply underlines the argument against the protests, no matter the reality of the situation. Reactionary responses do no good, so leave them to the people who we want to lose the argument. As a nation, we have to learn and progress, and part of that is understanding how to control the argument.
Where does this leave us? I don't fucking know, but unfortunately, if I had to guess, things will settle down and go back to normal, much the same as they did after the first highly publicized cycle of white-cop-on-black-male-violence from just before trump's election, set off by Trayvon Martin's murder at the hands of Officer George Zimmerman. The outrage doesn't go away, however, it only lies in wait, bubbling and becoming more caustic. Maybe I'm wrong, and due to the added frustrations of COVID, we'll see change. If not, one thing I can guarantee is, when this comes back around again, it will be worse. Across the board. For everyone.
**
Playlist:
Yoko Kanno/Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST
Flying Lotus - Flamagra
Mr. Bungle - USA
Odonis Odonis - No Pop
Run the Jewels - RTJ4
Titus Andronicus - The Most Lamentable Tragedy
ICE-T - The Iceberg
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
Revocation - Teratogenesis EP
Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar - Damn.
Zombi - Breakthrough and Conquer (Pre-release single)
L7 - Bricks are Heavy
Bella Morte - Where Shadows Lie
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
**
Card:
Skill, careful consideration of the micro-elements that comprise macro-level events. My translation/interpretation: reactionary responses motivated by emotional distress do not win the war. Plan, act with consideration of the larger picture.
