Schadenfreude

Okay! Now the whole world can say they saw a snuff movie.

I can't stop listening to Bows & Arrows by The Walkmen. It's a very lonesome-feeling record. They make this sound with their guitars that reminds me of Godspeed You Black Emperor's Lift Your Skinny Fists (which by the way is a fucking masterpiece and the piece-de-resistance of the whole post-rock period).

Okay, we all know these:


But do we know these?:


When the Sex Pistols ended, Rotten changed his name back to Lydon and started Public Image Limited. Terry Hall left the Specials with fellow singers Golding and Staple and started Fun Boy Three. Mick Jones left the Clash and started Big Audio Dynamite. Pattern!

James Osterberg

-Don't talk during the movie. If you are that person behind me that can't stop talking, I am that person in front of you that will turn around and ask you to shut it. I am that guy and I am not patient. If you keep talking I will get out of my seat and sit down next to you or maybe in the seat behind you, and in a condescending tone explain to you exactly why your behavior is intolerable. Asshole.

-Don't stand in front of the door when I'm trying to get out of the subway. Here's how it works: First you let the people get out, then you get in. I know it's really hard to think about people that aren't you but you live in the city and most people aren't you. If this is too complicated, that's fine. You and your kind can form a human wall of retards, desperately muscling and cramming your way in. I will smash through your ranks and you will taste elbow.

-Don't piss on the seat. Dude. Duuuuuuude... First off, why didn't you use the urinal? You obviously have aiming problems. You're terrified someone will try to sneak a peek, aren't you? You have size issues. Fine, go get some privacy in a stall. But for God's sake, raise the seat with the tip of your shoe! And fucking FLUSH! Again, use your shoe! You're not going to get AIDS thru your shoe, brother. But wait a minute... you don't care about germs because you just walked out without washing your hands. Oh I see, other people's germs are gross but yours are holy. Go forth and bless all the doorhandles and handrails with your divine piss-covered touch.

Not a bum note on this one. And it's waaaay beyond Ok Computer, especially if you consider Amnesiac as Disc Two, since they're both from the same sessions and were released less than a year apart.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Yes. Yes I am.

Happy Easter everybody.
I can't wait until the year 2033. Then it will have been 2000 years since Jesus was resurrected, like some vampire-zombie god.
How long has Jesus been coming? It seems like he's been on his way for ever. When is he going to get here? I guess it's a long walk from Heaven to here. From Here to Eternity. Let's go, Christ! Pick up the pace! Let's get this show on the road!

If you scroll down, you'll see a post with a scan of an old magazine called OZ. See? The one with the Hell's Angel & a subjugated "Mamma" on the cover (I posted that cuz I was reading Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson at the time. If you haven't read it you really ought to). Fucking cool cover, I thought. Nice design, could have been the cover of Thompson's book. Same gonzo vibe. Far out, man! So I went and found an archive of all the Oz Magazine covers, and Ho-Lee Shit!


Number 8


Number 31


Number 3

I wish I could post them all. Every single one is beautiful. Here's the link:
http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/zines/oz01_04.htm
Enjoy!

About a week ago I went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at my local multiplex. If you haven't seen it yet, go now. If you're worried about Mr. James Carrey doing that awkward "serious actor" dance, don't. He's amazing in it. So's Frodo Baggins. The little shit is the villain of the piece. He plays the conniving girlfriend stealing psycho to a tee and it might just wash all that career-ending hobbit makeup right off.



Anyway, after the movie I head for the lavatory. As I'm washing my hands I spot this kid walking in, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, shaved head, glasses, bomber jacket, doc martens and... What the FUCK IS THAT? A big round patch on his right-breast, white with a black circle and a black cross thru it... Now I'm no expert in racist symbology but I know what THAT means. We make eye contact. He picks a urinal, and as if to confirm my suspicions, right at the bottom of his jacket: rectangular white patch and in black gothic lettering the words "Aryan Youth League" or "Nazi Youth Corps" or some such thing. So I'm drying my hands and staring at the little shit and he's staring right back at me with a look saying "What?".

Back outside I tell Charlie and 835 about it. Charlie wants to stick around to see this thing, but we split. I'm seething. I'm having violent fantasies about throwing this kid at a brick wall, ridiculous seeing as I haven't fought anyone since grade 8. We leave by the wrong exit and as we circle the building I'm half-hoping, half-dreading seeing him come out of another door. If we run into him I'll stare him down, Charlie'll say something really mean, he'll say something back to her and then I'll lose it. I'll push him hard against the glass-plate window. As he hits it the crowd will freeze. He'll lunge at me but I'll grab him by his coat, twist him around and whip him into the street and into traffic, or no into some couple on a date... A hundred dirty little fights play out in my head as we pass the doors, my heart is beating kind of fast and I'm grinding my teeth. My eyes dart around looking for a shaved head. He doesn't materialize. All I see are teenagers, three skateboards two white and one black... "See you little nazi fuck, you're an anachronism!" Another block and I'm berating myself for being such a putz. Like I was going to get in a fight. That's what he wants, right? Proof that there's a race war going on in the streets of Montreal... Shit... Like he was even worried about me, probly gets way meaner looks from jewish grandmothers.

Still, though: A few months ago when Ronnie got stabbed my a bunch of Skins outside the Biftek he intoned: "Shit, man! You guys still exist?!

WTF! Sometimes, around town I'll see a couple of Spirit of Sixty-Nine guys (one white & one black) or that bunch of acid-wash punk-skins I used to see at all the ska shows, stupid & harmless & not stabbing anyone. In high school there were these SHARPS (Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice) who nonetheless got into fights with the haitian crew twice a week.

Go fuck yourselves.

What is it with me and ugly web-pages.

A far far prettier page to look at is My Shit Don't Stink. Pretty colours!

Right now I am going thru the paper to find a place to live. I downloaded a public transit map of the city because I don't know the names of any streets. I am drinking coffee and procrastinating actually calling any numbers because I have a powerful fear of talking on the phone. It makes me nervous.

I had a cup of joe at quarter to ten and now I'm wired. I'm UP. I'm fucking a-wake, chain smoking and I won't be able to fall asleep until 3. Fine. Tomorrow it's Friday and every one knows - there's this understanding - that a day of work if it's on a Friday is not to be taken seriously in any capacity unless it is for discussing plans for the weekend, of which I have none, save for finding a new place to live, which is my main goal right now. I live in Verdun at the moment, right by the aqueduct, and Fuck this place, man. This burgh blows. It's lamesville. Which is why I'm the Chairman of the Bored.

One of my favorite things is rock sax. I luuuurrve rock saxophone. Think of your favorite rock song. If it doesn't have sax in it, imagine if it did. Doesn't that sound nice? Bowie often had sax in his tunes. In fact he's an accomplished saxophonist. Roxy Music have always been horn heavy (horny). Glam in general was always keen on horns. Exile On Main Street is bathed in sax. And Coltrane! I'm not really a jazz buff (I just don't get it most of the time) but Coltrane fucking rocked. I just wish the Ramones and Sabbath had saxed up. Man, that would have been groovy. The Rapture played here last summer, and what really got me was they somehow AUGMENTED half their tunes with motherfuckin sax. So if you're starting a rock n roll band please consider adding some Jazz nerd because you will rock more and he will get a taste of what it's like to play music for people interested in something beyond mere chin-stroking.

Jazz is dead. They teach it at Universities for fuck's sake. And that's a warning to all those bespectacled schmucks enrolling in courses in Hip Hop Culture that are popping up here and there: Every thesis is a nail in the coffin.

Metal is the new Jazz. Virtuosity is fine for nerds and compulsive masturbators but if you don't have soul, you cease to exist. You're speaking aramaic.

Read this it's funny.

I woke up with AMAZING by Aerosmith schtuck in my head. Why? I feel anything but.