Child Abuse, to go along with Syllabus Building

...and its hopeless vicissitudes

 (I love this video)

Endless Spankings

Para Calificar, Jams

Hearts of Darknessess + Shitface

Movie Trailer for a collaboration between band Hearts of Darknessess and filmmaker Shitface.

"The steroids have gone to your head"

Thinking New Political Prisoners

Stolen from our friends at Franc-tireurs:


"Firstly, a man, Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted the auction of public assets in Utah by making bogus bids has been sentenced to two years in prison. This sentence is clearly out of proportion with the offense. Moreover, we support his action, regardless of their legality. Somewhat similarly, a man, Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, has received 12 years in Britain for apparently threatening Western politicians, or rather encouraging others to harm them on the internet.  We have to be clear that in both cases, these men are political prisoners. Both of them have engaged in actions which are fundamentally threatening to the basic norms of our society, though different norms in each case. DeChristopher's action is a crime against commerce; Ahmad's is a crime against politics. DeChristopher's action threatens our ability to buy and sell at auction, and as such he received an exemplary sentence. Ahmad's action threatens the ability of politicians to pose as the representatives of the people, and as such he incited the vengeance of the state. In both cases, the rationale is that commerce and politics as they are conducted in our society are perfectly proper activities that need the protection of the state. This is not our position. Rather, we think that commerce and politics as they go on are anything other than proper activities. That is not to say that we advocate the deliberate disruption of either as a strategy: in neither case will this be likely to be productive. Despite the feeling that the pseudo-elected leaders who unleashed slaughter on the world deserve to be executed, this cheap moralism must be eschewed in favor of the sober judgment that killing politicians who support war will play precisely into the hands of the warmongers. I do not make a pacifist argument: it's not that all killing is counterproductive, just this killing, because it plays to the prevailing rhetoric of fear.  Still, these men are political prisoners, because their crimes are political. They are at odds, as we are, with the way our society operates, are a threat to it, and it is for this that they are in jail."

Ghostface Killah, Top 10 Softest Rappers

Some of Ghostface's comments here are a little fucked-up, particularly those that regard gender norms, but I think there is something fundamentally right about his assessment of Soulja Boy:

"5. Soulja Boy 

Aka the 2011 Mr Bojangles. This nigga also deserves recognition as the coon of the decade namsayin. I dont even kno how muthafuckas listen to this niggas music….nevermind callin that shit hip hop. If it was 1930 this nigga would be rockin a necklace made of chicken legs n pigs feet n be tap dancin on watermelons for a livin. Anyways…sons music is only technically hip hop….like drinkin a beer wit a straw n a umbrella in the bottle is technically drinkin a beer namsayin. Hidin behind 50 Cent wont protect you from ya own bitchassness tho son. This nigga been germinatin in the garden of wackness for a hot minute now. This nigga done splashed hisself wit enough water from the fountain of coonery to last 12 lifetimes. Stop givin this nigga a pass jus cos he young. Muthafuckin Run DMC was around this niggas age when they made King Of Rock yo. LL Cool J was on his first comeback when he was this niggas age yo. NWA made Fuck The Police when they was this niggas age son. You cant hide behind youth forever you clown ass muthafucka. If I see you Imma smack the slaves outta you nigga. Its open season on you son."

Despite the proliferation of rap artist personas we see in the media, some even transgressing boundaries that make Ghostface uncomfortable, there remains a need to furnish America with a metonymic stereotype or icon upon which we might heap blame upon as a representative not only of the "poverty" of culture in African-American communities, but also for the affliction of its persistent economic poverty. To the reactionary mindset, the former produces the latter.

Primitive Accumulation is Now

La guerre des resources by odjag

(i.e. Rosa Luxembourg was right)

Lesbic Jams on a Rainy Day

Shaving ambivalence

This video gives us everything that is right about hardcore...

...and the hotness of hardcore boys/men/dudes

Medieval Chic

Woodkid - Iron from WOODKID on Vimeo.

Black Elk, Can't Stop Listening to This Track

Twitter Didn't Produce The Uprisings in the Middle East or in Northern Africa

Modernization theory is wrong, here's why.

From Al Jazeera:

To listen to the hype about social networking websites and the Egyptian revolution, one would think it was Silicon Valley and not the Egyptian people who overthrew Mubarak.

Via its technologies, the West imagines itself to have been the real agent in the uprising. Since the internet developed out of a US Defense Department research project, it could be said the Pentagon did it, along with Egyptian youth imitating wired hipsters from London and Los Angeles.

[...]

But neither version is particularly useful for organising resistance to the local dictatorship. In any case, the internet was turned off at decisive moments in the Egyptian uprising, and it was ordinary Egyptians, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, who toppled the regime, not the hybrid youth of the global professional classes.

Globalisation is also coming to awareness of the situations of other peoples, such as those similarly oppressed by local and faraway powers. Of particular interest are those moments when these peoples rise up, when they devise forms of revolt and struggle. Defeats provide lessons, and victories give hope. These revolutions need not be on satellite TV to effect their instruction. Revolutionaries in France and Haiti in the 1790s received news of one another''''s activities by the regular packet ship that plied between Jamaica and London.

Sailors, slaves, and workers circulating in the Atlantic between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries shared and improved upon their repertoires of revolt and resistance, bringing the good news to ports from Rio to Boston, Bristol to Havana.

Daily Gay Inanity 2

If you need some amusement today, I would recommend watching these videos tone-deaf baby gay twins, gather by our friends a House of Vader. Hilarious and completely magical at the same time. Watch closely with the 2nd video as they attempt a little montage.

Rubber Stamps I Wish I Had When Grading Student Papers

I'm not in love with McSwenney's the way most people seem to be these days, but this entry is consonant with a lot of the feelings I have about marking papers in general.

Rubber Stamps
I Wish I Had
for Grading
Freshman
Composition
Papers.

BY KATHERINE PERRY

- - - -

1. RUN-ON

2. DANGLING MODIFIER

3. WTF?

4. TRANSITION?

5. I CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE REALLY BAD AT THIS OR JUST NOT TRYING AND AM THEREFORE UNABLE TO MAKE CONCRETE STATEMENTS ABOUT YOUR ESSAY AT THIS TIME.

6. "ESCALADE" IS A KIND OF VEHICLE; DO YOU MEAN "ESCALATE"?

7. THIS IS AN INTERESTING OVERVIEW OF YOUR TAKE ON ZOMBIES/VAMPIRES/LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA, BUT IT HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH THE ASSIGNMENT. PLEASE GO OVER THE HANDOUT AND LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS. I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT DESPITE THE FACT YOU WERE TEXTING FRANTICALLY UNDER THE TABLE AND MAKING LEWD GESTURES WHEN I EXPLAINED SAID HANDOUT IN CLASS TELLS ME IT'S A WASTE OF MY TIME TO READ OR THINK ABOUT YOUR ESSAY AT ALL (LET ALONE FOR HALF AN HOUR ON A SATURDAY NIGHT ON WHICH YOU ARE CERTAINLY HAVING MORE FUN THAN I AM), I HAVE GONE AHEAD AND MADE CAREFUL COMMENTS ANYWAY, WHICH MAKES ME HATE MYSELF A LITTLE, WHICH YOU WILL SEE REFLECTED IN YOUR PARTICIPATION GRADE AT THE END OF THE TERM.

8. THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID.

Voces De Cambio

An interesting vernacular visual/literacy project:

"Voces de Cambio (Voices of Change) is an extraordinary after-school program for teenage girls in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Since 2006 the program has used writing and still photography to help teenage girls explore issues such as discrimination, gender equality, youth leadership, and civic engagement."



(Another instance of the NGO-ification of empowerment politics?)

Daily, Gay Inanity

2010 Review Part 2

Promising elements of 2010:

1) After a discussion with Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of American's Prison Empire and associate professor at University of Hawaii, I had all but given up on the possibility of the emergence of prisoner led movements at all given 2 facts he shared: 1) the capacity of prisons to warehouse people and also use solitary confinement as a means of quelling prisoner dissent, was highly effective, and; 2) and Bill Clinton's reduction of requisite journalist/scholarly monitoring of prisoner conditions (as well as suspending all prisoner led reform cases) make the system almost opaque to reform-minded folk and the general public. Even as tougher laws continue to dispossess prisoners of basic citizenship rights and more and more adult American's (over 10%) are currently serving time, it would seem that even momentary fulminations of resistance should arise somewhere.

A recent prisoner strike in Georgia suggests a different picture that was both organized and peaceful. From Final Call:

Fed up with bad food, unjust treatment, poor education and inadequate health care, thousands of inmates in Georgia's prison system staged “Lockdown for Liberty,” a peaceful protest on Dec. 9, according to activists.

The Black, White, and Latino inmates from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith, and Telfair State Prisons refused to leave their cells for work and other activities, partly because they feel the Georgia Department of Corrections treats them like slaves, according to supporters who are not jailed.

“I'm talking to these brothers every day, every other minute really, and particularly in Macon, Telfair, Hays and Smith, their decision is they're not going to stop this strike now. One brother told me, ‘We will ride until the wheels fall off,' and that's been the sentiment amongst the men when they started this,” said Elaine Brown, a spokesperson for the strike.

More specifically, the inmates are demanding: a living wage for work, opportunities for higher education, better health care without excessive fees, and an end to cruel and unusual punishment for minor infractions.

They also want more fruits and vegetables, more vocational training, an end to some restrictions on family access, and an end to excessive telephone charges and just parole decisions.

“Part of our purpose for doing this is that Georgia is the only state that does not pay it's inmates at all. Some guys in here work seven days a week and they don't get a dime,” said Dondito, one of the strikers, who requested anonymity.

He said despite reports by the Department of Corrections that no inmates have been hurt, several in Augusta have been beaten up to unrecognizable points, according to their families.

[...]

Ms. Brown, former chairman of the Black Panther Party, said she doesn't know how long the men are going to strike but doesn't believe they are prepared to give up after just after one or two days, despite the beatings in Augusta.

“The tactical squad went in to trash their property and give them a shake down to try and break their spirits and force them into some violent confrontation. They cut off visitation for everyone, and are really reacting very violently to what is a non-violent protest,” Ms. Brown told The Final Call.

Dondito said the prisons are doing all they can to break their spirits and the strike, like cutting off the heat and hot water, taking away recreation, feeding them cold sandwiches, and refusing to wash their clothes.

He said strikers intend to stand for as long as it takes to force a change in horrible living conditions, which include being beaten when taken to or in solitary confinement and receiving bad food.

2) Wikileaks continues to churn out important diplomatic leaks, as well as business/banking leaks, despite Amazon and Paypal's decisions to bump the site from their server and from accepting funds in the name of the organization.

Some Worsts:

1) The failure of the DREAM Act. Let's be clear U.S. policy toward Latino, particularly Mexican, illegal immigrants has been an exchange of the promise of citizenship for status as cannon-fodder for various U.S. wars. This lead to some positive outcomes after WWII for example where veterans of the Mexican-American and Puerto Rican persuasion becamed disillusioned about their chances in already racially/ethnically stratified societies and in many cases this produced some radicalization, beyond assimilation. The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, offered a disenfranchised, subordinate, and racialized underclass the same opportunity, with the added possibility of citizenship through college graduation. On the one hand the cannon-fodder element consistently suggests the value for racialized and immigrant lives and its consistent application suggests a continued devaluation of non-white, non-"native" citizenry. That said, the act's failure by five votes also leaves many who immigrated the United States as children without a path to citizenship and enfranchisment; producing an underclass much like the "sans-papiers" of France who remain unintegrated into the nation for generations.

2) Break-ups from long-term relationships can thrust your life into a series of deeply self-engrossed bouts of confusion and self-loathing. Avoid them (or prolonging them), when possible.

3) Haiti, 1 year later, according to community activist Jordan Flaherty:

One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the promised relief and reconstruction aid has not reached those most in need. In fact, the nation's tragedy has served as an opportunity to further enrich corporate interests.

The details of a recent lawsuit, as reported by Business Week, highlights the ways in which contractors – including some of the same players who profited from Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction – have continued to use their political connections to gain profits from others' suffering, receiving contacts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies at best. It also demonstrates ways in which charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses. 

[...]

The disaster profiteering exemplified by Ashbritt is not just the result of quick decision-making in the midst of a crisis. These contracts are awarded as part of a corporate agenda that sees disaster as an opportunity, and as a tool for furthering policies that would not be possible in other times. Naomi Klein exposed evidence that within 24 hours of the earthquake, the influential right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation was already laying plans to use the disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the country's economy.

Relief and recovery efforts, led by the US military, have also brought a further militarization of relief and criminalization of survivors. Haiti and Katrina also served as staging grounds for increased involvement of mercenaries in reconstruction efforts. As one Blackwater mercenary told Scahill when he visited New Orleans in the days after Katrina, "This is a trend. You're going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations."

[...]

Haitian poet and human rights lawyer Ezili Dantò has written, "Haiti's poverty began with a US/Euro trade embargo after its independence, continued with the Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times, the uses of US foreign aid, as administered through USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote US corporate interests to the detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty, sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms. USAID projects have been at the frontlines of orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing underdevelopment, coup d'etat, impunity of the Haitian Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters, and destroying Haiti's food sovereignty essentially promoting famine."

4) Arizona's racist new laws were co-written by the prison industry.

Favorite new vegetarian and vegan recipe:

Chickpea/Seitan Cutlets, at PostPunk Kitchen. For those of you who are like me, and have been vegetarians for most of your lives the possibility of new alternatives to meat, are always welcome. This particular recipe combines ground chickpeas, various spices,, bread crumbs, with vital wheat gluten to produce some tasty fried alternatives to steaks.

Favorite new find, that is already not that new in really any sense:

Pissed Jeans, combining hardcore with noise rock in the vein of Jesus Lizard:



Favorite new accessory, that redudantly fills a need (although it's smaller):

The Scout Pack, by Duluth.

Favorite viral video of 2010:



Favorite DIY Porn Auteur:

Despite my general distaste for the world of twink, The Black Spark represents rather well shot and interesting, but also incredibly hot short films for x-tube, including actual filtering in lenses, play with color, and skilled use of handheld cameras.

2010 Review Part 1

One of my graduate school friends labelled the 2009-2010 complex as "one of the worst years of our lives." So, because I haven't posted in sometime, and want to find some positives from this year, I will do my best to keep some positives in mind as I proceed, to compile some bests.

Best Tracks of 2010, for me:

Kanye has always been an interesting producer, but here he's becoming a much better songwriter. Also Nicki Minaj's portion of the track makes it to my mind. The psychotic killer vs. the profit motivated gangster cold blooded killer I think is an interesting variation for pop-hip hop



Justin Pearson's musical career shaped my personal aesthetic and sensibility probably more than it should have in the last few years of the 20th and the first few years of the 21st centuries. That said, this turn toward the more danceable and slightly more gay in these two tracks is just what the doctor order (although the quasi-hawk not so much):





I already posted this, but I love British lesbian art music.



Not really one for the ages, but a motivator for right at the end of the semester:



A like songs that occasionally make you feel like your life will or should be over in whatever way. Here is one the years most important with a stunning queer video (sometimes verges on a parody of itself I'll admit. As in, why are those women playing tennis with a liver?):



Kylesa, I will always love Male/female dueling vocals. Spiral Shadow is a fantastic new album:



The lyrics are trite and the video is a little overblown, but I really love this track, and Kelis' lesbic style here:




Best Continuing/ Resurgent Musical Trend:

Homocore!!

Brontez Purnell of, being a black gay man of note in the San Francisco punk scene has his own band:



Homo Black Flag cover band with appropriate American Modeling Guild Video:



Last.fm recommended this to me and they were absolutely correct: