Daily Bleed for 4.29

Red knights, brown bishops, bright queens
Striking the board, falling in strong L's of
color.

— Ezra Pound, opening lines,
"The Game of Chess"
excerpts:

APRIL 29

MAYA DEREN
Visionary filmmaker, convert to Haitian voudoun.

FEAST OF THE SECRET MASTERS.
______________________________



1858 -- France: Justice, by P-J Proudhon, philosopher,
economist, sociologist appears.

"Property is theft!"

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ProudhonPierre-Joseph.htm

1894 -- A Capitol Crime?: Jacob Coxey's protest Army of the Poor
reaches Washington D.C. Led a group of 500 unemployed workers
from the Midwest & arrested for trespassing on Capitol grounds.

JACOB COXEY 1999 SAINT (April 16)
Leader of "Coxey's Army" of hobos, arrested for strolling
on the White House lawn.

When they busted all the unions,
You can't make no living wage.
And this working poor arrangement,
Gonna turn to public rage.
And then get ready . . .
We're gonna bring back Coxey's Army

— Eddie Starr,
"The Return of Coxey's Army", from the CD
"War Zone, Union Jax."

1896 -- Séverin Ferandel (1896-1978) lives, in Basses-Alpes.
Travel agency interpreter, anarchist militant, syndicalist, ran
a radical bookstore, aided Spanish refugees, etc., while living
in France & Mexico.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/FerandelSeverin.htm

1899 -- US: Their demand that only union men be employed refused,
members of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) dynamite the
$250,000 mill of the Bunker Hill Company at Wardner, Idaho,
destroying it completely.

Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President
McKinley responds by sending in black soldiers
from Brownsville, Texass with orders to round up
thousands of miners & confine them in specially
built "bullpens."

1899 - 1901 saw U.S. Army troops occupying the
Coeur d'Alene mining region in Idaho.

1912 -- Terence De Vere White lives. Irish author of more
than two dozen books, literary editor of the "Irish Times"
& a leading figure in the cultural life of Dublin for over
30 years.

1915 -- Women's International League for Peace & Freedom
founded, The Hague.

1917 -- Visionary filmmaker, ethnologist Maya Deren lives,
Kiev, Ukraine.

I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick.

— Maya Deren

Maya did things in the Forties that other women didn't do.
Somehow we never got the idea that a woman could be a film
director. It's very difficult to conceive that something can be
done if it hasn't been done before. It always requires an
innovator, a heretic. & Maya was a heretic.

— Hella Hammid

1919 -- Germany: From April 29 to May 2, Munich:
Government forces crush in blood the Republic of the
Councils of Bavaria. Resistance results in many
hard-fought street battles. Many resistors are summarily
executed, leaving more than 700 dead.

1945 -- Poet Ezra Pound turned over to the American
Army by Italian partisans as a traitor.

Ezra Pound made pro-fascist radio statements in Italy during
WWII. Imprisoned in Genoa, then transferred to solitary
confinement in an outdoor wire cage near Pisa before
incarcerating him in a nut house.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, the US government
(like the Catholic church) is rehabbing Nazi's (read
"anti-communist" especially secret police, spies, scientists
& bureaucrats) in Europe & helping war criminals escape
prosecution & hiding them in South America & the US &
elsewhere.

1951 -- Viennese philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein dies,
Cambridge, England.

1961 -- England. 826 arrested in nuclear disarmament
demonstration, London.

1970 -- US: National Guard shoots seven students at Ohio State
University. "Teach your children well".

1970 -- U.S. secretly invades Cambodia.

1973 -- Over 15,000 attending a rock concert by Elvin Bishop,
Canned Heat, Buddy Miles & Fleetwood Mac are routed from
a baseball stadium in Stockton, California, by police firing
tear-gas canisters. More than 80 people, including 28 cops
are hurt & 50 arrests are made.

1975 -- South Vietnam: The last US troops flee. Seeing the
"light at the end of the tunnel", there is a mad scramble as
the last American troops gracefully fall all over themselves
in withdrawing from Vietnam. April 30, at 8:35 am, the
last Americans, ten Marines from the embassy, depart Saigon.

"...what we get mostly from the media & the textbooks
& the histories is ideological, biased not in the humanist
direction but towards wealth & power, expansion,
militarism & conquest...

So when I get to the Vietnam War I talk about how the
government manipulated the information, not only the
general public, but the newspapers, Congress, how they
fabricated incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin in the summer of
1964 to give Lyndon Johnson an excuse to go before
Congress & get them to pass a resolution giving him carte
blanche to start the war full-scale."

— Howard Zinn

http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/barzinn.htm

1992 -- Los Angeles riots kick off immediately following the
"Not Guilty" verdict in the Rodney King trial.

Despite a videotape documenting the episode, an
innocent verdict is returned in the savage police beating of
African American Rodney King, leads to the worst rioting in
Los Angeles history, with much destruction of property,
looting, 53 deaths & hundreds of injuries.

2000 -- US: Mid-Atlantic Anarchist Bookfair. Seth Tobacman
with slide presentation of his amazing artwork. Detrius (from the
band Angry Folk!) plays acoustic Anarcho folk punk. Len Bracken
on 'The artwork theory of revolution & a general theory of civil war',
from his book The Arch Conspirator.

___________________

The world that we have made as a result of the level
of thinking that we have done so far, has created
problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at
which we created them.

— Albert Einstein

___________________


— Auntie-Decor, 1997-2010

Daily Bleed for 4.27

TO MILTON.

   MILTON! I think thy spirit hath passed away
   From these white cliffs, and high-embattled towers;
   This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
   Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
   And the age changed unto a mimic play
   Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
   For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
   We are but fit to delve the common clay,
   Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
   This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
   By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
   Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
   Which bare a triple empire in her hand
   When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!

                 — Oscar Wilde

excerpts:

APRIL 27

AUGUST WILSON
Noted black American playwright, social critic.

FESTIVAL OF ART SABOTAGE.
     ____________________


1667 - Pound foolish?: John Milton sells "Paradise Lost",
written after he went blind, to Samuel Simmons for 10 pounds.

1737 - Large historian Edward Gibbon lives, England.

   Gibbon was smitten with Lady Elizabeth Foster, the Duke of
   Devonshire's mistress. He dropped, one day, to his knees with
   a proposal of marriage. When she bids him rise, the corpulent
   author, after a brief struggle, is obliged to admit that he
   can do no such thing.

1759 - Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft lives, Hoxton, England.

   In 1792, she  wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Women",
   one of the earliest surviving works of feminism. The treatise
   attacks the social forces that suppress women as the
   economic, political and intellectual inferiors to men.

   Labeled "a hyena in petticoats," Wollstonecraft died at an age
   prompting criticism that her death was the fitting punishment
   for such strong-mindedness. For the next century, women who
   similarly publish & defend their work will also damage their
   reputations.

1825 - US: The first strike for the 10-hour work-day,
by carpenters in Boston.

1825 - US: Robert Owen sets up Utopian Socialist
Colony at New Harmony, Indiana.

1855 - Jules Jouy lives (1855-1897), Paris. Songster, poet,
anarchiste, pioneer of the social song. An obsession with the
guillotine & its resulting dead lead him to madness, & he was
interned in an asylum until his death.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/JouyJules.htm

1894 - Trial of the French anarchist Emile Henry for bombing
the Terminus cafe February 12, 1894  & blowing up the Bons-
enfants police station, November 8, 1892.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/HenryEmile.htm

1942 - US: 16 pacifists, including A.J. Muste & Evan Thomas,
refuse to register for the draft (old guy's draft, age 45-65).

1945 - England: Three anarchist editors jailed for nine months
for "incitement to disaffection"..

1946 - James Oppenheim's poem "Bread & Roses"
published in Industrial Workers of the World's
(IWW) "Industrial Solidarity".

     As we go marching, marching
     In the beauty of the day
     A million darkened kitchens
     A thousand mill lofts grey
     Are touched with all the radiance
     That a sudden sun discloses
     For the people hear us singing
     Bread & Roses, Bread & Roses...

            — James Oppenheim (1912)

Mimi Farina, Judy Collins, & The Ranting Sleezos,
among many others, have recorded "Bread & Roses".

1957 - Italy: Situationist International (1957 - 1972)
founding conference, at Cosio d'Arroscia.

   The founding conference is composed of eight men &
   women from different European countries. Some founders
   of the SI came from radical art groups that emerged around
   1950 but were still little known: COBRA, called after the
   magazine of a northern-European (Copenhagen - Brussels -
   Amsterdam) group of experimental artists & members from
   the Lettrist International in Paris.

    http://www.bopsecrets.org
    http://www.nothingness.org/SI/

1960 - South Korea: Student protests in the wake of rigged
elections force the resignation of  US-backed Beloved &
Respected Comrade Leader President Syngman Rhee.

1962 - US: LA Negro uprising (according to "Eyes on The
Prize"). In Griffith Park, where BleedMeister used to hang out
in the mid-60s, 200 youths vs police when one is arrested for
horseplay on a merry-go-round.

1974 - A four-hour long battle with police occurs after the
Cherry Blossom Music Festival in Richmond, Virginia.

   The concert — billed as "a day or two of fun & music,"
   features Boz Scaggs, Stories, the Steve Miller Band & others.

1974 - US: 10,000 march in Washington, D.C., calling for
impeachment of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader
President Dick m Nixon.

1977 - Soweto protest starts demonstration against South
African educational system.

1986 - Captain Midnight (John R MacDougall) interrupts
HBO with an important public service message.

1987 - US: CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia is blockaded & shut
down by protesters of US policies in Central America &
southern Africa. 700 are busted.

1996 - US: Drinks On Us?: Twenty-seven arrested at Watts Bar
nuclear power plant, Spring City, Tennessee.

1997 - US: Grave Times? Seventeen activists protesting
continued funding of the School of the Americas are arrested
for digging a mass grave on Pentagon grounds.

2001 - Australia: N O  G O D S , N O  M A S T E R S:
Conference for an Anarchist Future,
in Melbourne, 27th -30th.

              "If You Don't Stand For Something,
                    You'll Fall For Anything"

2003 - US: 34th Anniversary Celebration for People's Park.

                 ____________________

      Companions, let's destroy all the prisons,
      Those walls which lock away our desires,
      That money may burn in the fire of passion,
      Let's change everything so that we exchange nothing.

                       — Raoul Vaneigem
                 ____________________


— Anti-Fall 1997-2010

Daily Bleed for 4.24

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
& hope & history rhyme.

— Seamus Heaney

Text excerpts:

APRIL 25
JANE JACOBS
American-born urban activist, alternative city-planner, writer.

Alternate Saints:

GEORGE HERRIMAN
"Krazy Kat" cartoonist, perhaps the finest ever.

GEORG SIMMEL
Sociologist, theorist of impersonalism & capitalist alienation.

Ancient Rome: ROBIGALIA, Sacrificial rites to placate the God of
Mildew.

ANTI-NUCLEAR DAY: Mutants for Nuclear Power -) say
"No Nukes is Not Enough!"
& "Better Living Through Radiation!"
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/humor/atomic.gif

Australia: ANZAC DAY.

______________________________



1792 -- France: The guillotine is erected in Paris at the
Place de Grève.
Quite the erection it is, too.

1816 - As Lord Byron leaves England in permanent exile,
friends arm themselves with firearms to protect him lest the
very sight of the poet incites a riot.

Consternation in Mayfair
Rioting in Notting Hill Gate
Fascists marching on the high street
Carving up the welfare state
Operator get me the hotline
Said, father can you hear me at all?
Telephone kiosk out of order
Spraycan writing on the wall

Look out, listen can you hear it?
Panic in the county hall!
Look out, listen can you hear it?
Whitehall up against a wall
Up against the wall !

— Tom Robinson Band
(from "Up Against The Wall")
http://www.tomrobinson.com/

1870 -- US: Tired of living as second-class citizens on Klamath
land & discouraged by failed crops during the government attempts
to convert them from hunting, Captain Jack & a group of 371
Modoc Indians leave the reservation April 25th or 26th, & return
to their ancestral lands near Tule Lake, California.

1878 - Anna Sewell completes Black Beauty, the Autobiography
of a Horse & dies, in England, after being invalided to her
home in Old Catton, Norfolk the last eight years. This
children's classic is said to have been instrumental in
abolishing the cruel practice of the "checkrein".

1892 -- France: The trial of Ravachol begins.

"Who is it — throughout this endless procession of tortures
which has been the history of the human race — who is it that
sheds the blood, always the same, relentlessly, without any
pause for the sake of mercy? Governments, religions,
industries, forced labor camps, all of these are drenched in
blood."

— Octave Mirbeau, "Ravachol"

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#25/1892

1901 - US: Licentious Communism?: New York becomes first state
requiring auto license plates ($1 fee).
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/car.jpg

1937 -- England: The benefit concert for the Spanish refugees,
which Emma Goldman has worked frantically to produce, is
held at Victoria Palace. With Paul Robeson's performance, it
is an artistic success but raises less money than Emma had
hoped for.

1944 - "Krazy Kat" cartoonist George Herriman dies, Hollywood.

1974 - Portugal: Armed Forces Revolt, the "Carnation
Revolution" begins, ending 48-year military dictatorship.

1982 - Australia: Women lay wreath for all women of all
countries raped in war, Canberra.

1984 - James Baker III is asked if he's ever been to a
Communist country. "Well," he replies,

"I've been to Massachusetts."

1993 -- US: Over one million march in Washington, D.C., for gay,
lesbian, bisexual, & transgender rights.

1996 - Australia: ANZAC Day. Swastikas painted on the front
door of Barricade Books, as well as other those of other local
anti-fascist activists. A local demonstration against fascist
organizing is held, & a march to the bookstore. It had previously
been harassed in 1995 by both cops & skinheads.

They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn

For the Fallen
—Laurence Binyon

2006 -- Canada: Urban activist, writer Jane Jacobs dies, Toronto.

_______________________


"Expect nothing from the state except your passport & your
ticket home to a prison of your country's choice. A free hotel
for you & your kind. The rats that came ashore with the cargo
have got a sporting chance of survival. They can hide & set up
house & they don't need a passport, & they don't speak out
except in times of plague."

— Ralph Steadman, from his introduction to "Waterstone's &
The Medical Foundation For the Care of Victims of Torture
celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights".



_______________________


— Auntie-Plague 1999 & a few years thereafter, or before,
please state your preference in 4 pages or less

Daily Bleed for 4.23

text excerpts:

RICHARD HUELSENBECK
Dada drummer of Berlin & Zurich. Marches to a
Different Drummer, in-deed.

England: 'DAYS OF SERENADES': 19th Century
festival of song & romance — continues until 30th

Bulgaria: EWE'S DAY.
Milking is done through a round cake with a hole in the center.

______________________________



1616 -- Playwright William Shakespeare dies; A curious will
awards his "2nd best bed with the furniture" to his wife, Anne Hathaway.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

— Henry VI, part 2

1860 -- Charles H. Kerr lives (1860-1944).

Kerr began a radical cooperative publishing house, still going
strong today. The son of militant abolitionists, Kerr was a libertarian
socialist, antiwar agitator, author, translator, vegetarian & scholar.

http://www.bookzen.com/publisher/p_kerrhist.html

1892 -- Richard Huelsenbeck (1892-1974) lives.
Prominent figure of the Zürich & Berlin dada movements. He was
an expressionist poet & writer & arguably one of the great pre-Y2K
drummers.

1902 -- Halldór Laxness lives (1902-1998), Reykjavík, Iceland.
Best known fiction depicts the hard living conditions of lower
classes, & weaves a tradition of sagas & mythology into social
issues. Recipient of the 1955 Nobel Prize.

1918 -- No Irish Fodder?: General Strike ends conscription
of Irishmen into British army during WWI.

1941 -- Newspaper headline:

EX-RED GUARD NAMES BRIDGES

Robert Wilmot, a former Portland, Ore., Communist,
expressed the opinion in the Bridges deportation hearing
today that "Harry Bridges is the greatest enemy the labor
movement ever had."

1942 -- Franklin Roosevelt addresses the
American Booksellers Convention:

"We all know that books cannot be killed by fire. . .

People die, but books never die. No man & no force can
abolish memory...."

Yep...but "they" do keep trying.

1946 -- Korean Anarchist Congress concludes (April 20-23), in Anwui.

1947 -- Bernadette Devlin, political activist lives.

1961 -- US: Right-to-Sing protest staged,
Washington Square Park,
New York City.
http://protest-records.com/

1968 -- US: Beginning of occupation & anti-Vietnam War sit-in
(23-30th) at Columbia University. 700+ arrested...
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#23/1968

1971 -- US: In the final event of Operation Dewey Canyon Three,
nearly 1,000 Vietnam War veterans return their combat medals
to the government.

The Vietnam Vets have planned to return the medals in body
bags, but authorities have erected a fence around the Capitol
building. So the veterans throw the medals over the fence.

1973 -- New Zealand: "Spirit of Peace" sails into French South
Pacific nuclear test zone from Tauranga.

1989 -- China: Students in Beijing announce class boycotts.

The commie government announces they can't —
given they're already classless!

1992 -- Satyajit Ray, Indian filmmaker, dies.

SATYAJIT RAY, SAINT 1998
Fine Indian filmmaker of daily life struggles of the poor.

1993 -- Death of Cesar Chavez (1927-1993), nonviolent civil
rights activist & founder of the United Farm Workers.

CESAR CHAVEZ, Alternate Saint
Organizer of migrant farm workers, "wretched of the earth."

1996 -- Ukraine: Nineteen demonstrators arrested in Kiev, during
illegal anti-nuclear protest marking 10th anniversary of Chernobyl.

______________

"An art of life in continual rising up, wild but gentle —
a seducer not a rapist, a smuggler rather than a bloody
pirate, a dancer not an eschatologist.

Liberation is realized struggle — this is the essence of
Nietzsche's "self-overcoming." The present thesis might
also take for a sign Nietzsche's wandering. It is the
precursor of the drift, in the Situ sense of the derive &
Lyotard's definition of driftwork. We can foresee a whole
new geography, a kind of pilgrimage-map in which holy
sites are replaced by peak experiences & T[emporary]
A[utonomous] Z[ones]s: a real science of psychotopography,
perhaps to be called "geo-autonomy" or "anarchomancy."

— Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone:
Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism

______________


— anti-CopyRite 1997-8000 or thereabouts, more or less

Daily Bleed for 4.21.2010

Courtesy of Recollection Books...

I pull on the stained blue briefs.
How in this sick and warring world could I have imagined
it was just about me, that nightmare's grief?

Janet Eigner
Wearing My Daughter's Underpants to the Peace March

Put you crayons down... Web version, precolored,
just for you, http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0421.htm

Text excerpts, in black & white,

JEAN-FRANCOIS LYOTARD
French philosopher, critic of the post-modern condition.

Ancient Roman: PARILA, honoring Pales, Protector
of flocks & herds.

FESTIVAL OF SACRED GROVES.
______________________________



1509 -- England: Feasting, dancing & general rejoicing greets
the death of Henry VII, the first 'modern' British monarch.

1519 -- Cortes lands at Veracruz, Mexico. Through
sheer bloodthirstiness (& the aid of European
diseases) a few hundred Spaniards manage to conquer,
loot, & enslave the millions of people in the Aztec empire.
In the name of King & Pope, anything is possible.

1812 -- England: Luddites. Food riot at Tintwistle &
machinery destroyed at Rhodes' woollen cloth mill.

1816 -- Charlotte Brontë lives (1816-1855). Novelist,
notably Jane Eyre, sister of Anne Bronte & Emily Bronte,
who described love more frankly than common in
Victorian England.

1834 -- 30,000 march for freedom of trade unionists
transported to Australia from Tolpuddle, Britain.

1838 -- John Muir, early western
naturalist/conservationist, lives.

1879 -- Javanese feminist Raden Adjeng Kartini lives.

1894 -- George Bernard Shaw's "Arms & the Man" opens
to the unanimous cheers of the audience, with the sole
exception of one who boos. Shaw bows to his
detractor:

"I quite agree with you, sir,
but what can two do against so many?"

1894 -- Dig This! US: Workers storm the prison in La Salle,
Illinois & liberate striking miners.

1898 -- Italy: In Ancône, anarchists go on trial (21st-27th)
for criminal conspiracy.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/1898

1910 -- Mark Twain dies, upon the reappearance of Halley's
Comet, which had last shone the year he was born.

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them
unwise & I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful.
If a man should challenge me now I would go to that
man & take him kindly & forgivingly by the hand &
lead him to a quiet retired spot & kill him."

1913 -- Andre Soudy, French member of the
Bonnot Gang, executed.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/1913

1918 --

"As 'Cholly Kokonino' would put it ~

The Whoest of the Whos were There.
The Dimless Dames of Coconino,
the Merry Wives in Full Galaxy,
The Representatives of
the "Desierto Pintado's" Social Apex.

Drifting now to a Lower Social Level,
We find 'Krazy Kat' Propelled by
a Great Sense, & urge of Kuriosity
on his Way to the Enchanted Mesa,
on Whose Topside, 'Joe Stork'
The Bird of Destiny, Makes his Home."

— George Herriman, April 21, 1918

Beatster Jack Kerouac described Krazy as,

"an immediate progenitor of the Beat Generation & its
roots could be traced back to the glee of America, the
honesty of America, its wild, self-believing individuality."

1945 -- Death of peace artist Käthe Kollwitz, in
Germany, notable for innovative technique & prints
conveying social justice themes.

I do not want to die . . . until I have faithfully made the
most of my talent & cultivated the seed that was placed
in me until the last small twig has grown.

— Käthe Kollwitz
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/1945

1948 -- American naturalist Aldo Leopold dies.

"When we see the land as a community to which we
belong, we may begin to use it with love & respect."

1967 -- Greece: CIA-assisted right-wing coup deposes
the elected civilian government; military junta takes over.

1968 -- Armando Borghi (1882-1968) dies. Important
Italian activist, propagandist. Friend of Malatesta's,
secretary of the large Unione Anarchica Italiana (UAI)
as well as the head of the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI)
in Bologna.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/BorghiArmando.htm

1980 -- Anti-American Label?: Frank Zappa's record label
refuses to release his single entitled "I Wanna Be Drafted".

1998 -- Jean-Francois Lyotard dies. Post-modern French
philosopher, libertarian revolutionary before the pressures of a
career & the ebbing of post-1968 hopes turned him into a darling
of the sociologists. Member of Socialisme ou Barbarie group.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/1998
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/12ref.htm#26/1997

1999 -- Australia: 'The Age' publishes the inaugural Lesbia
Harford Oration on behalf of the Victorian Women Lawyers,
delivered by John Harber Phillips, Chief Justice of Victoria.

Lesbia Harford was an I.W.W. labor activist & a strong
believer in 'free love'.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/1999

2001 -- US: FBI Raids Seattle Indy Media Center. Security
plans to protect Beloved & Respected Comrade Western leaders
attending a trade summit in Quebec were stolen from a car over the
weekend & posted, hours later, on a Seattle-based Web site.

Though the organization has violated no US law, FBI agents
seize computer-log records & staff & tell them "not to talk
about" the incident under threat of being held in contempt of court.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/2001

2001 -- Korea: Demonstrations nationwide, enraged over
the murderous police crackdown on a peaceful labor rally of
workers laid off by Daewoo Motors, which left 45 workers
seriously injured.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#21/2001b

2008 -- US: JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE
AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ

A nearly four year "homeland security" nightmare comes to an end.
Visual Studies Professor Steve Kurtz, practicing art in a time of terror,
became a “bioterrorism” suspect because of his art. A cofounder of the
Critical Art Ensemble (in 1987 with Steven Barnes) has won numerous
awards for its bio-art.

http://www.caedefensefund.org/


__________________

Make no laws whatever concerning speech & speech
will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on
paper that speech shall be free, you will have a
hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean
abuse, nor liberty license"; & they will refine & define
freedom out of existence.

Let the guarantee of free speech be in every man's
determination to use it, & we shall have no need of
paper declarations. On the other hand, so long as the
people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrannize will do so...


— Voltairine de Cleyre,
Anarchism & American Traditions

__________________


— anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less

Daily Bleed for 4.19.2010

 Brought to you by Recollection Books...

I woke up with a spot of blood
     over my eye. A scratch
     halfway across my forehead.
     But I'm sleeping alone these days.

     Why on earth would a man raise
     his hand
     against himself, even in sleep?
     It's this & similar questions
     I'm trying to answer this morning.
     As I study my face in the window.

     — Raymond Carver, "The Scratch"

Web version, updated:
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0419.htm

LORD BYRON
Wit, dandy, into incest & man-boy love. Died fighting
for Greek freedom & romantic ideals. Good poet, too.

SNAKES RETURN TO IRELAND DAY.

WORLD WEEK FOR LABORATORY ANIMALS.
Protest the torture & killing of animals during
"scientific experiments."

______________________________


1824 - British romantic poet Lord Byron, dies, 36, of malarial
fever contracted in a rainstorm in Missolonghi, Greece, where
he was drilling troops seeking liberation from the Turkish
Empire. His heart & lungs are buried in Greece, his body in
England.

  What is the end of fame? 'Tis but to fill
  A certain portion of uncertain paper:
  Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
  Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapor;
  For this men write, speak, preach, & heroes kill,
  And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper,"
  To have, when the original is dust,
  A name, a wretched picture, & worse bust.

       — from "Don Juan", Canto 1, stanza 217

       It was Byron who declared,

       "You may call the people a mob,
       but do not forget that a mob often
       speaks the sentiments of the people".

1854 - Charles Angrand (1854-1926) lives, Normandy. French
Impressionist, Pointillist painter & libertarian illustrator.
Influenced by Van Gogh, associated with Seurat, Cross, Luce &
Signac & other anarchist illustrators & Jean Grave's "Les
temps nouveaux".
 http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/AngrandCharles.htm
 http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/GraveJean.htm
 http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/SignacPaul/signacPaul.htm

1861 - The US Civil War claims its first fatalities: four
Union soldiers are stoned to death by a Baltimore mob.

1909 -- France: In Paris, Jean Goldschild, with Almereyda
(Eugène Vigo, father of the filmmaker Jean Vigo; his adopted
name, Almereyda, is an anagram: Y'a la merde), Rene de
Marmande, George Durupt, & others, are part of a group of
friends who form the "Fédération révolutionnaire" qui
préconise l'emploi de "l'action directe" for "La destruction
radicale de la société capitaliste et autoritaire".
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/08ref.htm#18/1969

1916 -- US: Benefit banquet for Emma Goldman at the Hotel
Brevoort is attended by notable artists, writers, socialists, &
doctors, including John Cowper Powys, Alexander Harvey,
Robert Henri, George Bellows, Robert Minor, Boardman
Robinson, & Rose Pastor Stokes.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/GoldmanEmma.htm

1943 -- Poland: 50,000 Jews remaining begin the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising: thousands of Jews rise in armed struggle against
Nazi deportations to extermination camps.

       On May 10th, some 75 survivors escape through
       the city's sewers.

       http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/04ref.htm#19/1943

1945 -- France: Louis-Ferdinand Céline is in deep doo-doo:
he faces arrest for collaborating with fascist Vichy
government.

       "Round up the usual suspects ........"

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/film/helpMe.jpg

1948 - Costa Rica abolishes its army. Pretty weird...

1957 -- Ian Heavens lives (1957-2000); Scottish
libertarian, co-founder of the punk/samba band Bloco Vomit.
A cofounder of the online Spunk Archives.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/HeavensIan.htm

1968 - Sexy Sadie, what have you done? You made a fool of everyone...

1971 - US: Several hundred Vietnam Veterans Against the War
begin an encampment on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. Launch
"Operation Dewey Canyon III" (April 19-23).

1993 - US: Tax Dollars at Whork? Whacko Federal agents attack
whacko Branch Davidian compound near Whaco, Texass,
whacking or incinerating over 80 women, men, & children.

1995 - Bombing of Federal Building in Oklahoma City kills 168.

   The bombing wrongly sets off a hunt for "Arab terrorists" &
   Muslims. Results in new laws suspending due process for
   non-US citizens. The crapshoot Constitution & Bill of Rights
   are again under attack in 2001-2, with Arabs & Muslims being
   arrested & held incommunicado without evidence or trial.

2001: Ethiopia: In a brutal attack by police, 39 people are killed &
over 250 injured on the second day of violent clashes in Addis
Ababa. Young demonstrators were supporting of a student boycott
of  lectures. "Addis Ababa looked like a city under siege as mobs
of youths clashed violently with police, creating anarchy all over
the capital." (BBC News)

2009 -- Author J.G. Ballard dies at 78. Famed for novels such as Crash
& Empire of the Sun. Susan Sontag called him "one of the most important,
 intelligent voices in contemporary fiction."

   His first book was The Drowned World, in 1961. His acclaimed 1984 novel
   Empire of the Sun was based on his prison experience under the Japanese
   during WWII.

   http://www.jgballard.com/

Daily Bleed for 4.17.2010

Brought to you by Recollection Books...

... a savage servility

slides by on grease.
— Robert Lowell

Web pot, brim full,
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0417.htm

APRIL 17

BENJAMIN TUCKER
Publisher, theorist of American individualist anarchism.

FEAST OF RANDOM WALKS.

_____________________________________________


1414 -- Isabelle la Boulangere fined for performing
an act of prostitution on this day (it is Easter Sunday.)
Inspires Playboy Bunnies & gives Catholic priests hope.

1854 -- Benjamin Tucker lives, South Dartmouth, Massachusetts.

"I have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection,
only that its results are vastly more preferable to those
that follow authority".
_________________


1863 -- Greek poet Constantine Cavafy lives (1863-1933),
Alexandria, Egypt. Published only about 200 poems, best known
to English readers from the many references to his work in Lawrence
Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

Daily Bleed patron Saint, 2003-05
Gay Greek,poet of spare, ironic subtlety.

1959 -- US: 22 arrested in Times Square for refusing to take part in
civil defense drill, New York City.

1959 -- 3rd SI conference, in Munich. The tract "Ein Kultureller Putsch während
Ihr schlaft!" (A Cultural Putsch While You Sleep!) is distributed on the 21st.

1961 -- Cuba: Defeat for Yanqui imperialism: the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion
of Cuba is routed.
http://www.patriagrande.net/uruguay/eduardo.galeano/memoria.del.fuego/19610417.htm

. . . remember, america
eugene debs said he would not
lead you into paradise if he could,
because if he could lead you in,
someone else could lead you out, that
was the text you ought to have
listened to, that was the text you
ought to have believed, instead you
bought a world free for democracy
& you bought a return to normalcy,
& you bought a new deal, & four
freedoms (freedoms you might only
have, anyhow, if you look deep inside
yourself where all freedom is to be
found, & not with rockwell hands so
carefully & badly drawn . . .& then
america they will be unnumbered for you, america)
america yes the square deal & the
new frontier . . .

— Joel Oppenheimer, excerpt, "17-18 April, 1961"
from Walter Lowenfels, Poets of Today:
A New American Anthology

1965 -- US: SDS leads anti-Vietnam War march in Washington, DC:
25,000 'March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam.' I.F. Stone
& Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska are among the speakers; Phil
Ochs, Judy Collins, & Joan Baez sing.

1986 -- Bessie Head — South African novelist/short-story writer —
dies, Bechuanaland, near Botswana. Wrote When Rain Clouds
Gather (1969) & A Question of Power (1973).

1989 -- France: Eugène Bizeau dies.

French vine-grower, pacifist, libertarian poet & songster,
member of the "Muse Rouge", Bizeau fought for his ideals
until his death at the ripe old militant age of 105.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/BizeauEugene.htm

2001 -- Brazil: Protesters across the country mark the 1996 killings
of landless protesters, planting crosses in city squares to honor the
victims, blocking bridges & McTossing McEggs at McDonald's
McRestaurants. Coordinated by the Farmworkers Movement which
is pressuring the government for speedier land reforms.

2003 -- Clifford Harper: Graphic Anarchy, An exhibition of Clifford
Harper's work, opens at the "Guardian's" Newsroom (-May 30). The
exhibition features over 80 images of Harper's most recent work.

Harper's distinctive style of bold illustrations has made
him one of the "Guardian's" most popular graphic artists.

Harper is a self-taught artist & has worked for many radical &
alternative publications, the international anarchist movement &
almost all of the UK national newspapers.

http://www.agraphia.uk.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/apr/10/ruralaffairs.countrydiary
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/apr/19/artsfeatures.art


2010 -- US: 4th annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair. One-day exposition
of books, zines, pamphlets, art, film/video, & other cultural & very political
productions of the anarchist scene worldwide. Additionally there are two
days of panels, presentations, workshops, & skillshares.
http://www.anarchistbookfair.net/


______________________________

— anti-FiftyCents a Year, 1997-3666

Until We Win: West Coast Solidarity Emerges in Response to Police Violence

From Portland's IndyMedia...

On March 22, a Portland police officer shot and killed a mentally ill houseless man at Hoyt Arboretum. Jack Dale Collins was an important figure in the Portland houseless community, known and loved by many. His killer, Chris Walters, responded to a call about a "drunk transient," of which Collins was neither, and shot him four times within three minutes.

This occurred around 3:00 PM. Within five hours, about fifty people had gathered in a public park on eastside to discuss strategic reaction to the second police murder this year. A spontaneous march to the Burnside precinct was lively and militant in nature. The same scene was repeated the following evening.

The following days were filled with a diversity of tactics in resistance to state and police violence. Organizations like Everyday People, who formed in the aftermath of the Aaron Campbell shooting, pursued reform along legal lines as they had before. Churches discussed community assemblies and planned speaking engagements with Jesse Jackson. The Portland anarchist community, which has been notoriously quiet for a few years, has exploded into action.


This seems to be indicative of a larger trend within the North American anarchist space. For several years, anarchists have been turned inward, creating a public face of the occasional animal or earth liberation communiqué and a whole lot of punk shows. Popular ideas seem to be moving to a place of open anarchist identification within larger communities, with dual focuses on insurrection against the state and solidarity-building projects within communities.

Anarchists and other radicals in Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Olympia picked up the banner of anti-police sentiment bravely after the March 29 march in Portland received much corporate coverage as a "riot." Friends of friends of friends exist in every major city. People were talking.

Within a few days, a call-out occurred for West Coast days of solidarity on April 8th and 9th. It is unknown which city first made the call. Pre-existing relationships between anarchists of different cities were used to coordinate action, as well as independent media websites such as Portland Indymedia and Indybay.

Thursday, April 8: San Francisco radicals planned to occupy a BART platform, an action meant to push for further accountability for the execution of unarmed Oscar Grant III by BART police on New Years Day, 2009. At 4PM, demonstrators flooded the Embarcadero Station platform and chanted. Hundreds of flyers handed out to commuters explained that there were officers involved who had not been investigated at all, and demanded that BART police as an institution are disbanded. As of this writing, no demonstrators have been arrested for the BART action.

635 miles north, in Portland, the first day of action was a road blockade at NW 13th and Everett by anarchists and other radicals. At 5PM, anarchists rushed into the street in full black bloc, quickly stretching caution tape between the four corners and moving pallets, planter boxes, dumpsters, and newspaper boxes into the intersection to strengthen their barricades. The intersection was chosen because it is historical to Portland. In 2006, Portland Police beat James Chasse nearly to death there. He suffered 16 broken ribs, 46 contusions, and multiple blows to the head. Chasse, a houseless poet and musician, died after being dragged into the patrol car. The entire incident happened in front of an upscale restaurant where people were dining.

Flyers were distributed about Chasse's death and anarchists held down the intersection for an hour, as previously planned. Demonstrators engaged with customers of the same restaurant about the lack of accountability surrounding Chasse's death. Corporate media noted that the police had "dispersed" the demonstration. However, this reporter's investigations indicate that the anarchists arrived and left on their own time. After an announcement about an assembly the following day, they melted back into the urban landscape. As of this writing, no demonstrators have been arrested for participating in the Road Bloc.

114 miles north. Olympia, Washington. At 7PM, between 30 and 100 people gathered in a parking lot. Many appeared to be anarchists, dressed entirely in black with masks and gathered behind a banner that read, "Jail the Cops, Burn the Prisons." The march proceeded towards the downtown area, occasionally erupting into militant action as members of the black bloc broke bank windows, spray painted anti-police slogans, and disrupted corporate media coverage of their actions. Eventually, 29 demonstrators were corralled and arrested. Most were booked and released. Two demonstrators were accused of attacking police officers, and two others of attacking a corporate media journalist. They made their first court appearances on Friday afternoon.

Police Commander Tor Bjornstad of Olympia remarked, "It may be related to similar protests in Portland, Oregon." Call-outs in the weeks leading up to the Days of Action and communiqués received later are open about the network of anarchist organizing. The solidarity actions took form all along the West Coast. Corporate media coverage is increasingly aware of the solidarity implied by the simultaneous Days of Action.

Friday, April 9th: About 100 people gather in front of Seattle community college and begin to march, snaking around Capitol Hill. The march seemed to be made up of an anarchist contingent, a houseless youth contingent, and a more varied crowd of demonstrators. The march was heavily policed from the outset, and police officers violently prevented marchers from taking the streets. After demonstrators attempted to pull a dumpster out and use it to protect themselves from the police, five arrests occurred. The arrestees appeared to be injured during the encounter. Only three of the five were booked and the march dispersed soon afterwards.

145 miles south. Portland, Oregon. As promised, the anarchists were back at the notorious downtown intersection at 5PM. This time, the police were not caught off guard. Bike cops and mounted police lined the streets, outnumbering the demonstrators markedly. However, the same public call-out that had stimulated police repression also invited many concerned members of the public, including students, houseless individuals, and parents. Flyers were dispersed to passersby and diners at the upscale restaurant explaining the Black Bloc tactic. Fox News and the Portland Police were disappointed when the crowd gathered in a large circle, found a facilitator, and proceeded to hold an intense discussion about the role of police in their communities, alternatives to the police, and the viability of different tactics of resistance. The assembly moved a few blocks to a park after about an hour, being joined by more families and a few angry folks in opposition. People spoke their minds, exchanged contact info, and the action was over by 7PM. Ending with "One chant to unite us all: Cops, Pigs, Murderers!"

The successes and failures of individual actions aside, we must count it as a victory that anarchists and other radicals were able to coordinate simultaneous actions in several cities. Widespread resistance indicates a widespread problem, which lends credence to the idea that police violence is not a few bad apples, it is a poisonous tree that must be uprooted.

Besides proving the ability of anarchists to coordinate nationally, this past few weeks of actions has began to hint at the power of those in opposition to the state. Corporate media has implicated fear at the reactions of anarchist response to continual police murder proving that they are becoming a legitimate threat. Not only in their ability to attack the state, but also to create healthy alternatives outside of it.

As of this writing, another man has been killed by police this weekend in Cornelius, Oregon. Based on initial information, it seems that the circumstances of his death were similar to the James Chasse murder. More actions are being planned. Will the fledgling network of West Coast resistance grow and respond to the constant threat of police murder? Only time will tell.

Daily Bleed for 4.15.2010

Brought to you by Recollection Books...

"As for me, I've chosen; I will be on the side of crime. &
I'll help children not to gain entrance into your houses, your
factories, your laws & holy sacraments, but to violate them."

— Jean Genet

THOMAS HART BENTON
Heartland painter, political radical, free thinker.

USA: TAX RESISTOR'S DAY.

USA: The Taxman Cometh!

IRS Terrorists demand war tribute (Pay or Die).

"Shake Your Money Maker" — Elmore James
"I Want My Money Back" — Saffire
"I Ain't Got No Money" — Buddy Guy
"Bucks in the Bank" — The Bobs

CONVERSATIONS WITH A TAX COLLECTOR ABOUT POETRY

Your form
has a mass of questions:
'Have you traveled on business
or not?'
But suppose
I have
ridden to death a hundred Pegasi
in the last
15 years?
And here you have —
imagine my feelings! —
something
about servants
and assets.

But what if I am
simultaneously
a leader
and a servant
of the people
... Citizen tax collector
I'll cross out all the zeros
after the five
and pay the rest. I demand
as my right
an inch of ground
among
the poorest
workers and peasants

— Mayakovsky

1755 -- Samuel Johnson's magnum opus, A Dictionary of the
English Language, is published. He says: "Dictionaries are
like watches. The worst is better than none, & the best cannot
be expected to go quite true."

1882 -- Pierre Ramus (true name of Rudolf Grossman) lives
(1882-1942). Propagandist & Austrian anarchist writer.

1889 -- Painter & radical Thomas Hart Benton lives.

1898 -- Blues vocalist great Bessie Smith lives, Chattanooga,
Tennessee.

"Gimme a pigfoot & a bottle of beer..."
"Gimme a reefer & a gang of gin..."

1915 -- IWW union Agricultural Workers Organization forms in
Kansas, Missouri.

1919 -- Start of victorious six-day strike across New England
by first women-led US union, Telephone Operators Department
of IBEW.

1934 -- US: Blue Moon Tavern opens, Seattle, Washington.
Some jokesters claim it opened on April Fools Day.

"Gimme a pigfoot & a
bottle of beer..."

"Gimme a reefer & a gang of
gin..."

The Blue Moon Tavern in
the U District opened its
doors on April 15, 1934.

It became a beloved hangout
of poets, the Beat
Generation & 60's activists
& gave new meaning to the
phrase "lit major."

Home of the famed
"Hammered Man"
sculpture — which the
Seattle Art Museum would
shamelessly ape with its
own sad version, inSIPidly
called "Hammering Man".

1938 -- Poet César Vallejo dies, Paris, France. Left his native
Peru in 1923, & once expelled from Paris in 1930 as a political
militant. Kept involved with Peru by publishing in "Amauta",
a journal established by his friend José Carlos Mariaátegui,
founder of the Peruvian Communist party.

1960 -- US: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), one of the main organizations of the civil rights
movement, forms. In the late 60s it becomes a black militant
organization & far from non-violent in position.

1961 -- Cuba: CIA invasion force lands at the Bay of Pigs.
A fiasco, defeated within two days.

1967 -- US: First mass burning of draft cards as 400,000 march
in New York City & 80,000 in San Francisco opposing the
Vietnam War. Culmination of April 10-15th Vietnam Week
featuring draft card burnings & turn-ins & anti-draft recruiter
demonstrations all over the country. In NY addressed by
Martin Luther King, Jr., McKissick, Stokely Carmichael,
Benjamin Spock.

1972 -- US: April 15-28, the nation experiences a new wave of
antiwar protests on campuses & near military & defense-
industry installations — with hundreds of arrests across the
country.

1980 -- Marxist existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre dies, Paris.

"I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers
marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow,
like stone.

I want to create an omelet that expresses the
meaninglessness of existence, & instead they taste
like cheese.

I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. "

1984 -- Australia: 250,000 attend nuclear disarmament rallies
across the country.

1986 -- Saint Jean Genet dies in Paris. French criminal, social
outcast later turned novelist & a leading figure in the avant-
garde theater & a political radical.

Genet, like Artaud, believed the theatre should be an
incendiary event. He also portrayed the gay world openly,
without apology or explanation. Genet's sense of solidarity
was even stronger with thieves, & others of society's
dispossessed. In later life, he championed the causes of the
Black Panthers in the US & Palestinian soldiers in Jordan &
Lebanon. His final work, Un captif amoureux (Prisoner of
Love), is a record of his years spent with these two groups.

Jean Genet died in a hotel room of the same working class
district where he'd been abandoned as a child 75 years
earlier. He is buried in Morocco.

1996 -- The rest of Jerry Garcia's ashes are scattered near
the Golden Gate Bridge in Frisco. A small portion
were scattered in the Ganges River in India 11 days ago.

1997 -- Sam Moskowitz dies. American science fiction editor & author.

He was dedicated to the past, not the present or future.
His prose, which Sid Coleman once suggested read as if
badly translated from a middle-European language. At one
point in the fifties, Dick Ellington "edited" Sam's writing
for him, significantly improving it. One wishes Dick had
kept doing it longer than he did.)

In 1960 or thereabouts, NYC fandom divided into two
general factions: the sercon types, exemplified by Sam, his
wife Christine, & Belle Dietz, who ran the Lunarians & ESFA —
& the Fanarchists, exemplified by the Riverside Dive/Nunnery
group that included Ellington & Bill Donahoe. They socialized
together to some extent, but took potshots at each other in
the pages of local fanzines.

2000 -- US: 5th Annual Frisco Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair.
Special guest: songster U. Utah Phillips.

2010 -- US: Tax time for everybody in America but the filthy
rich & those with corporate loopholes.

[& you know who you are!]

please read the following IRS form carefully:
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/DotCom1040.jpg
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/images/BB/breakfastofchampions.jpg
_____________________
"How can you help resenting the absurdity of time, its march
into the future, & all the nonsense about evolution &
progress? Why go forward, why live in time?"
— E.M.Cioran

_____________________

— Auntie-Time 1997-2010 or thereabout, more or less
(depending on the exact time)

Book merchandise gets weird

Liked the book? Buy the mug — or the shower curtain, or the soft toy, or the golf balls
_______________________
This was so awesomely disgusting I just re-posted it in full. Well, actually the one thing lacking is the picture of the guy from that Mormon bitch's Twilight series and an entertaining caption about him being on a shower curtain for teeny-boppers to caress with their virgin menstrual blood before supplicating, genuflecting, Eucharisting, wolfing down Communion, or attending Ordinance or some Temple ritual. I'm not sorry, I abhor what organized religion combined with capitalist economies and modern armies have done to the poor people of this world. But we still sell the Bible... Not to rag on Twilight too much, but it, like lots of other heralded texts of yore, is just pop propaganda; though I am glad to see the tourist trade picking up in Forks, Washington. Way to cash in on the Vampire Zeitgeist. I'll do her and Rowling the same honor paid to Tolkien and Lewis and not read their crap 'til after they're dead. Less tempting to pick a fight then, ya know? Hey, is anybody reading this blog? Leave some comments already, I could use the fucking ego-boost.

__________________________

It must be a great disappointment to those responsible for making pots of money from modern culture that the average reader doesn't very often buy into related merchandising. The science fiction and fantasy industries will knock out a fully poseable, collectable action figure of the key grip who worked on the umpteenth Harry Potter movie quicker than you can say "life-sized Quidditch broom", but those aside, you don't see many people walking around in Martin Amis T-shirts or carrying Da Vinci Code umbrellas.

Distressingly, it seems as if the great majority of readers are happy to just read the book, and maybe stretch themselves to see the movie adaptation at some point. But marketers, take hope: there are those out there who apparently can't get enough of their favourite authors and will happily buy pretty much anything, if some of the products available on the internet are anything to go by.

I like to think of it as Fluffy Cthulhu syndrome. I know we're back in SF country again, but the prevalence of soft-toy representations of HP Lovecraft's slimy Great Old God, described by the writer as "a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind" seems appropriate shorthand for some rather astonishing literary merchandising ideas. Lovecraft's fans generally being more fun than a barrel of Shoggoths, we can assume the fluffy Cthulhu thing is done out of irony and mischief, but how on earth do you explain the creative and commercial processes that led to the creation of a shower curtain bearing the image of vampire hottie Edward Cullen from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books?

Given Twilight's cinematic presence, it's perhaps understandable that all manner of strange merchandising will ensue, but look at a cult author such as Hunter S Thompson and the weirdness continues. If you're in the sort of job that requires you to hand out business cards, consider for a moment what the people you deal with on a professional basis would think if you pulled out a cardholder bearing the Fear and Loathing author's quote: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me".

I do quite like the idea of a bracelet featuring covers of banned books, which makes a nice statement: while it's not quite my style, it makes a decent stab at creating something literary and classy. So far, the only other merchandising that really seems to hit that spot is from Penguin, with their mugs, notelets and even deckchairs riffing off the classic Penguin branding.

Gift shops at sites of literary importance are a great source of rather unbelievable products. Visit the Mark Twain online gift service, and you can avail yourself of a bust of the writer to give your library extra gravitas, or, if you're in the market for something a little less expensive, a set of Mark Twain golf balls. The rise of inexpensive internet-based merchandising by the likes of Café Press has seen production costs for even the strangest item brought right down: memorabilia can be produced by the handful rather than the warehouse-load. Thus, having a poke around Café Press, you may find yourself wondering how you ever survived without an Allen Ginsberg scatter cushion (no "pad" is complete without one!), or a teddy bear wearing a T-shirt bearing a picture of his Beat brother Jack Kerouac's grave.

On that note, I have my own literary merchandise confession to make. On my desk in front of me, as I type this, is my Jack Kerouac mug, bought a good 15 years ago from a shop in Oxford. That's my soul bared: over to you.

I Took LSD w/ Groucho Marx

from the 1960's recollections of writer/activist Paul Krassner

I've taken LSD in all kinds of unusual situations:
when I testified at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial;
on the Johnny Carson show - Orson Bean was guest host
I was also sort of a guide for Groucho Marx once.

while I was researching the Manson case I took acid with a few women in the family including Squeaky Fromme and Sandra Good. It was a kind of participatory journalism....Otto Preminger made a movie called Skidoo. It was pro-acid propaganda thinly disguised as a comedy adventure.And the part of God was played by Groucho Marx.

Recently Tim Leary cheerfully admitted to me: "I was fooled by Otto Preminger. He was much hipper than I was." ... Anyway, Ram Dass kept seeking illumination and having his feet kissed by strangers, while I stayed at home and got a call from Groucho Marx.
He was going to be in an Otto Preminger film called Skidoo, and it was pretty much advocating LSD, and he had never tried it but was not only curious but also felt a responsibility to his audience not to steer them wrong so could I get him some pure stuff and would I care to accompany him on the trip?
.... I did not play hard to get.

The acid with which Ram Dass- in his final moments as Dick Alpert failed to get his guru higher was the same acid that I had the honor of taking with Groucho Marx. As I left the bank vault that week, I was breathing slowly and deeply so that I would not laugh my ass off in the lobby.

We ingested those little white tabs one afternoon at the home of an actress in Beverly Hills.

Groucho was interested in the social background of the drug. There were two items that particularly tickled his fancy.

One was about the day acid was outlawed. Hippies were standing around the streets waiting for the exact appointed minute to strike so they could all publicly swallow their LSD the exact second it became illegal. The other was how the tour bus would pass through Haight-Ashbury and passengers would try to take snapshots of the local alien creatures, who in turn would hold mirrors up to the bus windows so that the tourists would see themselves focusing their cameras.

I told Groucho about the first thing I ever sold to the old Steve Allen show. It was a sketch called "Unsung Heroes of Television. " Among the heroes was the individual whose sole job it was to listen intently the whole half hour for somebody to say the secret word on "You Bet your Life and then to drop that decoy duck when the word was said. He told me about one of his favorite contestants "a gentleman with white hair, on in years but a chipper fellow. I inquired as to what he did to retain his sunny disposition. "Well, I'll tell you, Groucho," he says "every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy that day."

We had long periods of silence and of listening to music. I was accustomed to playing rock 'n' roll while tripping, but the record collection here was all classical and Broadway show albums. After we heard the Bach "Cantata No. 7 Groucho said, "I may be Jewish, but I was seeing the most beautiful visions of Gothic cathedrals. Do you think Bach knew he was doing that?

There was a point when our conversation somehow got into a negative space. Groucho was equally bitter about institutions such as marriage ("like quicksand") and individuals such as Lyndon Johnson ("potato-head") Eventually, I asked, "What gives you hope? Groucho thought for a moment .... . Then he said just one word out loud: "People."

After a while, he started chuckling to himself. I hesitated to interrupt his revelry. Finally he spoke: "I'm really getting quite a kick out of this notion of playing God like a dirty old man in Skidoo. You wanna know why? Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?" "Always?" "If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people laugh" And right after he said that, his eyes began to tear.

When he came back from peeing, he said, "Everybody is waiting for miracles to happen. The human body is a goddam miracle." He mentioned, "I had a little crush on Marilyn Monroe when we were making Love Happy - I remember I got a hard-on just talking to her on the set." During a little snack: "I never thought eating a fig would be the biggest thrill of my life." He held and smelled a cigar for a long time but never smoked it.

"Everybody has their own Laurel and Hardy," he mused. "A miniature Laurel and Hardy, one on each shoulder. Your little Oliver Hardy bawls you out-he says, 'Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into.' And your little Stan Laurel gets all weepy -"Oh, Ollie, I couldn't help it, I'm sorry, I did the best I could. . . ' "

The year after that, I was heavy into my Manson investigation. During the acid trip with three of his family members Squeaky Fromme, Sandra Good and Brenda McCann I got an even more awesome compliment. Sandy Good had once seen me perform at The Committee in San Francisco. Now she was saying to me, "When people used to ask me what Charlie was like, I would compare him to Lenny Bruce and Paul Krassner." My heart thumped rather strangely.

Sandy had been a civil-rights activist. But Charlie Manson stepped on her eyeglasses, threw away her birth control pills, remolded her personality and transformed her value system. So now she was parroting Charlie's racism and asking me to tell John Lennon that he should get rid of Yoko Ono and "marry his own kind." I've never met Charlie Manson, although I've corresponded with him. But I have heard a tape of his rap, and he definitely used humor as a tool for evil.

For the first time I understood in my guts what Groucho Marx had meant about misusing the power to make people laugh. After our acid trip, I had only a couple of contacts with Groucho.

The first concerned a rumor that he had said "I think the only hope this country has is Nixon's assassination.
I wanted to verify whether he had actually said that. "I deny everything", he joked, then admitting he had indeed said it over a luncheon interview with a now defunct magazine, Flash. "Uh, sorry, Mr. Marx, you're under arrest for threatening the life of the president. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed A Night at the Opera. Here, now, if you'll just slip into these plastic handcuffs...."

Think of this as a piece of combat history. To fully understand the context in which this battle for the will has been taking place, you need only retrace the chronological profile of G. Gordon Liddy from his role as a Poughkeepsie district attorney who raided the Millbrook mansion where LSD was an experimental sacrament to his function as a CIA operative who offered to assassinate Jack Anderson on behalf of the Nixon administration. Had Liddy been given the go ahead, columnist Anderson wouldn't have been around to embarrass the Carter administration into not invading Iran, and we might be in the middle of World War III at this very moment.

I had assigned Robert Anton Wilson to investigate the game being played at Millbrook. In my capacity as standup comic and drug virgin, I had been poking fun at all the highs I'd never tried. Wilson came back and presented me with our cover story, "Timothy Leary and His Psychological H-Bomb." After it was published Leary called to invite me for a weekend at Millbrook. Working with him were Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert. Somehow, despite all the accoutrements of Eastern religion, the scene was quite American. Even this top level of the psychedelic hierarchy consisted of a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew.

Yet they were performing a cosmic task, this trio of Ph.D. dropouts, helping to spread the expansion of consciousness in the middle of a sadomasochistic empire whose perpetuation depended upon the mass contraction of consciousness. Originally, the CIA had intended to use LSD as one more means of manipulating the population. That scenario backfired. A generation who trusted their friends more than their government deprogrammed themselves from the society that had shaped them, and then reprogrammed themselves , into an infinite variety of incarnations. The think tanks had not formulated a contingency plan for this counterculture that was refusing to be brainwashed into becoming consumer and military zombies. This -mutation!-would certainly have to be discredited.

LSD influenced music, painting, spirituality and the stock market. Tim Leary let me listen in on a call from a Wall Street broker thanking him for turning him onto acid because it had given him the courage to sell short.

Daily Bleed for 4.9.2010

Courtesy of Recollection Books

After the offending bit is popped out
these tiny stitches on your neck

are exquisite. Lips of the slit
don't speak the way you think they should,

break into stupid song, blow kisses
at the doctor. . .

— Rachel Loden, "Lives of the Saints"

a few modest excerpts:

C
H
A
R
L
ES
B
A

UD
Y ...
L
A IRE


"Be drunken always with wine, poetry ... even with virtue"
— our tipsy translation from The Flowers of Evil

NAME YOURSELF DAY.

ALL IS OURS DAY.

HOCKTIDE: celebrates a battle in 1002 when
Saxon women defeated the Danes.

____________________________________________


1553 -- Francois Rabelais dies, Paris France.
His last will states:

"I have nothing. I owe much. I leave the rest to the poor."

1821 -- Charles Baudelaire lives (1821-1867), Paris.

One of the great 19th century French poets, who formed
with Stéphane Mallarmé & Paul Verlaine the so-called
Decadents.

"Genius is
childhood
recaptured."

See Kenneth Rexroth articles in Classics Revisited or
More Classics Revisited.

1834 -- France: In Lyon, the insurrection of the Silk workers begins.
It is the beginning of the "Sanglante semaine" (Bloody Week).

1879 -- William Claude Dukenfield, a.k.a. W. C. Fields,
lives (or Jan 29?).

"Taint a fit night out for man nor
beast..."

1898 -- US: American Renaissance man Paul Robeson lives,
Princeton, New Jersey. Football star, actor, singer, black
liberation fighter.

During the Cold War, Robeson was not allowed to leave
the Land of the Free & the Blacklist virtually destroyed his
career.

Exiled communist, with a voice so international that it
could be heard on the only juke box in the only public bar
in the only hotel in Ulan Bator, Mongolia during the bad
old days of Stalinism.

He renounced his US citizenship.

1908 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade President
Moose Roosevelt investigates legality of not only barring
anarchist propaganda that advocates political violence, but also
prosecuting those who produce the material.

"...When compared with the suppression
of anarchy every other question sinks into
insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy
of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, &
his is a deeper degree of criminality than
any other. No immigrant is allowed to
come to our shores if he is an anarchist; &
no paper published here or abroad should
be permitted circulation in this country if it
propagates anarchist opinions."

— Beloved & Respected Comrade
Moose President Teddy Roosevelt,
Message To the Senate Committee on
the Judiciary Regarding Transmission
Through the Mails of Anarchistic
Publications
April 9, 1908

1919 -- The 8th 'Dada-Soirée', at the
'Kaufleuten-Saal'. During a reading of Walter Serner
the audience begins with interjections & finally
some of them attack the stage. The whole
auditorium is in commotion & Dada-Zurich ends
in tumult & chaos — just as it began.

1927 -- US: Massachusetts: Death sentences for "those
anarchist bastards" (quote from the trial Judge Thayer
during the trial) Nicolas Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti
are upheld.

excerpt...AMERICA

...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 . . .

— Allen Ginsberg

1928 -- The 20th century's greatest living American classical
composer, arranger, musician, singer: Folk singer, protester
Tom Lehrer lives.

I'd like to take you now, on wings of song
as it were, & try & help you forget for a
while your drab, wretched lives.

— Tom Lehrer, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"

1932 -- Yippie! The 20th century's greatest living American journalist,
"The Realist" editor Paul Krassner, lives! Accompanied Groucho Marx
on his first LSD trip, co-founder of the Youth International Party. Yippie!!

"A jealous Thai woman has been arrested for
cutting off her husband's penis. The Thailand
police say 42 similar crimes have been reported to
them in the past 15 years.

What marks this incident as different is that she
tied the severed penis to a helium-filled balloon &
watched it float away."

1948 -- Colombia: If they do not kill him, Jorge Eliécer
Gaitán will be president.

Buy him, they cannot. To what temptation will he
succumb who despises the pleasures, who is single,
who eats little, drinks nothing & refuses anesthesia
to remove a tooth?

— ¡Lo mataron! ¡Lo mataron! —

In the street, three shots. Time has run out, Gaitán is
left unemployed . . .

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is assassinated. Listening,
earthquake noises, a human avalanche comes to him
above. From suburbs & hills, advances a whirlwind,
a hurricane of the pain & wrath comes sweeping the city,
breaking show windows, upsetting street cars, setting
afire buildings...

— Eduardo Galeano, Century of the Wind

1956 -- US: African American Singer Nat King Cole is beaten
up by a group of racial segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama.

1969 -- US: Deanie Babies?: Harvard students take over the
campus administration building, ousting the deans. 300 led by
SDS seize University Hall. More action to come over next few days.

1976 -- Folk singer Phil Ochs hangs himself at his sister's
house, Far Rockaway, NY.

"It is wrong to expect a reward for your struggles.
The reward is the act of struggle itself, not what you win.
Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the
world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's
religion. That's art. That's life."

1997 -- Mad Cow Disease — while much of the world shuns
British cows, a Cambodian newspaper suggested yesterday that
the animals be shipped to Cambodia & allowed to roam free &
detonate the millions of land mines littering the country.

"The plan is simple, practical, & will make mince-meat
of the problem overnight"

2005 -- US: Detroit Soccer Riot!!! "If revolution can't be fun,
then whats the point?" Rioting practice begins.
_________

HENRI LEFEBVRE, 1947

To understand this properly, we need to
think about what is happening around us, within
us, each & every day. We live on familiar terms
with the people in our own family, our own
milieu, our own class. This constant impression
of familiarity makes us think that we know them,
that their outlines are defined for us, & that
they see themselves as having those same
outlines [...] But the familiar is not
necessarily the known [...] Familiarity, what is
familiar, conceals human beings & makes
them difficult to know by giving them a mask
we can recognize, a mask that is merely the
lack of something. & yet familiarity . . . is by
no means an illusion. It is real, & is part of
reality. Masks cling to our faces, to our skin;
flesh & blood have become masks.
_________
— anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less