bling bling! glittery me
Well, now I know I’ve really made it. My friend Jenna, who used to live with Barrett Brown and is currently Facebook-engaged to Adrian Lamo, has Glitterified me. First the ninja trading card, now this. And all of DramaSec has been hammering that post ever since, wondering what the hell is going on.
Absolute, positive proof that bitching about moving house pays off.
First Nations pony is also overjoyed
When I mentioned on Facebook that I was coming to the wild Penticistan steppes above Ruralopolis, I never thought that the locals would take it upon themselves to create a Welcome video for me. Apparently, they were so overcome with joy at the thought that soon the mighty raincoaster would roam the sagebrush slopes above the lake, gibbering softly and occasionally making nameless sacrifices on mysterious altars on the hilltops, that they created this gloriously Canadian multiculti work of art to welcome me.
It appears they think I do not know what is meant by the term “Indian pony” but we will let it slide. After all, OMG PONIES!
A very passable impression of Mildew Manor
So, remember that the Big Move was this past Monday? Well, THERE IS STILL MOVING TO DO, Gawd help me. Today I hired a couple of guys to take out my heavy furniture and put it in the dumpster, because let’s face it, the particleboard bookcases are just not worth keeping, now that they’ve gone all soggy and rotten on the bottom. And the sofabed/loveseat is a) emerald green b) faded c) excruciating to sit on, so out it goes. And what did those nice young men do, other than cost me $60 (well, in fairness they agreed to do it for $20 apiece, but then one of the new twenties literally flew out of my pocket when I pulled out my keys and was claimed by the sky gods, as it was entirely THAT KIND of a day if you know what I mean)?
They broke my only working lamp, for which I did not have a replacement bulb. And the switch was neatly snapped off as well.
So, that put an end to my plan to sift through the rubble on the floor and look for things I needed to keep. Which is awkward, because the carpenter who lives next door is desperate to get his hands on the place and start renovating, motivated in large part by the fact that there’s a pianist on his other side (I don’t even have the vivacity to make a dirty joke at this point, CAN YOU SEE HOW STRESSFUL THIS HAS BEEN?) and he’s tired of being woken up by construction at 7:30 Monday to Friday and Beethoven at 7 on Saturday and Sunday. As Fran Lebowitz would doubtless say, if he wished to be awakened by Beethoven, he would sleep with Beethoven.
All of which is to say that his plan to rip up the carpet tomorrow is going to have to wait until 10 at the earliest, lunch most likely.
And now, the horrifying pix! Yes, direct to you from Mildew Manor, we present:
Dapper Fawkes
Hero. Revolutionary. Soldier. Assassin. Loser.
Guy Fawkes? Or Christopher Jordan Dorner?
“#Dorner killed two civilians. But the State is making it about much more than that. This is a message about social control. #wakeup”
L3ft-Libertarian
Mainstream media and the general public reacted with understandable consternation to the news that Anonymous, or at least parts of the famously fractious internet hive mind, adopted accused spree killer the now-late Christopher Dorner as a new icon, a rallying point if not a hero. Dorner, a former University football star, LAPD officer and Navy pilot, was on the run from the police and accused of killing three people when he died of a single, allegedly self-administered gunshot as police burned the cabin in which he was hiding to the ground. A million-dollar bounty had been put on his head, and in a contentious move the government authorized the use of drones to locate, if not assassinate, him, one of the first times drones have been used against American citizens on American soil.
“One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.”
Jeremy Hammond
Dorner’s fame stems not primarily from his actions, but rather from his powerful manifesto shared on Facebook in which he stated his intention to kill as many police officers as he could, in what he said was revenge for institutionalized racism among the LAPD and the way he himself was victimized. His first two claimed victims, however, were guilty of nothing more than being related to an officer who had drawn his ire. Meanwhile, the LAPD seemed like a more-malevolent Keystone Kops, having failed to located Dorner, mistaking two little old ladies for the so-called “Chocolate Rambo” and firing on them.
“Anyone else feel like the safest place to hide from LAPD gun fire is directly behind dorner? @YourAnonNews #Dorner #LAPD”
TheRaven
At first glance, Dorner seems little different from many another political revenge killer, from Andrew Kehoe to George Sodini: above average intelligence, good training, strong work ethic, and a powerful moral center. A man, in short, with every reason to expect success in life, who nonetheless tragically failed at the goal closest to his heart, and snapped as a result. For Dorner, it was a career as an LAPD officer.
For Guy Fawkes, it was bringing about a Catholic revolution in Protestant England by blowing up Parliament.
Unlikely icons for any movement, however splintered and self-contradictory, but it is their very failure which makes them eligible for the role.
“Guy Fawkes, as far as Anon is concerned was chosen because he failed. Fight Club is much closer to Anon’s culture. If people wonder whether Anon supports Dorner (no, just the LAPD meltdown) because of Guy Fawkes, G.F. was always a joke. What’s clear here: the subtext. Drones, fear, Erin Burnett the shark jumping drone hawk, this is like with Kony: war mind games, the whole lot of it. We cut thru dog and Kony show early on. Same here. Dorner is LAPD’s karma. Guy Fawkes a failure.”
Hectoring Hegemon
Anonymous’ public “face” was once a faceless stick figure cartoon known as Epic Fail Guy, a self-deprecating identifier for 4chan members, a group which at the time largely saw itself as basement dwelling wankers. But awesome basement-dwelling wankers. Anonymous emerged from 4chan, essentially evolving into its internet pranking arm. Not long after his creation, Epic Fail Guy stumbled across a Guy Fawkes mask, put it on, and the rest is history. Truly: English history.
Once OpChanology, the in-person protests against Scientology, was initiated in 2008, Anons needed a way to identify themselves as Anons while hiding their faces, and facelessness of the shiny green morph suit (another 4chan/Anon favorite) was not accessible to many people. The Guy Fawkes mask was chosen because, thanks to the anarchist (originally anti-Thatcherite) movie V for Vendetta, it was both affordable and ubiquitous worldwide. Revolutionary echoes handed down from Fawkes himself added to its appeal, as long as you didn’t look at the history too closely; however, the semiotics of the mask were actually directed at Scientology, intended to brand it a failure. Fawkes, after all, had to replace his gunpowder stock when the first stash deteriorated, failed in his attempt to get Spain to invade England or support his revolution, failed at this ultimate attempt to take out Parliament, and at last succeeded in killing himself. Score one for the revolutionary.
Instead of registering as a symbol of “Fail,” the heroic/outsider aspects of the mask were taken to heart by the public at large (who had no knowledge of 4chan’s history) and ultimately by Anonymous itself, which is not immune to the warm fuzzies given to our cultural icons. It’s better to be a lost, noble cause than a basement-dwelling wanker, no?
Remember: Epic Fail Guy = failure. Guy Fawkes = failure. Christopher Dorner?
A colleague and friend of Dorner’s was interviewed on KPFA’s Hard Knock Radio, and claimed the benefit of small-A anonymity, calling himself “Ben.” When asked why, he said, “I have an interest in raising my children. Someone might have an animus against me for speaking the truth, and that’s what I don’t want to happen.” And that is what Chris Dorner was talking about.
A new Facebook manifesto, written by former LAPD officer Joe Jones, has surfaced, and echoes many of the accusations of racism and nepotism that Dorner made. Jones, however, repeatedly stresses that taking lives is not the answer, is never the answer, and is clearly not about to “go rogue.” Respect for the rule of law is currently unfashionable, and is insufficiently controversial to make Jones a renegade hero, however much courage was involved in speaking out with honor about dishonorable truths.
Was anyone, ever, willing to put money on Dorner’s achieving the goals of his manifesto? To eliminate institutional racism in the United States, to retroactively win his police hearing, to clear his name, and yet to simultaneously die while killing as many LAPD officers as he could? Would he ever have been embraced, even conditionally, if people truly believed that there were any chance of his ultimate success? People prefer dead (or obviously doomed) martyrs to live, inconvenient revolutionaries. They are easier to incorporate into political narratives. They are less likely to repudiate their earlier beliefs.
They are simply more convenient.
Christopher Dorner the man had already passed into legend long before his mountain hideout was surrounded and burned.
“Whatever pre-planned responses you have established for a scenario like me, shelve it. Whatever contingency plan you have, shelve it. Whatever tertiary plan you’ve created, shelve it. I am a walking exigent circumstance with no OFF or reset button.
The only thing that changes policy and garners attention is death.”
Christopher Dorner
“The real story here is that methods of oppression by our corpos are now coming home. From PERF to drones, we. let. it. happen.”
Hectoring Hegemons
But when it comes to what Hunter Thompson used to call the shitrain it’s always easier to watch a movie than to look in a mirror.
Mildew Manor and me
So, this has basically been my position every day for the past, say, TEN YEARS, ever since I moved into Mildew Manor. Within a week, I noticed black mildew in my bedroom, where a concrete structural column comes up quite near the bed. The building manager told me to keep the bedroom warm and it would eventually go away, which it did after I coated the entire column in bleach, only later finding out that causes the mold to release spores or weaponize or some godforsaken thing.
About four years ago, I started to notice greyish stripes in my living room walls, coming down from the ceiling. I didn’t know then it was black mold on the uprights, but I do now. For some reason, I assumed the stripes were my fault, maybe from burning something on the stove, or the candles, or maybe incense, and the “extra gravity” of the uprights attracted the microscopic particles. Yeah, I was drinking a bit at the time.
By the time I found the mushrooms growing in my carpet and the hole eaten in the wall behind the tv, however, the jig was up and I knew it was not my fault. It’s ZEUS’s fault, damn him. Eventually the co-op fixed the eavestroughing, so the water no longer cascaded down the wall outside, right where the tv is. And eventually the carpet became so wet it would no longer support any fungus this side of blue-green algae. And eventually the mildew decided it was being too geostationary, and started spreading across the walls everywhere, giving the place sort of a greyed chicken pox look. It’s very Derelicte!
Not to mention the incessant soundtrack. We’ve had two years of construction at the co-op, and it has finally reached my apartment (they’ve been trying to work out their courage, I guess) and so every day I have been waking up to a symphony of sledgehammers and jackhammers and smash, crash, boom, to the point where the entire bed shakes, not to mention the two I call the Fuckery Twins with their vocabulary. Seriously, nobody should start with that vocabulary until I’ve had my coffee. Bring back the nice supervisor who did bird calls and sang to himself; he was nice. I bet he was cute, too.
Anyway, for the curious, here is the soundtrack to which I awaken each day at 8, which is awkward since I work each night till 4.
Anyway, 300 words to say that in ONE MORE WEEK I will never have to deal with this place again (other than sending in my tax assessments for the last three years so they don’t sue me, welcome to co-op living). And I’m telling you, I cannot wait.
Since the power’s off, because I DO NOT WANT TO BE ELECTROCUTED BY MY BASEBOARD HEATERS, I sleep with three empty whiskey bottles full of hot water (yay for central hot water) and one actual hot water bottle, and it works very well under my eiderdown, Hudson’s Bay Blanket, and down-filled full length parka. For lights, I use a railway lantern from Army & Navy which would work well if it weren’t made in China and thus leaks as soon as you set it on a hard surface. And that, when it works, works well.
And that, my friends, is how I’m going to be packing up my apartment over the next five days, God help me.
raincoaster 