PraCESSEO Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2010

http://www.archive.org/details/processedworld29proc PROeeSSED WORLD Summer/ Fall 1992 • Issue 29 ISSN 0735-9381

Walking Heads, p. 2 collective editorial N4arriages of Inconvenience, p. 50 Exile on Market St. by Marinus Horn as told to Poetry, p. 32 Louis Michaelson Letters, p. 5 John Ross, loanna-Veronika, David Fox, Farouk from our readers Asvat, Alejandro Murguia, Clifton Ross Blood Money, p. 52 Tale of Toil by Faye Manning KouN LoK, p. 12 Exiles in the Heartland, p. 35 Exile on Market St. by Mickey D. Exile on Market St. by Kwazee Wabbit Commie To America, p. 54 Exile on Market St. by Salvador Ferret Get The Message: Downtime!, p. 38 Mercury Rising Has Risen!, p. 16 Paperslutting by Stella, VDT Law Fails, interview by Chris Carlsson This Is Now by Tom Athanasiou Reviews, p. 57 I'm Uprooted, Now I'm Home by Med-o Ingenuity And Its Enemies by Chris Carlsson Pond Hopping, p. 22 Sabotage Stories, p. 41 Exile on Market St. by Frog Excerpts from a new book edited by Martin Sprouse with Lydia Ely The Swineherd, p. 62 Tale Toil Mark A Briton In Exile, p. 24 of by Menkes Exile on Market St. by Iguana Mente Same Old, Same Old, p. 46 fiction by Summer Brenner Front Cover: Tom Tomorrow Where And Back Again, p. 28 Exile on Market St. by D.S. Black Back Cover: Tracy Cox

PW COLLECTIVE: Primitive Morales, Mickey D., Frog, D.S. Black, Chris Carlsson, Louis Michaelson, Denim Dada, Kwazee Wabbit, JRS, Zoe Noe, Ellen K., Iguana Mente, Mark B., La Czarina, Severin Head, Curtis Interruptus, Other Contributors to PW 29: Markus, Jennie, Shelley Fern Diamond, Ace Backwords, Tom Tomorrow, I.B. Nelson, Tu-Lan Restaurant, Traveller's Liquors, Melissa Roberts, Med-o, Clayton Sheridan, Doug Minkler, Chaz

Bufe, Angela Socage, Joven, The Stranger, Solly Malulu, Hugh D'Andrade, no thanks to the worthless distributors at Routledge, Margot Pepper, Rick Gerharter,

Martin Sprouse, Lydia Ely, So Fun, Karen, J.F. Batellier, Dapper Dave, and many others whose names we can't remember right now. . .

The material in Processed World reflects the ideas and fantasies of the specific authors and artists, and not necessarily those of other contributors, editors

or BACAT. Processed World is a project of the Bay Area Center for Art & Technology (BACAT), a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation. BACAT can be contacted at 1095 Market Street, #209, San Francisco, CA 94103; PW or BACAT may be phoned at (415) 626-2979 or faxed at (415) 626-2685. Processed

World is collectively edited and produced. Nobody gets paid (except the printer, the Post Office/UPS and the landlord). We welcome comments, letters,

and submissions (no originals!). Write us at 41 Sutter St. #1829, San Francisco, CA 94104. Processed World is indexed in the Alternative Press Index. WALKING HEADS

he Processed World office is X corners of the globe. work and social life and vote with our located on Market Street, near San As we sojourn our way into the gray feet. Francisco's Civic Center. Down the 90s, the solution favored by today's Racism and bigotry are bursting from hall is the world headquarters for the hardline leaders to poverty and dis- beneath the surface as every society

Wobblies (the Industrial Workers of placement is to create new homelands faces new stratifications and increasing- the World — I WW). Across the for the homeless. The Berlin Wall may ly raw competition. "English Only" laws street is the empty Odd Fellows' have fallen, but a new fence has risen have been passed in state after state. In building. On United Nations Plaza, near San Diego, to stem the "human Southern California, yahoos organize flood" from Latin America. to Food Not Bombs feeds the hungry Woe Lights-Across-the-Border campaigns to those "outsiders" — the grubby homeless, intimidate Mexican immigrants, while and homeless, risking arrest and the swart gevaar (black peril), yellow around the country Black nationalists persecution from City Hall (since menace, wetbacks, and other bogeys — whip up hysteria against Koreans in January, headed by an ex-police who demagogues attack as undesirable. scattered urban areas. chief mayor) while an vigil AIDS In the posturing that passes for politics, One Senate candidate from Orange enters its seventh year. We are politicos everywhere are scrambling to County, Congressman William Danne-

surrounded by the ruins of Market score points on this issue — this is, after meyer, wants to put the National Guard Society: an abandoned Greyhound all, an election year. and the military to work "securing" the station, seedy bars and liquor stores, Today we see the largest population U.S.'s exposed underbelly. In 1989 a and an earthquake-damaged, ap- movements in history, within nations, group called The Coalition for Border parently condemned U.S. Court of continents and around the planet. Mo- Security issued a pamphlet, "An Open Letter to Congress," and subtitled "Our Appeals and Post Office building. bile, migrant, temporary, "precarious" work is becoming dominant with the borders are out of control." It reads: Contemporary urban nomads — the collapse of welfare states and the rise of "Hundreds of thousands of illegal immi- homeless — strive to make a home in two-tiered societies. As the British band grants and billions of dollars of narcotics makeshift doorway shelters, shoot- Gang of Four put it, "a force called hard are being smuggled into the United ing galleries and shopping cart/tent cash moves my feet." We move from one States [through] an open border. . .we cities. job to another as employers "downsize" cannot continue to wink at wholesale The physical world we inhabit was firms, cut production, transfer work violation of U.S. sovereignty." The created by humans — not freely, but in elsewhere, demand "flexibility," or until diatribe goes on to call for the "repair, the service of capital. Abandoned in- we just can't stand the monotony of replacement and extension of fencing dustrial rustbelt towns like Pullman, and other appropriate physical struc- Illinois, or Gary, Indiana, are entirely tures" along the Southwestern border the product of market relations, socially plus increased funding for the Immigra- and spatially organized to meet indu- tion and Naturalization "Service" (INS, strialists' needs for labor and resources. aka La Migra). Signatories include Ed- When the factories close there is little to ward Abbey, Gerald Arenberg (Nation- keep people there. Some people escape, al Association of Chiefs of Police), either by luck or by education — but Richard Dockery (regional director of where can they escape to? the Southwest NAACP), Edward Va- We live in an era of unprecedented lencia (chairman of the Santa Ynez economic globalism. Multinational Band of Mission Indians), William capital can shift production (e.g. tex- Winpisinger (president of the Machin- tiles) from Montrecil to Mexico to ists International) and Albert Shanker Malaysia to Los Angeles. Technology (president of the American Federation makes faraway places more accessible: of Teachers). railroads, photographs, satellites, and Organized labor's traditional xeno- computers collapse space and time. phobia reflects longstanding anxieties Decisions made in London or New York about wage levels being undermined by boardrooms have immediate conse- migrant workers willing to work for less. quences for people on the other side of Migrants are perceived as doing the the world. While entertainment techno- dirty work of the bosses; in the U.S. the logies slowly homogenize world cultures multitude of languages and cultures has into Disneyish Hollywood mediocrity, been an effective deterrent to unified cheap transportation and tourism en- resistance. The INS exploited these courage long-distance dispersion and insecurities in 1986 with its "Operation the widening reach of market relations Jobs" program of sweeps against undoc- into the most obscure and isolated wumii^siimDi.....j«Mti'V umented Latinos. "Progressives" help photo by D.S. Black

PROCESSED WORLD 29 legitimize such campaigns when they too demand "jobs," instead of income, or (heaven forbid) a drastic reduction of work and a radically different way of life. In doing so, they help perpetuate an obsolete relationship between work and life. Let's be frank: most of what we do on our jobs is a complete waste of time and nobody should do it! Jobs are an artificial, wasteful and dehumanizing way of organizing useful human activi- ties. Creative freedom and making a useful contribution to society are usually blocked by the 9-5 grind.

* * *

Much immigration to the U.S. today is a direct result of its imperial history. A migrant workforce is useful to capital because the "social" costs of reproducing labor— costs of education, training and survival — are borne elsewhere. Today it is not only California's agricultural sec- tor which is dependent on an imported workforce (who live in serf-like condi- tions) but also the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley. Companies like Oracle deliberately hire educated Asians and Indians because of their vulnerability before the immigration court (the ad- vantage of "working papers"). No matter which way the "brain drains," U.S. universities are similarly dependent on curious outsiders coming to this coun- try; in 1986, U.S. universities awarded more engineering Ph.D.s to foreigners than Americans. Why should U.S. companies concern themselves with the local education system, when the "fore- UNEMPLOYMENT, n. Escape from the shackles of a dull, soul- ign product" can do the job just as well? destroying job into the manacles of economic desperation. (Send PW your contributions to an upcoming issue on Education!) Calls for protectionism and the jingo- embrace of consumption and invest- ganizing" among transient and atom- ism of politicians, CEOs and union ment, a relation to a bank or landlord. ized workers. The situation hasn't officials ("Buy American") are all efforts For the lucky ones who can scrape changed much since then. Looking to blame plummeting middle-class liv- together a down payment, home be- forward, transience and atomization are ing standards on "lazy workers." The comes an entry into the rising (or — more likely to increase than diminish. elimination of the safety net and attacks these days — falling) land values game. Recognizing this, we embarked on this on wage levels of the last decades have For the unlucky ones erecting cardboard issue seeking contributions on the theme been propelled by an effort to make shelters in abandoned lots, "home" is a of Immigration. The articles and tales people work harder — to squeeze the temporary respite from the elements, or that appear, however, are less about most profit out of our "human resources." perhaps only a distant and confused Immigration than about Exile, both in The unwritten message of the recession memory. The same market forces that the literad sense that results from leaving is: Be Glad To Have A Job! Your have hurled individuals across the plan- one's original home and culture behind, Patriotic Duty in the Trade Wars of the et in search of elusive dollars have also and in the metaphorical sense that many New World Order is to Work-Work- ripped apart families, homes and com- of us drawn to radical politics and Work! munities throughout the U.S. alternative cultures feel. Our theme this In a society ailmost completely shaped Green politics based on "community," issue is "Exile on Market Street," refer- by abstract market forces, what do "bioregion," or "municipality" empha- ring to our location in San Francisco, people become attached to, and why? size the importance of where you live but more significantly, the exile we are

What does it mean to belong to a place over what you do. But is it likely, all subject to in the world market. or an environment, to be "at home"? Of possible, or even desirable for people to A half dozen Processed World regulars course, home is not just a place, or even stop moving around? In 1987 Processed check in with their own tales. Frog a shelter, but also a daily, unavoidable World examined the problems of "or- escapes a martial Paris in the post-'68

PROCESSED WORLD 29 Electronics Assembler 48 years old • Origin: Malaysia • Union Free Comes with small dowry Metal Worker SEOUL possibly marriageable Robust • Servile 25 years old Completely Alcohol Free highly qualrfied Union Free Religion: Moon • Sober • Punctual Inexhaustible • Polite

era and tries a few lily pads out before became a "freak." Mickey D.'s Koun cians, and representative democracy in leaving a bad green card marriage and Lok is an account of his stint among this quadrennial Year of Empty Frenzy. landing in San Francisco in Pond newly arrived Cambodians in San Chris Carlsson contrasts a couple of Hopping. In Where & Back Again, Francisco's Tenderloin, finding their books about that elusive category "tech- D.S. Black checks his imperial baggage way through the bizarre rituals and nology" in Ingenuity and Its Enemies at the border with the U.S.'s neighbor to artifacts of daily life in the U.S. Alejan- in the review section. Stella has advice Ross, As- "Paper- . dro Murgia, Farouk the north . . but finds that Canada was a John for temps in DOWNTIME'S mere foreshadowing of the many frac- vat, Clifton Ross and loanna- slutting." Brief looks at the recently tured lines dotting the map, careening Veronika d\\ offer poetic contributions overturned San Francisco VDT law and like rails across many faultzones, from to our theme. a bizarre conference of entrepreneurial the Balkans to the Pacific. Fellow Anti- Of course we also have a number of eco-capitalists round out the section. Economy League traveler Med-o takes pieces on Processed Worlds traditional Two sets of running graphics a look at Romanian exile poet Andrei turf: a local small press. Pressure Drop, throughout this issue are excerpted from Codrescu's The Disappearance of the Out- is publishing this summer Sabotage in the forthcoming productions: The JR side in our review section, and finds a American Workplace. Excerpts are pre- Swanson grafix with definitions by Chaz deep resonance in his own life as a sented in Sabotage Stories. In Get The Bufe are from The American Heretics metaphorical exile, persistent traveler, Message: Mercury Rising Has Risen! Dictionary (See Sharp Press: 1992), and and member of the alien nation. In Chris Carlsson interviews several San the Hobo Graffiti images are from Bill Exile in the Heartland, Dr. Kwazee Francisco bike messengers — always a Daniel's half-hour documentary "Who Is Wabbit, Ph.D. takes a witty look at the vibrant subculture — who have brought Bozo Texino?" exile communities inadvertently thrown forth a new magazine. Mercury Rising. We were happy about the great letters together in the bastion of American The current economic disaster besetting we received since the last issue. As an normalcy. Southern Illinois University daily life in the U.S. gets a look from unpaid, volunteer project, that's what in Carbondale. Two British members of different angles in our tales of toil and keeps us going, along with interesting the PW collective contribute stories: fictional contributions: in Summer and relevant submissions. We especially Iguana Mente describes his accidental Brenner's Same Old, Same Old an need more punchy graphic art, car- migration in A Briton In Exile, and office worker leaves one job only to find toons, and fake advertisements. Future Louis Michaelson relays a wild story of the next one virtually indistinguishable, themes we're talking about are The green card marriages from Marinus ultimately finding a new answer to the Future, Education, and Sex/Drugs/ Horn in Marriages of Inconvenience. pressures of her daily life. Faye Man- Pleasure. All kinds of graphics, photos, Salvador Ferret grew up in Puerto Rico, ning describes a harrowing descent into stories, analyses, etc., are welcome — Argentina and Mexico. In Commie To marginality, literally selling a part of please send us copies only! America he tells how he came to the herself (but not soul) to feed her family Processed World, 41 Sutter St. #1829, U.S. as a young teen. Revolted by the in Blood Money. The Swineherd, a San Francisco, CA 94104. Tel. 415- xenophobic, racist, plastic culture he tale of toil from Mark Henkes, is our 626-2979, Fax 415-626-2685. E-mail encountered in Colorado Springs, he token recognition of the election, politi- pwmag@well . sf . ca. us

PROCESSED WORLD 29 .

Office Realities

er its readers to deal with the very real mailbox. Dear Processed World, wrongs it agonizes over (maybe somebody Hasta la vista, Thanks for such an excellent piece of wants it that way). You on the other hand P.G.-JohnsonCity, NY journalism on the modern office. I'm fed up have dared stick your politically-incorrect with it being glamorized in the media in films noses into the restricted areas of manage- 1992-The Year of ?? like The Secret of My Success, Working ment, engineering and finance to show us

Girl, and dire (I TV shows like LA Law the bigger picture. Dear PW- watch Manhattan Cable— maybe you guys Like I said some years ago, what I'd I'm proud to say that I have every single should make Processed World a TV pro- really like to see from PW is an issue issue of PW and always look forward to the gramme). You guys show office life as it devoted entirely to people who've strug- next one. FOOD FOR THOUGHT. . really is, repetitive routines, demoralizing gled for years with shit jobs and yahoo I haven't written to you folks in a long and unhealthy atmosphere, uncaring and bosses, extricated themselves through luck while. This year has not been kind to me. I

unsympathetic employers, and sexist. I and/or determination and who now have lost my job in January due to the Reces- don't think anybody has or will write a livelihoods which they enjoy and make a sion. Lost the love of my life in February,

more accurate account of office life than I decent living at (please don't mistake me followed closely by the only other man in found in your anthology Bad Attitude. for a typical life "success seeker" — I'm inter- my whom I love and trust (both now live Your humor is great and articles your are ested in survival stories; most self-help on Vancouver Island in beautiful British never over our (office workers') heads books make me retch). [Ed. note: Check California). After a brief (too brief) spell of which is always a bonus. It's the first out 10th our anniversary double issue, feeling good about myself, I was hit by the political manifesto for the service sector »26/27, on "The Good Job. "] First of all worst trauma of my life— the death of one working class. though, I'd like to see PW back in my of my devoted cats. This emotional up- Keep up the good work and don't let the bastards grind you down. Yours, S.J.-Perth, Scotland, UK P.S. Office anarchy is alive and well in Scotland! ^,^^^-%

9 3 Kudos from an IBM worker

Dear Bay Cats and Chicks:

I haven't seen hide nor hair of Processed World for over a year now (your "vaca-

tion" issue was the last one I received). I

hope it hasn't gone the way of Working Papers, Place or Madness Network News. What sets PW apart from most "peo- S 16 ple's" newspapers and magazines is that you aren't out to flog any party line, though of late you've started to sound like mainstream anarchists (how's that for an oxymoron?). Still, you've represented all colors of collars, blue, pink and white, and you've discussed in great detail how "the job" affects the rest of one's existence. All we've had in the way of worker press for

many years here in Broome County, NY is the Community-Labor Reporter, a throw- away newspaper published by a local "anti-poverty agency" that seems to be AMERICANISM, n. 1) The desire to purge America of all those loosely modeled after the Daily World and qualities which make it a more or less tolerable place in which to live; month after month, endlessly regurgitates 2) The ability to simultaneously kiss ass, follow your boss's orders, the same old whines and whimpers about callous corporations and unfair welfare swallow a pay cut, piss in a bottle, cower in fear of job loss, and agencies; it's very depressing to read, and brag about your freedom. in my opinion does terribly little to empow-

PROCESSED WORLD 29 .

Good Jobs and Other Oxymorons hours. . .enough for you to resemble

Munch's "Woman on the Bridge." I love Next time you're stuck at a railroad Dear PW: wearing my thrift shop rags to the horror of Although cutting and pasting do not my dressed for success co-worker, or crossing, ctiecl( out ttie sides of normally fit into my "job description," I felt openly talk about gay phone sex, or write ttie boxcars. inspired after reading the double issue pornography to/with my other co-worker.

#26/27, "The Good Job." So, I spent most What I do have to endure is working the of my morning cutting and pasting, making sleazy world of retail and am constantly copies for surreptitious company distribu- exposed to its soul-less mechanizations.

tion. Doing it on company time made it all The game is easy: sell low quality mer-

the more sweet. Now that I am back from a chandise for inflated prices to unsuspect-

long relaxing lunch, I can begin to type my ing "consumers" who really believe that

thoughts out. this or that product will somehow fill a In my mind the term "the good job" is an need that does not exist in reality, but is oxymoron. In capitalist economies there fabricated by the mass medium, advertis-

can never be anything except selling la- ing. Just think what would happen if

bor/time for money, always for the exist- people stopped buying the bullshit! It ing order, and for the god Commerce. would make the (inevitable) current reces-

Even if one has the "luxury" of being sion look like a Gump's display. Keep up self-employed, that person always submits the good work!! to the economic regime. The bottom line is Widget -S.F. money. WHO IS BOZO TEXINO? ALWAYS

And About Art. .

PW: heaval was like losing my best friend, lover, Who's writing these pictures? Tramps? Just got issue 24. What a dilemma. and favorite child in one fell swoop. I'm still Railroad workers? Moving into art . . . definitely a sensible not over it! proposition. Moving into green-party-ism

As the year of 1991 wanes, I find myself means ideology. . .that means starting to little in with very to look forward to 1992. read on page 1, and taking it a page at a The thought occurs to me— how much time. Art means starting anywhere and worse can things get? And the answer? flitting about. We can only take so much of

DON'T ASK! I am sure that things can get boring jobs, and perhaps only read so a lot worse than they are now, and not just much of ranting about boring jobs. There's for me but for everyone. Years of living a bit of an upturn over here, some people beyond our means will finally catch up with writing about zero-work and possibilities us, on a global scale. I anticipate the worst, (an anti-work stance is more often than not which is summed up in my present philos- an anti-work POSE)— a care of putting ophy of life: theory into practice— and not practice into 1. NOTHING MATTERS. theory. Also there are a few people looking 2. NO ONE CARES. into "information age" and the current 3. EXPECT NOTHING. shifts toward fascination with information

(Think about it. . .) and meta-data. Adopting a stiff "anti-

R.B.— Toronto, Canada technology" stance is a problem as it

Who Profits?

Dear Processed Individuals,

My life has made more sense since I Much of our early life is spent preparing Some of the train pictures you'll see a found Processed World. I use a computer for the working world: learning how to bunch of times If you keep looking, as a tool to create art work and teach consume from parents and television. Ad- some of ttiem you may only see once. computer graphics to college students to justing to the tedium of school work isn't pay the bills. Your analysis of the effects of any different than adjusting to the tedium computers on the workplace is a welcome of work-work: it's just a different cell. We relief from the attitudes of students and even learn to accept that we can't change colleagues alike who too often view the the existing order. In other words, just grin computer as a panacea to the world's and and bear it and hope that you have enough . *- ml lyt^^l*^ their own problems. Valiums to last until the next round of When things still don't work out perfect- pleasant unemployment. ly after learning the hardware/software the The undeniable horrors of modern work solution is always "More hardware or make Processed World a Godsend. Like software." any decent commodity critic, I extol! your While the is technological revolution virtues with aplomb: I laughed, I cried, I exciting and in many ways inevitable, only despaired. people with the courage to ask "Who I am rather lucky, I think. I don't have to profits and who gets manipulated by the endure those frightening hierarchies, the new technology?" can expect to meaning- confining straightjackets most people wear fully shape the debate. to work, or toil as much as I have had to in Keep up the good work! the past. Try legal researching for a living, P.B. -Cleveland, OH or keying 12,000 numbers an hour for eight

PROCESSED WORLD 29 assumes some kind of precise division have been released, the paranoia of the "technology/not technology," and we P.W. Botha era has subsided, and yes,

need critical discussion around "technolo- is no war, this is massacres, exterminates thank God, repressive legislation has been gy" in its various formats (communica- Croatian fight for freedom but they are repealed. tions, information, silicon chips...). [Ed. weaker than Serbia, they need help. But The free flow of information has been

note: See the review "Ingenuity and Its what is world doing? Nothing. Because restored to a level unknown to my genera- Enemies" in the review section of this issue they haven't money, gold. Money are tion (I'm thirty years old) — one can hardly for more on this very topic] But plenty of freedom, money are happiness, money are believe that three years ago one could go to prison for publishing pictures of Mande- artworks is a good thing. Cut down on the all. But I and certainly many other live rantings, it's depressing, drift a bit with people think that this isn't truth. And one la and his mates! Yes, everyone can where they want, work where they want, and your stories, open up channels of possibili- warning: In 1914, World War I started in in theory, is afforded to ties of what could be, why it isn't, and how Serbia. Thanks and keep up your good equal opportunity, to get there. work. everyone. Till then, Your sincerely, But all those privileges and rights are Barney Dog -Sheffield, U.K. L.V. — Prievidza, Czechoslovakia part of the scenery in any "democratic," free society. There is no need to applaud A Warning from Central Europe News from South Africa them, not in South Africa in any case. The bottom line is the same as every- Dear Processed World! Dear Processed World, where on the planet: A person with a roof, in I have read articles which you send me Are you guys still hanging there? The a reasonable dinner and kids in school

and which are telling more about your last issue I laid eyes on was No. 23 way makes a poor revolutionary. Some of you

work. I think that it, what you are doing, is back in 1988. I have about seven or eight might think that this sounds like an over-

very interesting and important because in copies of different issues, and cherish simplification, but that is reality here. (I

this time on the world are few people them like gold! I decided to write and hear think many locals don't even realize it.) It

which don't want and don't find only whether you still exist. I hope I am not really is a knife-edge between social stabil- money for every things. disappointed! ity and social degeneration a la Yugoslavia. is Many articles are written about AIDS, I don't know whether you have had What really terrifies me the potential terrorism. Northern Ireland, massacres in someone come here and do a report on SA for a typical African pseudo-dictatorship to

South Africa and war in Kuwait. This all is recently, but I'd like to give you a bird's eye come to power, complete with racing horrible. War in Kuwait is ended. But view of local conditions anyway. Presidential motorcade and trigger-happy

should she have ended if Kuwait hadn't Since my last letter was published in comrades. And don't give me that bullshit money and oil? No! Why? #21, well, a couple of things have changed about local cultural peculiarities. From May 1991 fight in Europe two here locally, haven't they? Or have they? Please send me a copy of anything nations: Serbia and Croatia. Serbia attack The old dictum: "The more things change, you've published on South Africa since

Croatians village and towns. They destroy the more they stay the same" seems to be #23. I am kind of a media nut, and am there. They are killing not only soldiers but particularly true in the case of South always on the lookout for discussions many civilians, women and children. This Africa. Yes, imprisoned political leaders regarding my beloved fatherland in the

PROCESSED WORLD 29 TWISTED IMAGE by AceBackwords©im uh, WHftT IeV.'.' It:s the Bu51M£S5 of gxcUSE ME EXACTLV (^UT ISN'T THAT ILLEGAL?? •^AND BESIDES, EVEN IF VOU G£T^ susiNESS IS BosiNiEss, Inc. // DOES 6-8.8vlNC- PRODUCE? '^WELL, WHO CARES? N060C>V:s CAUGHT, Vol) just spend a VEAR (N FNOTHING/ BASICALLV^E"^ TRACK ANVWAVS, ASIDE KlINIMUM SECURlTV, PLAVING TENlJiS , FIRST VO(J WRITE A CtJECK-.THEhJ KEEPINJG HAVING CONJUGAL VISITS. .AND JUST 5CREIA/ AROOND WITH HEADS Of BANfCS// AND VOU DEPOSIT IT IN THIS flCCOl^fJT.-.- I FROM THE THEN; WHEN NO- WHEN VOU GET OUT; VOUR HOUSE Ohl TRANSFER THE ACCOUNT To THPiT CORP- PAPER... AMD ArJD THEV^RE THE BIGGEST ADD A THE RIVIERA IS STILL WAlT/NG Fbf? SELL THE COf?pORATlON/ TO BCJDV'S LOOKING, WE OF ALL.',' HOK/ DO VtoU ERftTlON- CROOKS ASK TtiEM "JUNK Of £)^TRA zeros To. THOSE ^^OU!'. TUSr SUE VOURSELF ToR, BflNKr I COUPLE THINK m!i' GOT ALL UrtiiPSELF- CROOKS .'/y /N LIEU ACCOUNT//^"^ TfjEIg A/WE5^ BOND" oiiPTcV COLLECT DAMAGES OUR BANK EXTKA 2ER0S AFTER NOW; EXCUSE OF STOCK CANCEL ORlGlfJAI^CriECK^ ME. I'VE GOTtA make A f^W MORc MiaioNS 8V LUNCHTIME.'.'

THERE'S NO BUSINB5 UKEBOSINESS Bt)SlNES5.'|

foreign press, especially if that press is one tious consumers and Shopping-for-a-Better- heavy industry, including Union Carbide,

worth pricking your ears for! World-heads, who treat politics as just an Kerr-McGee, and others of that ilk. Take care, enlightened version of calorie-counting. My vocation is writing fiction, poetry and

C.D.-Hillbrow, South Africa Even demonstrations seem more like con- playing guitar. Like all such misfits, I've sumer events than genuine political acts. In had to take "straight" jobs from time to Dragging the Guardian into the 21st C. organizations like the Guardian, politics isn't time so I could keep myself housed and Dear Folks, something you do or enact or live, but fed. I've worked temps, general clerical, something you possess; and "good politics" assembly/ production lines, loading docks, Well, barring a change of heart, it looks can be used to increase your status in the like your prediction of how long I'd last at UPS (2/4 years there), washed dishes, hierarchy, and to get in the Guardian (3-4 months seemed to be the your way power flipped burgers. . .well, the list goes on, struggles. It's like a little protocapitalist consensus) will be right on target. From my and so do the usual horror stories. economy, with politics playing first staff meeting where we fired someone the role of Reading Processed World helped me for "gross misconduct," to the discussion capital. keep in mind that there are others out there over whether new members can vote But I could gripe about the Guardian with Certified Bad Attitudes, and that my forever. luck with the magazine. (decision: they can't, not for 4 months, Good small circle of cohorts and I aren't as alone Stay in touch. as and even then only if the Central Commit- we sometimes seem. Take care, tee—excuse me. Coordinating Commit- Congratulations on producing a fine N.M.-NewYork, tee—approves them for Staff Member- NY 'zine that will be a useful tool in my ship), to the decision to hire a managing personal and continuing role as a editor at nearly twice the salary regular Process Resistor, Thanks for the Attitude C.R.— Jacksonville, FL staff make (because, as one person put it, it's only fair to pay "what the market will Dear Processed Wor/d, bear"— though there was also much class- For the last eight years I have . been baiting going on, whereby it was ex- A Helluva Decade reading Processed World. I am of the plained that some people weren't privi- pre-World War II generation but belonged leged enough to afford to live on a regular Dear PW. to a small group of people who would take Guardian salary— this from someone who It has been one hell of a decade and a half to the Processed World idea. wants us to hire an ultra-professional white working for "the man," people like Martin I am grateful for The Good Job in issue woman before we've even conducted an in Generation X and Rajiv in Biohell. #26/27. I agree, we shouldn't be fooled by

affirmative action search), to the lecture I (Rajiv's company was not doing well our "good job." A while ago, some of the got today to the effect that one shouldn't financially? Gee, I wonder why?) women's essays in Processed World's Bad be rude to Black people because they have I thought it was just me whose integrity Attitude made a difference. For days I was a history of oppression and might interpret was being sucked dry by the smarminess wounded by my work adversary and it as racist, it has become ever clearer to of Time magazine's cute characterizations reached for Bad Attitude. These essays me that these are a bunch of petty- of "twenty-somethings" ("Freshly minted made something in my subconscious shift management wannabes whose idea of grown-ups." Jesus Christ!) Now I realize and relax. I felt a desirable warming of my progressive politics is making a laundry list that there are others who feel the same brain cells. I got a perspective on my of Oppressed Groups to pay lip service to, way I do. problem and felt better. while their own political behavior goes Who is Tom Tomorrow? He (or she) is Thank you for the control you have on unexamined! fantastic. I really can't tell you how funny I your subject matter. I find I'm seeing more and more things in find his (her) material. On page 50 of Sincerely, terms of the commodification of politics PW28, the last frame of "How the News J.K. — San Francisco, California —the very people (activists) who protest Works" is utterly true and therefore utterly against the system increasingly see politics terrifying and therefore utterly hilarious. as something you either produce or con- News From Jacksonville The picture behind the G. Gordon Liddy- sume. So you have on the one hand career looking character is of an advertisement. activists, who see politics essentially as a Dear P. W. Creators and Promulgators, Just look at that hamburger and fries job that doesn't necessarily filter into their As you may already know, Jacksonville, SMILING. FUN MEAL. Look at the hat on "real lives" (whether it really is their job or although a port city, is mainly a town of top of the hamburger. IT IS SO TRUE. it's just what takes most of their time and huge insurance companies, regional bank Sincerely, energy), and on the other all the conscien- headquarters. Navy Bases (three!) and E.L. — Beliingham, WA

PROCESSED WORLD 29 arrogant, preppy anti-smoking articles. You say that, "The mass, interchangeable

If you health-nazis would get some real nature of office work, and the enormous Good Taste is the Chief issues instead of attacking the working transiency among white collar workers

Enemy of Creativity class (who are most of the smokers), you indicates, . . , that we have a different . might find organizing the workers as a relationship to Work than the one which class a lot more simpler, (sic) gave rise to the theory of Industrial Union-

Where I live, the death rate from cancer ism." I think that you are mistaken. It was has doubled in the area surrounding Rocket- precisely the "mass, interchangeable na- dyne. None of the cancer deaths were re- ture" of labor that accompanied the ag- F:T*IM lated to smoking. What does our local gov- gregation of large numbers of workers in tmton AxWAar>l(«^rts ernment do? Outlaw smoking in govern- mass production industries that gave rise •Go Go Go This is It This is It • Improvisation is Better Than Planning ment buildings. to the theory of Industrial Unionism in the •Notice What You're Noticing My mother, who was very conservative first place. Prior to this development, •Participate in the Creation of Ruins (voted for Nixon) got radicalized through production was carried on by relatively •Operate Outside The Paradigm smokers' rights groups. At 72, she is active small groups of skilled craftsmen in small in the state of Nevada, where she took early shops. Craft, or trade, unionism was the retirement rather than go outside to smoke. form of organization worked out by these The Avant Garde is Obsolete 1949 to all areas of needs within Her awareness has grown skilled workers to meet the •THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN CENSORSHIP WORKS repression of workers throughout the world. the prevailing organization of labor. Simi- All this anti-smoking bullshit is just larly, industrial unionism developed to graphic: The Stranger another way for the bosses to divide workers meet the needs of the mass worker created Workers of the World Support PW and get their focus off the real issues, and by the new organization of labor. Indeed, you have become pawns in their game. the IWW had its greatest successes among Processed World sent copies of PW 28 I sure don't want to support anyone who the migratory agricultural, timber, con- to the membership of the Industrial Work- wants to take away my rights. Many work- struction and mining workers of the West, ers of the World, along with a polemical ers are battling for their right to smoke on whose way of life and work were much cover letter from Chris Carlsson, arguing the job. Do you support them or not? more transient than that of the "white for a new approach to radical workplace D. — Colorado collar" worker of today. This was because organizing. Due to the Wobblies being a the concept of revolutionary class union- few doors away from PW in our San ism made no hard and fast distinction Francisco office, an ongoing dialogue has PWers putting up a smokescreen! among industries, seeing each particular developed about work, workers, self- industry as an integral part of an overall identity, and radical social change. We industry; i.e., the production and distribu- hope to continue this discussion in future tion of goods and services to meet the issues and encourage readers to partici- needs and wants of human beings. So, it pate. didn't matter if you were harvesting wheat

in August, cutting timber in September, or Use/Need On The Agenda working on a dam in October, you were

still part of the working class. The same Hey PW, goes for the white collar worker who might

I used to have a sub to PW. Then, I change jobs every six months. agitated for a sub at my workstation, a The relationship of white collar workers, library. Since the curator there eventually including "information handlers," to the

I perusing did put in an order, had been production process is not all that different your excellent 'zine, more or less, free of from that of blue collar workers. I'm a charge on the job. programmer. I write and maintain soft- Your project of putting the question of ware. The software I write and maintain is what constitutes use and need on the decided on by my employer. I do not own agenda of whatever social revolution the means of production (i.e., the terminal eventually explodes the capitalist political to), nor I use or the CPU that it's attached economy is, I think, very worthwhile. The the product (i.e., the program) of my toil. pro- fact that very advanced commodity How is this different from the situation of, duction, such as we now find ourselves let's say, a millwright in a factory? None immersed in, reveals an incredible possibili- that I can see. ty for eliminating material suffering, while You may be right, self-identity may very at the same time shrouding that potential well be found outside the workplace, and graphic PW Collective in millions of reified images, gives your the worker identity, at least among the project extra added weight on the scale of We Are Workers First people you hang with, but to my mind this meaning. But more than that, the sense of is not a good thing. I identify myself as a love laughter that you bring to the joy, and Fellow Workers, worker because it is the one thing that readers of PW makes it worth sub- well-paid skilled First of all I was pleased to receive the connects me, a moderately scribing to, if only to be a part of that sample copy of PW you sent, although a worker, with the low paid key-puncher process myself. clerk, the guy few weeks later I received another copy in order processing, the mail Yours for the works, along with a notice to renew my subscrip- who picks up my garbage, the woman who M.B. -Palo Alto, CA that tion. Thanks. I do like Processed World sews the soles on my sneakers AND

and have shown it to coworkers. They separates me from my, and their, bosses. If as artist, Get Real, You Health Nazis! dig the graphics. I were to identify myself an Anyway, I'm writing to briefly comment philosopher, or whatever, these other Dear Processed World Collective: on some of the points you raised in your workers would be merely other "people" views. whose conditions of life and work would be As a smoker, I really didn't enjoy your cover letter in order to clarify my

PRCXJESSED WORLD 29 NOT so REMOTE CONTROL

of no interest to me except, perhaps, as that we can resist being sucked into the On this question of "mass interchangea- objects of pity if their conditions were belief that we workers and our employers bility" and its relation to self-identity and particularly harsh or as objects of envy if are all part of one human race with work, I agree with your invocation of the

their conditions were appreciably better identical interests and that if we'll just try historical experience of Wobbly organizing

than my own. There would be no basis for to cooperate, we'll all be better off. among far poorer, far more marginal work- solidarity. This would lead me to remain The contemporary collapse of business ers in a broad range of occupations some

indifferent, or even hostile, to a particular unionism (both trade and industrial) is due, 80 years ago. I was trying to find some

group of workers who were engaged in a I think, primarily to the restructuring of the discussion of how transience affected or-

struggle with the employers. As a worker I capitalist economies and the increased ganizing in the IWW anthology or some see that, though our work and levels of stratification of the working class that has other old literature but failed to find compensation may be different, we are in It been produced. In this situation, I think anything. seems that the working class the same position in relation to the work that the IWW's concept of revolutionary identity was so profound and clear at that we do — powerless and expropriated — and class unionism is most relevant. To realize time that it wasn't necessary to worry that the way to put an end to this common this concept it will be necessary to create about highly transient workers failing to wage-slavery is to organize ourselves in communities of resistance both within and see their common predicament as workers. opposition to those who hold the power without the workplace that aim at the And of course, as I'm sure you know, the and rob us of the wealth we create. abolition not of "Work," but of wage immigrant communities that largely sus-

PW emphasizes the voices of contem- labor. It seems to me that before we can tained Wobbly organizing, were tightly knit porary workers as writers, artists, poets, get rid of all the useless work we do, we and often had dynamic periodicals and historians, philosophers, etc., and that's a have to get possession of the decision- frequent cultural gatherings which some- good thing. The Industrial Worker, on the making power to determine, collectively, times became integral to strikes and other other hand, emphasized the voices of what is and what is not useful and Wobbly campaigns. So I would argue that contemporary workers as workers, or it necessary work. This will take organization while early twentieth century industry in- should to my mind. This is important so and struggle, an organization and struggle troduced the mass worker role, the late

that will not happen if those who want to twentieth century is suffering the psycho- see the abolition of this society take the logical harvest of decades of mass work Evolution is a Virus path of escape into marginal, self-managed and Just as important, mass consumption. businesses. As the saying goes, "If not us, We no longer think of ourselves as work-

who? If not now, when?" ers. You say you are a programmer and do •Everything Changes I still see yourself in status. I Well, I think I've gone on long enough. your proletarian •Eternal Yearning for hope all this clarifies my views, for what am a self-employed typesetter and graphic Eternal Learning is artist also identify what Keeps Me From they are worth. I'll sign off now and wish and with workers and a Burning you well. working class movement. But I am pain- •Fortune Favors the In solidarity, fully aware of how empty that sounds to Bold M.H. -Chicago, IL others not already sharing such a perspec- tive; in fact it sounds as distant and alien as Conventional Wisdom DearM.H., the exhortation of Christians to get saved! Is a Lie Thanks a lot for your thoughtful re- So that's what we're trying to do in PW, #Destroy All Genres find a language ^Demolish Serious Culture sponse. I had begun to despair of intelli- new and new connections gent dialogue resulting from sending out not dependent on (rightly or wrongly) discredited categories and language. I 3188 my letter. I expected to receive a number ^ I NOW of highly critical letters, but didn't. hope it's still clear that we are in favor of graphic: The Stranger

PROCESSED WORLD 29 workers' self-organization and the abolition reconceptualize their lives on the basis of a estate workers in a liberated division of of wage- labor! You argue that the basis of meaningless job which they will only be at labor? What is useful information? How solidarity is a shared self-identity as for a couple of years at most. When they should we go about organizing that? How

"worker. " I really doubt it. Solidarity is are transient and move to a new place, it's will bank workers who (hypothetically) born out of practical necessities more than usually an attempt to find work at their organize themselves and expropriate Bank any psychological self-conceptions. But if creative goals, not to resume whatever of America, say, feel about the abolition of the practical links between different kinds alienated office job they are leaving be- said institution and the elimination of all of work remain opaque, and everyone is hind. But their engagement with the that information? Mightn't they feel they just "people, " practical struggles remain possibilities of their lives is more profound should fight to save their jobs? Don't we remote. So how to proceed? Why should than the 40-hour-a-week worker at any have to find a way out of that loop? By we spend our energies encouraging people kind of job. And we need people with the continuing to insist on embracing work and to define themselves as their job, one of passion that gets them more involved with workers, as such, we reinforce people's the worst pillars of the work ethic? I think their lives and makes them unwilling to dependence on this abstraction known as almost all workers have something better accept the tawdry choices left us by late The Economy, when really it's high time to to do than their jobs, and that's what a capitalism. Individualism is a good begin- make a break with this totally obsolete radical workers' movement should be em- ning, and provides an opportunity for us to organization of society. phasizing. Might there be some way to tap promote the kind of social responsibility I know it's all pretty embryonic and far the reservoirs of creativity and community, and mutual aid that, combined with self- from figured out. More dialogues are really to excite people based on their desires for a motivated, responsible individuals, can ac- important right now. more fully human life (which is why so tually bring forth a different way of life. Thanks again for your intelligent re- many think of themselves as musicians, Since you identify as a worker, and do sponse. It came as a great relief to me, and historians, dancers, photographers, etc.)? computer programming, how do you relate to helps restore some of my (admittedly Wobblies should advocate using the social the purpose of your work now? I assume limited) faith in the IWW. I look forward to power on the job to achieve this more it's largely useless, but I'd be curious to further exchanges.

complete life. I think this approach will know how you see it. And what is the role Best wishes, resonate with people as they are living of millions of bank, insurance, and real Chris Carlsson now, exploiting the widespread stifling of creative capacities by the capitalist system.

I think you make a real mistake when THIS M«»fclU W«IL» by TOM TOMORROW you identify my choice to make a living in VNHKT IF TW$ COMIC STkiP WERE RUN tHEM.rriE PR0CES5 OP /f£V/JlOfiS WOULD an environment of my own creation (at LIKE THE MO^ti BUSINESS? Be&IN... least compared to a bank!), where I have much more control over the hours worked, riR5T,t»tE INITIAL CARTOO>J \NOUU> t 40V£ IT. BABE i iT JUST MEEDi BE SUgMlTTCD... A LlHLE N\oK...SeXAI^£AL ! the way the work is done, and even /V\AYBE WE (OUU) OIYE TWE sometimes what kind of work I do, as an CHICKEN A 6lRLPRtent> WHO "escape. " Sure, it is an escape from the ALV\/AY5 WEARJ A BiKlMI! worst kind of totalitarian nightmare, the sort which prevails in large corporations.

But it is no escape from the basic logic of our lives, the incessant buying and selling. Finally, the escape of self-employment is also the acceptance of a much less medi- ated relationship with the marketplace, hardly an embrace of freedom. \rS A FANTASnc CARTOON! |T5 THIS IS ONDOUBTeOLX ONE OF T^Z I want to engage in resistance that's fun! OUST THAT...WELL...WE DID SOME BEST CARTOONS IVE EVER S£E^4..^ roCUS GROUPS. AND THE. CHICKEN I REALLY MEAN THAT.' THCJ?ES I don't know if you think that's weak of JUST DiDNT 60 OVER TOO VSJELL... JUST ONE THING .^WE NEED TD me, or frivolous, or whatever, but I think BUT PENGUINS \N£:R€ RBAILY EMPHASIZE THE MeHOtMOlSlMO pleasure is our best weapon, and we have POPUlAkl Do You THINK \WE COULD ASPECT A SIT/ LIKE, WHAT IF TME to fight for it all the time, in every arena, MAKE THE CHICKEN A PBNGOIN? PBN60IN WEJ?E A T£eNAOS especially political/social/industrial oppo- MI6ILANTE KIUER PEM60IN? Vit^E ALREADY oRAVVN U? SOf^E sition. iKEKHB K>R A 5EPIB Of T^tJ... I think the widespread rejection of the worker identity is extremely healthy, rais- ing the interesting question of how do we organize and use our collective social power on a different basis with perhaps more far-reaching goals than merely, as 6REAT JOBi REALLY. REAUY 5TRON& THEN, AT LAiTJHE. f/MAL WERSIOH the IWW Preamble has it, "organizling] the WORKi THE ONLY PROBLEM IS.WEVE WOULD BE «£i£A5EI>...

army of production. . . to carry on produc- JUST INKEI> A PRObycT PLACEMEHT tion when capitalism shall have been DEkL AND WE NEED TO SHOW THE THIS M«»fclll W«|L» PENGUIN PRiHKlNO A PIETCOKE' overthrown. " A free future seems to me to Dl» : HCY ClTatNI WHt TMC preclude concepts such as an "army of production, " irrespective of its goals. The demise of the worker identity and its replacement by a new individualism is at

worst ambiguous. I see no hope in trying to convince people who have tried very hard to find a creative role in life (usually without any hope of making a living that way, e.g. photographers, writers, etc.) to

PROCESSED WORLD 29 F w

I HE DOORBELL ON THE CAST-IRON furnished. One entire wall is taken up by a huge gate doesn't work, so Chuahan is yelling up to an TV-CD-stereo-VCR console showing some kind of open window on the third floor: "Phouthouloum! Khmer Benny Hill video; opposite it, a Theravada Bounthoum! Beck!" A small head appears and darts Buddhist shrine with burning candles; below it, a back in. Within seconds the gate is pushed open by bed protruding legs and arms that contains sleeping a crowd of excited children and we leave the men and babies. sun-drenched sidewalk for the murky hallway. A new group of kids from inside the room Hands tug our clothes as we're led into the interior. approaches and quietly stands eye-level around me, Kids are climbing my legs, jumping on my back, sizing me up. The oldest woman's eyes are swinging from my arms. The stink of urine-fetid questioning even as she offers me soup. Her name

clothing is overwhelming. Chuahan chastises them is Sepanerath and she wears a beautifully colored in Lao while they compete for our attention. One dress and tinkling jewelry. The other women are performs kung fu motions with his feet; another heavily made-up teenagers with luxurious hairdos. jumps an entire length of staircase, easily five times Looking at Souvanna, Sepanerath points at me his height. The only hostility comes from a with one fmger and with another simulates — runny-nose kid who persistently takes aim at my fellatio? The teenagers giggle. It takes me a crotch with his tiny fist. moment to realize that she's asking Chuahan if I'm Trying to balance the squirming, giggling arm- gay, i.e. a pedophile, and am I after her kids? As if load of kids while twisting my waist to avoid the in answer, I open my bookbag and give the kids the punches, I follow Chuahan up the stairwell, past notebooks and packages of paper that I stole from the used condoms, burnt crack pipes and piles of work. They accept them blankly. Sepanerath says uncollected garbage. Pubescent homeboys in hood- to the children in Khmer for them to say "thank ed San Francisco Giants jackets scowl as we pass. you" in English. When we get to the fourth floor, I notice that Then I produce a handful of magic markers and none of the apartment doors are closed to the colored pens (more loot). I draw a cartoon face. hallway and the children pass freely from one "Draw Donatello," requests Nancy, an eight-year- apartment to another. With the fragrance of herbs, old girl with just- shampooed hair. Before I under-

spices and cow brains in the air, it seems as if a stand that she isn't talking about the 16th century remote village has suddenly been transplanted to a Italian painter, her younger brother shows me a sleazy skidrow hotel. picture of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. To their Chuahan shows me into a small studio and — delight, I duplicate it; then I draw Bart Simpson. after quick, unspoken introductions with a group of More cheers. My popularity is assured, and we women sitting cross-legged around bowls of food spend the rest of the afternoon drawing pictures.

— I try to settle inconspicuously in the corner on a On the way home I feel happy in a way I've never six-inch-high kneeling stool. The room is sparsely felt before.

With the fragrance of herbs, spices and *^=-- cow brains in the air, it seems as if a remote village has suddenly been transplanted to a sleazy skidrow hotel.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 Chuahan was born in eastern Thai- war," "imperialism" and "revolution" sidew2ilks during the day are ominous land when Ubon could still be called a ("samsaravattam" is the closest word in figures at night; several kids' families are village, but his earliest memories are of Khmer to "revolution," though its routinely terrorized by break-ins. The the airfield and the earth- rumbling rou- meaning is closer to "transmigration"). cops are even greater objects of mis- tine of U.S. planes en route to bombing For many Asian immigrants, children trust, a relation which fails to change sorties over nearby Laos. Ubon was (who learn languages much more despite innumerable "community rela- forever transformed by the U.S. mili- quickly) are indispensable to their par- tions" meetings. tary personnel and AID officials, the ent's survival in the new country; they're Slang and style tastes are distinctively inevitable economies of drugs and pros- interlocutors with the outside world: African-American. It takes me a while to titution, and the arrival of tens of thou- courts, landlords, immigration officials, realize that when these six-year-olds

sands of refugees from across the border. etc. They become my translators as address one another as "nigga," it's

Traditionalists took it hard. Chuahan well. learned from neighborhood blacks and renounced his parent's religious funda- Chuahan and I take the kids to places as neutral a part of their vocabulary as mentalism and wholesale fabric business, they've never been: the playground at anything in Lao or Khmer. shaved his head and made his way to an Golden Gate Park, the Santa Cruz The kids show me a side of their American university to study poetry. Boardwalk, Ocean Beach. On Hallow- neighborhood that was previously invis- een we take a taxi cab full of 3-4 year ible: down a labyrinth of seedy alleys a When we met in San Francisco's olds to a rich neighborhood. The idea of rabbit sits in its cage, wedged between a financial district, we were both bearers ringing the doorbell of an oak-doored dumpster and a pile of trash. In a of worthless degrees stuck in dead-end mansion and receiving free candy is a remote attic corner some other kids jobs. Desperate to escape our condition happy novelty, but not nearly as excit- show me a broken pigeon's egg, long as servants to giant bureaucracies, we ing as the expanses of lawns: being able abandoned in its nest. Anticipating its talked endlessly about ways of contrib- to run and fall on soft grass comes as a eventual birth, they've organized an uting meaningfully to the world while surprise. extended family for it. having fun. Chuahan seemed to have "Koun lok," announces Chanpheng, hit on the perfect combination when he after a magpie-like bird known in Cam- landed a job at the Head Start program, bodia for its cry at sunset. In Khmer, it tutoring Lao and Cambodian pre- literally means "child of the world." schoolers in the Tenderloin. A combat According to legend, some young kids zone of illicit pleasures populated by who were abandoned in the forest to be transvestites, strippers, hookers, ad- eaten by tigers transformed into these dicts, drifters, thieves, lost tourists and birds, achieving safety by being at home newly arrived Southeast-Asian refugees, in the wilderness. Forever after, the cry the Tenderloin is about as far from the "koun lok" serves as a reminder of the spirit of the financial district as you can borders between the wild and the get — only a couple of blocks away, it tamed, nature and human. Birthday exists in its shadow. parties for the children are community Witty, charming and compassionate, celebrations; every kid seems to have Chuahan was an immediate hit with the about twenty birthdays a year. families in his program. An Indian Sometimes more formal gatherings subcontinental, his reputation is en- (particularly for the young and unat- In fact, not a union, but o bunch of thugs and hanced by a readiness to speak up on tached) are arranged by Lao ethnic "stomp tramps." Gangs like the H.U.A., the Goon like behalf of Laotians and Cambodians who Squad, and the FTR A traverse the main lines from associations; gloomy warehouses resent the Vietnamese domination of one foodsfomp scam to the next, lootln' and klllin' the Hungarian Hall (next to Sex Toys & the meager social services available to along the way, sometimes for only a bottle of Movies) are rented for an evening. cheap wine. southeast Asians (the majority of the These involve crystal-ball disco decor Vietnamese got here a decade earlier with a Lao rock band intermixing and are better established). Chuahan's standard rock covers with more tradi- ascent within the ranks of Tenderloin The kids seem oblivious to most tional numbers. They're fairly somber non-profits is rapid, and pays better urban hazards. When playing tag, they affairs, except for the appearance of than temping. move with frightening speed in and out three Lao transvestites, who are always "It's not such a bad thing I do, helping of traffic. Scrawny Phouthouloum a hit. poor women who can't speak English (a.k.a. "Rambo") possesses an acrobatic At one party I hear Mony reminis- collect their welfare payments." Com- grace that is truly incredible: he can cing about the miserable, squalid condi- pared to what I do for a living, this mount a newspaper vending rack, tions for the Cambodians in the U.N. sounds reasonable. shimmy up a sign post, swing from his refugee camps and the interminable Recently adrift from an east coast legs, and always land on his feet. In his waiting for visas in the Philippines. I ask suburb, my entire social horizons be- hands, anything can be transformed Mony for more information about come enmeshed in the lives of people into a toy weapon; baseball cards be- where he's from in Cambodia, how he who less than five years ago were living come stars, rolled up newspapers be- ended up in the camps, what he thinks in rural areas outside of Vientiane and come numchucks. about what's going on there. Mony Phnom Penh. Until now I have only "Gangsters" (older kids and thieves speaks with contempt of the arrogant thought of them in terms of emotional who prey on the more vulnerable) with Thais and the Filipinos, but turns the associations with concepts like "civil whom the kids indifferently share the conversation to brighter subjects.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 women one night, Souvanna hands me about luck and knowing when to make what looks like a tobacco leaf and your move.

instructs me to dip it into some purple Chuahan and I are visiting Sepane-

powder and chew it. I try not to lose my rath and her children's new apartment in attention. Evidently, I'm supposed to a new building behind the medical chew the leaf and spit out the juice, not center. They only moved in a few days

swallow it. When my head stops spin- ago and most of their stuff is still in ning, I realize that I'm a big loser at boxes. It's late, and the younger chil- poker too. dren are sleeping under a blanket on the

Later Souvanna, recognizing my fi- carpet. It's more spacious and cleaner nancial misfortune, lets me in on what than their old place in the Tenderloin. he promises is a formula for making a Sepanerath's new boyfriend is paying fortune. Of a group of 12, everybody for it; she doesn't want her oldest son, promises to contribute a hundred dollars Bounari (already 11) to grow up to a month; if you want to collect $1200 become a gangster like the other Cam- some month for any particular reason, bodian kids. She tells us that this new

it's yours with the stipulation that you environment (a mile or so away) will pay an extra $100 that month. My math help keep him away from the influence is bad, but Souvanna demonstrates to of gangs. me that no matter what, since every Nancy, her only daughter, always month somebody collects, we all even- wears new dresses and jewelry, and she's

i heard the guy who draws this picture stole that tually come out $100 richer. In what is self-conscious of her looks as she serves moniker from the original Coaltrain and now the obviously an act of bad faith, I skepti- us soup and fish balls. I notice Nancy's oldtimers gonna Idll him If he catches him. cally decline the invitation. similarities to her mother by checking Most of these people work at low- her against an enlarged photo framed on wage jobs: washing dishes in Thai the wall of a younger Sepanerath smiling just "Once we were poor Cambodi- restaurants, day-labor construction, fish triumphandy, wearing a disco dress ans. Treated like shit! Now, when we go cleaning; many are dependent on wel- sparkling with gold. get respect," he back to Cambodia, we fare. So where do the rolls of large bills Chuahan opens the bottle of wine explains, cocking his biceps into a proud everybody seems to have for gambling we've brought as a house-warming pre- muscle. "Because we are Americans." come from? Maybe the sub-economy sent and pours everybody a glass, of agreement the men in Nods among which they've invented is a way of including five-year old Peter, who gulps the room. rotating the riches that they'll likely it right away, defiantly. I think: are you kidding? Your kids never possess as individuals; maybe Nancy and Bounari give me a tour of play in garbage, work like a dog so you gambling is a way of facing fortune, a all (three) rooms. Sepanerath and her you can live in the slums! Instead I say, metaphor for fate or the randomness of boyfriend (who's at work) have their "Look at what the U.S. did to Cambo- the market. In any event, the intensity own room now. Bounari turns on the dia, though. They bombed it for years they bring to gambling shows something jam-box I gave him ("Wild Thing^). For — they must have killed a quarter of a million people." Silence. Then Mony says, "I heard drccn ICeftoucra once \stW about that. It was on TV. But they said As Gramsci be a grass- ^^tf^«^ they only killed the bad people." said, to .bo? roots workers' host produces a bottle of brandy The movemerxt, you and calls in the birthday girl, who must draw from culture models her crisp chiffon dress and their own

pirouettes. A toast is made as shots are downed. Mony and his friends dismiss our talk as "politics," and the rest of the

night is forgotten in alcohol.

Gambling is a way of life for the '"enbecauJ'°^«Wcsas

adults. It is pursued with unflagging fascination from early in the evening to late the next morning, several nights a week. Each night a different host's floor ThanxtomYJobas is crowded with sessions of poker, worker a construction blackjack and an unfamiliar game sprawl I for suburban enough played around a blanket with mysteri- was able to save to become a stakes are high: if money ous diagrams. The ActivistI full-time Green you aren't willing to bet at least twenty

dollars to get in, forget it. Sizeable fortunes can be made and lost, and Anybody who * All dialogue disagrees with ME nobody ever quits. guaranteed verbatim. RACIST! While playing poker with three old is a

PROCESSED WORLD 29 a long time he kept asking me to get him batteries until he told me that his mother's boyfriend was using the electric

cord to whip Peter. I feel guilty when I look at Peter, who's bouncing off the GARDEMERSI walls. They're excited because their mothers let them take the week off from school and they are up past their bed time. While we draw pictures of monkeys,

Buddhas, and race cars, I think about how Nancy can be particularly vicious to her friend, Bounthoum, who has a is your flower patch overrun with mouth full of jagged, mangled teeth and bad breath. "Bounthoum fucks her boy- friends! Bounthoum fucks — [every boy WHITES?!! in earshot]." Bounthoum's clothes are Then you should try the new organic, wholistic philosophy of always dirty and several sizes outgrown, not like Princess Nancy, who leads the other children in chants to upset a shaky Bounthoum. Peter's bumping into me until he falls M£/Lci/URALISM face-flat on the floor and begins snoring FROM 1ST away. Nancy's telling me about her THE CHURCH OF INFOSPHERIC SCIONTOLOGY favorite teachers and classes. After a Just sprinkle Liberally throughout your yard . . . while it occurs to me that they haven't Before you can blink, every possible color will been to school because they don't know be yet where their new school is; once racing into view. again, they've ventured beyond the familiar and are waiting. In all the months I've known Nancy, I've never once worried about her, even when she lived among rapists and

murderers. She carries more adult re- The kids' participation was entirely settle down and listen to his bullshit. I

sponsibilities at eight years than most voluntary — there was no point to it remember the look he shot me as he people do in a lifetime, and she seems to unless they had fun. I thought it would headed for his car (I was in the parking

take it in stride. So I'm surprised that be cool to have a place outside the lot with the basketball dissidents); in one now, all of a sudden, seeing her in this playground-less Tenderloin for the kids hand he had his briefcase, in the other a

safe, electrified condo, I detect some- to paint, learn baseball, play blackjack, plate full of turkey and mashed pota-

thing like a worried little girl in her whatever. They spent all week being toes, but his eyes said it all. Subse-

voice. bussed to a school at the Treasure Island quently, Chuahan informed me that I Driving home in his new sports car, military base. had been retroactively "not hired" and Chuahan tells me that Sepanerath's a The main area that St. Mark's allot- wouldn't receive the wages that had "racist bitch" who just wants to be a ted for the kids was a stuffy basement been promised me. white American. The social worker with with pictures of the last hundred years of Chuahan, a true professional, the master's degree in English tells me the Lutheran hierarchy on the wall. The couldn't quit as easily as me. He had a that "they've turned their back on their outside "play area" was a dismal con- reputation to protect among wealthy culture!" crete plaza of the type that condo patrons of social workers. When Christ- I don't see the kids anymore. Fun developers throw in for "public space" mas came around he had to gather the becomes work. Taking four rambunc- tax rebates. I took great satisfaction in kids together and take them to the tious kids someplace on the bus can be seeing the kids reduce the place to a Embarcadero plaza for the annual holi- entertaining; trying to keep twenty-five mess. day lighting of those hideous slabs of

together can shave years off your life. All went well until various adminis- office building (where I worked as a Chuahan got a job as director of a trative busybodies insisted on playing a temp, as a matter of fact). The whole

weekend activities program; I was his more "active" role. One was a hefty- thing was a photo-opportunity for city "assistant." Obnoxiously called "Super buttocked old hen who the kids called big- shots and the next day on the cover

Saturday Plus," it was funded by a grant "the Ghost" because of her dull grey of the newspaper was a soft-lens picture from the Embarcadero Corporation to complexion and cop mentality. She of Bounthoum holding a candle. The St. Mark's Church — both large real- invited the St. Mark's minister to make a kids, in the generous gratitude of the estate businesses in San Francisco. We Thanksgiving speech to the kids about event's wealthy sponsors, were each were assured that we would have the "how they should be thankful for all that given a single McDonald's hamburger freedom to let the kids do what they they've been given." That was too much. — no fries, no apple pie, no coke. Not wanted— and there would be no reli- When the day came for his speech he left even a cheeseburger! gious proselytizing! in a huff because the kids refused to — Mickey D.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 MERCURY RISING Has Risen!

^fiSte^:^-^ ,^2g^.

Interview with Markus, Amerigo, and it ended up being a big personal PW: It sounds like one of the main Pelona and Ramblin' de Kay — of the defeat, but it did end up getting a bunch goals is the development of some kind of collective that publishes Mercury Ris- of us thinking. We all talk about work community? ing, a new magazine by and for bike after work. Amerigo: No one is just a messenger. messengers. Interview conducted by Amerigo: Yeah, too much! Everyone has outside trips: they're in Chris Carlsson on January 11, 1992, Markus: We realized that we need bands, they do 'zines. This is a way to in San Francisco's Mission district. something that gives people the nerve, get all that in, print people's poetry, Amerigo: Mercury Rising was Mar- that mzikes them feel confident enough print people's artwork, you know,

kus's idea, really. that they could have a wildcat strike if spread the word about other people's Markus: One of the major companies the time comes, or to do any kind of projects. in town, Executive Courier, lowered solidarity action. People have to com- Markus: We give everyone a forum

commission rates from 50 percent to 48 municate and in our business there's still to print stuff that isn't directly related to percent, which is a 4 percent pay cut, on quite a bit of turnover, and always a lot our organizational goals for bike mes-

a couple of days notice. I was down the of new people on the street. At times it's sengers. Still, it's really good for those next morning with a flyer telling every- very much of a community and one big long-term goals because we are getting

body to go out on a wildcat strike. It was family, but in another way it's pretty together in different areas of people's clear that that wasn't going to be atomized, and we have a lot of getting- lives.

happening. The day after that I had a together to do before we can fight for the Amerigo: MR is the first thing that petition about why management was survival of our profession, which ac- I've ever dealt with on any level (I've going to have to give something if they cording to the front page of last Wed- worked at legitimate newspapers, too) were going to take money out of people's nesday's San Francisco Chronicle, is where everyone is so enthusiastic. Peo-

pockets. I don't think anyone signed it threatened with extinction. ple keep pouring in their stuff, you don't

PROCESSED WORLD 29 r^'^"^. have to go and beg for contributions. work part-time and come back full-time

People pay for it, they're excited and in the summer and January so I could

happy to see it. go to school for those five years. It's Pelona: People are asking, "Oh, really a great job to have if you're when's the next Mercury Rising coming playing music because there's a lot of out?" other messengers who tend to be into

Markus: It's amazing how quickly it music and in bands too.

found its audience, it's like a big success. PW: What makes it a lovable job? The first day, the first issue, I'll never Amerigo: The people involved, forget. It came out late in the afternoon they're just the most hilarious, amazing and it was on a Friday. We always try to or strange, bizarre people you'll ever release on a Friday cuz that's when meet. The most eclectic collection of people are flush. When I got home, my individuals ranging across every inter- pockets bulging with money, I put it out est, every intelligence, [laughter] the kitchen table and it was eighty- on Markus: And age group, we're not all some bucks. a bunch of young people. There are Amerigo: In quarters! people raising families on this more and PW: Does working on Mercury Rising more. make the prospect of being a messenger PW: Is it a health choice for some? easier? any Amerigo: Some people do it cause Amerigo: It's like a total immersion they're into biking, some people just like — that's not true of a lot of work. in the culture, it's almost too much. to stay in shape. You're in a bank with this huge Pelona: I've met so many more Pelona: I can't sit down for a long stack of paper on your desk. I've working on this. I people since been time every day. I recilly need to bike two You work extra hard to get , .^^ feel more a part of the community now, or three hours a day or I don't feel right. through it, and at the end of *\ so I guess I do have more reason to stay I like being outside. I meet a lot of the day a new stack of paper is "^^ in it. I going to leave Francisco was San different people in elevators and I feel on your desk. *»^..,.,. to go back to college. I couldn't stand really free to make comments about Ramblin': Going into so many build- my job! Bike messengering, I thought what they're saying, since I'm not going ings, it's so stagnant and antiseptic. You "How can I get out of this?" But I didn't to ever see them again. You're alone a deliver your package and you just don't think at all in terms of how can I make lot of time, you can think about whatev- want to be a part of that — it's bad I just to this a better situation. wanted er you want, that's the greatest resource enough to deliver the package! it, I the personally get out of but see of this job. You're doing this thing Pelona: It's true, many times a day situation differently now. physically, but your mind is totally free, you think "Oh god, if I quit I'll have to do Markus: I've always had this roman- you can be thinking whatever you want something like this [office work]." Peo- tic fixation on this particular job. It's and no one is looking over you. all sitting around in these the other ple are also convenient for me to do Amerigo: You get totally addicted to expensive clothes, looking so bored. I to do, like I was able to things want the adrenalin too, a physical addiction. I Markus: After going to so many almost get killed a couple of times a day offices for so many years you start and get so wired, I'll be jump- seeing everyone else's work as "all those ing up and down. The jobs," and bike messengers as "your days when I work and job." You do learn where there are some the days I don't work are groovy offices, where people have a so different. good time, but mostly. . . Markus: And when it's Amerigo: Then there's places like really happening, like in Bechtel, where you go in and people's last hours of the the three bodies are weirdly shaped, sad faces like day you make like $30 an they're in jail or something, and you go hour, it's just go go go, into those rooms where all the comput- getting weird waiting time, ers are, and it's chilled to like 50 having incredible luck and degrees, and you think "Oh I wish I making all this money when could work like this." [laughter] you've had a shitty morning PW: Do you agree that bike messen- or something. It's recdly fan- gering is a dying niche because of fax tastic and you feel like you've machines and rising workmen's com- just been through this incredi- pensation insurance rates? Sj / ble adventure, especially when * Amerigo: No, there are more mes- / you've done it on acid! sengers here than ever. [laughter]. PW: How many do you think there PW: Bike messengering has are? that exhilaration that comes Amerigo: I've heard anywhere from """"Bv v.iuvcj,,,,, from exertion. You can exert 200 to 600. I'd estimate around 400-450, '^•^'^''smmsmr,^ yourself and do better as a result

PROCESSED WORLD 29 that's including scooters and walkers. for the convenience of their downtown out here for a long time, and we should You just see more than ever, and there clients. Our company knows they need a have the right to survive our jobs and are new businesses popping up all the certain number of bikes to keep things not be killed. time. Definitely the industry is chang- going, so they're supposedly committed In future issues we have to have some ing. It's moving away from where you to some people being able to make a kind of broad exploration on "Is the have your company bike. There's all living. Messenger Business Dying?" since the sorts of different companies now, and A company like Aero, on the other controversy has been newly brought up. lots of them don't have insurance and hand, is committed to not letting anybody I think messengers haven't analyzed that's scary. except maybe a few make a living. stuff that much yet, and kind of believe

Everyone else is just supposed to cycle it, so need to go public with a basic PW: So if you get hurt, it's just tough we through really fast before they find out luck? "why messengering isn't dying out." that they're getting ripped off. Amerigo: Yeah. PW: And also why they're saying it the "dying niche" — trend Anyway, about Ramblin': That's part of a is. . . such bullshit, because it's been said as among big companies to treat messen- Markus: We're happy to make three long as I've been in the business. In the gers as merely a commodity, and not as bills a week. local and national media the fax has part of the company itself, merely a Amerigo: I'd be ecstatic! I don't make been killing us off as our numbers grew means of landing larger contracts. that much. year after year. I disagree with Amerigo PW: So what about the general Pelona: My last paycheck was for in that I think there are finally a little bit profitability of bike messengering? Isn't $230 for seven days' work. less of us than there have been. We've Markus: That's an interesting di- it true that the real money is made from kind of leveled off and the numbers have the longer-distance truck tags? chotomy because we're all involved in tapered a bit, and are likely to taper the thing but because of the Markus: Our boss told us that it costs same further, but that's not necessarily a bad the same to administrate a $40 vehicle seniority system in our industry we're thing for us. Those tapering numbers really in the boat economical- tag as it does to administer a $3 not same could indicate less rookie turnover and downtown regular. more stability and getting our business Amerigo: So raise the rates! Pelona: One thing I don't like about institutionalized. We can't make any Markus: Our company has far more messengering is that it makes you progress as far as not being ripped off, drivers than bikers. Now Courier, competitive with your co-workers, be- as long as people are living under this maybe we're up to a dozen bikers now, cause there's a certain amount of tags useful illusion that we're on our way out. but we have about 40 drivers, maybe a and some of them are good and some One of the main things couple of big accounts like IBM in are shitty, and some people are going to we have to accomplish is to Foster City. We bike messengers exist get gravy and some will get shitty tags, ourselves, the rest show and If ^ and you want to get the gravy. you're of the people out there in I working somewhere and they hire some the City and the rest of the more people, you can hate this person Area that they should Bay for like 2 or 3 days who's causing your think of us as permanent, paycheck to go down (not really of because there's going to be course). Until you meet them and talk to hundreds of us them and then they're just like you. Markus: I get to do this legal stuff, but I'm not the number one guy. They set up a pecking order and if we want

our part in it we generally don't say

anything. I got set up in a weird political situation because I'm in the "Inside Club," those who are trained — in other words, taken around by Joshua and shown how to get into the computers and the courts and stuff, introduced to docket clerks and shit like that. We get 40 percent for doing jobs for this legal subsidiary company. If I'm doing just

that work I can do that and no other tags for the normal company, but the way it

is being #2 I just get it sometimes. I make 40 percent but if it gets too busy and they have to spin some of this work off to the regular Now riders, they make ^0 percent. I sounded off about this and threatened to forego my position, but I ended up capitulating, although I con- tinue agitating for them to get a higher Contact Mercury Rising at 564 Mission St., #152, San Francisco, CA 94105. Samples: $2 percentage. We get a lower percentage

PROCESSED WORLD 29 for legal work because there's a lot more school. Did you have any notions of the on nuclear bombs, and my great-aunt work in the office processing this stuff. I noble struggle of labor, or that you was a big union organizer, too, on my have no problem making 40 percent. I ought to belong to a union because that's mother's side. It's always been clear to guess there's some logic for there being what you do when you're a worker, or me that workers should be organized.

some "club" that does it, that is mostly any of that kind of stuff? Mercury Rising is an unofficial pub- just a few people. But it's all pretty Pelona: The reason I joined is cause I lication of the San Francisco Bike Mes- uncomfortable. It puts a strain on was working in a school and then I got a sengers Association. There is no "official solidarity, no question, because I need job as a secretary for the teacher's union, thing" of the SFBMA-

all the dollars I can get. and I felt so bad, here I was working for Amerigo: It's sort of an anarchist the teacher's union and I wasn't even a labor organization. PW: Especially in this economic cli- member of my own union, so I joined. Markus: Yeah, It's a disorganization mate! It's like musical chairs, and I'm in Markus: We have a union shop in at this point. It's evolving. . .1 think the a chair and I'm staying right here, I town. Express Messenger, a Teamsters S.F. Bike Messengers Association was don't care if they start the fucking in issue 4 of started Rich and Nosmo, the people music! [laughter]. shop. They're covered MR. by I worked there when they were one of from the other messenger magazine, Markus: We're in a business where the big companies in town with 30 + MessPress, which you really must pick there's more sophisticated technology, bikes, and was there for some of the up. It's less political, but very cultural the fax, which can ostensibly do what we struggle to get the Teamsters in. One of and joyful. About individualism, you do better and cheaper, if you're only little independent is one doing one or two pages. And then the reasons why bikers are a were asking? Going reticent union-wise is that the Team- of the big trends, and for a lot of people there's cars, an inferior technology, that sters haven't particularly worked out for it may be the solution to our labor can also do our job, and they're saying Express. problems. it's a superior technology. I'm sure there Amerigo: Wouldn't you say that Amerigo: There's so many jobs, are niches for us like big clients that will with Aero, is about the there's this big hype in America about go on needing the kind of service we Express, along this supposed work ethic, but it's so provide. worst-run, most inefficient company, the worst of hypocritical. They're not working, Pelona: Another person was telling and treats their messengers they're just sitting there. That's why I'm me about public-key encryption that any company? Markus: Yeah, except that I would proud to work commission. I only make allows documents to be sent between disagree about Aero, because it's well- computers with a code that is as good as run for the evil purposes to which they a signature. He told me that when this are directed. takes over it will eliminate some mes- Pelona: Express is just incompetent. senger business, because things like Markus: It really is, and I think they court filings that would need a lawyer's unionization for some of it. I signature that we currently hand-deliver blame think with messengers it would have to will be able to be sent by modem. And a brand new, independently started as the recession gets worse, a lot of the be thing that would have to take the form stuff we deliver is sent by messenger for the prestige of a "hand-delivered" letter that people wanted from it. via messenger, and people are just going Ramblin': I didn't mean to hit too heavy on organized unions, I really do to fucking put a stamp on it when within the/re cutting costs. respect people who can work that context. UNIONS AND INFORMAL Markus: Oh yeah, unions are really ORGANIZING big in my family. My dad is an IBEW PW: What do you think are the man, he works at the Nevada Test Site advantages of a more informal approach to organizing versus something more traditional and formal?

Ramblin': I think it's more enjoyable, so you spend more time on it, it's more sociable. The amount of effort you put into something is related to what is going to come out, and if you're working in these rigid, bureaucratic structures you're just hailf-assed about what you're doing.

Pelona: I belonged to the California State Education Association (CSEA)

and the only thing I ever got out of it iiki was a discount on ice skating. ^"^erwear... ;^ PW: How old were you then? you don't Pelona: 18. PW: So you were just out of high change them often, they start to stink!"

PRCXJESSED WORLD 29 Express took over the new management

wanted it run like a regular business, and they got rid of all these older people who were troublemakers, and they didn't cut slack for messengers' person-

alities, they didn't like it when people

called in sick. Well the reality is, you can't ride 8 or 9 hours a day really hard, every single day. You physically can't do

it. You have to call in sometimes, you have to take breaks. They didn't under- stand that. He told me, the end of US was the end of what being a bike messenger was about being a freak and

still getting the work done.

PW: I find this strong affirmation of money when I work. I don't sit on my lar situations, and there's been senti- subcultural identity, of being "freaky," butt and get paid hourly. ment expressed for making it more and embrace of a classic work ethic, a Pelona: We work really hard. I don't permanent, more regularized. So trans- curious combination. A lot of times impact those subcultures, especially around the music . ience know if we said this, but. . When I has a subversive on worked at Sizzler I worked really hard, kinds of goals, doesn't it? scene like the outside life of some but this is the hardest job I've ever had, Amerigo: Even though it's bad that messengers, are really anti-work. Yet the hardest money I've ever earned. we're so disorganized, there's still good the people doing bike messengering, at Markus: Your labor is less alienated things about it. As far as messengers least you guys, are asserting a commit- when you can feel how much you're goes, there are a lot of them who've been ment to hard work, that you really want making by how much you're working. on the street, lots of people who get off to earn your pay. Standing-by gets stressful if you do it too the street by being a messenger, and Markus: I don't mind that. If I got much, 'cause you go "Fuckinnotmak- also people who end up on the street paid decently, I could work 3 ^ or 4 in'anymoney!!" But generally you don't after being a messenger. Even though days a week and do the same job. If I have to feel guilty about standing by, this is anti our labor goals of getting could survive on doing three good 10 lots of time you just wanna staaaannd more money, it's still a place where you hour days, the kind of days I normally byy [laughter]. can get a job, even if you just got out of work five of, like I would work harder Pelona: Once you start standing by jail, even if you've got weird drug because I would only be doing 3 of you just want to keep on standing by. habits, even if you drool all over them. Boy, I would never look for Markus: Oh, when we're at the Wall, yourself and don't make any sense, another job, it would be great. Really, with friends and "proj," man the social [laughter] for those of us playing music, that's not

life is just great! Pelona: People accept you. anti-work either. It's another job. So's Markus: I think that has already this publishing stuff. Lots of messengers PW: You talked earlier about want- been sacrificed. On KPOO they asked are working incredibly hard on all kinds ing to make things more stable. . . how me about messengering as a job for of things after those 10 hour days. does the transiency among messengers people just entering the market, and I Amerigo: As work it's fun, it's like a affect you editorially? Does it cause you realized that it's already gotten a lot sport. just to think to the next issue, or are you more difficult to get in. Now veteran Ramblin': We talked at the start beginning to plan say, 12 issues down messengers who've left town, come back about the attempt to create some kind of the road, what you will be publishing? and have to wait around a while to get a community. I felt that [sense of com- Pelona: I've been thinking about this job. There's just not as much transiency munity] since I came over here [from because officially I'm on leave of ab- as there was, but still quite a bit, maybe England] and starting working as a sence from UC Santa Cruz and I told 100 a month! messenger. I've met people who are so them I'd go back in the fall. Right now Pelona: This dispatcher who used to honest. They're interested in you if you we're using Lydia's computer, which is at work at Express told me what happened want them to be. If you wanna bug off my house. But I'm sure something'll when Express took over US Messenger. on your own and not talk to anyone, happen, it'll keep going. Apparently had been a cool place to they're not going to hassle you. Amerigo: You're asking about trans- US work, according to him; a lot of people Pelona: I never felt like I was a ient people? who had been there for a while were messenger. Then I deformed my bike PW: One of your goals is to establish making 55 percent or 56 percent com- with a basket, decided I was a messen- some kind of community of conscious- mission, good money. But the messen- ger, and started going out more and ness amongst people employed in simi- gers had a lot of say in how they would getting involved. do what they would do. He told me they Markus: She gave her bike a sex

' worked out a compromise between what change, [laughter] . . . The fact of bike _ gEATH needed to get done and how they wanted messenger subculture, I postulate, may mmreRS to do things, and the work got done, but be a key reason why they keep wanting everyone had fun and they got to be us to be a disappearing occupation. their own freaky personalities. When Every other industry in this town whose

PROCESSED WORLD 29 .

numbers are maybe off 10 percent from Our dispatcher has nicknames for cer- Everyone's gonna work 20 hours a week what they've been through the '80s, tain runs, it's called the ShameOn run — at a job they find meaningful, and they

they're not talking about those occupa- Markus: SHAAAME ON CITI- can change jobs throughout their lives if

tions disappearing. Why are they talk- CORP. That woman, I forget her name they want to. And everyone is gonna get ing about us that way? [she's been picketing a downtown Citi- taken care of, maybe no one will have a PW: Solidarity in the face of bike corp in SF for 2 years over some loan lot of stuff but everyone will have theft is described in exciting detail in fraud she suffered — ed.] There's the shelter, everyone will have food — Mercury Rising. What other kinds of Chickenbutt and the Bonehead, these Markus: No one will have to worry solidarity do you experience and can are dailies, the American Dream Run. about getting sick.

you foresee among bike messengers? Pelona: There's a woman named Pelona: Yeah, if they get sick they'll Ramblin': I think the benefits [con- Lynn Breedlove who I interviewed in be taken care of. certs and parties] the second issue, who started her own Amerigo: People will care for each Amerigo: Messengers came and do- company, Lickety Split Delivery, but other, they'll understand. nated money to get in, and bought beer won't go out for corporate clients be- Pelona: Yeah, we'll have a feeling of and wine to help this guy out who got cause she doesn't want to work for community. You'll be able to walk busted for some bogus drug charge. Bechtel. The clients she pursues are everywhere you need to go, you really Markus: About half the gigs my band tenants and legal aid groups, non-profit don't even need a bicycle. There'll be

(L. Sid) has played have been messen- companies, and so on. like small stores. . . ger benefits. We had another one at Ramblin': I think your day job, PW: So a high level of self-sufficiency Brave New World where Ramblin' whatever you're doing for money, it in local areas? works as a DJ Sunday nights. He's might be useless, but you still have this Pelona: Yeah, so you know people. having a monthly benefit, like for a job where it doesn't destroy your other ideas couple of messengers who cracked up off energies, and you have space to do PW: Any about how you'd relate to the larger world? the job and missed some work time as a whatever your particular interest is. Pelona: the whole world's result. Of course no one's got health Markus: It can destroy your physical No, gonna be like that! insurance. energy sometimes, make you a little too Amerigo: We'll all have separate Pelona: There are so many people exhausted to do as much as you want to worlds! who get hurt, we could do a benefit do, but you don't have to compromise Pelona: Someone else was talking every week easily. yourself too much to do it. Another about this, they were saying "Let's drive Amerigo: Right now Harvey's [5th thing, you get to learn a lot by being a all the big corporations out of Street Market] is our Corporate Head- messenger. down- town." I quarters! Pelona: I've been bothered by the said "Oh no, there won't be any bike messengers," but they said PW: You've spoken with distance, if meaninglessness of this and really "Yeah, but bike messengers are going to not disdain, toward the average office wished I was doing something mean- be planting gardens and tearing up the worker with whom you interact on a ingful. streets and stuff." daily basis. My impression is that there PW: What is Utopia, or at least a Amerigo: People need to be honest is a similar, de facto dissidence among society worth fighting for, for you? about their needs. You won't be re- temps, in spite of the fact that it is often Pelona: A society worth fighting for? pressed about things, and you won't deny invisible. There are a lot of temps with In Utopia, there's no cars. Down the things like death, you'll understand that an "Attitude." I wonder if there are any middle of the street, we're gonna tear up there's a cycle and the whole of life will practical links between messengers and all the asphalt and there's gonna be be accepted in balance. temps? gardens and orchards and you can just

Ramblin': I know a couple of mes- grab a peach as you re riding by PW Yeah yeah sign me up' sengers going out with secretaries, [laughter]. Markus: No, not much going on in that department yet.

Pelona: A temp is someone who says,

"What, a package? Ana L.? I don't know her extension!" That's our take on temps.

PW: Zoe Noe, when he used to messenger for Special T, he gave out a lot of Processed World propaganda, like

the Bad Attitude Certificates. . . Pelona: [reading the bad attitude certificate] Oh, but stealing time, when we steal time we steal our own time, /know? PW: Do messengers discuss the pur- pose of the work they do and what kinds of thoughts prevail? Pelona: We do a run for Citicorp.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 1 ) 1 ) f^,

I DREAMT OF ESCAPING PARIS for five repression set in (I was thrown out of high school at fong years. While I finished "growing up," I went the end of 1969 and spent my last high school year daily from place to place between rows of heavily in a private school), people went back to work and '68 failed martial law was armed cops. May had and the social scene got grim as the government tight- in effect. ened the screws. May '68 had been a month of wildcat strikes and Freedom of the press is not a "right" in France so student demonstrations turning into a general the government succeeded in running underground strike. Imagine a whole country (50 million presses out of existence. "Charlie Hebdo," my inhabitants) immobilized where business was con- favorite weekly, was restricted when its front cover cerned, but effervescent in political and social made fun of the then- recently dead De Gaulle. It

activities. Parisians met daily in the streets for could be sold at a magazine stand only if it was kept discussions on the theme of the "quality of life." below the counter, shamefully out of sight. Mean-

There was Viet-Nam, there were sit-ins, armed while Playboy and its kin were blazing on center confrontations with the special national police stage and people got 18 months jail-time for selling trained for "riots" (Compagnie Republicaine de the ludicrous maoist rag La Cause du Peuple.

Securite aka CRS.) The walls bloomed with I left in 1971 at age 19, in pursuit of the dream of

graffiti: "Culture is like jam, the less you have, the a sane society in which mutual aid was a reality. I

more you stretch it;" "Culture is a carnivorous had no concrete plan or methodology. I just hied plant;" "Plus je fais I'amour, plus je veux faire out and struck north: aurora borealis, uncharted

I'amour; plus je fais la revolution et plus je veux territories, wilderness a gogo. . . faire la revolution." Pardon my French: "The more That got me stuck in Germany for two years,

I make love, the more I want to make love; The tramping one year and the next as a foreign ." more I make revolution, the more. . Barricade language teacher in a high school. Germany wasn't building (thanks to abandoned street equipment) terribly different from France. I was at home brought about the slogan: "Under the pavement despite an ornery attitude towards the German you'll find the beach." (Sous les paves, la plage!) language and history (they did kill my grandfather). There were unauthorized street concerts, a piano I experienced German racism in one unforgetta- was dragged from the dusty depths of La Sorbonne, ble scene in 1972. At that time, foreigners were re- there was spontaneous friendship, mutual support; quired to check in with the authorities at regular generosity abounded. I was born to a larger reality intervals. My two American roomies and I showed after a sixteen-year sleep. up one cold winter day in Biberach- Then the sacrosanct Summer Vacation inter- an-der-Riss to validate our papers. vened. Paris exchanged its usual population every A minor bureaucrat was summer for tourists and a skeleton crew of shoving papers miserably paid North Africans to keep the streets clean. Despite promises that "the sum- mer would be hot" (L'ete serachaud!). I hated the States with a will. Everything hurt, from the discovery that broccoli was not some form of "•^^ pasta to taking a dislike to almost everyone I met.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 at a bewildered Turkish "Gastarbeiter": tion de la reaction") sound like an not amuse her much but she stamped !?" "Kannst du kein Deutsch verstehen?! ! interesting proposition. Then she asked: my passport with a three month visa and ("Can't you understand German ?") "Are you going back with him?" Startled released me to the July sunlight of

about the concept of "going back," I Munich. What a relief! A month later, I I got angry and forgot the little blurted "which him?" It came out that was in Colorado, culture-shocked and German I thought I had, cailled the guy my "American" accent was too perfect bewildered about my decision. a Nazi (he looked like one, recycled) and for this uniformed woman to believe While passing the New York border more, in every language I could sum- that I had never been to the States guards, visa was cut down to one mon and demanded to see his "superi- my before. I was most assuredly lying about month on monetary grounds, despite or." The pathetic little man crumbled. previous visits indicating dark and pos- my explanation that the cash I carried He let go of the Turks, processed my sibly terroristic reasons for my "return." was just pocket money. I was to American friends and me real fast and ($300) I managed to convince my interrogator live with a good family in gentle, apologized to me personally and Mormon that the only English-speaiking country I Colorado and could wire home for more we left. I was shaken by the experi- had ever seen was Great Britain (several pocket money if needed. No go. "Amer- ence. . . but not enough to anticipate times) and that I had no hope of ica is expensive" I was told as similar problems yet to come. my French reproducing or even approximating passport was inscribed with slashes and In 1973 I "emigrated" to the US of A. their accent. lots of red ink. That was though, I put it in quotes marks because I didn't OK Relentlessly, she went on: "Do you since meanwhile my boyfriend had realize it at the time. I was just checking plan to marry him?" The thought, at successfully smuggled some hashish past the place out. I had a lot of informed twenty-one, of being married at all, the whiskers of his border guard. We'd reservations about it. much less married to my current Amer- worry about my status later. The dope My emigration problems started in

ican lover was funny. I laughed . . .too was safe! Also, he was the one who had Stuttgart, then in West Germany, hard. This displeased my interviewer suggested, after my failure to obtain a where I naively told the bureaucrats that who saw nothing funny about marriage. visa in Stuttgart, that Munich was the I was going to work in the States (one (She was right.) I assured her I was way next option. So I believed he would has to eat, ya know). Despite the fact too young to consider marriage serious- come up with some solution. I was soon that a friend had pretended to need my ly, especially to an American. This did to taste the fruit of his solution: marri- specific services, I was refused a work

visa. So I asked for a tourist visa, sufficient to investigate the place for a while and decide on further action. This visa was immediately refused on the

grounds that I had given away my real motives: possible immigration.

Not a whit daunted, I drove to Munich and applied for a tourist visa, answering "NO!" to the question: "Have you ever applied for a tourist visa

to the U.S. before?" For several hours, I watched tourists get their passports stamped with no problem. When my turn came, a flurry of activity preceded the arrival of a prim female army security officer who bade me accompany

her for a special interview. Of course I thought Stuttgart had communicated to

Munich that I was an undesirable fake

tourist. Then I thought about my politi- cal activities in high school and on the

Nanterre campus since 1968. I was freaked but had to face up.

To my relief, the big deal was that I was a French citizen going to the U.S. from Germany. Apparently a highly sus-

picious move. Why didn't I go from

France? Because I happened to live in Germany. This was long before the concept of a Euro-community had made much inroad on public consciousness.

The next question was "why did I want to visit the States?" Naively I stated the truth. I had shared my digs with two Americans who had made visiting their country (the famed "bas-

prcx;essed world 29 One month passed in the bHnk of an property (where she had any or even eye. I hated the States with a will. rights to it) and children would hence Everything hurt, from the discovery become the property of the husband. that broccoli was not some form of pasta Divorce voided the bit about "'til Death to taking a dislike to almost everyone I do us part," except in the matter of met. Were all Americans bigots, patri- property. There is no "parting" of the ots and political dolts? One month was powerful from their property. Ask the not enough time. The place was bewil- world's impoverished female masses. deringly vast. You could drive nonstop On September 10, 1973 I married the for three days from Pennsylvania to boyfriend. I wore jeans to the court- for I was a congratula- California, yet the language , except house where handed accents, did not change. And in Ameri- tory "gift" for brides. Talk about poi- ca as in Germany aliens had to register soned apples: it contained mouthwash, once a year with la migra as to wherea- douche packets, aspirin and many cou- married to an American was a desperate bouts and occupations. Every January, pons for sanitary products to keep you experience. Exchanging Paris for Fort TV screens reminded whoever would fresh and sexy for your lawful hubby. Collins, CO, USA, was a bad idea. Let listen that aliens were to be accounted No condoms, though. me give an example of cultural un-ease. for. By November I knew I was pregnant. As a teenager I had a bout with My "boifurendo" (boyfriend, for those Decision making time. This kid felt real hypoglycemic perturbations. I passed who don't twig Japenglish) kept insisting in more ways than one. . Despite out if I didn't watch the blood sugars. I that marriage would be painless, a mere misgivings about the status of my rela- passed out in the weirdest places and formality that would solve my visa tionship with my husband, it was now or times: Demonstrations, history classes, problems once and for all. My parents never. I did it. I gave birth to this

trains, etc . . . People had always helped; and almost all my friends' parents had wondrous new being and never regret- Many knew the simple solution to this divorced which made me very suspi- ted it despite the adventures to come. coma: sugar cubes in their paper wrap- cious of the institution. A bit of research Giving birth is the greatest high one can pers, lifted from restaurants. showed that it was a business contract experience. Trust me. I passed out in downtown Fort Collins designed to ensure that the woman's The culture shock spread. Being on December 24, 1973. Everyone was ^ ^[^DT©[^ wm \Mmi\u

After all, broke as I was, I could still afford

I'VE ALWAYS FELT AMBIVALENT return I shared my American girlfriend's the airfare back to England. If I was about living in the U.S. Why on earth small one bedroom apartment in a dilapi- straight with myself, I would say that it was would a non-American leftist choose to live dated building that perpetually smelled of without doubt an interesting experience,

clerical in I really liked in the "Great Satan?" If you're born garbage and took a menial job an but I couldn't in all honesty say

American that's unfortunate and you have office where they were prepared to over- it. I liked Americans and things American,

I felt little choice, but to come of your own look my lack of working papers. Thatcher's but it was a long time before

It at confessing to liking volition seems perverse. It wasn't as if I Britain for Reagan's America. was comfortable with could claim to be fleeing desperate eco- best a sideways move. America, before its good points (more nomic conditions or political repression (at My first sense of unease with my subtle than its bad ones) became known to

in with and, importantly, before I real- least not in the Third World sense). I came adopted country came 1986 the me, more for and appreciation I centennial celebrations of the Statue of ized that my fondness just because I had nothing better to do, so feel unworthy of the term "immigrant." Liberty which occurred shortly after my of it could be on my own terms: extremely

It happened six years ago when a arrival. While the few Americans I knew qualified and very equivocal. woman I'd met in Europe the previous —friends of my girlfriend — saw it as noth- Whatever my initial reservations, it was summer and corresponded with suggested ing more than good clean fun, I couldn't exciting. For the first few months even my help but view it as an orgy of nationalism, ferreting around in filing cabinets and I job— I come live with her in New York. jumped militarism, self-congratulatory back- repetitive data entry— seemed exotic. My at the chance, not only because I was and

infatuated with her, but because it sound- slapping— the like of which hadn't been coworkers had strange accents and an ed like an exciting and irresponsibly impul- seen since the Nuremburg rallies. Since I exuberance you scarcely find in England. had yet to develop my own circle of While my new life in the New World was in sive thing to do. I gave little thought to

friends, I didn't realize I was not alone with many ways similar to my old life in the old how long I would stay, consumed by the

these opinions. I was unaware of the the props were decidedly different. idea that for the first time I had a chance to one,

I felt do something larger than life. This was a alternative "celebrations" and protests My senses were reawakened and new frontier — New York, the quintessenti- that were taking place. While my girlfriend compelled to carry a notebook in which I

al urban experience, and beyond that the shared some of my distaste, she thought I would scribble my observations. Going to far and being an store, riding the subway, walking down vast expanse of America. I read Kerouac's was taking things too the adventure. On the Road as preparation. incorrigible party-pooper. I was a minority the street, everything was an

• of I America just to fly in the ointment was, of course, It was with little regret that I gave up my one. Had come to The

Brighton bedsit with burns in the carpet participate in a jingofest? money, or the lack of it. I had arrived with barely paid the rent. and gaps in the window sashes through Feeling as I did, I was at a loss when only $200 and the job worked in which the wind whistled, and my place asked — and I was asked frequently — the My girlfriend was a student and among the nanks of the unemployed. inevitable question, "So how do you like a bar at night. The solution to our econom- green card, I a Leaving family and friends was harder. In America?" I liked it, sure did. Didn't I? ic woes seemed to be

PROCESSED WORLD 29 busy with last minute shopping for

Xmas. No one stopped to offer help. I got looks which worried me: not at all the

European looks I was used to but looks that threatened to be followed by cow- boy boots grinding my face further into the snow. Later, friends explained the "why" of this asocial behavior. I could have sued anyone who stopped to help, they said. I was horrified at the weirdness of the thought: In Europe, it is a crime not to assist persons in danger. Thus I was taught that survival in the USA has different parameters. This incident ef- fected a cure. Hallelujah! (Or was it physical maturity?) When my daughter was born I'd wanted to call her Solitude. My hus- band nixed the name. I became a wife. I lost my name. I was X's mother and Y's wife. It threatened my identity and I became deeply depressed, even suicidal.

I divorced instead of dying, both messy propositions. I was isolated, penniless and naive. I got screwed. Hubby got custody. I took the pro bono lawyer

way of life in semi-rural England. We opening up (what seemed from the outside returned ten months later to New York regularly, even listened to the BBC World looicing in) a world of opportunity thus far enriched by the experience, but not know- Service. But in the last two years I've let denied me. To this end we were married on ing where to go or what to do next. The things slip. England seems more and more the back lawn of a rather bemused-looking plausibility of a return to the old world like a distant memory, a foreign country to justice of the peace somewhere in upstate quickly evaporated. When it came time to me. I have only a vague idea of what's

New York. An old school friend who was return I got cold feet. I realized it was not going on there and have become painfully with us played chauffeur and drove us to England I missed, but the idea of England. aware that I cannot expect the same level Niagara Falls for the "honeymoon." A combination of being away too long and of intimacy from friends who, once an Theatre, I felt total indifference to marriage. I watching too much Masterpiece integral part of my life, I now see only once

it naively failed to see why it should change I'd created a myth of England that could a year, and from whom I am a world apart. things. It was a practical solution to a never live up to in reality. Parallel lives cannot be sustained indefin- logistical problem. It was "real" in the Every year I would go to England itely, ultimately I have to choose between sense that we had every intention of sometimes for a month, usually just for a one and the other. continuing to live together (till difference, if week. I always had a great time and was I can always go back, there'll always be not death, do us part), but "arranged" in sad to leave. But I knew that were I to enough to build on. But were I to go back, I the sense that marriage would— at the move back, the euphoria could never be don't think I'd feel like that option were ages of 22 and 24— never have crossed our sustained. It's one thing to visit for a week reversed. By staying here, not only do I minds had the green card not been an and spend it drinking with old friends, preserve the idea of England which I have issue. another entirely to live there and have to become so attached to and avoid the

In the end, the labels of "husband" and worry about the mundanities of everyday inevitable shattering of illusions, but I also "wife," and the changed expectations of life, like getting a job, a place to live, etc. In keep my options open. others, who now saw us as a "responsible the end we decided against England — or at Today America is no longer a travel married couple" rather than happy-go- least deferred it for the time being — and adventure, just everyday life, the "general lucky single people, contributed to its came to San Francisco instead. Another drama of pain." I am as assimilated as I'll demise two years later. By that time I'd new life, reassuringly like the old one with ever be, speak fluent American and though life built some kind of self-perpetuating in a similar cast of characters, but sufficiently I retain an accent, people rarely ask me any the U.S. I also met my present partner, different to feel challenging. more how I like America, since I no longer

Frances (another American), so despite I used to feel that I had two lives, one in look like a tourist. What keeps me here is plans to return to England I remained in England, one in the States. The first could what keeps anyone anywhere: inertia, the New York another two years. never be taken away from me — my birth- idea that it's harder to leave, for whatever

I if In the spring of 1990, Fran and left New right, you like. The second existed as reasons, than to stay. When I visit England

I first I York to travel throughout Central and long as lived in America. At was I still call it "home," but I have come to South America. This was to be the final act anxious not to lose touch with England, to terms with the fact that this is probably of my American odyssey, after which we keep this first life very much alive. I read more out of nostalgia than anything else. would "retire" to a more sedate and simple the Guardian Weeiily, wrote to friends — Iguana Menle

PROCESSED WORLD 29 with throughout my interrogation. It was a humorless interlude. After

two hours of questioning, it was obvious that a private letter of "denunciation" was at the root of my troubles. The INS lawyer flunky declined to state the

identity of his informant but it was not necessary: Only my daughter's father could have done such a thing. I was accused of being "to the left of the French Communist Party" and of being a lesbian. The U.S. of A. barred "known" leftists and homos from visiting this country until recently (The McCarran- Walter Act was repealed in 1990), and certainly would not grant them citizen- ship. You don't want more commie gays voting, do you? There was no appeal to the INS decision. The truth is no defense. One private letter of denuncia- assigned to my case by Legal Services a couple of years before I was notified by tion was enough to bar me from citizen- (later killed by Reagan's funding starva- mail that I was to take a proficiency ship. I am not inclined to try again. tion of social services) all the way to the exam at the Immigration and Naturali- The lawyer, my daughter and I Supreme Court of Colorado for misrep- zation Office (INS where S is for shared a "celebratory" toast after the resentation of the laws. His pudgy Service — don't sneer) in San Francisco. INS session. Eight years old at the time, be-ringed little hand was slapped: He No problem. I was getting to be less my daughter was upset and asked many had been "ill-advised" to take money naive by then, but not enough. At the questions. How to explain inequity to from the wrong party. Illegal? Maybe appointed time and place, I seemed to the innocent? We had an interesting but I did not regain custody and am still be the only white person fluent in the discussion on the subject of "lying," its in debt to boot. language and basic political organiza- origins (authority), its uses (self- tion which we all were to be quizzed on. defense) and the possible neurosis, hy-

From Mudhole to Lily Pad I coached a couple of panicked South pocrisy ascendant, which reliance on lies called to the I was divorced on my twenty-fifth American women, was could bring. birthday. March 10 has been a strange "bench" and promptly forgot you had In return she delighted us with the or whatever. know double celebration ever since. At last I two senaturds per state following story: "Mom, do you years' wait I did could unfold my own wings again and Still I passed. A couple more what I was doing with your hand?" resume my quest for the foreign grail. ensued. not know the meaning of her magical she demonstrated: I moved to Berkeley because the In 1984 a phone call woke me from manipulations. So university had a better language pro- slumber. A directive had been received folding four fingers of my hand against gram, especially Oriental languages, at one of my old addresses which the palm, she left the middle finger than Boulder U. could ever hope to warranted the intervention of yet an- upright and pointing at authority "avec develop. I wanted to go to China, armed other lawyer. The pal sounding the emphase." with a smattering of mandarin and warning was in the know: as a law Talking with numerous exiles from historical understanding. student, he had a teacher specializing in different parts of the globe brought me oneself Since '68, I had held the belief that the immigration. I quickly visited her. She to the conclusion that exporting Chinese model might be a pointer to was as puzzled by the strange notice is hard work. You'll never fit snugly in future societies: Share and Care, bro'! I from INS as I was. We decided to go any one culture again. The grass is had great admiration for the accom- and see. never greener on the other side. Socie- interac- plishments of the Maoist revolution; it So on July 14, 1984, my daughter, ty's problems are global. One's ain't easy to take a huge, backwards lawyer and I dressed in unlikely skirts tion is perforce local. The locale is less agricultural country into the age of and headed for our rendezvous. That's important than the will to achieve the

information at a single bound. I be- where and when the shit hit the fan. improbable: quality of life! lieved the propaganda. First the INS lawyer ejected the kid It is doubtful that I'll ever get to When "normalization" occurred in from this meeting on the grounds of immerse myself in China. I could barely 1979 (keep in mind that France "recog- "hardship to the child." Then "my" do it in the US. The effort to jump public sever all ties nized" China in 1958). I thought I lawyer declared that it was a across one more pond and should obtain an American passport to meeting: he'd better state his reasons for to the known cultural universe is too avoid a repeat of my Munich adventure ousting the kid. The guy explained that much for me. I have accepted my asked. I though American on a larger scale. I filed for U.S. tough sex questions were to be limitations. Even tell that I have become an citizenship in '80. laughed. . . Hard. The INS lawyer- friends will you just a Frog at Due to changing immigration laws flunky did not think it funny. He was American, I am in fact and the impending "pardon" granted to right. The kid came back in and Odds.

illegal aliens and their employers, it took grabbed my hand, which she played — Frog

PROCESSED WORLD 29 New to the U.S.? Let Us Help You Be More Like US! Put Your Foot on the Accelerator and Get Down to The ACCULTURATOR COMPLETELY PAINLESS!

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PROCESSED WORLD 29 /A\rfMirn

LJ OiLl \ 11 .

CALL ME FRISKO Philosophy is really homesickness,

it is the urge to be at home everywhere. — Novalis WE WANT YOU BACK implore the signs over the Remaining an alien thousands of miles from "home" front fenders of MUNI buses. HAVE YOU has given me a finer appreciation for things Canadian

COME. . .YET? demand the bus shelters. Guilt trip, than my first two decades there ever did. Since coming courtesy AT & T, which wants us to reach ever farther to America (the Ewe Ass of Eh) — the bellum of the

out, and touch everyone (fiber optically). beast, as it were— I feel the clarity of detachment in For the emigre in autumn, these pleas reach deep; as viewing the varied strangenesses of both my distant and

a green-card-carrying (though the card is predominant- adopted homes.

ly pink), bona fide "resident alien," I worry about the Yet however great my disdain for the state of things

atomized spirit spinning round in circles of infinite here, I am still humbled and saddened by the sense of

regression, the elusiveness of home, the marketing and identity-confusion which is a fundamental part of the manipulation of migration. Canadian condition. Caught in the shadow of two

Gertrude Stein once belittled her native Oakland, empires — British and American— Canada is saddled

saying "There is no there there." San Francisco Bay with a world-class inferiority complex. Areans today find that among the East Bay (Berkeley- Oakland- Emeryville), the technopolitan villages of INNER ZONE

Silicon Valley, the lucid but fuzzy, well-heeled dream- The city is born, in my opinion,

ers of the north counties (Marin and Sonoma), the when each of usfor himself is insufficient scattered but emerging virtual communities, and the and has need of others. City (San Francisco), there are a multiplicity of heres -Plato and nows with an especially rich yield— high-grade During the 1988 economic summit conference held in either ore. Toronto, the ABC news anchor Peter Jennings (himself

Like most in the Bay Area, I was drawn here from a one-time Tronnan) called it "the city that plays

afar. It may be the fog, or living on the edge of a anyplace, but is still waiting to play itself" That horror continent — the playing- with-fire mode of existence we filmmaker David Cronenberg makes his films there,

take for granted— or the exquisitely varied cultural soup and recently used it as the site for both New York and

that draws us from all over, in preference to the thin Interzone in his adaptation of Naked Lunch strikes me as gruel we've found elsewhere. Northern Californians are grimly appropriate. justifiably accused of superiority; when we look to L.A., Douglas Coupland in Generation X (see PW 28)

it's easy to feel detached (different faultzones) from the describes it as "[giving] the efficient, ordered feel of the

rest of the state, to say nothing of these disUnited States. Yellow Pages sprung to life in three dimensions, peppered with trees and veined with cold water." EXIT WOUND

Though I look right at home

I stillfeel like an exile — Elvis Costello

. . . the overwhelming centurion dream of America -*^f^ drowned out our weak northern signal, dimmed the aurora borealis in a torrent of acid rain.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 Pierce later banned my review of Canadians live. Flowers For Algernon, citing my fondness In 1970, we left Winnipeg for Toron- for science fiction as the pretext. To to, the city of my birth. It was there that emphasize his disdain, he told me to I enrolled at Upper Canada College. It prepare another one, and deducted 10% was supposed to groom the brood of

from my grade because it was instantly business and the old aristocracy (what

late. In revenge, I dwelled on the the stuffy 19th-century Canadians of bloodier passages in Something of Value, British stock called "the Family Com- Robert Ruark's pungent fifties bestseller pact"). Most of my schooling occurred at about Mau Mau atrocities in Kenya. As private schools like UCC — world-class, I read aloud to the rapt class of castra- presumably, for their emulation of tion and other dismemberments — with Eton. veiled references to our own enforced One of our rallying cries was "The impotence — I glimpsed Pierce's face Blue Machine is Supreme!" As consum- turning green. mate snobs, we thought we were des- (Unfortunately, this was a game I tined to control the financial world couldn't win. Next year he made me centred on Bay Street, the provincial stand unprotected in a freezing Novem- government at Queen's Park, and ulti-

ber rain, from which I nearly caught my mately, with all due modesty, accession to the halls of in Ottawa. Kafka spoke of his Prague as "that death.) power Beyond that was the terror incognita. mother that has claws and won't let go." In a related war of words, my French It's easy to see where I developed my Toronto let me go; in maudlin moments, teacher said to me knowingly, "Oh, so revulsion for authority: the macho in- I might even say it drove me away — and you're one of those." He was referring to ferno of boys' school, the petty elitism for that, I neither forgive nor forget. can the fact that I was actually reading in the reflected in our "house" ties, the Scottish Toronto is in some ways a laboratory school library (as opposed to "study- brogue of the endless stream of pipe- for the future city. It is one of North ing"). His disdain deepened when he smoking masters dictating the brutal test where America's marketing hubs — saw the book I held was The Hugo and capricious terms for our existence. such questionable commodities as cher- Winners, a collection of award-winning My training included BASIC, which ry-flavored potato chips made their science fiction. Apparently my interest I optional Its indoor shopping mall envi- pursued as an subject through debut. in "sci-fi" branded me a cultural barbar- (e.g., Yorkdale and the Eaton ninth grade. As a student programmer, ronments ian. I knew in fact I was ahead of my Centre) are more grandiose than Frank I toured more than one computer- time, and I could either wait. . .or, to Paul's visions of the 25th century whirring office in the mid- seventies, R. find my stride, I could go to the source half- suspecting that this was my future. splashed across the covers of 20s pulp of the attractive signal from the south. magazines. I narrowly missed (by a year) being As a Canadian first generation forced to march in the "battalion," And though it boasts one of the most — varied, cosmopolitan populations in the mother; father an immigrant; more wearing ridiculous military uniforms, saxon than anglo— I was no happy toting replica firearms, doing maneu- world — close to half its population was camper. early years were spent in vers around the school grounds. Another born outside the country — it has also My pass before been home to a very stodgy, mannered the Siberian wastelands of Manitoba. If decade would computer you've never heard of Pas, don't science replaced Latin as a core subject. people. I like to visit them, love some of The worry; you won't be required to find it It would be an oversimplification to them to distraction — but still, I cannot say that science fiction led to my leaving live there. Alas. on a map. From those outer limits north of the 53rd, my family moved south to Canada. As a genre representing a pulp, SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS the narrow band straddling the border sophisticated, fast-forward impulse, it with the U.S., where 90 percent of all and the overwhelming centurion dream It seemed natural that a little boy of eight or ten should be a miserable, snotty-nosed crea- ture, his face almost permanently dirty, his hands chapped, his nails bitten, his handker- chief a sodden horror, his bottom frequently blue with bruises. — George Orwell An English teacher named Pierce Basic once told me in prep school, "You're a Training stranger in a strange land."

"Have you read the book?" I asked, hopefully.

He had not. I gave him a copy of Heinlein's famous hippie-prophetic novel that Christmas. We were friends, as far and as briefly as that went between pupil and master (yes, they called themselves that) at Upper Canada College.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 )

of America drowned out our weak immigration.) What more can I do to as such, his openly sympathetic view northern signal, dimmed the aurora resist the abhorrent machinery when I towards Baltic independence was just borealis in a torrent of acid rain. SF have put myself in its maw by choosing one area where he was at odds with the provided the means (a social network to live here? Soviet center of power. that transcended borders) and certainly James Joyce gives good tactical advice I was traveling through Eastern Eu- the mindset for a restless young cosmo- for survival in exile: rope as part of the Anti- Economy politan that were infinitely more appeal- / will not serve that in which I no longer League mission to undermine blind

ing than the pallid imperial baggage of believe whether, it call itself my home, my faith in the false idol of the West and its Britain, whose most dour representa- fatherland or my church: and I will try to cathode-radiant future. Walking down tives seemed to end up teaching at express myself in some mode of life or art as the Unter den Linden in East Berlin, I Canadian private schools. freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using drifted into a "Unitopia" conference at

I had to escape — as a budding writer, for my defense the only arms I allow myself to the Alexander von Humboldt Universi- poet, stifled student of the world, eager use— silence, exile, and cunning. ty. In one of the classrooms students to shuck the fetters of tradition, to — Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the from the Baltic states showed videos unsquelch my lacquered tongue — I fol- Artist as a Young Man documenting their struggle, provided lowed the siren call south. Silence and cunning are limited if one narration and answered questions in RESENTMENT ALIEN does not find an effective balance in English. They were an affable group of sociail action. Self-expression, if success- guys in their young twenties, active at Nowhere is everywhere ful, or at least away from the margins, the universities in Tallinn and Vilnius. andfirst of all in the country means collaboration. It may be with an One powerful image they brought where one happens to be. audience of strangers, or one's peers; at with them was the story of the human — Alfred J arry best, it resonates and may disturb the chain across all the states from Lithua- I have to admit I've been lucky. To universe. nia through Latvia and Estonia which get here — In this City of exotic smiles, one's first was organized to protest lingering Sovi- I didn't have to pay a coyote to sneak question is often "Where are you from?" et domination in 1988. As an artistic me in a dusty suffocating drive out of The Soviet epithet "roodess cosmo- and cultural statement on a massive Tijuana in the trunk of a monoxidized

politan" has always struck close to. . . scale, it went far beyond anything I've automobile. I didn't cross the Rio

well. . .home, wherever that is. Having seen from the jaded emigre artist Chris- Grande, blinking in a late night march lived in California since 1983, I've now to, with his menacing, homicidal um- through a desert of scorpions and in- been in Francisco longer than any brellas, or Man Ray-run-amok visions frared sensors, watching for the strobe- San other place. I feel myself at last a San of wrapping the Reichstag. lit rotors of la Migra. Franciscan. As I traveled, news of further atomi- I did not have to "vote with my feet" But however comfortable and inspir- zation abounded: Yugoslav republics to avoid having my skull added to a ing it may be here, I'm always going to Slovenia and Croatia were advancing in pyramid of eggheads in Indochina. be dreaming about somewhere else; their drive for independence. The only I never had to sail in a listing, where I've been, where I come from, drift in the other direction, towards overcrowded boat, drinking seawater, and ultimately, where I may be headed. unity, was in reunifying Germany, and braving pirates, turned away from one on the dim horizon in South Africa, as port to another, as if on a deathship, the Group Areas Act was reformed out only to while away the indignity of years THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE of apartheid, laying the groundwork for languishing in detainment centers, fear- CENTER the eventual dismantling of the "home- ing repatriation, waiting to live. Imagine having nothing on your hands land" system of "separate development." No linguistic barrier came between butyour destiny. In the meantime, my own native me and where I now stand, except for You sit on the doorstep ofyour realm — Canada — was itself in the throes increasingly infrequent ribbing about mother's womb andyou kill time of new waves of separatism, as the my accent. With the passing of time, I — or time kills you. constitutional fabric of confederation am a less obvious stranger. You sit there chanting the doxology of once again appeared fated to bitter Nobody ever dropped any bombs on things beyondyour grasp. dissolution. Once again, I felt the de- a country I've lived in, except in weap- Outside. spair of a country that is paralyzed by ons "tests." (Although periodically bits of Forever outside. chronic uncertainty, plagued by doubts space junk have rained flaming across — Henry Miller, Black Spring and self-flagellation, two solitudes that the skies. And power plants have been People born after WWII have lived have multiplied into a terminal alienation. to overreact . . the shadow of the Bomb. known . their lives in

Since I can be in only one place at a We will all go together when we go, gibed time, and am not content to remain a Tom Lehrer in one of his satirical songs virtual traveler, I grapple daily with the of the sixties. Now that the specter of

problems of displacement. . .and en- communism has obligingly imploded gagement. I may not be able to vote in across the once monolithic Eastern Bloc, America, but I pay taxes. And until my history — rather than ending— has spun wife fired me, I was counted on all the ever faster in increasingly uncertain various forms she faithfully completed, directions. a model minion of bureaucracy. (I June 1990 was a time of tumult. Boris shouldn't knock it; those very forms Yeltsin was the newly elected Chairman eased me through the pearly gates of of the Russian Federation parliament;

PROCESSED WORLD 29 There are many heres now — here, here, and yes even there — however cycli- cal history or our memories of amnesia may be— in terms of the beat that echoes in my chest, maybe a muffled explosion, enough that I somehow continue to rise and think: maybe I won't pass this way again.

How many thousands of miles have I circled the square on this hamster wheel of life? In the movie 2001, an astronaut bound for Jupiter jogs around an end- less track, a centrifuge, on an express- line beyond the infinite. The force that points his feet to the floor has another side: a centripetal pull, which governs the fate of nations. As we

have seen recently, it doesn't take much, once the process is started, for these curious social constructs to fly apart. With the vanquishing of the Challenger shuttle, and the Soviet disUnion, manned spaceflight to any of our distant neighbors appears to be increasingly remote in the short term — ask that poor cosmonaut, still stranded in orbit, the country that launched him no longer in existence. Perhaps, as in Alphaville, we'll just have to drive our cars from city to city, pretending they're different star systems for that same (almost quaint) thrill of discovery.

If we are to escape, it may only be from one room to another in the burning house we all live in. -D.S. Black FROM THE UNDERGROUND Heinlein wrote "The Roads Must In another country, with another name Roll." Asimov called them The Caves of Maybe things are different. Steel. Dostoevsky had his Notes From a Maybe they're the same. Hole in the Floor (better known as Notes — Brian Eno From Underground), in which he ventilat-

I can always tell the weekend riders: ed the violent interiority of the subter- their hesitation at the turnstiles, their ranean dweller lashing out, excoriating uncertainty over ticketing. Or some- the sickness of the status quo. times late at night, on the last lonely Fortunately or not, most who ride do trains before the subway system shuts not show their loco side when on the down, they're the ones too nervous to train. The train is an engine of genes read or catch up on their sleep. They and experience in a brownian stream of blink in amazement at every little thing. motion.

They never know till the last moment on It is a quality of indoor life; from A.K.A. Buz Blurr, one of your more prolific and sitting in one's which side of the train the doors will garret, the outside fades poetic writers, he signs his self-portrait with a dif- open. If there's something to see outside in a haze of distant memories. I close ferent title every day. the window, they watch it whiz past in my eyes to follow the slipstream of the drop-jawed stupefaction, waiting for a everflowing street, from the Polk Street moronic boom. of Frank Norris to Edvard Munch's

I was a precocious commuter. I silhouette edging against the current of started going by subway to school before Sunday promenaders on Karl Johann-

I was ten. Now I find I've spent the last strasse. Joyce strolls along his river twentysome years riding the rails; time Liffey, Doblin's fetid Alexanderplatz to take stock. It has not always been the assails the nostrils, while Nevsky Pros- most pleasant experience, but it opened pekt continues to beckon from the work passages for me that in many ways seem of Pushkin to the futurist Biely. Saint to define my existence. Petersburg lives! Still, memory wanes.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 —

LUCHA LOST IN THE METRO

"Lucia Valenzuela: last seen in San Lizaro Station She answers to the name ofLucha Not in full possession of her mental capacities Her native language is Nahuatl" —note on bulletin board, Isabel la Catolica Metro stop

in Metro, Lucha lost in the Metro Lucha lost the the rubber doors she tries to count slide behind her the stations between like they are kissing. the darkness but of Why are all these eyes there are more them going for a ride than all her fingers put together, down under the streets her children are crying now, where the dead people shhh they must not know are planted, she wonders. Will she see her mother? How much for this one the tall woman pulls her arm

as if she were deaf and dumb, she is not her mother, she doesn't have to tell her INFORMETRO: how much her own children cost. Fact; Our Metro

is one of the few

In the whole wide world that uses pneumatic tires INFORMETRO: designed with Fact: The integrity mathenfiatical precision. of our users

is the absolute bedrocl( of our high standard of technological innovation.

in the Metro, Lucha lost in the Metro Lucha lost Observatorio, searching out her dead mother she arrives at between the fluorescent stations, the tall woman tells her they have given her it is the end of the line, she must leave now, these little dolls to sell, dead children with sewn smiles, the conductor shoos her out, they keep giggling the dolls are sleeping at last, under her blue rebozo, her mother is waiting for her, sells sunflower seeds shhh, don't tell she wall, the conductor. against the subway Lucha squats down next to her, relieved that she has found her own at last, cries hard INFORMETRO: she her mother's lap Fact: Our Metro into was constructed in Nahuatl. at a cost per user lower than any transportation system anywhere else INFORMETRO: under the world. Fact: More people are found In our Metro eoch year because each year more and more people are lost.

-John Ross Mexico City 3/88

PROCESSED WORLD 29 — —

MOJESERCE

You ask me to say some love words in Polish

1 hesitate afraid you might not like IHI! the hard h in the verb for love

but you lie still and trusting Text P?

as if expecting an unknown T[bang]\

caress Overhead? 1 got all the head I can handle. mqj mity Heading for a crash, no kidding. mbj ztoty. A real bagbiter when you're interrupt-driven. Thrashing. mqj aniele All information is assigned on a Need-To-Know basis. my angel Of course it can be embarrassing, my own Some fourteen-year-old phone phreak whose handle is Headhook my golden one Flashing your credit history on screen. Some tidbit he found hacking the TRW mainframe.

it's California But whatcha gonna do, it's the Information Age: January the unstoppable sun You can't incent them suckers to stonewall. beats on the pillow We're not looking for excessive functionality here, Just a hook to start with, I whisper the eternal banalities of love Something to inspire song. Or compel it.

I think I'd like it's Los Angeles I take you to non-concur with you there, sir to another country Ride Public Transit: streets muted with snow Smell the armpits of your fellow man

early in the morning Gnless you'd prefer that 1 went into emulation mode: before footprints Another yes-man. Another soft luck story. A man waits His way to the top and stays there. So true and so boring protected by a language We won't empathize when his son Skipper gets skin cancer in Chapter 6. you cannot enter How many man-months in that oeuvre? Just asking.

I coo the extravagant And as for you, love, catalogue How will we know if it's

hi res until we've seen it all? especially We'll have to be each other's scratch monkeys moje serce CJntil we get some answers. my heart As far as we know we're just liveware Beta testing for the real human race

that's what 1 want you to be Rumored to be released real soon now.

before falling asleep I repeat the brief —David Fox syllable of your name like a heartbeat

it's hard giving you up THERE IS TOO MUCH TO LEAVE the room snowy with light There is too much to leave:

1 whisper inoje serce The blood of growing up and you The calling of the ancestors whisper back The longing for your hardened tones it sounds wonderful The feel of cinnamon loam goon But the sea whispers — loanna-Veronika Banjos keep dancing And the heart keeps forming words Trapped by the hardened lips.

The heart, Cloaked in onionpeels of steel Caught in the inertia of ideologies Between swollen bellies smiling for the camera And children disappearing into the rescue of graves, Keeps waiting for the delicate kiss To unveil the sorrow of doves imprisoned there.

—Farouk Asvat

PROCESSED WORLD 29 19 MEN

19 men running in the moonlight -^ 19 men waiting in a railroad yard | 1 9 men heard a coyote's howl 19 men sneaking in a freight yard 19 men dreaming of a big dream 19 men going for a hard ride 19 men trying to get a tough job 19 men blurring an illegal border 19 men with nothing to lose 19 men stepped down into an aluminum Missouri Pacific boxcar were sealed (Where's the light in this rolling and the doors SEVEN A.M., ENSENADA coffin? Let's strike a match, let's see your faces—There's Manuel & Jorge & his compadre Isidro from Zacatecas, que no? Seven a.m., Ensenada, & Juan & Jose y los cuatitos Miguel & Mateo, there's Adrian & Baja California, Martin, Tomas, Pablo, and that other Pablo, too, & Joaquin, Hotel Las Palmas Ramon, Arturo, Ernesto el poeta, and Mario who said this was time, and Miguel Rodriguez) his last What saddens me today 19 men headed for Dachau isn't that the ozone 19 men with a ticket to Auschwitz disappears inch by inch 19 men riding through El Paso like cards up a gambler's sleeve 19 men in the West Texas heat nor that poisons fill the earth 19 men without air to breathe and spill boiling into the sea 19 men sealed in a death car nor famines nor wars that ravage 19 men and they can't go far paradise-to-be. 19 men on the road of no return 19 men got burned But today there was a middle-aged 19 men sealed alive in an aluminum nightmare Mexican campesino who passed crazy with heat convulsions / tearing their hair out in by in the parking lot asphyxiations / blood & skin & hair smeared on the walls of the and neither he nor 1 refrigerated freight car had the courage to look the other 19 men only one survived in the eye and say "good morning.' 19 men —Clifton Ross —Alejandro Murguia

If you know any whereabouts or who's abouts of Bozo Texino, please write: Clickety Claxton, Box 77325, SF CA 94107

PROCESSED WORLD 29 I O ME, MAIN STREET WAS NEVER matters of sexuality. Indeed, part of the reason they more than a pathetic imitation of a gay bar, a sent their sons (daughters were kept at home) to fractured parody of the demimonde. The outdated bucolic Carbondale was its (relative) remoteness disco music and the de rigueur mirrored ball that spun from corrupt, decadent, irreligious Western cul- wearily over the dance floor tried but failed to ture. On the one hand they needed the intellectuail create an atmosphere of big city sophistication in products of that dangerously secular civilization; on that heart of southern, rural darkness. To others, the other, they feared their offspring would be however. Main Street was a glittering Oz, a fabled seduced by its siren call. This fear was well- land of dreams come true, a taste of paradise. founded, and they took what measures they could The only gay bar for a radius of a hundred miles, to contain this threat.

it was the far flung outpost of Queer culture. Back Khan's family, like most others, had signed a home in Chicago, 350 miles north of the Ozarks, contract with the Malaysian government to cover gay bars — there were over a hundred in the the cost of his degree. Big Brother would pay for the city — specialized and had highly specific clienteles: bulk of Khan's education as a mechanical engineer, leather bars, preppy bars (aka "S & M" or "Stand tuition and some living expenses (generously and Model" bars), "Gentlemen's" bars (i.e., for rich supplemented by his obscenely wealthy family); in old daddies and young hustlers), cruise bars, etc. return, KJian would serve the government at the

Not so in Carbondale, where it was one size fits all. ratio of four years of work for each year of school. Main Street hosted men and women, students from Thus, the average four year degree would commit the University and locals, drag queens and frat him to 16 years of government service. boys, hicks and Internationals. Alas, Khan had discovered: a) that he was queer; Khan Chang could usually be found on what I b) that he hated mechanical engineering, Islam,

sometimes called the Flight Deck, because it was so Malaysia, and his family (not necessarily in that often host to the Royal Malaysian Air Force. It was order); and c) that his True Calling was to move to a raised wooden platform to the right of the bar; New York City and become a Famous Fashion

opposite it was another platform containing the Designer. These were not unrelated discoveries, pool table. (This was, obviously, the center of but the bottom line was that if he welshed on the lesbian activity in the bar and was known as the deal his parents had cut they would be stuck with "Dyke Deck.") It was only natural that Southern the tab for his years at SIU and he would be persona Illinois University, with its well-developed outreach non grata with his family and the Malaysian

to Moslem Asia and its world-class aviation and Government, both orthodox Moslem outfits with aviatronics departments, should train the entire impressive grudge-holding skills. Royal Malaysian Air Force. What was less natu- For Khan this was such a good deal ral—or at least less obvious — was that so many of that he never the RMAF cadre should be queer. ^ The oligarchies of Moslem Asia are not famous for their open-mindedness in general, After only let alone on four years of Exile ... I would metamorphose into a full-fledged, well-paid *^ Professional ... I would be a Guppy at last!

PROCESSED WORLD 29 a

looked back. "There's no 'gay life' in both sides — but, naturally, denounced long and checkered undergraduate ca- Malaysia," he explained to me. "Some the bar as sinful, the campus group as reer. I had the lowest grade point dirty old men hanging out in parks. irreligious, and the separatists as pa- average of anyone ever accepted in the

Yuck!" It wasn't just gay sex he wanted gans. program, squeaking in despite my orig- (though he wanted plenty of that, from The Pit was an example of the crazy inal ranking as "eighth alternate." In

all reports), it was a "Lifestyle." contradictions governing the very limit- return for working 20 hours a week, at "In Malaysia you have to have a ed queer and queer-safe space in South- an hourly rate comparable to what I'd family, a wife and kids. Your life is ern Illinois. It was a pit mine a dozen generally earned in the Real World, I supposed to center around them. Family miles north of the campus, which had got a tuition waiver (otherwise $4K per

is shrugged. him, been abandoned when it struck a spring year), and training as both an academic everything." He To j family was nothing, now, not compared and flooded with water. Now it was the and a shrink. Such a deal! I to the glamor of Main Street and the best swimming hole of the region, and There was bound to be an "Ivory rumored grandness of fabled New York. all on private land owned by Nick, a Tower" effect, I figured, to offset the But he was atypical in that regard. Most prosperous fireworks salesman. Nick otherwise bucolic nature of the region. of his gay Malaysian friends were too liked having nekkid women hanging After only four years of Exile, living well bound up with moral and financial around at his swimmin' hole, and gave cheap in the sultry south, I would obligations, and by family ties, to con- highly coveted keys to selected gate- metamorphose into a full-fledged, well- sider defecting. They were content with keepers of the local lesbian community. paid Professional doing Meaningful

camping it up on Main Street for a few On a hot summer weekend the secluded Work. I would be a Guppy (Gay Urban years, and then holding out for occa- park would overflow with dozens of Professional) at last! sional business trips to the U.S. and its nude lesbians, a few of their fag friends, It didn't work out quite that way. But gay scene. and Nick himself, naked except for a big I still say school beats working for a .38 strapped to his waist. living, nine times out often. The Lure of the West Nick was a blatant sexist, and often Social Geography 1 Carbondale's gay community was ran around taking pictures of the wom- clearly obvious Everyone was an outcast in Carbon- a foreign element, an en's bare tits and asses. They didn't it place of universal exile. import of urban perversity into the chastise him for objectifying them; they dale; was a its population were Heartland (as the local TV stations like howled with glee and demanded copies. The majority of to call it). It was grudgingly tolerated as an aliens, isolated in a strange land, and Besides, it was his pool and one of the the natives seemed dislocated unpleasant but unavoidable byproduct few safe places for queers to gather. The even by culturad-imperialist intrusion of of the University, like toxic waste from a bar was a target for fag-bashers, the the The University. For most of us the Ivory job-producing heavy industry. local rest-stop cruisy area the prey of locals disliked was in fact a tiny ghetto sur- What the most about local cops, thugs, and occasional mur- Tower this queer colonial enclave was its derers (including a husband-and-wife rounded by a vast and hostile wilderness defec- for of the rest it was an remarkable ability to encourage team that chainsawed their victim into (and most colonial enclave). tion and conversion, no less from pieces, and only got caught because they invading, local, conservative Christian student body was an interesting among the used his credit cards at a local furniture The the conservative mix. was at the bottom of the state's population than from store). If you wanted to be picky about SIU residents. educational hierarchy. All the really Moslem Asian temporary the Political Correctness of your host, students couldn't afford These converts usually soon departed you'd be better off returning to your top-notch (who C-dale for one of the Gay Urban Gay Urban Mecca. private schools, that is) went to the Meccas (which by regional standards world-famous University of Illinois at I Got There included Memphis and St. Louis, How Champaign-Urbana (or Shampoo-Ba-

southern backwaters in my jaded opin- I wanted nothing more than to return nana, as we called it). Middle class

ion). Their families far preferred it that to Civilization, but like Khan Chang whites with less obvious academic talent way; nothing could be more humiliating and most other students I'd accepted and the better-off blacks went to North- that an openly gay relative lacking the Exile as the price of an affordable ern Illinois University at DeKalb, just a shame to either hide or flee. education. It was my determination to couple hours outside the city; the frat The stridently militant, anti-closet avoid working for a living that led me, boys could drive in for the weekends. proselytizing, nationalist attitude of big naturally enough, to consider a career in Distant C-dale, 350 miles South of city Queers, which flavored the campus academics, and ultimately to C-dale. I'd Chicago, got the leftovers; party ani- gay group, was considered derangedly finished up my long-neglected bachelor's mals (we had an outdated rep as a political by the indigenous Queers who degree and finagled a slot in SILTs "party-hearty" school held over from the dominated Main Street and tended graduate program in Counseling Psy- '60s), poor blacks from Chicago's South

more towards a pre- Stonewall, Southern chology. I gleefully gave short notice to Side and from East St. Louis, where drag-queen culture. There was a femi- my boss (see "Progressive Pretensions," there was a branch campus, and assort- nist-separatist community, held over PW 26), tucked the "Dr. K. Wabbit, ed semi-rural low-brow Aggies and from the seventies, which avoided the Ph.D" plaque (a going away gift from Techies from mid-state. campus group as sexist and the bar as my co-workers) under my arm, and set Like so many American schools, SIU promoting addiction. A local Metropol- off for the South. got its big boost after World War II, itan Community Church (a national It was no small accomplishment to be when any degree-granting institution gay ministry) advocated a fusion of accepted for such a cushy spot at all, could expand ten-fold on the glut of

fundamentalism and homosexuality — and I was fully aware of how marginal a veteran's benefited students. Right after

fusion vociferously denounced from candidate I was for it, what with my that came the "Sputnik" scare of the '50s,

PROCESSED WORLD 29 the fear that the Russkies were going to win the "race for the stars" because they got their rockets off the ground before we did (having snagged the better German rocket scientists, while we got Werner von Braun). Huge bucks were poured into the education system to offset this (imaginary) deficit; besides, they figured — correctly — it'll keep kids off the streets and out of the job market. Then there were the upheavals of the '60s, when many public schools adopted virtual open admissions standards. The tab, in those days not very steep, would be picked up by generous Federal financial aid, rounded out with low- interest, government guaranteed loans. <^i This lovely gravy train, despite 35 years of momentum, was abruptly de- railed with the advent of the Reagan- SHEEP, n. A large, abysmally stupid quadruped bearing a striking Bush regime. State schools all over the to the voter. country felt the crunch, but SIU had resemblance another common animal, average American hedged its bets cleverly. Led by a visionary president, the school had students of any campus in the country. minor midwestern state schools. Rapid created and promoted special outreach They were mostly from the less devel- advancement depends largely upon a programs to both foreign (officiailly oped countries, but particularly from willingness to accept further exile in the "Internationad") students and to disabled Moslem Asia, e.g., Malaysia, Brunei, form of "good" positions at out-of-the- people. Singapore and Indonesia. There were way institutions. I myself turned down a Both groups paid premium tuition, also lots of students from Africa. For position in the Counseling Center at about four times the standard for resi- them the only other choice, most of the Northern Illinois University at DeKalb, dents of Illinois. They flooded speciad time, was China, where African stu- because by that time I'd been diagnosed programs, and required all sorts of dents live fifteen to a room in hovels with AIDS and felt myself to be exiled to expert services and tutoring, for which without plumbing — and end up with San Francisco by virtue of mediccd they paid top dollar (incidently provid- cheesy degrees in obsolete technology. necessity. I can't think of any place I'd ing employment — usually subsidized by Attending SIU was the chance of a rather be exiled to, and anyway, my Federal money — for other students). lifetime for them, an interesting contrast diagnosis rapidly eroded my lingering They were also more vulnerable to to the average lackadaisical frat boys, urge to merge with the mainstream via a gouging by the locals than ordinary who drifted on a haze of beer for four "good" job. students, so the private sector got its years at SIU for lack of anything better The premise of graduate work is that share of the goodies. Unlike state resi- to do. it's a good deal in the long run, albeit dents, who stayed away from school in The various exile communities lived merciless exploitation in the beginning. bad times, these lucrative constituencies peaceably side by side, mostly ignoring I found it a tolerable deal in the short held stable and even increased. C-dale's each other entirely. We didn't come run, by virtue of my superior skills at well-developed programs in agriculture there to socialize, after all, but rather in shirking, coasting, and ad-libbing, but and technology, sneered at by the more pursuit of some higher cause: Truth, or clearly most others did not. They en- academically inclined upstate schools, a lucrative career, or training in how to dured exile plus unreasonable work were quite attractive to students from transform the world, or a few years of loads because it was one of very few Third World countries. subsidized leisure away from nagging paths upward. The initial outlay wasn't too bad. The parents, or adl of the above. As to how Khan ended up, I don't entire campus had to be made handi- After four years my term expired and know, not having much information on capped accessible, but there were lots of classwork, thesis, and major exams the New York fashion design scene. I'll federal dollars for stuff like that, and it's completed, I departed to do my year- bet he's much happier than he would be great PR. We had a mobile wheelchair long, paid clinical internship at the back home working for the government, repair unit that could get anywhere on University of California at Irvine in and it was obvious that his prospects as a campus in 15 minutes. Catering to Orange County. This is another tale of Designer were far brighter than any he'd foreign students was even easier. The toil and Exile by itself. If I ever actually had as a mechanical engineer. Once registrar developed a muscular and bother to do my dissertation — which is again the lure of decadent Western experienced visa department that spe- what I should be doing instead of writing culture and the unrestrained freedom of cialized in pushing through the passport subversive trash like this — I will offi- the Capitalist Market triumphed over paperwork. SIU was often the only, or cially be Dr. K. Wabbit, Ph.D. traditional values and a Planned Econo-

at least the easiest, place for foreign Was it worth it, that long, painful and my. For Khan, as for me now, what students to study in the U.S. costly exile? Most of my cohorts feel so started as Exile ended as finding Home. When I went there, C-dade had the now, as they climb their way up out of second largest number of "international" the ranks of the junior faculty at various — Kwazee Wabbit

PHOCESSED WORLD 29 DO\A/NTIME! PAPERSLUTTING but here are some of my favorite ways. reasons: to benefit the goals of the Be 5 minutes late for work. Get lost corporation (for example, evading EPA okill sharing is the way of the future. on your way there the first day (even if regulations) or to work against the goals This is probably not what Kropotkin you don't, they can't expect you to find of the corporation. Which side are you 1 envisioned when he wrote Mutual Aid, your way around their zoo very easily, on, after all?!? but I'm going to go ahead and share at any rate). Get coffee or tea or water. Go to the bathroom a lot. (One with you some of what I've learned on One trick is to get half- cups, on the temping friend tells me he takes small

the job. I work as a temp, a word ostensible basis that you like it very hot; naps on the toilet, waking up when processor, a secretary, part of what the that doubles your coffee-getting time. someone opens the door. I'm impressed

communists call the "paper proletariat," Ask for a small tour of the worksite, if but not that adept.) While you're in the doing what this anarcha- feminist prefers you think your genuine interest in their bathroom, try out new hairdos. Wash to call "paperslutting." operations could be plausible. Write your face. Pull up your stockings (as the

My agency (read: pimp) arranges the down everything they tell you. Ask case may be). Masturbate. Plan your trick, and I meet the client. I dress and several people to recommend places for evening. Do graffiti if it's possible not to act appropriately, and I do whatever lunch. Be 5 minutes late getting back have it linked to you. they tell me for the time specified. (If from lunch. Leave work five minutes early. they are overly cruel, my agency/pimp Whenever possible, don't use your This list is by no means exhaustive. will ostensibly protect me. The one time best judgement. Wait until someone's Be creative. Your creativity in this I did report a client for cruelty I found off the phone to ask them how they want respect is only rivaled by the creativity the agency very sympathetic, but they their letter typed if you have a question. of those who devise the thousands of haven't gotten me a single assignment If you're typing it in the computer, sure stupid regulations set up to keep you since then.) you could always change it later, but my passive in their workplace. Lest you feel

For as long as I work the job, I get motto on the job for the hourly wage is, frustrated with this approach — it may approximately 40% of what the client pays "Why waste work when you can waste seem petty — bear in mind (and they me hourly. The state gets something like time?" have told me so in so many words) that 20%, and the agency takes the rest. On The most famous way to waste time at your time is their money. the training video, they showed me a pie work is an old radical union trick, from Be careful, but always keep alert for chart detailing what they do with my the military too. It's referred to as opportunities. You'd be surprised at earnings. According to the chart, my working by the book. Literally, the rule how many apartments can be furnished earnings go to pay their "rent, office book. They write the damn things, but with the seldom-missed surplus of the supplies, salaries, profits, and other if work actually were done by all the corporate world. If you have particular costs." Funny the way they order their regulations, nothing would get done. skills, you may be able to do large-scale words to make profit sound like an Working by the book means doing damage to office machines that will be unavoidable expense. exactly what procedure dictates and interpreted as due to breakdown rather So here's some advice from the vast more but never less, no short-cuts, no than sabotage. stores of my desperate creativity. If rushing, check everything twice, get Maybe I've read too much Foucault, work is a prison of measured time, it is approval at every step, cut no corners, but in any case, I think the most damage only logical to begin with time. What do and, whatever you do, don't use your you can do in an office setting is you do with time at work (other than intelligence to streamline their process- organizational. The whole idea of bu- I watch it)? WASTE IT! I'm sure you can es. reaucracy (rule by desks or offices) is to figure out how to do this on your own. At work, people break rules for two centralize information, to have at the fingertips of those who make decisions all the available facts about those they control, affect, observe, monitor, select, disregard, ignore, and forget, and about those by whom they are affected and limited and on whom they depend. Thus they rely on computers, on elaborate filing systems, on steep but extensive hierarchies, and on principles of secrecy and mystification. Organiza- tion and structure are the backbone of the internal aspect of the corporation

which I think is most interesting to the infiltrator: Bureaucracy. Misfiling even a few documents can do a lot of damage. On the IBM, you can name files inscrutably and fail to label the floppies, so when you're gone

PROCESSED WORLD 29 they can't really derive the name of the I am. And you're reading it. It's fun, but first," said Rubin. "It's part of a coordi- file from the subject of the document. it's not just a game, not just heroically nated effort involving collective bar- On the Mac, files can be stored in pitting your mind against the enemy. gaining and attempts to pass statewide inappropriate folders and can likewise Sometimes way up on the 57th floor legislation." be labeled unintelligibly. When you of their corporate headquarters, you The lawsuit overturning the ordi- leave, don't explain what you've done find a wide-open window, and if you nance was secretly subsidized by IBM, with things unless you have to. stick your head out, you might just see and looks to have been a good invest-

Address labels can be riddled with the sky. And if it makes you feel deadened ment for the giant computer company. misspellings and typos (no one has to or sick or frustrated or lonely or crazy or IBM, along with several other compa- approve them before they go out). You helpless or angry or just sad, remember, nies, financed two tiny plaintiffs in their can answer the phone in a confusing it doesn't have to be like this at all. quest to outlaw the few concessions way. Just do it the way you learned - by Stella granted VDT workers. Neither the how; pick it up and say hello. Almost plaintiffs nor IBM would name other without fail, the person calling will think VDT LA\A/ FAILS corporate backers, but did confirm their they have a wrong number. existence. I think it's good to do these things A San Francisco judge recently An IBM spokesman said that the even when they have only a marginal overturned the controversial VDT ordi- company's backing does not mean it is effect in countering and undermining nance after it had been in effect for only opposing SFs law. "What we're inter- the evil and power of these companies three weeks. According to Michael Ru- ested in is having federal standards because it keeps you critical. This kind bin, attorney for Service Employees instead of local ones," he said, revealing of dual consciousness at work prevents International Union (SEIU — which a typical strategy of multinationals. In slippage toward the conservative ca- helped draft the law): "Judge Lucy another recent case, not directly related reerism that is what is so insidious about McCabe said CAL-OSHA expressly to this one but similar in that it relies on office work. pre-empted San Francisco's VDT ordi- an argument that a higher jurisdiction Without a critical consciousness at nance, and that no other entity has the takes precedence over local efforts to work, it's too easy to mingle your ego power to regulate the workplace. She regulate public policy, an arbitration gratification with their corporate goals. relied on language of the CAL-OSHA panel of GATT (the General Agreement

They have it set up that way. You do a Act for her decision." The ruling essen- on Tariffs and Trade) ruled that U.S. good job for them, and they pat you on tially bans occupational legislation at the attempts to require dolphin- safe tuna your soft little head. Sabotage is resis- municipal level. fishing violated international free trade tance. And resistance is sabotage be- Supporters of the ordinance intend to agreements. SF's VDT ordinance would cause their work order depends on the appeal quickly, but expect that it will be have required, over the next four years, association of your personal fulfillment at least another year before the issue is that employers in SF provide VDT with their processes. When you resist, resolved. workers with adjustable chairs, desks you fuck that up. "I'm confident it will be back in effect, and computers in order to reduce the So go ahead, fuck shit up. I did. I do. unless we're able to get state legislation incidence of repetitive strain injuries,

PROCESSED WORLD 29 and the installation of non-glare lighting tion as a sign of things to come. "First artists. It was a strange brew. Knocking to avoid vision problems. However, they say the city can't regulate it; then around in it, I learned that even though measures to reduce potential health they'll say the state can't regulate it, and "most of these corporations are green the injuries from the electromagnetic fields we'll have to wait for the Fed to regulate way an apple is green, on the outside emanating from computers were thrown it— and look at their record on worker where you can see it," in the silver words out in the negotiating process. protection," said a disgruntled office of Joel Hirshhorn, author of Prosperity In exchange for accepting such a worker. "Maybe we need some direct Without Pollution, there was something negotiating process, which included action. A substandard VDT, once dis- going on here that could not be reduced representatives of the Chamber of abled, can't be reinstated by a mere to the public- relations bullshit recently Commerce, the City and SEIU, the lawsuit." named greenwashing. ordinance was supposed to be lawsuit- Corporate environmentalism is— just proof. maybe— a real social movement. Ifs "We always knew there was a possi- small, and far less important than its bility that a renegade employer group adherents believe. The bulk of them are might challenge it, but we were disap- painfully naive, and they spend hours pointed and upset that litigation was bemoaning their lack of access to the conducted in such a secretive manner," "guys at the top" and the "real decision said Rubin of SEIU. "I don't know why makers." But for all that, there they corporations are hiding behind the are — sincere, pragmatic and more than screen of two tiny companies set up as a a little worried. They believe, as a front." While the amount IBM spends woman from PG&E put it at one of the on lawyers' fees pales next to the late-night "break out" sessions, that "the company's $2.8 billion loss last year, corporations have the talent, the re- siding with the forces of regression sources, the R&D and the ability to shows the company has little acumen for make a difference," and that if they can't the current technology industry. VDT be brought "on board" there's no hope of industry watchers, such as Louis Slesin, reversing the environmental crisis in editor of the New York-based VDT time. News, say they find IBM's position On day two a nice lady from Hall- baffling when IBM could easily be mark Cards (a corporate feminist, by making its products more ergonomically the way) took the stage to assure us that safe for users and marketing its low even in Hallmark there were a few electromagnetic emission VDTs — sincere and determined people working resulting in more sales. hard to make a difference. Although this is the first major lawsuit THIS IS NO\AA Again and again, the message came over a protective ordinance, at least 19 down from the stage. Peter Schwartz, lawsuits representing hundreds of mil- Ecotech, a three-day conference re- bigtime corporate consultant and author lions of dollars have been filed against cently held in Monterey was intended as of The Art of the Long View, summed it up computer companies over repetitive a coming out party for "corporate envi- well when he said that "corporate envi- strain injuries in the past few years, ronmentalism." The organizers were ronmentalism can be a successful part- according to Slesin. Apparently, IBM somewhat disappointed, as only about nership between private initiative and and others fail to see the logic in 20% of the attendees — including Chev- social good" and that greens who are supporting protective legislation so ron, PG&E, Apple, Arthur D. Little fixated on "blocking" corporations and workers don't get hurt and sue the hell and Esprit — were corporados, and pushing their "kneejerk views" of envi- out of them in the future. blamed the low turnout on the "reces- ronmental problems do more harm than

"One wonders why IBM is going sion." Others weren't so sure. Jay Har- good by "delegitimating environmental against what must be the recommenda- ris, the publisher of Mother Jones, noted regulation over time." Corporate envi- tions of their own ergonomists," said that General Dynamics was nowhere to ronmentalism, on the other hand, "pro- Slesin. be found. vides multiple payoffs" because "efficient Slesin and others supporting protec- In the other corner were a flock of the and high-quality products reduce cost tive legislation make the economic ar- usual suspects — Amory Lovins, nerd and environmental impact" and envi- gument that Processed World readers love and techno-pragmatist par excellence, ronmental regulation forces companies to hate: a protected VDT worker is a Stewart Brand, post-political green ex- to take the long view. productive VDT worker. traordinaire, Fritjof 'I am a philoso- A few hours later I cornered Schwartz "Major employers know there's no pher" Capra, Denis "Earth Day" Hayes, by the buffet and asked him why, if doubt that they get an investment in Chellis "Technology is the problem" environmentalism and efficiency and ergonomic equipment back in produc- Glendinning and a variety of other profitability all go hand in hand, the tivity gains," Slesin said. green luminaries of local and national world was going to hell? He smiled, Employees, on the other hand, are fame. The middle ground was held by a chewed and pronounced — "incompe- mostly interested in avoiding debilitat- melange of environment£il consultants tence. It scares the hell out of me." ing and disabling injuries. Some VDT and wannabes, politicians, green-fund It scares the hell out of me too, but workers have taken the stormy and managers, entrepreneurs, middle- then again, so does competence. faltering path of the protective legisla- managers, journalists and multi-media — Tom Athanasiou

PROCESSED WORLD 29 and lead to greater space and powerfor the workers. A nd of course the well-placed individual act, even without the complicity ofothers can produce interesting results, too. It all depends. Thefollowing stories offer examplesfrom the mundane to the dramatic, individual to collective, and provide much food for thought. We are also excerpting editor Martin Sprouse's introduction. Processed World would love to have your sabotage stories, but especially your reflections on how sabotage helps or hurts efforts to make worklife better, different, or at least more bearable. This discussion has already gone on for more than a century. Sabotage and how we understand it remains a vital component of any work- based movementfor social liberation. — Chris Carlsson

The basic idea behind this book [is] to document reactions to the day-to-day frustrations and conflicts of earning a living in America. Anyone who has worked knows that dissatisfaction is a part of a great number ofAmericanjobs. Because I wanted the book to include a wide range of anecdotes — encompassing different types of sabotage, people and jobs — / chose to define "sabotage" loosely, as anything that you do at work that you're not supposed to do. I was just as intrigued by the

straight- laced data processor who always added extra hours to her time

card, or the graphic designer who regularly came down to the mailroom and talked when he should have been behind his desk. Then there was the

quiet, middle-aged accountant who had me send his Christmas gifts at WE ARE PUBLISHING THE FOLLOWING ex- company expense. Did he do it because he knew he could get away with cerpts from the new book SABOTAGE IN THE it, or because he the company owed him something? AMERICAN WORKPLACE (Edited by Martin felt These aren't the kinds of people that come to mind when sabotage is Sprouse with Lydia Ely, ISBN 0-9627091-3-1, $12.00 mentioned, but these are the people who wereyelled at when the boss was postpaid Pressure Drop Press, P.O. Box 460954 from in a bad mood. Considered expendable by the managers, they were the

San Francisco 94146). Processed World gained a first to have their salaries cut. I wanted to listen to their stories, find out certain notoriety in the early 1980s with a number of where they drew their personal line of tolerance, and hear how they articles and letters on the subject of sabotage. The defined sabotage . . . excerpts presented here excellently illustrate the sometimes The people I interviewed have backgrounds as varied as their stories. barely survive, to paycheck; others made contradictory nature of sabotage. It's the most available Some could living paycheck 000 a year. Their ages range twelve to sixty-five. Their recourse for disgruntled or enraged wage-slaves to exact $60, from stories are set all over America, from Los Angeles to remote Alaskan some revenge on their workplace and/or bosses. It is a

coastal towns, from Wall Street to the North Dakota wheat fields . . . vital weapon in the class struggle. But it is a difficult Each person's choice of sabotage and reasons for using it are as much a weapon to use constructively, that is, as an individual act reflection of their character as of their jobs. The motives behind the acts of revolt it is often not only isolated, but by bringing down cover the spectrum between altruism and revenge. . . As long as people the authorities it makes worklife those who remain for feel cheated, bored, harassed, endangered, or betrayed at work, sabotage even controlled atomized. the other more and On hand, will be used as a direct method of achieving job satisfaction — the kind acts of sabotage committed with the complicity of that never has to get the bosses' approval. coworkers can strengthen solidarity, unnerve authorities, —Martin Sprouse, Feb. 1992

PROCESSED WORLD 29 - PROGRAMMER - LAZLO Hitting It attention to mine. And my bosses are I worked on their payroll program, content that my productivity is up to or interfacing a clumsy old in-house sys- beyond par. tem. It was one of the worst designed Can't Fix It, My situation is a by-product of the

systems that I had ever seen. It was company environment. I will try to get

using a wasteful amount of computer away with whatever I can for the sake of time and had a very bad user interface. creativity. It made me ashamed to be a program-

mer. I thought, "Look at this piece of SYSTEMS DESIGNER-

shit." It insulted me that I was supposed STAN

to make the system work better, but I I beat "the system" by helping to foul wasn't allowed to make any fundamen- up a computer system for the largest tal changes. I could only patch things bank in the United States. I did it, well, up. sort of accidentally. I've always felt Because I was restricted in the ill-at-ease with the intentional stuff. amount of work I was allowed to do, I I started working for a savings and was having a lot of problems imple- loan several years back, in the systems menting the system. It was a real pain in department. Frank, the resident com- the ass. Bank of America started being but it might puter expert there, was six feet tall and pushy because I wasn't getting the work impeccably groomed — the very image of fix done as fast as they wanted me to. When you an afternoon off!' conservatism. He was the one who the higher-ups in the bank wanted to graphic by Solly Malulu taught me the art of corporate sabotage. know what was going on, the computer writer, it's only natural that I'd be filling Whenever there was a bug in the supervisors said I was incapable of up my screen with words. However, for system, he took me to the computer doing the job. They put all of the blame the last four years, I have spent only one room on the fourth floor. Most big on me because they didn't want the third of my time at work filling the corporations have their computer rooms bosses to know how shitty their comput- screen with work-related words. protected by guards, pass-keys and er system really was. They made me I'm a generalist, a person with diverse special ID devices. Not this place. We look really bad, then went a step further interests which multiply daily. Left just asked the old, revered receptionist and stopped paying me. I got so pissed alone and well-financed, I would pro- to give us the key. She kept it in the off at them that I planted a logic bomb duce voluminous amounts of creative unlocked top drawer of her desk. Once in the system, a kind of electronic "Fuck stuff in a variety of media. But alas, in the computer room, Frank and I you!" society doesn't cater to such capricious would find five huge consoles blinking I had all the passwords that I needed and irresponsible thinkers. So I circum- and whirring. When we — or rather, to do it just right. I got into the payroll vent society's shortcomings, and still pay he— figured out which console had the program and wrote a new program that the bills, by doing my techno-artistic problem, we would switch it off and on would delete it. The next time the projects at work, on company time. In really fast. This erased loan data from payroll program started running, it the last four years, I have written a all over California. But at least the slowly started disappearing. Once it novella, a workbook for a major pub- computer system was working again. started failing, all the other programs lishing company's science textbook, two Ironically, Frank left the company to started deleting themselves. The logic travel narratives, and countless smaller become a consultant. Now it was my job bomb had a chain reaction effect. It things. I have explored computer music, to take care of the company's computer started out small, but then all of a art, and animation at work and have hardware. It wasn't too long before the sudden the entire system was corrupted. even written a computer game. I have system went down again. I trudged to On payday, nobody got paid in spent at least a couple thousand hours of the fourth floor and asked the old, Northern California's PayNet system. company time on my projects, and at a revered receptionist for the keys, which Granted, I fucked with the workers, but pretty good salary. she surrendered gleefully. But I had a I really ruined Bank of America's credi- Most of my company work involves problem. I'd long since forgotten the bility. A couple of the supervisors got text and graphics, but so do my projects. procedure for figuring out which com- fired. Heads rolled and that's all that Most of the time, my co-workers think I puters worked and which didn't. I could mattered to me. They knew I did it; I am working for the company. I'm never think of only one solution. I turned even admitted it, but this was before too cautious. Over-caution leads to them all off and on really fast. I there were laws against these types of paranoia, and paranoia dampens the reminded myself to take a look at the list things. Technically, I didn't commit a hedonistic spirit. The co-workers who of company job offerings on the way to crime. All I did was destroy data. I catch me have mixed reactions. Some of my desk. didn't steal anything. them subscribe to the old ethic and think A few minutes later, a co-worker told me that everything was now working TECHNICAL WRITER you should devote all your time to work. DEXTER Others wish they could find the time at fine. He congratulated me for having work to do non-work related stuff like I absorbed so much during my short I'm at my place of employment ngni do. My various bosses have never tenure in the systems department. now as I type this into my Macintosh. I caught on. So my co-workers tolerate or One of the things I learned from all could be working. At least it looks like admire me. They are usually too caught this is that the less you care about your I'm working. Since I'm a technical up in their own activities to pay direct job, the easier it is to indulge in

PROCESSED WORLD 29 -

sabotage. But there's a paradox to it. If you're doing something you really hate, why in the hell are you doing it? BUS DRIVER - LOUIE

It's a city-owned bus utility, so it's

heavily financed by the government. It's in a college town so drugs are considered

part of the lifestyle. Marijuana use is a common thing among the people who live here. A group of drivers and mechanics got concerned after we got federal orders that all bus utility workers employed by a company getting Urban Mass Transit Administration money would have to be drug tested. People were just saying, "This sucks! The government doesn't have any right to tell us what to do." We wanted to know why we had to jeopar- dize our jobs for having a joint on the weekend. First, someone xeroxed a brochure on how to flush your system out. So I

started copying that and giving it out. Then a couple of people got information from the American Civil Liberties Uni- on on what our rights were. And interestingly enough, our union, which wasn't a very active union, started getting involved. When something really hits home, people start to get more involved. We started gathering information which spread around the shop. The level of interest increased as we got closer to the date the random tests were supposed to begin. Some people stopped using their drug of choice until they could figure out what was going on. The weekend before the drug testing was to begin, we had an "After- Holidays Party." Somebody — nobody knows who it was, though someone in management thought they knew — brought in a pan of that down itol Hill. It's a group of attorneys, brownies laced with marijuana. Obvi- ruling came down knocked the testing requirement because of some columnists, whatever, who crank out ously, the purpose was so innocent technicality. The Urban Mass Transit — daily or weekly or whatever— people would test positive in the drug Administration had to rewrite the rule, information. It's printed downstairs, in test, and the results would have to be so we have a year reprieve. In the the xerox room, and distributed to thrown out. meantime, we're trying to get new senators, congressmen, and other in- Once people heard about it they language in our contract. The federal fluential people. In a couple of cases I crossed their fingers. The brownies government can tell you to have random delivered packages addressed to Ed became the hit of the party. The tension drug testing but it can't mandate disci- Meese. That gives you an idea of what grew every time an unsuspecting dis- pline. If we don't succeed, I know at kind of people work there. My basic patcher or supervisor ate one of the next year's party, people are going to duties were to collect mail in the morn- brownies. Unfortunately, the general look at the brownies and ask themselves, ings from the post office, sort it, distri- manager didn't eat any. Nobody real- "Do I want to eat these?" bute it, and so on. I pretty much did ized what had happened until it was too everything myself and I had a lot of late. All they knew was that the pan of MAILROOM CLERK responsibility. brownies had been eaten. Management REGGIE was completely flustered. They had I got the job right after high school. I absolutely no idea of what to do. I worked at the Heritage Founda- had never heard of the organization, A couple of weeks later a federal court tion, a conservative think-tank on Cap- and just found the job through the

PROCESSED WORLD 29 - -

newspaper. When I was working there, same thing every day. We also realized branch. I think that did more damage I would occasionally glance at what they that the intense heat you build up when than all of the bad checks that I'd

were putting out; the more I read, the you bike, mixed with the right food, cashed. I never went back. They tried to

more I thought about it and realized means you're farting all the time. So we call but we didn't answer the phone for a that they were doing fucked-up things, found the right type of food that caused week. like defending business practices in South the worst type of explosions, and when- Eventually all those checks came back Africa and U.S. investments there. ever we were in a big office building, we as bad. I knew that if you steal from a

They have a big fundraising deal, and farted. You can imagine what it was be bank from the inside, you'll never be

when they send out fundraising re- like when one of us was in an elevator prosecuted because it hurts the bank's

quests, people would mail in checks. with ten businesspeople in suits. Our reputation. So I didn't think twice about

Sometimes they'd be huge amounts, and clothes were stinking, our bodies were doing what I did. I did it to get even, sometimes they were piddling. Checks stinking and within a month the compa- which I don't think really happened, but

came in from individuals as well as ny had enough complaints to let us wear it did make me feel better. companies. So I'd randomly take an shorts again. envelope, open it, see how much it was SENIOR OFFICER for, and throw it in the shredder. I BANK TELLER -JASON BRUCE started doing it more and more. I could I was sick of starving so I needed a Federal employees are subjected to a tell if it was a check by holding it to the job. I walked into the California Em- wide range of management styles. The light. If so, I'd toss it, dump it or shred ployment Development Department agencies and bureaus have widely dif- it. graphic by Tracy Cox and this was posted on the wall: "Be a ferent missions and very little training

bank teller. We'll train you." I didn't and development for their "professional"

have any experience at all. I just went in supervisors and managers. As a result, and took an aptitude and math test and there is a widely divergent set of stan-

aced them both. Then I went to a week dards among even adjoining offices. of teller school that was run by Bank of The Federal Executive Board is a America. They taught me how to count loose internal organization which estab- money, handle irate people, and what to lishes certain policies and procedures for do if someone pulled a gun on me. federal agencies in a particular section of The job was okay. It was just a job the U.S. — the "somebodies" who deter-

but I was getting paid more money than mine snow days and administrative

I had ever been paid before. I ended up leave. "Snow days" are reserved for working there for a little more than a worsening snow conditions, while "ad- year. There wasn't that much job pres- ministrative leaves" are arbitrary em- sure at first, but then there was this ployee leaves given around the Christ-

weird reorganization. I started out mas holidays. working part time, but then they had me On a particularly slow Christmas Eve doing other work and paid me at a lower workday, I called the Regional Manager

rate for these extra hours. I was working of all Northeast federal operations. I

full time but classified as part time so I introduced myself to his secretary as wound up making less but working "Steve Watkins" of the Federal Execu-

more. I got kind of tired of working full tive Board. The name was entirely BICYCLE MESSENGER time but I was told that if I wanted to fictitious, but the affiliation wasn't lost KENNY keep my job I would have to keep on the secretary. In a flash, she patched working those hours — they refused to me through to the man who managed Being a bike messenger in Seattle is hire me full time. the entire Northeast. hellish, but we had it kind of cush. We This is when I put the word out to my Although I was a bit panicked, I had to work our butts off, but at least we friends that I would cash any check, just plunged ahead and breezily introduced got paid by the hour. come on down. So over the course of a myself. The company always let us wear couple of days, there was a stream of "Hello Ralph," I boomed. "This is shorts, but since we had to wear compa- people who had forged checks, or had Steve Watkins with the Federal Execu- ny T-shirts, we cut off the sleeves. All of scammed them somehow and I cashed tive Board. How are you?" a sudden the company decided to clean them. The next day was the busiest day This was the moment of truth. If he up its image because they were dealing of the year for that particular branch; a realized that he'd never heard of Steve with big businesses. They started mak- Friday, the first of October, payday for Watkins, or had taken a similar phone ing us wear long pants and shirts made welfare. Social Security, San Francisco call minutes earlier, the game would be of heavy material, which is insane. Try General, MUNI, the City, and private up. biking ten miles up hills, up massive business. The line was out the door and "Oh, hi Steve, how are^ou?" hills with heavy packages as fast as you I just didn't show up. My soon-to-be- This was fantastic! The Northeast can, in long pants! wife, who also worked there with me, Regional Manager was schmoozing All of the messengers agreed there didn't show up either. We were the two away on the phone with a non-existent was no way this could continue. We all best tellers at the bank and we were also peer, at taxpayer expense. decided that we wouldn't wash our the only ones who spoke English as our "Ralph," I continued, "I thought I'd clothes at all and that we'd wear the first language. It just wrecked that better call. We've decided that as of 3:00

PROCESSED WORLD 29 graphic by Fuzzy Mudge, from Mercury Rising magazine pm you can let the chickens out of the

Yes. It's true. I am disappointed You see, I have always had a coop." in the outcome of the Persian fantasy that one day a war would thanked "Great!" said Ralph. He me Gulf War. come. 1 would put the best of my Blindfolded, I would be brought call exchanged hearty abilities to work and yet 1 would for the and we before their leader. He would be crushed and defeated. The Christmas wishes. violate my body repeatedly with enemy would burst into my head- his personal firearm, and then It was a done deal and I was weak quarters and take me prisoner. leave me to the pleasure of his with relief. True to his word, Ralph guard elite. They would force me called all his agency heads and, proba- to service them one by one, bela- boring my buttocks with their bly struggling into his own winter boots, pocketknives. passed on the good news. Within twenty minutes, all of the tiniest sub-offices across hundreds of miles in six different states had received the word. If news travels fast, good news goes out like a Days later, 1 would be strapped rocket. into a harness and suspended vat of the collected I take pride in single-handedly af- above a large syphilitic urine of hundreds of fording hundreds of federal employees a male prostitutes. A lowly peasant press would be crack at some last-minute Christmas would be invited to toss a base- The national resist publicizing the ball at a target which would release unable to shopping. bound fat my bound form into the vat. image of my tightly bulging from the bindings as 1 This is not too much to ask. gargle helplessly in the pustulant PROSTITUTE -JANE That I may find one day an pool. Our nation would hold its enemy which 1 can submit to. It breath in shame and horror! I slept with men for money. I worked may take many more wars before

my dream is fulfilled. 1 hope that in a brothel that was advertised as a the American people will grant five other massage parlor with women me this small request. on an eight-hour shift. The majority of customers were just married, middle class men. Some guys were disabled and had a hard time finding someone to be with, so it was easier for them to pay for it. The owner got tired of the business so he took on this new partner. This new guy couldn't handle things and stopped coming into the parlor except to pick up ment most of the customers but leave that the quote we agreed on was too the money at the end of each night. So, out three a night, which would total much. He said, "I can't pay you for this we got to manage ourselves. We were in about $60 that she got to keep. Each and I'll only pay you for that." Then he charge of all the money, but our rent, night we took our turn doing the books. said something like, "You're not even bills and the cops were all still paid by at all." all agreed to it and it worked out licensed, so I might not pay you the owner, which was the best part. We great. We worked really well with each The guy thought he could save money The men would come in and pick the other and all became friends. and finish it himself. girl they wanted. When we got them in This gave us the feeling of being more We immediately got bad attitudes. the room alone, we would find out what than just prostitutes, because we had We packed the water pipes full of nails. they wanted. We were making pretty control over our bodies and what we We didn't do all of the pipes, but we put good money — but then we decided to up were doing. enough nails in there so he would have a our rates. It was supposed to be $60 problem. We could have used a high dollars for a hand job, $70 for a blow job PLUMBER - PEDRO pressure hose to blow the nails out if we and $80 for a full service, which is what knew we were going to finish the job, we called sex. We started charging $80, Like my father, I've been doing but it never happened, so we left them $90 and $100. The customers couldn't plumbing pretty much my whole life. in there. really argue with us because we could do Our family was kind of poor, so I later because practically whetever we wanted. Some- worked through high school. He came back to us time he turned on the faucets in times we kept the place open later or A friend and I had a job where we every all of this opened up earlier than we were sup- were doing the plumbing for a house his brand new house he heard didn't know was that posed to. Everybody was supposed to do under construction. It was a side job, rattling. What he noises, three customers a day; that was the working directly for the owner. We had not only was he going to have the nails would rust up, average. The owners didn't know how done all of the copper pipes that go but in time the faucets. many customers came in on a night or underneath the concrete floor of the wrecking the washers in the how much was charged. house. The concrete had been poured We definitely got more satisfaction didn't Each night we picked a woman to run over the pipes, which had been looped than guilt from what we did. We got the books. She would keep track of the up through the floor to hook up to the have anything to lose. I still think we didn't get paid, but money that came in, the room fees, and fixtures. It was at this stage when the fucked because we gotta cover your if a customer used a credit card. The owner started going back on his word. he got fucked too. You woman doing the books would docu- He said, after the job had been done. ass any way that you can.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 Also, she was in the middle of a nasty When Sissy asked her co-workers if iT THE OLD JOB SISSY divorce since her girlfriend didn't want that was really how they wanted their hadn't been paid much, but it to live with a man. Sissy realized she world run, they always shook their was close to where she Hved. If hadn't really been a lesbian after all. heads, no, no, no. But when you came The former vice-pres in charge of pro- one of the kids was sick, she could right down to it, everyone was scared in duction told Sissy that the greatest thing put him on a pallet on the floor of the pants about losing their job. In other about her new life was going into the words, no matter what you thought her office. run out on Thurs- Or men's and not having anyone look room about the world or how unselfishly you days to take her daughter to at you funny. It was always hard for tried to live your life, you were always gymnastics class. No one com- Sissy to remember to call her "him." relieved when the other guy got it and plained if Sissy took extra time The marketing manager was Sissy's you did not. That was how the system new boss, and he decided that she getting in or left a little early. worked. should take the Southeast territory, continued to survive The job was convenient, and that Basically Sissy meaning the last and worst choice. As because everyone at the company in itself made it an unusual and far as everyone else was concerned, the thought she was smart. That was how desirable situation. South was the garbage can of sales, but she had gotten along at school too. When Sissy first came to her old job, Sissy was from Georgia and with her Although she never did the best work, her boss was vice-president in charge of accent she left the other telemarketers teachers assumed she could and reward- production. Short and tidy with cropped with New York and Los Angeles accents ed her with A's. hair, she wore rumpled tweed jackets in the dust. In fact, in the first month Sissy's cousin, Ada Lynn, insisted and boy's trousers, and always made a Sissy sold $25,000 worth of software on their cross in life wasn't only looks but point of telling Sissy how great her legs a cold call to Chattanooga. brains, too. Ada Lynn said that beauty were — something men never said. This plus intelligence was too much of a woman had lived with a female package for most men. And that's why All around her, Sissy saw companion for over ten years, and they they had the problems they did. had had one child by artificial insemina- variations of the same people But Ada Lynn was being kind. She tion. she had already met and worked was definitely the one with the looks and At the old job Sissy managed to with in another town at was the cheerleader, homecoming survive the tidal waves of cut-backs and etc. another place. queen. Miss Georgia Chick, Since lay-offs, even though she was officially the seventh grade. Sissy had watched laid off twice. The first time she stayed while boys and men responded to Ada The second time Sissy was laid off, in her office tidying up, thinking that Lynn, observing that if you were beau- she stuck around again. By closing, it what was happening to everyone else tiful, it only served as an asset up to a turned out that someone in publications wasn't really happening to her. The point. After that point it was definitely a had upped and quit in disgust so she delusion worked because by closing liability. If you were ugly, the process automatically got his job. time, they had found another position to worked in reverse — first rejection, and one in the wanted to lay offer her. She went from technical editor No company then a lifetime of trust. Sissy off because of her kids. needed to telemarketer, or as Sissy put it, She Part of what Ada Lynn said was true. TEL-MAR-KETEER, sung to the the money and the health plan. But Back then Sissy had been very smart. Mouseketeer theme. Sissy discovered that in the business Now she wasn't so sure. She asked Ada world no matter However, the vice-president in how much anyone said Lynn how come if she were such a charge of production went bye-bye in they liked and wanted you, or how genius, she found herself supporting a this first round of lay-offs. The date many times they told you what a good couple kids from fathers who did noth- happened to coincide with her fortieth job you were doing, when it came to ing to help her pay the bills? That birthday, and on the spot she told Sissy cuts, the word was always that it was out probably required the intelligence quo- that she had made the final decision to of their hands. Being a corporation tient of a turtle. Stupider than a turde, have a sex change. All the way with meant you could always pass along the she corrected. At least, a turtle left her hormones and surgery. She said she had blame, and at lay-off time, it was the eggs to fend for themselves. always been a man trapped in a wom- board of directors' decision, whom no- She also wondered how, with her good an's body. When Sissy saw her a year body had ever met. Sissy learned in her looks and beauty trophies, Ada Lynn later, she had a rough complexion, a first experience with lay-offs that corpo- had ended up a young widow with three deep voice, plentiful growths of hair on rate life fundamentally depended on kids and bottomless debts. her arms, and a new executive job. secrecy at the top. One day the president of Sissy's

PROCESSED WORLD 29 company (and there were five in the last express her feelings. Unless you've been changed her job title to Czarina of Sales eighteen months of its existence) an- asked to go shopping by your boss, it because her territory in two years had nounced to Sissy that he had saved her would be impossible for you to know expanded from the pitiful Southeast to job at the last board meeting. He had how disgusting a request this was. the Eastern division of the entire United told them what great work she was "Has something I've said offended States and Canada. From educational doing, how many kids she had, what you?" He inquired. "Has it anything to and textbook distribution to international good grades they made in school, and do with suggesting you go with me on markets. In other words, she had the blah. how smart she was. Blah blah an innocent trip to the mall?" whole world, and it was all her vast but Although Sissy was grateful, she under- Sissy told him she hated to shop for crumbling empire. him some- stood that now she owed other people's shoes and then she got Sissy's greatest friend at the old thing and it was a smarmy feeling at frank. She said that she resented his company was a world renowned chef best. friendliness and his assumptions. She who had fallen on hard times. He came few days later, the president asked A probably would have lost her job on the to fill in as a receptionist and stayed on. find time to Sissy if she could possibly next go-round, but he got canned a Not only was he a master cook, but he help him pick out a pair of new dress week later. She felt bad when she heard knew everything about opera. He ex- shoes. He explained that he never made he didn't even know about it until he plained to Sissy the difference between a the right decisions when it came to arrived at the board meeting. Mozart and Verdi soprano and told her clothes, and since his wife had left him, At this company it was the joke that that Callas' greatness was her mortali- needed a W-O-M-A-N to come he you couldn't get hired unless you were ty. "When she sings," he said, "you can along. handicapped or aberrant. Sissy's claim hear her burning up." It only took Sissy a moment to recall a to being strange was her mysterious past. After the company closed down, he piece of her genetic inheritance — stone Anyone could look in her face and see stayed on to help sort files, discovering her grandmother coldness, straight from that. One of her incisors was gold and that every company transaction had Olivia— and very effectively Sissy icily she had a crescent moon tattooed on the been documented dozens of times. He that surely the president must explained inside of her left forearm. She had lived said the nightmare of the entire century understand that as a single mother, in Guatemala and almost died when her lay by the ton in the dumpster out back, blah, blah, her responsibilities outside appendix burst on a bus in Afghanistan. and in these times the only reason were overwhelming. In other the job She had walked across Borneo and people had jobs was to create files that in a million words, she could never followed the sacred elephant with the no one looked at or needed. years and not if he were the last man on Buddha's tooth through the mountains Although it wasn't loyalty that made the planet. of Sri Lanka on the second full moon in Sissy stay, after so many internal trou- This president prided himself on the August. Sissy's face showed stories bles, financial vicissitudes, and a vicious efforts he made to be open and clear to which she never told anyone. Who lawsuit, loyalty was how it appeared. the expectation that his employees, with would believe them after seeing the kind Sissy had stayed as the company de- each of them should tell him everything. of ordinary problems she had now? clined from its original robust sixty to its the result of management This was The last aberration to come on board pathetic finale of seven employees. training courses in sensitivity at Har- before the company went under was a When it was over, the last president vard Business school. "My door is man whose voice was so high that it was commended her and the others for their open," "don't think you can't always reasonable to assume he had had a doggedness over a bottle of expensive with anything," blah, blah, come to me terrible accident in the vicinity of his champagne. "If you're having problems" or "if blah. private parts. However, once the com- Now Sissy had a new job. The duties see else having problems," you someone pany really started to roll downhill, his were the same as the old job, but the etc. voice lowered two octaves, and he new company was in Lafayette where try to be Honestly, he did communi- officially took over as comptroller. she didn't have her own office, where cative, and it was true that his door was Towards the end. Sissy unofficially she had to commute, where there wasn't always open. But it mostly served to let everyone hear the arguments he had graphic by Hugh d'Andrade with his ex-wife's lawyer. As president, PEMELOPe- TTJT' SHOPPING ACTIVISTS PETI AND YKNCm/PAL, A^ citizens AND TO THE. this man functioned under the illusion ARt ON A MAP DASH SAVE RtCrCLEo, CONSUMtM, WE CAN "Al^E A DIFFERENCE ' that the company was a tribe planting PLANET... the same seeds, reaping the same har- C0U^4TS, DEAR/ vest. The difference was that he was , making an annual $100,000 to dig for roots, while Sissy was making a crummy twenty-two. A week after he asked Sissy to help him find a new pair of shoes, he must have noticed that she had stopped speaking to him. One morning as she slithered past his gaping door, he called out, "Sissy, could you come in here for a IP EVERVONE. FOULOWS PtTE's AMD v-ze cam moment? I'd like to speak to you." After Penelope. 's example, iUSTAlW THt E:NVlRONMEHr. . asking her to sit down and shutting the AND LAROE. COR.P0RATI0MS two exterior doors, he invited her to

PROCESSED WORLD 29 a pool to swim in at lunch. it. Sissy, however, liked him a lot. He stance. All around her, Sissy saw varia- At the new job Sissy noticed right was handsome, tall, foreign with an tions of the same people she had already away that the place was full of weirdos, elegant wardrobe. Most of all, he was met and worked with in another town at smart. He ran the like another place. and it was nearly an identical set to the company the old place. There was a transsexual, man province that his family owned in the She called her cousin Ada Lynn to ask to woman, in customer service. And the third world country of his origin. Noth- if she had ever considered her to be technician who set up Sissy's computer ing went out without his approval. crazy. was a soft spoken guy like her anti- At the old job, coincidentally, the "You know, like a nut," Sissy asked. macho friend Roberto at the old compa- company's founder had also been tall, "Like the kind of person that grows on ny. Besides gentle manners and the foreign, suave, and wore custom-made trees in our family." clothes told same first name they both wore baggy from Hong Kong. And at both Ada Lynn Sissy that the only purple pants and two tiny gold hoop companies this sign hung by the coffee time she ever thought she might be a little off earrings in the same ear. machine: was when she took up with the sax player In the cubicle next to Sissy's was who didn't have a real house Nine World Religions In A Nutshell another familiar face, a robust Irishman and camped out in the woods. Ada Taoism: Shit happens. with a Dolby stereo voice. He brought Lynn said she thought that with all the Confucianism: troubles in donuts, organized frisbee tag at Sissy had keeping the kids Confucius say, "Shit happens." Friday lunch, and obsessed about together, she might have hooked up Buddhism: Women. He was a version of her fellow with someone a little more substantial. If shit happens, it isn't really shit. cheerleader and rival in the old telemar- But it hadn't lasted long, and Ada Lynn Zen: What is the sound of shit happening? keting department. assured her that except for that one Hinduism: This shit happened before. On her second day at the new job, the little incident of romantic misguidance, Islam: If shit happens, Irishman cornered Sissy by the xerox she considered Sissy the sanest person it is the will of Allah. machine and asked what kind of music she knew. Protestantism: she liked, where she went on weekends, Sissy said that even though she might Let shit happen to someone else. not if she liked to go out dancing, etc. A be crazy, maybe she was having a Catholicism: series of enthusiastic questions from him nervous breakdown. Maybe the strings If shit happened, you deserved it. was followed by a round of listless that had held her together while she Judaism: responses from Sissy. Finally, after a made the money to go to the store to buy Why does shit always happen to us? few weeks he asked her what she thought the things the kids needed were starting a man should do who had a crush on a to wear out. Maybe she was losing it. told if she girl who never noticed. "Nothing," Sissy They were all pretty good but Sissy Ada Lynn her were having a nervous said. "Absolutely nothing at all." liked the Protestant one best. It fit in breakdown, she probably The two women who ran the art with the feeling everyone had at lay-off wouldn't know it. Her kids would know

department at the new company were time. it, her boss would know it, but she

exactly like the two who had run it at the It didn't take long before the similar- wouldn't be calling up with an inquiry. old. Thin, cheerful gals nearing forty, ities between the old company and the That just didn't make sense. with neatly combed pony-tails, over- new company had Sissy spooked. Mul- Okay, so Sissy wasn't crazy, wasn't sized glasses, and lipstick that never tiplying coincidence times probability, cracking up, then why did everything cracked. They wore outfits, meaning she came up with a few slight variations that was different look the same? Ada they shopped in department stores, and and a bunch of uncanny resemblances. Lynn said she had had times when the never cut or dyed their hair themselves. Something greater than weird. world looked the same way to her, too. The young man who supervised Sissy tried to reason, tried to joke, but Ever since she was a teenager, Ada shipping at the new company was a the more she pushed the similarities out Lynn had always had more than one version of the one who had run it at the of her mind the more the new job boyfriend. Even when she was married, old. Both were skinny shag blonds appeared like a phantom clone of the she had someone on the side. Ada Lynn

whose calf muscles bulged like rolled old. Soon it wasn't funny. Maybe she swore that from time to time something socks. They typically wore cut-off jeans, had died one night on the freeway would happen where she couldn't tell the cropped Van Halen T-shirts, and drove coming home from work and was in- men in her life apart. four-wheel-drive trucks plastered with stantly reincarnated as an office worker. "Talk about horrible," she said. "I mylar decals. That's why things were a little off. A would go into a panic. I could not tell At the new job there were two clerical classic case of bad karma. which was which, who was who and got gals who Sissy could have been friends Sissy had watched enough episodes of so scared that I was going to get their with, but it would have taken five years. the Twilight Zone with her kids, espe- names mixed up, I stopped seeing all of They were good looking black women cially the 24-hour marathon when they them. I moved out of the master whose large plastic earrings always all curled up in front of the television bedroom and in with one of the kids for a matched their blouses. They did their and ate popcorn for dinner, to know week. Don't you think I thought I had job fine but they made relentless fun of that people did get lost in time or space some kind of disease?" Ada Lynn asked. the place. Something Sissy totally ap- and did end up in places that seemed "Sure as hell I did. Don't you think I proved of. After all, they weren't being like somewhere else. drove myself to the neurologist in At-

paid not to. Sissy, in fact, went through the list of lanta as fast as I could. They took tests On the other hand. Sissy's new boss psychological maladies, family curses, and gave me tranquilizers, but they was being paid plenty to take everything and various religious beliefs, to try to always told me there was absolutely very seriously, and he had the car to prove figure out explanations for her circum- nothing wrong with my brain, Sissy,

PROCESSED WORLD 29 I want to and that is what I am telling you." Do what you want. Do what you "Because I want to do what slow "Then what is wrong?" Sissy cried. want. Do what you want. For a week do for a while," Sissy said, low, and Ada Lynn suggested that maybe there those words rolled around in Sissy's trembling. was another explanation. Maybe Sissy head like a sackful of marbles. That sounded good enough to the had already seen too much in her Then Sissy called Ada Lynn and told kids, for after all, they tried to do what lifetime, traveling to Borneo and Sikkim her that she had decided she didn't care they wanted to whenever they could get like she had, having all those different if the kids ate popcorn for dinner. "It away with it. But as the sentence colored lovers, living in a tepee in New won't kill them. In fact, it's good for tumbled out of Sissy's mouth, it was Mexico, eating peyote and psychedelic them. Good to see that motherhood isn't terrible. Childish, unmotherly, irre- mushrooms, etc. Ada Lynn said all that a crucifixion." Sissy said that she was sponsible. Yet she made herself repeat had soaked up Sissy's capacity, "saturat- turning in her resignation the next day. it, until the words got louder and more ed" was the word she used, to see the In the morning Sissy shouted into the cheerful and she was singing, "I Ain't differences in things like office work. At hall of the two-bedroom apartment. Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No Singing and that level it probably did look alike. Ada When the kids arrived at the dinette More" like a crazy woman. Lynn said maybe everything was start- table, Sissy was standing at the stove flipping Swedish pancakes. ing to blend. flipping Swedish pancakes, a dish After the kids left for school, Sissy "But don't you think blending suffi- usually reserved for Sunday. called her best friend and sang to her. cient cause for alarm?" Sissy asked. "Mama, how come you're making Called her ex-husband and sang to him. Sure, she did. "That's why you have pancakes on Tuesday?" Her cousin Ada Lynn and sang to her. got to quit your job," Ada Lynn told "Mama, how come you're not Then she went to her boss, stopped into her. dressed?" the unemployment agency. And all the Sissy knew that was the truth, but she "Mama, aren't you going to work time she was singing. And you could didn't know how she could. She'd been today?" hear mortality in her voice. You could working in an office and taking care of "Mama, will you take me shopping?" hear Sissy burning up. She sang she kids and doing laundry and washing "Mama, are you sick?" didn't want to work on Maggie's farm no dishes and paying bills for a long, long "Mama, why aren't you going to work more. Sang she wasn't going to work on time. Bad habits are always harder to today?" Maggie's farm no more. Said she had break than good ones. Why, why, why? The word bounced had enough of working on Maggie's "Quit," Ada Lynn said. "And do what off the walls of the apartment a hundred farm. And thanks to Bob Dylan, every- you want for a while. See what happens. times, as expressions of alarm passed body knew what she meant. Things will work out." along her children's faces. — Summer Brenner

PROCESSED WORLD 29 / / VAlJ lj lj lj

I n the anxious gasoline-rationed big old North Oakland Victorian. my FBI file, packed with fun facts radical summer of 1974, 1 was awarded We would even legitimately have from my days as a campus my IVIaster's degree from a Cali- the same address; and if Immigra- during the Let's-Crater-Cambodia fornia State University. I awoke tion gave us one of those notori- Era, not to mention my more from thesis-and-orals trance to ous third-degree interviews about recent media-guerrilla hijinx. The cold, and utterly unhelpful. After

realize that my student visa was our personal habits, she would Mormonoid smirked a bit as he all, they intimated, I was a gringo — about to expire. I had come to the know just what I ate for breakfast said he would have to take my an Aryan in fact — and middle- trivial. U.S. five years earlier as an under- and which side of the bed I slept case under consideration. class, so my problems were graduate and had moved straight on. Another long wait — about But my new attorney was the from my B.A. at the University of I'm not sure what combination twenty-two months, actually. By goods, an immigration specialist

California into grad school. Now I of substances Naomi had ingested this time I had moved in with for over thirty years. A large, was going to have to go "home" that day— she had a formidable Alison, while Naomi and her writer rotund, owl-faced man in his early

—that is, back to the country of appetite for all sorts of psychotro- boyfriend Kevin were living down- seventies with cigar ash down his — in his my birth, which I had been trying pic agents but rather to my sur- stairs from us another apart- vest, he pressed the tips of so hard to forget about. Like most prise she agreed to become my ment. During the interim I had fingers together and remarked in

Northern European nations, mine official spouse. What a pal, I gone to great lengths to make it an undiluted Bronx accent that was in those days a pretty com- thought. Sure enough, a week or appear that I was living with this was indeed "a matta of some fortable place, with a cradle-to- two and a blood test later Naomi Naomi in their flat, in preparation deli-cussy." Calmly, he advised grave welfare state, a low rate of came with me in a thrift-shop for the inevitable visit from the INS me to divorce Naomi and marry violent crime, and the prospect of dress and her one pair of nylons to investigator. I left my books in her Alison. Then, he said, we could subsidized further education if I the Alameda County Courthouse. shelves, my clothes (improbably "draw a veil" over the previous wanted it. It was also repressed, We got hitched by a grey little labeled with my name) in the chest marriage. conformist, rainy in summer and Republican judge whose indiffer- of drawers, and actually sat with Luckily I had gotten a straight icy in winter, and very dull. I ence to us was so complete that ever-increasing awkwardness in a and quite lucrative job while wait- decided to stay on in California — his face has smudged in my mem- corner of her living room every ing for the Sword of the State to forget the rest of the country — by ory like a greasy thumbprint. Then evening from 5:30 to 7:00, prime drop, while Naomi was unem- dis- hook or by crook. we went home and drank tequila. time for La Migra. Kevin ployed once more. I was able to

Hook was out: I had not been Next we had to go to the dismal coursed amiably enough between ship her off to friends in Reno, trained as an aerospace engineer chamber at the Immigration and chugs of Bud about the bit players where she established residency or a portfolio management spe- Naturalization Service offices on in the Six-o'clock Movie, but Nao- after two weeks and was able to cialist, so no company was going Sansome Street where aspirants mi stepped around me as if I were run our marriage through the Ne- to write an affidavit claiming the to the Promised Land filed Peti- a cat-turd she hadn't yet had the vada Divorce-o-Mat. Over the irreplaceable uniqueness of my tions for Permanent Resident stomach to scrape off the floor. phone she complained bitterly of potential contribution to the Status. In those days one had to Finally neither of us could stand it how bored she was with no Kevin,

American GNP. In fact, I had stand for four or five hours in a any more. So when the INS for- no drugs, and not even enough virtually no saleable skills other serpentine line defined by blue eigner-finder showed up, I wasn't pocket money to go gambling, but than fluent English, a knowledge vinyl ropes, with no place to sit there. Naomi told him I was just she did it. of my chosen field of scholarship down, in order to reach a bored upstairs visiting the neighbors— That was the easy part. Getting sufficient to get me a low-paid job clerk who took the fee and which in a sense was true. (What Alison to marry me was quite in a junior technical college, and a stamped the papers. The long he made of Kevin, who had hair to another matter. Her marriage al- certain talent for oral sex. I decid- counter was adorned with eagle- his waist and smelled like the lergy was intensified by the fact ed to try Crook: that is, find sealed official threats about falsi- bottom of a keg-tub after a frat that our relationship was, as you someone to marry. fying information and with one of party, I'll never know.) He didn't Americans say, circling the drain. Alison, my girlfriend of four those posters showing a kitten stick around to find out if she was We had long since parted ways years, was off the list. She was dangling by its front claws from a telling the truth, but left his card ideologically, she having turned plausible enough, with an Ivy bar and captioned "Hang in there, and said he'd be back. After I into a New Age Joy-Junkie while I League B.A. and WASP creden- baby." climbed down off the ceiling with stuck to my anarcho-marxist guns. tials, but she was allergic to marri- Alas, Naomi felt unable to heed the aid of half a pint of schnapps, More important, she had been age after a messy divorce a few this patronizing advice any further. visions of deportation jangling in seeing another man, a charming if years back. Also, what if they Ten months later, one week be- my brain (ohdeargodthey'llmarch- somewhat dissipated actor, two found out she was a part-time fore the interview at the INS, she meouttotheplaneinlegironsl'll- nights a week for about a year. dominatrix, or checked her crimi- got a Real Job with a Financial nevergetbackherenever) I decided From this fellow she had acquired nal record and discovered the District company. Unmoved by all it was time to get an expensive herpes, the gift that keeps on speeding tickets, the two prostitu- my pleading, she refused to come lawyer. giving. Of course, she vehemently

I those tion busts, and the arrests for with me to Migra Central because I say expensive because had asserted when we both got demonstrating in support of the the absence would look bad to her already tried cheap Leftist lawyers nasty little blisters that / had given Black Panthers? Then there was boss. Needless to say, despite my and found them unsatisfactory. it to her. This was because, some my ex-lover Naomi. She too was a short haircut and new tweed jack- The first, a referral from the Law- three months earlier, I had finally, somewhat shell-shocked veteran et, my solo appearance before the yer's Guild, was a weedy, earnest- in exhausted retaliation, fallen in of the late 'sixties counterculture crisp, Mormonoid young INS offi- ly liberal fellow with a preppy love with a wonderful Rebel Girl —a surrealist poet, on-and-off cial lacked a certain/e ne sais quoi. manner that was about two sizes named Morgan — smart, sweet, spiritual seeker, and anarchafem- Further detracting from my attrac- too large for him. He made sym- and honorable. And (suitably rub- inist — but had managed to stay tiveness as a Good Alien was a fat, pathetic noises and advised me to bered) I was passionately en- out of the official spotlight. Better dog-eared dossier on the agent's fly home and start over. The next twined with Morgan whenever I alternating love- yet, she was currently my house- desk, whose title I read upside- two I visited worked for Legal got the chance, mate, living on welfare with a down with a ghastly feeling of Assistance offices in Latino neigh- making with pillow talk about dazed alcoholic screenwriter in a sudden free fall. It was a copy of borhoods. They were brusque. Hegel and the Labor Theory of

PROCESSED WORLD 29 .

Value. But despite Morgan's un- on the agreed nights (though Ali- Not too long after that I came of the day and night. Then she hesitating offer to marry me, and son, losing what shreds of cool home unexpectedly early one af- threatened to turn me in to the precisely because I adored her, I she had left, took to calling me at ternoon to find Alison being bug- INS and demanded hush money. couldn't take her up on it. The Morgan's place at two in the gered in our bed by one of the In between these outbursts she whole thing was too new, and she morning and whining about being actor's buddies. This solidified my radiated pheromones of such po- was only twenty-one to my twen- lonely). Still, we found out once resolve to extricate myself as soon tency that (against what I laugh- ty-eight. Not only that, but I had again what had always held our as possible and give myself over to ingly call my better judgement) I almost finished paying for Alison's seven-year struggle together: lust. Morgan and True Love. But I more than once succumbed to her graduate training as— what else? Under these bizarre conditions we didn't dare pack my toothbrush, undoubted if neurotic charms. But

—a Marriage, Family and Child had sex that, while not involving Goethe's Selected Works, and I didn't move back in: and one

Counselor, which made me immi- sheep, rubber masks, baguettes, leather jockstrap until I got my morning I came over to find her nently dispensable to her. To call or Boy Scout uniforms, was emo- Green Card. For all I knew they voluptuously damp and disheveled our relationship "troubled" would tionally kinky and lurid in quite had found my old dossier again and the editor of a local up-market be like describing Mike Tyson as indescribable ways. This may be and determined to come get me at glossy scurrying around in the

"touchy." why on the day of the interview, the earliest opportunity. I had to Pendleton bathrobe she had Never one to let logic or equity Alison put on her protoyuppiest stay put with my lawfully wedded shoplifted for me last birthday. My stand in her way, moreover, Ali- outfit (over black lace Frederick's wife. Understandably, Morgan got services, it seemed, were no lon- son had become frantically jealous of Hollywood underwear; she tired of waiting and went off to ger required. of Morgan. For some reason this couldn't do it completely straight), Labor History grad school in Bos- Then the roof fell in. Back in

I, yielded to her green-eyed fury intensified when I slipped on my new Italian suit ton. Even more ominous, before Boston, Morgan had ironically equipped with a dozen and red silk tie, and we sailed into she left she had met a handsome ardent young admirer, who had red roses, popped the question. the drab little office hand in hand and charismatic young revolution- moved out there to be with her. I

Finally, after cursing me almost in true ruling-class style. ary, closer to her age than mine, tried everything I could to detach — continuously for three days, Ali- I noticed right away that my file and had taken quite a shine to her from him impassioned dec- son sullenly agreed to tie the knot. on the desk was slim as a televan- him— while he had, with the pain- larations by phone, sheafs of love We were married on her lunch gelist's alibi and brand new. The ful obviousness of youth, fallen as poems, broken pleading — but af- hour. examiner caught my glance and hard for her as I did. We detested ter much agonizing back-and-forth

The next day I had my lawyer announced sheepishly that my each other: if looks could kill, we she decided to stay with him. I file the petitions with the INS. He original file had been "misplaced." would both have been shrink- was heartbroken. But I had my swept through Sansome's Inferno (I've always like to think that Old wrapped in styrofoam trays. little green Ticket to Opportunity. I in a genial cigar-scented breeze, Deli-Cussy had called in a favor At last the little plastic-coated, was a Legal Permanent Resident brushing aside bureaucrats like dry and had had the file shredded computer-coded card arrived in of the United States, at liberty, leaves: you could almost see them accidently-on-purpose). Under the mail. Terminally exasperated equipped with a Master's degree, diving under the desks when he these conditions, with both of us with Alison and frantic that I a suit, and a functioning set of appeared. so clearly articulate, well- would lose Morgan, I moved out glands and erogenous zones. Now

Alison and I passed the ten scrubbed, and gainfully employed within a month. At this point, let me tell you about my next two months or so between petition and members of the Master Race, the naturally, Alison decided that I marriages. . interview in alternate crockery- interview was scarcely more than was her One True Love. With my smashing Armageddon and fake- a formality. The examiner shook Smith & Wesson .38 she staged

- cheery mutual tolerance, humping my hand and welcomed me to the tearful suicide vigils which I was Marinas Horn, as told to our respective extramarital honeys United States. summoned to interrupt at all hours Louis Michaelson

PROCESSED WORLD 29 BLOOD MONEY

In spite of the 22-foot truck and its a hole in my soul; a cavernous maw I AWOKE JUST AFTER two- ton overweight load of our Accum- opening wider and wider; an expand- sunrise in order to present myself ulated Things being emptied completely ing, terrifying emptiness. I turned the at our doorstep (make no mistake: we TV and VCR off, unable to continue to J-Mar Biologicals the minute and Our Stuff aren't going anyplace else watching. their doors opened at 7:30. By anytime soon), I've been plagued by a Today, after living in this duplex for I with in 8:45 walked out $10.00 feeling— a nagging, irrational, un- six weeks, I promised Lindsay that

my wallet and a hole in my arm named, quasi- anxiety— that our life while he is gone doing laundry and inside my elbow. Having done here is somehow "temporary." In spite of donating plasma on his day off that I all the evidence to the contrary, I have would put all the clothes away, so that my duty to my family, I stopped held out inside my innermost heart that when he returns home with the piles of to have $3.00 of gas put in the this duplex (with its avocado appliances, clean clothes we can put those away too. car. I stared at the ten-dollar bill matted carpet, pitted linoleum, bath- I promised, but it feels empty, like I'm in my hand, as if my gaze could room door hung backwards, huge trying to force myself into admitting somehow penetrate its mysteries. though harmless two and a half spi- something I haven't conceptually The bill was soft, velvety and ders. ... I could go on), that this job of grasped, even now. Lindsay's (my intelligent, witty, talent- At first, I found I was reluctant to limp. I wanted to fathom its ed husband pumping gas), that this admit that Lindsay and I are donating depths and capture some elusive financial wreck is really our life. We are plasma to put food on the table. This is its meaning from inscrutable still living suitcase-style three months something winos do to buy their next surface, since I had so blatantly after abandoning our tenuous toe-hold bottle, not middle-class Mormon prin- exchanged something of myself on normality in Los Angeles. cesses who grew up with a washer and "WE DON'T WANT YOU BACK." dryer in the basement and shoes from for it; so soon to be handed over They didn't say this, exactly, but that's J.C. Penney. Still, my mother didn't and lesser change to replace its what they meant, and I don't stick sound surprised or shocked at all when I meager measure. around where I'm not wanted. They'd mentioned this to her, although this So here we are. Within the first day, have one helluva lawsuit on their hands could have been studied nonchalance on Lindsay dubbed this town "Spring-a- were it not for one very fatal mistake I her part.

leak-field, Oregon" and I am not only made just before leaving to give birth. I expect I would feel insufferably inclined to agree, I have championed Thus am I repaid for all my dedication. noble about my bi-weekly donations. the name. Springfield is the poor,

shirt-tail relation to its hip and educated :xx: mk: i^k: ixk: ^}C i^tiC older cousin, Eugene, just minutes away is across the (what rhymes with dammit? "[Selling plasma] Willamette!) river. Eugene is a college something winos do to buy their town full of lushly shaded streets lined next bottle, not middle-class Mormon princesses with sleepy little woodframe houses. Springfield is an industrial bedroom, who grew up with a washer and dryer in the base- full loggers on welfare; of unemployed ment and shoes from Penney." the dumping ground for those who J.C. couldn't cut higher education. 3tK: 3

become accustomed to it, to the point attempting to do the work of two or offered myself up for that sort of that I simply "notice" the smell, and then three people and failing dismally. Still, experience again. (Can anyone blame

tune it out. when I turned on PBS that evening to me?) Until now, that is. When I was In spite of having been here for over a watch "The Computer, the KGB, and pregnant with my firstborn, the obste- month, I seem to have a last, inner Me" and saw all those ten- inch magnetic trician's nurse could not get any sort of

resistance to settling in this exact place. tape reels and printers and CRTs, I felt blood sample, let alone the three and a half

PROCESSED WORLD 29 .

vials they wanted. She stuck me at least five times with NO RESULTS before she gave up and called in the doctor, who stuck the side of my wrist, over my thumb. It was so sore that no one could take even the slightest hold of that wrist for three weeks. (I have never felt so completely manhandled and mistreated by the medical establishment as I felt from that office visit. There's just noth- ing to equal the experience of meeting for the first time the person in whose hands you will place your life and life of our baby after freezing your butt off for twenty minutes completely naked under nothing but a crummy sheet.) Since that time my experience has given me cause to believe those techni- cians were simply somewhat inept and doubtless inexperienced. Lab techni- cians who stick people all day long for a living generally know what they're do- ing. ', ?.fmctH b- Notwithstanding, on my first visit to J-Mar the guy next to me had a very way to spend an hour or so. The POST SCRIPTUM bad experience (complete with several technicians are very friendly and I get to exclamations of pain and blood on the read without interruption. It started off badly. A painful stick good flow. Blood clots in armrest) and the technician had to call I must confess the first several visits I and not a very over the (obvious) expert of their group. found the sight of multiple reclining the tubes. High pressure on the return She had gone too far and had punctured bodies hooked up to machines some- cycle. Bruising of surrounding tissues. lightest touch. his muscle tissue. I kept my eyes on her what comical, reminding me of the Burning sensation at the the first time she stuck me, but it was movie A Boy and His Dog ("What God Bleeding under the skin: Hematoma. prest-bingo and she said "Good Flow." has joined let no man put asunder"). But Give up on that one. Switch to other arm. So far I've had no repeat of my college just like the acrid stench from the local More comfortable but needle clotted in freshman experience. Luckily, on my paper factory, I've become accustomed short order. Try again a half-inch lower

first visit I had the "expert," and the man to the sight and now I don't find down on the vein. More bruising. Poor next to me went through this trauma anything particularly odd, ironical, or flow. Hematoma. If the red blood cells after I was already hooked and going otherwise notable about it, though I are not returned, donation is halted for (not that even what I saw and heard keep looking for the hidden meaning, as eight weeks. I submit to one last stick, to first time). cells back. Manager would have deterred me that if it has only temporarily gone under- get the red blood Just yesterday Lindsay had a painful cover and will re-emerge if I just stare uses smaller size vein on first arm. We experience similar to my unfortunate long enough without blinking. mutually agree to a slow return due to first-time neighbor. He really earned So here we are. We are surviving (just the size of the vein. It works, with no tissues. that bonus, as I suppose I will take my barely) and my self-esteem is slowly on damage to vein or surrounding of 850. lumps too, at some point. the mend. I still have mixed feelings Units donated equals 500 Let no one mistake: there is not the about being a plasma donor. There's a I get paid, but I can't donate again slightest thing generous about this. It is sense of helplessness that flows out from until the bruise is three inches from the arms are a purely selfish act and my conscience is my soul like water when I look at a pile "venal puncture site." Both my assuaged only by the knowledge that of laundry in the corner. At $1.50 a screwed up. Lindsay still has one good are ahead unless the J-Mar is obviously making money off load, it piles up faster than J-Mar can arm. Tough times position from A-1 my body's ability to reproduce plasma, pay for it. Spend an hour or so hooked computer support and the plasma I "donate" is clean and up to a machine, put a few dollars of gas Employment Service comes through. untainted by HIV or other infections. in the car, buy a couple cans of tuna, a I can't wait to get home and put ice on I'm sure they lose a lot of money from couple gallons of milk, do a load of my wounds and generally fall apart. Both first-time donors who are dishonest and diapers, a load of jeans, and then you're arms are VERY SORE. I am shaken by subsequently rejected, not to mention broke again. Lindsay got paid, and I the experience. I feel small, vulnerable, those donors who are initially false- have a wish list that includes baby fragile, and injured; betrayed by my

. is quivering negative and who are — eventually (we powder, light-bulbs, and shoelaces. . own body. My confidence hope!) — caught through random test- NEVERTHELESS: in spite of every- in the corner. I have curled up inside ing. So at the very least I do get to be thing ... or maybe because of every- myself, and I long to curl up on my bed

I I will sleep. unabashedly honest as I respond to the thing. . .oh what the hell. think and close my eyes and same old questions every time, again put those clothes away into drawers — Fajie Manning

and again. And it's not such a god-awful today, after all.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 LJ—\A

M Y FATHER WAS BORN IN TUPELO, Mississippi, Elvis's hometown, and, like Elvis, he went from weird to brutal. An Argentine colleague was tired of being poor. He became an ordained on the train to Rosario dropped a disparaging Baptist preacher, not because his faith was deep, remark about Peron, and was invited to another car but because he had the gift of gab and evangelism by a couple of eavesdropping thugs and beaten half was one of the few ways poor white southern boys to death with rubber truncheons. No one came to could win friends, or at least influence people. But the man's defense. Most Argentines, said my after a scandal involving a teenage girl, my father, father, just want to eat their red meat, savor their now married to my mother, cast about for far-away red wine, and ignore the red blood flowing in their places in which to test his fortune. streets. overthrown in bloody No Es Mi Culpa Peron was eventually a coup and fled to a gunboat anchored in the La First stop in my parents' neocolonial adventure Plata. My brother was born in this nervous week, was San Juan, Puerto Rico. My father soon found and the hair-raising, curfew-defying trip to the that he despised Puerto Ricans, who, he main- hospital gave my parents second thoughts about tained, were feckless, irresponsible and undigni- raising a family in this volatile land. fied. He used one phrase to ridicule the Puerto After a brief return to Puerto Rico, where I was Rican "mentality": 'Wo es mi culpa,'' it's not my fault. born and my father discovered that the Puerto He would say it in a whiny voice, with a supposedly Ricans hadn't changed, we were off to a country Puerto Rican look of cowering defiance in his eye. whose government was stable — and no longer as He grudgingly allowed that this "mentality" might anti- American as it once had been— and whose be connected with Puerto Rico's slavish political economic growth was phenomenal: Mexico. status as a "possession" of the United States; but whatever the cause, he wanted to get away from the Host Country effect. Mexico City, then as now, was the center of the

He looked for a proud and independent Latin country, so it was natural that we should settle

American country, and came up with Argentina, a there. (In 1957 it was not yet the overpopulated,

prosperous, big country of rugged gauchos run by polluted miasma it is today.) We lived on a tiny the unconventional dictator Peron, who had taunted ranch south of the city, and we four children were the U.S. by flirting with European fascism. Never enrolled in the American School. mind that Argentina was virtually owned by the The American School was presided over by a

Swift-Armour meat packing company; it was more mysterious, never-seen superintendent named Dr. its own country than Puerto Rico. Patterson. Our school, he wrote in the First My dad got a job with, surprise, Swift-Armour, Handbook of Overseas Schools, was established to and for two years he oversaw stunnings, eviscera- tions, splittings, shroudings, curings and other aspects of the meat business. The political situation What impressed us most about this weird .^^=^' country were the smells, the packaging, and the vast numbers of police.

PROCESSED WORLD 29 provide "broad, bilingual educational and therefore as Americans. Our father made of solid gold. We were gringos programs which may lead the students was anything but practical; he could with guns and golden bullets. into business and commercial activities rarely remember the direction in which Our father was making good money meaningful to U.S. interests, both in the a screw tightens. Fearing we would get shipping fertile eggs from Arkansas, host country and in the U.S." In 1958, him involved in some frustrating me- hatching them in his hatchery and the school began to receive subsidies chanical project, he did not encourage growing them into broilers. Our lifestyle from the U.S. Department of State. our interest in such things. Whereas our was one of servants, heated swimming The campus was incongruously lo- gringo friends had chemistry sets, so- pools and trips to coastal resorts, but cated in the midst of the dusty slums of phisticated toy weaponry and go-carts, dad, meanwhile, was going loopy under Tacubaya. At 2:30 in the afternoon, the we had pet chickens and a couple of the pressure and the success: boozing huge iron gates would creaik open and pigs. Our gringo friends built bombs heavily, brawling, taking my brother our schoolbus, one of 23 lined up in (sometimes with unfortunate results), and me on wild car trips through martial formation, would roll down the tinkered with engines, and knew things Mexico, getting the maids pregnant. steep concrete ramp between fortress like exactly how many grams of botulin Finally, in the dead of night in January, walls and into the vast, poor city. 1968, our mother put herself and her That urban Third World landscape brood on a secret flight to California. became familiar over the years, yet Suddenly we were strangers in a remained hopelessly alien. The dramas strange land, and poor to boot. without took place as if in slow-motion: Gringolandia two vehicles crumpled at an intersec- ^^^,i:i:£^

' tion, hugging each other like a pair of On the lam from the raging patriarch, prehistoric crustaceans in mid-battle, we hid out in motels throughout the their occupants limping from the scene i southwest U.S. Motels were our some- to avoid the police and the shakedown; ^ how fitting introduction to American the slum dweller on the high-tension f culture. (We had only been to the U.S. pole, who in his illegal attempt to tap I once, for a very brief visit to Mississip- electricity, falls in a ball of flame. Even 1 pi, many years earlier.) What impressed were the jeering, cudgel-toting students on CT us most about this weird country the prowl for schoolbuses defying the !- the smells, the packaging, and the vast general student strike (like ours) seemed numbers oi police. unreal. ® The smell, the smell of Gringolandia, The American School boasted about § was what I can best describe as an odor 2,000 students, evenly divided between of refined toxicity, a subtle chemical middle-class or bourgeois Mexicans and scent that permeated everything. Mexi- North Americans. In elementary school co had its share of toxic odors, to be the two nationalities mixed happily, sure, but these were coarse and blatant playing soccer together and trading compared to the gringo ones, and Sputnik and Gemini cards (these cards specific to that factory or this canal. SENATOR, n. A millionaire or, if newly appeared in loaves of Bimbo bread, the elected, about to become one. There were very few smells in the U.S. Mexican equivalent of Wonder, which attributable to organic causes: you middle-class Mexicans trained them- it would take to wipe out everybody on didn't find folks roasting corn in empty selves to prefer over the lowly tortilla). earth. Even our Mexican friends were lots, filling the air with wood smoke and By high school, however, Mexicans sometimes amazed at our lack of famili- the fragrance of caramelizing sugars, or and Americans became hopelessly div- arity with things modern, such as tele- encounter the stink of roadkill. Just that ided along national lines. Many Ameri- vision and movies. Television reception incessant chemical smell, which seemed can boys, offspring of CIA agents and of was poor on our ranch, and our parents to reach its greatest intensity at those the technocrats sent by U.S. corpora- hardly ever took us to movies; so when all-American sites, motels and malls. tions, were keen on technology and our Mexican friends took us there, they Packaging was truly fascinating. De- gadgetry, whereas most Mexican boys, laughed at how we kept our unblinking monstrating the gringos' neurotic fear of looking forward to careers as idle bu- eyes riveted to the screen throughout the contamination, foods were packaged reaucrats and having an aristocratic whole show. and repackaged down to their smallest disdain for practical knowledge, traded Our big technological break came single doses. It was amazing to behold in their interest in such matters with when we were eleven and twelve years those little aluminum jelly trays with their last Sputnik card. American girls, old, when our father finally relented and their fancy lettering and their smidgeon daughters of bold mothers in a foreign we were given a couple of Daisy BB of jelly inside. The food itself was land, became tomboys, whereas their guns for Christmas. By this time, our generally pale and bland; Americans, Mexican counterparts strove to become family had fled the big city for the more we learned, had an aversion to spice, dainty senoritas with a view to mother- livable one of Cuernavaca, where my and to dark foods. hood— "walking wombs" in the Ameri- brother and I were enrolled in a tiny, The ubiquitous police, especially the can girls' contemptuous words. very liberal "tutoring section." We California Highway Patrol, were in- Though we weren't yet in high school, prowled the outskirts of the town trying credible robot-like creatures, very dif- my brother and I sensed our shortcom- to slay small game and telling whomever ferent from the wretched Mexican traf- ings in the area of technical expertise. would listen that those shiny BBs were fic cops and, it would seem, eminently

PROCESSED WORLD 29 unbribable. We were sure these mon- to freak us out. The totalitarian scale of The spy progeny had been necessarily sters would, as soon as they discovered things— the highways, the shopping cosmopolitan; but the Cheyenne our situation, deliver us back to our centers, the miracle miles — was bizarre, Mountain brats were racists and xeno- father, who would surely beat us all as was the relentless homogeneity and phobes. We were immediately targeted black and blue for having escaped. uniformity of it all. (It seemed laughable as some kind of exotic spies, very That is how we spent our first months that the American press criticized the strange, very un-American. in the U.S.A.: picking at the pale, communist countries for making every- Perhaps I put too much of the blame chemical- smelling food in motel restau- thing "the same" when one medium- on our peers. Most loathesome about rants, examining the tiny packages of sized U.S. city could scarcely be differ- the place was the fascistic atmosphere jellies and sugar, watching for the entiated from any other). The social created by the administrators and some police, and waiting for our dad to chill atomism and the lack of solidarity in all teachers, who attempted to regulate out so our mother could get back in that didn't involve commerce — the para- their prisoners' every move. Our "his- touch with him and get us some money. noid individuals holed up in their little tory" teacher, perhaps the most reac- Meanwhile, my father had blown his houses were also disturbing. Here an tionary, spent most of the time showing businesses in Mexico by stealing a large angry man could be raging in the us anti-Chinese propaganda films and shipment of fertilized eggs and re-selling streets, and nobody would respond, just reading Ayn Rand. When Nixon asked them back in the U.S. His Mexican turn away. In Mexico he would always his "silent majority" to turn on their partners put out a bulletin in the get a response: perhaps not always a headlights by day to show support for newspapers for his capture, but he kind one, maybe just a jeer, but at least his bombing of Vietnam, the cars enter- absconded to the Caribbean to booze a human reaction. Mexico had poverty ing the school parking lot looked like and whore it up. Eventually he would go and corruption, to be sure, but there they were going to a goddamned funer- to San Jose, Costa Rica, to try to was something organically human about al.

become a leg-man for financier-crook it. You could get stabbed, but at least We had to fight back. Weary of the

Robert Vesco, who wouldn't have him, you knew it was an enemy who did it. principal's creepy scrutiny of his hair and then to Nicaragua, where he tried to Colorado Springs boasted the Air length (the hair could only touch the

drum up some beef export business with Force Academy, a huge army base, and collar, not go below it), my brother Anastasio Somoza, who liked to call a principal center for NORAD (North shaved his head, which only caused Nicaragua "his ranch"; but there my dad American Air Defense Command), a more commotion. I grew marijuana and witnessed a gunfight between the then- Strangelovian command post deep in distributed it among our small group of tiny Sandinistas and the Somocistas, the heart of Cheyenne Mountain. malcontents. We wore black arm bands and this scared him off. My brother and I were enrolled in after the shootings at Kent State, and When my mother's funds ran out, she Cheyenne Mountain Junior High, a were suspended. We read such lumin- felt compelled to get in touch with bunker-like public school with thick aries as Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoff-

him — she didn't know AFDC or other concrete walls and a few suspicious slits man and Eldridge Cleaver. welfare existed, and heaven forbid any- for windows. Of the 500 students there Ironically- by driving us off to the

one would tell her, so "shameful" was the was one black and one Hispanic. It intolerant, bigoted, jingoistic heartland dole held to be. He agreed to send made the American School, not to of America our father turned us into the money, as long as we moved to a mention the little school we had attend- hippie-freak-commies he so abhorred. suitably conservative town. It was 1968, ed in Cuernavaca, seem like Summer- Had we stayed in Mexico, we may have and he was sure the hippies and the hill. become bourgeois "juniors" with inher- commies were taking over the country. It was one thing to have had a few ited business interests in Latin America,

California was out of the question. gringo friends, as my brother and I had always thinking of the U.S. as the seat of Finally he decided that Colorado in Mexico, whose fathers were U.S. world civilization. Instead, being so

Springs, with its heavy military influ- spies; it was quite another to be thrown rudely exposed to the reality of Ameri- ence, would be all right. among 500 offspring of the most paran- can society, we came to recognize the We Become Freaks oid and xenophobic military personnel United States as a seat of world barbar- By this time, the U.S. was beginning this country is capable of producing. ism. — Salvador Ferret

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PROCESSED WORLD 29 heat less from ethnicity or geography how has it hindered me? and more from free will, imagination, The Disappearance of the Outside illu- and resistance. Whether metaphorically minates these questions and more: here

or literally foreign, we are the black is the peculiar situation of the exiled sheep born with teeth and tearing at the writer, and the poet's role in creating

urban fray. I am the bundle of contra- social disruption; the domination of OF THE DISAPPEARANCE THE dictions who is both an independent cuss machines and mechanical processes over OUTSIDE: A Manifesto For Escape by and inextricably bound together with a people, and the concomitant loss of the Andrei Codrescu. Addison-Wesley, 1990. considerable herd of cultural desperados organic; as well as the replacement of who have flocked to San Francisco. the word (meaning) by the mass medi- metaphysic exile views the human The of One ally is Andrei Codrescu, a 1960s ated electronic image (simulation) as the There condition as a series of tragic events. transplanted Romanian poet-in-exile, dominant representation of social reali- a Fall, and people were in exile. This was who now lives in New Orleans. His ty. The focus of this review is the issue by every religion and mythology Fall, repeated book The Disappearance of the Outside of exile and social identity. our existence on on earth, proves that we began spurred me to consider my own story as Codrescu opens Disappearance with his earth an exile. Leaving the womb com- as an exile. return to the ruins of his Romanian pounds the original Fall with a new sense of After spending the first 18 years of my hometown, Sibiu, just after the fall of estrangement. consists, it seems, in a Life life near an isolated timber town in the the vicious Ceaucescu regime. It is New home. variety of ways of not being at hinterlands of Washington state, my Year's Eve — before the onslaught of the Consciousness itself is in exile from biology. initiation into adulthood was to fly 1990s — amidst an atmosphere of wide- History is an exile from paradise. A "home" as away. Since then I've never stopped, spread optimism. He expresses his fore- such can exist only in a temporal perspective, living and travelling for extended peri- boding that even as the people of is illusory and limited to the indulgence which ods all across America, Africa, New Eastern Europe "have come Outside at rarely indulgent. It of history. History is Zealand & Australia, and Eastern Eu- long last after painful dark decades in ruthlessly displaces people and will continue to rope. the repressive interiors of police states" do so. joining the glittery new (old) world odor — Codrescu ODDITY AS ODYSSEY Andrei will very quickly leave an empty, rotten Americans my adult life Like most aftertaste. The book revolves around been a series of moves. In each place I... has such Inside vs. Outside tensions. Co- felt stuck, psychically vi- Why? I've quickly drescu integrates cultural/political forces attitudes and The shortest poem and longest story olated by the prevailing with personal/existential concerns. To- then felt compelled to is the cartographer of my identity and its concerns, and gether, through the imagination they lies native on. Unlike most Americans I've shifting "homeland." Here my move inform our ability, as aliens, to stay vital identity, ripe with spaces, silences, and never thought this nation was the best meaning inside that quixotic anti- the world could offer. I love its freedoms identity I most identify with. Eternal and forwardness, but despise its de- emigre, born an Outsider. Now I've vouring of planetary resources and all arrived as a permanent refugee in a culture alien to the commodity, televi- dense global resettlement city of myths sion, and western "progress." It is realized: San Francisco, California, strange fruit to be born American, live 1992. in a family that believes in America, but Here, in infancy, are the beginnings always identify yourself as outside the of post-nationalistic, urban tribes. They American way. Even as a young boy I include Processed World and several other never understood the big deal: all the political/artistic/intellectual/social clans rah rahs. We're #1, Let's Kick Butt! It I'm part of. Together we constitute an seems so stupid, even pitiful. America's anti-state. A state of psychogeographi- greatness through individual liberties,

c£il inversion unique to modern aliena- cultural diversity, and material afflu-

tion: a "nation" of aliens. ence is, at the very best, counter- Many of us (and some of my worldly balanced by its loss of tradition and inner selves) are "true aliens." Like most community, psychic and spiritual pov- Americans, my ancestral cuisinart mix- erty, and preeminence in global exploi-

es a number of alien blood- nations: tation. Yet I always feel compelled to

Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and Polish with return even though I could choose not to. Cherokee and Choctaw native Ameri- My interest here is why I and so STUPIDITY, n. An invaluable com- can. Most of my friends (and identities) many like me have heeded the call of the modity. The grease which lubricates are, more powerfully, metaphorical al- western wanderer. How has my identity iens. We forge our identity and home- as outcast (and being "cast out" largely the wheels of American commerce, land in a poetic furnace which draws by my own desires) served me? And politics and religion

PROCESSED WORLD 29 inside an Insane Outer Reality east and wandering. Metaphorical exiles who still possible to speak. Before the vacu- west. shed their allegiance to the myth of exile um of the mass sucks in the words Although the east/west distinction is also forfeit their claim to poetry. This is forever." rapidly becoming obsolete, such divi- a tragic position because they will never We need to become saboteurs of sion shaped Codrescu's adult life from be natives again either: the prodigal son history by re-ordering the very atoms of the time he fled Romania in 1966 at age is always an oddity." (emphasis added) public thought and discourse to illumi- in fact. 19. He landed in America during per- Codrescu stresses the need to claim nate the facts in myth, and myths haps its most intoxicating period of myths and "metaphors that matter." An This requires turning language itself freedom. Swept up by its libertarian example is Milan Kundera's use of inside out. Such a juggling act involves spirit he failed to notice "at the time that "laughter and forgetting" which he sees more than simply being a poet. It also exile was a temporary religion in Amer- as "a phenomenal critique of memory." means dancing on and over the edges of ica." A religion rather more constant He notes that Kundera "pointed to the today's global high wire. We are en- than transient. America is a nation state exact place in his memory where the couraged to become "saboteur, fool for founded by the excluded. It "modernized" generative, creative urge is located, thus health, and schizo- activist all at once." through a Civil War whose moral freeing himself (and us) ..." This, Co- Codrescu locates the proper "home" base sought to include the excluded. drescu claims, is crucial particularly for for the "schizo-activist" at the interplay Despite great efforts to revive the nation those in exile. When he went into literal of myth and fact in the arena of politics god, it is today's metaphorical exiles that exile, "Kundera had to remake himself and art. It's not just a matter of sanity may push the absurdly gigantic United in order to continue. In order to write he within an insane world or survival States to emulate the rapid collapse of had to remember, but in order to be he amidst war and pollution, but simply the Soviet empire. A disintegration that had to forget. What to forget and what making life worth living. may well be sooner and quicker than we to remember? It is a tension peculiar to Schizo-activism is one of those word now imagine. exile but it has vast importance beyond -roles which is both specific and ambig-

it. In the West we are faced with the uous. It fits me like a glove. I'm often IF YOU'RE NOT A MYTH, catastrophic loss of memory brought sanest when the world around me is THEN WHOSE REALITY ARE YOU? about by industreality. We are com- craziest; most insane when swaddled by Codrescu experienced little of the pelled to forget even the immediate past the entropy of normalcy. Schizo- inner pain and nostalgia that most have by the collage style of the mass media. activism is the one word job description when cut off from their native land. Living in a continual forgetting (an for me and my tribe of post-national Instead he identifies with a larger, active act), we can only face forward, in exiles. global community while realizing: "I a kind of parody of the Communist goal We urban love warriors work over- was in love with the myth of exile and I which always bids the masses to step time to eliminate our jobs. We don't its reces- was disappointed with sudden "forward." "Progress is the act of forget- believe in missionary work. Indeed, sion in the 1970s. About history I did ting." other than military huns, missionaries not feel one way or another and this put Codrescu maintains a simultaneous have been the most prolific mass mur- fellow me, I guess, in exile from my belief in and critical distance from the ders in human history. The urban love exiles." This changed considerably mythic/metaphorical mode of truth. He warrior's calling is the education of when later, "My exile appeared to me, understands western culture's conscious desire. We want excesses of personal for the first time, in a historical light. attachment to the god of objective facts indulgence and global justice. The poli- Times of great freedom breed metaphorical results in an even more powerful un- tics of change must drink deeply from exiles while times of repression breed literal conscious appropriation of myth. Com- the well of eros and art, not the other exiles. I had been granted a temporary mon myths congealing our culture of way around. reprieve from the reality of my exile by "objectivity" are faith in "progress," Our friend and fellow schizo-activist the ascendance of the myth. This con- salvation through technology, belief in Andrei Codrescu has a unique and tact with reality did not change my national, racial, or ethnic superiority, comic view of the use (and abuse) of belief in the therapeutic value of my the military/ macho salute of the Rambo artists from the Outside. When inter- identity, and the social necessity of viewed by D.S. Black by telephone in strong authority figures. They feed a January on a radio call-in show, Co- common misuse of myth (one which drescu shared his recent impressions of applies to desirable myths as well): the the U.S., having driven across the abdication of personal responsibility to country in a Cadillac.

"larger forces" beyond us. Today the "I just see a tremendous amount of experi- political and artistic imperative is to ment and craziness. Most Americans that I

reverse this process by making new talked to on this trip are something I call myths (that matter) collectively consci- zawats, a word I hope to put in circulation

ous. very soon, which is that they're simply crazy. To that end, Codrescu advocates a Under the exterior of a normal person — ifyou monkey wrenching of the dominant scratch the surfacejust a little bit, the strangest

stories shaping us today. "We must ideas come out. sabotage both the sentimental story that "They are ideas that have and will have an

ends in God and the machine story that effect on the practical world, whether they are ends in the tool. In order to do that, we stockbrokers in Chicago working in the pit USA all of us have to become poets. But we using their mystical notions to buy and sell, or Keeping Democracy in the Right Hands. must become poets quickly, while it is whether they're part of a religious community

PROCESSED WORLD 29 "

in upstate NY, they believe in things which would not seem reasonable to anyone who has experienced a conversion to the Enlightenment,

I think. There are currents in American life that are here that have escaped the Enlighten- ment, and they've continued a life that is quite apartfrom a reasonable understanding of things. In The Disappearance of the Outside Codrescu wrote that "Western artists are not taking Icindly to this invasion by exiles. As peripheral people in charge of shoveling art into the maw of the center, they demand of these exiles who are (clearly) the peripherals of the periphery to make sense of their freedom. The cultural slum raises defenses against the culturally homeless because it is asked to provide a creative space that it does not possess and has no idea how to take back from the electronic media. The exiles do know how, and know how through their exile, which is a fundamental loss of all centers, private and public."

The loss of center . . . oh, do I know this place. We urban love warriors possess intimate knowledge of loss. But what makes us different, what funda- mentally exiles us, is our meditation on taking back. Taking back meaning while subverting the power of simulated image. Taking back direct contact and sabotaging spectating entertainments. Taking back community and overcom- ing our isolation. Most significantly, overturning the "objectivity" of this constructed society by taking back our own living imagination. Today that is the definition of exile and the practice of the urban love warrior. -Med-0 Ray Beldner's dehumanizing office scenario literalizes, with live pigeons, the timeless "dumped on" position of the employee. (Glen Heifand, sf Weekly)

INGENUITY AND ways been deeply critical of the social ism. He appreciates the "powerful desire ITS ENEMIES processes in which specific technologies for self-respect, self-determination and evolve, but haven't espoused a general Utopian experimentalism that lies be- position on Technology, largely because hind the... New Age... inspired by a

it's such an impossible category to deep hunger for community." But he Strange Weather: Culture, Science, and adequately define. also subverts the New Age's reactionary Technology in the Age of Limits by Andrew Over the past two decades a broad embrace of austerity by usefully point- Ross (Verso: London 1991) range of critical technology texts has ing to the "difference between saying Questioning Technology: Tool, Toy or emerged, many of which have been that limits ought to exist, and saying that Tyrant.'', edited by John Zerzan and reviewed in earlier issues of Processed we ought to recognize the existence of Alice Carnes (New Society Publishers: World. Two books published in the past limits." Ross excels in showing how Philadelphia 1991, originally published year offer opposite approaches. marginal, oppositional, and outlawed in England by Freedom Press) In Strange Weather Andrew Ross de- scientific subcultures have, by promot- tails both contemporary and historic ing their own counter-science and alter- Processed World has been labeled both subcultures which formed in response to native rationality, helped legitimize Big "anti- technology" and "pro- technology" the promise and the inadequacy of Science's more subtle claims to author- by ideologues on either end of that Science. In his pursuit of a "green ity. The sweeping scope of his survey so-called debate. But the magazine, per cultural criticism and politics" he finds encapsulates futurology, global warm- se, has never taken a stand either way. encouraging elements in expressions as ing, computer hacking, science fiction, Processed Worlds contributors have al- divergent as cyberpunk and New Age- environmental decay. Technocracy,

PROCESSED WORLD 29 ' " "

virtual reality, and utopianism/dystopi- actual life on the planet (cultural experi- "Questioning Technology challenges us

anism. Though he is surgically precise ence)? And, unfortunately, the snide to re-engage our hearts and minds in the search in his dissection of myths and underly- tone of the introduction doesn't read as for truly appropriate and accountable technolo-

ing meanings, his attitude remains di- witty, but as transparently condescend- gies . . . sadly there are precious few models to

zdectical and hopeful. He wants: ing, which has been one of Zerzan's guide us . . . Native, traditional and organic " . . .a hacker's knowledge capable of gener- major tendencies for years. (He has farmers may have the most to teach in the ating new popular romances around the always had really awful things to say ongoing work of reconstituting technology in

alternative uses of human ingenuity. . . we about Processed World, of course.) harmony with local communities and the

cannot afford to give up what techno- literacy Two pages later technology is unam- earth. . . [which] demands an attentive we have in deference to the vulgar faith that biguously defined for us: "[Technology] awareness of the natural world, patience, a

tells us it is always acquired in complicity and is an impulse, a thought form, before it large dose of humility and a stringent account-

is thus contaminated by the toxin of instru- has anything to do with tools. It grows ability to the land, to natural cycles, and to the mental rationality; or because we hear, often from the desire to rival the awesome, larger human community. To be sure, there's from the same quarters, that acquired techno- unfathomable creativity of the earth. plenty of room for ingenuity, but always logical competence simply glorifies the inhu- This is where domination of nature within an explicitly cultural, human and

man work ethic. Technoliteracy, for us, is the begins." Defining the birth of technolo- natural— not merely an economic or technologi- " challenge to make a historical opportunity out gy as a neo- Promethean desire to rival cal—context. " ofa historical necessity. Mother Earth gives prehistoric gadget- This bucolic advice to learn from The "vulgar faith" he anonymously eers and contemporary engineers too traditional and organic farmers may be

attacks here is found inserted among much philosophical credit! They pre- sound for those in basically rural set-

nearly three dozen excerpts of varying sent human creativity in all its myriad tings now, but it completely ignores the quality, assembled by John Zerzan and forms (good and bad) as essentially question that our collective relationship Alice Carnes under the title Questioning untrustworthy. Finally this approach with technology really hinges on: what Technology: Tool, Toy or Tyrant? Zerzan, leads to "know-nothingism," a refusal of will happen to city life, where the vast of course, has been flogging technology knowledge which is thought to be mor- majority of us live and work? Clearly a since the late 1970s, mostly in Fifth al\y impure, a state of mind which thorough- going decentralization and Estate, the Detroit tabloid dedicated defends itself by wielding as an en- greenification of urban areas is in order, increasingly over the years to the advo- chanted talisman a completely desocial- but I am not interested in being held cacy of neo-primitivism as the only way ized, abstract concept of "nature." "stringently accountable to the land or out. FEs George Bradford contributes In Strange Weather, Andrew Ross ad- natural cycles." I like the idea of an excerpt from his "We All Live in dresses this directly: surviving as well as we humanly can Bhopal" wherein he concludes: "The construction of nature as a social storms, droughts and earthquakes.

"The empire is collapsing. We must find vacuum distances us from any direct engage- Moreover, what is this idea of "natural,

our way back to the village, or as the North ment with the actual social forces that human, cultural context" within which

American natives said, 'back to the blanket, command vast power in our everyday lives ingenuity must be kept, which is so and we must do this not by trying to save an through their organization of technology and separate from the "technological con-

industrial civilization which is doomed, but in bureaucracy. One of the inevitable effects of this text?" Where is the line drawn exactly?

that renewal of life which must take place in its retreat is to entertain Arcadian fantasies of Which side is the mouth harp on? ruin. By throwing off this Modern Way of preindustrialist life resourcefully embellished Which side are you on? Life, we won't be 'giving things up' or with many of the philosophical contents of a Zerzan's (and, presumably Games')

sacrificing, but throwing off a terrible burden. postindustrialist wardrobe. proto- religious absolutism is starkly re- " Let us do so soon before we are crushed by it. Questioning Technology is philosophical- vealed in the essays selected to answer The structure of Questioning Technology ly based on just such Arcadian fantasies. "What is the future of human culture

is built around chapters headed by In the terribly irritating, "hand-written" with respect to technology? Is there a rhetorical questions such as "Was there a introduction. New Society Publishers' solution to the reality of being dimin- point in history when technology came TL Hill explains why s/he decided to go ished by high tech?" Sally Gearhart calls to dominate the individual? How could through the entire book with his/her pen for the Jonestown solution taken to the this have happened?" and followed by a and insert brackets everytime words like planetary level in "An End to Technolo- page or two of editorial introduction to "man" or "his" came up: gy":

. . in. . the essays excerpted in response. "By adding a bit of hand work to this "I find. . .an integrity. .[human] I The editors' basic contempt for the mass-produced item, we hope to humanize it species suicide. . . If some still ask "Why?"

potential reader leads them to sarcasti- just a little, and to enhance its challenge to suggest that the burden of proof has shifted, cally berate us already in the opening rethink — and remake — our relationships with that in terms of our biosphere the question is, " introduction: "You can close the book technology and withyou, our community. "Why not?" all this catches on, buy Kool-Aid now. . . and go right on for the next 40 Of course this "hand work," like Boy, if years, smoking your way into the cancer the typeset bulk of the book, was done stock! ." in editors declare "the instrumental or ward. Or you can turn the page. . on the original and then printed The And by turning the pages we will learn thousands of copies. Perhaps if TL Hill utilitarian character of science and technology to "wonder how our cultural experience had actually written the introduction by is a false notion; domination itself is found vast, so are the has. . .deformed our human nature." hand into each copy the message would there. If this indictment is This framing of the issue reveals the have had a bit more resonance. measures we must take to remove its applica- Jesuitical roots of Zerzan's anti- The impoverished imagination im- tion from a world we would like to save and

technologism. What is this unspoiled plied by this book's basic approach is savour. human nature, distinguished from our laid out in the same opening comments: Then T. Fulano in an excerpt from

PROCESSED WORLD 29 "

Fifth Estate contentedly predicts that specificity of human life drops out of the "Jetliners fall, civilizations fall, this civiliza- picture.

tion will fall. . . and we will be inside, each "Like global models of corporate planetary one of us at our specially assigned porthole, management, which take the planet as an going down for the last time, like dolls' heads economic unit, Gaian philosophy demonstrates encased in plexiglass. the danger of taking the planet as a zoological The final section asks "Is technology unit. In either case, humanity appears as a "neutral"?" and offers a plethora of mythical species, stripped of all the rich historical and documentary information specificity that differentiates human societies to answer "no, of course not." John and and communities, and oblivious to all the Paula Zerzan look at the imposition of differences in race, gender, class, and nation- the factory system and the widespread ality that serve tojustify and police structures of violent working-class resistance. Jerry human domination within and between these

Mander argues for the elimination of societies. In both instances, the questions television. Ian Reinecke looks cogently raised by ecology can no longer be explained or The "superstar" of boxcar art, Herby was outed by at the reality of contemporary workplace the press in 1981 after his creator, Herbert Mayer, answered by social theory or social action; they automation, and finally Jacques Ellul had anonymously drawn over 70,000 "sleeping are resolved at the level of "resource manage- Mexican" pictures over a span of 30 years. This claims that technique has become truly ment" by the logic of the multinational popular logo was once used to identify a railroad autonomous and is itself the new arbiter corporate state, or by the independent diktat of safety program, and inspired a line of "Herby" of morality. The Zerzans' and Reinec- sportswear. the "tough" planetary organism. The problem ke's pieces are both straight ahead of global warming is no longer an arena for " descriptions, of historic resistance to exposing the barbarism of social institutions. proletarianization and the totalitarian Ross's final chapter on the weather,

nature of the modern workplace, re- "The Drought This Time," is reason spectively. enough to read this book. He examines Jerry Mander makes one of the how weather reportage provides a met- underlying points of the collection when aphorical language which "naturalizes" he glibly asserts that "the basic form of the social relations. He ironically enthuses

institution and the technology determines its about the reassurance he gets as a

interaction with the world, the way it will be weather addict to know that "the re-

used, the kind of people who use it, and to sponsible weather citizen's rights are

what ends. " (emphasis added) I don't only threatened with natural and not share, say, cyberpunk's enthusiasm for social erosion." the liberatory possibilities of new tech- If we accept the demonization of nology as employed by outlaw subcul- Technology as presented by Zerzan and tures, but I really object to such an Carnes, suicide is the way to go, since overly deterministic view of human all attempts to redirect or reclaim tech- ingenuity. Considering the complex negative assessments of technology." nological processes are already so con- relationships between media and con- Andrew Ross addresses the abstract taminated that they can only reproduce sumers, the always contested construc- nature-ists, too, in his fascinating and the same logic with the same dehuma- tion of meaning and shared cultural witty discussion of the weather and nizing results. Technologies are far from norms, there's always the possibility of global warming: neutral but that does not make inani- creative appropriation and subversion "The crusade to claim the whole world as mate objects the new subjects of history! by human intervention in any "domi- "free" for liberal capitalism is currently locked Andrew Ross goes the opposite way. nant" process, industrial or cultural. If in step with the campaign to "free" the climate By insisting on situating specific tech-

we don't believe in that, at least, then from human influence. . . Now that science nologies within the specific social webs there's really no hope, and the suicidal has shown the clear impact of the "human that have given rise to them, with their views of our future cultural life may be a fingerprint" on a global system so vast as own contradictory and multifaceted his- logical choice. atmospheric behavior, such a logic demands the tories, we are encouraged to see the Questioning Technology provides a valu- more stable, guiding influence of the whole ways in which individual and collective able service in assembling a large num- hand. . . Greater powers of regulatory control choices both produce and are produced by ber of excerpts from many texts, some are thus claimed in the name of allowing the various technological choices. Wides- welcome for their insight and facts, system to revert to its "natural" self- regulating pread barbarism and hopeless despair others as examples of various ideological economy. This is the contradictory form in does not change the fact that human stances, both pro- and con-. Writings which laissez-faire economics have been ad- ingenuity is in the driver's seat. The by Lewis Mumford, Daniel Burnham, vanced throughout modern capitalist history. society in which our ingenuity functions Langdon Winner and Herb Schiller all "The Gaian thesis simply inverts the logic of today restrains, distorts, and usually offer critiques similar to Processed Worlds, human domination over the natural world: defeats our creative capacities. But the own. In fact, in spite of attempts to planetary management is seen not as an machinery itself makes no decisions and stack the deck in favor of the Humans- extension of human control, but as a process to only enforces certain human relations if as-Plague point of view, the editors do which thefate of human is utterly subjugated. we go on allowing that to be the case. graciously admit in the last sentence that Under cover of the rhetoric of "biocentric The choices are, in fact, in our collective the works they have excerpted do not equality" and the "balance of nature, " the logic hands. "necessarily embody fundamentally of domination is held intact, and the social — Chris Carlsson

PROCESSED WORLD 29 THE S\A/INEHERD

riGS GRUNT WHEN finally — finally — I gently inform them feel certain you will be able to help they get excited, plunge their that the answer to their question is "no." them," a young employee said to me. "I answer to their inquiry is "yes," wish I could write like that." curious snouts into mounds of If the only one full page of the prescribed fluff "You will learn," I replied. "As the muddy slop, and run with the is required. Many times I wonder if years go by you will learn that in almost athlete. I grace of an obese ex- am politicians read my letters before they all cases the best thing to say in your not a pig. I wish I had the power sign them. letter is absolutely nothing. You can to appear before a nationwide If a woman who failed her LVN exam hint that anything is possible; you can complains to us that she was fired from tell them that the most respected con- television audience and tell the her nursing position because she failed stituents are those who are mature nation, the world: I am not a pig. the test, I write to her that I feel the pain enough to be patient; you can assure It is true that some of my co- she feels, I understand her anguish and them that their opinions will be taken workers whisper that I am a pig, her frustration and even a little anger, into account when committee meetings yet I do not grunt. It is also true and I wish she could continue her begin; you can graciously thank them career. In reality, she will have for offering their opinion, because with- that I thrust my snout into nursing to re- take the exam when it is offered six out it proper representation would not mounds of slop, but it is never months from now. In the meantime, she be possible and democracy would not muddy slop. I work for the is unemployed. flourish; you can assert that their views in sense, the "people," and, a Of course, the legislator who signs are quite interesting, and such an in- people work for me. I make this letter is officially the one who feels triguing, fresh approach that they may $60,000 a year, and the people the pain, who knows the anguish and be related to the chairman of a certain even discuss the pay every dollar, dime and nickel even a litde anger so that this sorry committee who may woman might be soothed enough to vote matter with the Majority Leader, the of it. Note that I said I make for him in November. Personally, I Speaker of the House or the President of $60,000 a year; I did not say I don't give a damn about her pain. the Senate. You can say all of these earn that much. One day I received a well-written things, but you must say nothing." The taxpayers who give me a pay- letter from a prisoner who was an What this new employee doesn't know check think poHticians write their own unfortunate bystander during a prison is that I don't actually write letters letters. They think the legislators they riot and suffered a fractured vertebra, a anymore. Today I merely re-use the elect actually have the ability to use fractured nose and a concussion. I letters I wrote 10 to 20 years ago. I can sesquipedalian words, conduct their endured a fractured vertebra when I was write to constituents that their ideas are own research, investigate a problem. young and it annoyed me when I felt his unique and fresh, but the truth is that Legislators are incapable of all of these pain. I thought I had grown immune to their opinions are old and tedious. So I things. I am the letter writer. the pain. I cannot comprehend how this keep in my files thousands of letters I

I obtain the information. I make the prisoner had the strength to stand have written and merely place the phone calls. I am the mask legislators upright in a food line with these injuries, appropriate floppy disc in my personal wear so they can get re-elected. It is my waiting minute after minute for his computer and produce a letter on my task to retain the almighty incumbents, meal, while others jostled him from side laser printer. so I must make them appear personable to side. There was nothing I could do for I have two major files, one for those but at the same time unreachable. If a the guy except urge him to visit the who call themselves right-to-lifers and constituent wants an answer to a ques- prison doctor. Pitiful aching bonepile. another for those who call themselves

tion and the answer to that question is I place on our legislators the most freedom- of- choicers. I consider all of

simply "no," I could easily write them a erudite mask our office can offer. I don't these activists fabulously boring. They clearly- stated three- sentence response need the skills of Locke, Rousseau, seem to thrive on tedium, so within each and give them an honest answer. But Aristotle, Plato or Montesquieu except of these files I have developed sub- files.

this is not the essence of politics. when I quote them in one of my letters. If a freedom-of-choicer wants to discuss The politician must not only appear All I need to support some patriotic the importance of certain court decisions informed and at least somewhat educat- political premise is a poignant quotation and each of the trimesters, I pull out an ed, but also possibly omniscient, even from Patton, Kennedy, Eisenhower, appropriate trimester letter and print it

omnipotent, so I compose two full pages Churchill or one of the Roosevelts. in an instant. If I am bothered by a of meaningless history, phrases of sym- People respect words they don't quite choicer who wants to dionysiacally dis- pathy or empathy, hope- filled scenarios understand and quotations from famous cuss the humiliating methods men have and godly ideals employing occasional individuals whose faces appear in their used to manipulate women from the adjectives, powerful verbs, and a varie- minds when they read the words. time of Cicero to Ivanhoe and Ludwig gated array of other writing tricks until "You calm people down, make them van to Peter Pan, I retrieve the appro-

PROCESSED WORLD 29 priate women-who-have-been-ruled-by- you got it. I have letters already pre- "That I did." men screed. If a woman wants to dis- pared for socialists, gays, members of "And you sympathized with them, cuss her personal life with me and the KKK, members of gun clubs, gave them all kinds of examples." generally feels sorry for herself, I pull neo-Nazis, constituents who suffer from "I did that." from my file the suitable feeling-sorry- triskaidekaphobia, any flotsam that "And you informed them how the for-herself response. wants to jaundice itself with some legislature is involved in this issue."

I wrote one letter which I send to over-discussed topic. "But I said nothing because I com- energize outraged right-to-lifers — I de- "I don't think you give yourself mitted myself to nothing. I remained scribe the crushed baby skulls of main- enough credit," this new employee said mute. My neutrality did not waver. I land China. If one of these easily- to me. "Those letters you showed me on never attempt to guess how the legisla- excited lifers wants to discuss Biblical the abortion issue, how can you tell me ture or even one legislator will treat an passages, I retain various missives you said nothing?" issue; I only tell them how the legislator which quote this entertaining book — "I said absolutely nothing." COULD or MIGHT treat an issue

Old or New Testament — you want it, "But you described the history of the because nobody can predict how the

problem in great detail." legislature will vote. In this way I cannot

PRCXJESSED WORLD 29 be accused of lying to or misleading a letter writer in our office. You under- at all, but where there is little hope I constituent. A legislator can be con- stand how the legislature works and magnify that hope until it is only hope vinced he will vote against legislation on you know how to convey this in simple the constituent experiences. I inflict one day, but that vote can be changed terms for constituents." incremental braindeath on the constitu- with a hastily scribbled memo from the "Of course." ent. Governor, a phone call from the Speak- Because I live only two blocks from I consider myself a swineherd and the er of the House, a snap of the finger of the Capitol Building, I occasionally go public my swine. I call them my public the Majority Leader, a look of disgust home for lunch and sleep for two hours; piglets; my cute, roundbellied, enthusi- on the face of a committee chairman most of the other writers in my office astically grunting piglets. I inflict a who needs one more vote in his favor. I cannot afford the leisure of a two-hour Nembutal haze on them and they give me am not in a position to explain the lunch, but the fault is their own. They a paycheck. I soothe them so their lives complexities of the legislative process to spend too much time with each assign- are less painful. Sometimes I wish there constituents because they would not ment. They waste their time trying to existed one constituent who would not understand, they would lose their en- find specific answers to some ridiculous give up, someone who would write one thusiasm, and they could possibly lose questions asked by constituents who letter and then augment that with their respect for all of us. Consequently, have nothing better to do than bother another and then another and another,

I describe the situation in the simplest their legislator. These writers are still refusing my injection of braindeath, terms so that there remains a vibrant foolish and idealistic like I once was. refusing to be pacified, then become so connection between my explanation and They still feel the pain of the persons outraged they would march to the their needs. If there has been legislation they attempt to soothe. When they learn Capitol and find my obscure office and introduced that would address their the reality of politics, they will realize we follow the labyrinthine path to my complaint, I imply that by the stroke of do not write letters to help anyone; we obscure cubicle and take me by the hair someone's magic signature their prob- write letters to keep constituents at least of my head and shake me until I publicly lem could be solved in a very, very short a snout's length away from the legisla- promised to sit at my desk and write time — even by the following day— if I tor. We comfort nosy taxpayers so they them a personal response to their ques- am clever enough to sufficiently excite never again threaten the sanctity of the tions. them. I exclude the possibility of their incumbent. We offer hopeless persons Sometimes I watch the door of my problem never being solved; to achieve hope so they never again write a letter to office and wait for this person to burst this, I do not mention this particular the politician we are trying to re-elect. in. Then I laugh. It could never, ever possibility." Of course, the hope we offer is mostly happen.

"And this is why you are the best false hope. Very often there is little hope —Mark Menkes

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