Getting Wise

Via Feministe, I read a insightful article about rape prevention. Obviously, this is a very touchy subject for most people, but it is a problem. Check it out, and more importantly, SPREAD THE WORD for the sake of people you care about.

The wait continues, or: "You know what they say about procrastination and autoeroticism..."

Instead of diligently working on my own blog here, or--y'know--sleeping, I responded at length to a misandrist on a thread at Feministe.

Snap.

So you're probably wondering when the acutal blogging will commence...

I am: Kurt Vonnegut For years, this unique creator of absurd and haunting tales denied that he had anything to do with science fiction.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Random 10 (while you wait)

Just to get the ball rolling here, I've decided to institute a practice I've borrowed from the fine folks over at Feministe. (Trust me, this'll come in handy if things get a little too serious. And who doesn't love Party Shuffle?)

1. "There There" (Radiohead)
2. "Coffee Break (from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying)" (Charles Nelson Reilly, Claudette Sutherland, and Company)
3. "Rock N' Roll Suicide" (Seu Jorge)
4. "Domingo" (Caetano Veloso & Gal Costa)
5. "Tropical Ice-Land (solo version)" (Oblivia Fit2battleaxe)
6. "Happy Meal" (The Cardigans)
7. "Pling!" (Shuggie Otis)
8. "Girl Blue" (Stevie Wonder)
9. "Downbound Train" (Chuck Berry)
10. "Are Everything" (Buzzcocks)

Goin' through some changes...

Welcome to the new Paper Progressive! Obviously, things are a little different if you've been to the blog before--namely, the presence of multiple posts. There'll be more where that came from.... just as soon as I get my shit together. First up: a story about a recent experience I had, and the name change.

Manifesto of the PRICK

Welcome, people! Hope I can interest you a little revolution...

Here is the manifesto of the PRICK. To give you a little background, I wrote this as an assignment for my writing seminar. We were asked to write a manifesto, drawing on its conventions as a distinct modernist genre. I took the assignment fairly seriously, and looked to the (as I would argue) failed or stalled revolutions/movements of the sixties as inspiration.

As Fred Hampton once said, "You can’t jail the revolution." You don’t need to. You can kill it. Ask Chief Joseph where his people now stand. Better yet, ask Socrates. Better still, ask Fred. You can kill the revolution and wait—-wait for the people it could have helped the most forget, while THE ESTABLISHMENT remembers and re-forges its armor. You can kill a revolution.

Sometimes the revolution will eat itself. Ask Jean-Paul Marat if he thought the Storming of the Bastille was just the beginning of an extended political holiday or the beginning of the end of aristocratic oppression. Ask him if he though his people would need fascist aggression and occupation to remember what freedom was. Ask Judas Iscariot if the money he received for his services was enough. (It wasn’t.)

Sometimes the revolution gets eaten. Every idiot with a Ché Guevara T-shirt is thinking, "¡Viva la revoluciόn!" or "Fuck the man!" and they never see the irony in buying a mass produced piece of clothing (probably manufactured in some Third World country in exchange for substandard wages, naturally) emblazoned with the image of a PINKO. Anything worth believing in or fighting for is bought up and resold to the first person who’s ready and willing to ignore the fact that their revolution’s secondhand. You think, "¡Viva la revoluciόn! The ideals those brave men and women fought for will live on," etc., etc. News flash: NO ONE KNOWS THEIR HISTORY. We are a species in perpetual relapse, recovering heroin addicts constantly discovering methadone, and finally, returning to heroin. For the same reason that the same shit (i.e. the whole of human history, i.e. genocide) keeps happening over and over again, is the reason that YOU ARE NOT FREE.

Ask a 17-year-old freshman in a co-ed college if she sees the contradiction in being reminded how important her education is every waking hour, when the first and last marker of her person is her appearance. A black man might see it in his shiny new car as he offers up his license and registration to a feckless white highway patrolman. A pair of "life partners" might wonder why words as simple as EQUALITY, always seem to have stipulations. Forty-nine percent of the electorate might wonder if cutting a person in half with a chainsaw gives the murderer "a mandate" to do what they want with the corpse. Seldom does the revolution live on or reach the reach the finish line.

It should be known that life is a terminal illness. You catch it, shit happens to you, and you die at the end. No ifs, ands, or buts. Ah, but why does shit happen?

IMPORTANT!>>If you are a shit-starter (i.e. a brutal dictator who rose to power in a violent coup), stop reading and await judgement. PRICK is not for you.

It happens because people conspire to make others suffer, shooting themselves in the foot along the way. The forms that oppression takes to attack us on a daily basis would be easy to defeat if it weren’t for IGNORANCE and APATHY. You are ignorant and everyone around you is ignorant, or worse still, apathetic. You oppress yourself and others daily with your apathy (the known evil) and your ignorance (the unknown evil). This condition, replicated several billion times over, means that we are currently fucked as a species. You, me, everyone. It is IGNORANCE and APATHY that the corrupt people of the planet depend upon to operate.

THE REVOLUTION IS DEAD. AS THE REVOLUTION IS DEAD, NO ONE IS FREE. AS NO ONE IS FREE, THEY MUST BE MADE FREE. What is left but to liberate yourself and your fellow woman and your fellow man? What is left but the truth? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is from these higher truths that our specific belief derives its authority.

1. No one is born to be subservient. All races, [colors,] genders, creeds, religions, and sexual orientations are equal. If there is a GOD, his only mistake would have
been to allow hatred into the world.
2. No government has absolute authority over any individual. As government is not infallible, the right of civil disobedience must be preserved. As the LAW can hold any individual responsible for their actions, so must the individual take responsibility for herself or himself [or their self]. That which is wrong must be treated as such.
3. No one has the right to be poor. Until the final revolution comes, economic inequality will always continue. It should be the goal of every government, working in concert with every other, to END POVERTY. Hard work should always be rewarded, but is that the issue? Everyone has the right to be healthy and live their lives; the alternative is nothing short of murder.

Until these three ideals are realized, suffering will continue in our world.

Ignorance is the enemy, and those who choose to weaken the populace by disseminating will be destroyed. We cannot pat ourselves on the back while we picket the back doors of the centers of power on the planet. We cannot bring REVOLUTION if we are on the outside. We must work within the system to destroy the system. "The master’s tools can never destroy the master’s house," but we have our own. We will storm the MTVs and Congresses of the world and the Halliburtons, and twist them from the inside until the ignorance-mongers are gone, and the people are stirred from their apathy. Do you think that if people know where and how they are oppressed they will sit still and wait for death? No. Ask Rosa Parks, ask the French why they have July 14 off. We must be the vanguard that Lenin spoke of, but we must always be humane.

The reactionaries are on the march. So long as we allow it, they will continue to devour and slay the revolution, contaminating with amnesia wherever they go. We must meet and defeat them, for the future depends on it. The establishment my catch us, and imprison us, but we must never be afraid to show our commitment. I do not expect your help, but I hope for and demand it. "FREEDOM IS A ROAD SELDOM TRAVELED BY THE MULTITUDE." For the punks, funksters, jazzbos, feminists, Panthers, suffragettes, Freedom Riders, Free Speech-ers, Ghost Dancers, campesinos, Boxers, paupers, poets, beatniks, dadaists and every other Lost Generation you must rise. For the proletariat and bourgeoisie alike you must rise to face the sufferings of your species. To borrow from George Clinton,
YOU MUST RISE ABOVE IT ALL, OR DROWN IN YOUR OWN SHIT.

PRICKs UNITE!

Granted it's not perfect, but I feel like I've covered most of the bases I wanted to cover.