The Antisocial Socialist

I'm actually really sad about Pete Seeger's death. End of an era and all that. I grew up listening to his music and it was part of the formative background of my politics. It's another one of those things where one goes, "oh, I mean, he was 94 and lived an amazing life," but it is still kind of making me tear up every time I turn on the radio.

Via one_serious_cat:"Comment on this post and I will choose seven interests from your profile. You will then explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along."

art terrorism was a lot funnier before some douche from OCAD used it as an excuse to call in a bomb scare at a fundraising event for AIDS research. But I appreciate it when Banksy replaces gallery and museum pieces or viral marketing goes awry.

biotic baking brigade: I used to be really into these guys. I don't think they do much as a collective anymore, but the idea has caught on and now pompous asshats are getting pwned by pies (usually vegan) all over the world. The pie's the limit!

gwendolyn macewan is one of my favourite poets. She lived here in Toronto and wrote poetry and plays and drank herself to death. I used to live across from a park named after her. She was a depressed, broken person but utterly brilliant and prolific. Some of her poems are here but you really should check out some of her books. Also, she was a total cat person and sort of looked like me.

leftist trainspotting is a major pastime of mine. It refers specifically to the study of leftist sectarian splits. My basic worldview is similar to that of most of the people and organizations that I mock, but that doesn't matter. Most splits occur for hilarious reasons.

Here are some fine examples of leftist transpotting: U.S. | Nepal

Also check out pemm.

nestor makhno was a Ukrainian anarchist who fought basically everyone during the Russian Revolution, on horseback, and with a wicked mustache. If the Bolsheviks are to be believed, he was an utter dick in almost every way. I find him rather interesting even though I suspect that they're probably right.

phil ochs: Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan were, respectively, the Tupac and Biggie of their day. Bob Dylan told Phil Ochs that he was a journalist, not a folksinger. I gather Phil Ochs told Bob Dylan some things that can't be repeated in polite company. Both had some self-destructive tendencies but Phil Ochs died of his, whereas Bob Dylan sold out and became a Christian. Guess which one I like better?

the coming beecopalypse (OR zombie porn): I'll talk about the beepocalypse, because it's more interesting. Bees all over the world have been dying of something called Colony Collapse Disorder. There are many theories as to what causes this, but the bottom line is that if the bee population is drastically reduced, the current food shortages we're seeing (which aren't really shortages but distribution problems but that's a whole other rant) are going to get even worse. Bees die, you die. I find the idea fascinatingly horrifying. (Also see: peak bee, peak banana.)

Two completely unrelated topics, by the way.

zingerella and I went to see Eric Bogle last night. For those of you who are asking, "Who's that?" -- you probably have heard his songs. He wrote two of my favourite anti-war songs, "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" and "The Green Fields of France." Apparently a lot of folks (including some who write for newspapers) think that he's dead. Anyway, he's not, and fantastic show.

After the show, we got to talking about a 400+ comment flamewar on Making Light (check it out!), which is vastly amusing and includes a few well-deserved disemvowellings. If you don't have time to read such hilarity, it involves the murder of the Nielsen Haydens' downstairs neighbour and mentions, in passing, the blog entries of a group of conservative girls who were slumming at the strip club where said neighbour worked. The girls, and their friends, none of whom have heard of Making Light and who are under the impression that TNH was trolling for more traffic by linking to their oh-so-popular blogs, descended en masse to decry the hypocrisy of liberals, etc., resulting in a fine moment of Inigo Montoya-esque "I do not think that word means what you think it means."

Of particular note is this comment by Anarch about a brand of right-wing bourgeoisie with whom I have had very little real-life contact. By coincidence (okay, because I go searching for these things), I stumbled upon christianitysex. The majority of posters seem to believe in strict abstinence for everyone but themselves -- or rather, they claim to believe in abstinence for themselves, but then go into massive guilty contortions when they find themselves unable to actually live up to their own standards. The degree to which they openly struggle with their own repression is quite illuminating. These are primarily the old-school fundie types -- and I do see where they're coming from, even though I think it's sad and pathetic. What I find more befuddling, though, are the "Sth Prk Rpblcns" that show up in the Making Light thread and occasionally on conservatism. Is this really common -- people who want to control other people's sexuality (by aligning themselves with the Religious Right, by opposing reproductive freedom, etc.) but simultaneously flaunt their own? Or celebrate their own individualistic liberty (smoking pot, hanging out in strip clubs) while setting up structures that reduce the liberty of others?

Also, is it true that Young Republicans throw really good parties? Because I've heard from a firsthand witness that the Progressive Conservatives don't.

Discuss!

P.S. Dear CBC: I don't like the ELF any more than you do, but could you please restrict the term "violence" to describing acts of force against living creatures? Property destruction is not violence. It's property destruction. Kthxbye.

It's a wonder that I made it through last night sober and still a leftist. N. and I got the foolish idea to show up at a War Resisters benefit concert. (N., by the way, is the guy who called me a "tofu-futon folkie" for preferring Phil Ochs to Bob Dylan.) Anyway, we figured it might be a bit snicker-worthy, but nothing could have prepared us for the horrors that awaited us in the back room of the Oasis.

Two of the three IS triplets greeted us at the door. Inside, it was solidly IS. It was the sort of scene that people in conservatism envision when they think of the radical left -- half old hippies, half young wannabe Marxists, and a girl with long, flowing blond hair and a guitar singing old labour songs earnestly into the microphone. (I like old labour songs, by the way. They're really hard to bungle. I was sort of impressed.) We sat in the back and I tried to stop N. from drawing too much attention to the fact that we weren't taking this very seriously.

And the old labour songs were the highlights of the evening, musically speaking. At least they have good lyrics. The same could not be said for original compositions ("I wrote this song about Cindy Sheehan!"). I felt a sudden, crushing horror -- is no one writing good folk music anymore? All of the new political songs that I like are hip hop. Not that there's anything wrong with hip hop, but I'm a big fan of spontaneous sing-a-longs and hip hop, being reliant on the talent of the performer, doesn't lend itself well to sing-a-longs.

True to form, songbooks were circulated. I was stunned to see that almost all of the songs were Wobbly songs and almost all of the graphics they used were Wobbly graphics. I was ready to be severely pissed at the IS for appropriating Wobbly culture before I spotted a lone Wobbly, "Fellow Worker," sporting an IWW hat and buttons. (Subtlety is not anyone's strong point.) So I guess she did the songbook. Fair enough. Meeting her was probably the only good thing to come out of the whole experience, although she was less friendly than most of the Wobblies I've met.

They were selling a CD called -- get this -- Peace Not War. Now, I like a lot of the artists on that, but it epitomizes the sort of thing that I hate about the anti-war movement, such that it is. This is not the '60s. Iraq is not Vietnam. Putting a white headband over your hippie hair and painting peace symbols on your cheeks didn't defeat US imperialism then and it's sure as hell not going to do it now. It's kind of embarrassing, and it's hardly a way to confront the complex geopolitics of Iraq and the Middle East.

All of those songs are still relevant today, but the difference is that when they were written, they weren't to be sung with a pacifist, liberal sensibility. These are, at their root, songs about anger and outrage and passion. They are meant to be fluid and adaptive, but what I heard instead was all of the vibrancy and fire replaced by moderation and political correctness.

( Cut for song lyrics, and some analysis. )

Anyway, I did manage to stick to cranberry and orange juice, despite the fact that this tempted me to fall off the wagon more than the offer of free sake shots on Thursday. I somehow woke up feeling very hungover regardless.

...was more fun than it's been in a long, long time. I think I'm now the subject of many rumours on the Toronto Left. Go me!

However, my deep, dark secret was revealed...

(Gaybortion!)

Later, I will try to post the pictures that someone took of me dancing with a 70-something-year-old tattooed, naked guy. If the photographer obliges and e-mails them to me. A good night was had by all.