1987: Penelope Spheeris: Dudes, Vista Organisation

1987: Penelope Spheeris: Dudes, Vista Organisation

• Punk Easy Rider
• Includes Flea and Lee Ving

2018: Margaret Killjoy: The Barrow Will Send What it May, Tom Doherty Associates

2018: Margaret Killjoy: The Barrow Will Send What it May, Tom Doherty Associates [0]




A follow up to 2017’s The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (one of my favorite book titles) in the Danielle Cain series. This is, I believe, book 2 in that series.


Like the previous book this is another mix of anarchism and magic. While the first book was about a demon that ensured that oppression and exploitation did not take hold in an anarchist community in Iowa, this book is about a small town in Montana with an anarchist-run public library with a large occult collection and a man in town who unleashed a wave of death by using one of the books to return his dead wife to life.


The resurrection spell requires the death of one individual for each resurrectee - a metaphor for capitalist exploitation and the destructive side of desire.

2008: Cesar Chavez: An Organizer’s Tale: Speeches, Penguin Books

2008: Cesar Chavez: An Organizer’s Tale: Speeches, Penguin Books [0]

Collection of speeches, interviews, letters, by United Farm Workers of America leader Cesar Chavez


The content of the book comes from Chavez’s entire career, beginning with a 1965 speech titled We Shall Overcome discussing a strike and the pressures on the union, very inspired by the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement, and ending with a 1991 eulogy to his mother.


One piece of particular interest is titled “On Money” wherein he describes how to do union organizing and strike actions without any money - how to effectively organize poor people.


A few of the pieces are memorials to murdered union members.

1997: Harmony Korine: Gummo, Fine Line Features

1997: Harmony Korine: Gummo, Fine Line Features [1]

• Harmony Korine’s first directed film after the release of Larry Clark’s Kids, which Korine wrote.
• With Gummo Korine established himself as a director who could push the sensibilities of 1990s indie filmmaking into avant territory as he wrapped a series of disjointed scenes populated by amateur actors around a loose narrative set against a background of a natural disaster - the film takes place in Xenia Ohio not long after, but not immediately following a bad tornado - and blended with footage and imagery from disparate sources.
• I first saw this film when it was first released and I remember enjoying it but it includes a number of scenes of cat killings and I was plagued by the thought that those scenes were real. Only recently I learned that they were not, phew.
• Something that stood out to me was the element of metal, specifically the death metal soundtrack. I found this to be VERY jarring when I first saw this, not only because I’ve never, at that time, seen a film that used Death Metal like this, respectfully, (I know Ace Ventura Pet Detective featured a scene with Cannibal Corpse but that was to provide the background for some jokes) but also because I just figured punk made more sense. Now that I’ve lived in a small midwestern American town for a time I see how extreme metal, that is death and black varieties, and all of their demonic and satanic poesis makes so much more sense as a rebellious artform in those places that are saturated with Religion.