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(geek+punk)thinking2much

"my palm chirps a song
awakening my thoughts
from falling leaf dreams"

°00.11.27.mo | thanksgiving

I had a lovely long weekend and celebrated the time off in high tradition: Tofurkey [°] on Thursday, Buy-Nothing-Day [°] on Friday, and a Buddhist lecture [°] on Saturday! I had many little personal projects to do but I didn't do any of them. When I approach a bit of time off it's in the expectation that I'll be able to unwind and feel recharged. However, I frequently fail to unwind and end up responding to work emails at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night because my mind won't settle. This time my spring uncoiled and eased into relaxation as if it melted into liquid metal. A partial success, but it's clear my spirit wasn't keen on being pressed into a tight little ball at the conclusion of the weekend; my body feels kaput. Nora said, "It figures that you'd get sick from relaxing."

°00.11.18.su | elastic

I've been busy and bored. My time stretches like the tightness and slack of a newsprint stained rubber band. Not the little red ones, but the thickie tan band, the sort that hugs the porn of Sunday sales and the flesh colored stockings of old ladies.

However, the elasticity fits me well.° During the weekdays time is flying; on weekends it's hiding. Monday to Friday the cold hurries me to work; on weekends it buries me inside where I'm happy to spend silent hours reading zines, listening to radio, and watching documentaries.

Last weekend Nora and I ventured to the abandoned Danvers Lunatic Asylum. It was an autumn afternoon and the sun was setting on a wooded hill with gothic spires scraping at the belly of an orange sun set. I could feel the spirit of nearby trees and smell the carpet of dead leaves. I recalled the chill of reading Lovecraft, and the thrill of seeing a broken Batman perched and silently screaming atop a tower of Arkham Asylum. But a rent-a-cop gunned his car before breaking 16 inches from my feet and his anger and annoyance frustrated our desire to sit in a deep shadow of the autumn sky.

°00.11.11.sa | MIM

Mao worked in the fields as a boy and died long before the Web was born, but it appears his work still might be relevant to the new era.

Those who disclaim capital and possession, claim Capitals and the omnipotent third person.

PIRAO (People's Internationalist Rear Area Organization) -- the unarmed MIM-led army that accepts the greatest discipline and does infrastructure work, not public opinion work.

MSG (MIM Supporters Group)--for people with some major difference with the party but who choose to work in MIM orbit and not the orbit of a revisionist or bourgeois party.

USW (United Struggle from Within) -- mass organization of anti- imperialist prisoners united to fight for justice for all humans - - including prisoners.

Party member (MIM) -- people chosen for membership by the Central Committee based on their proven ideological and practical support for the four cardinal principles.

Central Committee (MIM) -- people who have leadership roles and uphold party regulations.° - Fight Imperialism and Join Up for Revolution.

Definitions and acronyms are the coin of an ideologue economy, whom's legitimacy is presumed to be inherent:

In 1984, we changed our name to MIM to reflect that while the RCP, USA/RIM might claim its Marxist-Leninist unity internationally: MIM contains the real Maoists. - MIM History

And Web Ministers and Email Ministers extend dialectics to web site management:

1. We oppose nihilism. We do not destroy existing written or artistic work or take it down. When in doubt back up a file you are working on...

2. We follow the political leadership of the Central Committee, as incarnated by mim3@mim.org on questions of political content.

3. We proceed with our technical work confidently. We understand that web page work is constantly improving technically speaking; however, we do not put off our own attempts to do the best job possible while waiting for complete unity of form and technique amongst all the web page workers. Dialectics tells us that development is always an uneven thing.

4. We take credit for own work by listing either our mimXXX@mim.org account or MIM-affiliated moniker on our web pages; where multiple authors are involved, we list them in rank of work done. This is a matter of both political accountability to the Central Committee and the masses and also to inspire the masses to take up their own share of the work and create their own political persynalities. - Credits for MIM Internet Volunteers

These similarities with geek culture are not surprising when we realize they've nailed the Web thing right on the nose:

... Nonetheless, MIM applauds the bureaucrats of gender dynamics and their consumers for circulating MIM material along with that of other Maoists such as Comrade Gonzalo in Peru. If MIM had the computer server running that could take the traffic, it would also run a pornography server with MIM work on it. Currently, the number of hits on a pornography web site is like the number of people who pass by a laundromat and see the MIM Notes without necessarily picking it up. Obtaining 70 million hits for a web site with MIM material on it is no small matter. From PIRAO's point of view, since it is PIRAO's job to provide logistical support, the creation of a pornography website context for MIM articles distribution is a great accomplishment. - Against lifestyle idealism: The PIRAO and porn

Yes,° I am being sarcastic and poking fun. I respect MIM's aid of those in prison, though I wonder if this is only because they hope that the imprisoned will be their revolutionary vangaurd. However, the exaggerated pomposity of their writing and alternatingly astute/stupid philosophy often makes me ill. And I giggle to myself when I imagine there's about as many people as there are committees, and that this homogenous autocratic writing style is the work of a single maniacal writer.

°00.11.02.th | air drop

The girls across the isle are of an alien society. The one is recently married, her wedding was no doubt a prissy shade of white. The other carries a portable manicure kit, her nails clippings will be well traveled. The third has a cracked nail and asks about the size of the diamond, her brother weighs three hundred pounds.

When the second began to paint her nails and I asked her to stop, the first and the third joined her in silence as their jaws dropped ... 35,000 feet to the ground.

°00.11.01.we | name-deleted

A year ago I wrote how a friend had disappeared soon after dating someone from the Middle East; I recalled my joke that she'd be abducted and never heard of again, because I never did. Yesterday I received a respectful (though alarming) request from someone I did not know to remove that entry because "She wants to have nothing to do with her past life, so please do not ask any questions." I responded as follows:

I decline to remove an entry from 1999 regarding the "disappearance" of a friend. As I've written before, "Yanking something is anti-social breaking links in the web and removing the context of your contemporaries." However, on those few occasions where I mention a person's name, I try to respect their privacy. Consequently, my policy on the revision of recent entries is to bring the entry to the attention of the person and

  1. correct any factual errors suggested by the person under their name
  2. if we are unable to agree upon such corrections anomymize the name.

Things older than 4 months old I change under the same policy, but only under the most extreme circumstances: what was said was said, for good or bad.

Unfortunately, your request is second-hand and does not suggest any corrections (there's little to correct, the fact that I joked "she might get kidnapped and I'd never hear from her" is a fact). Furthermore, your email prompts me to believe that my jest has ironically and sadly become a reality. The following points from your email are indicators of destructive mind control under the Behavioral Information Thought and Emotional Control model, including

  1. Regulation of individual's physical reality a. Where, how and with whom the member lives and associates with
  2. Need to ask permission for major decisions
  3. Use of deception a. Deliberately holding back information
  4. Access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged

I hope [name-deleted] is well.

After a subsequent email from [name-deleted], I agreed to anonymize her name. The concern had less to do with my supposition of disappearance and more to do her mere (and solely platonic) association with me. I responded:

Also, while I'm sorry about the difficulties you are in I'm very hesitant to change things that have been written (even those things that I'm not happy with). This is doubly so given that this request is rooted in misogyny. I don't use that term lightly, nor do I use it to describe [a particular religion] ... but social norms that place a women's conduct under the harsh scrutiny of masculine censure and control.

... In either case, I do not "silently censor"; either change will be noted and explained (of course without mentioning names).

I want to respect the wish of the person that used to be my friend while preserving the integrity of what I write. While this raises numerous issues of cultural relativity in the context of my "western" concepts of human rights and gender relations, there's little I can do. In the end, it's her life and her choice. I've had many exhaustive conversations with religious fundamentalists, people both recently in and out of cults, and even those that have been targeted as enemies of a cult; I've also seen the issues surrounding gender/sexuality, cross-cultural, and inter-racial relationships close up -- uncomfortably so. The personal issues are never so simple as even the most complex theory.

If mistakes are made, they are the individual's to make, and I respect an individual's choice to follow their inner voice and second Gandhi's maxim that, "My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith." Even if it makes me sad.

[october archive]