August Movies and Iron Rail Events!

Lots of great stuff in this August email, coming as it is in the midst of our building excitement for the re-emergence of anarchists as a visible national presence in the streets, with the DNC and RNC protests looking to be off the hook at the end of the month.

- August "Long, Hot Summer Survival SALE"
- Iron Rail Supports Anarchist Injured by Police
- August 11th workshop: Self-Defense and Hold-Breaking 4pm
- Shut Down the RNC with us!
- August Movies
- End Notes and Quibbets

-----
The very first Iron Rail sale EVER!
It has a taken us four long years to get this great idea, but our blossoms have finally borne their succulent fruits in the form of a sale!!! We must take a moment to pay homage to our heroes of sales, Frankie & Johnny! Let em haveit! Here's the terms of our "insane" idea:

-All pamphlets are buy one, get one free (almost all are priced at $1)
-All $1 used books are buy one, get one free. (These books can be found in the large "used fiction" section, as well as scattered through all of the for sale books, in every section.
-All books with "Bush" in the title are 50% off, because the bastard's almost history! Woo!
-Our large size 2008 Slingshot organizers are down from $10 to $6 because the year is half over.
-We have some books on permanent sale to reduce overstock. Another World is Possible, Get Your War On, SchQuall Yearbook 2001 are all $5.

-----
The Iron Rail recently sent $50 to an IWW member in Providence, RI who got her leg broken a year ago at an IWW demonstration. She has undergone surgeries and physical therapy because of her extensive injuries. We also signed letters asking the DA to drop her charges. More on her case: http://www.iww.org/en/taxonomy/term/679/all

-----
Self-Defense and Hold Breaking Workshop
August 11th, 4pm, Iron Rail Books
Come learn self-defense and hold-breaking techniques from a knowledgeable Kung Fu practitioner. This is a useful skill for: getting away from cops, defending yourself from an attacker on the street or in your home, staying safe and out of jail at protests (such as the RNC: see below), and more! This will be super fun, there will be cold drinks like lemonade and a comfortable atmosphere for all. Come!

-----
Shut Down the RNC with the Iron Rail!
Some of us will be headed north to the Republican National Convention at the end of August to join with tens of thousands of others in shutting down the RNC. We are trying to co-ordinate interested people from New Orleans into a car caravan to ride up ttogether and fill every car that goes to St. Paul, MN from here. PLEASE, email us if you want to go or help with gas money or in any way.

The dates are flexibly from August 29-September 4. If enough volunteers end up going, we may close for a few days during this time. Email nolabookcollective@hotmail.com to get hooked in. RNC Protest info:
http://www.nornc.org
http://www.unconventionalaction.org
We also have papers about the protests available free at the Iron Rail.

-----
August Movies - All start at 8pm on Tuesday nights

August 5: The Triplets of Belleville
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters--an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire--to rescue him. Fun animated movie.

August 12: The Gits
The story of the promising, underground Seattle band, The Gits. Fronted by charismatic vocalist, Mia Zapata, and poised to explode onto the national music scene, a stranger came in and took it all away. A decade later, the legacy lives on. 'The Gits' party included, as they are one collective member's favorite band of all time. WOO!

August 19: Breaking the Spell
Anarchists make a documentary about the WTO protests in Seattle, telling their story and getting us pumped up before we head to Minnesota to shut down a spectacle of capitalism ourselves!

August 26: Fourth World War
From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, 'the North' from Seattle to Genova, and the 'War on Terror' in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq. It is the story of men and women around the world who resist being annihilated in this war. It is the story of a global movement for justice, against the corporate tyranny swallowing the world. Another film to get us pumped up before the RNC protests, and to remind us of the millions of people who would be there with us if they could, whose lives are devastated by the policies of the US empire.

-----
-Bring us your textbooks, they help keep us open and buy awesome books for the library.
-What the hell is a quibbet?

FRAUD RADTKE

What is this nonsense? Some dupes are claiming Fred Radtke painted over Dr. Bob's Bywater sign? BULLSHIT. I know my boy's handiwork. I know his technique, and I know his approach. I know the brushstrokes-- rollerstrokes-- that make a Radtke a Radtke; I see them in my dreams.

This hasty, half-assed hackwork, this sloppy, slipshod slapdashery is NOT an authentic Radtke. I say it, and I will pin my reputation as a Radtkologist upon it. The photos tell the story, and examination in person certainly confirms it beyond all doubt, or certainly would if I was to ever venture somewhere as déclassé as the Bywater. Pay nothing for this piece, and reprove its provenance, 'cuz it's straight-up a FORGERY!

Whatever one thinks of the gesture-- the effacing of beloved, cheerful public art with magisterial grey-- this gesture was not carried out by the maestro, but by some imitative Other. The incomplete coverage, the awkward mélange of horizontal and vertical strokes... dead giveaways.

What then does it mean? What motivated this copycadtke? ...can it be? Can this be the time long foretold by Mayan calendars, convicts' knucklebones, and Jackson Square tarot readings? It is! The hour is finally upon us when other painters admit defeat and each take up the mighty grey torch, spreading it to a grey conflagration. Let remaining taggers, sign-painters and muralists tremble! This is the great crisis, the birthing of the future! Secure all tray tables in the upright and locked position: we are in final approach to a glorious Grauenacht!

OR

maybe this is someone's attempt to make Radtke look bad. If that's the case, while I generally avoid passing any sort of judgement, it does seem to me that you have in this case achieved an un-victory. Of course you have outraged those whose whole lifestyle and worldview is founded upon their own outrage-- but that's no accomplishment. Those people are professional shriekers; Radtke is just one dark deity in their teeming personal pantheons of put-uponness. Career complainants, eternally victimized by the less enlightened. Oh how dare he! I bet he won't vote for Obama, either! Radtke, blasting Pop Country from a Humvee... there, I just made them all quit reading, 'cuz they fainted.

No, if you're trying to make Radtke look bad, I deem it an un-victory because the quality of your work stands in such stark, unflattering contrast to Radtke's. It's a travesty that anyone could mistake your work for his! Many think what Radtke does is easy, in part because he executes an individual work relatively quickly, but first of all, any given Radtke is just a piece of the larger Ur-Radtke, and second of all, his technique, honed over more than a decade, is explicated in the parable of the zen ceramicist:

"Master, how can you sell that pot for eighty dollars? It took you only ten minutes to create it on your potting wheel."
"Grasshopper, creating this pot took me my entire life, and ten minutes."

That's where Radtke's at. Second or third- or whwhatever... fuck these are strong ... of all, when you use Radtke's language, the grey language of obliteration, you are totally in his power, even moreso than the reactive, semi-satirical school of "Radtke-critical" art that has sprung up in supposed opposition to him (a school of art ferociously excoriated at the tragically American-spelling-of-grey-employing therealgrayghost.blogspot.com). By trying to make a point about Grey with grey, you are playing poker with his chips, so when the chips are down, they're always gonna be his chips. It's trying to tear down the Grey Master's house with the Grey Master's tools, y'erdme?

BUT

If you're just some dipshit who thought it would be funny to stir the pot by Greying a giant, prominent Dr. Bob piece, then baby, let's get drunk and screw, because you're my kind of reckless, socially irresponsible adolescent nihilist!

In conclusion : not a real Radtke : portends a new era in Radtkism I am too fucked-up at present to figure out : author needs a disco nap.

--the mighty respiratory-infection-riddled d-block

HOW DID PAT ROBERTSON LEG PRESS 2,000 POUNDS?

You jerks need to blog more. While you're not blogging, Pat fucking Robertson is leg pressing 2,000 pounds. He'll fucking crush us!!

"How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds."

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN

IRON DAIQUIRI

One of our collective members is just now winding up his second shift in two days. Until a few hours ago, he was prepared to do tomorrow's shift as well, a three-shift back-to-back marathon. Heroic self-sacrifice; heroic, but hardly healthy.

I know we are all starving sweating struggling in the summer, but please, if you are a trained volunteer who can take shifts, help us out. You don't have to come to the collective meetings, if your schedule prevents it; you can just telephone the Rail... 944-0366... any time during the week between 1 and 7 p.m. and tell whomever you reach to put you down for a shift. It's so easy!!!

A Few Cool Books

Edible Wild Plants of the Gulf South by the Allen Family
This book is awesome! A thick volume on edible plants in our area. $15

Chainbreaker: A Bike Repair Manual and Zine Anthology
A Bike Manual and Zine Anthology by a couple of local bicycle grease monkeys. People love the writing, and they also love the clear diagrams and instructions for everything you need to know about your bike. $12


You know you love us.

CHOCOLATE CHIP LABELING

REVENGE OF BRIDE OF RETURN OF LABELING PARTY

Do you know how sometimes something feels so good that you just can't stop doing it? That's where we are with the labeling parties. Oh dear. The labeling, the alphabetizing - where do we start? Where do we stop? Slowly, the dream that was the labeling party has become our day-to-day, and the rest of our lives... the hours empty of labeling... have faded to the texture of dream. Only labeling is real. Did you know that piracy goes in class war/labor studies? I did. Plus, we chucked out a bunch of Maoist stuff, so if you want hardline polemics to inspire your shrill, hectoring newspapers which no-one reads, you'll have to go elswhere. Seriously, 'communism' is now 6 books thick - it's original texts only - direct action/protest has been EXPANDED. Christianity is the next to go - tomorrow. Each book in the section will be marched up the steps to the guillotine, summarily judged, and sentenced to the free pile.

My co-author is being kind. We're burning books at the iron rail. No way, that's not even funny. Yes, it is. We aren't, though. Because YOU, gentle reader, will come be a voice of reason in this purging, by contributing your time and talents to the labeling and cataloguing process. It's spelled cataloging!!! However it's SPELT, there will be a lot of it tomorrow, and it will be exhilirating, like a fox. Like the hot orange blur of a fox, and the henhouse is our overstuffed shelves full of insufficiently revolutionary books. He totally stole 'like a fox' from me, btw. Like the internet for dummies, and "A pseudo marxist critique of freudian lesbianism from the 1950s". No just kidding.

We're thinking it will kick off around 1:30 PM, and we'd love you to intervene and save us from ourselves. We're going to hopefully provide chocolate chip cookies. Sunday, July 6th. COME GIVE US A HAND WE'RE WICKED SWEET. (That is true).

-- SARAH -&- the mighty d-block