FRED GOTS IT

The National Guardsmen near the Rail are now painted over. Why and by whom? A righteous patriot who found the depiction offensive? Some total weirdo making an ironically complex gesture of anti-art? The building's owner, afraid of thieves stealing his wall? Fred himself, using his penis as a brush? Doesn't matter. Really, really doesn't matter. All that matters is that it's greyed over. Fred is greying, and all greying accrues to him.

I liked the Guardsmen stencil-- hell, I loved the piece, even more than I love Banksy's other work-- but the half-assed buffing of the artwork does resolve the tension of how long it would last and what would become of it. Vulnerability is part of what makes Banksy's work and all graffiti exciting. Now it's grey again, or mostly grey.

We've reached a point where we can pretty much ascribe public artwork's inevitable reversion to grey to a natural process. It's no longer an insult, no moreso than litter on your stoop or mold spots on your linens. Call it an environmental quirk, endemic to the area. Fred has made himself the status quo, but he isn't just the status quo, he's ours. He's us. Banksy visited, graced our city with several glorious artworks, more than one of which specifically critiqued the Grey Ghost... did you really think some foreigner, some out-of-towner, would be allowed the last word over New Orleans' own Duke of Desaturation?

Maybe you're tired of Fred, and tired of hearing or reading about him. Only two more short paragraphs.

No-one can still deny Fred's tireless labor has created our city's contemporary visual reality. It's a distinctive, recognizable look, as pervasive as summer heat. It's locally characteristic, full stop. The WWL radio promos like to say, "As New Orleans as the St. Louis Cathedral." "As New Orleans as Filé Gumbo." As New Orleans as Fred Radtke.

I should be funnier, but I don't want anyone to mistake my tone. We might as well own this, and we might as well recognize the buffing of Banksy's National Guard stencil for what it is: an assertion of authentic New Orleans ugliness destroying a colorful, beautiful contribution from someone from somewhere else. It happens every day, and in ways much worse than paint on a wall. Don't try to distance this from yourself. If you love our city, go pose for a snapshot in front of the eradicated Guardsmen. There's your postcard: New Orleans 2008.

MUSINGS

There are many reasons to destroy society as it stands, but reducing social organization to the atomic structure of interpersonal relationships simply isn't enough; those also must be boiled away.

One never really knows where one stands with friends, don't you find? Maintaining cordial relations is a strain. A wrong word, a thoughtless gesture or a moment of human selfishness can compromise a relationship that took months or years to build. A vivid enmity, on the other hand, is as constant and reliable as the sunrise. When you deal with people overtly committed to destroying you, there's no mistaking where they're coming from. Viciousness is a consistent quality, one which rarely disappoints.

Too, a long-standing hatred has nuance, a richness and texture the bland truce of friendship can never achieve. What is friendship, after all, but a suspension of natural hostility, a temporary absence of distrust? The only things that make a friendship interesting are the subliminated cruelties it conceals, the papered-over hurts, the suppressed resentments-- the unfriendly elements.

One "knows" one's friends, and how tiresome we quickly become to one another. How quickly familiarity breeds contempt. Friends tell you things about themselves, tawdry truths, cold porridge. With an enemy, you are cut off from tedious interpersonal intimacies, safe in both directions. You get only their malevolence, from which you may seek to deduce the shape of the mind beneath. Their dislike and their efforts to hurt you function as psychic lingerie, simultaneously hiding and revealing, hinting, limning, alluring.

One's enemies seldom have difficulty identifying what it is they dislike, and isn't that refreshing? Hatred is more genuine, fundamentally more honest. Don't the things your enemies virulently despise about you ring far truer than the nebulous, patronizing crap your friends claim to like, if and when they bother to say so? Who really "gets" you, those who flatter and indulge you, or those who declare you monstrous and take action from there? Between two people who can't stand each other there can even arise a grudging respect, but at that point the relationship has strayed into perversity and should be terminated. A moment to savor the rewarding nature of this respect is acceptable, but a moment only.

Everything about friendship (or love, dare I say) is tragic in the classical sense. Tragic, because it is hubristic to suppose we can get along, or be endured. Tragic, from the deluded optimism of the outset to the bewildered obsequies concluding it. The only heroism available to a friend is to suffer on a friend's behalf, or to endure outrages a friend perpetrates. Not very stirring, unless you're a masochist. An enemy provides all sorts of opportunities for thrills, and even a hatred conducted in low-level, cold-war ways brings a frisson impossible to disentangle from sexual excitement. What will happen? How far will it go? How crazy will it get? This dynamic is heightened by the inconvenient but inarguable fact one's enemies tend to be vastly more sexually appealing than one's friends. Why this is, only science could explain.

Admit your weariness with navigating the minefield of "friendship." The wasted energy, the misunderstandings, the inevitable betrayals-- what a drag. Only in the fertile, bottomless draught of hatred do ingenuity, creativity and all the nobler parts of our nature find the sustenance they need. Being loved inspires complacency; being hated spurs us to action. How I wish I was surrounded only by those who hated me! What a luxury it would be to inhabit a world peopled entirely by enemies.

Ha! Ha!

Yes, what a delicious luxury.

NEXT TIME: MY THOUGHTS ON PARENTING

MISSIONARIES OF CAPITALISM

Guess what, New Orleans??? We're gonna be rescued by opportunistic technocrat white-collar ruling-class youth! Hurray!

Last night, in true New Orleans style, some 504 New Orleanians attended the historic launch of 504ward, an initiative designed to retain the influx of young movers and shakers who are arriving by the hundreds with dual aspirations of sparking social change and advancing their careers in the inspiring laboratory of post-Katrina New Orleans...

Leslie Jacobs, a business leader and venture philanthropist in New Orleans, spearheaded and funded 504ward. According to Jacobs, "New Orleans is experiencing a historic opportunity as the city is attracting droves of educated young people, poised to advance their careers and contribute to the rejuvenation of New Orleans... A silver lining to Hurricane Katrina has been the influx of college-educated, mission-driven 'brain gainers.' Our community must join together to retain this high-demand demographic."

YUPPIE CAREERIST SCUM GO HOME

This is not a laboratory. This is not your playground. This is not a resume item. This is a battleground, and I hope you wander outside the Green Zone and find that out the hard way.

You're the imported beaureacrats who can't speak Arabic, here to aid reconstruction. Come tour our colorful, exotic marketplaces, kids. You may not be the army-- they're already here-- but make no mistake: you're the occupation.

DEATH TO ALL WAR PROFITEERS

-- D-block

TAKE MY BREADTH AWAY

No more narrow column! Reject the aesthetic heresies of Funckism! Wide 'em, cowboy! I'm not into this corsetry crap... I need my elbow room! Awwwwww shit, you could drive a TRUCK through this motherfucker now... much more like it...

Change of film tonight

The DVD of Cache (Hidden) which arrived today was cracked in half. So, instead we will be showing the 2003 Hungarian film Kontroll. I have not seen it, but it recied a lot of acclaim.

Here's a summary:

Ghost trains and ghostly characters, figuratively speaking of course, are what run through the perpetual night of this fictitious underground (metro) system. Bulcsú's (Sándor Csányi) life that once was, on the surface, where the real people go home after work, who go to the movies or a fine restaurant is now replaced by the dark, cold and solitude arena of his new dwellings. Him, and his motley crew of ragtag metro ticket Kontrollers must patrol the trains that run these City dwellers back and forth and with daily ritual, check that no one dare come down into their world for a free ride. With indifferent passengers, a possible love interest, a regime set on competition and to top it all a mysterious serial killer at large, Kontroll is a dark and bleak comedy of the world of the ticket inspector, who, in the end must keep this Metro system running. If not, what would be the worst that could happen, if they ever lost control? Dare you ride here for free, too?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373981/

Will Banksy Affect New Orleans?

Will you just appreciate Banksy's art or will you use it as inspiration?
There is a city-wide anarchist meeting & potluck at the City Park Peristyle on October 26th.
All are welcome. Download the .PDF flyer citywide.pdf
But don't wait until October to put your plan of civil disobedience into action. The figures in the photo above are already painted over.
Will Banksy's legacy of disobedience with a purpose outlive his art?

<3 - co@ch

Eric McDavid

Several folks from New Orleans' radical community came to Iron Rail Tuesday night to watch representatives of Eric McDavid's prisoner support team discuss Eric's case & to give suggestions on how to pretect oneself from suffering the same injustices dealt Eric.
Learn More:
@ Earth First
Anna in Elle Magazine (indymedia)
Crimethinc's Elle Retraction?
Coax

NOLA Anarchists E-mail List

To sign up to the NOLA Anarchists email list, visit http://groups.google.com/group/nola-anarchists

or e-mail

nolabookcollective@hotmail.com

and tell us you want to be added to the list.
This list will work as a discussion list for New Orleans area anarchists to co-ordinate, plan, and network.
We have to get organized so we can make our city and our world a better, more egalitarian place!

September Films at the Iron Rail

Tuesday, September 23, 8:00PM
CACHE (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387898/
In Paris, Georges Laurent is a famous host of a literary talk show on TV, who lives in a comfortable house with his wife Anne and their teenaged son Pierrot. When Georges and Anne receive videotapes of surveillance of their private life and weird and gory childlike drawings, they go to the police, but they do not get any protection since there is not a clear menace to the Laurent family. When Georges follows a clue in one of the tapes that shows his childhood home, he meets his former adopted brother, the Algerian Majid and accuses him of sending the tapes. Meanwhile, through glimpses of Georges' nightmares, his lies due to his jealous relationship with his foster brother are disclosed.

Tuesday, September 30, 8:00PM

BABY DOLL (1956)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048973/
Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll tells the story of Baby Doll Meighan (Carol Baker), a pretty, vacuous Southern 'white trash' gal who at 19 still sleeps in a crib and sucks her thumb. Married for two years to the middle aged, ineffectual and impossibly bigoted Archie Lee (Karl Malden), the couple have not yet consummated their marriage because Archie Lee promised Baby Doll's dying father that he would not touch his daughter until she said she was "ready for marriage." He is frustrated by this strain and obliged to peek at his squirmy half-dressed child-bride through a hole in her bedroom wall, among other things. Archie Lee is further humiliated ind incensed by a flashy Sicilian business rival (Eli Wallach) who has recently managed to force Archie Lee's decrepit cotton gin out of business. One night in a fit of desperation and frustration, Archie Lee burns down his rival's cotton gin. The rest of the story describes the Sicilian's revenge as he blatantly pursues and seduces a distraught but sensually aroused Baby Doll, and attempts to terrorize her into revealing Archie Lee's crime. Amazing performances from Carol Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach in this sordid tale of a decrepit and decaying South in a film adaptation from Elia Kazan.

RNC Riot Porn & Prisoner Support Tour

9/13/08
7pm
@ Iron Rail

This Saturday, September 13, there will be a report-back from NOLA anarchists who went up to St. Paul, MN to protest the RNC with thousands of other like-minded individuals. Videos taken at the RNC protests will also be shown. There will be free PBR to encourage cheering in the crowd during cool parts of the videos.

9/16/08
6pm
@Iron Rail
There will be a presentation by people from Eric McDavid's support crew about his crazy case involving government informants, entrapment, and lies. This is a presentation not to be missed! Eric was recently sentenced to almost 20 years in prison for thinking about committing an eco-defense crime, and being pushed along by a government agent. Come see this presentation and support Eric!

Burroughs sez

Burroughs sez:

"Boards Syndicates Governments of the earth Pay-- Pay Back the Color you stole--

"Pay Red-- Pay back the red you stole for your lying flags and Coca-Cola signs-- Pay that red back to penis and blood and sun--

ok yeah, penis, blood, sun, sure, yeah, but also... also, and just now suddenly... I... gee willikers, I think I need another Newport.

BLASTING INTO THE TELEGRAPH AGE

Have you tried calling the Iron Rail lately? Of course you have; you're just as curious about Plan B's hours as the rest of us.

For a while now the 'phone has been unusually un-useful, but operatives inform us it is now back in working order, and can make and receive local calls like a motherfucker.

All hail the liberating & inherently revolutionary force that is technology!

COULD WE POSSIBLY SEE / THE KEEPER OF ALL THE KEYS

The Iron Rail will NOT be open today, Thursday, September 4th, due to ion beams.

We will however be open FRIDAY, as well as EVERY SINGLE DAY THEREAFTER!

PUTSCH YOUR LOVE IN ME

Yes, the Iron Rail collective is meeting this Wednesday at 8 p.m. In the absence of many of our regular collective members, there may be many shocking consensuses-- consensi?-- reached by those few of us who remain. Look for these bold new agenda items to be considered and likely put into effect:

- Iron Rail transitions to anarcho-libertarianism, endorses Ron Paul for president, begins charging visitors for bathroom use

- Contradictorily, rent and utility bills paid exclusively by means of barter system

- Adoption of adorable wacky mascot, update of Iron Rail logo by paid ad consultancy

- Entire library reorganized by birthdate of author, regardless of subject

- Institution of loyalty oath for new library card applicants and "blood in, blood out" tradition for collective members

- Collective meetings to center around passing of "talking feather"

- Cable television

Be part of these fresh, exciting developments... come to the Wednesday meeting!!!!!!!!

Fuck a curfew, and oh yeah, fuck the police.

JAKES ON THE BLOCKS WE OUT-CLEVER

Here is a video showing a pair of pigs skulking along in a St. Paul poor people march. Keen eyes may spot other items of interest as well, and by 'items,' I mean awesome ion-beam sweethearts, and by awesome ion-beam sweethearts I don't really mean much at all because I'm too burned out to formulate a properly tedious and convoluted inside joke.