Iron Rail Definitive Update

We have gotten tons of cool new books in. We have movies figured out for a while, and there is some stuff you need to know. Check it out:

New Books & Stuff:
-More Iron Rail T-Shirts ($5-15 sliding scale)
-Rolling Thunder #6
-Abolition Now! 10 years of Critical Resistance
-Derrick Jensen books, including Endgame
-Wild Fermentation
-Chainbreaker
-Toolbox for Radical Sustainable Living
-Red State Rebels
-Orgasms of History
-Conquest
-Twilight of the Machines, a new book by John Zerzan
-Disaster and Resistance, a new book by Seth Tobocman related to Katrina
-That's Revolting!, probably one of the best radical queer books ever
-A Disjointed Search for the Will to Live
-Open Wide The Freedom Gates: A Memoir
-Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
-Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
-One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy
-Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster
-Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States

We also always carry current issues of:
-Make/Shift Magazine
-$pread Magazine
-Earth First! Journal

and
-2009 Slingshot Organizers are on their way!

Movies {All FREE. Start @ 8pm} :
Oct. 21: "The smartest guys in the room" A Documentary about Enron that is very similar to what Wall St. is currently going through, and what they just did.
Oct. 28: "Battle in Seattle" A new movie about the WTO protest, with Hollywood actors. Pretty crappy, but fun to watch anyway. See CrimethInc.'s leaflet made to hand out at theaters when the film was showing.
Nov. 4: "Manchurian Candidate" For Election Night. BYOB and Attitude.
Nov 11: A documentary about the Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Nov 18: TBA
Nov 25: "Dos Americas"

Citywide Anarchist Potluck, Meeting, and Protest
Join other anarchists in a potluck, meeting, and protest against Starbucks for their anti-union illegal firings against the IWW, their financing of Israeli terrorism, and their corporate occupation of cities across the world. October 26th, The Peristyle at City Park on Dreyfous Ave., 12 noon. See right-hand sidebar.

Bike Buddy Meeting
Next Wednesday at 7pm a meeting will be held to organize a bike-escort service for folks who don't want to ride home alone late at night. It is up to us to keep each other safe.

New Orleans Anarchist Email List
Organize, strategize and discuss with local anarchists via the listserve to create a new world. Use the list to let others know about local radical info and events, discuss news and views, and figure out how to best create the world we want to see. To join, send a blank email to nola-anarchists+subscribe@googlegroups.com

90s ROMANTIC COMEDY MOVIE MONTH JUGGERNAUT ROLLING FORWARD GRINDING YOU INTO BONE MEAL

It's Tuesday! That means there must be a movie at the Iron Rail Library and Bookstore. It's at eight p.m. tonight, and it's the 90s romantic comedy film "She's All That."

TOMBSTONES ON THE MOON

I was at the lake beach it was hot and there was a sparkle on the water and the sparkle moved side to side like someone darting and skating wildly back and forth sideways while making steady progress in my direction and the sparkle was in the form of a human-shaped figure way out on the lake skittering side to side zigzagging in towards shore and the figure was made all of sparkle and so bright and morbid I couldn't look at it and I experienced fear at its approach and it moved so unusually and rapidly and could reach me in a moment.

Fortunately there was a small skinny dog nosing around and I called it and it came and it stank and I cracked its neck with my strong hands as the bright side-sliding figure out on the lake was zeroing in like a pea in a funnel and I used my fingers to get out one of the little dog's milky eyeballs and brought it close to mine and could see filmy layers of rainbow translucence on its surface and the eye was a pearl and the pearl was a planet and the closer I looked I could see individual continents, islands in oceans of glistening sand and I was on a chilly island on the shore of sand and the sand was blowing in plumes and there was marble statuary all about and no people no sky and the ground was polished stone and I was safe from the bright sliding figure, gone from the lake, gone from everywhere and safely hidden among tombstones on the moon.

90s ROMANTIC COMEDY MOVIE MONTH

Some may think I'm joking, some may wish I was, and some are wiggling in their chairs with glee at the prospect: The Iron Rail is showing romantic comedy films from the 1990s throughout October. This bold and refreshing filmic initiative first manifests itself on

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7th, at EIGHT P.M.:
A screening of "Ten Things I Hate about You."

Next week will likely be "She's All That," but we'll keep ya posted. Regardless,

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF MOVIE NIGHT ARE STRONG

NOT ANYTHING

Sobriety is so awful, and it's so awful in such uncool ways. It's waiting, always waiting, and you're the only magazines to read, you're the unattractive wallpaper pattern, and you're the climate control that displeases and the TV that's loud and the receptionist who won't make eye contact. You're stuck in yourself waiting for nothing, nothing, it really sucks. I mean drinking makes one fat and clownish and more monstrous than usual and ruins one's life but there are far worse things than ruination. Ruination is at least something, and sobriety is nothing, nothing, nothing, every fucking tick-tock moment.

It's a howling absence of pleasure's possibility, an absence that makes the multifarious other absences in one's life sing in sympathy, chiming in until every dog in the neighborhood's barking. Emptinesses, shortfalls, absences, keening like cavities, a cacophony crowding ever into one's attention, the wind whistling through them all. God, one longs for the absence of absences, but of course there are things to be done.

Another moment endured, another minute survived, another hour harrowed, another afternoon undergone, another weekend withstood finding ways to get by, and no reward waiting, nothing waiting but nothing, more of it, a fucking wall of it falling over you every second, burying you again and again, and you're clawing through your life like it's quicksand, but it's not-- it's not anything.


...Fortunately, one can sometimes find solace in a good book. The Iron Rail is open every day from 1 to 7 p.m.

NOTES ON PRISONER SUPPORT

Is there somebody in OPP you'd like to help out?

Books and magazines cannot be mailed or hand-delivered or even ordered from a third-party vendor; they can only be obtained by the inmate herself ordering from the book selection on the commissary list. I'll see what I can do about getting a copy of the commissary list, but in the meantime please join me in making uninformed and overwhelmingly negative assumptions about its contents.

I asked a couple jail employees if the prices on books and magazines are more or less in line with the prices of other commissary items (meaning hyperinflated) and was told yes. This means reading material would be pretty hard for somebody locked up to get ahold of first-hand when balanced against necessities like soap and tobacco.

Inmates can receive letters, however. If you were to lay hands on an electronic text of something, maybe some poems you like, maybe some shakespeare plays, maybe a novel, and broke it into chunks and printed it out, you could certainly send it along, in envelope installments, in 10- or 15-page increments. You cannot send blank envelopes, stamps, stamped envelopes, blank paper, or cards, however... nor can you send a literarily inclined inmate pens or other writing utensils. Stationary supplies may only be obtained via the commissary.

You will need the inmate's actual name, booking #, and location to send mail.

To put money in an inmate's commissary (very important), you can either mail the inmate a signed money order or donate over the web, though the latter does add a fee. Again, you will need the inmate's personal information. The webpay service is here, and for somebody in OPP the Pay Location Code would be 5500 and the Facility Code would be "MSY - Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff (LA)".

To avoid providing the sickening, parasitic war-criminal fucks who run these hideous systems any more $$fees$$ than necessary, I encourage those interested in helping somebody in OPP in these specific ways-- money and reading materials-- to get ahold of me. If you don't know me, or how to reach me, come to a meeting; we can discuss pooling our resources.

Jails are not justice
"Judges" are an illegitimate authority
The legal system is corrupt beyond saving

HERO OF THE HOUR

So this seven-year-old went into a zoo and killed a bunch of animals and also fed a bunch of 'em, living and dead, to crocodiles. Here you may read the article and be appropriately appalled at the Dollar Amount of damage wrought.

There is nothing beautiful, good or acceptable about captivity; being bashed to death with a rock or fed to a big ass crocodile may or may not be "preferable"-- we can each decide that about our own lives-- but it has a fuck of a lot more in common with whatever may still be said to constitute the natural order than you'll ever find in any zoo.

I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't acknowledge there's plenty of innocent animal blood on my hands-- I wear a leather belt, I eat lambs. Nevertheless, zoos horrify me in a way few other settings do. We'll forgo the polemics; suffice it to say zoos are hateful and this larval psycho-killer is my HERO OF THE HOUR.

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE FREE BIN ARE STRONG

BOW TO SANTA'S BLEND

This has nothing to do with Santa's Blend, though while we're on the subject, isn't it delicious? Chocolatey, Pepperminty, Cockroachleggy, it's the special coffee with the dusty zing, the coffee that says "Iron Rail." God, even writing about it makes me crave a murky jarful.

But really, this post is about Iron Rail volunteers tabling popular music concerts. If you are remotely connected with the Iron Rail now or at any past point and disinclined to swindle us, please accept this cordial invitation to spend an evening or two staffing a table at a local music event. You can meet people and sell them things and tell them about the Iron Rail... many of our most valuable collective members first learned of the Rail's existence by just such means.

Following is a list of October shows it would be cool to Table. If you are interested in attending and shilling radical/anarchist books and 'zines at any of these shows-- specific shows, or just generally-- please send an e-mail to our Live Music coordinator, the Big Dawg of New Orleans punk: flyerstorm AT yahoo.com

OCTOBER
Thu 02 - Theresa Andersson | The City Life | Big Blue Marble @ Howlin Wolf
Thu 02 - Guitar Lightning Lee and His Thunder Band | The Young | Hollywood Blues | King Louie One Man Band @ Saturn Bar
Fri 03 - Rotary Downs | MyNameIsJohnMichael @ The Republic
Sat 04 - Antenna Inn | The Revivalists | The Other Planets @ One Eyed Jacks
Sat 04 - Start Select | Pumpkin | Party Time | Epic @ Parlays
Mon 06 - Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? | Nick Jaina @ Dragons Den
Tue 07 - Sourvein | Zoroaster | Hellkontroll | Thou @ Hi Ho Lounge
Wed 08 - Elysium | Consumed | Sisera | Raum @ Hi Ho
Wed 08 - Saviours | Hawg Jaw | Thou @ One Eyed Jacks
Wed 08 - The Walkmen | The City Life @ Republic
Wed 08 - Helios Creed | MC Trachiotomy and th' Cone of Uncertainty | Rampede @ Saturn Bar
Thu 09 - My Graveyard Jaw | Deering + Down | Jamie Randolf @ Dragon's Den
Thu 09 - The Dead Science @ Hi Ho
Fri 10 - I, Octopus | Meadow Flow | Smiley With A Knife | Tony Italiano @ Dragons Den
Sat 11 - Spickle | Terranova @ Checkpoints
Sat 11 - The Pallbearers | Switchblade Combs | All Rise | Blanks 77 @ Hi Ho
Wed 15 - Sunburned Hand of the Man | Rob Cambre / Donald Miller duo @ Hi Ho
Thu 16 - Hail Seizures | Chin Up, Meriwether | A Collective of Dirt @ Ducbo
Fri 17 - Spider Bags | The Golden Boys | Die Rotzz | RomanGabrielTodd's Beast Rising Up Out of the Sea @ Saturn Bar
Sat 18 - Black Tusk | A Hanging @ Saturn Bar
Sun 19 - Ladyfest 2008 @ the Big Top
Sun 19 - Bridge and Tunnel | O Pioneers! @ Dragons Den
Sun 19 - Tim Green + Steve Masakowski + Larry Sieberth + Doug Belote @ Hi Ho
Tue 21 - Jack of Heart | Die Rotzz @ Saturn Bar
Sat 25 - Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? | Japanther | Killer Dreamer | Turboslut @ Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Sat 25 - Fishbone @ Dragons Den
Sun 26 - Watain | Withered | Book of Black Earth | Ritual Killer @ Dragons Den
Tue 28 - The Matadors of Shame | Party Time @ 4722 Palmyra (house show)
Wed 29 - The Screaming Females | Pumpkin | Spring Break Shark Attack @ Zeitgeist
Thu 30 - Evil Army | A Hanging | Tirefire @ Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Fri 31 - Zydepunks (plus, early show with Angry Banana) @ Dragons Den

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF THE 'ZINE ARCHIVE ARE STRONG