sigh.
You know how 9/11 truthers make protesters seem even crazier and more stupid than we are? This guy has just ratcheted it up a notch.

This is happening now, so I don’t know everything that is happening. But a gunman has taken hostages at the Discovery Channel. They believe it to be a guy James Jay Lee who has been arrested for protesting the place before, and he’s got a seriously wingnut list of demands. Some of the basic ideas make sense: advocating that human ingenuity ought to be turned to reversing environmental catastrophe, that the media has the opportunity and the responsibility to encourage a more responsible worldview. But it’s all couched in rhetoric about “filthy, filthy hobbitses” er… I mean, humans.

I wish I was baffled by how someone could possibly mix an anti-civilization worldview with an anti-immigrant one, as well, blaming immigrants for being “yet more human filth” or whatever. Clearly, those people were going to be people wherever they were.

This kind of militant misanthropy will probably only increase as civilization staggers forward, plowing down the last bits of the wild earth. And that sucks. The destruction of the wild sucks, and motherfuckers like the unabomber are in no way the solution.

from the list of demands that Mr. Lee had at a previous protest:

The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order.

I went with my friend Dea to the boat graveyard in Staten Island, a fascinating place where they just dump boats to rust and rot. It’s beautiful and spiky and probably not particularly safe. i played a lot with my new pinhole lens, as well, so that’s the deal with all of the hella-blurry pictures. Dea and I shot with the same camera, so it’s not actually 100% clear who took which pictures, which is fine with me.

And Graceless: A Journal of the Radical Gothic is well underway and will be totally awesome.

Hello my name is Jason Drake with Sunergy Domains.

We wanted to let you know that the domain name, steamypunk.com
is for sale.

If you are interested in obtaining this .com name please let us know
and we can send you more information.

Thanks,
Jason Drake
Sunergy Domains
Primary email: domains@sunergy.org
Alternate email: drakesourceone@gmail.com
ph: 707-SUNERGY

Some nerve. They know that I have “steamypunk.net” registered so they figure they might as well buy “steamypunk.com” and hold it for ransom.

I hate that these bastards are called websquatters, too. Because they’re not squatting, they are real-estate prospecting. Squatting is historically the opposite of real-estate prospecting: a web-squatter would be a hacker who took back one of these domain names for free and used it because no one else was, and it was just being used as leverage by some greedy bastard.

I did, however, respond to the email:

Fuck you.

Okay, turns out that industrial hip-hop didn’t stop in the 90s, and it has definitely stayed political. This song, by Meat Beat Manifesto, is from 2008.

lyrics (incomplete) after the cut

Meat Beat Manifesto: Solid Waste

Now common sense make take offense
when the media turns away from current events
pass the plate, pass the buck there’s no luck
for getting an answer [...]
saboteurs connoisseur what’s your objective
this is definitely not a collective
part of the process, sign of progress
how will we ever get out of this mess

Intelligent design my ass
doesn’t [...] see that all things must pass
‘cus the air is thick with black noxious gas
you know what it does to me
I can’t even remember the last time I felt free
step into the light with me
why can’t you see if they can set fire to a gitmo detainee
and I currently don’t know what it does to me
cus I can’t even remember the last time an amputee stepped into the light
to be forever free you’re killed in Iraq in an American crime spree

Amusing yourself to death,
what would you say when you’re taking your last breath.
for the United States of America
and now you’re called a preditor
another heading for the newspaper editor
when will you realize it’s not just a game
when the normal people are the ones who [...]
because the language goes against the grain
What ignorance sweeping the nation
plastic chips for identification
Hah! what do you mean I don’t know what I’m talking about
I already live in a country who’s [...]

Now common sense make take offense
when the media turns away from current events.
Pass the blame, pass the buck

What’s your objective?
Cuz this is definitely not a collective.

Real life TV

Now it feels that life has lost all its appeal.
Solid Waste… of time

Goth can (and used to more than it does currently, as far as I can tell) cast its spooky shadow across pretty much any genre. And at least in the 90s, there was industrial hip-hop, including the incredible The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, who derive their name from socialist literature and collaborated extensively with more “properly” industrial bands like Meat Beat Manifesto.

lyrics after the cut:

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy: Television The Drug Of The Nation

One nation
under God
has turned into
one nation under the influence
of one drug

Television the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V. it
satellite links
our United States of Unconsciousness
Apathetic therapeutic and extremely addictive
The methadone metronome pumping out
150 channels 24 hours a day
you can flip through all of them
and still there’s nothing worth watching
T.V. is the reason why less than 10 per cent of our
Nation reads books daily
Why most people think Central Amerika
means Kansas
Socialism means unamerican
and Apartheid is a new headache remedy
absorbed in it’s world it’s so hard to find us
It shapes our mind the most
maybe the mother of our Nation
should remind us
that we’re sitting too close to…

Television, the drug of the Nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation

T.V. is
the stomping ground for political candidates
Where bears in the woods
are chased by Grecian Formula’d
bald eagles
T.V. is mechanized politic’s
remote control over the masses
co-sponsored by environmentally safe gases
watch for the PBS special
It’s the perpetuation of the two party system
where image takes precedence over wisdom
Where sound bite politics are served to
the fastfood culture
Where straight teeth in your mouth
are more important than the words
that come out of it
Race baiting is the way to get selected
Willie Horton or
Will he not get elected on…

This is a fan video, but the lyrics to this song are pretty explicit too. I don’t know too much about Die Warzau, but they seem pretty political in general. A bit frightening, though, with an album titled Vinyl 88 (88 being code for “heil hitler” in places like Germany where you’re not allowed to be explicitly pro-nazi)… but near as I can tell this is intentional satire, as the band seems to make statements against racism with some regularity and the song “hitler’s brain” on that album is a collaboration with George Clinton.

lyrics after the cut:

Die Warzau: Insect

We terrorizing?
Want to touch?
Turn away
While awaiting
Terminating
Watch it

Fucking voice on the telephone
It don’t remind me of someone i used to know
Patriots at the back door
Waiting in line for you down in guantanamo, baby

They’ll rip your wings like an insect
Just tell yourself that you’re better now
They’ll rip your legs like an insect
Just tell yourself that you’re better now

Spread your legs and remember
Everyone changes; everyone’s culpable
Lose yourself in the apathy – abandon the sympathy
Let your mind go

They’ll rip your wings like an insect
Just tell yourself that you’re better now
They’ll rip your legs like an insect
Just tell yourself that you’re better now

I’m hanging out on the inside
When everything changes to metal/stone
I want to take the world with me in suitable anger
Leaving you alone

They’ll rip your wings like an insect
Just tell yourself that you’re better now
They’ll rip your legs like an insect
Just tell yourself that you’re better now