Trigger Warning!
This world is a fucked-up, traumatizing, and hateful place. I live in this world, and so my words, experiences, and thoughts are birthed from within it. Further, it should come to no surprise that this blog will detail many of these fucked-up things in graphic detail. Fortunately, resilience is what I do, and I try my hardest to ferment inspiration from the darkest parts of my life. It's time to confront, it's time to resist, and of course... it's time to win.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Against All Odds

So this was written Oct 22nd, and I'm finally typing it up. Sorry for the delay! Edited for spelling/grammar.
-Ruthie


Curtis Townsend, recovering meth-head, and survivor of the police brutality lottery: His grand earnings after medical expenses and attorney fees weighed in at just under $54,000. Although less than the amount a typical American family will take home annually, for Curtis, this amount was enough to change his world.

Despite the facial scars, old age, and near eye crows feet, when Curtis smiles he more closely resembles a 20 year old virgin than a 40 year old father of two. The night he was apprehended he was tazed three times while handcuffed lying face down on the ground. After his arrest, it took an hour and a half to arrive at the hospital--but when he did finally arrive, carrying the artifacts of his beating, the emergency room medical staff were nauseated by the sight of his swelling, bruising and bleeding. Still, Curtis deems the facial scarring minimal, considering that when he arrived at the E.R. his face was smashed in so god damn far, that cranial fractures on his right side made it impossible to continue to hold on to his eyeball.

Locked up, the first thing Curtis did with his negligible prize winnings was to pay off the $20 grand still owed on the trailer his mom and kids live in. He then dropped another two thousand dollars on a down payment for his mom's fly new ride, and another grand on two brand new bicycles for his two kids to ride. With only four months remaining of his reduced 9 month sentence, he now tries to supply all of his friends on the inside with enough jail comforts to make their mutual time fly right by. Ramen noodles, honey-less honey buns, pre-stamped envelopes, and a pair of tube socks will do a number of wonders to a person's self-esteem while being forced to remain behind bars.

He will, without a doubt, spend well over half the amount that was awarded to him on his family and friends, and all before he leaves the pen. Down to his last dollar, he will still shine his surprisingly white-toothed smile, because as he sees it, with meth out of his life, he can finally be a father to his kids and avoid the horrendous and unneeded custody battles with his ex-wife. After all, it's never about the financial gain when someone actually survives the insurmountable odds within the state funded lottery of unjustifiable police brutality.


Can't Stop, Won't Stop
-Jayson

Monday, November 9, 2009

Seagulls 08-31-09

He is from Argentina. He's tall and very dark brown. Soil dark brown. He's six foot three or six foot four, but add in the bouncy monstrosity of his 'fro and you could then add on six inches or more. He weighs no more than 125 pounds and so his clothes sa off of him, more closely resembling window drapes. Throughout the length of his arm the thickest section is where his hands attach to his wrists. He is the epitome of what it means to be a human stick. When he walks around it most closely resembles a stringless dia de los muertos (calaca) puppet.

I know very little Spanish and he knows even less English, so when we talk it is very limited. The other inmates have come to call him "Seagull" because after each meal he hovers around the garbage can, with a large plastic cup in hand, he scoops everyone else's leftovers into it. For some reason the great majority of other inmates can't stand it.

The black inmates beat him to the garbage and the wait for him to get there. When he does, with exaggerated movements almost taunting him, they dump whats left of their meals instead of giving it to him.

The young Hispanics will accidentally drop their bread on the floor and then after recovering it will send one of their to deliver it. Sometimes the filth on the bread is still really obvious, but they'll hand it to Seagull with a sincere face of charity.

The group of older Hispanics always share portions of their beans and rice, but they never forget to add snot, spit and mucus before giving it. They will even have a friendly conversation in Spanish while doing it.

The whites of all ages, to no surprise, are by far the worst. They try to police the situation by complaining to the guard that its not fair that he gets more to eat. They loudly scoff, scold, insult and harrow him in a language he cannot understand but with a body language that is universally crystal clear.

I can't help but to feel that all of this is more than an exotic big bird being locked in a cage and fed scraps as a source of amusement. This isn't just ignorant cruelty, but intense and deep feelings of hate. I've tried to ask each group of inmates why they do this, and tehy are all quick to get aggressive and I am even quicker to go back to my form of self-protective silence. Sometimes I feel just as guilty for perpetuating this silence through my own silent passivity. How are we ever going to ever see that it is us the inmates, against them, the guards, if we can't even see each other as humans?

Even my use of the nickname Seagull really started bothering me, that is until I realized how anthropocentric I was being. I was viewing seagulls only as I was raised to see them. I was only seeing them as a scavenger of human trash but now I can see that calling the young Argentinian as a seagull is far from an insult and may be an accurate description,

Seagulls are forced to rummage through a city's trash only because cities have successfully ruined their original food sources. Industrial commercialized fishing has stolen most of the ocean's fish while hospitals, factories and refineries have polluted all the world's water. The ecosystems of beaches have become places of beer, tanning and other senseless forms of recreation. After seagulls are born on their native sea shores, they are quickly forced to migrate into cities to subsist on what humans deem waste and trash.

Now the young Argentinian is forced to salvage what he can from inmate's leftovers because he has no access to subsistence food sources. Argentina's land, people, forests and beaches have been converted into resources for hospitals, factories and refineries serving the on-demand exploitative consumption of cities, especially the rich and white ones. Ex-African slave/indigenous forests and shore communities that share the young Argentinian's beautiful espresso skin tone are all but almost completely removed from their native lands and are forced into city centers, slums and even landfills. Their natural communities they were once a part of are now Burger King cattle ranches and the ultimate alcohol and club filled spring break hot spots.

All of this abstract theorizing and critiquing does not change these very real world situation though. Seagulls are still dying from consuming pounds of plastic instead of pounds of fish, while Seagull himself is being subjected to extremely cruel and malicious behavior from other inmates in an already over-bearing, disempowering and oppressive system. Beaches and forests are dead or dying from our gross domestic consumption. Inmates are spending time policing and oppressing each other instead of making attempts to challenge their mutual and overriding conditions. The destructive ideas of waste and trash are still as prominent in the outside world as they are on the inside. The world is going to be completely discarded, just as the inmates in jails and prisons have been, just so a select few can have a world of power, control and money.

This isn't a very good ending and that bothered me at first, but now I'm not worried about an ending. The world's major religions start with people and end with abstractions of faith and paradise and sometimes we as radicals/people/animals are guilty of the same thing. We look at theories as a relief ending point of some understanding instead of using them as a starting point for tangible and meaningful action. We look at events with their own beginnings, middles, and ends instead of looking at our lives as a constant struggle. Who cares if some battles are won if you and everything you are fighting for gets eradicated before the war's end?

This is not the only an end to my writing, but a beginning- no, a continuation of my personal struggle. A struggle that is interwoven into other struggles, human and non-human alike. A struggle of seagulls. A struggle of Seagull. A struggle against those who destroy life.

Monday, November 2, 2009

To Whom It May Be of Interest

Sandra C. aka Sandanista posting some backlog letters from everyone's favorite part-time pop star, Jayson Tx. In this entry, I included the prefacing letter to illuminate the lulzy quality of Jaybird's writing. This kid, I swear.

To My Dearest Sandanista, In the wee hours of 9/25/9

To begin with, to say I'm in crisis for paper and up past my bedtime would be an understatement. To start off a letter with an understatement would be blasphemous. To start off another sentence with "to" would just be annoying. To waste four lines when I have only 20 to write with would be quite inane. To use inane instead of silly to sound smarter is the epitome of Jayson Tx, to use it incorrectly or in improper context would be the icing on the honey-less honey bun... to say I miss you more than I miss full sheets of paper might become soon self-evident. To say self-evident reminds me of this country's genocidal forefathers, or to say in clearer words slave-owning crackers, to continue on in this format seems beyond my current control. To speak of current control reminds me of currency control. To write currency control, I feel I am paying homage to Tesla. Yes, Nicola. To further currency control the lizard people, Illuminati, Ron Byers, CCPD and the Zapatista will bankrupt the federal reserve to bring about the new world order. To get to the point, or to make a futile attempt at such would be to state that I found a "to whom it may concern" letter. To say I lost it for a while would be correct. To further leave it up to you to determine if it is of postable character would be appropriate to say the least. To end this ridiculous excuse of a letter now would be to save you the way Jesus saved my brother. To clarify: while in jail J-dizzy saved my bro. Eeek.

Evict me from your worries
and let me squat in your loving affection,

Jayson Tx
_____________________________________________________________________________________

? 9/14/9 ?

To Whom it May Be of Interest (And Yes, Even the F.B.I. this time),

The last couple of days have been "do art and forget about the real world" type of days. My good friend the Colonel, as well as one of the sweetest people I have ever met got tased a couple of nights ago for talking too loud. The correctional officer who tased him has spent the last two days joking and bragging about the whole incident.

My personal food trays during the last couple of days have consisted of not much more than apple sauce and iceberg lettuce. I am told consistently by the guards "Damn, they doin' you wrong. Real wrong." Yet in the same breath they refuse to use what minute power they actually have to help me out a little bit. Even the tone of this letter is following my typical grievance-form voice.

About three of my friends that I met in here all recieved 10-15 year sentences this last Friday, all from the same judge, who as one underpaid public defender stated, "he was probably just having a bad day". My friends will have to do the majority of their sentences, because they were enhanced as habitual criminals- the Texas equivalent of a three strikes law. One will be 72 years old or dead before he leaves the custody, or more appropriately the ownership, of the Texas Department of Corrections. All the while, a Nazi-sociopath pimp who brags about raping and killing women, or in his terminology "facilitating a use and the discarding them", will be back on the street in less than sixty days. He has two brainwashed, desperate and traumatized sex workers waiting and saving up money for him. He explicitly stated that he's also trying to find a way to discard of them as well.

The most upsetting part- okay, I can't say that- but an upsetting part is, this neo-industrialist, rapist, drug dealer not so explicitly explained that one of them has to go because he's falling in love with her and that would disrupt his power structure he currently has and needs in place. You really do have to commodify and objectify something to exploit and destroy it.

But don't worry, even in this meek and disparaging mood I'm still thriving and surviving. Resiliency. It helps to know that I'm a white male and if I choose to, in as much as we can make choices in this culture, I can wear long sleeve button down shirts and slacks and never make it back to similar confines. Of course, I will probably make some right choices and my reward will be the gift of a longer repeat to my current conditions, but it helps to know I have choices. I actually feel more alive than I have in months, and more human, which if anything means simply that I have an upper hand in some unusual way against those oppressing me. That's more than the rest of the world, human and non-human can say. Or maybe the feel the same way.

Even the strongest wall will crumble
and the thickest of cages will eventually rust through.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Wall Street Journal

Dear World,
I’m sorry you’re dying. If I wasn’t locked up in jail, I promise you I’d be doing something to stop this insanity.

-Jayson

Dear Destroyers of Everything Beautiful,
Fuck you! I just spent 6 hours locked in a jail cell reading the Wall Street Journal. Your attaboy! Your feel good newspaper. I read your numbers. Sure you understand millions, billions, and trillions but for the people making 5 cents an hour to $7.25 these numbers don’t seem to have a relevancy. For those not making any money, for those millions, they’ll just starve.

Your stock market made it back to 10,000. Great. You made millions when it crashed and now you’re making double that. Good job, you’re so smart.

Money is no longer made out of paper but 75% cotton and 25% other. Is that so you can launder the blood that it soaks in, that is soaks up. All so you can have a penthouse and a monthly visit to Cambodia for a taste of a new seven year old.
Wall Street use to be a place to auction slaves, now you trade them, how clever of you. I hate you. I hate you the way a poor child’s stomach hates hunger, the way a seagull hates the 5lbs of plastic that fills her stomach. I despise your greed the way a tree despises the tearing of its flesh from a well oil lubricated oil powered oil forged chain, I despise you the way an electric-less Iraqi village despises the oil that lies underneath it. I wish you lied 6 feet underneath me. I wish you were dead like 200+ dead zones in the oceans you have created. I wish you were deprived of oxygen the way you have deprived 8,000 square miles of once living ocean in the Gulf of Mexico.

I wish I could make an application for your I-phone that would give you the cancer from the production of its internal 32 GB hard drive, instead of it going to the Korean and her family that was forced into starving or producing. Or an application to turn whatever shit excuse for music you listen to up to a 250 DB to blow your ear drums and cause you to hemorrhage and die, in the same manner you kill whales in the ocean looking for more oil, oh, I mean Soviet submarines.
I know your house. It’s the big one on the other side of town. When I get out there will be empty forty bottles scattered on the ground and gas in your beamer to siphon out and one more cocktail to top off your drunken slumber making sure this time you don’t wake up.

Written from Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Experience as Parable

A young (nice) kid got beat up today, 5 feet from outside my cell door. I heard the 5 or 6 taps from the assaulters first hitting the kid’s mouth and skill. It is sad I know that sound, but it’s even sadder that it took me 45 seconds or so to actually get off my bunk and see if he was okay. I saw the assaulter leave in a hurry so I knew something had happened. The kid’s face and nose were in really bad shape. Eventually the guards came in and took both of them away. They also took a third person away; a guy that attempted to hurt the original assaulter. All three people are going to get punished. The kid who was assaulted and the person who tried to stand up for him will face the same consequences as the asshole that did the violence. That is bullshit and insane, that is unless you are trying to prove two things. You cannot take the law (a monopoly on violence) into your own hands. There are no victims in jail, only criminals, on other words inmates, or more clearly, subhumans.

The blood that was all over his face and the floor made me feel many things. The first was fear, fear of pain, fear of being a victim of assault again. Then came the fear of violence, violence is very dreadful, very real. With the current inequalities and resource scarcities, a crazy amount of violence is happening right now, but soon it is going to have a more physical manifestation. Some people don’t feel fear when they see clearcuts or logger trucks or mills or paper for that matter, but first world people always react in some way to bloodshed. Some sadistic fucks get aroused or happy at the sight of it, but most get a similar reaction to mine. Our culture is use to police and military to do the dirty work. We are use to economic sanctions and prisons to commit our genocides. Back to the point – we are not prepared to see the bloodshed we are currently inflicting and the increased bloodshed that’s coming soon. I don’t even want to write about it, I wish I wasn’t. The next feeling I had was a fear of authority, I had already seen the images of victim blaming go through my head as this kid sat their bloody. I debated whether or not to talk about what I saw. Would it be snitching? Would it blowback on me? Could I say anything, do anything to hide this from the authorities and attempt to handle it on our own?

The final feeling, and I’m ashamed it came so late was, how can I fight back? How should I get this asshole back? How can I get back at the larger culture for making all this so real, so common? How can I get the cops back for putting all of us in here in the first place? How can I make the politicians and corporate executives pay for being even more culpable than even the cops? The guard finally walked over and then all the crazy lockdown, tons of guards rushing in and all that stuff happened. I sat there, well here, and standing, actually pacing, still thinking, still racing through emotions. I realized the assaulter was someone in here on a domestic abuse charge, a charge he bragged about. Why didn’t I remember that before? Why did I not go and immediately confront him? Why was I more willing to – or more rapid – or more able to fight when I was 14 and 15? Now my brain processes and thinks and analyzes. I guess this is good, given my circumstances and consequences. Why is self-preservation so high up on my worries and by worries, I mean excuses? I finally was resolved, ready to fight, and I was locked down powerless.

It’s been about 2 hours since then and I think I know why I’m still bothered by all of this. When it comes to defending those and what I love, I don’t want to act that slowly. I don’t want to have to think, I want to be able to pounce immediately. I don’t want self-preservation or consequences to affect my action/inaction. I don’t want a fear of authority or moral issues preventing me or slowing me from what I want to, what I need to defend.

I guess that’s why I’m so bothered. I already know what I want, what I need to defend and I’m not doing it. All these fears have me paralyzed. I always tell myself I’m waiting, waiting for leverage, for more bang in my buck, but maybe these are just excuses.

I don’t want to overly turn someone’s pain into a look at me, pity me, what about me-fest. So I’ll end it here. There will be no excuse good enough, no resolve resolved enoughed, no preparations prepared strategically enough, if by the time I’m ready to fight, I find myself locked down – so incredibly powerless. Repression is rising and the time for action is now. I’m ready to fight for what I love. I’m ready.

Never give up.
Jayson Tx #10126758

P.S. This is by no means meant to sound fatalist in any manner. I still look forward to fun and happy things. I still want to find more loves, grow more veggies, read more books and heck, even dance a little. It’s just having such a literal metaphor (I don’t know how else to describe it) I guess an experiential parable, yeah that’s it, having the Experiential Parable of being locked up when I was finally ready to act, made me realize that I don’t want that to happen again, not ever, especially not for those things I feel closest to.

Written from Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Code Names

I just decided we all need code names, and yes that's probably just the cool punk rock excuse to rename ourselves the way hippies do...

David will be Dr. BHT, Alyssa - Captain Raccoon, Kaleb - Professor K-Dubz, Steve - Sir Pittstown, Charity - the Honorable Judge Leaf-Beer, Ema - Dr. Moonshine Remedy, Hudson - Pope John Paul the Negative, Thomas - the Decepticon, Ted - Bill, Tara - Subcommadante T2, Sandra - Sergeant Sandanista, Alyse - DJ Rage-a-Lot, George - Colonel Space Jam III, Jenny - General Yaya!, Jan - Ms. Mother Jones, my Mom - Officer Holdin' It Down, Spookie Hysteria II - El Presidente Spookie Hyst-a-ria II, me - Avril Lavigne/The Sentimental Senator...

Okay the names need lots of work and of course no one gets dubbed a name until they move to Picket Pin Ranch/Roseburg/Umpqua National Forest...

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Reading Disorder

I’m awoken to the sound of heaving
It is a sound I thought I had become so accustomed to,
But it’s a miserable sound, no matter how hard I tried, I never quite get use to
I turn to see light, splintering out around one of the room’s three door frames
And as I make my way to open it
I’m afraid to see the pain, I soon find on the floor behind it
No matter how I wished to be apart from it
I know that I’m inescapably a part of it

Inexplicably, I attempt to be there for you
As I ask you if you’re okay, your eyes quickly reply, telling me that you are not
And it’s not for a lack of trying, still answerless, in my ability to understand all of this
But problems only seem to multiply, with the entrance of each one of my sentences

You misconstrue all the intentions in my words, with that pocket dictionary of yours.
The one you found on the clearance rack, mimicking your life, written in only past tense

So your past tensions begin the progression towards a relentless retention covering your body with every painful memory
With your hands resting on cold ceramic and your head wearily above it, you lean
Barely above it, you heave with a hollowed revereb, that only a bathroom can lend

You give up the food, that sustains your every act of existence
In hopes to purge yourself, of those memories, that keep reenacting your inflictions

Disease, disorder, abuse, control, trauma, and self hate
Mirrors, beauty, identity, family, what equates to in one’s weight
All become words, as cold and meaningless as the ceramic bowl, you hug onto nightly
As I hang on tightly to memories interpretation of what once was known as you

I too, find my own books on the clearance shelf, in order to fix you
Those words inside paragraphs, pages apart of chapters, front to back, cover from cover
I broke so many spines, searching to find, what to do
Ink imprinted paper, carefully edited, but never perfect, misled me dearly, even more away from you

I searched for a universal answer, to what I falsely called my particular problem
All while you defied the universe’s ends with your own particular beauty
And that’s all you needed to be, and that should have been what I embraced
But like almost all others, I was trained to fix, solve, abstract, and equate
And so I subtracted you from you; from the specific
Dissolving our connections; our bond, dropped reflecting your weight

Colder than the tile floors, colder than the ceramic bowl
I gave you a cold shoulder to cry on
In which you refused to take
Intake, input, internalize, the very Culture that I hate
I stopped touching you as if it was you
Gave up your smell so distinct; forgot it, as I never knew
Share, compare, compartmentalize
I continued to commodify
All your despair into a word; into emotions
Deny, demote, decide, demolish
For what it all comes down to
Annotations; your entire experience
Touching, feeling, breathing another
Become disposable experiences
Long before I ended us; you and me

Entering into a relationship, your past tense dictionary, could not define
Being not having, my clearance rack stack of books, three words in a row, never able to find

So you heaved, in hopes to give more than food
So I left, in fear that I was owning you
So we both wrecked, too damn busy, to listen anymore

Heartbeats, gone ascounding, left pounding
In your breast and on my chest
We both became blind, dumb and deaf

Impaired beyond repair
We got scared
And lost touch

Relationships always start with that very first touch
And inevitably end when we give up the belief that
To touch, that to feel, is no longer enough.

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A late night, drug-induced, transcendental piece of dadaist found object art

So, first and foremost, the poem you are about to read is a piece of drug-induced transcendental dadaist found object art... let me explain. The last night I was in Oregon (DC), before they extradited me, I was incredibly high on a magnitude of coffee... the coffee they had there as I explained in other letters was magical to say the least. So that night I was so messed up that I thought I had transcended time, space and especially language. I felt the way that people explain mushroom tripping to me... yest, that fucked up. So I attempted to start a letter to you, the Roseburg crew, when in my delusions I realized I was far past a mere letter to friends and began to challenge the foundations of civilization, language, and everything... I would pause writing and with my brain contemplating at opposite ends of the universe I wrote line by line, each time finishing feeling like I had made an immeasurable advancement. For 4-5 hours I wrote and wrote and wrote and then they came and took me away... I was not reunited with the letter until last week. Upon reading it, I felt an embarrassment level I have never felt previously. I remembered feeling so inspired during the actual writing itself, but could not remember any of the content. So when re-reading it I felt like I was reading a 12 year old rant from my youth, I was immediately disappointed. I had no idea of the horrendous rhyming and ridiculous repetitiveness. But upon reading it a second time, I grew fond of it, after all there will never be many if any other drug-induced writings from Jayson (although half of them probably seem drug-induced). So I was going to re-write it, to polish it, but I decided it would be a grave injustice and insult to my artistic integrity to not have it repeated verbatim... So all I did was format it into poetry from from letter form (which I can't even format my own poems) and changed three words that I obviously knew were incorrect. So now you know the mindset in which it was written, enjoy! If it is the worst thing you've ever read in your life, than that's a good thing, it it's one of the funniest that's even better, if it makes any sense than please seek immediate attention:

Hey you guys, and gals, and those that prefer to identify with neither.

Today, my eyes filled up with tears
I know that’s no way to start a letter out from jail
But let me make my case
This world is dying!

I take that back
The world I’m in
This cell
In this jail
In this town
On this freeway
Apart of a network with other cities
In this state
In this nation
A part of a global system
Is already dead

We live in modern pyramids
Mega machines
That converts everything living and wonderful
Into dead things

Things that have value to them
Like
Money and tools
Houses and cars
Jobs and pools
Banks and bars

Value – what a useless word
Use another useless term

It’s in our languages, it’s in our religions, it’s in our sciences and in our governments
DEATH.
But not the same death
That once was celebrated along the side of life

Not even the same death
That was once a part of life

Capital-D, Death as its own thing
As it capital-Departs from life
As it capital-Destroys life

Thing – we view the world in things
Abstractions, Definitions, Ideals, and Beliefs

Everything is a thing
Everything as a thing
What a silly Ideal!

Science, religions, governments, and languages
These are ideals
These are our ideals
These are based on their own ideals

Ideals of control, isolation, explanations, control
Definitions, understandings, beliefs, control, love, hate
Separations, control, life, death, definitions, control, intangible
Untouchable, incapable, unknowable, control, Angels, Devils, spirits
Souls, control, freedom, liberty, democracy, control, study
Experiment, discovery, control, letters, words, sentences, paragraphs and pages
Control

“I think therefore I am”
Fuck Descarte
If you add another “e” and flip the “a” and “r”
You can then desecrate
That fucker Descarte

Reality – what a human thing
Human – yet another thing
Another – still some other thing
Other – a separated something
Separated – an isolated thing
Isolated – a definition, an ideal on how to view certain things
View – a way of observing, speculating, or seeing such things

Things – everything is a thing
Nothing is a thing
No thing is still a thing
N – O – T – H – I – N – G are all things.

Things are dead and dead becomes things
Existentialism, even has a particular meaning
Existentialism – what a silly, useless thing

I think therefore I am
Inverts to
I am therefore I think
The other is based in insanity,
But both are ideals and ideas are mere things

I don’t want a new philosophy
A new definition, ideal, or worldview
While though I will never be able to break from
Viewing things as things
I can at least break apart some of the parts
In this death-craving mega machine

Here’s to a world where everything surpasses the tangible defines in intangibility
Where anything refuses the definable limits of undefinability
So that somethings are not left limited to an unbearable unlimitedness
To the point where nothing can be explained
Anymore

Here’s to everything being wild past our wildest dreams
And it may have been expressing dreams that first defined this world into things
But now it’s dreams that make it possible to break through every single thing

So to those in power, you can try to keep me locked up behind steel doors
But eventually even these doors will wither down until they are no more
And then I’ll be the one knocking on your very front door

Written from the Douglas County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Dear Fucked Reality (Yes that is a choking victim reference, suprise!)

Disturbed, depressed, distressed, and partially destroyed. That is how I feel right now. For the first time I am given a chance to see or read or hear news, it’s bad. Terribly bad.

Can anyone get more info on this 18 year old kid that was set up by the government? Ultimately, although this isn’t always the case, it doesn’t really matter whether he was a crazy right or crazy left extremist. He was a kid. A young one. Coerced and lied to. But nonetheless, more information would be nice.

In case you don’t know, the 18 year old I’m talking about was set up by the Feds to blow up a building in Dallas, Texas. Life in prison (with no chance of parole?) is what he faces. The charge he’s facing is some bullshit post 9-11 Bush era anti-terrorism charge. All I know is the whole thing depresses the fuck out of me.

We just got racked up for 2 hours and shooked down for a spoon that went missing. Nueces County has 2 jails. At one (not this one, but the other one, the annex) you are issued a spoon and cup, at the other you are not. So even though issuing us all spoons would solve the situation of lost spoons, they don’t. So once a week we get shook down because either someone miscounted spoons or someone accidentally/purposely threw a spoon away. Whatever getting shook down is microscopic in the problems that jails and prisons face and by that I mean the inmates who occupy them. Not to mention invisible to a world full of much more immediate and serious problems. Nothing comparable to what that kid in Dallas is going through. Nothing compared to billions of people living in poverty as a direct result of the U.S. tri-phecta of imperialism, consumerism, and sanctions.

Along with an increase in acne, a bloating of my belly, the (should be embarrassing) diarrhea problems, I’m starting to get boils, or at least what I assume to be boils. My body is saying fuck this food, fuck this lack of sunlight, nutrients, diverse physical activity. My brain is screaming for saturated fat to lubricate my receptors. Also, my body goes through periods of uncontrollable twitching and my eyes do this mini seizure thing when I try concentrating on a fixed object. Oh, and my feet and fingertips go numb numerous times throughout the day. But without trying to undermine the personal significance of my health, in outrospect, these problems are below minimal.

It’s a very real possibility that our children or their children will never see amphibians, bears, tuna, old growth, or non-civilized people. More for the history books or more to be overlooked/underplayed by the victors who write them.
Thought crime is alive and well! It is punishable by life in prison. Self-censorship equates to self-preservation and self-preservation comes at the expense of the great majority of the human and non human worldly inhabitants. I apologize to the rocks, soil, trees, birds, reptiles, mammals, and air for not speaking up enough. For not acting up enough. But of course, apologies are never good enough and they should never be.

“Believe the lies, before your eyes, credit cards and apple pie”

10126758 Jayson Tx

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Check Mate

It started with six bars of soap, one cup, one spoon, some coffee, and a fragment of string. Between the carving out of pieces with the backside handle of a disposable white plastic spoon, the molding of equally more pieces with the excess soap shavings and the dying of half the pieces with a stain made from a thick coffee past, six days worth of doing time flew right on by. And on the seventh day, we played chess. The chessboard was penciled in on the flipside of a large storage bin container. The white pieces had a robust smell of soap, while the marbled brown pieces had a lingering coffee scent. Without a doubt, the queens on both sides stole most of the board’s spectators’ attentions. Merciless is the only word to suitably describe the intensity of their presence on the board.

For the next two months, the pieces engaged in many hundreds of battles. Constructed from a material more fragile than glass or marble, some damage was incurred during these ferocious contests. One of the white rooks looked as if a corner of its towers had been blown to rubble by an enemy catapult. One espresso colored horse had lost an entire ear as if the other side’s knight had taken a lance to it. Where the opposing pawns stood in almost perfect uniformity, one brown pawn gained a slight bloatedness as if possibly showing signs that he was the regiments ordained cook. And finally, the white king stood tall but flawed, lacking a tooth on his grand crown as if a bolt from an enemy’s crossbow damaged it in a nearly successful assassination attempt. In a world of mass consumer, assembly-line, plastic chess pieces, these soldiers, royalty, and clergy had some unquestionably unique character to say the very least.

Many prizes were won as a result of some of those battles. Most likely, a side might lose a single pre-stamped envelope or a preservative-laddened, cheese-less, cheese Danish with a shelf-life that makes a package of twinkies seem rapidly biodegradable. But there were a few costly battles in which the victor might acquire an entire $4.15 bag of child-slave harvested instant Nestle coffee, or where the defeated side would forfeit three days worth of breakfast trays. Personally, I never won anything more than experience, but damn, do I have a vicious game now.

The pieces, when retired from fighting, would stay inconspicuously hidden inside a frosted white plastic cup with tight fitting lid. Even during many jailhouse blitzkrieg shakedowns, they never once attracted the attention of contraband fiending correctional officers. But that would all change on one fateful morning.

Incredibly fitting, that morning I was awoken from a dream in which I was a small child in a Jewish family during the Nazi Occupation of Poland. I went from dreaming about a Gestapo raid, to find two very real Gestapo like characters forcefully rendering my cell to an early morning surprise shakedown. Their faces were unfamiliar and the tone their words took to was one of extreme sarcasm. They found the cup and with it, the contents it dearingly held. They then interrogated me about the means to which I carved and dyed the pieces. They wanted me to confess to cutting and shaving the soap figurines with an illegal razor blade, but I continued to contest that my only means was a length of string and a plastic spoon. Before the interrogation tired, two to three pieces at a time, the chess set was taken from the safety of its homely cup and casually placed into the side pocket of one of the guard’s mock military, navy-blue, commando pants.

Throughout the rest of the morning, a number of dedicated chess players and myself vigilantly tracked and followed the bulge in his side pocket, hoping to witness the protusion against the pants’ fabric disappear. If his pockets did deflate, it meant that our pieces, my beloved creations, had made their way into the garbage can behind the guard station. We already began the plans for a real world, covertly militaristic operation to extract them back in an act of defiant reclamation. But the bulge remained an obvious apparel accessory for his entire eight hour shift. A couple chess-playing inmates distastefully and unfruitfully begged and pleaded for him to leave them in the garbage oh his way out of work. Yet each time, wordless, he only replied with a convincingly despicable grin.

After being un-racked from the afternoon shift change that acted as his dramatic exit to stage left, we asked the more familiar guard, officer Senger, about the officer he had just relieved. Officer Zeena was the superfluous name of the swindling swine responsible for stealing our hand-crafted soap chess pieces. Senger explained that Officer Zeena continually brags about auctioning off jail-house contraband on the internet for a plush in-between paycheck lining of his pockets. Knowing the artistic integrity of the pieces, being that he had caught us playing before, Senger in a futile attempt to comfort us, reassuringly stated that officer Zeena the fuck face would probably earn $300 or more off of our jail-house chess set. He continued to tell us how Officer Zeena that shit bag, in an attempt to increase his auctions values, would create harsh and false back-stories about riots in which the items he stole and auctioned off were supposedly confiscated during.

It breaks my heart. All of it. The whole ordeal. Even the knowledge that, as inmates, we are out of a chess set to play countless more games with is unbearably saddening. Even more depressing is the notion that some Obama-worshiping, rich liberal, chess fanatic will win, the now auctioning chess set and then place them as brut artifacts, incarcerated to a shelf in his den or office. Never to see another battle again, two contending groups of mercenaries will minimally act as a reminder to some mid-level, Prozac-popping accountant that his professional occupation offers him the ability to afford such luxuries, on top of his guaranteed full medical benefits and transferable 401K retirement plan. Perhaps the most disastrous and sickening thought of the whole jail house debacle is the knowledge that Officer Zeena the good-for-nothing scum face will most likely be purchasing in excess, some name brand, over-priced, cancer causing chewing tobacco, to accompany cases upon cases of some commercialized, over-rated, piss tasting brewskies and all at the expense of inmate jailhouse ingenuity.

But instead of wallowing in the civil injustices of abusive power structures, I think I’d much rather start subversively widdling away at those same abusive power structures. Because it’s only a matter of time before the alienated and disempowered exclaim to their faultering oppressors, “Check Mate!”

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

The Anti-Retirement Treatise: the transposed remains of a Jimmy Buffet and The Clash fatal head-on collision car crash

Don turned 46 today. Incarcerated, with no letter or hallmark card sent from the place he once called home; the only birthday gifts he received was a few congratulatory, homophobic-driven, replacement-for-hugs, masculine-reinforcing, pats on the back, along with a $1.35 bag of oatmeal-less, oatmeal and raisin cookies (1) from Curtis and two over-sized shots of unfairly traded, plantation grown and slave harvested coffee (2) from yours truly. To be fair, the cookies did have raisins, even if they were listed under all the carcinogenic preservatives as the last ingredient.

Don, not as in Don=the godfather, but as in Don=the early retiree from the harsh weathered reality of northeastern Washington, has become one of my jailhouse buddies. After running moonshine, dandelion wine, and other mischievous brews for twenty some-odd years, Donny left his 4th generation Washington rooted family for a warmer Autonomous future. And so, a dozen or so years ago he made his way to the south Texas coast.

A couple years after arriving, Don could no longer justify the necessity of paying for a home in such a fair-weathered climate, consequentially adding his name to the short list of people I have met who willingly decide to become and remain homeless (3). Once lessened from the burden of rent, Donald then realized that bosses as well as landlords were to become a thing of the past. Sure he takes upon an occasional pay-for-labor task to in return treat himself to the occasional luxury, like the addictive coronary-clogging, life’s too short, corner-store hot dogs or the megalithic, 64oz high fructose filled to the brim, thirst-quenching, years lessening, fountain soda. But for the most part, he refuses work and enjoys his anti-retirement, “semi-charmed kind of life.”

One of the few people you’ll ever find at a downtown library willingly wanting to read – as opposed to the mass majority of folks who populate such places in either an attempt to steer clear of the “Anti-poor so the rich can get more” police brutality reach, or the kids forced to write research papers while being unconsentingly stuck under the oppressive and suffocating hands of compulsory education’s dream-smashing brutality. Don will check out a couple of books and take them to a nearby park to read in between naps.

Don, Donny, Donald, will be locked up for a total of 256 days as an institutionalized form of pentenance for the offense of creating his own anti-retirement, against the establishment, unplanned paradise (4). Of course now locked-up in the serious hazard to your health, Nueces County Jail, it is Don’s love for literature and high fructose sweetened, artificially flavored, fruit punch beverage that keep him mostly sane. In his already one hundred and some odd forty days of time served, Donny has read close to a grand total of a hundred and some odd books (5). His unrelenting requests for new literature out of the jailhouse “library” (more honestly read as the hallway closet full of books to which no inmate has direct access to) is without a doubt the only reason unit 4-P ever sees a change in our book selection.

Donald, although by profession – or lack thereof – a hobo, cannot for the drunken life of himself, grow the respectable and stereotypical homeless, sun bleached beer-scented beard. Instead, he compromisingly rocks a mustache that looks as if it had been imported from Denmark and a decade old beard, that through its own self-determination and resistance against all authority, remains seemingly well trimmed and kept, making neither the use of scissor nor razors an immediate or far-fetched threat (6).

All of this time being forcibly kept locked away in a large concrete, compartmentalized box has not waivered his anti-retirement, future investment plans one single bit. If anything it has done just the exact opposite. It has been megabyte of memory added onto an already overfilled and practically crashed hard drive that he calls his past life. A soon to be outdated file, inventoried in the folder marked hard times then effortlessly dumped in the trademarked desktop icon reserved as the place for memories trashed. The only thing that can rival his love for a fresh salted breeze and coastal bend fishing, is his undying hatred for recycled stale air, that has long since been bludgeoned to death by the miracle of central air-conditioning.

Within staying true to his anti-retirement, consistent as the scales of a chameleon philosophy, the first investment he plans on making, after being released during next year’s February, is the easily acquisitioned blanket and jacket. His first stop is the thrift store, where he says he plans to say “thank you” before defiantly fleeing out the glass and steel framed door (7). His second destination will be the local Salvation Army or Good Samaritan, where after asking for a bed and blanket, and once in possession of then acquired blanket, he plans on exclaiming, “fuck your scabies filled bed!” as he quickly proceeds to the nearest fire exit (8).

It seems that sleeping under mesquite and oak trees while fishing his days away in the Gulf of Mexico’s increasingly absent marine biodiversity, is exactly how Donald, age 46, plans on spending the rest of his south Texas anti-retirement (9).

#10126758 AKA Jailbird-J

Footnotes:

(1) As much as it may seem I’m joking; the honey-less honeybuns and oatmeal-less oatmeal and raisin cookies are very much real. But to give the producers of such fine gourmet toxics the benefit of a marketing scheme doubt, they do actually state on the package of cookies “oatmeal and raisin flavored (in small print) iced cookies” and the term honey bun is only the common term we inmates and the guards use to refer to the cleverly titled “ICED MONSTER BUNGEZ.” I shit you not.

(2) Nestle brand Nescafe Instant Coffee. Research it if you don’t believe me. Nestle is fucking baby killing swine.

(3) That is, in as much as someone can make choices, locked in chains and under the reign of industrial capitalism.

(4) His actual offense was violating probation by being homeless and publicly intoxicated.

(5) This is an estimation being he reads through at least 5 books a week.

(6) Poetic clarity – for 10 years, his beard without ever trimming has stayed under 2 inches.

(7) Having said this one day jokingly conversing, I suspect just like other lifelong thieves he will walk out the doors more inconspicuously.

(8) This is an event he claims to have already happened on a number of occasions and stating plans to do again.

(9)He actually referred to his homelessness as “retirement” and the “anti-retirement” label was super imposed by me; not only as a poetic scheme but also in an authoritative and illustrative attempt to inspiringly set apart his fuck work – fuck rent mentality from the all too typical and depressing American “me!me!me!” retiree.

(10)So there is no ten and these footnotes had no real intended purpose, except maybe an after the fact notion and explanation of I try to be ridiculous yet maintain an honesty. By “an honesty,” I do not mean objectivity, because fuck all that noise!

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Friday, September 25, 2009

Alyssa,



You might know this but one of my biggest hero’s lives in your home state of California. She is this amazing weed that has been wreaking havoc on the industrial farmers of Cali. In a couple of weeks, her roots can dig further down than 20 feet. Even Mousanto’s worst successful herbicide “RoundUp” is a useless weapon against her persistence. She is what science calls a super-weed. She has been taking over complete fields all through Cali. She shows up on the worst destroyed and depleted soils. Soils so damaged that nothing else can grow in them without a massive cocktail of chemical fertilizers. With roots so extensive she keeps the soil from being washed or blown away. She’s slowly bringing the soil back to life, so that it can eventually support more life once again. In a few years, capitalism, industry, progress, science and greed will find a chemical harsh enough to kill her. But before she dies she will release millions of seeds. Those seeds are her children and only a few will make it. Those that survive will change at a rate faster than any human can study or stop them. They will become the newest warriors against civilization and will resist with more passion than even their mothers before them. Civilization not only tries to poison our bodies, but also our spirits, our feelings, our lovemaking. I fight back every time I make love, every time I feel, every time I breathe. And I will continue to fight even after I die. Even as I decay and break down I will continue to fight. I will die on the frontlines. I will die fighting for those barely surviving soils. Eventually, I will die to become food for those warrior weeds and eventually I will become those weeds and for centuries to come I will fight back in many forms, and eventually I will win and eventually we will all win. Since childhood, my favorite flower has been dandelions.

With all the love my raging heart can beat,
Jayson Tx

Written from the Douglas County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Dear FDA (but not really),

One time I was so hungry I ate something that contained thiamine mononitrate, monoglycerides, ascorbic acid, calcium sulfate, azodicar bonamide, color, preservatives (calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, TBHQ, sorbic acid, tocopherols), food starch modified, sodium steroyl lactylate, sodium phosphate, calcium carbonate, propylene glycol, triglycerides, sodium hexameta phosphate, ethyl alcohol, BHT, fumaric acid, blue 1, red 40, titanium dioxide color, sodium casienate, ammonium sulfate, sodium acid pyrophosphate.

That was just the stuff I don’t even know exactly what is….

I imagine two things might even be good for me but the simple fact that we can go our whole life digesting this stuff never questioning it all… is well, insane! Is well… who says that? Maybe I’ll blame all the poisons in my body the same way Tara said Marilyn Manson made me do it.

To ingredients that sound like jet fuel boosters,
No longer inmate #10126758

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Dear Friends,

One time for breakfast I at ½ cup of eggs made from a powder, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter that was so old that it turned into powder and ½ an orange. Then for lunch I received a single 2-3 oz soy/hamburger patty. One time I was told I was being provided an adequate and balanced diet plan approved by the State and created by a dietician. Remember that on time Nueces County Jail was full of it? Eh. I don’t think I even like writing about it although I feel the need to vent or something because every time “chow” time comes I can feel myself getting angered.

I will be glad to be going to the much worse state jail facilities, at least they have an actual process for inmates to aggrieve, of course no one probably listens but even an at’a boy would be nice right now.

Lacking food and therefore lacking energy, I’ve been laying around a lot, idling, loafing, or what have you. Most of the time I’m thinking about things to write and stuff like that, but I’m starting to get what I can only define as day-mares. Sometimes I close my eyes and images or a short nightmarish dream will play through my mind. Sometimes it’s not even as tangible as that… I’ll just be sitting and I’ll be overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of fear or endangerment. I wonder if this feels like what a woman feels when she walks a dark street at night; or when a dark person finds themselves “on the wrong side of town” and has the eyes of 200 angry ghosts staring at him; or how a deer feels when she hears the first gunshot of her life; or how salmon feel battering their heads against concrete that is preventing them from returning to their home to continue on life with their death; or how a sex worker feels when she sees a John pay her pimp the extra dollar so he will not have to wear that silly condom; or the feelings a junkie gets when he’s coming down off of a 3 month high into a world that’s still spinning way too fast for him to handle; or the feelings his girlfriend gets a week later, after their biggest score, when he is having “trouble waking up;” or is it the feelings of the 72 year old lady every time she sees the spotlight from a chopper above flying through her neighborhood; or maybe it’s the feelings of her next door neighbor, the single mother, who can hear the gunshots enter the living room where her child is watching cartoons; or is it the SWAT officer’s overwhelming feelings as he shoots into the wrong house for the 3rd time this week wondering if he’ll make it home to his wife and baby that night; or is it the feelings of ancient air being crowded out and poisoned by chemicals and industrial waste; or is it the feelings of ancient soil and ancient waters suffering from the same; or maybe it’s the feelings of a dolphin being entrapped by something she does not know is called a net; or the Chinese man working on the troller dragging the net as he thinks of his brother who got washed overboard the week before and of his cousin who worked for three months and then was still denied a paycheck; or could it be the feelings of their Grandma as she makes her way from the electronics landfill that use to be her farm land; or of her husband’s feelings as he sees for the first time computers, LCD’s, LEDs, Plasma screen TV’s and men who walk around carrying guns as they make their way into the city. Of course it’s a feeling of dread, but I can’t even imagine it being as dreadful as the feelings from all of those I just listed. Still, I can’t help but to notice that all of these feelings are birthed from the same problem. I’m not trying to project, create, assume, presume, or establish false realities. I’m simply trying to relate. Here’s to surviving this dreadful culture.

Here’s to their death. In the name of our health.

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Interdependency over Codependency

With a new pen and some fresh words sent straight from the heart, I’m ready to spit fire. I really believe there are significant differences between interdependency and codependency. The most radical belief in their differences is that interdependency is real and codependency is not. I started a radical health mental zine dispelling codependency before getting locked up.

Codependency started, was established as a term to describe the conditions, the material reality in which battered and abused women suffered from at the hands of men with substance abuse issues. It went from a term of explaining a situation to becoming the reason, or more appropriately the scapegoat for those men and their personal culpability. Victim blaming 201. Because these women gave love, gave money, gave and stayed, they perpetuated the beatings; if they were to leave the men would stop beating. Men only beat enablers. The men aren’t guilty, just products of their surroundings. Now codependency is so openly vague that it pretty much covers any dependency. Counselors in the 90’s realized that people are so brainwashed to accept specialization and authority (or professionalism) that they will take advice that even seems so incredibly wrong as long as it comes from an authority. Clearly authority figures have been capitalizing on this fetishization of over specialization for centuries but for psychology it’s become really bad in the last 20 years.

Anyways, long story short, you can train a counselor over a weekend workshop (you decide which hotel conference room) to learn the language (no matter how deceptive and wrong) of codependency and then they can cure most of America (or the industrialized world) of its inflictions (caring, loving, longing for reciprocation, did I mention caring and loving).

My Mom drank and my brother used drugs and so now I only look for people with problems to “fix” them. I further perpetuate abuse by telling my Mom “I love you and I wish you’d quit drinking.” I should say, “I will be able to allow myself to love you once you quit drinking.” Control. Control. Control. Unconditional love becomes the disease not the substance abuse… Damn I forgot, long story short, codependency is beyond wack victim blaming, over simplification, problem solving.

Codependency is Ayn Rand’s wildest dystopic erotic fantasy on steroids. Individualism, selfishness, and conditional reward based affection are the altruistic goals of the codependency model.

Remember when the world, ecosystems, animals, the cycle of life and death was based on interdependency? Remember when humans and their ancestors were interdependent on not only one another but the rest of the natural world for millions of years? Remember when humans were social creatures and part of survival meant relying on social well being? Remember when I asked a bunch of rhetorical questions to get across what I was trying to say?

Case in point (I don’t even know what that phrase means); why interdependency over codependency, three words, Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.”

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Most of the posts from jail are not in chronological order. I have been typing the letters he's sent to me and posting them whenever I can get internet access. Enjoy!

Dear Department of Justice,

Today you came to Nueces County Jail, the facility I am currently incarcerated at, to give your “National Inmate Survey.” You sent or hired individuals to come interview about 350 inmates in a jail with a population of over 1,000. Furthermore, you stated that you plan on doing similar surveys at about 500 facilities Nationwide.

Your consent form states that, “The results of this study MAY help improve the condition and well being of inmates in correctional facilities across the nation (emphasis on may is mine, not yours). It also explains that “The purpose of this research project is to estimate the numbers of inmates who are sexually assaulted in prisons and jails each year.”

Unfortunately, I am writing you today to let you know that you can add one more to the already staggering numbers of inmates who have tragically been sexually assaulted during their incarceration. Of course, in your cold statistical survey percentages, this individual assault will not even change your numbers a fraction of a percent. The assault actually occurred during the same exact time you were requesting inmates for your survey today. The already well understaffed jail was having a significantly hard time fulfilling your requests for potential surveyees, giving the perpetrating inmate an ample amount of time to assault the victim. To better your statistical understanding, in our own unit, the on duty corrections officer spent a collective one to one and a half hours sending and collecting people to your survey. Furthermore, the survivor of this assault happens to be the only openly transsexual person in our unit, and her earlier requests for protective custody had been brushed off by jail staff.

After consulting with the survivor-inmate, I have promised to keep her identity anonymous as she only has a few more days left to serve and does not want any amount of individual or systematic blowback for whistleblowing on an already traumatic experience. Also, out of my own fear of receiving some sort of “terrorism,” sedition, or defamation charge, I by no means am nor would I ever, insinuate or state that any government branch or office is liable for this rape. Also, I would not dare state that this is a tragically precise example of the institutional failure in your self-fulfilling, self-interested, self-perpetuating, bloated and bureaucratic monopoly on violence. I would further like to ass that as a God-fearing patriot of this amazing nation – one that was proudly founded on the genocide of entire native populations and economically fueled for over two centuries by the exploitation and enslavement of even more human beings – that I undyingly support every racist, classist, and insane policy created and enforced to make this beautiful country the world’s leader in incarcerations and state-sanctioned executions. But before moving on, I would like to clarify that in your own laws (legitimate of course, only through the monopoly of violence that you, the State, uses for enforcement; in other words, your rules because you have the guns to say so), you have explicitly stated, that for better or worse, you will assume all legal responsibility for the protection and well being of these inmates while incarcerated.

So, as an ex-economics major and community college dropout, I have learned through the years a couple things that might interest you. The first would be, how to effectively run a black market gun and drug running operation. Oops. Wait, I actually learned that from you, the United States Government, in History 1302, during the section on the Iran-Contra Affair. The second thing (really, I guess now the only thing) I learned while studying economics is that statistics are ALWAYS used by their two largest producers, for profit corporations and governments to even further legitimize and justify their claims to power (as if force was not enough). Through the use of deceptive and limiting language (such as words and terms like “only,” “some,” “way below,” and “comparatively), the facilitation of only selective statistics (lying through omission is still lying), even within the carefully scripted manner on how statistics are displayed (for example, stating that “Only 22% of those currently incarcerated admit to being sexually assaulted,” instead of more explicitly stating, “660,000 of the 3 million currently incarcerated inmates, or almost 1 in 4, admit to being sexually assaulted during incarceration, but the total number of unreported assaults would bring this number even higher”) your statistical narratives will only paint a rose-tinted portrait of correctional facilities. Once again, but in different words, these are the same facilities that you have an oversigting responsibility to fulfill all inmates’ constitutional guarantees while under state incarceration. This is not an attempt to accuse you of, now or ever, purposely misconstruing or outright manufacturing “the facts” to rationalize or justify your actions, or sometimes more fundamentally destructive, your inactions. That would be as horrible as establishing unfounded and false pretenses for a war (like the existence of weapons of mass destruction), which you have never been accountable for, so that must mean you are not guilty of doing such dishonest things. But then again, look for who is in charge of the accountability process or even the accounting process for that matter. Wait, there is an accountability process?
Okay, so I guess my real intention of writing this letter is not to give you a lesson in either economics or statistics (by looking around at the current financial situation, it seems you already have that one down perfect). My intentions actually come from the much more frustrating by honest standpoint of being locked up behind bars. Honest, because I actually admitted to my actions (so, how many coups and assassinations does the C.I.A. have under its belt now?). Frustrating, because the internment, belittlement, suffering and countless other harmful implications of my being incarcerated, have no more meaning to you than the tax margins on a capitalistic end of year accounting spreadsheets. Marginalized by statistics, then branded with an 8-12 digit inmate identification number, we become no more than data in computers, which is then printed out on yearly congressional reports, that end up being not only double the size of San Antonio’s completely un-abridged phone book, but also about twice as useless. Reports demanding the same thing annually; more tax dollars and harsher sentences; a reduction in prison education programs and more control; less inmate’s rights and more greed; less nutrition in the food and more power; ultimately producing lesser human beings.

Some would say that there are only two major distinctions between you and the Nazi’s. The first simply being that while the Nazi’s exclusively used only IBM computing machines, that you further perpetuate an illusion of free markets with purchases from Dell, Compaq, HP, Macintosh, Acer, Toshiba, etc. The second is that while the Nazi’s systematically eliminated Jews, gypsies, gays and other minorities; inside ghettos; packed on to cattle-cars; shot with rifles and machine guns; and by Zyklon-B gas chambers disguised as showering rooms; that you, the U.S. Government, are only systematically murdering poors, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, among other minorities; inside ghettos, hooked on government trafficked drugs; shot with police issued handguns and tasers; and death caused from old age and stress from fighting within a trap of probation, jails, and a lack of property rights, if we’re a part of the lucky ones; or if we are not so lucky then it’s death by parole, prisons and the loss of all rights.

You hold the power to take away one’s rights at anytime, such as the right to vote or the right to a fair trial. You instead replace them with the rights of all white juries; drunken public defenders; racist judges; three-strike laws; mandatory minimums; private, for profit, maximum security detention facilities; a bastardization and crumbling of due process and habeas corpus; and parole and probation violations that are as arbitrary as not being able to find work as a felon; or successfully renting a residency as a felon; or establishing a line of credit with the local phone company as a felon, just in order to have a landline to hook your monitoring bracelet into each night. And who the fuck, in America, still can rationalize a landline when cell phones are sold at Wal-Marts, Safeway’s, and Dollar Stores for only $9.99; an amount that is less than a tenth of a percent the true cost of total ecological destruction caused by the ridiculously obscene manufacturing of cell phones; or one hundredth of a percent less the cost of medical expenses from the economically coerced slave-wage laborer, that could never actually afford the luxury of a hospital or health care, so instead incurring the ultimate cost of or price of numerous cancers; yes, the same precious gift of cancer that is continued to be passed down through a poisoned land base and water table, onwards to their children and countless generations to follow; all while the necessities of food and drinkable water are being denied to those same newborn children through so called “necessary” U.S. economic sanctions; running concurrent with IMF and World Bank imposed mandatory repayment plans on loans, that those same people never saw a dime nor even a penny from; making the countries that those same people reside in, labeled so obscurely in global economic indicator terms as, net food exporters, but in more honest words, food robbed from the poor to be given to rich world’s landfills; all while, CCIA propped up military dictators run to offshore banks with billions in profits swindled from those same IMG and World Bank’s loans that are now seeking repayment (and interest) of another way of saying, holding hostages, in the form of destition and starvation; the same exact Caiman Island offshore banks that double as tax shelters, for many of world’s largest multinational corporations, from the burden of “unfair” and “harsh” United States corporate tax laws,; laws that are overlooked by U.D. lawmakers and the lobbyists who own them, in order to reallocate funding from schools, healthcare, and other social programs into financial bailouts and economic stimulus plans; plans that end up benefiting the same tax-evading corporations with tax payer dollars amounting into the trillions; all under the flag of freedom, free enterprise, free trade, and freeways only for those house servants that can afford to cash in their clunker for a more gas efficient, ethanol-burning, hybrid SUV; burning up the same ethanol produced from the heavily tax-subsidized corn, that use to be sent overseas as food rations from U.S. Aid; all while the U.S. claims to aid “backwards” countries forwards into freedom and democracy, with its leaders like a broken record repeating freedom and democracy, freedom and democracy, as they continue to “liberate” poor countries to much more manageable sizes; with the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs, wars, when properly managed can increase the cancer rates while decreasing the voting rates which makes for a better transition into the democracy of industry; So, once these war stricken countries become stable enough for business, the same multinational corporations make their way to economically enslave more of the world’s poor; among the many new sweatshop factories, is one that produces lithium ion batteries for prepaid cell phones, and another that produces clothing for Bob Barker’s prison supply industries; and of course, like any system of abuse, the cycle continues to perpetuate itself at the expense of most, for the delusions of a few.
Being that your job is to isolate and quantify very real world things into abstractable numbers, I don’t expect you to understand all of this, or any of it, for that matter. These things are all connected and not just by numbers. If you really were interested in “help[ing] improve the conditions and well being of inmates in correctional facilities across the nation,” you would not interview a limited few thousand inmates by computer survey and then expect to gain an understanding of the infliction, problems, concerns affecting over 3 million inmates. Instead you would interview all 3 million plus inmates, and not just without a survey with preset parameters, but actual interviews requiring an open dialog. Actually, if you really cared about any inmates, you would no longer be able to justify in words or numbers their ongoing internment under such a corrupt, insufficient and broken system.

But if you allowed yourself to care, you would no longer be able to justify waking up Monday through Friday, just to leave your own kids behind to then spend all day staring into a glowing box as it shoots out magical numbers and a paycheck twice a month. Is your salary worth the bloody perpetuation of oppressive wars abroad, repressive policing here at “home,” an overall enslavement of most human life, and all at a historically unmatched, irreversibly destructive exploitation of the land base that all life depends on? Is the best way to benefit your children to be away from them forty hours a week? Is that what you or they think?

Do they actually prefer self-medicating their lack of identity with television, cell phones, computers and video games? Instead, would they much rather prefer forming a substantial relationship with their father, who up until this point, they have grown up never knowing because he spends his day doing his part to the continuation of incarceration, a colder way of saying, keeping other fathers locked up away from their own families? Do you realize your daily monotonous tasks are inseparable from the nightmarish consequences of the larger institutions that through your career have used and pimped you? Do the answers to any of these questions scare you?

What’s your child’s favorite book? What was your favorite children’s book? Have you even had the time to share it with your own child? Can you imagine trying to read to your child during a ten minute visit, once a month, using a dirty plastic phone, because multiple plates of shatter-proof glass and bolted down prefabricated sheets of steel separated you? Have you ever even read any stories or told some of your own, to your child at night by their bedside? Can you imagine only being able to read to your child, by their graveside, all because one year earlier they were killed by a daisy cutter, that was unsuccessful in targeting someone who might have shared your religion, your neighborhood, your skin color, or maybe the only common ground you two shared was both being poor? Can you imagine not even knowing how to read because you were raised from factory to factory and now that your oldest daughter has just turned ten, she to will be forced into working just like you? Do these questions even affect you or are you so numb from booze, work, and T.V., that you stop yourself from feeling anything?

When was the last time you made love? Have you ever been overwhelmed with feelings while in another’s arms, or have you always just rated them on a scale of ten to one? Have you ever had to sit in front of a computer screen and listen to a manufactured voice, list out multiple choice questions about sexual assault? Can you imagine doing this after witnessing a cery real assault? Would you be afraid to tell the truth? Would it do any good if you had? Have you, yourself, ever been sexually assaulted? Have any of your children or significant others been coerced into such a traumatizing experience? If they had, would you even know, or would you just be at work? Would you place them in a freezing cold building, in front of a screen, with a computer voice poking and probing with dozens of emotionless questions, in hopes that you’ll be able to understand them better? Would you try to bribe them with a bag of 100 calorie mini-snack cookies to answer question after question? How, when, where, and with what were they sexually assaulted by? How hard was it? How long did it last? Did they take a bribe of a honey bun or ramen noodle soup afterwards? Did they bruise? Did they bleed? Did anything break or tear? Can you even imagine, you or anyone else you love, answering these questions to a computer with a robot voice, limited to only replies of yes-no, true-false, a) b) c) d)? Would it make it easier if you used the touch pad or touch screen? Would it make it easier if these questions were interpreted in Spanish? Can you imagine not knowing that at the end of the day, all of your answers were simply tallied up, equated out, and averaged to find a few numbers or maybe percentage? Could you imagine knowing any of this? Does any of this make you feel anything at all and if not, what will? What will it take for you to see statistics as a disgusting, inappropriate, warped and insane way of viewing the world?

Thanks for your time,
Inmate #10126758
Nueces County Jail

Written on 08.03.09

(Transcribed by Charity)

Alyssa...

Alyssa,

The Bahamas are nice this time of year; this vacation was very much needed. I heard a hurricane is headed here soon, so I figured our fly out on my private jet within the next couple days. Before I go, I hope to purchase more sweatshop produced souvenirs for some ridiculously cheap price. Nothing says the Bahamas quite like a “Made in China” authentic sombrero.
You know I called my accountant and they said the person renting out one of my condos was 3 days behind on rent. I called the cops and they said I have to wait 15 days to evict them. Can you believe the nerves of these so called peace officers? You can’t have people just not paying rent, that anarchy and we all know anarchy is the opposite of peace. Plus what about my profits, uhh! It’s so hard being rich.

I’m thinking about putting Steve, my youngest child in rehab. You know his coke habit has reached $300 a day. I mean when I was a kid, if I went over $200, my Dad would take away my BMW. Kids these days.

So I hope all is well with you, I mean not that I really care but I’m obliged to say nice things in letters like this, but really all I care about is me me me me me me me me; oh and don’t forget me. You know I used to pay for hookers, but now I find it much more enjoyable just to have sex with money. Man I love money as much as Jesus loves me.

Here’s to the next million,
Dr. Jayson Thomas III Phd L.M.N.O.P

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Jail riot

“The revolution will not be televised, an over-used but interestingly appropriate title for an unintentional play by play report on an almost full scale county jail riot.”


So for the first time being in Nueces County Jail, we the inmates held it down together, we had this particular shitty guard who was being an ass and coming up with dumb rules, one of which is we couldn’t change the channel on the T.V. (yes I know, give me convenience or give me death!). Anyways, it was because the guard himself was watching T.V. He admitted this to us saying that “We’ll watch what I wanna watch.” He also was looking for any excuse to rack us up (lockdown) probably so he can better watch T.V.

So anyways, I was watching a chess game (yes of course with my hand carved and molded soap pieces) and someone changed the T.V. channel and soon after the guard came in and unplugged it telling us all to “rack it up,” about 50 of the 70 refused telling him to call rank, so we can explain to them that he’s trying to watch T.V. instead of doing his job. Of course we were right and he refused to call and that’s when the showdown began.

In refusal of his orders, the T.V. got turned back on and channels were changed, people started getting on with their chess and card games. He came and unplugged it again so we all moved out to where the camera was the best angle and continued to yell and taunt him… he was scared and knew he was in the wrong. So he called in the JET (Jail Enforcement Team i.e. Jail SWAT) He told all of us to rack up but refused to open our cell doors (a dirty, dirty trick I might add). So we were all still out in the open when 5 guards with riot sized pepper spray cans came in ready to throwdown.

After a short standoff they realized it was not only a part of protocol, but in their best interest to pen our cells and at least give us the opportunity to rack down, and of course face to face with pepper spray, all but one of us did. So no riot, but we still flexed some of our strength which is more than I ever expected from my neighboring inmates who usually do a good enough job policing themselves and each other. We also without a doubt left an impression on the asshole guard. He will also have to justify to his superior why he called in the JET team, i.e. the equivalent of sending him to the principal’s office. Yes!!!

The one guy is still out there getting questioned by all the guards, and he’s still holding his own as best he can. I would have gave in already, fuck being called out and isolated like that. He’s going to have to receive some sort of punishment, because although he was in the right, he’s an inmate and it’s blasphemy to show the guards for the scum that they are. Plus, if they didn’t punish him, we would all know that we can get away with standing up for ourselves. So, fuck T.V. but I’m glad something was a catalyst for this showdown. After each sentence I write, I get up to go check on the inmate still getting questioned… so if this sounds scattered it’s because it’s still very much happening.

Five minutes have passed and things have settled some, they took the inmate out of the unit, and now they are P.R. Bonding (letting someone go free) the wife beater because the jail has reached over-capacity. Fuck that! Half of these inmates are on lesser non-violent drug and property offenses but of course they let the wife beater go. Then again, in our culture, wives and children are just as much property as a T.V. or probably valued at even less. It’s only called domestic violence in name not in definition. It’s an illusionary term to appease the masses, to make it look like they are holding violent perpetrators accountable.

It’s amazing how any one hour of being incarcerated will foretell the disgusting hypocrisy of those in power. Even that’s not right. Hypocrisy assumes they are going against their self or stated interests and those in power are safely hidden well behind these hourly and salaried grunts. The struggle to stay in power rages on. We just got unracked, and I’m going to go see if I can find out if that one inmate is okay.

15 minutes have passed and in a typical “abuse of power” (once again an illusionary term to appease the masses, whether we see it that way or not, they hold an unaccountable and self-justifying monopoly on violence), the prison guards are running through the rule book to justify their actions, after the fact. Still no word on the inmate, or what kind of punishment he faces, the only thing for sure is that he will face it. Fuck incarceration!

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)