Radical Sentimentalist

The Wind and The Wanderer

2011-05-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

She's a wanderer

the type that has all other creatures frozen in moments fond of her

a beauty that has mockingbirds directing original compositions of never before heard songs inspired by her

a sweetness that has admirers admonishing the quietest enduring longing for her

...longer and longer the pain will beckon in absence of her

as shorter and shorter the days become without the presence of her

she runs away as if and with the seasons passing

never taking root but always leaving behind an unfathomable everlasting passion

She's a wanderer

sometimes leaving those enamored with her in a whirlwind of uncertainty

yet, unfailingly, every year the snails come out still looking for a sign of hers

because she dreams up the rain that keeps them from getting too damn thirsty

shes the waterfall converting the icy winter snow into an overflowing ever-bearing and over-descriptive greenery

ever expanding the resiliency of colors within the simplest and most complex of forest scenery

leaving most of whom she comes in contact with in a battle against a shortening of breath...

only to later, in absence, resuscitate and rejuvenate those with the lingering scent of lavender

She's the wanderer of wanderers,

so she flees with such celerity on top her calloused pawed feet

yet past her hardened bottoms is the gentlest creature radiant yet meek

her precious presence being the priceless present that she herself never quite gave an inquiring consideration into

because she's been too busy conflating the fearful feeling of not wanting the burden of loss with the feeling, the rush of an everlasting proliferation break through

still, she hides herself behind layers of cynical rocks and underneath a facade of numb ledges

still... overlooking a vulgar cliff

she tries to disconnect from this place that has birthed her

freeing herself from the gifts that her mother has graced her with

See, she's the wanderer who's become tired of wandering alone

still... sometimes she feels no more significant than a murky puddle

yet before the sun gets to settle the wind takes up a rebellious rebuttal

he wraps his welcome around her in replicating the warmest of bear embraces

exposed, her face bares a nakedness that's fragile but not quite broken

she closes her eyes and begins to feel the indulgence of a smile

all the while, the wind continues with his touch

moving feverishly about her goose-bumped turned skin

weaving refreshingly in and out her dirty copper toned curls

and in one whirl she turns on one foot to spin and spin and spin

She's always been a wanderer but now she'll never be alone

because almost as soon as the wind came he left again

but this time taking her with him

she's a wanderer, always has been, and now he's the wind that will forever accompany her

someone reworked rasberry crazy ants

2010-10-29T13:17:00.000-07:00

I don't get on the computer much anymore, so I don't update this much but here is something worth reading.

A zine based on a zine I made... imagine that. It's like I'm famous, and yes it's so hard being this famous and good looking. But for reals, read it, shits good!

crazy rasberry ants

Dandelions and Diamonds

2010-08-12T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am a dandelion,
resiliency birthed from within a beauty redefined,
I am the chaotic spits of yellow,
that ruin the trimmed green canvas of suburban yard design.

I bare within myself
A burning intent of revolutionary desire
with a flared windgust,
or from the wishes of a child's young breath, I conspire

So in time and in waves
throughout the weeks and months of days
like the regenerative wealth of a wildfire on a forest's well being and health

I stretch outwards,
simultaneously in two separate directions
down into the cold damp soil
and up into the warm skyline

But I'm not stretching for nothing
double negatives will always multiple to make a positive
so always remember that, there is no one way to grow
and so I grow

I grow radically rapid
from the roots of my rhizome; from the history of my home
from the seed that once played family
a genetic memory, a reason in this world for me to be.

but those who tower in power over me
only consider my growth to be:
terroristic to their hegemony
parasitic as their worst enemy, I'm labeled as:

as infliction upon man
and a disease upon the land

They label me an invasive species,
but they are the one's born from the bloodlines of colonizers, conquistadors, settlers and pioneers
they say I'm an illegal immigrant,
but if they were to follow their own logic and lies, that lie intertwined in law,
founded on the basis of property and ownership, they would soon see that
they are the one's on stolen land

They call me an undesirable,
and for once that might be considered a relatively good thing,
to not be directly sought after by Gilgamesh as he continues
his conquest to consume everything

They call me a weed,
and by that they simply mean, that unlike all my lost brothers and sisters
who, at one point, made the mistake, that I myself remain wild and refuse to domesticate

They label me an invasive, an illegal, an undesirable, a weed
but with cities outsretched, losing power, what do these things even mean?

She is a flawed and damaged diamond,
because she refuses to be shaved down and objectified,
hardened like so many other females from
the compounding pressures of carrying this world's weight

She has told me that, she has formed a self value that
cannot be, nor will it ever be,
anymore than her own bodily home
that's not to be confused with a homebody or a nobody
because no body except her's will own her body

her own body has been birthed from
the surrounding charcoal confines
it is within this blackness

she is able to find

resiliency
her own earthly sincerity
a one of a kind strength
that forms her one of a kind shape

flawed by only a curse of uniqueness
she defends her right to not be mined
refracting light with every bit her love and rage
she resists their attempts to make her intent to resign
to their bleak manufactured blood riddened design

She is an inseparable beauty, bonded and grounded into her ancient surroundings
she remains there, contained in the mines bought by her oppressors
battling to engrain in the mind's thoughts of her oppressors
that she refuses their attempts to:

extract her into ownership
abstract her into an object
they'll hit her, break her, shape her into
the desires of what a man wants

they'll evict her from her homeland
sell her affixed upon a wedding band
to be placed on the finger of another woman's hand
who might not yet quite understand
that she, too, is absolutely priceless
and doesn't need to do this

to be hit on
to be broke in
to be shaped thin
to be forced into
what a patriarchical fuck of a man wants her to do

Yeah... she may be a diamond in the rough
but it is this same roughness
that has made her the world's toughest
so under every axe blow they swing
she remains undauntedly
proclaiming utmost passionately

"YA BASTA! YA BASTA! Enough is enough,
I will not give in, I refuse to give up!"

So, it is not until civilization gives up the notion that
it is the fittest to survive
we, dandelions and diamonds, will vehemently fight back,
undeniably with the knowledge that
we are just but two aspects of a larger world fighting to decide

not if, but when and how
we are going to take them down

The Earth is still surviving, as she always has
beholden to her own great resiliency

and resiliance has become the downtrotters biggest weaponry
because resiliance will not even be found within the gifts of civilization's viral industry
for resiliance must be born from within one's own self identity,

like a diamond from within a bed of charcoal
or a dandelion from within its own seed
we are born from the resiliancy of the natural world, of a community, of a home, of a family

the sun has started to break through this cityscape of smog
giving me the warmth I need, to finally escape into growth.

fast track

2010-05-20T18:03:00.000-07:00

I got locked up for some really bad shit I did...

yet, with the years passing I was beginning to adjust

life in prison with no parole is a hard pill to swallow

but I swallowed it

then, newly resigned to my fate

my celly told me to swallow it

but I refused

so he grabbed me by the throat

and slammed me up against the back of the cell

so I fought back

and I fought hard

I saw a demon that night possess a man I knew all to well

when your doing a life sentence

you can't be someones bitch

so I fought back

and I fought hard

I killed a demon that night and regret the man who went with

but now justice has to flex its weight

so it weighed in

and I was weighed out

I killed a demon in self defense and now they say I must die too

because self defense doesn't exist on this side of those gray prison walls

at least not for us condemned to life

but I was always sentenced to a death of sorts

just one that had a few more years left

yet, now I'm on the fast track

with even less time to say goodbye

with even less time to say

*note: if a prisoner is facing life for a murder charge and he kills another inmate in self defense he can receive the death penalty. even if he is defending himself against rape. burn all prisons, break all cages

Womyn

2010-05-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

Womyn: an untold story 10-13-09

"Sometimes it's not the stories we tell that matter, but the ones that remain untold." - a quote from someone that I either mutilated and paraphrased, or simply just made up.

Womyn in my experience, seem to be the one's mainly responsible for making doing time survivable. I'm not talking about the Cosmo and Maxim photos of womyn completely objectified behind jail cell walls. When the male inmates are done masturbating to these superimposed images they trade them out saying "I done used that bitch allready." Of course, that is not the support I'm talking about.

The womyn i'm talking about have a strength, endurance, and beauty that probably surpasses any inmate in here. The wife who writes her husband everyday even if she doesn't have much to say. The grandma (abuelita) or aunt (tia) who unfailably puts $10 a week on their family member's commissary books, even though they themselves are on an incredibly fixed income. The mom's that come and visit every weekend, no matter what, even if they are missing out on the 12:00 pm Sunday bingo. The sister's who let their addict brother use their physical mailing address as a "residence," so that when they do get released they don't have to go to half-way house for yet another six months.

The 5 foot nothing, 160 pounds of real authentic southern black women who comes by everyday to see the towell wave from her 6 foot 3, red haired, 135 pound, swastika-tattooed boyfriend. She was the only one who cared long enough to teach him real love, one that is not predicated on institutionalize racist brotherhoods.

Or the 17 year old pregnant girl, who smuggles drugs into jail for her 18 year old baby's daddy, all because the voice on the phone says if she doesn't do it, her baby's daddy will be killed.

Or the ex-wife of the now recovering, good-hearted methhead, who continues to explain to their 4 year old son that his dad is sick and in the hospital, all so that he won't grow up ever thinking bad of him.

Or the girlfriend who adopts the son of the man she was prison penpals with all before the state put him down. A womyn who is now trying to raise his son to be a revolutionary, eventually giving him the knowledge and empowerment needed to fight against the murderous state and all of it's injustices.

But it goes past prison walls... to the multitude of womyn stories that will always remain untold. The one's who sacrifice going back to Him because she believed that it is what is best for the kids. The one's whom never go back to Him again, even though their biggest fear is never finding another partner again.

Then there is the mom who emails and phones her son's bestfriends so that they know updates on his case. The womyn who takes care of the kitten he unintentionally abandoned when the small town Reedsport cops kidnapped him. The mother that was forced to make an impossible decision, when both her son's had court on the same day and she made the decision to decide which one needed her the most. The womyn who was belittled and harrased by the district attorney, but never once gave into misrepresenting her son's character. Relentless love.

Then there's the womyn who are also currently locked up. The ones that receive three times higher sentencing for killing their abusive husbands, when compared to those abusive husbands that kill their wives. The womyn who face a much high chance of being violently raped while incarcerated. The womyn who will have to struggle more than men, once released form the pen. Because no one wants to higher a felon conivct, but especially a womyn felon convict, not to mention a person of color womyn felon convict.

These stories, their stories, fill ghost anthologies larger in size than entire congressional encyclopedia sets. I don't want to pit womyn against men, I just want to recognize my own inequality in storytelling. Thanks to those womyn in my life, who have made doing time everything but soul-crushing. Especially, thanks to my mom. I know -but cant fully imagine- how hard this is on you

against the patriarchy
who holds the keys
responsible for imprisoning me

Jayson Tx

* maybe in an attempt to be honest, or maybe just top use my own experience as example: The womyn in my life have written, acted, payed, and given more for and to me while being locked up. More than any of the important males in my life. Exponentially more.

** it would also be fair to note that those male-bodied friends that identify as queer and/or gender neutral have done more than those who identify as otherwise.

Months later, I recognize now that there are more factors to play into what people are capable of doing for their loved ones locked up. Some of the males in my life were having more emotionally turmoil over my incarceration (in as much as that can even be quantified). Some also had jobs, families, and other time consuming life sustaining things. Ultimately, looking at each person as a unique individual friend is way more meaningful and productive than setting up groups to judge or qualify. I can't describe the importance of each and every one of my friendships. But I still think the relevance of my writing this given my circumstances still stands. Not to mention, most people incarcerated are not supported by a radical community. Instead, they are supported by communities with strict gender roles and I see no harm in celebrating the struggles, strengths, and love of the one gender that appears more frequent in their personal support systems. But if I'm wrong, please challenge me.

rasberry crazy ants... an update

2010-05-17T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today I went and researched some more on my little crazy Rasberry ant friends. Of course, they are continuing to grow and reek havoc on more of industrial civilization. Its also official, they are now costing billions of dollars! anyways I turned the old story and new one into a zine. You can click on the link to find the complete Crazy Rasberry Ant Zine ... but if you don't have time to read the whole thing here's the newest part. enjoy and let me know what you think.

Update.

Swarms of rasberry crazy ants are still spreading through Texas and now Florida, raising alarms as they will soon rival fire ants which have ravaged the South, costing billions of dollars in damages each year.

Having ruined pumps at a sewage facility, computers, burglar alarm systems, and gas and electricity meters, the ants have accomplished their march to NASA’s Johnson Space Centre and Houston's William P. Hobby airport, putting federal officials in a frenzied panic.

According to an April, 2010 edition of the amazing and intriguing Pest Control Technologies magazine, “A major chemical company projects damages from this invasive pest to top $1 billion in its operations, and, had the Johnson Space Center not sought special consideration in its fight against the "crazies" in 2008, the critters could have feasibly brought NASA to its knees as well.”

But the battle at NASA and Houston area airports is still not over. Without daily vigilance and millions of dollars, the combination of summer heat and crazy ants could destroy both space shuttle communications and essential commercial aircraft electrical and computer components. This would endanger thousands of human lives and billions of dollars in machinery. Thank god Rush Limbaugh has disproved climate change, otherwise the war against the Rasberry ants in another record breaking summertime heat might be won by the ants.

As more is being learned of their organizational structure, we are starting to learn that they form federations, or supercolonies. A supercolony is made up of smaller collective colonies, in which the smaller individual colonies do not exhibit mutual aggressions toward each another. It is actually thought to be the opposite, that instead, the autonomous colonies work together in a sort of microscopic mutual aid. Each Autonomous colony is polyamorous, breaking from the myth of using a queen ant hierarchical organizational method. World renowned entomologists actually suspect the ants of polyamorous behavior, so in other words, nests upon nests of anarchic orgies.

Their presence has increased in suburbia, endangering the McMansions, lawns, and domesticated pets of the already struggling and depressed middle class. Their increased presence in industrial and corporate parks have some of the worlds largest multinational corporations investing collective billions against these little anti-capitalists. But not to worry, the Rasberrys are still waging an epic war on commercial bee farms.

More recent reports have shown that although the ants are known to have a sweet tooth, when robbing the bee hive's, these omnivorous ants prefer to eat the bee larvae before the honey. After killing or driving off all the bees, the ants then proceed to expropriate the hives for their own colonies. They may not be the only squatter ants in the world, but they have proven to be the most strategic and tactical.

Is anything lacking from the crazy Rasberry ant model for revolutionary change?

Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Technology, Anti-Military industrial complex, Anti-Authoritarian
Squatting and expropriation as main means of subsistence
A willingness to use guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and violence when necessary.
Resiliency to chemical warfare and inability to be pinned down by authorities
A sweet tooth, and from the looks of it, little ants that know how to party

I guess if anything is lacking, we will just have to keep a close eye on our six legged allies as they rack up the billions of money spent in unsuccessful attempts to eradicate them.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop!

Jayson Tx

dog soldier

2010-05-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

revolutionaries used to carry guns

now it seems they resemble something more close to bums

it use to be the in thing to know worldly affairs

now we all must be too consumed with our own internal despair

capitalism has won and it reigns over us

we no longer know what it means to say enough

so instead we enter our mid-twenties and just give up

give up, give in, give out that meager pocket chain solidarity

grow up, cave in, throw out everything we used to be about

anarchy means doing what whatever the fuck I want

so I'll eat my taco bell

autonomy means I have every right to kill myself

so pass me another two beers

I despise authority and abolish all morality

smoke them up with just one more pack

I'm not trying to say my addiction to poorly planned notepad poetry is any better

and just so you know... my self-righteous judgments don't help me sleep at night either

still higher spirits and desires is what I miss and I must admit

I have no fucking clue how to get them back

yet even now, with all of this

my friendships are one thing I will never lack

but I still cant help to see it's getting harder and harder

to hop scotch down this broken and shattered path just to get back

so stay close to my side my dear dear friend

as a canyon creating line draw its way across the dirt

stay so close to my insides that sometimes it hurts

because I've got a lot of questions to the answers we've been spouting

touting, shouting, pouting – or whatever it takes, I'll ask, I'll state

what are we going to do with our everything at stake

let me restate, my friendships are my everything

with dog rope and picket-pin, here I lay down my stake

-Jayson Tx

"Attached to each dog rope was a picket-pin [used to tether horses]. The pin was driven into the ground as a mark of resolve in combat. When a Dog Soldier was staked to the ground in order to cover the retreat of his companions, he was required to remain there even if death was the consequence. The Dog Man could pull the pin from the ground only if his companions reached safety or another Dog Soldier released him from his duty."

Dope Boy...

2010-05-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

Dope Boy just received a seven year bit on an aggravated assault charge. Short in stature with a hooked nose, he can easily be mistaken for a Jim Hansen puppet extra or an aging Coho salmon. To live up to his ballah status -to which the playboy bunny on his neck certifies him as such- he has his mom, a school cafeteria wage laborer, put obscene amounts of money on his books, so he is always ordering big and hard on commissary days.

In Big Boy style, sometimes he will go pick up his lunch or dinner tray -prepared by under-paid hard workers just like his own mother- and instead of sharing it with other hungry inmates, he simply dumps the whole thing in the garbage, all while exclaiming such filth as: "I don't need that food, I gots my own store" or "Man! Players don't eat that shit." When he's not making his mom pay $7 a pop to three way call his girlfriend, just to let her know how big of a ho, slut, or whore she is, he runs around looking for anyone that will give him the littlest bit of attention.

But if you observe this prick long enough -lets say, three weeks- you will find that he has a very big secret. If you pay attention after every breakfast and lunch, when the noise level from clean-up is still very high, dope boy makes his way to the toilet. At night, after eating a large $10 -$15 spread of ramen noodles, chips, tuna, nacho cheese, and mayonnaise, Dope Boy once again finds his way to the toilet behind his cell door. Its after that, that in staying up late you will hear someone throwing up a minimum of three times throughout the nights duration.

Dope Boy -self-described player, ballah, convict, drug dealer- suffers from Bulimia Nervosa, an eating disorder that effects millions of others. So why nothing can, nor should, justify his abusive and ludicrous behavior towards others, especially those he supposedly loves like his own mother and girlfriend, I cant help but to feel saddened when like clockwork, with the other inmates well asleep, he forces his two fingers down his throat to purge himself of much needed food, all furthering his self-hatred and self-destruction.

I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it will be if he ever decides to allow out his mouth the one thing he needs more than anything, not food, but a plea. An "I'm tired of hurting, can someone please help me."

Jayson

I think I was so intrigued with Dope Boy and his eating disorder because it made me realize that even the people who act the hardest sometimes have the largest cracks in them. It also isn't unusual for people to beg and plead their family and friends for commissary money to fund bad drug habits, but Dope Boy just very well might be the first one to, instead, fund an eating disorder. I also couldn't help but to me moved by the fact that this seemingly and outwardly aggressive and mean person actually hated himself as much or more than others... but of course doesn't this culture force eating disorders on all of us. For the third world it's the not having anything to eat disorder, while for the first it's consuming and wasting an uncountable amount of food. An as individuals we all suffer from our eating disorders, and by that I mean to draw from the much larger dysfunctions this culture forces on us.

When I wrote this, I also had no idea that at the same exact time i was criticizing Dope Boy's eating habits, i myself was forming an eating disorder that would put my body, brain, and feelings through all sorts of turmoil not just while i was locked up, but even once I got out. It's sometimes so hard to see your dysfunctions and disorders all while their trying their best to kill you, but the goal is to not let them. Don't let this fucked culture get the best of you. Don't let it kill you.

necrotic concrete veins

2010-05-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

dreams! I have never really chronicled my dreams. Well, by dreams, I mean nightmares, because those are the ones that most frequent me at night. But even now with each second I spend writing this I lose one more scene. And so I'm going to try and write with somewhat in detail and also in somewhat of speed. It's actually a repeat nightmare, though, most of my nightmares are. Not repeat to were every detail is the same, but the general overview and the dis-empowering, degrading, and frightening feeling they leave me with is. so here goes...

This one I've had before. Years before, months before, and even days before. It involves me as a fugitive (hah, imagine that), running on an underground railroad to flee further prosecution. Sometimes the dreams are more cartoon like, and others have a twinge of hilarity, but mostly they are filled with frightening, surreal, and intimidating circumstances.

It starts of with maybe my worst fear, even worst than going back to jail One of my friends gets caught shoplifting and finds themselves in jail. We decide to act quickly to defend those that we love and we start taking action to bail-out our friend. I'm already wanted, but we have to boost to get bond money. It seems like there's a tension between my close friends about this, but we also know of no other way.

So next, we all quite hesitantly make our paired and coupled ways into the commercial gateways of hell incarnate. We take to our teams of two very well dressed thieves, and enter the mall from all sides. For the most part its like stealing the icing off from a cake with a machete, and by that I somehow mean; easy for us camouflaged as Misses and Misters Unsuspectings to get what we need with an end result that becomes significantly disastrous for those corporations unlucky enough to have our crew frequent their shops.

But there's a problem. Duh! There's always a problem. Back when we were drawing-up verbal straws to see who gets what stores, I talked my way into tackling the two hardest ones. This of course goes against any sort of reasonable risk management, but again I find myself falling back into the martyr friendship role. It's a role that I know is unhealthy and even undesired, yet I still continue into the pattern of thinking that I can handle more threats or that I even deserve more risk.

I imagine any of my close friends reading this can think back to at least one time in real life in which I tried to act on this flawed and selfish form of logic.

But on the very last store, by some force unseen (as if there's really any other in this type of dangerous anti-work), another dear friend of mine, and my current crime partner gets slammed down at a store surprisingly standing tall in resemblance of every real world yuppies favorite recreational, sports, and outdoor store. They've been hit by us before. It seems like for decades actually. And almost instantaneously it seems like they began hunting for me. Somehow, in just seeing my friend there collapsed under the weight of many knees and fists on the floor, they knew I was there.

In a very short time -but one that feels like light-speed in overdrive to the tune of some multiple magnitude in the billions (ie. faster than the race between creationism and evolution and then some)- I began my futile seeming leap for safety. Talk about a relative term, who would of ever thought that some of the hiding places we thieves instantaneously devise while being chased is the epitome of safe. But for someone in flight, it's exactly that under the church, teeming with black widows, crawlspace, that becomes heaven. Dumpsters, rooftops, ditches, alleys, sewers, and even backyards with really large dogs become our safe heaven in times like those. Unfortunately for me, it was currently in the middle of a seemingly century long drought of creative and enduring hiding spots. So I continued to run and run and run.

Their forces definitely began to compound. The police were on the hunt, accompanied by -but not limited to- corporate loss prevention, private for-profit military type forces, almost mechanical like hounds, and the never ending, all-encompassing, ominous chain of dime-dropping, god-fearing, good Samaritans, to just name a few. It's a scary place to be, when SWAT Teams and nosey self-righteous Grandma's have as much control over one's ability to flee a crime scene. Of course, no one ever reflects on the scariest place of them all; this world in which we all must, at one point or a thousand other traumatizing points, make again and again the decision to not flee the scene of a crime or to continue on living. This culture has found almost every way to outlaw, ban, and criminalize, not only and true form of substance, but also any and all forms of meaningful sustenance.

As a kid, and confessedly even now, I don't know if I see the difference between the two, sustenance and substance, as both are required for living, and so sometimes I actually will find myself saying, typing, writing, or even just thinking of a word I made up called substanance. I think even in my last year of high school, I somehow was able to pass my English class with a final test in which I answered the cliché question of “What is the biggest goal you want to accomplish in life?” with none other than “a pursuit of substanance” essay.

But back to the nightmare...

It felt a lot like Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451. But even Ray Bradbury's over the top dystopia portrayal can't began to explain the mockery to which this megamachine has made from life. Perhaps to lighten the nightmarish blow of mockery, my mind came up with one mockery to sugarcoat all the rest we are constantly so forced to dream of. Because next thing I know, against my wildest dreams, but still very much within the dream I'm so shakily describing, I find myself obtaining refuge from within a Catholic Church. It's not quite clear, but they seem to all know about my history and I cant help but to notice the revere it.

Of course, I don't know what to make of this. Maybe just humor, or maybe it goes back to falling into the martyr friendship role mistake. A mistake I have so frequently made in real life. But regardless, I found my momentary safe space. In vivid and engrossing detail, an almost completely passed-out drunk, sprawling over a pew, puking out putrid spew priest explains to me a route to get to the outskirts of the city.

Before I know it, I'm in the suburbs of the city which in my dream have turned into the metropolis' worst hood (Now, don't tell me you didn't see that one happening. After all, what do you think gentrification is about?). So of course, my very incredibly white skin sticks out in this very dark neighborhood, increasing the difficulty in trying to remain safe. Not to mention I began the mental battle against racist insecurities, indirectly instilled in me from a youth of admiring the hardships of everything poor, urban, and black at a comfortable white lower middle class distance. It would be intellectually dishonest, colloquially speaking, to not admit to ourselves that imagery painted by the rap industry, the urban clothing monolith, and black film have not become our generations unequivocal equivalent to the once great “noble savage.”

The nightmare gets really bad. People everywhere are out to fuck me, and game theories like tit-for-tat have no relevance in dreams this crazy, nor even in schizo societies that inspire such dreams. I soon start fucking over everyone I can, even those ones out who I truly believe are helping me. Finally, I get out of the city. Finally.

But it doesn't end. Of course not. Not this nightmare. Just like in reality when you leave one city outward among one of the many stretching necrotic concrete veins that feed them, only to find yourself in yet another disgusting city, this nightmare doesn't deviate from the norm. Roads never lead to paradise. So, the nightmare starts over again. A nightmare inside of the existing nightmare. Everything intensifies. The cities become harder, the obstacles taller, and the air ever so thicker to breath.

It goes on like this for three or four cities. The same nightmare. The same bad guys. They are everywhere. And just like the perfect formula for a psychological thriller, the tone settles down. The sky turns from impossible dark, to slightly illuminated in the near distant. It feels like I'm getting away. It's the same exact feeling produced in the realist of real times that I have actually gotten away. It's comforting. Then finally as I'm exiting the dream triumphantly, I feel myself. I feel myself getting pulled back down. It's over and everything I'm feeling turns to dread.

I wake up. I wake up with tears burning through my eyes. I wake up at the highest pitch of a cry. It's myself crying, but it doesn't last much longer after I wake up. Then, the day comes or so it goes.

old stuff round 1

2010-05-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

here is the first bit of some stuff that never got posted while I was locked up... I think for the most part I'm going to keep this as true to the original content as when I first wrote them. In this one I originally included some footnotes, so yeah...

A failure of the Texas public defender system Oct. 17^th, 2009

Moments before court, Chris Iles, dim-wit attorney at law, was explaining to his client in an unreasonable, abstract, and undeniably foolish analogy to what his client was actually up against. 1 His infelicitous words, if anything, only delayed an unequivocal dereliction of not only the legal oath that supposedly bonds him to duty, but also any sensible intelligence one might have inappropriately assumed to find in him. The dialogue went as follows:

Chris: See, what you are asking for is like, well... it's like asking for a large pepperoni pizza when we are at a Whataburger drive-thru. 2

Client: What are you trying to say?

Chris: That you really only have three options. You could choose the Whataburger meal which would be 15 months at SAFP, 3 or the chicken strip meal which would mean 18 months, day for day, in State Jail, or you could get the Whatachick'n meal.

Client: And whats the Whatachick'n meal?

Chris: You go in front of the judge and swing yer own deal.

But then, From the ashes of a never once great public defender system, a phoenix takes flight...

Client: But what if I want the triple meat with cheese?

Chris: What does that mean?

Client: It means YOUR FIRED FOOL!

After firing Chris Iles, his client received a new attorney and eventually got a better much deal, 9 months in State Jail.

Texas does not have a true public defenders system, instead it pays attorneys -most of whom cannot find their own clientele- a meager fee ranging $300-$1500 to represent a defendant through any and all court proceedings.
Whataburger is a Texas based fast food chain. It was founded in the 1950's, in Corpus Christi, and comes second to none in Corpus' claim to fame, only to be beaten by Selena, who was born, raised, and murdered here, finally putting the dirty city by the sea on the map.
SAFP (pronounced Safe-P) is an utterly disgusting excuse for a peer-based rehabilitation facility. I and other inmates refer to it as Snitch-P because that seems to be the only life skill the inmates suckered into going there ever learn.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Stab-A-Cop

- Jayson Tx-

14 years and then some...

2010-05-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

a milk crate of memories
a milk crate of letters
a milk crate has surely become my most valuable possession
an unquantifiable love can be found scribbled in the margins
on the lines and in the headers of the pages stacked so chaotically in that little black milk crate
multiple voices some more frequent then others
some filled with more clarity
but all seeping with relentless and resilient love

essentially a little black milk crate that reminds me
a crate of words outweighing its weight in gold
outmeasuring itself in any possible or reasonable manner
a little meaningless crate that carried me through those horrible days in my life

but im scared to travel back down memory lane
scared to reflect on the tortures I faced
evermore scared of remembering the even more vicious tortures i was unwillingly playing witness to
i was witness to
i was witness to much
too much
i still witness too much in weekly recollections
nightmares while other people dream of kittens or things not so fluffy
but it's this crate of letters that carried me through
this crate that is now somewhere between an eyesore and artifact
this crate is somewhere between nuclear fallout and standing on the right side of rapture

this crate that ill never let go of

sometimes i had to wait over a week to receive a letter
to receive word from anything sensible
to receive any form of love or affection
i think even once my inmate correspondence drought lasted in upwards of two weeks
but even then
my absences of loving words cant compare to that in what i bared witnessed to

i bared witness to the remaining shell of a man
a man so fragile in his hardness
a skin fortified by fourteen years of not one letter or single visit from any living soul
five thousand one hundred and ten days
five thousand one hundred and ten days without an ounce of affection or love
how does one survive that ...

anyone out there

2010-04-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

well... even if there's not. im going to use this blog again and more frequently to consolidate thoughts and post shit i write..
welcome back to myself

2010-01-12T18:10:00.000-08:00

Today is the day Jayson got released from prison. True story.

Against All Odds

2009-11-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

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

Seagulls 08-31-09

2009-11-09T11:20:00.000-08:00

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.

To Whom It May Be of Interest

2009-11-02T21:10:00.000-08:00

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.

Wall Street Journal

2009-10-23T13:38:00.000-07:00

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)

Experience as Parable

2009-10-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-10-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

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!)

2009-10-21T22:44:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

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 4^th 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)

2009-09-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

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),

2009-09-25T13:41:00.001-07:00

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,

2009-09-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-09-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

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,

2009-09-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-09-22T15:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

“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)

Steve...

2009-09-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Steve is in recovery from what he hesitates to call the worst years of his life. It started with the disillusionment of being left in the aftermath of the first peak in the green anarchy movement.
Starting from the points where green anarchy had failed to answer, he flocked to the baptismal pool of academic understanding. Interpreting replaced experiencing, analyzing took priority over feeling and compassionate objectification secretly ousted subjective uncertainty in such a subtle manner that it went even more unrecognized than the most successful of CIA coups.

While entrenched in this world where the political is always separate from the personal; his intimate love life started to more and more resemble the aftermath of a 15,000 pound Daisy-cutter bomb dropped upon a small Afghani town; or more suitably a pioneer wagon circle around the piled corpses of tens of thousands of bison. Following in the same manner which the settlers did to the Indians, he inched towards relationships that destroyed him, the starving, as he desperately approached searching for any subsistence.

Soon armed with a liberal arts Bachelor’s degree, his metamorphosis finalized uniformed in fashionably tacky hipster clothing and a religious dependency on alcohol that makes a normal addiction look like child’s play. Realizing that his career options ranged from bad to atrocious, he signed up to be a soldier among the ranks in the United States government’s domestic cheerleading branch, Ameri-Corps.

He could not perceive this just quite yet, but analogous with the Vandals, Luddites, and countless indigenous before him, every self-inflicted attempt to defoliate his spirits and systemic defilement into assimilation was resisted by something fermenting insistently inside of him. So while this mischievous brew permeated through premature emotional negativity such as frustration, disappointment, depression and anxiety, his nervous childhood ticks came back to seemingly nullify his self-perception and self-esteem. Then unbeknownst, this brew left percolating grew darker and stronger, stronger and richer, richer and bolder, until in all its boldness it replenished his insurrectionary beauty, as if the first signs of re-growth from a much belated spring had finally arrived.

Like a rainstorm does to the aged and shredded layers of paint on a ran-down drug reddened dope house, he broke through the pieces of anguish and trauma built up from the previous days, weeks, months and years. In replication of how someone would eat an artichoke, he worked his way backwards through memory and emotions, peeling back pedal by pedal, going through layer by layer, digesting and internalizing any valuable meat along the way, while discarding the remainders. He made his way back to his heart.

Not much long after, in economic desperation, he took up the job to clear out a forest of invasive species. On one of these days he worked on taking out some Himalayan blackberry brambles. Cutting through layers the same way he did his own life, but this time he was left even more startled by what he found in the center of this so-called problem. Nestled in the large thorn fortress, a mamma had protectively hid her two baby raccoons. Who was Steve to evict these two from the safety of their blackberry home?

As two baby coons stared up at him, he was re-grounded once again in the quest of what it meant to be alive. He lowered his machete and walked away from the brambles, deciding then and there that no amount of paid reward would ever be worth the destruction of a place that another called home. Feelings, experience and the particular; these were the only weapons he would ever need to challenge each new situation; to live as a human; to live as an animal. And maybe, just maybe, a few pounds of TNT.

Written from Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Jayson's Current Situation

2009-09-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know exactly who reads this or how much you guys know about Jayson's current situation, but just in case anyone's out of the loop I will give a brief update.

Originally Jayson was supposed to be transferred from county to state jail on Thursday, September 3rd. However they didn't come for him, and thinking for sure he would get transfered the next Thursday he continued to tell people not to write to him in case those letters didn't reach him in time. On Thursday the tenth, again they did not come for him, even after apparently he had been assured by a few guards and inmates that he would definitely catch chain.

Yesterday was Thursday Sept. 17th... and I guess all we can do at this point is hope that he is finally getting transfered after an extra two weeks of waiting. None of this counts towards his "actual sentence" of course which totally sucks.

So cross your fingers for Jayson getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. Hopefully the first person to get his new address/number will post it up here so we can all write to him to make up for all the time he spent with no letters coming in :(.

-Ruthie

Excerpt from a Letter (Written 8-23-09)

2009-09-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Parts of this letter have been excluded for personal/security reasons.

... It's also late and I can't sleep. My cellmate just caught "chain"--that means got on a big white bus to prison. Her's the anti-civ one that read Endgame 1 & 2 and Culture in like two weeks. I'm nervous for him so I can't sleep. He's been doing prison for most of his life, and I hope this time it changes for him. He says he's more motivated than he's ever been. :)
...
When I first got locked up I was so so angry and energetic. Now I'm starting to get in the "groove" of things, and I hate it. ... Today I spent more time with the sociopath woman killer... He scares me so much. I gave him my email. He thinks we are not only on the "same side" but also potential friends. If he emails me when he gets out we will have to come up with some evil plan for him, or at least mischievous.

The "Colonel" is this schizophrenic who is on lock-down for 23 hours a day, and they only let him out for one hour between like 2 and 3 am, and so he just came to my door and we talked for a bit. He's a sweetheart, and it hurts to see him in here, especially with his infliction. It can't be good. He's been in here for like 4 months for improper use of 9-11, but I think there is more to it.

Well I really was just writing because I was wide awake thinking about my cell mate, and I also don't want to have to go to bed and have nightmares. Last night they were the worst they've ever been in here... I hate it... but good news: I read today about inmates setting a prison on fire in Kentucky and about a dam being taken down here, and about Mexico City decriminalizing drugs, and about California having to let go of thousands of inmates cause they can't afford them, and about "natural disasters" getting more intense in the next 20 years--I only hope I can do the same--no I'll make sure I can do the same.
...

Something meaningful and inspiring,

-Jailbird J

(Transcribed by Ruthie)

Excerpt from a Letter (Written 8/20/09)

2009-09-14T18:30:00.000-07:00

Some parts are left out for personal/security reasons.

Hey, I'm rested. I think I'm the only person in jail trying not to waste time, so some days I go without sleeping much, trying to get stuff done, to be productive. So yesterday and the day before I had to participate in two conversations both over an hour long, with the most fucked up person I have ever met in my life... let me give you a run down of a little bit...

He identifies as an industrialist, neo-nationalist (Nazi), Mormon, superior to women, ex-military current militia patriot, drug dealer (meth), pimp (escort security), and he hopes to buy land and clear cut it to make money to buy guns. He wants all minorities dead, all women to know their place, all disabled and white trash dead (haha he grew up "trash"). He thinks Stalin and Lenin's murder of 26 million people was necessary, he knows the holocaust was a lie, he kills animals for fun (and talks about it). He thinks that we're "friends" (i.e. he thinks I'm dumb enough to help him in his causes), he's anti-government but pro-America, he's disgusting, creepy, hateful, and a sociopath. He creeps me out more than any child molester (chomos as they are called here), judge, or cop I have ever met and I've met some evil mother fuckers.

Anyways after we finish talking I get so upset and overwhelmed... talking to you on the phone was the only thing to calm me down and make me happy.

...

I am forced to drink city water in here which is disgusting not only in taste, but in contaminants. I think David said this was one among only 20 cities whose water system completely failed the national standards (which are horrible to begin with). for 21 days I couldn't eat any of the food in here save for oranges, lettuce, and occasionally potatoes. I came in at 185 and now I weigh 168... and last week I was 165 so I'm doing better. When I get to state jail they'll have better (but not good and definitely not healthy) food, and I hope to get back to 175 before leaving. My arms have dwindled and my chest too. Oddly enough, my stomach has bloated out. I honestly don't think my arms have been this skinny since I was 12. If not 12 for sure 13.

I'm almost positive that without receiving protein or nutrients if I were to "work out" it would just burn away more muscle. I don't want to become one of those skinny malnourished vegan anarchists (i.e. my friends). But it's all set up to make me break down and start punishing myself, haha they have to be joking themselves to think I'm about to do that.

I'm in a mental health unit because I have a wheat allergy and this is the safest place for me in case of a "medical emergency". So I'm in a unit with 74 people--two to a cell except for the "high risks" that stay in their cells on a 23 hour lock-down. Most of the people aren't crazy (I mean as far as civilized people go) but there are some inflicted people and it breaks my heart. It also breaks the law that they are in here but they have no one advocating for them. I've seen a schizophrenic dwindle to nothing because of this environment...

This guy "The Colonel" is on 23 hour lockdown and sings children's songs. He's incredibly smart and kind but he's a paranoid schizophrenic and so things trigger him and he goes on yelling rampages. He's allowed out from 1-2am by himself, and the rest of the time he stays in his cell. :( The guards purposefully fuck with these inflicted people to set them off for entertainment purposes. So do the inmates. I've almost gotten into two fights for calling out the inmates on it (I can get in fights here but in state jail its zip my mouth for 75 days) and I've been writing grievances on the fucked up guards (which does nothing here and at state jail would make me a target).

There are also very old people in here in their 70's that are not a threat to anyone and are actually so endangered in here--their eyes are always glossed over and red from sadness or recent tears. It made me think about DGR and Lierre talking about how our movements don't have elders, we don't respect them and she's right, warriors are nothing without the guidance of elders. We just follow the same way the rest of this culture treats them... lock em up in homes if they're rich, and in jails if they're poor. We need to reclaim our elders and the knowledge they carry with them.

It's about 30-35% black in here when there are less than 10% blacks in the county. Every single one in my unit came from the same neighborhood. The same 8 blocks. The run down part of town on refinery row.

...

Just to give you an idea of what I'm eating in here: for breakfast I had 1 ounce of cereal with a little cartoon of 2% puss and blood filled industrially factory farmed raped milk, and 3/4 (four out of six slices) of an orange. Then for lunch I had a "salad", which is 2 ounces at most of ice burg lettuce with no dressing (hah), a half of a half of an orange (3 slices this time), one 3 ounce hamburger/soy patty. No bun, no veggies, and no dressing. Also two stick of celery this size...

______________________

[______________________] <---This is the size of the picture he drew me.

Dinner will be just like lunch, and I actually get fed better than everyone else because I have a "special diet". It all sounds miserable but it's not. I have Endgame 1 & 2, and Culture of Make Believe. I'm waiting to get more books when I get to state. I have a cool ass anti-civ celly and some other interesting people... we carved and molded a chess set out of soap bars and died the dark pieces with coffee... so playing that has been lots of fun.

I get tons of letters, not tons but comparatively more than the others, and I know that I've got hella love and support from the outside. It breaks my heart to hear from people getting locked up and coming out to find that everyone they knew and loved is dead (no exaggeration). Fuck prisons and jails, burn them down. But also please please please x32 don't worry. I guarentee I'll be fine, plus it's only making me hate them more. If we could pass out anti-civ literature in every jail/prison (to people who already hate and are most negatively affected by it), civilization would be sooo 2009.

...

-Jailbird J

(Transcribed by Ruthie)

Letter to "Linda"

2009-09-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Space Jam here, for another installment of the Jayson Thomas Fuck the Law Reader.

Today is a special treat for those of yall who aren't from our hood (361 Represent).

If you haven't ever been to Corpus Christi and wonder what it is like, this letter and the characters (some would say caricatures, but those of us who grew up here know all too well the reality of the contents/context) therein are a pretty accurate representation of the culture that surrounded, (in)formed, rejected, disfigured, inhabited, accepted us--making many of us the people we are today: completely fucking insane. In a totes awesome/endearing way, though; we keep it real. Frealz.

I've taken the liberty of breaking the letter up into paragraphs for ease of reading, as well as clarifications of places/events (they will be in italics within brackets).

Much love to my boy Jay, holdin' it down in the dirty third.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Linda,

Girl, I miss you. Bein locked up in her is just not fair cuz I love you more than I love weed. Now I know I've said that before, but baby girl, you gots to believe me. You know, it's like that one time at Bayfest [an awesome/trashy, annual city festival/carnival complete with rides, food/vendor booths, and washed up musical acts] when when I shot them ducks and gots you that big tweety bird. Girl, I spent 30 bucks tryin to shoot them ducks. You know how much weed I could have bought with dat der money. Cuz I'm a balla, I could of got like 2 blizzies off my cuz.

Speaking of my cuz, Shorty, I've heard you been calling him up sayin that you think about leavin me. My other cuz be sayin that you be sayin that your girl be sayin that 2 weeks is too long to wait for no man. Now I know I be servin some hard time but baby girl, you know I gots to do me for me.

So I know Whataburger [awesome local fast food place] be payin you on Friday, and I wonderin, well you know I love you, I gots you that tweety bird, you know, and since I can't be on the grind, since I aint stuntin in here, can you put some money on my commissary. These guards be treatin me bad like my name's Yolanda and I just shot Selena. Shorty, I tried to holla at Hot Z-95 [local rap/R&B station], you know, send out a dedication to you, cuz i know you be listening for our song, but they don't be acceptin no collect calls up in that ho.

First thing when I get up out of here, Ima smoke a blunt and then take you out to eat at Boat N Net [fast food seafood shack. the drive thru "intercom" is a pvc pipe you yell into] and go see a dollar movie. Nah you know what, my cousin owes me like $12.50 for some herb I be sellin, so I'm gonna take you out to the movie and then Golden Corral. I mean I get out on Monday but let's wait til Wed, you know movies be cheaper then.

You know let's got eat and then go to the dollar show and babe, bring that big Gucci purse, so we can fill that ho up with gummy bears from Golden Corral. See if your momz will let you take some of those sodas too, cuz you know my momz only be buyin that Hill Country Fair [local cheapie store brand] stuff.

Speakin of my cousin I heard from my cuz that he saw you at the mall with your cousin and he say you be dressin all like you goin to the club, but its all good cuz I know you aint cheatin on your big daddy like that. You know that Master P song "Them Ho'z crazier than a bag of Ding Dongz" came on and I thought about you. Especially that line about "girl, can you put some money on my books, this world throwed and them cops be a bunch of crooks." That always makes me think of you.

You know speakin of which, since you my shorty and I'm your daddy, you think that when you get payed on friday you can put some money in my books. Nah, better yet check this, you know how me and your cousin used to date, well I know HEB be payin her ass on Tuesday so see if she can put some money on my books. Tell her if she remembers that one time i spent like 2 twenties on her at Bayfest trying to win her that Tweety poster that said "smoke weed." And what about that time I got money from my momz and bought both you and her a funnel cake at the rattlesnake races [exactly that].

Yo, i saw Joker from Robstown, his ass got locked up and your cousin Flip, he's in here too but I heard that the secret service be lookin at your uncle tito because he connected to all that blood shit.

When I get out of here boo, I'm going to buy me one of the Escalades on 32's. I'll get you one of them baby pits that my cousin flip be sellin you know.

Your Southside Country Gangsta,
Dope Boi

PS- Tell your brother to put some money on my books. I know Stripes [local convenience store] pays him on Monday.

Excerpt from a Letter (Written 8/11/09)

2009-09-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

Here's most of another letter sent just after his court date in Texas. Some parts are left out for personal reasons.

I am in so incredibly tired and in so much pain, but I feel obligated to write you today.

I hope someone let you know the court decision but I'll explain it in detail later. This letter is going to be crude because my body is exhausted and my mind still numb and my heart still racing (it is actually having really sharp pains) but fuck fuck fuck the law! With every ounce of my dying breath, fuck 'em!

I have to say though that my overall feeling is one of absolute adorement. I have the most amazing and inspiring friends, in the whole world. You are included in this without a doubt, but let me give you the run down of the whole day. Wake up and shave, get shackled up and wait for hours to go to court and get bombarded with all sorts of legal paperwork. My friends and Mom are there, my Mom starts crying and it breaks my heart. Then I basically talk on my own behalf. I probably fell short... it's so hard to balance my actual feelings and desires with trying to sound remorseful and all that bullshit.

Then my Mom went up and fuck! What an amazing woman. She did so good Ruth ... she stayed so strong even though during the cross examination the D.A. tried to belittle and ruin her. I wanted to hurt him so badly for making my mom feel like shit. He had no right, and if his job is the excuse then he's still wrong, and even more so.

Then David came up, he did good but was David, all hella relaxed, which is what I needed. Then Charity from Roseburg went ahead and said some of the most loving things I've ever heard. You're going to love her. She has this reserve about her so that when she does speak up finally, it's usually the most amazing clear thoughts, plus she's not "read-up" or any of that. Everything she says comes from experience which is mad crazy!

Then came Sandra, clearly the most eloquent speaker. She has the capability of expressing anti- civ and anarchist sentiments in such a way and tone that it comes off as widely acceptable and desirable. She stood as such a strong Latina woman and refused to be frustrated by the D.A. I'm still crying this whole time, or most of it, it was just so much I couldn't handle it. I could hear my Mom crying behind me and it just killed me.

After Sandra came Tara who spoke with such definitive love and rage... it was so god damn inspiring. It doesn't help that we've been best friends for fucking ever, but god god damn--and when the D.A. tried to trip her up and attack her she fired back with a certainty in herself and in her words that I had never seen in any one else, period.

Then cam Emma. I literally met her the day before I got arrested, but damn I love that girl. Plus her words were straight up in your face anarchy 101. She was able to fill any gaps or doubts previously left open. Then last, but not least, was Jenny from Corpus, and god damn! If you were to take Tara's sincerity and Sandra's clarity and Mom's straight up love and put them in a flour tortilla, that was fucking Jenny.

By the I had stopped crying, but she started... and then I did again. I don't really get the point of explaining it to you like this... the whole thing was surreal. I think for a while I forgot why I was there. I even forgot that it was for me.

Also in the court was Alyse (an old friend from CC, TX) and she was so strong the whole time, Kaleb (a new friend who came all the way from Roseburg) who I literally had talked to for like 30 minutes before getting locked up but now I feel the ultimate love and friendship for, Alyssa (my new friend who's moving to Roseburg!) who I spent some time with having the best connection and personal talks with--she is such an adorable and caring kid, and George who without a doubt is my most underappreciated friend. I've been through so much with him and we go for months without talking, but I can't think of anyone else I'd want to spend hard time with. Okay maybe Mumia (???can't read it) but that's because he's already holding it down.

There was at least one more person, maybe two, but I couldn't see because all the seats were full. The amount of love that was expressed in that court is going to keep me strong every day I'm locked up and then for the rest of my life, and that's not an overstatement. I had never felt so much on the right side than I did today, I guess that's the point of all this. There I stood against the most destructive and powerful government of all times, and I was not in the least bit scared. There could not have been a single thing said or done to me that would have made me feel ashamed or in the wrong. You know, me and you are pretty pessamistic about winning (whatever that means) but today I realized that we have the most important traits to win.

Everyone in that room (my mom included) proved to me everything I had always believed. We are on the right side. Each one of us can take a thousand of them. The state can and will do fucked up things to us but we won't break.

I have never been so excited about my personal future and the future in general. I know you are deaestated that I will be locked up for a while (at least 6 months, maybe 2 years).
...
Just please remember that I'm going to fight on your side till my very last breath and that I will do anything I have to to help you out while I'm locked up, and when I get out. I mean anything and everything ...

-Jayson
(Transcribed by Ruthie)

Excerpt from a Letter (Mon 8/03/09)

2009-09-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

This is most of an older letter sent from the Roseburg Jail. Some parts are excluded for possible security reasons.

I Hate Jail, it is a cold and desperate place. They make it that way to break your spirits, but I refuse to let them break mine. I'm goin to stay strong through all of this no matter how ridiculous their attempts at punishing me may be. In case my Mom hasn't informed you, here's the brief rundown. They are trying to prosecute me because I fled probation. I fled probation because I was miserable. The probation was for graffiti ... So the only thing you didn't know was that I was still on the run for it ... So I'm facing 2 years in State Jail. If so I will serve day for do all two years.

This is so ludicrous. Most cases of rape and manslaughter get 10 years in prison with parole out in 18 months--but this is capitalism. This is a culture that puts a price on everything it owns. It clearly values buildings over women and children. Yes, I hate it. Yes we will change it, or die trying.

So there is an 18-20% chance that we can convince them not to lock me away and an even smaller chance that I will be able to leave the state of Texas, but I want you to know I am trying hard and you are one of the main motivating factors. Look at the bright side, I'll have some crazy amazing stories when I get back.

So they have been moving me every few days, and every time they do, they take all my shit away, including my legal paperwork and letters. I finally have a chance to write you, but I still have to make it short because my wonderful Mom has to transcribe it via e-mail to you ... I did not fully realize how much people care about and depend on me until I got kidnapped away from them.

It took 7 very long days to get to my destination of Nueces County Jail. Sleeping shackled sitting up in a van is no fun at all. They forced McDonalds happy meals down my throat three times a day for the whole 7 days. I kind of know how you feel being surrounded by sexist, racist and homophobic people who by no means "get it". The skinheads and Nazis are pissed that I didn't join them for their protection, but I've been fighting them since I was 14 and I'm not going to stop now.

It's scary how segregated jail and prison are. Even if I get locked up there is good work to do from in here. ...

Until the last cop is hung by the entrails, or the last judge.

-Jayson
(Transcribed by Ruthie)

The Impossible Palm Tree (A Primer on Subversive Golf Course Maintanence, or a Lack Thereof)

2009-09-01T13:42:00.001-07:00

I got moved to a new cell--one on the second tier with no bunk--so I get the whole thing to myself. Most of my view from the window is blocked by a palm tree, or actually, a number of them. They are of course exotics, not native to this area. That's a horrible drawing of one of them...

They got me thinking about two things: leverage and breaking points.

Leverage points. This tree is incredibly skinny about half way up its trunk, and when the wind blows, it threatens to snap in two. If it did, it would land right on top of a few cop cars--which is always good to think about. But more to the point, the fragile trunk reminded me of a similarities between the palm tree and interstate highways.

The palm tree is most alive at the top and in the roots, which are dependent on each other. To stay alive they have to exchange nutrients through the trunk, and if the trunk was to break at its thinnest point, the entire tree would die. Cities are the same way. They are large and interdependent on one another (as well as on the destruction of the living world).

Cities rely on highways, which work like trunks. They're the weakest point through which critical resources are exchanged. Highways thin down to the fewest lanes when they are about halfway between cities, just like the trunk between the roots and foliage of a palm tree, so it would be most effective to break or attack a highway between two large urban centers. It would take more time, resources, and work to repair a road the farther it is from the city, and this strategy would maximize the distance from both cities.

Breaking Points. The trees outside my window are particularlyweak and breakable because they are not in native soil. Civilization is the same way: it tries to mimic itself in every area, no matter its surroundings. (Las Vegas; case in point) The same is true for major religions, science, and the English language. All of these, just like civilization, try to have universality with little or no regard to their actual circumstances. It is finding or realizing these breaking points that will help bring a stop to this insane culture.

Civilization tries to impose golf courses everywhere it goes, but a golf course, (although always absurd) would not be as significant a target in Washington State as it would be in Pheonix AZ. On the smallest level, the irrigation system of a golf course would be more crucial in Arizona than in Washington. On a much larger scale, Pheonix's entire water supply would be a much more effective target than anywhere in the northwest.

Taking out a fertilizer company in the midwest would cause more overall damage than attacking one in the southwest. Targetting a rail line in New York or Chicago would have a bigger impact than choosing one in SCL or Houston, because those places aren't as dependent on public commute networks.

Think seasonally. A (displaced, tropical) tree can go without being watered for a longer time during the the wetter months than it can during the summer. Similarly, Pheonix needs and uses elictricity more in the summer than in the winter, and Seattle would be the opposite way. We sometimes get caught up in strategies and tactics that worked well once, or in one place, but--just like civilization demanding a golf course in the desert--some things are not meant to be universally applied. All tactics should be viewed circumstancially.

If what we want is to fight on the same side as nature, using seasonal, regional, and circumstancial thinking will maximize our effectiveness.

I feel I should mention a third strategy that takes both leverage and breaking points into account. Civilization is often extremely limited on a certain product or resource. These can serve as critical target points, which are not always specific to one region or area. If there was, for instance, one supplier that provided some important metal used in making computer processing components, and this metal was stored at just one climate controlled facility, no matter where the facility was in the world it would be a crucial target.

Be as diverse as the wild itself.

Most importantly, strategies are worthless unless enacted, and enacting them is impossible if you are locked up or dead. Be brave and careful, courageous and thoughtful, and let fear be a cautionary process--not a paralyzing endpoint.

Till the last exotic palm tree falls on the head of the last Nueces County Sherriff,

J-Bird
(Transcribed by Ruthie)

2009-08-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

"A Song Unowned" 7-31-44

I'm surrounded by concrete, steel, and relentless lighting. Actually, I am entrapped by these things. But even in this brutally cold and hostile environment, I can think of so many inexplicably beautiful memories.
Places, feelings, people. Memory is a world where tangible and intangible collide, where material and immaterial are express equally on the same flashing screen. During this internment, one memory keeps providing me security within myself while in such a despicably depressing, disgusting entrapment.
It is not a memory of the free world, one from the outside, but one born from within similar confines. My first time I was locked up for any meaningful amount of time, I was struggling to survive through a horrible depression and it was during those days that this memory was created.
I spent those days, reading my only inspiration from within, the black and white daily newspaper. Everyday I searched for stories and then the riots in France hit full swing. A real revolution, even if it was just momentarily, became the for the first time in my life, a feasible possibility.
But along with that burning inspiration came the heavy realization of my current confines of only a sympathetic spectator. I was locked up, incapable of escaping the walls burdening my emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical self. I was impaired and disconnected, trying to swallow the prepackaged guilt, blame, regrets, and shame inflicted upon me.
It was then and there while reading those words of inspiration, that it found me. I was sharing the stainless steel jail table with two dark skinned old-schoolers. It's easy to tell who the old schoolers are, because they carry the weight of each year they have served sinking down upon their backs and shoulders. But they always make sure to never let their heads be burdened by the weight. They have been here too long to know, that in this place, you always keep your head up.
So, they sat there talking, laughing, and playing chess. The concrete walls and floors were replaced by trees and grass. Exchanging the steel doors, locs, and bunks for squirrels, birds, and light posts, they soon found themselves surrounded by the landscape of a well-maintained downtown park, late summer. The mold and dust-filled air-conditioning ventilation along with the flicker from the fluorescent lighting transforms into warm sunshine piercing through the tree's canopy, while the first sign of autumn approaching comes from a cool breeze.
The loud shouting of men bouncing off the hardened walls of incarceration diffuse to the sounds of kids playing games and birds singing over the creaking of swing sets, with a mellow swoosh from the traffic in the distance. The large durable gray plastic garbage cans, well, they remain large durable gray plastic garbage cans, but they do become encased by an ornamental, metal frame-work and an assortment of bees and flies battling over the delicacies humans so easily define and discard as waste.
This was not my naive imagination wandering, but an actual transformation of experience refusing to be a just spectacle any longer. So, when they began their game of chess, I, too found myself integrated into the scenery. Into the moment.
We sat at one of those nice, heavy, stone tables. The ones with rounded seats and a chessboard engraved into the top of the table. They took turns making swift but casual moves, and each time one would finish a move, he would sing out a line or two. The other one would then move next also adding a couple more lines. I tried to pin down the song they were singing. Was it an old jazz tune? A newer soul song? Or, any even older tune born from times when slavery was as much a reality as these moments now.
Some time passed before I realized they were not reciting any old tune. The songs they were singing, were being created in that very moment. They were telling a story, a narrative. One in which they each took turns continuing the storytelling collectively, while all the while still competing in an extraordinarily thoughtful game of chess.
They sang the stories of their lives. They talked of old lost loves and childhood adventures, new found loves and current trials and tribulations. They talked of their grandchildren, describing problems and joys they may have to face or embrace. A melody of lifetimes.
Each one of them had won a couple of games, but I soon realized that it was beside the point, and I was the only one keeping tally of a pointless score. We spent the whole afternoon doing this. Being and becoming this. I gained some bravery and on occasion would add to their stories. They did not seem to mind my intrusion and through one of the song's storytelling they nicknamed me "Young Pup."
Eventually, it all started to rapidly fade away. The trees and insects, the grass and cool breeze, all started to disappear, as the unpleasant voice of a guard yelling, "Rack it up!", became more and more prevalent. Until, once again, we were in the horrible jail we began in.
Those old-schoolers shared an amazing thing with me that day. They showed me that we can take all of the horrible punishments forced on us by those abusing power, and turn it into something to benefit ourselves. Unbroken spirits can only partially begin to define those two old men. They had both spent the majority of their lives locked up, they ultimately refused to give up their own self-determination.
It was those stores they sang to each other. Those songs that held the timeless beat of their aging, pounding hearts. Those songs that did not bother distinguishing dreams from realities. Those songs resisted confinement of the towers and walls. Those songs are the songs that I continue on. Those songs have become mine, but they can be as much yours, as no one person can ever own them, really. Those songs refuse this current entrapment of concrete, steel, and relentless lighting. I refuse to be entrapped as well.

Vita Pro

2009-08-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

Around 1995, during the same time cigarettes were banned in Texas prisons for health related reasons, also came the introduction of a suppliment and meat filler by the name of VitaPro. The Canadian based company who produced VitaPro suggested a 25%-75% filler to meat ratio, but in no time Texas was soon serving the delicacy in 90%-100% filler ratios. This of course is the same Texas Department of Corrections that has always prided themselves on raising tens of thousands heads of sheep, cattle and pig livestock.

Some inmates and staff became curious and decided to inquire about how the state could justify auctioning off their livestock at discount rates to instead purchase an expensive meat filler. Their "inquiries" were met with only a subtle reply of cricket orchestras serenading them from the surrounding fields.

It wasn't long after the introduction of VitaPro that inmates started to complain of major stomach pains and uncontrollable flatulence. "God damn! The whole unit done turned itself into a gas chamber on death row after all of them meals" explained an inmate who was incarcerated at the time. Never to see daylight again, all further inmates complaints were tossed in TDC's extensive skeleton closet. That is until the more valued TDC livestock began mysteriously dying off.

After an initial investigation, it had been determined that the prison kitchen slop being fed daily to the pigs was actually the murderous culprit. Upon further investigation, it became even more clear that VitaPro was killing the pigs by blowing up their intestines. The pigs, who up until this point in human history, had been known as an animal capable of devouring any and all types of food had to be safely taken off the VitaPro mixture. It never became questionable why the inmates still remained eating it multiple times a week.

The inmates skin began to boil, literally. And eventually after the compounding pressures of the inmate's increasingly serious health conditions and growing interest from outside advocacy groups, the state's courts finally led an inquiry in the prisons use of VitaPro. They came to find out that not only had most of the prison units overserved massive amounts of VitaPro, but that also one of the Canadian company's paid consultants was none other than the current TDC director, Andy Collins. So the state owned inmates and livestock were not the only things blowing up, with a $1,000 a day corporate consultants fee. Director Collins bank account also was on the verge of exploding.

VitaPro eventually stopped being served in prisons state-wide, yet its legacy still remains as large as the gigantic TDC owned warehouses that have remained stocked to the brim with buckets upon buckets of VitaPro. With a shelf life that gives Twinkies a run for their money, the pig exploding VitaPro may one day sneek its way back into the perpetually nutrient dwindling meals of Texas corrections, some inmates believe it already has.

Written from Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

When the ants stop marching one by one...

2009-08-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

It's summertime in the Lone Star State and the Rasberry Crazy ants are at it again. This time, they have turned their attacks on the Texas domesticated honey bee populations. For years they have been terrorizing the Tejas urban, suburban, and now rural landscape. These tiny ants seem largely resistant to all but the most toxic of pesticides allowing them to spread like wildfire.

It has recently been observed that these small ants will aggressively cannabilize other types of ants, even one's multiple times their own size. Recent reports describe them attacking and consuming entire colonies of fire ants, and ant previously defined as one of Texas' most dangerous insects. Breaking from the outdated forms of classical warfare, such as the method of marching in regimented lines, the Rasberry's have become known as the first ants to embrace guerilla warfare tactics. Their Human enemies have not yet been able to make sense of their new, more effective tactics, instead humans one handedly rationalize the recent attacks as crazy, unorganized, and erradic, but with the other hand pressure the state to label them, a top "pest" priority, which would be the insect equivalent of topping the F.B.I's Domestic Terrorist Threat list, just like the Elf, Alf, and other so called "Ecoterrorists" that currently claim the #1 spot on the F.B.I.'s List, these ants appear dedicated to destroying industrial civilization's most important infrastructures.

Last year, in the greater Houston area alone, they were responsible for millions of dollars in damage to the public works system. On a few occasions, with surprise attacks, they would swarm out of the tall grass thickets and into large electrical sub-station boxes. Within a matter of minutes they would successfully overload entire neighborhoods' electrical framework, leaving behind thousands powerless and important components non-repairable. The Rasberry's become most active during the sizzling August and September months and with every business and household blasting their air conditioning units at full throttle, there becomes no better time to cause blackouts in Texas.

Along with attacks on the larger electrical grid, they also make attacks on tertiary targets, such as smaller government and corporate computers also rendering them beyond repair. Other targets include automobiles, heavy farming and construction machinery, sewage pumps, and anything that may contain an expensive, delicate or intricate electrical system. These electrical systems seem to be their favored picks, and why not, in most machines and equipment, these components tend to be the most crucial, costly and fragile parts. Guerilla warfare states that when any resistance group is taking on much larger enemy targets, and in this case millions of times larger, that it becomes strategically fundamental to find a fulcrum, or leverage point, and the Rasberry crazy ants have done just that.

The relentless Texas drought, that is currently decreasing all industrial and agricultural production (in as much as the two can or should ever be separated), only seems to be aiding the intensity of the Rasberry forces. The most recent statistics verify that they now have an established presence in 11 Texas counties and are still growing rapidly. It is with this recent expansion, that they seem to have found their next leverage point, the domesticated honeybee.

Within the last few years, domesticated honeybee populations have become the most crucial link in sustaining Texas' farm and food production. Even taking in consideration the recent crisis of an extreme shortage in irrigatable water and annual rainfall, pollination is still the basis for maintaining any successfull harvest.

Texas, throughout its history has destroyed millions of acreage considered wilderness, rapidly converting it, to make room for the big businesses of cotton, corn, cattle, feed, and oil. Now, with the exception of a few designated wilderness areas, the much more manageable Texas farm and ranch lands stretch out in all directions, well beyond the seeable horizons. All of this has led to a population crash and almost extinction of the wild bee populations, leaving their domesticated cousins busily buzzing around attempting to pick up the tragic slack. The ageless homage of, "Everything's bigger in Texas!" although cliche, rings so very loud and true when describing bee farms across the state. In some of the world's largest bee farms, the busiest little Texas workers can be found laboring non-stop, around the clock. Just in Texas state production, honey, considered a secondary product of the busy bee industry, can be measured in the billions of pounds.

In the spirit of capitalist industry, Texas bee farms, or more honestly, Texas bee factory farms have become more in search of profits, then even the Texas-sized, evangelical, mega-church prophets. Having found cost cutting methods of cramming so many bees into each square inch, the bee farmers have comparatively made the otherwise disgusting KFC factory farm, chicken per square foot ratio, look like suburban sprowl. The all so densely populated bee hives began to look like a diaramic of the most overcrowded urban slum. Farpassing Bangkok, New Delhi, and Mexico City, these prefabricated uniform dwellings, tower to incredible heights and are so closely packed together that the bees sometimes have to squeeze by surrounding tenements to get their own housing unit.

The workerbee's daily conditions become comparable to those of Indonesian sweatshops and Latin American coffee and banana plantations. The factory farms become a place where living, flying, and loafing all become serious occupational hazards and the amount of dead workers surmount to numbers so despairing, that not even the cruelest C.I.A. funded dictator of S.O.A. trained death squad would fantasize about them. Like any good factory, or for that matter, any form of property including mines, forests, stocks, women and children, the only valuable measure is it's output. Desperate and miserable in their own living conditions, domesicated bees reveal an easy breaking point for industrial agriculture, it becomes no wonder the Rasberry crazy ants would pick them as their next target.

With only a slight advantage in group numbers, the ants are incredibly disadvantaged against the bees in weight, size, and mobility, but this doesn't stop them. Camouflaged under the raise of a friendly neighborhood ant, just passing by, quite a few Rasberry's are able to infiltrate their way into the megatropolis to surveying the enemies' infrastructure. Once enough ants are inside the massive complex, they signal for the rest to come out from hiding. In a spectacle far more spectacular than the Trojan Horse debackle, their friendly demeanor suddenly converts into a savage flood, as the rage of the wilderness is unleashed upon the prefabricated environment.

The bees fight back but because of domestication and selective genetic breeding for relative passivity, they don't stand a chance. The previously fortified honeycombs, now, are no more together than, if by chance, the U.S. Federal Reserve awoke one morning to find itself 4,000 miles away in the center of a fallujan neighborhood, or better yet, if it awoke to find itself a couple hundred miles away in the middle of West Baltimore's ghetto. Just like the ground corporate bail out of 2008, but on opposite day, each ant makes off with such a large amount of honey, that it comparatively makes a citi-group executive's bonus seem like monopoly money. So by the time the capitalist owner's find the battle scene, their hives are as ravaged as a collapsing ransacked Rome, after a final visit from the German tribe of Vandals. Tens of thousands of hives can now be counted in the hundreds. One factory farm attacked, in a week turns to five, in a month turns into forty, in a year one can only dream.

Interestingly enough, Rasberry crazy ants are not named after their favorite variety of vine-grown fruit, but instead, ironically, they are named after, no in honor of, one of their most enduring and hated enemies, Tom Rasberry. Good ol' Tom Rasberry is one of the leaders in this modern day, fear-mongering, McArthist, insecticidal witch hunt. Tom, a lowly exterminator by trade, now finds himself as the lead expert on the aggressive little ants. This has landed him employment as a part of a special force unit, a combined federal and state funded project, or more clearly seen as the bug's world equivalent to a post 911 government agency, his group no longer has the time to actively battle the ants, the only reason the group was established in the first place. Instead they spend their time traveling from Academic universities, to city and state agencies of all shapes and sizes, and even the occasional local neighborhood watch program (I wouldn't dare make this up), spreading unfounded and fear-filled propaganda in attempts to receive support, more specifically, additional funding. The primary interest to any bureacracy is the continuation of itself and Tom does this beautifully as he describes the ants invasion with a dreadfully slumbering tone, demanding his audiences to take the most immediate of actions, before the ants are able to spread anymore and ultimately cause unimaginable amounts of destruction to the state and possible the nation.

So it seems that a moral line the size of biblical proportions, okay maybe just Texas size, is currently being drawn in the sand. Soon, we will be forced to ask ourselves, "What side am I on?" Am I on the side of state and corporate interests, dillusionally demanding the complete eradication of this species before they destroy our most altruistic foundations, the American pillars of freedom, democracy, and profit? Or instead, am I on the side of the oppressed, the side of coming insurrection, the underdog, or in this case the under-ant? The united liberation front of Crazed Rasberry Armed Ant Forces vs. Industrial Civilization - honey craving, six legged guerilla sabatour extraordinairs or cancer causing, heart-stopping, bug dropping, radioactive insecticidal spray, 6 billion little David'd against one monolithic Goliath, but you know what they say about giants, The bigger they come the harder they fall.

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Dear Heavenly Father AKA self righteous Patriarch scum-bag,

2009-08-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I find myself upset that the days are going by so fast, I'm probably the only person in jail thinking like that. I'm also sad that I've heard witness and been a part of so much experience in here that I can't remember it all. My memory problems actually are another very sad story, remind me to tell you about them sometime. But one absolutely never ever depressing thing is having such Amazing Incredible Loveable Adorable Cuddable Huggable bad asses for friends! WTF, having friends send the most inspiring words from thousands of miles away, having friends come from thousands of miles away, just to talk to me through some horrible cage, so so so so amazing! They want me to feel defeated by denying me so many things, even those that are "legally mine" and I get frustrated and angry but never defeated. I can't, not with the support I have. The sky was so beautiful and clear today. Nevermind the ugly parking lots, buildings, bars, and two windows keeping me from it. Little sparrow-like birds come visit me, It's so cute, we stare at each other forever. Today one had a scorpion in its mouth. It spat it out on my window seal. I guess it could have been a spider, all I know is it made me hungry. My thought process went like this - "Ohh man, that's a bird eating a scorpion almost its same size, gross, cool, gross again, guts, oh mann, I'm hungry, I mean hungry, I hope my vegan friends wouldn't get upset seeing this - man I love non-vegan food, I bet that makes some people mad at me, well, it doesn't make non-human people mad at me and that's a good thing, I wonder if this bird is sharing, I wonder if it has babies, man I'm hungry, I could eat some babies." - and then it flew away... That was just 3-5 seconds of my day... Now you can see why my letters are non-linear - my thoughts are everywhere right now - I'm talking to my cell - we are making jokes about Global Warming and how it's melting our Jolly Ranchers and that if everyone's Jolly Ranchers were melting then people would take ecological destruction seriously - Yes... damn there's no need for these elipses, let me try again. Yes! to making inmates Anti-civ, actually Prison made them Anti-civ, I just gave them a book to put what they've always felt, in words, on pages, so they can for the first time (or at least in a long time) feel sane in their anger and frustration... One time I sat for like 16 weeks in an anger management class - I've never been so angry. So they closed the Hatto facility! It was a private prison they called a "family detention facility" but it was of course a horrible internment camp for immigrants or as they say in the German language "concentration camp." Okay, that's not German, but you can see my point. Some families got out for good, others on like a probation type thing and unfortunately a few just got relocated. But knowing that some amazing people this week got released from even worse situations than I find myself in, makes breathing a little bit easier, makes seeing birds even better, makes the sky seem so much closer, makes it to where if I close my eyes, even if only momentarily, I can feel a breeze, I mean really feel the breeze... and all of it brings me a much needed relief... I love ya'll as much as I hate cops and that's a lot! I mean (insert Anarchy-A symbol) lot!!!

Jayson Tx, the artist formerly known as #10126758

Written from the Nueces County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

Letters from Nueces County Jail

2009-08-13T16:15:00.000-07:00

Dear Derrick Jensen,
Salmon, Salmon, Salmon, Dams, Dams, Dams, Abuse, hate, culture, Abuse, hate, insane, Salmon, Salmon, newt. Salmon, me, redwoods, indian, redwoods, salmon. Civilization makes me sad... 800 pages later, Salmon, Dams, Salmon, chrones, chrones, chrones, dams, dams, dams, bring it down, dams.

Dear Daniel Quinn,
Boring, wrong, right, me, me, me, bad, evil, bad, me, me, me, I understand, no, please explain, me, me, me, Ishmael, b, me, me, wrong, right, listen, listen, listen, now that I'm rich civilization ain't so bad, me, me, me, socratic method, me, ishmael, b, me.

Dear John Zerzan,
Uni-bomber, friend, uni-bomber, language bad, symbols, philosophy, civilization is poopy, philosophy, time, time, break windows, time, philosophy, I like big words, everything bad, nothing, future, time, more big words.

Dear EarthFirst!,
Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, trees, ropes, disclaimer, disclaimer, back in the day, disclaimer, explicit, disclaimer, security culture, disclaimer, disclaimer.

Dear Elf/Alf,
Evidence, fingerprints, look at me, evidence, college, super glue, snitch, snitch, snitch, evidence, terrorist, evidence, snitch, lies, snitch, SUV's, evidence, snitch, communique, evidence, college, terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.

P.S. I still Love You!

Dear Everthing Non-Human,

What do you mean Sorry is not good enough... I mean at least I tried, right? Or almost tried.

If I was post-mod,ern, I would call this subversive performance art, but I was just bored.

Dear Mom and Dad,

2009-08-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

(written from Nueces County Jail)

There are very few things more beautiful in life then short stumpy men, singing tejano naked in the shower no more than 10 feet from you. Summer camp's been awesome! I don't ever want to leave. I've learned so much during arts and crafts. We made a tattoo gun out of a fan motor and toothbrush, and ran it on an electrical charge via headphone wire from the nearest fire alarm. We melted down checker pieces for red and black ink. I learned how to make oil pastels by crushing colored pencil lead and mixing it with the oil from my very own hair. In survival school, we learn to create fire from a staple, pencil and toilet paper. We also learned how to talk to other campers through the actual toilets and air vents, it's so much easier than the can and string method. In cooking class we made a feast, it's called a cell block spread! 20 chile lime Ramen noodles, mix with 10 packages of mayonnaise, 5 bags of fire hot corn chips, 6 bags of jalapeno pretzels, 6 bags of cajun style pork rhyndes, 2 single serve packages of spam, 8 2-ounce squeeze packages of nacho cheese, and 3 packages of chili with beans. Mix together in a mop bucket or tupperware bin, add hot water and sit on it to seal. Wait 10 minutes and serve with saltine crackers. For best results crush all ingredients before mixing. The foot-stomp concrete floor method works best! Doing laundry just like the pilgrims did. Using the toilet as a tub or basin, we mix 2 parts soap to 1 part toothpaste for fresh smelling clothes. We don't have a clothesline so we use spoons to hold the drying clothes. After laundry we use the same toilet to make Hooch - it's a juice beverage made from baking yeast, kool aid, and whatever fruit we can get our hands on. I can't wait to try it, it makes all the other campers laugh and go crazy. Some of the campers save and dry banana and orange peels, then they "keester" it to take it to other campers, that's where you hold it in between your left and right buttcheeks. Then they smoke it, but I think they are using Bible papes to roll it and I don't like that at all. Today, there was pieces of bologna inside my jello, how weird is that? Well I love you both but I hope I never leave here! But I guess if I do, I can just come back next year!

Your son,
Tommy Thompson #10126758

(Transcribed by Charity)

A fugitive's run in, with a two-way mirror

2009-08-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

As I find myself spending an undetermined amount of time in the Douglas County Jail, the unemployment rate is still rising, although it's been in the double digits for a couple decades now. So it is no surprise that, in The Timber Capitol of the World, I sit in jail surrounded by unemployed loggers. They are legally known as harsh characters; criminals, wife beaters, drug users, car thiefs, and angry vagrants.

But I know them individually as Joker, Hater, Conspiracy, David and Jose. Collectively, they are the nicest, most welcoming group of locals I have yet to meet.

The surrounding forests they once worked with chainsaws and cables are now littered with invasive species and disgusting industrious machinery. Unemployed, they now find themselves scrubbing cell floors, baking corn bread, and playing cards behind steel doors, concrete walls, and two way mirrors.

Four nights a week, all the inmates stop whatever they are doing, and turn their absolute attention to a 13" television. They sit and watch reality shows on the logging industry. Like an absurd two-way mirror, they stare intentively into the glass tube. Afterwards, they talk about the good ol' days. The long hours, the money, the girls, their families, and the money.

However, they will never be able to discuss how now, they are nothing more than outdated tools being stored in Climate Controlled Storage Units. And that's the problem with two-way mirrors. If you are on the losing side, it becomes impossible to see clearly through false Reflections.

Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

No More Cages, No More Locks

2009-08-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

His job was to fingerprint me for a ludicrous theft charge but he also asked me about my tattoos? I replied to him with ideas of anti-oppression and resistance. After surveying the surrounding area, he replies. When he speaks, he speaks of high taxes and corrupt, corporate controlled party politics, and fat cat, no good for nothin' Senators. He speaks of greed, money, and the injustices of capitalism. He knows his own role and recognizes its destructiveness, although, he just can't see just how culpable he really is. In all of this, it is not much a dialogue. I suppose what he needed was a confession. The fingerprinting booth acts as his confession cell and I as a priest. He finished the Monologue, not with feelings or even ideas, but with a statement. He looks around once again, reassuring himself no one is listening in and then says, "They better hope this revolution comes after I'm dead, because if it doesn't, I've already picked what side I'm on and I'll be the first to start unlocking cells."

Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail

(Transcribed by Charity)

mormon death squad

2009-07-10T22:37:00.001-07:00

It seems that Mexico is more than willing to arm Mormons with guns to fight Mexican Narcos and that Mormons are more than willing to be a snitching retaliation force for Mexico in fashion reminencant of death squads. This might be an interesting place for young Mormons to go on thier two year "mission" for serving god.

“Love, Earth®”

2009-06-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

Wal-Mart's Yellow Brick Road to the Sustainable and Ethical Corporate Wonderland

In the past, environmental and human rights activists have made Wal-Mart the poster child for everything wrong with corporate greed and a crystal clear reflection of the wider consequences of globalization in general. Countless documentaries, reports, and lawsuits trace abuses by the world’s largest retailer so often that to do so has become passé.

But today is a new day, and Wal-Mart will soon become the prizefighter for the green revolution—or more appropriately the vanguard of ecological well-being. The people’s Big-Box Corporation is making way for their new Love, Earth® jewelry line. The same family who brought us the 3-gallon jar of pickles for $2.97 now offers us “fine jewelry created with materials from, Eco-responsible, community-friendly sources.” The largest private employer in the world has the resources and now the stated desire to help us attain an Eco-communal future, far surpassing the Lenin, Mao, and Castro revolutions of the past.

The revolution will be accessorized.

And why not? The inconvenient truth is that the world is getting hotter, so why not counter climate change by owning your own piece of “ice'? It wasn't so long ago that blood-free diamonds and responsibly-mined gold were things only affordable to the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio and other liberal elites. But in the era of “yes we can,” Eco-friendly gold is now accessible to us and our significant others—and all this with a price tag of just under a week’s worth of Starbucks' almost-fair-trade coffee. Not only can we all comfortably say “yes, we can” when it comes to purchasing Love, Earth® jewelry, we can say “yes, we will.”

In this melting global economy, Wal-Mart has turned to the motto “think globally, purchase locally.” Their main partner in this brave initiative is none other than the third largest mining company in the world, Rio Tinto. As an all-star multi-national mining group, Rio Tinto is the world's largest aluminum producer, the second largest in iron-ore mining, third largest in coal mining, and is responsible for 30% of the world’s all-natural diamond output. Rio Tinto also tops world mining and production lists in silver, uranium, talc, titanium dioxide, salt, borax, bauxite, lead, zinc, nickel, and molybdenum.

The Rio Tinto Group (RTG) has received countless awards for upstanding ethical behavior and sustainability and environmental practices from fellow multi-national corporations, including the Splenda-producing mogul Tate and Lyle. In return, Rio Tinto is the sponsor of its own sustainability award, recently recognizing a rubber and tire plant, several Indian tea plantations, a clear-cutting timber business, and everyone’s favorite oil company, Shell Oil.

With such a glorious background in world production and ethical practices, it would only be appropriate to shine more light on RTG’s incredibly rich and progressive history.

Rio: Flawless, just like its diamonds.

RTG has been a leader in stewardship of not only the land it mines, but also of its hard-working employees and neighboring communities. And as a responsible company should, RTG ensures safety and equality to all of its global employees, even those in the world's over-exploited—I mean under-developed—countries.

Wal-Mart's Love, Earth® jewelry line consists of 24 golden rules they like to call the “Environmental and Social Sourcing Criteria for Mining and Metals in Jewelry.” Talk about a mouthful! This lengthy title leads to an even more extensive list of requirements. The list seems more verbose and inspiring than the Bill of Rights, yet is more elusive and vaguely written than the Patriot Act.

In order to be accepted as Wal-Mart’s “green partner” in the brave endeavor of ethically-mined precious metals, it had to meet each articulated requirement of Wal-Mart’s golden 24 rules.

For example, gilded rule number ten states that: “When [a mining source is] operating in zones of armed conflict... [They] should seek to ensure that, through their actions or inaction, they are not benefiting from, supporting, contributing to, nor tacitly permitting human rights abuses or atrocities, either directly or indirectly.” It should come to no surprise that since the 1950’s, Rio Tinto proudly supported the oppressive apartheid governments of many nations around the world, including governments in South Africa and Papua New Guinea. RTG did so by not only setting up “white only” facilities, but also by directly providing these apartheid governments with money and military equipment. It seems more likely that RTG read rule ten to state that any mining company should guarantee “through their action or inaction,” that they are “benefiting from, supporting, contributing to... human rights abuses and atrocities."

The golden rules obscurely mention some concerns about mercury and cyanide contamination to human and environmental health. RTG's Namibian mine employees, along with other RTG African uranium mine employees, have been exposed to toxic levels of radiation, ultimately enduring disproportionate levels of cancer and other illnesses. Most, if not all, of RTG's opened and abandoned mines contain audacious amounts of mercury and cyanide contamination in amounts ranging from toxic to deadly.

RTG's PT Kelian Equatorial Mine (PT KEM) is just one of Rio Tinto’s many mines in the Indonesia region that has violated human rights. In 1989 the paramilitary police of General Suharto, yes Suharto, drove an uncounted amount of small scale local miners and farmers from their land to make the land open to acquisition by Rio Tinto. Later, RTG displaced another 440 families to make room for their mining operations. The Indonesian government's own National Human Rights Commission reports show that the military and PT KEM company security evicted miners, arrested protesters, and burnt down villages. I imagine somewhere or somehow this complies with Love, Earth® rule number thirteen, which requires the company:

“Seek to avoid or at least minimize involuntary resettlement of communities for new operations and expansion of existing operations and where this is unavoidable compensate fully, appropriately and fairly for adverse effects on individuals and communities with the objective of improving or at least to restore the livelihoods, standards of living, and living conditions of displaced people.”

Maybe RTG assumed that since the Suharto government had already inflicted enough hardship on locals, that full, fair, and appropriate compensation for burning down villages and physically assaulting villagers was a life forced even further into squalor.

This is not just ancient history either. As recent as 2001, a number of indigenous Dayak female employees have been involved in multiple cases of abuse, rape, and sexual harassment committed by senior mining staff. In many poor countries, the senior mining staff consists of well-educated foreigners, a good number who come from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and other industrialized countries. This clearly shows respect and reverence of the 24 Love, Earth® golden rules, including number nine which states a mine should “have in place policies and practices that uphold fundamental human rights and respect cultures, customs and values in dealings with employees” enacting “policies and practices designed to eliminate harassment and unfair discrimination.” Maybe because subjecting women in poorer countries into sexual coercion and violence is something Wal-Mart knows all too much about they decided to let their buddies at RTG slide on rule nine.

In 2000, Australian television news show Dateline explained that local and indigenous inhabitants were murdered near and on a Brazilian Rio Tinto mine facility. One former guard told Dateline the company's head of security had “urged him and his colleagues to use violence and torture to discourage the miners." The employees at that same facility were also adversely—or more likely purposely—endangered and harmed. Contrary to the company doctor's reports, workers there had highly toxic levels of lead poisoning.

Practically every RTG mining operation in Africa, South America, Indonesia and other poor countries have reports of similar events, while virtually all operations globally have experienced union and worker suppression as well as cases of employee exposure to hazardous and toxic material.

In the world of dirty mining, we are blessed to have a system like Wal-Mart's 24 rules to help establish the basis for a 24-carat gold standard. A standard based in transfusing nasty little terms like apartheid, human rights abuse, rape, poison, contamination, and murder into the greener terminology of Eco-this and community that. By simply moving numbers from the neutered columns labeled “capital” and “resources” into the columns entitled “expenses” and “profits”, this corporate accounting alchemy develops poor foreign workers into profit rich skeletal remains, transforming backward native land into progressive toxic waste sites. The gullible may be quick to call this magic, but most know it as corporate efficient economics or more simply, sound business practices.

Green mining alchemists

The numerical alchemy responsible for the Love, Earth® line, although a part of a global foresight, seems to have its focus on a more local sight. In order to adhere to the motto “think globally, act locally,” RTG has decided that they will provide the gold and silver used for Wal-Mart's Love, Earth® collection from its Utah based subsidiary Kennecott.

Since the 1989 buyout from British Petroleum, Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation (KUCC) has been a prized jewel on the crown that represents Rio Tinto's mining dynasty. And why not? To keep up with Wal-Mart's $2.8 billion annual jewelry sales, RTG needed a lot of gold and silver, and what better place then Bingham Canyon in Utah, the world's largest open-pit mine. Considered the biggest hole made by man in the world, KUCC's Bingham Canyon open-pit mine stretches 2 1/2 miles wide and nearly one mile deep. A size so epic, that it can be sighted from any point within the greater Salt Lake Valley. RTG proudly gloats, “It has produced more copper ore, 18.1 million tons, than any mine in the world. Every year, Kennecott produces approximately 300,000 tons of copper, along with 500,000 ounces of gold, 4 million ounces of silver, about 30 million pounds of molybdenum, and about 1 million tons of sulfuric acid, a by-product of the smelting process.”

As the sun rises over Utah's Wasatch Mountains, the sound of diesel engines ring in the work day, while $3 million super trucks begin moving copper ore. Billowing clouds of smoke that on some days hazes the entire Salt Lake Valley, Kennecott's private 175-megawatt coal burning power plant blazes as it generates enough power to move the newly mined ore along a five mile conveyor belt to the concentrator, creating tons of waste every year. Energy and water are next used to smash the ore into a concentrate, creating an even greater extent of waste. Then, a significant amount of energy and thousands of gallons of water are wasted to slush the ore concentrate down a 17-mile slurry pipeline to the smelter and refinery, once again creating an increasing quantity of waste and spillovers. Once there, copper is smelted and refined with immense heat a minimum of three times, using even more energy and creating ever more waste. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “each year, [Kennecott's] smelter and refinery plants use approximately 2.8 billion cubic feet of natural gas, 200 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electric power and 450,000 tons of oxygen.” A small bi-product of this whole process and all the waste and pollution it creates is gold.

Most consumers are shocked to find out that the average 18-carat wedding ring leaves behind 40,000 pounds of waste, but RTG's Bingham mine makes those numbers seem grossly conservative. At the end of each workday 900,000,000 pounds of earth are removed from the mountain side in Bingham Canyon. Of those 900,000,000 pounds, 894,600,000 pounds (about 99.6% of all materials mined) are considered by KUCC to be nothing more than waste. 450,000 tons of rock are permanently removed from the canyon everyday in order to recover 960 pounds of gold. That averages to be approximately 642,000 pounds of rock removed in order to recover 1 troy ounce of gold. Isn’t it nice how corporations use the term “recover”, as if they once had, or owned, and are now regaining whatever the earth so wrongfully withholds from them? Regardless, KUCC is clearly setting the standard of a responsible corporate Eco-foresight with a large hallow point caliber in the chamber and our children's well-being in the crosshairs.

Let them drink gold

Utah is the nation's second driest state. Keeping tone with such environmental limitations in mind, KUCC states on their website that, “water is perhaps our [Utah's] most precious natural resource.” This statement comes easy when KUCC has larger water rights than most communities in the entire state combined. Owning a significant percentage of Utah Lake's water rights, they have access to one of the state’s largest freshwater supply. Kennecott's use—or potential misuse—of water is not regulated in any meaningful manner.

According to Rio Tinto's website, under the “environmental stewardship” section on water use, KUCC uses 15,000-gallons of new water a minute. For every 8 hours the facility operates, it exhausts 7.2 million gallons of fresh water. That means that the same amount of water that KUCC uses in an 8-hour period could fill more than 14 Olympic sized pools. The average citizen in the United States uses 66 gallons of water a day, so by comparison, Kennecott in 24 hours of operation depletes double the daily amount of water consumed by the entire population of Salt Lake City.

Among the preposterous scenery of their colossal consumption rates, it is hard to see where the environmental stewardship and conservation actually start. In typical corporate “green” fashion, water preservation seems to only exist on their web page, never making a genuine physical manifestation. As KUCC nears the end of its mining operations, wasting water will be just one chapter in the methodical books of historical achievements.

Kennecott; a barely told legacy

Utah, known as The Beehive State, ranks number 37 in states population, but fluctuates between second and third place in industrial pollution. Utah accomplishes this in large by playing host to KUCC, and according to the EPA, “in 2006, Kennecott's Utah Copper Mine and Power Plant was the second highest polluting facility in the nation with 102.5 million pounds of pollutants.” By 2008, after being forced to maximize technological improvements in order to lower pollution, Kennecott actually increased its release of pollutants to 113 million pounds. This seems to fall right in line with the rigorous criteria in which Wal-Mart states, “the Love, Earth® collection celebrates the Earth’s bountiful gifts by featuring jewelry pieces made with materials from sources that are committed to protecting the environment.” Exponentially producing more pollution than gold or silver, the degradation of environmental conditions must be KUCC's “bountiful gifts.”

For the past 20 years Kennecott's executives have successfully suppressed information about the risks of their tailings waste dam faltering and failing. KUCC has dammed up over 1 billion tons in mining sludge known as tailings. If the dam failed, an ecological catastrophe greater than the Dec. 22, 2008 Tennessee coal ash spill—a disastrous event considered more than 40 times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill—would occur, incurring hundreds of deaths, millions of dollars in property damage, the destruction of dozens of ecosystems, and the pollution of water sources. In the process of this cover-up, KUCC went as far as to secretly buy up neighboring houses to the dam to later resell some of them to less-than-suspecting individuals. Despite their own leaked documents from hired independent engineers and government officials that elaborate on this threat, KUCC continues to release unfounded documents to nearby communities explaining that the poorly housed 1 billion tons of waste poses no real threat.

According to an EPA report on KUCC, drinking water wells and ground water in the areas surrounding Kennecott facilities are contaminated with cadmium, chromium, sulfate, zinc, copper, lead, nickel, selenium, silver, acids, and arsenic. Mining wastes continued to leach acid waters eventually creating a 72-square-mile, or three million acre water plume of sulfate-contaminated ground water. Endangering communities in Salt Lake County, those polluted waters are known to causes cancer, and severe damage to the liver. The EPA further states that, “Lead, arsenic, and selenium are the main contaminants of concern. A plume of selenium-contaminated ground water enters nearby wetlands through springs and seeps are particularly troublesome because native birds are sensitive to selenium.”

Staying true to corporate accountability, KUCC actually proposed a clean up plan that permitted them to gain a profit from pumping the aquifer dry of the contaminated water, later depositing the same untreated water into the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake. This plan would have further polluted the same bird wetlands the EPA officials showed concerned about, while ultimately increasing the human health risk.

The Magna Ditch is another recent representation of RTG\KUCC malfeasance, and one that hits even closer to home for me. Once used for Bingham mining operations, this covered ditch stretches over 17-miles long now encompassing an area filled with thousands of residential homes, schools, and agricultural areas. The Magna Ditch expands through five communities in Salt Lake County, including the approximate area in which I spent my childhood playing.

Some time ago, when Bingham Mine perceived the ditch no longer useful to company production, they simply covered the ditch with dirt. Since then it has been discovered that the non-operational Magna Ditch has poisoned the surrounding soil with a number of toxins, including arsenic. Since the ditch was never lined, the arsenic and other nasty chemicals leached into the encompassing soil, expanding the contaminated area an even greater distance. Local, State, and Federal governments mandated a remediation clean-up of the area at the expense of Kennecott. The clean up efforts in this area have thus far been, at best, a failed sham, and at worst, a total environmental and human catastrophe. Greedy, profit-driven KUCC only dug up a small percentage of land—areas they considered the most arsenic-contaminated. However, they left large regions of land untouched, that to date, still contain unsafe levels of arsenic and other chemicals.

Currently, my two brothers live within the area where the old drainage ditch is. They have received confusing KUCC mailings ranging in explanations; that there was “no threat of arsenic,” that there was a “threat” to my brothers' property, that they will clean up arsenic from their yard, and that they will not be coming by after all. Neither of my brother's dare to have a backyard garden to grow food, and both are continually worried about the adverse affects the arsenic may have on their pet dogs. My niece and other neighborhood kids play daily in the contaminated front yards. Arsenic-poisoned soil is no longer merely a side effect of war and poverty stricken regions, but now another element to the constantly expanding horizon of American suburbia.

It's time for a Day Break

If the thought of back yard gardens and playgrounds being tampered with poisons is frightening to parents, local residents can now turn to none other than RTG's Kennecott for relief. With the world's largest mine forecasted to only last 10-20 more years, Kennecott has turned to Suburban Sprawl as their solution to rid themselves of the somewhat tampered 80,000 acres surrounding Bingham Mine.

Flying their well deserved Eco-sustainable flag, one of RTG's newest subsidiaries Kennecott Land (KL) has taken on the largest corporate initiative in history to tackle residential planned development. With an ammunition of words such as “community”, “open”, “green”, “sustainable”, “wildlife”, “green”, “trees”, “plants” and more “green” than a flu ridden Kermit the frog could ever spit up, Kennecott Land has a master plan that cannot be rivaled.

Kennecott's plan is to build more than 162,000 homes, luxury condos, and apartments. The plan also includes a college campus, industrial areas, business offices, retail spaces, 105,000 new jobs, a minimum of 100,000 trees, a ski resort and much more. Of course it makes complete environmental sense to have more jobs than trees in any given area. They expect their development to aid in expanding the Salt Lake regional population by another 500,000, or in other words, a sustainable growth rate of 5 people to every one tree planted. And maybe, in bang-up fashion, they will even be able to incorporate a meaningless fraction of their billions of pounds of annual mining wastes for green tax credits.

To keep the influential LDS church at bay, KL donated enough land to have a church and park in every neighborhood. Polishing the Mormon pay-off in a manner that the Mexican Mafia could only dream about, they then sealed the deal with a plan to build a towering LDS Temple. What the Mormon's do not know is that once the area now envisioned as a sustainable paradise nears completion, it might ultimately eliminate any future need for churches or belief in a higher power altogether. With the world's largest and ugliest man made hole as the backdrop, Heaven on Earth will soon exist; and it will be heavily stamped with Kennecott's many corporate trademarks.

The first community development Daybreak® (yes it is trademarked) is already being built in this aspiring plan to permanently scar Salt Lake's West Bench even further with asphalt and concrete. One already built structure in Daybreak® is Oquirrh Lake, ironically named after the mountain range that Kennecott has annihilated with its ongoing excavation dealings.

To make up for the number of real wetlands that mining has earlier destroyed, they have created this 85-acre, 250 million-gallon man-made lake. In typical green-wash fashion, this lake is not an actual wetland, but created for human recreational use only. This creation has thus far resulted in the transportation of 35 million cubic feet of soil, 25,000 tons of rock, and will require an annual 255 acre-feet of water each year. The water to refill the lake is stolen from Utah's largest natural freshwater lake and wetlands, an area that is home to thousands of animals, including endangered fish species and hundreds of migratory birds. But no need for anything natural or wild, they have stocked the lake with 6,000 largemouth bass, 12,000 channel catfish, 30,000 bluegill, 160,000 fathead minnows, and some rainbow trout.

Kennecott may be dabbling in community construction projects, but their main focus, as always, remains in mining. Just as a magician uses sleight of hand, so does the world's greenest mining company. RTG's cheap parlor tricks have been used to successfully confuse and evade , in the last two years alone, while Kennecott Land has been busily building their Eco-image in the Salt Lake Valley, KUCC has been even busier, placing over 70 mining claims on newly acquired county open-spaces.

Salt Lake County has recently spent over $10 million to set aside 4,000 acres of mountainous land for a beautiful open-space reserve. But the region that is home to wild turkeys, cougar, fox, blue grouse, mule deer, and a herd of at least 750 elk, is susceptible to a national federal law that states that any company can file and work a mining claim on areas of public land. So what does this mean? It means if Kennecott gets its way, then you might be looking at another open-pit mine—along with the arsenic, selenium, and billions of pounds of air, land, and water pollution with it. If KUCC does succeed in mining some of the last intact natural area in the valley, they might build us another recreational lake, and maybe this time we will be allowed to swim in it.

Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got

So it seems yet again Wal-Mart has found itself in some very dirty dealings. Rio Tinto, their partner in crime, not only profits off the unmitigated destruction of complete bio-regions but also the health and lives of humans who also share the region. With this entire point aside, and in typical green-wash, guilt-free consumer fashion, Love, Earth® jewelry will no doubt become a corporate success for both Wal-Mart and Rio Tinto. Sure there will be more articles, reports, documentaries, and maybe even a lawsuit or two attempting to show both of these corporations for the scum that they really are, but in the end Wal-Mart will still win. See, as long as we (whoever that “we” might actually be) allow these multi-national corporations to define our reality, and as long as we allow them to have a “person-hood,” a power that not only supersedes our own human-rights but also threatens our children's future and the greater future of the earth and everything that inhabits it, we lose.

They dig virulent holes, systematically destroy mountain lands, harass and kill workers, and all the while, we still lose.

So what's the point?

Halfway through this article I asked myself, what's the point? What is the point of informing people about Wal-Mart's deceptive practices when we all live in a capitalist society dependent on what Wal-Mart stands for: power and greed? Why even attempt to challenge the horrible practices of Rio Tinto and the rest of the corporate mining industry when the truth of the matter is, we are a culture that needs its copper, steel, coal, silver, and gold, and we will do whatever it takes to get it. We can read articles while pondering the extensive destruction of everything and everyone, but at the end of the day we still feel powerless and so we do nothing. So, at what point will we realize that our grandchildren and their children may not be able to survive among the wastelands that we are currently proudly stockpiling in the name of progress?

For too long we have been able to slip a price tag on anything we wanted, and perhaps now is a good time to stop valuing things in such a constrictive manner. We are fractured addicts, born from broken families, so that when we grow up all we want is want. So we try our hardest to replace the shattered communities we never had. We are told to focus on the good, and soon we lose focus of anything tangible or meaningful. We fiercely participate in the amazing race to convert our old television's before the screen goes to snow, or we gladly take opportunities to work overtime to mortgage our lives out for new ones, all in hopes that when the big digital switch comes, instead of just turning the fucker off, we will get the clarity, the validation, that we have spent our lives chasing.

Or we could start something new. We could support those groups and individuals currently dedicated to stopping the destruction of every remaining ecosystem. We could replace that 18-carat engagement ring and the 20 tons of waste it creates with a simple, “I Love You.” We could build real alternatives to a culture hell bent on profiting off our children's future.

Writing articles is not going to save or stop anything, but what comes out of these articles might. Don't be afraid of finding a starting point, just look around. I mean really: look around. Starting points are everywhere.

Dragonfly

2009-06-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

She is forgotten in all the texts about revolution. She is never mentioned in the folk songs that ring out nightly from mountain to mountain. She is never casted in plaster and bronze, never carved from the native woods, never chiseled out of imported granite. She is one of the forgotten.

But she was the first line of defense. She was the food that filled the stomachs of any fighter willing to go back for one more day. She was also the one who dragged back the lifeless remains of those who did not make it back for one more day. She was the revolutionary greeting and the goodbye.

She was the first to shoot when the death squads came into the village, and she was the first to get raped in response to it. She was the first to protect a child from rape, and she got layered with bullets in response to it. She was the first to die, but has become the last remembered. Even now, her name has slipped my own lips. Its time to get a grip, but with 400 dead, the names of dead just slip lips. So we call them the forgotten, but I have done everything except forget them.

revolutionary metronome

2009-06-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

a flame is burning and she refuses to be put out

shes the type of fire that shines through the thickest of fog

a leading light to brighter days

pass the pollution of this virulent smog

occupying this urban decay

landscaped and manufactured from a culture

sickened and plagued by insincerity

we our addicted to gross domestic necessities

like cars and concrete

asphalt and asinine clocks

a pocket watch keeps ticking

trying to keep us all on time

so we wont miss the train

we begin walking in obedient lines

then funneled into cattle cars

we set off on our final destination

with paradise promised into the horizon

and the pain of our histories blind sighted behind us

but the rails run thin and thinner

and eventually they run out

right on the edge of this genocidal cliff

we euphemistically know better as industrial civilization

so one boxcar at a time

we make the climactic dive

even though we unequivocally know better

yet the brakes are never applied

parachutes are never supplied

we are denied and then denied again

even driftwood on occasion will faultier and sink

just as a boat of lead can be engineered well enough to float

but Archimedes principle follows our lead

and this time, it too, fails under the weight of denial

but theres another tick tick tick

to counter progress' clock

a bomb that has been placed

strategically somewhere in this city

and shes ready to go

shes ready to blow

shes ready to fight the capitalist fucks

that stole and sold her life for profit

all before she was even birthed

but shes not a prophet born

shes a revolutionary metronome

setting the pace and tone

to a much needed insurrection

correction, shes more than a mere tool

but she does not have a problem

using the masters tools to tear down the masters house

correction, shell evict that racist fuck and use that house

to shelter transients outlaws and runaways

correction, shell use the masters tools to create

a masterpiece that is unrelenting

a spirited art piece

that refuses to be framed stagnating on walls

shes the type of art that incorporates itself

into the most subtle walks of life

and she walks for life

but not in the charity 10 k manner

instead in a way that equates

man versus her

subject verb object

she fights it

she flows in and out of the dead of night

a moon lit ghost who's tired of being haunted

by a doomed future and unfulfilled past

she strikes back

and she strikes hard

and then harder

and then hardest

she strikes the match

that burns down all previous

physical and mental borders

a heat that burns with such intensity

that it has a spiritual propensity

to purge out this cultural disease

we all have been suffering under

and no longer shall we sing

“you really got a hold on me”

because instead

we now hold ourselves

and embrace each other

blurring the divides of

our selves and each other

into soon forgotten obscurity

her flames keep us warm

as we unpave the path back to our homes

it is soon replaced with weeds

and then young forest growth

and we struggle side by side with the land

sprouting up from these ancient scarred soils

her flame becomes the sunlight we are reaching for

a warmth radiating intermittent life

taking and giving

become neutered terms once again

as we begin to

grow and decay

live and die

rot and thrive

spoil and build

on and on

in and out

up and down

once again

it becomes all the same

as long as shes out there burning bright

and as long as she still refuses to be extinguished

we can become the soil and it can become us

we can enter once again

into a relationship that makes a little sense

instead of this current one that makes little sense

no more beginnings and no more endings

just continual light and life

some cycles are not meant to be broken

Tattle Telling gets Paddle Wailing

2009-06-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

"Scruff McGruff
Chicago, Illinois
60652"

This was the anthem that played among my generation's childhood. I heard more from Scruff, than even the largest toy company. His advertising brainwash came on the television multiple times an hour. His address may have been one of the first things I was forced to remember, that and 911, yes the snitch line, not the awesome holiday.

We learn to snitch on each other before we learn most things. Anyone with siblings knows what I am talking about. Parents reinforce, celebrate, and reward snitching. This may not seem like a huge deal at first, but it creates a tendency that is not easily shuffled away.

Snitching is the least autonomous action an individual can take. By snitching, an individual not only submits themselves to the power of abusive authority, but also renders others into very compromising situations.

Even snitching as "harmless" as telling on an annoying neighbor to a landlord, or a fellow employee to an employer, can have much deeper and more serious implications. My friend does a better job explaining this than I ever could;

"The culture at every articulation is a prison culture. The method of organizing every possible social activity: Work; Education; Shelter; Medicine; Charity; Food distribution; Food production; Social deviance; Everything is the prison model. Every individual in their assigned place; Ubiquitous surveillance; A set of rules to follow; a Set of guards to punish their violation...

Surveillance is ubiquitous, but not omnipresent (yet). We nevertheless behave as if we are always surveilled--having internalized the culture of surveillance, we surveil ourselves. And increasingly we willingly open our lives to the continuous surveillance of others."

We are currently living in a culture that operates as a Panopticon prison. This must be challenged on even the smallest levels. Personal and community responsibility are not synonymous with personal and community policing.

Snitching is the adult word we use to describe a very childish thing we do, Tattle Telling. So Stop Tattling! Here is a website that can provide some pretty recent examples of the horrible results of snitching.

these are the things I know

2009-06-16T23:34:00.000-07:00

I once carried the weight of the world on my shoulder. Damn! What an unbearable burden. Attempting to defy gravity, in this manner, I did not get very far. I ended up worst off, utterly squashed by the weight of the world and it's mass of problems.

Hero was a word I once strived toward. To save the day was my daily protocol. Damsels in distress were my favorite to love and caress. It took so damn long to finally realize that heroism is no better than hierarchal worshiping egotism. If Frued would have spent time on his own couch, his drug addicted narcissism would be the least shocking of his many disorders, hang ups, and shortcomings. Clark Kent is no more than a selfish, codependent, schizophrenic, delusional psychopath, and Superman, his fractured ego.

I have been misdiagnosed clinically sane by a death-craving culture and over-prescribed an insidious dose of reality. Majority rule does not work in mental institutions. Consensus reality seems more like delusional destitution when love is confused with abuse, experience with trauma, memories with nightmares, expectations with limitations, golden hearts with golden arches, daily commutes with death camp marches, and the drumline rolls on and on.

Leading by example is ultimately no more effective than authoritarian coercion. The battle will only be won in filling the empty stomachs of the world's most undesirables, in filling the hearts of the world's most apathetic, in filling the graves dug for the world's most wealthy and affluent. The best tasting apples come from those orchards bordering cemeteries. Poison oak is the frontline defense in areas of the forest most threatened. Worms have no brain but still regulate their own population growth based on resource availability. Substance, resistance, and sustainability can be inspired in the most unusual manner.

candy rocks

2009-06-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

A young bee comes back from her first trip out. She's carrying very little pollen her first time back. Regardless, the other bees are never too busy to give her strokes in a congratulatory manner. They celebrate the occasion. She receives enough encouragement to continue on and eventually she is more than able to carry her own. This is the politics of honey making.

A young boy drops out of middle school to post up on the block. He comes back with a black eye and in the hole $50. But two weeks later, surviving the exchange of shots, that corner becomes his spot, and from there, he now slings rock. But with his brother in prison, dad never showing up for roll call, and mom hooked on what her son's booked on, alone, he learns to carry his own. This is the politics of money making.

steady red hipster nurse

2009-06-12T14:47:00.000-07:00

She was a nurse. She was wearing bright red Chuck Taylors and the lipstick to match. She had the skin of someone who worked late nights. She was funny, in that snide sarcastic manner. She grabbed my attention. I thought to myself, "Neat, she might be someone cool to talk to while I'm institutionalized."

The next day she arrived as the sun departed. Her hair was something I would imagine a "The Cure" fan would appreciate. I tried not to be to judgmental. Plus, maybe to her benefit, a Keffiyeh garnished her neck.

Later she was told to perform some procedures on me. This is not a bad sex joke, just simply, bland medical language. So as she works we begin to converse.

"So you ride trains?" She asked
Laughing, I replied with a "No."
She followed with an "Ohh."
I continued with an awkward "Sooo..."
(And no this is not poetry, just one of those times in life where conversations actually rhyme.)

After more procedures, she spoke up.
"So what do you do besides hate 'the man,' hate money, and ride trains?"

Clearly she hadn't heard my "no" from earlier, that or she didn't believe me. It was also clear that she was trying to make a judgment or assumption on my beliefs, based purely on the tattoos that covered my skin. Fair enough, I suppose, considering my body has become a billboard for anti-this and anti-that. I also had already made my assumptions of her, but before I begin to reply, I digest the tone in which she spoke to me. I soon recognized it as a tone way too familiar for my liking.

It was a tone of talking down. It was a loaded question. She already knew how I was going to reply. She was going to fulfill herself in self-righteous grandeur with her hideous pride of being an apolitical, hipster shit-bag. I was entertainment to her. I was her culture's Noble Savage. Something to admire from a far, but not actually desire. A spectacle, to be viewed, but never experienced. I was "cute" to her, not in the kitten way, but in the poor, naive, helpless anarchist type of way. And for a moment I almost played into it, but I resisted.

I snapped back with a short overview of my past activism, although halfway through, her smirk began to grow. Quickly, I had to respond with heavier artillery or she would still turn this around and win. So as I finished my overview, I made sure to not give her time to reply, and as she began to speak, I stopped her at an inaudible gulp.

"And exactly what is it that you do? What else are you proud of, besides working for 'the Man'? Drinking at over priced beauty bars? Paying for haircuts that look like haircuts no one would pay for? Or is it completely disrespecting an entire culture by turning their traditional and meaningful clothing into an unremarkable fashion statement? People that are caught fighting a war. Trapped fighting for their lives every single day. I suppose that makes you proud?"

Almost immediately she replies, "working for the man, and overtime." Her sarcasm had dropped to the wayside by now, she was speaking with honesty for once. No facade. No barrier. I had effectively shattered it.

"Working overtime? Why?" I questioned her
Caught off guard, she responds, "To buy things for myself."
Stealing the last words, I state, "your life's pride is in buying things"
Nothing further was said.

Assort. Notebook

2009-06-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

I once had a girlfriend. We had dated for about a year and a half. We had even lived together for about a Year. There was many problems within the relationship. The main one was that she was very abusive and manipulative. But I was also guilty of trying way too hard to "fix" her. We were not equals. It stopped working, regardless of what hope and comfort desired. One day she was yelling at me. I yelled back. It was the first and last time I have ever yelled in an intimate relationship.

That same day, I asked her to move out. She had many places to go. I did not. So she left that day devastated.

It had all been tough, but even after a couple days had past, I still had not cried. Then while picking up some food at a horrible pizza chain, yes the corporate one that offers large pizzas for $5, I had the sudden need to use the restroom.

They did not have one so, I had to walk across the parking lot to the large and offensive Wal-Mart. As I entered the store, I looked above at all the fluorescent lights and black clouds hovering on every isle. Those black domes tend to hang over your head like the worst Charlie Brown clouds. Restricting your movements, your actions, damn them. But today was not one of those days. I was there to use the restroom, not to find an isle clear of clouded views. Today, there was a truce between me and the disgusting giant. After defecating, I made my way back out the store. There was one huge display just as you were leaving the store. It had school supplies on sale, so it must have been the beginning of the school year, or more importantly then end of summer. The end of freedom. The end of growth.

I couldn't help but to notice a large white price tag that stated "low prices, always" and underneath it hung a huge 8 cent. The sign next to it said 12 cents. It was for a large pink Eraser. The one on the other side said 15 cents. It was for one of those pencil sharpeners with a plastic cover to keep the shavings together. Then my eyes made it back to the 8 cent sign. It took me a while before it came clear. When it finally made sense, I stood there shocked.

Under the sign was a crate full of stacks. Stacks that were made of paper. Paper that was binded together with metal spirals. Metal spiral bounded with machine precession, 100 sheets, college rule: one subject, notebooks. Thousands of them. You could even have a choice of five or six generic colored covers. You could buy as many as you needed. A sign with red print stated "no limit."

I looked back at the neighboring signs. They all had limits. You could only buy 2 sharpeners or 5 erasers or 4 packs of pencils or 6 packs of ballpoint pens. Under each price and was a small description. I thought, "this must be a mistake." I glanced once more at the 8 cent sign. No Mistake. Underneath the price it clearly said "Assort. Notebooks." I stood there for another minute before walking out into the nonredeemable late summer sun. The smell of salt and ocean-decay was rampant in the air.

That walk across that parking lot seemed so damn long. It was longer than that awkward moment leading up to the first kiss with each new partner. It was longer than those tingling moments after that same first kiss. I couldn't breathe. I was choked up. I was having a hard time seeing straight. My heart was beating hard and then, it started to hurt.

I made it back to my friends car. He asked me some non-unique standardized question. I stayed quiet for quite a while, and then it happened. Tears started making their way to a great decent. The same tears that made the decision a couple days before that a broken heart wasn't worth their time. They clocked in and got busy. That night they would surely work overtime.

I took some time to verbalize to my friend what was going on. I think I just kept saying "8 cents, 8 cents... what the fuck" That night still reminds me of the most dreaded feelings. There was a mixture of feelings that night. I stopped being an adult.

I was a kid who had a broken heart. The girl I lost my virginity to had been consumed in self-destructive behaviors. The culture I was brought up in was killing the natural world I loved. This girl I loved had finally lost a horrific battle to Aneroxia-Nervosa. The forest I visited regularly as a kid, survived a huge summertime fire, but not the timber sale that soon followed.

The destruction became too much. It became an 8 cent College Rule, Single Subject notebook. 100 pages to never be filled up, not even in the most engaging ecology college class. It became a profit margin of 4 percent X 1 billion notebooks. A profit that can only be measured in the thousands, not even in the millions. It became notebooks without any recycled symbol in sight, because it became cheaper to produce that way. It became the death of a single forty to fifty foot tall fir, cedar, pine, or poplar tree just to make 100 pointless notebooks. It became more than that. It became four billion dead trees a year, slaughtered and pulped into paper. Papers turned into teachers, as teachers turn papers into pass or fail, ignoring altogether that this culture has already failed.

It has failed a young girl who only wanted to love herself, but could not see past the ugly that was so brutally painted on her every time she turned a corner in this culture.
It has failed a young forest just as it began recovery from the last time it was clearcut, creating more scars that will never heal as it's ancient flesh of top soil is ripped away during the frequent early spring rains.
It has failed me as it is dedicated to destroying everything, everything I love.

Those future humans and non humans are not going to want to hear the "back in my day" stories.
They will hate us for gas only costing a dollar.
They will hate us for letting it only go up to 5 dollars.
They will not understand why value menus at fast food chains were such a good thing.
They will never forgive us for converting once living trees into dead and bleached 100 sheet, college rule: one subject, notebooks only to end up selling them for 8 cents a piece.
8 fucking cents.

I'm sorry is not good enough anymore.

When did anarchy become so safe... and why is green becoming so damn mean?

2009-06-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

After appearing in a few conversations of mine this week, I figured the following might be interesting enough to talk about.

Since when did anarchy become so safe? I have anarchist friends who teach in schools. They talk and actually get some of their students into anarchist thought. I by no means am trying to say this is a negative thing. This is good, very good, but it also seems that anarchy should always be a threat to both Capitalism and Nationalism.

Upon finding out I was comfortable calling myself an anarchist, it took a couple more years before I outwardly verbalized this. This is in part to do with that at the time anarchy was still stigmatized. It seems that even up till 2002-2003, that anarchy was still a threat, especially on mainstream media, especially those "self-proclaimed anarchists."

Just read anything from the press in the last two years. Anarchists have been practically laughed at with only one exception, our friends the Greeks. Even then, Greek Anarchy was practically squandered into a silly isolated student movement by the mainstream media.

A couple clarifications before I go any further

I do not think that the mainstream media should be used as a gauge alone on where we stand
In a sense, I do think we need to be "relevant" to the "masses." I do not however think that means that we should stop being a threat to those in power.
It seems there is much more momentum now than lets say Seattle '99. So then why is PETA more of a threat to national security than the IWW?
Using this "Obama" momentum that some radical Socialists and anarchists seemed to be stoked on seems foolish. Obamaites are just like Green-Technoites. Green Washing is not our ally neither is ObamaRama. We can find allies, recruits, or whatever utilitarian term you prefer in both of these areas, but we can do that by being honest in what we believe, in what we desire. I'm not going to be co opted and I'm sure as hell not going to co opt liberal wash.

When did crimethinc become one of the best anarchist publications out there? I mean I was never opposed to crimethinc, but it now seems they are a leading voice for what I desire.

It seems to me that anarchy can be embraced, but not because it's acceptable, but because it actively opposes all that is acceptable. That's how and why I was attracted to it. Maybe on this topic, I'm just being nostalgic.
_ _ _

One thing is for sure. Green is mean, and it depends on who is asked, just how mean it has become. So up until about 8 years ago, being an environmentalist was a joke, now it's the #1 United States Domestic Terrorist Threat. If you ask Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage, even the loveable Eco-Stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore are terrorists. But I'm not interested in asking them for anything but a good laugh, that is until it settles in that millions, many millions follow these two religiously. Regardless it's the thoughts of different people that frighten me more.

Teachers, Students and Administrators trying to get rid of recycling clubs and other bright green events on school grounds. Hunter's who have been raised to love and appreciate the landbase choosing the sides of progress and America instead of the land they loved. Indian Tribes worried about Salmon in the Columbia river and it's tributaries are allying with the Federal Agencies interested in killing the federally protected sea lions that have been eating those salmon that cant make it past the dams, instead of allying with the radical and progressive groups trying to stop the real problem, the dams.

Sure recycling isn't going to save the world, hunters sometimes can be racist, selfish assholes, and some native folk just like all cultural groups will make poor choices, but what the hell!

Before this gets to long let me make some clarification points

Any effective action or planned action to aid the environment in the past decade has been vehemently opposed by governments and their huge monopoly on repressive "law and order"
Even supporting groups or individuals who fight for the environment can now get you many years in federal prison thanks to the AETA laws recently passed.
I am going on the premise that what is threatening to those in power is what is effective. This goes past game theory, and can be defended historically and currently. When those in power feel threatened it is because they are, and we will not be effective as long as they are in power.
there is a huge overlap between anarchy and environmentalism and these groups and individuals are feeling the worst of the repression.

So I am not interested in offering any solutions, just to set up a dialogue within ourselves and our groups.
Can and should we make anarchy threatening again?
Can and should we use anarchy's current non-threatening stance as an opportunity to spread and grow?
How can we keep the repression on the environmental front from growing?
When or is it appropriate to trumpet both causes?
Why the increasing focus from the government away from anarchists and on to environmentalists?
What do we have to gain from this current standing point?
What do we have to lose?
And is it even important to do all this strategizing when there is so much work that needs to be done?
It seems like if we start answering these questions than we would have more insight than this blog could ever offer.

2009-06-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

Democracy, has always had its foundations in slavery. Always, since it's original and modern inceptions. Both Greeks and American patriots had economies, lifestyles based on slavery. In my teenage years, my break from Socialist style majority rule was due to this understanding. I wanted Autonomy, I wanted Solidarity, and Mutual-Aid, I wanted consensus, I wanted to consent to those actions that affected my life. I did not know this was anarchy, well I did, but anarchy still had a certain stigma to it.

Democracy benefits some, at the expense of others. It always will, so why should we settle for this? Does this mean we should not even work in groups that operate on anything other than consensus? Is good activist work ever going to come out of a majority rule group? I mean there are clear physical results. Even the worst hierarchical top-down NGO's have very real and tangible results. People get food, people get shelter, but at what expense? I'm starting to believe that the power structures we organize under have a much larger impact on the work we do. I've worked with food kitchens and mobile food banks. We fed peoples stomachs but the rest of them remained diminished. But with Food Not Bombs, Tacos Not Bombs, you could see the replenishing happening, it was an all around nutritional increase. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

Let me stop before I get too self-involved on some dialogue or self-critique. I think I wanted to just simply explain that it seems their will never be a viable option for Democracy to break from it's foundations on inequality.

Death Squads Normalized

2009-06-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Death squads have stopped being called death squads. I don't understand this. It use to be that if military groups went on campaigns for corporate interest, we saw them for the atrocious scumbags they were, but now we see them as something much more friendlier. Why has it become normalized for death squads to kill hundreds, kidnap many more from their homes and hospitals, and terrorize whole countries with United States military sponsorship? With words of "wealth," "equality," and "fairness" another massacre has yet again been underwritten by United State's government, multinational corporations, and consumers.

These Mining, Logging, Oil, and Gas projects will not just threaten the Amazon's human population but also the Amazon itself. Words on a blog. Words in a paper. Words written in still drying paint on the side of a bank. How can these words stop this ecocide? Are they even meant to stop it, or just help me sleep better at night? My stomach turns from this overweight blood dense privilege I have in this story, but in the end, I'll still benefit, and I'll still be able to sleep comfortably tonight.

I wanted to be inspiring. I wanted to draw parallels to build an understanding. I wanted to feel that today, the people down their struggling, would actually have benefited from my continuing existence today. But I can't. Not today.

We are losing. Anyone who reads this knows this. I guess all I can ask is to feel it.

borrowing an old ibm think pad... some would call it a dinosaur. I wish they all went extinct!

2009-06-02T00:30:00.000-07:00

So of course, when I find myself serious and dedicated enough to start a blog... something happens. My computer, which is less than a year old, crashed. I was going to say died, but that would be an insult to everything that has gone extinct so that this culture could thrive, so that that my computer could be made, so that I could be typing this instead of being in a more intimate relationship with my local community and land base. Ha, I just noticed I also gave my computer an age, as if it was alive. Wow! This is why they are winning and we are not.

On a different note, most of my short stories, and my last two years of poetry was on that computer. The majority, I did not make a back up for. So as much as this could paralyze and depress me, I wont let it. Instead I'll just have to replace all that was lost with more that is better. I wish I could say that about the natural world. Well except for the better part. I'm not going to make value judgments on whats wild or best or more natural. I do however wish for more wild. But just like any good wishing well story, the moral of this is story, is wishing is never good enough.

So shall we get to work?

2009-05-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

I was going to post a few quotes from this amazing interview, but I realized I would be block quoting the whole article. This is a good interview for any activist, feminist, radical, or environmentalist. So check it out

wetland / whatland

2009-05-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

I met a lonely beaver the other day.
She was swimming in a small stream.
Maybe it could even be considered a creek.
But there was a fence that locked her in on all sides.
Some signs read mitigated wetland.
I don't know what that means, and I don't think she does either.
Maybe she is better locked in that patch of few trees and some shrubbery.
Because she would be even more saddened to see what has happened to the rest of her home.
Before progress moved in, it was a beautiful forest, but now it's ugly parking lots.
There is a Wal-Mart on one end and a K-Mart on the other, competing.
All the while, she's trapped in the middle.
But I guess competition is a part of nature.
I guess it's all natural.

Stool Pigeon: someone acting as an informer or decoy for the police...

2009-05-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Martha, the earth's last known Passenger Pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, during the beginning of the Great World War. I don't think she was willing to see another war. She had just finished her own war. One in which she had lost badly. The war on the natural world and her was one that was centuries old. It was a dirty war.

A single flock of Passenger Pigeons migrating could stretch one mile wide by three miles long and could contain two billion birds. They called the extensive forests of North America their home. They would establish colonies covering hundreds of miles in these forests. With hundreds of nests in a single tree, they communally took care of each others young.

Then came the white plague. In hopes of supplying themselves with an abundant source of agriculture fertilizer, and cheap meat for their slaves, servants, and the urban poor, whites begun the commercial hunting of Passenger Pigeons in the early 1800's. Boxcars filled to the brim on steel rail lines, became the pigeons new migratory passages. At the same time, hunters not only killed Passenger Pigeons in increasingly larger numbers, but settlers also deforested the dense forest canopies that they refused to live without. Unlike their closest surviving cousins, the Mourning Dove, they refused to domesticate to the ever expanding cities and farms. Refusing the way of their Mourning cousins they took their communal forest life head on with civilization, and ultimately like everything else to challenge civilization before, they were slaughtered.

Hunters would spend five months at a time, killing 50,000 birds a day, from a single nesting. They would get the birds drunk on alcohol soaked grains, while setting fires to the trees the pigeons called home. One technique stands out above the rest. An imprisoned pigeon would be fastened alive to a circular stool attached to the end of a long pole. Her eyes were then sewn shut with the finest silk thread to keep her disoriented. Blinded and Bound, at the end of the pole, she would be raised and lowered. Her frantic movement would attract other pigeons flying above, and they would make an inquiring decent, not knowing it would be their last. Hunters would then shoot and net the entrapped birds. The ones caught up in the net faced their death when a hunter would crush their heads between his forefinger and thumb. This was afterglow, just business.

After the last Passenger Pigeon died, from the culmination of acts perpetrated by whites, none of which where short of ecocide. Humans continue to triumph over “evil” in two bloody World Wars, all while further dominating the land in service to their own holy and righteous production. This of course, is not a story about one lonely bird named Martha. This is the story of great men. This is the accounts of our grandfathers, great grandfathers, and their fathers before. This is his story.

But there is another story being told. It's told in whispers. It's told from dance. It's a story a mother sings while nursing her young child. It's told by weeds, fighting to take back the grain fields that were once grand forests. It's a story of a people who learned to live communally from their old friends, the Passenger Pigeons. It's a story told from people who refuse to live apart from forests. They too, will eventually die from this ecocide called civilization. All that will be left, will be some distant cousins. Us, the mourning human. And we will walk, surrounded by towering concrete, pecking at food scraps, ever mourning. As generations pass, memories will weaken, but we will always mourn that something from out past. We just might not be able to name it.

a side note. Martha, the pigeon was named after Martha Washington. Yes, the same Martha Washington that was married to good ol' George Washington... talk about offensive

The national park formerly known as...

2009-05-28T00:13:00.000-07:00

Glacier National Park is a magnificent area in Montana. Bordering the continuing natural landscape in Canada, this area played host to the Salish, Flathead, Shoshone, Cheyenne, and Blackfeet Tribes. The imperialist explorers, gentlier known as Lewis and Clark, traveled within miles of the modern boundaries and recorded accounts of the area, detailing it's natural bounty. The glaciers that the park was named after, numbered over 150 in the mid 1800's. In 2005, scientists put the number of remaining glaciers to 27 and melting. To make this travesty furthermore a tragedy, most scientists agree the 27 remaining glaciers will be completely disappeared from the park by 2030.

The only question remaining is; will they continue to call this area that is so sincerely affected by climate change, Glacier National Park even though the glaciers will be long gone?

This is the curse of a culture who turns ancient glaciers into sediment pools, in just a few generations. A culture that turns millions of dinosaurs into obscure statistical profits, for just a few wealthy and privileged. A culture who is cursed by its fundamental foundations. Foundations that seem to be ever receding. Foundations that are melting to the heated rhythm of hellish five o'clock traffic jams and lightning-fast-food value menus. Foundations valuing menus over glaciers.

"boy, it's hot out today! can I get that super sized with fries and a coke. extra ice please."

for more information read Collapse by Jared Diamond or Wiki: Glacier National Parks

2009-05-28T00:09:00.000-07:00

so after a year of searching, reading, and writing, I believe it will be worthwhile to make a more asserted effort on this blog.

please feel free to comment on anything written within these entries of dissent, reflection, and personal development.

without comments, I won't have much to base off which directions I need to explore.

a girl life lost

2008-05-08T13:14:00.001-07:00

A Girl's life lost
on the battlefield of wanting to be loved
outward bastard images of perfection
. . . perfection
so slim, so damn thin
that her face gets lost
in the margins of advertisements

Magazine, white, pulped, paper lies
hide behind ink that does not bleed
for the lives of trees
are not the only ones
lost tonight

-Jayson Tx

City of the Walking Dead

2008-05-08T12:56:00.000-07:00

May 8, 2008

Cairo, is Egypt's ancient city for the dead. It is now occupied by tens of thousands of squatters. Stones previously used as tombs, now makes desks, beds, chairs, and TV stands. Becoming poorer and poorer, these squatters have been forced to settle in this graveyard like sanctuary. It at first seems amazing that the same place where once the richest and proudest of a past civilization would go to set their travels, into many other worlds beyond our own, is now being used as housing by this civilization's poor and alienated. But then it dawns on me, these squatters were previously living in the mass urban slum villages that are currently being torn down and replaced with corporate western shopping malls. This is not amazing, it is just another gross attempt at gentrification. Soon, Cairo will be known as the city of the walking dead, as thousands of squatters began fighting for what little resources are left for them.

-Jayson Tx