Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 14:38:32 +0100
To: brooklyn-cacophony@smoe.org
From: NOT BORED!
Subject: rats and cowardly little weinies
Sender: owner-brooklyn-cacophony@smoe.org
Here we again find a rat that has already been hard-bitten by our fangs and poorly carries its wounds: one William Abernathy. Quelle surprise!
NOT BORED! wrote:
*especially from a group that is said to be planning to dress up as the Yuppie Go Home guy for Halloween.*
Mr. William Abernathy has no comment on this salient point. Does anyone else?
We got little response from "the crowd" that day because A). it was raining steadily that day [we -- and this is not the editorial "we," but a reference to a total of 7 very committed anarchists -- performed in the rain] and B). there was, consequently, no "crowd" there.
Well, sniff, sniff! As I remember it, there *was* a crowd before you started...
Translated into honest, plain speech: "the NOT BORED! crew took the stage as it started to rain, despite the fact that the rain drove people in-doors."
I had thought that the crazed, inchoate and incoherent rambling of the Yuppies Can't Go Home poster
Words that suggest either the manner in which you earn a living or the nature of your hobbies. Are you a psychiatrist? ("crazed") Are you a sociologist or even an anthropologist ("inchoate")? Or are you a literary critic or a paper-grader? ("incoherent")
was *satire,* and certainly a reaction *to* your acts of vandalism, rather than the prolix footnote you have revealed it to be. Only now do I come to realize that you are engaged in a self-parody so arch that not only was *I* taken in, but that *you yourself* don't get the joke!
A very strange statement: "You had me thoroughly duped, but now I see through you." Oh, no: *you* are still thoroughly duped, and *I* do indeed get the joke.
I'm sorry I failed to live up to your militant standards of confrontation and direct action. Perhaps we should have stormed the stage, but frankly, you didn't seem to rate.
Translated into honest, plain English: "I am indeed a coward, afraid to 'put my money where my mouth is,' and I live with myself day after day by judging the grapes too sour, in any event, and not worth the efforts I did not in any case take."
For those of you who missed it, Mister Yuppie Go Home Guy (AKA Bill Brown) took to the stage after a spiff Latin combo had left a decent-sized, cheerful crowd.
Missing from narrative: it started raining (see above) and there were problems with (and those delays) both the on-stage sound and the line back to the 103.9 FM transmitter.
Beneath a hastily-erected picture of that master of historic preservation, Mr. Popularity in Polish Neighborhoods Worldwide, Joe "Higher Body Count Than Hitler" Stalin, YGHGuy tried to get the audience to chant "Yuppie Go Home" along with him.
Missing from narrative: the poster of Stalin -- a prop for our stage adaptation of George Orwell's _1984_ -- had the words "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU."
No dice, comrade. (Why? Not because we weren't there, or because we have any particular slant on your impotent crusade against global capital, but because you're a tedious little man
A telling detail. Ever read, I'm sorry, ever see something on television about a book called "Listen, Little Man"?
whose only claim to fame is a wave of property damage inflicted upon a neighborhood you quite paradoxically claim to defend.)
Neighborhoods have been and can certainly still be defended quite successfully in the name of abolishing the very sacred cow "property" to which you refer. The only paradox here is the belief that people who are deeply, even fundamentally separated from each other by the institution of private property constitute some kind of real community.
Mister Brown then proceeded to read a bunch of poetry, or a screed, or a rant, or whatever you want to call it, about the evils of capitalism. Or something like that.
Fexlix Guattari, "In order to end the massacre of the body," _Soft Subversions_ (Autonmedia, 1996).
So stick with it, Bill: the police are always looking for new crowd-dispersal techniques--As long as Amnesty International doesn't put up a stink about the cruelty of it all, they just might hire you on.
Pretty lame insult coming from someone who subscribes to a "cacophonous" listserv.
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