The Means To An End

It's crucial to remember that a lack of understanding of people different from you — their collective experiences and culture — leads to desensitization, and ultimately dehumanization. Dehumanization is is a powerful tool which craven politicians use to fool people into accepting what should be the unacceptable, and as history has taught us, the unspeakable.

Art (Brush Mirror Watch) by Peter Ransom © 1984

Principles And Perspective

A few recent ugly events that were recorded on "smart" phones and amplified via social media exposure — Proud Boys vs AntiFa in NYC, Catholic high school students vs Native American activists in DC, etc. — have me realizing how Rashomon was truly a prescient film.

Searching For A Future

Lorna Doom

Rest In Peace

The first time I heard the Germs — via The Decline Of Western Civilization documentary — I thought they were the worst thing I'd ever heard; a joke. Years later I picked up a copy of their debut album (GI), and within one listen my jaw was on the floor — I truly believe it to be one of the very best American punk-rock albums of all-time. And Lorna was a total-bad ass who left us way too young.

Freedom Is Always The Freedom Of Dissenters

"To be a human being means to joyfully toss your entire life ‘on the giant scales of fate’ if it must be so, and at the same time to rejoice in the brightness of every day and the beauty of every cloud."

Making The Scene

A lifetime ago MaximumRockNRoll was a crucial monthly read; through its pages I was turned onto countless underground punk bands and record labels (and I even wrote a few NYC "scene reports" for the 'zine, and sold my own publication and record releases via ads I ran with them exclusively). I stopped reading MRR long ago as I lost interest in pouring through the finger-staining pages for what became diminishing returns, and I also felt that their eventual scene-policing ways, strict rules, and definitions were anathema to the true spirt of punk-rock. Criticisms aside, MaximumRockNRoll was an important publication and I am sad to hear they are ceasing publication.

Hurry, Get On, Now It's Coming

Avoiding stepping in human waste in the alley near the A-train stop, meeting graffiti writers from all over the city, copping fireworks, liberating fat caps from Pearl Paint, buying throwing stars and nunchucks, watching the hustlers sell brick-filled VCR boxes... Canal Street in the early '80s was a real adventure for us Brooklyn kids.

Humans Are Garbage

Extinction is happening at 1000 times the normal speed with the Eastern Puma being declared extinct, the recently discovered "lost shark" looking like it's on it's way (due to overfishing) as well as nearly all species of lemur, the White Rhino, and English Brown Hares. The growth in toxic emissions worldwide will likely introduce a generation of sick kids (carbon emissions in this country recently hit the largest yearly increase in 20 years), the Joshua Tree National Park is closed due to trees being destroyed and people leaving behind mass amounts of trash (the government shutdown isn't helping matters), and oceans are heating up at a rate that's 40% faster than earlier estimates with rising water temperatures destroying ecosystems, not to mentioned increasing the destructive power of hurricanes.