anarchists, nihilists, and outlaws recording and writing for our own entertainment
This is a reading of Alejandro de Acosta’s A Funny Thought on a New Way to Play.
Turn to your parents or children and say, “this is a game.” Turn to your friends and enemies and say, “this is a game.” Say silently to your self and any imaginary entities you discover in solitude, “this is a game.” See what happens next.
The sands are frantic 
In the hourglass. But there is time
To change, to utterly destroy
That too-familiar image
Lurking in the glass,
Each morning at the edge of the mirror
The writing and thinking of John Gray is a gift to those of us who have endured a life full of others’ ideals, moralities, and rules driven into us. John Gray relentlessly questions and troubles the narratives of progress and social betterment that run through society largely unquestioned, even in radical circles. The idea of transforming or evolving the world and the individuals within it into “something better” is a plague that has stricken the best of us. Once I am able to shed myself of this sickness of narcissism and self loathing (for there is always a flaw in the human to be fixed) then something resembling an authentic life could begin to be imagined. This life looks like raw possibility, what has been written before as the creative nothing. From this voidal abyss grows my life free of all the baggage that I have been born with, for I had no say in the size and shape of my body, the place of my origin or the monsters who parented me, whether they be at our homes or in our schools. While I may never be able to shed these skins completely, what is my life if not an attempt to metamorphose myself in each moment. Ursula Le Guinn once wrote that “what is most changeable is fullest of eternity” and what is a human life if not the search for eternity. Eternity is gained from ecstasy, from the moments that defy time, society, and reality. John Gray has gifted you and I with a chance for more of these moments, and we would be fools not to listen.
The goal of this podcast is total absurdity. In this podcast we discuss anti-fascism, freedom, and have a special advertisement for the LBC internship program! Enjoy!
Though obviously anyone can read this book and use it as they see fit, I made this translation first of all for my own pleasure, and secondly as a gift to other aware, willful, and rebellious self-creators as a tool and a weapon in their project of creating their lives on their own terms against all that would impose upon them.
JZ hosts a special episode of Anarchy Radio, the New Sunday Show. The show begins with JZ discussing yet another set of car recalls, this time it’s the good ol’ Prius. 42 million Priuses in Berkeley, CA were recalled over the weekend. JZ then takes a call from local future primitve and master rewilder Billy. Billy discusses his relationship with his dog Sooki and moving out to the city after his wife left him alone. Then another call from Josh, who discusses feelings of alienation and despair and JZ and Josh get into a spirited debate over egoism and nihilism. The show ends with JZ recapping the call with Josh and asserting his opinions on Nihilism, Egoism, and Leftism.
The Trial by Franz Kafka displays the life of Joseph K, a bank employee and supposedly good citizen of a society in which there is universal peace. The novel begins abruptly when K is delivered an indictment by three strangers who despite their civilian attire are said to be official warders. Though there is no clarity as to what the charge is, K accepts his proceeding as a personal project or obsession which from then on consumes his reality. His social life becomes a montage of witnesses, corroborators, defendants and testimonies regarding his arrest while authority is an undercurrent driven by everyone and no one. By the essence of its own inertia, K’s world is a banal confinement, a moral prison illuminated by his allegation.
“What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will
make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.”
There are innumerable splits between “anarchists.” Some disagree about economics, strategies of resistance, and a seemingly infinite number of isms. I find the most important split to be between social and anti-social. What need is there for social and anti-social anarchists to “work together.” This is something I just don’t understand. Anyone who seeks to build a new mass society is someone I have a fundamental and irreparable split with…in essence, we are enemies. People who believe that everyone is an anarchist are my enemies. People who can look at history and see progress towards freedom or compassion or social change that is desirable are my enemies. People who see human nature as freedom loving are my enemies. I see a few who burn with the desire for an ephemeral freedom and a huge majority of people who are not only willing but eager to submit themselves to society, a cause, a partner. People who refuse to acknowledge that slaves(including me and most reading this) are responsible for their condition, are my enemies. My enemies are the existing and the existent. As an anti-social anarchist I find myself constantly surrounded by my own enemies. Friends are difficult to find, harder to keep, and a rare find for one who chooses freedom as value.
Does a house control your thought process? How does the structure of a city limit not only your movement, but the way you can think?
You can’t throw a brick without finding a discussion of the way social structures restrain and contain us – the ways that gender, sex, race, wealth, government, law, language or whatever affect our ability to move through the world. There’s a physical built world around us too, and it wields equal authority over our bodies.