textfiles-politics/politicalTextFiles/dietsoap_05.txt

  					Diet Soap #5

				The Unemployment Issue			        	 

			   		       or

			The Tragic Emancipation of the Wage Slave

			

				       THE BOTTOM LINE



	In this realm of the commodified soul the only action more miserable 

than consumption is production.  The job, career, profession is the central 

point of alienation in this society of individuals divorced from themselves.  

To work is to create, not out of need or desire, but out of fear and for mere 

survival in a world which is not your own.  

	There are, however, brief moments of respite for the average wage 

slave; not so much in the form of weekends or lunchbreaks, but rather in the 

form of tragic emancipation, or unemployment.

 

	 YOU'VE BEEN TERMINATED, FIRED, CANNED, LET GO, but most of all 

you've been freed.  

 

	Our relationship with the world is so thoroughly manipulated by this 

system of prices, and trade offs, and SCARCITY (illusory or manufactured) 

that when this freedom does come most don't recognize that there are two 

words involved in the event: "tragic" and "emancipation."  The tragedy is that 

the emancipated wage-slaves find themselves freed into a society immersed 

in work, just as the black slaves were freed into a society immersed in 

racism.

	There have been a few moments of supercession, however; rare 

instances of fully realized situations in which individuals or communities 

have either stepped out of, or removed the spectacle:



	Andre Breton sits in a Parisian cafe sipping lightly at the one coffee he 

could afford, and automatically writes on his napkin.  He stands on the table, 

and looks down on the poor souls who have worked all day.

	"The time has come;  I beg of you to do justice.  At this very hour girls 

as lovely as the day are bruising their knees in the hiding places to which 

the ignoble white drone draws them one by one.  They accuse themselves of 

sins that on occasion are charmingly mortal (as if there could be sins) while 

the other prophesies, stirs, or pardons.  Who is being deceived here?" -pg. 

197, Andre Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, 1925



	In Zurich, Tristan Tzara moves without aim or design, and creates 

anti-art which will only disrupt the museum.  

	"We had lost confidence in our 'culture.' Everything had to be 

demolished," Marcel Janco yells over the screams of "Dada."



	And of course there is the month of May in the year 1968 on the 

European continent in Paris, 

France. 

	"On May 14th, 200 men were on strike; on May 19th, 2,000,000; on 

May 22 more than 9,000,000.  The paralysis spread with incredible speed 

and spontaneity.  At no time did a general strike order go out from the Paris 

head-quarters of the union federations, and yet all over the country a calm, 

irrestible wave of working-class power engulfed the commanding heights of 

the French economy."-pg. 153,  Patrick Seale, "The Great Strike; Red Flag, 

Black Flag: French Revolution, 1968



	 This last example is the most appealing and hence intriguing.  During 

the operation of the spectacular society only those born with some amount of 

privilege can find life outside of work.  And although those who decline the 

power their birth randomly gave them were noble and shined with insight, 

only when the realm of commodification is cast aside by all for all can one 

see the true potential for men to live rather than watch their lives. 

	How can such a liberating state be sustained?  Obviously, violent 

revolution is not an answer, for on the level of pure might the state has 

achieved a technological level which no amount of mere manpower can 

overcome.  Further, violence seems to breed greed and a need to be led out 

of disorder even if this means that work prevails.  Counter-revolution is 

almost always the end result of revolution.  

	What we need is to put a bug in the system.  A small glitch which 

spreads to the point of total meltdown is what's desirable.  I suggest 

cultivating the excuse as an act of pure revolution.  



	"What's happened to the work ethic?  That's what I want to know.  I 

got three calls from people who just aren't going to show up today," my boss 

tells me as we amicably smoke cigarrettes during the break.  

	"Did they say why?"  I ask.

	"Oh, they all had excuses, of course."



	What is needed for the worker is a sense of a Universal Revolutionary 

Excuse.  Tell the boss anything, but don't show up on the day when the final 

presentation is due.  Work very hard at establishing new clients, but let most 

of them slip through small cracks which open up, quite legitimately and 

unavoidably of course, in your schedule.  Put the widget on the wrong gadget 

because your ex-wife is having puppies with another man, and you just can't 

concentrate.

	Or if even this is too degrading for you then simply act outside of 

categories.  Come to work in a suit of tinfoil, bring a puppet with you to work 

and refuse to speak to anyone except via the puppet persona, spend the 

night at work and make a paper clip chain which blocks the door, or master 

the art of being the office non-sequitor and walk aimlessly from office to 

office interrupting real work with questions which seem to be valid but 

aren't.  Make them laugh while the numbers fall and productivity reaches a 

near standstill.  Organize your entire office to show up to work as the 

Rockettes, and have fun kicking everything over while you dance away the 

hours.   Perhaps it's not too late to destroy the spectacle with dissident 

strangeness.



	"A group of people had moved a dining table out into the street and 

were sitting around it eating and talking.  Were they protesting something, 

perhaps an eviction, or were they celebrating the absurdity of the 

moment...a reporter came up to the group, took out a pad of paper and a pen 

and began to ask them questions.  With great solemnity someone at the table 

began to butter the reporters tie.  The reporter stepped back."-pg.54, Lisa 

Goldstein, The Dream Years, 1986. 



	This issue of Diet Soap is an attempt to look at the possibilities of 

unemployment and the consequences.  To escape the prison of an everyday 

life not directly lived, and to replace the spectacle with a world which is 

actual, is the goal of this ultimate commodity.  

	Read on, and enjoy...



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			A Letter From Noam Chomsky



	Noam Chomsky teaches linguistics at M.I.T. and is a well know political 

dissident.  He has written such books as "Deterring Democracy," and 

"Manufacturing Consent."  The Editor of Diet Soap recently contacted Mr. 

Chomsky to ask him a few questions and perhaps entice him into adding 

some respectablity to this fringe zine.  This second effort was futile, 

however, the professor did have some comments (although none which he 

"trusted enough to convey," whatever that means) on pranks, surrealism, 

psychedelics and the "deeply personal."  



Dear Mr. Lain,



	Interested to hear about your journal.  About your questions, I don't 

really have any opinions that I trust enough even to convey.  Surrealism, 

pranks, and sabotage may have their place. Some of the Dutch provo 

"pranks" were quite imaginative, humorous, and effective I thought.  

Surrealism had its place as a movement in the arts, with many 

achievements, but little in the way of undermining indoctrination, as far as I 

can tell.  Incidentally, immersion in the "deeply personal" is not counter to 

capitalist oppression; rather, it is a central component of it.  Huge capitalist 

PR efforts are precisely designed to immerse people in the deeply personal, 

removing them from the arena of decision-making in the social, economic, 

and political spheres.

	As for drugs, my impression is that their effect was almost completely 

negative, simply removing people from meaningful struggle and 

engagement.  Just the other day I was sitting in a radio studio waiting for a 

satellite arrangement abroad to be set up.  The engineers were putting 

together interviews with Bob Dylan from about 1966-7 or so (judging by the 

references), and I was listening (I'd never heard him talk before -- if you 

can call that talking).  He sounded as though he was so drugged he was 

barely coherent, but the message got through clearly enough through the 

haze.  He said over and over that he'd been through all of this protest thing, 

realized it was nonsense, and that the only thing that was important was to 

live his own life happily and freely, not to "mess around with other people's 

lives" by working for civil and human rights, ending war and poverty, etc.  

He was asked what he thought about the Berkeley "free speech movement" 

and said that he didn't understand it.  He said something like: "I have free 

speech, I can do what I want, so it has nothing to do with me.  Period." If the 

capitalist PR machine wanted to invent someone for their purposes, they 

couldn't have made a better choice.

	Admittedly, that's one case -- though not a trivial one.  It corresponds 

to what I saw over the years, though I admit I didn't see a lot.  I did have a 

great deal of contact with young people in the resistance, the civil rights 

movement, and other popular efforts, and still do.  But simply don't know 

much about the influences you mention, which were quite remote from any 

form of struggle that I knew anything about or had any contact with.

				Sincerely,

				Noam Chomsky



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				   OBIT FOR HOLLYWOOD

		      (Excerpt from the Film Journal of Jim Farris.)



5-22-94 

"Being Human" 

Lloyd Cinemas, 5:00 PM.  $3.25.



Unbeilivably dull look at man through the ages wastes Robin Williams 

talents.  Bill Forsythe directed and wrote the film and after charming films 

like "Local Hero" and "Comfort and Joy," this was a shock.  Tedious 

conversations sprinkled with diversions to nowhere.  Awful.



5-23-94 

"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"

Lloyd Mall Cinemas, 10.20 PM.  $3.25.



Mind numbing adapdation of Tom Robbins novel directed by Gus Van Sant 

should be great fun but isn't.  Great cast is wasted in cameos as we sit 

through the movie debut of pudgy, unattractive, untalented, Rainbow 

Sunshine Phoenix.  This is the Titanic of 1994 movies.



5-28-94 

"Maverick"

Lloyd Cinemas, 5:00 PM.  $3.25.



Oh my God, I'm on a roll.  This makes three cow pies in a row.  This movie is 

just so full of itself.  It winks at itself for it's own amusement, and you get 

the feeling that if you knew these people you'd like the film more.  Well, I 

don't know them and I didn't like it.  All the scenes are too l-o-n-g.  Richard 

Donner like the gags so much he lingers for the laughter he measured in the 

studio screening room.  

Everyone in it, Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, and a tired looking James Garner, 

look like they've all seen "Ocean 11" too many times.  Danny Glover's cameo 

belongs on a Bob Hope special from the 1960's.  

Mother of mercy, is this the end of movies?



5-30-94

"The Flintstones" & "Jurrasic Park" 

Foster Road Drive-In, 9:20 PM.  $4.00



"Maverick" is not the end of the movies..."The Flinstones" is.  Let it be known 

that as of 9:32 PM, May 30th, 1994 I sat in a vacant lot, overgrown with high 

weeds, staring at a worn wall of metal and wood and witnessed the end of 

movies.  Who knew that an industry that started with the likes of a racist 

like D.W. Griffith, and a man with taste to rival Margarine like C.B. 

Demille...an industry that could produce "Lawerence of Arabia," Elizabeth 

Taylor, "Earthquake," Martin Scorsese, and "Ma and Pa Kettle," would tip it's 

hat, give you a canned laugh, say "Yabba Dabba Do" and disappear into that 

good night?  Alas poor movies...I knew them well.  



"Jurrasic Park" played as the second feature.  Just a cruel joke to remind us 

that even last year Hollywood was still making movies that were 

entertaining and well done, that just last year we thought everything was 

fine.  Movies were "better than ever."  The sky was the limit.  Well, my 

saturated fatted friends we were wrong.  We have reached the sky now, 

we've gone the limit and what do we have to show for it?  What's left?  

Scarlett O'Hara?  "2001?"  Bogie?  

Or maybe, in your heart of hears you know: Don Knotts, everything Universal 

made between 1963 and 1974...that's right all of it, and Troy Donahue.  

I should have hope.  I want to believe.  But the movies speak for themselves.  



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		      Lettuce and Tomatoes and Sour Cream

							- Kate Schwab



	The odds are one in ten that a meteorite large enough to cause serious 

damage (in the catastrophic sense of the word "serious") will hit the earth 

within the next fifty years.

	

	And the most commonly spoken word in the English language is "I."



	And the enviroment.  

	And subatomic particles. 

	And child abuse.

	And animal testing.

	And the Industrial Revolution.

	And capitalism.

	And the state of education in America.

	And space.

	

	I am tired of this--too much time to think.  My thoughts will kill me 

soon.

	

	Do most people look at the stars and see space as something 

conquerable, or do they gaze in wonder?  I wonder.  The Universe is infinite-

so many things we can never know-but people keep trying.  I am tired of 

thinking and never doing anything, never reaching an end.  Thought, 

knowledge, has no end.  It is an infinite universe.  We will never know 

everything about the Universe.  I've stopped believing that we can.  Today.  



	What I do: I collect unemployment.  I am immobilized by freedom.  By 

complete freedom.  I don't know what to do with my time (I can't stand to 

just sit and think anymore, I'll go crazy).  I've stopped reading, stopped 

writing, even stopped watching television.  They make me think.  

	I spend my time in a tiny, cold cafe, drinking coffee and smoking.  I 

am here now.  

	It's time for me to leave the cafe, for good.  I learned today about the 

coffee industry being held up on the hunched backs of peasant laborers 

everywhere.  The work, the chemicals...while I sit here calmly, leisurely 

sipping the sweat from their brows and the opportunity from their lives.  I 

already knew about the horrors of the tobacco industry, but I already am 

addicted. 



	Everytime I look up at the sky I think.  I can't help it.  It starts with 

the stars, then expands until I'm terrified that the CIA has a file on me and 

that the government is already taken over by the military industrial 

complex.  My file is long and this file points out certain good and bad things 

about my life.

	 Good:  he supports  the tobacco industry. 

	 Bad : he suspects the true controlling government.

	 Bad:  he thinks about the state of education, about the oppresion of 

women, about capitalism and class war. 

 	Bad: he does not think we can conquer space.  



	I feel like I have something inside me that is twisting,  it's going to 

twist until it breaks.  It's made of molded plastic and it bends, stretches, and 

grows white at the juncture.  This plastic is old and has been worked at for a 

long time.  Like a Big Brother constantly tearing at the same favorite toy, 

tearing at it every day until it snaps and he laughs.  But I can't stop the 

twisting.  I don't know what stops it.  I try not to think about it, about 

anything.  



	I am free to do anything I wish, but I don't, I can't.  Everything is 

harmful to someone.  Coffee makes me sick now.  I don't do anything, but I 

should.  My form of protest is inactivity, boycott.  But, I don't even tell 

anybody that I'm boycotting.  I need to start doing something so I don't have 

to think all the time.  My thoughts will kill me soon. 

	

	If I get a job again, I won't have to think all the time.  I can just work.  

I will try not to think about my job.  

	I collect unemployment because the company I worked for went 

bankrupt.  I worked at a biotech firm as a lab assistant where we genetically 

engineered organisms to clean up toxins in freshwater sources.  It worked.  I 

worked.  I lived for it.  It made me think and I loved it.  

	Problem:  no one wanted to buy it.  

	It was a great idea.  "Look, we made these organisms that will eat 

toxins in freshwater sources.  We can clean up the enviroment to a limited 

degree and keep it from getting any worse."  But it took too long. 10-15 

years and that is too long to wait (We all want results now).  

	

	I took the first job I could find, at Tasty Taco.  My pay is low but the 

work interests me.  I think about how many tacos I make a day and how 

many people eat the food I slip-shod together.  I try not to think about 

what's in the food, how we get the food, and so many other things.  I just 

work. 

	Bob, my manager, tells me that I'm a good worker.  I can make a taco 

--wrapped, bagged--in 22 seconds flat.  I console myself on payday by 

remembering what Bob told me after my first week: "If you stick around, 

Carl, you're good enough to make management in six months."

	Space doesn't bother me much anymore.  I get up and go to work now, 

I don't have time to think about the Universe.  Just tacos and burritos and  

nachos. 

	"Keep up the good work, Carl," says Bob.  

	

	I met a girl.  She works at another Tasty Taco store.  She can make a 

taco in only 18 seconds.  

	

	"Doesn't all this paper waste bother you?"  Tim's only been working 

here for three weeks.

	"What do you mean?"

	"Well, we wrap every damn taco in paper, and  then put them all in a 

paper bag with a handful of paper napkins." 

	"They would all spill out if we didn't wrap them, Tim." 

	"But what about all that trash, it has to go somewhere.  Don't you think 

about the enviroment?  The trash?"  

	"I think about it, a little, but I don't let it get to me"  

	He quit a week later.  I knew he wouldn't last long.  



	"Carl, your review is coming up in a week, buddy.  I'm planning on 

recommending you as a managment trainee." 

	"Great, Bob, did you know my taco times are down?" 

	Life is good: I'm a management trainee, my work is only getting 

better, Carol and I are spending more time together.  Thursday nights we go 

to her apartment to watch Blossom and eat popcorn.  Afterward, we go 

outside.  

	"The stars are out tonight," she says.  "They sure look pretty." 

	I look up.  We sit in silence, gazing at the stars.  

	"What are you thinking about?" she asks. 

	"Nothing."



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			 Tabarian Filmmakers and Microbrews

							-by Jerry White





other reason, because the way that is similar in content to Italian Neo-

Realism, while remaining totally distinct from an aesthetic point of view.

	But more significantly, this body of recent films from the tiny middle  

eastern nation of Tabaria is remarkable because of its raw emotional power.  

This modest journal provides insufficient space to list the large number of 

filmmakers doing important work within Tabarian borders, but there are a 

few who must not go without mention: Amir Labeliki, Hasfan El Jafarat, Tariq 

Ramouz, and especially Rhian Nonjones, one of the few women to produce a 

viable body of work within an Islamic country.  Their films are marked by 

an impassioned social conscience, an attention to form, and frequently 

exhibit a meditative sensibility.  Not to say that these filmmakers are all

self-important stuffiness- El Jafarat, in particular, has made several hilarious 

slapstick comedies that owe as much to Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin as 

to his Iranian colleague Darius Mehrjui.  While it's impossible to generalize 

about the cinema of an entire nation, certain tendencies are certainly visible 

within Tabarian cinema, and this development is without question

deserving of discussion. 

	With the rapidly deteriorating social conditions that are a reality of 

the post-colonial Islamic world, Tabarian cinema is frequently concerned 

with issues of day to day survival.  Labeliki's film A JOB TODAY, A WAGE 

TOMORROW (1990) dramatizes the struggles of one man, Garash, to find 

work in the labyrinth that the capital city of Asmera has become.  While he 

manages to pick up odd jobs, it's never quite enough to support his family,

so his wife is forced to brew beer (forbidden by the country's extremely 

strict liquor laws) in the basement for sale to the desperate minions above.  

All the while Garash remains fiercely devoted to Islam, a dilemma of colossal 

proportions since his violations of its laws are what enable his family to eat.  

On a similar if more humorous tract, El Jafarat's first feature LET'S ALL SLAY 

THE BOSS (1983) details the oppressive rigors of office life and the elaborate 

plans that a bunch of meek accountants make to overthrow their tie-wearing 

tormentors.  Both films portray employment in contemporary Tabaria to be 

an experience wrought with unseeable power relations while remaining the 

one boundary that keeps the proletariat from sliding into the tragic existence

of the desperately poor.

	Both of these films are especially notable for the way that they 

develop rich characters while still giving a sense of how they fit into their 

greater urban landscape.  Labeliki's protagonist is truly a man tormented, 

but his personal struggles are always placed within a specifically post-

colonial context. While the film sometimes edges into the realm of the

melodramatic, the struggle that it portrays is quite serious because of the 

questions it raises with relation to the role of the individual in a country 

struggling to define itself.  If the Islamic revolution was supposed to be what 

liberated the Arab world from the legacy of European domination, Labeliki 

makes it clear that this revolution comes with a set of oppressions which

are all its own.  The focus here is on everyday life: how the precepts of Islam 

have the power to inspire on an abstract level, but tend to make basic 

struggles all the more difficult.  

	El Jafarat's film also makes a point of making his

accountants-cum-freedom fighters fully developed men and women,

not merely pawns to be moved to advance his allegorical story.  The group's 

leader, Kiman, at first comes across as a fairly conservative fellow, but it 

quickly becomes clear that his passions can be aroused if given the right 

circumstances.  But his change of heart is far from sudden, and by the time 

he is stringing up his supervisor by the toes, the viewer has a real sense of 

what has driven him to these lengths.  LET'S ALL SLAY THE BOSS is one of 

those rare films that works on both a comedic and allegorical level: El Jafarat 

has constructed his situations with great care and fit them together to form 

an almost seamless whole.



films are the meditative, almost poetic works of both Tariq Ramouz and 

Rhian Nonjones.  What we see in these films is a serious concern with issues 

of representation and form, and the result is sometimes remarkable 

beautiful, and in Nonjones' case, among the most rigorous in contemporary 

cinema.

	Ramouz has almost sixty feature films to his credit, many of which 

were made for Tabarian television.  It is only in recent years that he has 

come into his own as a serious film artist, in addition to concerning himself 

primarily with rural Tabarian life.  His 1987 film DAVSHAT OBSERVED 

marked the emergence of his new sensibility, if only in a nascent form.  The 

film takes a day in the life of the small farming community of Davshat, 

which lies on the Tabarian border with Yemen. There are a quite remarkable

number of characters, and it is a tribute to Ramouz's talent as a screenwriter 

that he is able to make it easy for the viewer to keep them all straight, in 

addition to keeping them all constantly interacting with each other.  Italian 

Neo-realist Vittorio deSica once said that "the ideal film would be 24 hours

in the life of a man to whom nothing happens."  Here we have the realization 

of that aesthetic to its fullest: 24 hours in the life of an entire community to 

whom nothing happens.  

	Ramouz followed this film with a trilogy of works on the day to day 

life of Yak herders which, through narrative invention, hemanages to invest 

with a universal significance.  The three films, TALMAT AND HIS THREE 

SONS (1988), THE HERDS OF THE PLAINS (1990) and SKYWARD BOUND 

(1992) together chronicle almost sixty years in the life of these herders, and 

discuss both minutia and philosophy with equal depth.  In THE HERDS OF THE 

PLAINS, two nameless characters move from a conversation about the uses 

of Yak shit to the true nature of Islam within a single shot, but in a way that 

is utterly smooth.  In a similar vein, TALMAT AND HIS THREE SONS features 

a remarkable sequence of a baby being born, all shot in extreme close up 

with a minimum of cuts.  The sequence lasts for almost forty minutes, but it 

seems to go by in a matter of moments.  A more genuinely thoughtful 

collection of work is not to be found anywhere.

	Anywhere, expect perhaps for the epic documentaries of Rhian

Nonjones.  In contrast to Ramouz, Nonjones has made very few films, but her 

work must stand as among the most beautiful in the cinema.  Her 1989 

documentary HISTORY CENTURY 20 is deceptivelysimple in its form, but 

mind blowing by the time it has concluded.  The film features a group of ten 

women who all live in El Kanatra, a working class quarter of the city of 

Tamas. 

	Each woman directly addresses the camera and discusses her

family's history.  When all ten have taken their turn, the women re-tell each 

other's stories, trying to interpret them through their individual lenses, 

which have all been defined by differing experiences of class, ethnicity and 

countless other factors.  The result is a stunning document of the way that 

oral histories can be molded and formed by various members of the same 

community.

	But Nonjones' most important work is her most recent: the 9 hour 

SACRED, PROFANE, AND THE WORLD.  Completed in 1993, the film features 

interviews with people from all walks of Tabarian life talking about most 

everything.  Spiritual matters are of key concern, and she continually 

returns to the interplay between Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, and how 

they can be joined to help to strengthen the East as we enter a new century.  

While her project is clearly an anti-colonialist one, Nonjones' politics are hard 

to put a finger on.  She is above all concerned with the dignity and 

importance of average, working people, and has made a career out of 

collecting their stories.  It is these collections, and the way that she 

masterfully assembles them, that add up to some of the most important 

stories of late twentieth century narrative art.

	Not surprising for a country which is simultaneously in a state of 

decay and re-building, Tabarian cinema echoes many concerns about social 

welfare and the future of working people.  The films as a whole are 

important not only in the context of middle eastern cinema but also in terms 

of the construction of a viable body of work that rallies for the worldwide 

proletariat.  These are films about the work that people do and the way that

they relate to it, frequently made with an uncommon  sense of respect for 

the subjects coupled with political awareness.  In a nation in such a state of 

flux, this kind of holistic strategy is nothing short of an act of survival.

	Because of its isolation, Tabarian cinema has been unjustly neglected 

by film scholars and critics.  But the time when the established sources of 

aesthetic wisdom could let this important movement in world Cinema pass 

them by is drawing to a close.  Tabarian cinema has come of age.  We can 

only hope that American criticism and exhibition will do the same.



Postscript: Credit where credit is due



city filmfest, I strike up a conversation with the press liaison, Robin.  Pleased 

to hear of my status as a programmer, he tells me about a friend of his who 

is putting together a series of Tabarian cinema, but is having trouble getting 

the films out of the country.  Censorship, it seems, is strict.  Would he like

to join me tonight for a beer at this little bar where I have been regularly 

having a nightcap, I ask.  Perhaps we could discuss this further.  He is not 

sure he can make it, so I leave him with my card to give to his friend.  Tell 

her to send me some tapes, I say.  And do try to come by the bar tonight.

	That evening, I drink a pint of Boreale, a dark Quebec beer that I have 

had each night of the festival, after the last screening is over.  As it has been 

each night, I drink it alone.  The train back to Philadelphia leaves early the 

next morning.  I wait for a few months, but the tapes never appear.  Then 

comes the news that civil war in Yemen has broken out.  Neighboring

countries, it seems, are nervous that fighting may spread.  Borders are 

tightened.  Clearly, a beer or two at a festival is no longer sufficient.



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				      Tone Deaf World

				    	       or 

				    Why I Quit the Drag



	The owner of the St. Francis Residential Hotel wanted her zombie 

tenants to stay that way.  Behind the cafeteria counter, behind the tubs of 

starch and gravy, she placed an old transistor radio with tin speakers.  She'd 

twist the dial and --CREAK--there'd be noise in the dining hall.  Muzack.  Big 

Blands doing nothing to "Song Sung Blue," or "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My 

Head" except maybe smoothing out what few wrinkles the original songs 

had.	

	Eleventh and Jefferson--residential hotel for the falling apart.  A place 

of faded elegance for dust in the cracks of life, where old wooden chairs with 

flat cushions were lined like desks in a classroom.  Up front, where the 

blackboard should've been, was an RCA color television with a sign taped 

underneath which read "don't touch the screen."  War Veterans, old 

housewives who ran out onto the street with their curlers and smeared 

rouge faces, and the simply old "lived" there.

	Me, I hung around behind the counter at the feeding trough.  Spooning 

up the mandated portions of bleached mashed potatoes and overcooked 

meat from six to nine and eleven to one and six to nine.  Clockwork 

consumption, brought to the zombies via minimum wage.  

	I did my time and bit dutifully, but when I worked the tin speakers 

didn't do their bit quite right.  I'd turn the dial, you see, and add some bebop 

to the old folks fragile hips.  I'd tune in 1101 am radio.  The owner, Mrs. 

Winston, was too tone deaf to notice the jazz that infiltrated her zombie 

kitchen, and so I survived...for a while.

	Time and Place, space/time, historical locale, etc...

	January, 15th 1991.  The man was hot, and his people crazy following.  

The radioactive chalkboard kept the powerless tenants up to date, and I kept 

myself in check by the thin thread of a Bird melody.  

	Juxtapose this against the oil scene -- Of the veterans three were shell 

shocked out of reality.  Jack, Ralph, and Bill were icons of insanity neatly 

separated by generation.  Jack came out of World War II with a steel plate 

and voices, both in his head.  He spit when he talked and was easily agitated 

by those on the kitchen staff who didn't reply to his sputtering preamble of 

"You know what?  You know what?"  I learned early to say, "what?" and then 

ignore the rants which followed.

	Ralph was pure appetite.  After protecting the nation from 

communism in the Korean War, he was hungry, and seeing as that war never 

officially ended he probably needed the extra-calories.  This single 

mindfulness, however, did catch the attention of the Boss Lady.  A diet was 

instigated, and this led to a consistent conflict in the dining hall.  Him always 

yelling for more meat, more meat, and me always conning him into a calm 

denial.

	Paranoia was Bill's staple.  To call him by his name was to rile him, 

and to touch him was to incite riot.   Vietnam left his bald scalp crawling and 

he always smelled of chemicals.  This was most likely my imposed trip on 

him, but something scrambled his mind and napalm is a good a culprit as the 

jungle...or as simple war.  

	These three didn't hang together as individuals, and so they didn't 

hang together.  Still, they usually arrived at the trough at the same time and 

would often follow each other, if only in the Boss Lady's line.  

	That's half the set-up.  Three deranged ex-patriots to be served on the 

day war broke out in Iraq.  But what of the server?  Suffice to say that I was 

and am a twenty-two year old college dropout looking to drop some more. 

The real question is, did this sad melody have room for fine improvo?  I only 

know that  the way I jazzed the place definitely had a cost. 

	I was up the night before with a bottle of wine and a fistful of stems 

and caps.  I started sabotaging the paper at about nine and by eleven I 

needed a little extra-kick to make the words I was cutting out fit together.  

A swig of wine with a cap of psilocybin.  A piece of bread with a stem.  I 

wanted alien visions to be the paste I used to glue my revulsion down to 

paperboard and twist it into revolt.  Mushrooms, wine and my own AM tin 

speakered radio seemed the perfect combination in order to wash my eyes 

and see Blake's infinity of possibilities which I deemed necessary if I was to 

escape the man.  

	A simple sign with the appropriate slogan was far to appropriated to 

work, and so I tossed the standard "NO BLOOD FOR OIL" over and upside 

down in order to create the following message:

	"Cold World conducted for hi-tech Third war.  New Media Order 

established as Gulf between Schwarzkopf and chemical weapons is bridged 

by menace in the United Nations.  Desert desert DESERT desert!!"

	This found anti-war sign having been converted into true sentiment, I 

got the urge to walk.  With my protest on a stick in one hand and my other 

hand pressing the small radio up against my ear I went into the streets.

	I arrived at Pioneer Square to find the place empty.  A banner hung 

half twisted and soaked above Starbuck's, but otherwise the protest hadn't 

left a mark.  Did the marchers for peace melt in the rain like their sugar-

coated slogans?  I wandered aimlessly and sank into a feeling of deja-vu 

before I found the note stuck on the brass business man.  Held in place by 

this statue's pointing finger, and protected by its metal umbrella the note 

simply said "river."

	I walked to the water and held my radio under my jacket as it rained 

again.  There, along the Willamette, I found the riled masses of pumped up 

teenagers, spectacled men in black sweaters, grey haired ex-suffragettes, 

and a pile of Birkenstocks all in formation around the waterfront fountain.  

It was cold, but while an Arab man pleaded for his people, water splashed  

as pale skin waded about and a harmonica blew.  

	Myself, I found a patch of dry concrete and sat down to absorb.  I 

surely couldn't stand.   And I lost myself there among the tin saxophone 

loops from my pocket.  

	"The United States wants this war, the United States has created  this 

war--right on brother,"  a mix of voices.  Miked and unmiked, and even 

farther to the side, "Did you hear about what happened in San Fransisco?  

We blocked off the Interstate there, 60,000 of us there...where is the media,  

why aren't they...they're on the other side, man...chemical weapons, we've 

got all kinds of...I couldn't stay home...I think that guy in the shades is with 

the NSA.  No really see the wire?  Is that Susan, I didn't know she did the 

protest thing...woooo...and when we invaded Panama where was the world 

court then?  Where was the New World Order then?  Not on television...I 

haven't been this stoned since...where is Kuwait anyway?"

	All of this gently pushed by a Lester Young melody muffled by my 

wool jacket and slowly from the fountain a green light rising up like oh my 

god its time and I'm not even packed.  Psilocybin punching up humanity's 

last yelp before the world stops and runs backwards. 

	"What does your sign say?"  she asked.

	"What?"

	"Your sign?"

	"It says, 'this end up,'" I said.

	She was wrapped in paisley.  She smoked a green cigarette with 

shaking hands and yawned and scratched at freckles.  Her red hair blocked 

her face. 

	"I cut up today's paper and stuck it on.  Trying to gain some control of 

the damned image factory and maybe turn it around I guess,"  I recanted.

	"Interesting," she said.  She held her sign down to me.  A rainbow and 

magazine trees stuck to plywood.  "I thought that too many people were 

letting the war twist them into negative space.  I guess I wanted to show 

some positive alternatives." Children dancing around a sprinkler, a pigeon, 

some fish sticking up from the corner, nude sunbathers, and finally a 

trumpet under that.  I liked her.

	"We're the alternative to the mainstream alternative," she said.

	"We're alive," I replied.

	Together we walked to the dock, and as we stepped onto the bobbing 

planks everything peaked.  The world, the universe, ran through me and all 

was confirmed by the raspy lilt of Billie Holiday:



		Away from the city

			that hurts and mocks

		I'm standing alone

			by the desolate docks

		in the chill, in the chill

			of the night.

		

		I see the horizon

			the great unknown.

		My heart has weight 

			it's as heavy as stone.

		Will the dawn coming on

			make it light?

		

		I cover the waterfront.

			I'm watching the sea.

		Will the one I love 

			be coming back to me?



		I cover the waterfront 

			In search of my love,

		And I'm covered  

			by a starry sky above.



	We danced.  That's all, we danced to it, and the waves rocked us.  

Maybe the highest protest of all is to live well, and to have a freckled girl in 

your arms.  

	But, she knew someone who knew someone who was planning to go to 

Salem and block the doors or break some windows or something and I was 

left lying in the waves on the dock watching my inner-eye conjure up lights 

and sounds.  Then the sun came up.

	I slipped down, and as outer light poured across the waterfront inner 

light slowed.  Having seen the bouncing ball of being in its fullness and 

without dimension I floated gently back into the "here and now."

	Back to the hurts and mocks of SW Main, up to the work-house and at 

6:15 a.m.  I checked into so called reality with its screaming cooks and 

glares.  

	"Late!" the Boss Lady said from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

	"Yeah, yeah.  They'll have to wait for their artificial scramble,"  I said.  

The glow was still with me.

	Placing all the grub into the steam and shoving tiny Dixies into the bin,  

I opened the doors and let the sleep walkers into the linoleum trough.  

Wheel chairs first, brain damage after. 

	Jack, Ralph and Bill filed in;  each jerking with their trays in pathetic 

pantomime. 

	Jack was first.

	"You know what?"  he asked.

	Now, one of the symptoms of psychedelic influence is a certain sort of 

earnestness.  A willingness, more aptly, to see and respond.  And so, in my 

haze of aftershock, I saw into Jack.  I looked past the steam and lost my 

protection of plastic cynicism. 

	"What?" I said, and for the first time meant the word as a question. 

	"God woke me up this morning.  He said, 'Wake up!'  And I said, 'it's 

early.' "  Jack was moving, squirming his wrinkled hands around and forcing 

the other patrons to step back.  His hair glistened at the roots with grey 

sweat.

	"God slapped me awake.  He said, 'Look at the clock!'  It was six 

o'clock, six oh five, six twenty."

	I paused.

	"I guess that happens to everybody,"  Jack said.

	"Eggs?"  I asked.

	"Yeah."

	Slop.  From God to eating slop this man went on and I left the room 

through the colors I found in the steam.  Work getting done by method of 

automatic pilot.  It is said that Lester Young created his greatest improvs 

when he was so blitzed that his body could barely stay vertical.  I found that 

my greatest monotonies were created when my mind could not flex, when a 

pale drone replaced any sort of inner dialogue.  Psilocybin is not the best 

method by which to deaden the mind.  

	"Don't spill it!"  the dishwasher man yelled as I removed the now 

partially consumed bins of slush from the steam racks and moved them into 

the kitchen. The dishwasher carried the mop.

	"Don't spill what?  The message, the beat, the line.  Don't let the world 

you've created slip away from you," one part of my mind told the other.  

	"Don't spill it!"  the dishwasher said.  His apron wrinkling as he rushed 

to my side and put out his tattooed arms to stop the catastrophe.

	Punched out at nine.  Punched in at eleven.  Fitful sleep between the 

blades of a miniature fan turned on strictly for repetitive and hypnotic noise.

	 I punched in again at twelve to find the same crew of veterans 

waiting to be served.  Like a Monk tune, harsh and striking.  Is that the right 

chord?  Did we miss a beat?  No?

	"Do you know what?  Do you know what?"

	Clank! Jingle! Clank!  In tune by being totally out.

	"Can I have some more meat?" Ralph asked.  

	"Sorry, but the boss lady put you on a diet."

	"Can I have another piece?"

	"Sorry, man."

	"May I have another portion, please.  I'd like some more meatloaf.  

Can I have some more meat?"  Ralph was hungry.

	"I can't do it," I said.  A good robot.

	"You trying to starve me?"  Bill asked.  

	"Can I have an extra?" Ralph asked again.

	"Ummm..."

	And across the dining hall Jack asked the world, "You know what?  

You know what?"

	"Get out of my way!" Bill nudged Ralph, and I quickly prepared Bill's 

plate.

	And while I was turned away, while I concentrated on putting barely 

thawed vegetables onto Bill's plate, Ralph reached.  He reached over the 

plastic shield and into the bins, and snatched two bits right into his mouth. 

	"Caurmph I hauph umphvelmph meat?"  Ralph asked.

	Bill took his plate as Ralph moved away, smiling around two patties. 

	Clank!

	Half a world away, I imagine now, planes took off.  Inside the cockpits 

sat Tom Cruise wannabes looking at Pac-Man video displays and preparing 

for the destruction to come.

	After this, I took a five hour sabbatical.  In between the lunch hour 

and the catastrophe I paced the streets of Portland, and the simple feel of 

the asphalt under my feet triggered something...an itch which escalated as I 

walked on a ground I never chose.  Five hours of walking, of protest, of 

scratching and itching and scratching.  

	"You know what?"

	"You know what?" 

	"You know what?"

	You know what happened already.  This idea, this thing which 

happened already and is happening now, it's already in everyone's mind.  

What happened is that the war started, but more than that.  I snapped. 

	"Can I have some more?"

	Bill must be seven feet tall.  His eyes are certainly bigger than 

average, and at supper his eyes were on me.  You see, I prepared his plate 

before he got to the front of the line.  Assembly line style, I jerked each 

tenant a plate trying to speed things up.

	"I'm not eating that poison," Bill said.  

	"What?"

	"I'm not eating that poison, Joe!" 

	"Okay, okay...for christ's sake."

	And behind this, tin speakers added irony.



		Don't stop to diddle daddle

			Stop this foolish prattle

		C'mon swing me Joe

			Swing me brother, swing 



	Then a burst of static, and this just in:



		War is Peace!

		Ignorance is swing!

		Freedom is impossible!



	The war had started and it wouldn't be prudent at this juncture to 

consider the humanity of the situation.  The man spoke through the tin 

speakers and not a soul noticed.  Bill just tapped his foot and mumbled as 

yet another batch of veterans went out to lose their minds.  There was a 

pause on my side though.

	I started to toss Bill's food back into the bins.

	"Sorry Bill, you'll have to eat the food I gave you." 

	"Don't call me that, Joe!"

	"Eat the food I gave you...BILL!"

	"Don't call me...don't you call me..." he reached over, all seven feet of 

him, and grabbed my arm. 

	"Who are you, Bill?  Is there anybody in there?  Uh?  Who is Joe?  Is 

Joe dead?" I asked.  

	"I'M NOT EATING THAT POISON!"  

	"Don't spill it!"

	He lifted me up, and shook me loose.  Then a mob climbed all over me.

	"Call the police."

	"He's losing it again."

	"Let go!"

	And I dropped to the ground.  I dropped back into place and while 

everyone ran and jerked and wrestled I grabbed a dish of gravy and strolled 

past the counter, past the dining tables, and to the front window.

	"You got him?" the cook asked the dishwasher as she started to let go 

of Bill's arms.

	"Don't...don't..."

	I dipped my fingers into the gravy, into the muck and started to 

spread lines onto glass.  I smeared boiled brown guts onto the pane:

	

			"UNDERNEATH THE NOISE, THE BEAT"



	Exhausted I flung my apron off, and walked out...onto the road.  I 

knew what time it was.  It was six o'clock, six fifteen, six twenty.



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



			    Being a Proletariat in the New Age



						-by Brian Nedweski



	It must be an employer's market.  Not that it was ever an employee's 

market, but at least twenty years ago it wasn't as crazy as it is now.  In 1964 

it would've been unlikely that you would be asked for a resume when you 

applied for a position as a dishwasher.  Now to look for a job makes you feel 

like a commodity and salesperson all at once: a member of the new age 

proletariat. 

	I applied for a job serving espresso and coffee.  The employer was 

looking for three or four people to man (or woman) her cart.  I found the job 

in the want ads.  The job only paid about five dollars an hour.  Since m;y bills 

did not amount to much, I could get by on a low paying job.  I love coffee, 

I'm sociable, so why not apply?  It seemed pretentious that they wanted 

applicants to send resumes and letters of intent, but when I have a notion I 

usually follow through on it; off went the letter and a resume.  

	Two weeks later a woman called and scheduled an interview with me 

for the job.  When the time came, I put on some "going for an interview 

clothes," trimmed my beard, and drove out to the small liberal college to talk 

someone into giving me a job.  The young woman who had contacted me by 

phone also interviewed me; the interview took place in a small room in an 

administration building.  A room in which stood the modest coffee/espresso 

cart I would be working at, if all went well.

	I must've struck a sympathetic chord with her, because she called a 

day or so later and said I was one of the four chosen for the work.  I was 

asked to attend three training sessions during the next week, which would 

each be two hours long and would include the others who had been selected.  

A short time after she notified me of the training sessions I recieved in the 

mail about ten or fifteen pages of written material about this espresso cart: 

rules on payment procedures, rules on employee behavior, rules on the 

operating of the machinery, etc...

	I thought this process to be a bit anal.  For a meager five dollars an 

hour I had sent in a letter, a resume, references, had attended an interview, 

received a slew of written material, and would attend three training 

sessions.  Was this all necessary?  From what I'd gathered during the 

interview the customers were mostly faculty members whose offices stood 

near the small room with the espresso cart.  This wasn't a Starbuck's in 

downtown Seattle. 

	I went to the training, did my level best to learn where the cart went 

after hours, how to clean the espresso machine and cart, how to set up the 

espresso machine and cart, how to get water from the janitor closet, how 

they wanted their specialty drinks made, how their cash register worked, 

etc...  After the training, I knew I could do a good job.  I have spent a good 

portion of my free time in cafes slugging back caffeine laden drinks; names 

and terms such as doppio, con pana, americano, late', tall, skinny, cappuccino, 

mocha...these words don't frighten me.  (Northwesterners know coffee; 

sometimes it seems like some Johnny Espresso Seed sowed a path from 

Portland to Seattle, even some 7-11's have espresso machines).  Just coming 

from a high stress job where I had succesfully interacted with the public 

daily (i.e., political fundraising by going doo to door in all kinds of 

neighborhoods), I imagined that this job would be a restful one. 

	Surprise, a day before I was to start this new job I got a call from a 

woman, not the young woman who had hired me (too chicken), informing me 

that on second thought they believed I was not the right person for the 

position.  The only explanation she offered me before she so rudely hung up 

was that in such a small operation as theirs they could not afford to make a 

mistake.  

	I was miffed.  What I deduced after deciding not to go down to the 

snotty little college and take the espresso cart for a spin on the nearby 

highway, and after reflecting upon that profound question "what the hell did 

I do wrong," was that I had asked too many questions during the training.  I 

remembered a nervous worried look on the young woman's face when I 

asked her to explain over the process for correctly starting the espresso 

machine.  All the time I figured that the machine must be the owner's 

largest investment; I didn't want to screw it up.  Maybe if I had prefaced my 

questions with something like, " Do you remember where it states on my 

resume that I have earned a university degree?  Well, I found that asking 

questions helped me obtain that degree; I am asking questions now so I can 

do a good job for you."  

	I spent a lot of time landing this job, sending in a resume, a letter, 

commuting back and forth to an interview and training sessions, reading all 

their materials, and they decide not to give me a chance at even one day of 

work.  I think they feared I might scald the milk in their favorite professor's 

late'.  

	It makes me wonder just how typical is my experience.  This 

employer felt that a groomed list of qualifications, an extensive interviewing 

process, a long list of rules, lengthy training would insure against the wrong 

employee, but this was a job serving coffee not performing brain surgery.  

How about answering simple letters and telling the people whom they found 

appropriate to come on in and complete a basic application and be 

interviewed; let the people whom they trained have a chance at doing the 

job.  Simpler, cheaper, more efficient.  Who knows they may have been using 

the advice of some high-priced consultant.  

	I haven't searched the want ads for some time now.  I'm glad; doing it 

always unnerves me.  So many employers want only employees that fit 

perfectly into a mode.  Wouldn't the person hired who did fit the ideal be 

less likely to be a loyal employee than the one offered an opportunity even 

though he or she didn't fit the listed qualifications exactly.  A person with 

just the right qualifications will likely know they were hired on the strength 

of their qualifications and not for much else.  He or she will probably move 

quickly leave when they have improved their qualifications through 

experience or education; so long sucker, now that I have that degree, I don't 

need you anymore.  On the other hand the person who feels the employer 

gave them a chance will probably thing twice before leaving their employer 

in a rough spot.  

	If someone messes up big time fire them, but give a person a chance.  

If you don't they might write an article about you.

	

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



	

PEOPLE WHO DO THINGS:



Editor: Doug Lain

East Coast Editor: Jerry White

Psychic Consultant/Internet Guide: Will Jenkins



Jim Farris is a political activist who admires Hilary Clinton and her various 

hairstyles.



Doug Lain wishes he was all three of the Marx Brothers.  He edits this thing, 

and is a student of Philosophy at Portland State University.



Brian Nedweski understands the proletariat as he has a real job.  He lives in 

Portland.  



Kate Schwab is a student at Portland State University, a short story writer, 

and our future Washington D.C. correspondant. 



Jerry White publishes regularly for the Philadelphia City Paper.  His is also a 

film smuggler with a base in West Philadelphia.  



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



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