___________ __ _______ \__ ___/| |__ ____ \ \ ____ ____ | | | | \_/ __ \ / | \_/ __ \/ _ \ ______ | | | Y \ ___/ / | \ ___( <_> ) /_____/ |____| |___| /\___ > \____|__ /\___ >____/ \/ \/ \/ \/ _________ __ __ \_ ___ \ ____ _____ |__| _____/ |_ ___________ ____ / \ \/ / _ \ / \| |/ \ __\/ __ \_ __ \/ \ \ \___( <_> ) Y Y \ | | \ | \ ___/| | \/ | \ \______ /\____/|__|_| /__|___| /__| \___ >__| |___| / \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ .......... ......... ........ ....... ...... ..... .... ... .. . . . . . . . . .. ... .... ..... ...... ....... ........ ......... .......... t h e n e o - c o m i n t e r n e l e c t r o n i c m a g z i n e I n s t a l l m e n t N u m b e r 1 4 0 We Are the New International February 4th, 2001 Editor: BMC Writers: Melatonin d""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""b. ;P Featured in this installment .b $ $ $ Selected Excerpts from The Luddite's Diary - Melatonin $ `q p' `nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn' EDITOR'S NOTE Ok this editor's note reminds me of this guy named Nicholas from Sweden who stayed with my then-girlfriend's parents for a few weeks and made fun of my wool socks. "Those are rag-socks," he would say, "for they look as though they are made of rags!" I hated that guy. Then there was the other one, Petter... - p a u s e d - (I just ate a mouthful of salt and now I feel very sick and I realize that eating a mouthful of salt is a bad idea) - r e s u m i n g - ...yeah that Petter, he was something else. He never said much but "Yep." (That is an actual quote from him.) In his later weeks here he admitted that he understood English quite well but never really learned to speak it out loud. It was funny when we would hang out at the pub or festival, because I would tell a joke and if it wasn't funny I would just say, "Right, Petter?" He would reply "Yep" and save unfunny me from making a complete fool out of myself. (I'm still sick from the salt) Anyway, that reminded me of today's editor's note. I've got more little stories about them but I will save them for another time if anyone wants to hear them. Otherwise I'll just forget them with time and time will forget Nicholas and Petter. d""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""b. ;P SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM THE LUDDITE'S DIARY .b `q by Melatonin p' `nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn' Feb. 8th I arrived in this world in the 1950s, and I've spent the last 48 years watching it decay. I've seen cultures rise and fall, movements grow and die, politicians come and go, and I've never been a part of any of it. I've witnessed it all as an outsider -- a recluse, some of my students might say -- and I believe it's for this reason and this reason alone that I'm able to process things as they truly are; I may have missed the boat, you understand, but I'm the only one who can see the sea. Now this paragraph here -- this is where I'd tell you a little bit about myself: my appearance, my background, where I grew up, who my friends are, how I dress, where I eat, what my favorite color is, and so on and so forth in a superficial display of what writers like to think of as "characterization." But I'm not going to do that. I'm not a writer and besides, it's a waste of time. The fact that my hair is a salty brown and swiftly disappearing from my head, the fact that I opt for loafers over sneakers and cardigans over sweaters, the fact that I prefer my meat charred and my vegetables wet -- these are all things that will only distract you from what I have to say. I am my words, my words are me, and good fucking riddance to all the rest. Does my language shock you? I should hope not. "Fuck" is just a sound you make with your tongue. Without our ears it is meaningless. It is we who give the words context and power, and not the other way around. "Fuck" can mean whatever we want it to. So can "flower." Everything's relative. I need to sleep. Feb. 9th Last night I started working on a rough draft of my anti-technology manifesto/novel, but I grew tired with my own inner voice before I reached the end of the page and the material quickly degenerated into random nonsense. These ideas have value, but how do I put them down in an effective way? Who do I turn to? My blood boils with the passion for change -- for meaning -- but it never comes out as I'd like it to. I lecture my students about Aristotle and Descartes and Mander and all they do is sit there and stare, as stone-faced as the walls around them. Sometimes I try to jolt them out of their unending blankness with a sudden shock -- a curse word, a fist slammed on a desk, a shout -- but all I get are snickers and giggles. The more emotional I become, the funnier I somehow appear to them. It is ridiculous. It is absurd. The female ones look at me with slender eyes and a smile on their lips and I can feel their mocking gaze on my back every time I go to write on the board. I hear them whispering to their friends in the halls. "Look at him," they say, "Look at him. There he goes. There goes the funny little man." These girls are nice to look at, but their skulls are so full of bubble gum it must come oozing out their ears every single time they set head to pillow. I don't know. I suppose I should probably just ignore them. In the end, it's hardly worth thinking about. (P.S. You must remember to buy more Tidy Cat tomorrow. Sophocles' litterbox is really starting to smell.) Feb. 11th The Neo-Luddite Manifesto As children, we are born into a world which we are told we cannot change. Our own incompetency and impotence is hammered into us day in and day out until finally -- finally! -- self-doubt sets in and we pick up that hammer for ourselves. We are led to believe, by a variety of forces I will address in Chapter Two, that we are little people. Common people. Mindless, inefficient consumers who will never amount to anything. We are told that this world, as full of opportunity as it may seem, is simply not for us -- that any issue that truly matters is, and will forever be, in the "highly qualified" hands of others. We have our big-screen TVs, our five-minute microwave dinners, our glossy entertainment magazines, and that, we are informed, should be more than enough. The great and prophetic Noam Chomsky has correctly identified these figures as being creations of the The great and prophetic Noam Chomsky has correctly identified these figures as being nothing more than media creations of the academic propaganda establishment, and I couldn't agree more. In his prophetic _The Chomsky Reader_, the great Noam Chomsky correctly identifies these political figures as being nothing more than manufactured creations of the academic propaganda establishment, and I, personally, couldn't agree more. (Then why are you writing this? Idiot.) Note: Ignore. Am Having Problems. Will Try Again Later. Feb. 13th An uneventful day. It amazes me how boring life can sometimes be. It is without a doubt the most precious thing in the world, and yet tonight I spent thirty-five minutes staring at a spot in the carpet because I didn't feel like looking away. Bizarre. Incidentally, the radio says another plane went down near Maui. Why does anyone think these mechanical beasts are the safest way to travel? They seem to drop out of the sky every other week. But I haven't heard of a cruise ship sinking since Titanic. People have no sense of the past. Hmm. I notice my calendar says it's Friday the 13th. Perhaps this wasn't the best day in the world for long-distance air travel. Feb. 14th Valentine's Day and I'm stuck in a shopping mall with a bag of Tidy Cat under my arm and an ache in my tooth. Saturday is no day to leave the house. That's when all the morons come out to play. I was stuck in line at Safeway for fifteen minutes. The ten items or less checkout aisle and it's full of people with more than ten items. The woman in front of me -- an ugly old hag with an overbite -- I specifically counted everything she put down on the conveyer belt. I counted exactly eleven items. Eleven! The sign says ten. Not eleven, ten! Can't the old hag count? Probably not. She probably quit school in the second grade and spent the rest of her life sponging money off the government. Stupid old hag. I wanted to follow her out to her car and kick out her teeth. Ugly old hag with the fat teeth. Kick them right out of her skull. I'll be honest: today was a bad day for me right from the start. I woke up from one of my reoccurring nightmares to find my bottom left wisdom tooth in a dull, throbbing pain. I imagine it had something to do with the nightmare; in it, my top and bottom teeth become magnetized to each other and I have to pry my mouth open with a crowbar every time I want to say something. It's extremely painful, as you can imagine. My ex-wife once told me I grind my teeth in my sleep like some kind of wild, gnawing coyote, so I assume I'm grinding away every time I have this dream. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, but it's the only thing I can think of to explain the pain. Saturdays are the worst. Traffic everywhere and sun in my eyes. I have to remember to stay indoors on Saturdays. I hope Sophocles appreciates her kitty litter. Feb. 15th The Neo-Luddite Manifesto by Charles Michael Lavoire, Sr. INTRODUCTION Every single day, without fail, corporations of all shapes and sizes somehow find it in their busy, overworked schedules to ravage and destroy the environment, polluting the air we breathe and infecting our waters with a cornucopia of poisonous toxins. This has been going on for years now -- nay, decades -- and yet, for some reason, we as a society choose to put up with it. We watch as our spouse's hair falls out in clumps and our children's teeth rot into a rainbow of tiny black stones and we live with it. We accept it. We tell ourselves that this -- this! -- is The Way That Things Should Be. It's enough to boggle the mind, as well as to Every single day, without fail, corporations of all shapes and sizes of all of all shapes and sizes of of of all fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuk [sic] fuck fucketty fuck fuck fuck what do you do when the words won't come? where do you go when you're out on your own? who do you love when there's no one around? why do you move when you keep falling down? Every single day of Every single day, without fail, Every (Note: Have come up against roadblock. Will continue with this tomorrow. Paths of Glory coming on TV anyway.) Feb. 16th Can't write. Woke up this morning in enormous, stabbing pain. My tooth again. Even now, with a stomach full of Tylenol, can barely make out words on page. Will have to miss class. Damn this body of mine. Feb. 16th (cont.) Hallelujah, I've discovered the wonders of ice. The Tylenol wasn't doing much for the pain, but a small shard of ice pressed to the problem tooth is numbing everything. Finally I can write again (though not well enough to continue with my manifesto). Sophocles keeps begging me for food and water -- I can hear her distant whines from the kitchen even as I write this -- but I can barely bring myself to stand up, let alone prepare her another meal. I'm sorry Sophocles, honey, but it'll just have to wait. Papa's in a lot of pain right now. Had to take the phone of [sic] the hook. Logic 115 students kept calling, asking me endless questions about next week's assignment, demanding to know when the mid-term grades would finally be posted. Would it horrify them to hear that I've barely even started? Would it kill them to show a little sympathy and ask why I wasn't at class today? Typical self-absorbed college kids. Took some sleeping pills a half hour ago. Can already feel them kicking in. Eyelids growing heavy. Meow some more Sophocles, I want you to [indecipherable]. Meow. Meow meow meow sad the cat. Walk down the line, eat in the seat. That's what its their for. That's what I'm in bed for. I can barely Feb. 17th Last night I woke up at three in the morning, again in enormous pain. The Tylenol had worn off and the bucket of shredded ice had melted into that much tepid water. There was no time to make a new batch and the agony in my tooth had reached such a tremendous peak that I was forced to swallow my disdain for the world of modern medicine and seek out professional help. I threw on a jacket and scarf and went bicycling around the empty city in search of an all-night dentist. Turns out there's no such thing. I then went down to the local emergency medical center and tried to get a doctor to look at my throbbing jaw. But they turned me away outright -- said they don't deal with teeth, said it's not their area of expertise. "Well listen," I told the lady behind the counter, "Of course it's not your area of expertise. Of course I need to see a dentist and not a doctor. You don't think I know that? I'm not an idiot, you know." Sir, no one here thinks you're an idiot, she interjects. "Did I say you thought I was an idiot? Did you see those words come out of my mouth?" Sir, please, she says. "Don't go putting words in my mouth," I told her. "I'm not your little dancing puppet. I'm not going to do a little jig for you. I'm not going to put on a little show." Around this time a particularly gruff-looking security guard came out and asked me if there was a problem. From the way that he addressed me, I could tell that he was a man of reason and intelligence, and wasn't likely to mock me the way that the nurses had. I calmed down and told him my story. He nodded kindly throughout, then asked me what I thought they -- a bunch of doctors -- could do about a simple toothache. I informed him that a) this wasn't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill toothache, and b) that as doctors they would almost definitely have access to certain types of medication, certain forms of painkillers, that could very easily alleviate whatever misery I was in. And that was that. They didn't even let me finish. As soon as they heard me say "painkillers" they assumed I was some kind of delusional junkie and proceeded to throw me out of the waiting room. I couldn't believe it. Over and over, all the security guard kept saying was, "It's time for you to go, sir. You're disrupting the other patients. It's time for you to go." Well, let me tell you: I looked around that waiting room and I didn't see a single patient in the whole damn place, so I don't know what he was talking about. It is now nine in the morning and I'm lying in bed, fully dressed, waiting for my first class (Environmental Philosophy) to begin. I have a dentist appointment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, and until then I've been told that ice, Extra Strength Tylenol, and perhaps a bit of alcohol should be enough to get me through the next twenty-four hours. I've also found that pushing the tip of this pen into the fat of my thigh helps to dislocate the pain in my mouth. I think it's all a matter of control, personally; pain you inflict on yourself is somehow easier to absorb than pain inflicted by others. But I've gone on too long this morning, and I'm going to miss my bus. (Addendum: spent most of class behind my desk, a smile on my lips and a pen in my leg. Answered students' questions diligently and without condescension. On the way home blacked out for a few minutes. Driver had to pull bus over, make sure I was lucid enough to continue. Apparently you can't sleep on buses -- likelihood of injury and, more importantly, lawsuits becomes too big an insurance risk. What a joke.) Feb. 18th Just got back from the dentist. Jaw is still quite frozen. This morning I couldn't find Sophocles anywhere. Went through the entire house, singing her name; finally checked out back and found her sleeping in the grass. Quietly woke her up and she just looked at me and purred, her two yellow eyes glowing like a pair of melancholy half-moons. At the dentist's office, the odious Dr. Taverd did a quick examination, an extended x-ray, and informed me that my left wisdom tooth is impacted -- that over the years it has gradually twisted onto its side and is now pushing against my other teeth in a desperate attempt to burrow its way into my gum. He also told me that although the pain would most certainly be immense, he wasn't qualified to do anything about it. And with that bit of disappointment aside, he sent me away, an antibiotic prescription in my hand, an oral surgeon appointment on my mind, and a two hundred dollar hole in my pocket. Feb. 23rd Sophocles has stomach cancer. For the last week or so she'd been acting strange -- refusing to eat her food, clawing at her belly, whining at the back door for no discernible reason -- but I was always so busy with my manifesto and my tooth that I hadn't been able to pay much attention. Then one night I was lying in bed, grading papers and listening to Charlie Rose interview James Carville when she got up from my lap, took a few shaky steps across the bed, and quietly vomited a tablespoon of blood across the sheets. I took her to the vet the very next day. The vet -- apparently as unqualified as Dr. Taverd -- sent me to see Dawn Clarke at the College of Veterinary Medicine in Westlake, where a team of oncologists diagnosed her with lymphoma of the gastrointestinal tract. Needless to say, I've spent the last few days chartering back and forth from class in the afternoon to the hospital at night. They finally released her a few hours ago and she's now home with me, still very sick but at least back where she belongs. Right now I'm sitting in the backyard, listening to the crickets chirp and watching Sophocles slowly eat grass (the vet tells me it's a common animal behaviour, as it helps neutralize painful stomach acids). But the truth is, my mind isn't on the grass, or my aching tooth, or even the nineteen essays I still have left to grade. No, it's on the repugnant little decision I've been asked to make: do I pay for the chemo, surgery, and radiation therapy needed to combat the growth in her stomach (which, in the end, may not even work), or do I use that same money to operate on my impacted tooth (which, in the end, almost certainly will). It's a difficult decision to make, and I truly don't know what I'm going to do. Actually, that's a lie. I know exactly what I'm going to do. I just don't want to have to admit it yet. Feb. 26th I've spent the last three nights in bed, nursing my tooth, grading papers, and dealing with Sophocles. The accursed essay pile has finally been whittled down to nothing, but it was no easy task. Have [sic] these kids are silly, sub-literate mongoloids without an original thought to their names. And some of the handwriting is enough to send you screaming naked down the street, clawing out your own eyes and shouting nonsense about semi-colons and sentence fragments. Ah, the boundless joys of being a teacher. Feb. 27th Butted heads with Jonah Albertson, Department Head of Philosophy today. Apparently I've gotten a few too many "unsatisfieds" from spiteful students and now my tenure is up for re-evaluation a year sooner than it should have been. Now I get to look forward to some clown administrator coming into my classroom, pouring over my credentials, and coming back with a one-page checklist that is somehow supposed to dictate my value as a teacher. I went to see Albertson in his office to protest the decision. He was sitting behind his desk, eating his lunch, and I told him, flat-out, that I was the best damn mind to step foot on that campus since Greg J. McAllister back in '84. I told him all about my manifesto, how near it was to completion, and just what it could do for the school once it was published. I even told him about my cat and my tooth and why I'd been missing so many classes lately. I hadn't told anyone about that stuff. And he listened to me, and nodded, and swallowed his food, and when I finally finished he just chuckled and shook his head and turned around in his chair. It was as if I didn't exist. As if my remarks weren't even worth his addressing them. Have you ever wanted to reach inside someone's skull and pull their brain out from the inside? Have you ever wanted to chew it up and spit it out like some kind of fleshy mouthwash? Have you ever felt your fingers tingle with the rage of an animal? The acids in your stomach gargle with fury? The bones in your jaw crackle like a forest fire? You see, now my tooth is starting to bother me again. This diary is a waste of time. It's burning me out. I should be working on my manifesto. I need to get it finished. I'm running out of time. March is coming. Sophocles is dying. Frustration frustration frustration. Fuck fuck fuck. See the frustrated old man's head explode. See the children lick his remains off the floor. See the world crumble in spite and disease. See me close this book and throw away the key. Mar. 9th I put Sophocles to sleep today. It was a horrible thing, but it had to be done. Last month's bills have finally arrived and, as if plumbing, heat, and electric weren't enough, I still have my alimony and child support payments to look forward to. Add to this my upcoming oral surgeon appointment -- which is likely to cost me a good five or six hundred dollars -- and suddenly that cold, hard wall of realization slams down in front of you and there's nowhere left to turn. There was just no way I could have afforded the ongoing surgeries and treatment Sophocles would have needed to survive. Especially not now, with so many of my key funds wrapped up in investments and RRSPs. And I can't deny the amount of time it would have taken, either. With my manifesto still stuck in the mud and this sudden triptych of Stull evaluations coming up and a new set of finals right around the corner, I'm sorry but there was just no way for me to I don't know. At the end of the day, maybe I just did it out of sheer laziness. It's a tough thing, you know, trying to force-feed an animal food it can't even keep down. Plus there were the horrible baths and the constant diarrhea and the whining in the night and those stubborn little yellow pills that kept slipping out of my fingers. Eventually it just got to be too much. I couldn't keep up the pace. I'm not a young man anymore. I didn't take her to the vet, though. I wouldn't give those greedy, no-good incompetents the satisfaction of putting my own cat to sleep for me. No, I did it all myself. After class today I stopped by the supermarket and bought some fresh fish fillets and some nice raspberry wine and cooked a beautiful cuisine meal for the evening. I stuffed Sophocles' serving with a few crushed sleeping pills and together, by candle light, we shared our last meal together, me at the table and her curled in my lap, slowly nibbling her life away one bite at a time. It's now a little after nine and I'm just waiting for the moon to come up and the city to go to sleep before I head outside to bury her in the backyard. I've already picked the spot. It's in the garden, beside the fence and under the shadow of the old wet stone. It's the same place she used to spend her summers as a kitten, and I think it's where she'd like to stay now. Now that everything has ended. Mar. 10th The reality of last night's actions is hitting me pretty hard in the harsh light of day. I had to miss class. The world suddenly seems so grey and lifeless. I can't see the point in getting out of bed anymore. I'm angry, but more than that I'm just tired. I feel hollow. I need to find a purpose. I need to use the rage and dissatisfaction of Sophocles' death to propel me through my manifesto. I need to get it finished. Mar. 11th I've just returned from the oral surgeon and I suddenly find myself in a state of confused euphoria. I'm not sure if it's the painkillers they sent me home with or the brilliance I've just been witness to, but something has done this wonderful, horrible thing to me. I walk through my home and study my surroundings and it all looks like nothing I've ever seen before. Who owns these objects? What purpose did they ever serve? Even this book seems to exist on a different plane of reality; this pen is lighter than I ever remember it being, and the words it's scrawled out seem to have come from the mind of another. Where do I start? Let's see. It began on the ninth floor of the clinic this morning, where after filling out an information sheet I was asked to make a decision. I could go through the surgery completely sober and simply endure the pain, I could have them give me a few shots of laughing gas to dull the edge, or I could go all the way and have them put me under with a general anesthetic. I would have gone with either of the latter two -- and in retrospect, maybe I should have -- but the risks just didn't seem to outweigh the benefits. The laughing gas may destroy valuable brain cells and the anesthetic -- well, they can put you under, but they can't always pull you back up. After a short stint in the waiting room, a female assistant led me into an oversized office and told me to take a seat in the leather dental chair. I smiled and sat down and laughed at her pleasant chit-chat, all the while thinking nasty thoughts about the inside of her skull. Then she left the room and I was alone. It was such a strange room; at least three sizes too big, with an odd, raspy apparatus to my left and a massive, wall-sized window directly in front of me. Outside, the entire crumbling city was spread out before me, its great desert dunes of brick and stone disappearing into the horizon. My thoughts turned to Sophocles. Then Dr. Awhl came into the room. He entered without a sound, his entire being simply manifesting by my side like a ghost. He explained the operation, double-checked my dismissal of anesthetic, and then proceeded to remove the impacted tooth. It was an amazing experience that mere words can't do justice to. Right from the very first moment, when he slid his slender fingers into my mouth, I was transformed into a child. I lied there, silent, my mind rapt with attention as I stared up into his oval face and he peered down at me, his red hair outlined by the blue sky outside, his eyes focused with an intense burn. The entire operation only took a moment. Within seconds, an entire forest of metal had sprouted in my mouth as Dr. Awhl worked his tools with the speed and grace of some glorious sea creature. He seemed to switch from saws to picks to tubes with more hands than any human being has any right to have. Blades whirring, enamel flying, water spraying, he separated the tooth into four sections and tore each piece out with nothing more than his own brute force. The crunching, snapping sounds this produced were shocking, unbearable, even comical -- and yet pure and dignified in their swiftness. And then, as quickly as it had begun, the blades came to a stop, the water slowed, and the symphony was over. The doctor was finished, and I was healed. This man -- this Dr. of Awe -- was an artist, a painter. His brushes were hard and metallic, his paints wet and bloody, and inside the canvas of my mouth he laid out his greatest masterpiece. He cut me, sewed me, changed me from the inside out. He infected me with his art, and for the first time in my life, my bones know real poetry. Where do I go from here? .d&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&b. ___________________________________________________ |THE COMINTERN IS AVAILIABLE ON THE FOLLOWING BBS'S | |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| | TWILIGHT ZONE (905) 432-7667 | | BRING ON THE NIGHT (306) 373-4218 | | CLUB PARADISE (306) 978-2542 | | THE GATEWAY THROUGH TIME (306) 373-9778 | |___________________________________________________| | Website at: http://members.home.com/comintern | | Email BMC at: thebmc@home.com | |___________________________________________________| .d&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&b. Copyright 2001 by The Neo-Comintern #140-02/04/01 All content is property of The Neo-Comintern. You may redistribute this document, although no fee can be charged and the content must not be altered or modified in any way. Unauthorized use of any part of this document is prohibited. All rights reserved. Made in Canada.