“I want more bands like us. I want people to see us and start something, or else I’m just wasting my time.”
– Johnny Rotten
The kids get pissed off. There is a quote – I can’t remember who said it or when and why because sometimes I use my memory in lieu of google – but it goes something like this: Every revolution is a war of sons against fathers. The best example of this would be the 1960s.
(It’s the best example because there’s so many baby boomers and we have to hear about how great the fucking 1960s were and how awesome the Beatles were and how they almost did this and they did that and sit through specials about health directed at a bunch of people who drank and drugged and fucked more than everyone else – or so they say – when they were young, and we have to sit through all this until they all die. Fucking hypocrites. Each and every one of them. Hunter S. Thompson said it best – even though he was a boomer too – “the true Generation of Cowards and Queaslings Who Failed at everything except building new jails and bombing sand-niggers and turning in each other to the Police.”)
But let’s ignore the hippies and instead turn our attention to France and the Situationists. This was a group of motherfuckers so bad that they said the idea of “Situationism” was an attempt to destroy situationists. Their theory – in short – was this: Society is spectacle. The only way to destroy the spectacle is to create a situation. Or as Guy Debord, their leading writer, said: “I may have written less than other writers but I drank more than other drinkers.”
The Situationists shut France down. They were behind a general strike that arguably led to every socially progressive thing that country ever did since. Punk was based on their ideas. But fuck the ideas. It was based on their actions. Based on their situations. If you want to be a Situationist – it’s easy. The next time someone shoves a camera in your face, break it. The next time someone wants to talk about Marxism, jack yourself off with an egg sandwich. It might not be pleasant, but it will be real.
And, for a moment, you and everyone around you might actually feel alive. As opposed to reading a blog or watching a youtube or boobtube show about being alive.
2 comments
v
May 12, 2006 at 3:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is this the desert of the real? I took a turn off of Simulacra and just kept going.
That’s the best I could come up with.
If you’re taking suggestions, do Che Guevara next. Thanks.
Tom
May 13, 2006 at 5:37 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Baltimore is the wild west of the East Coast.Something completely evil is going on. A woman in her nintys was raped.The mayor is running for governor though he should be tried for derliction of duty.