gordonzola | The only meme that I've actually found, generally, to be good reading.

Interview by

reddawn

1) Your sense of humor could be described as a bit (ahem) dry and sarcastic. Don't you hate it when people just don't get it?

I kinda love it when people just don’t get it. I’ve written previously as a retail worker about lying to customers on purpose just to make the day go by faster. I would count that as just a part of my "dry" and "sarcastic" humor. Weirdly, I’m a terrible liar but I can fool anyone who has no sense of humor.

However, I can’t stand being around anyone with no sense of humor for long.

2) Name your favorite record to fuck to? To make love to?

Is the fuck/make love duality similar to the porn/erotica one? I going to ignore the distinction.

But to answer the question, it depends on the person. It can be meaningful or totally random, but if I hear an album while fooling around, it becomes kinda a theme and I wouldn’t listen to the same one with anyone else if I could help it. * I hate listening to the radio because of the commercials and I’m not too fond of metal though Rob Zombie was kinda special once. Other records that have been special in the past: Jonathon Richman – pretty much anything, Dead Milk men – "Bucky Fellini", Fela – "Black President", X – "Wild Gift", Dr Dre – "2000". You can see I don’t have just one "makeout" mix tape or anything.

If we ever fool around RD, it will definitely be to the Feederz, ok? Or maybe a tape of the MRR radio show circa 1984 or so. I know you’ve got the semi-old school fetish going on.

*If I could help it means that I wouldn’t likely say in the heat of the moment, "Oh turn this off, It reminds me too much of XXXXXX.

3) What quirky trait of jactitation's are you going to miss the most once she moves out? What annoying habit are you (not-so)secretly glad you'll no longer have to deal with?

I will miss so many quirky things about Jactitation that it is hard to pick just one. The way she will start speaking French and not stop until I start guessing how to respond through context. The way she remembers what TV, movies and soap operas all the bit actors did previously. Her bringing home good books to read. Disagreeing about word meanings and origins with her until finally one of us would look it up in the dictionary (and then I’d find out she’d be right 90% of the time). And those are just the shallow ones, there are many, many deeper reasons why I’ll miss her but I’m going to stop before it makes me sad.

What I won’t miss is her obsession with "Friends". And the way she says, "You know what would be great right now? Cigarettes!" every night even though she hasn’t smoked regularly in about ten years.

And then there’s the way she obsesses about a current hit like "The Thong Song" or "My Milkshake" and plays it over and over and over for weeks.

Oh, that’s me, isn’t it ….

4) So, considering the tensions you've mentioned about identifying as an anarchist, how have your views on worker co-ops changed over the past nine years at Rainbow?

The perfectly thought out co-op won’t work. It’s all about organic compromise* between individuals who come from different backgrounds and places. The pure co-op only breeds purists and purists are hateful, humorless, and annoying. Plus they usually can’t run businesses in the capitalist world so unless someone with a trust fund or rich relatives is secretly keeping someplace afloat, cough …AK Press … cough, having a realistic business plan is kinda a necessary evil.

The co-op world spans the radically political and the status quo capitalist world. Worker control is revolutionary. Being business partners isn’t. Most co-ops are somewhere in between and have a lot to offer radical movements about realism, hope, compromise and being serious about what one is doing. Radical movements supply (some) consumers and a vision for co-ops about what they should strive to become, when more radical possibilities are realistic. Co-ops can also easily ape traditional business models if they (or a portion of their members) don’t keep this vision alive. As Malatesta wrote (and I’m paraphrasing) co-ops can train people in essential skills and show them that they don’t need bosses to order them around in order to function, but they need to guard against the "shopkeeper mentality" that can turn a community-aware organization into a parasitical one.

". . . In my opinion, co-operatives and trade unions under the capitalist regime do not naturally, or by reasons of their intrinsic value, lead to human emancipation, but can be producers of good and evil; today organs of (conservatism) OR social transformation, tomorrow serving the forces of reaction OR revolution. All depends on whether they limit themselves to functioning as defenders of the immediate interests of their members or are animated and influenced by the anarchist spirit, which makes the ideals stronger than sectional interests."

In my years of working at a co-op and with many others politically, I feel like I just agree with this more and have a deeper understanding of what Malatesta means.

*I’m not implying that I think these compromises can be accomplished somehow outside of the societal structures we’ve all grown up with, but that compromises are necessary and that different ones make sense at different times.

5) As a big zine dork and a livejournal superstar you're used to (and obviously enjoy) writing for a Public, and being at least partially aware of their expectations of you as the Author. In contrast, the anonymity of graffiti can provide an avenue for both liberation and cowardice. Assuming you hadn't been scared straight after your last graf spree, what would you write anonymously to the world on a darkened underpass?

Well, actually it did scare me straight. But, if I was to graffiti again, it would depend on my mood:

A year ago – a simple "Fuck Your War!"
10 years ago but maybe now again – "Bush, you liar, we’ll set your ass on fire" because it’s catchier than it seems.
For the Old School -- "What vision is left and is anyone asking?"
For you – "WOLVERINES!"
But likely I’d go for my old standby – "Smash the state and have a nice day" with the anarcho smiley face symbol.

Weirdly, I’ve never been good at slogans so this was the hardest question for me to answer.

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