ObMag#4 Intro

Senile: /see-nahy-ul/
 Having or showing the weaknesses or diseases of old age, esp. a loss of mental faculties.

Nihilism: /nahy-uh-liz-uhm/
1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.

Here’s how it went down.

Political unrest in the Middle East drove up fuel prices and the cost of living.  A protracted war against a seemingly undefeatable indigenous guerilla force sucked the national coffers dry. A gutless democrat president was steamrolled by corporatist republicans and downturns in housing and manufacturing dragged the economy into recession and sent unemployment to record highs. And Ronald Reagan was elected President.

It was in that atmosphere of post-Vietnam imperial decline that punk came of age. Nihilism was the message. The government and society had sold out the American people. Older hippies were well down the path toward yuppiedom, so punks chose to start their own alternative culture. Punk was based not on the collectivist optimism of the psychedelic generation, but more on a vision of a DIY culture rising from the ashes of  mundane mainsteam middle-America. Punk bands booked their own tours, pressed their own records, designed their own flyers. Punk artists took to the streets or started their own galleries. Punk writers published their own ‘zines. A subculture grew and punks flourished, without the permission of the growing corporatocracy. Punk was the last best hope for a life outside the establishment system.

In the 90’s, many punks, now in their 30’s, sadly but not unexpectedly took the opportunity to sneak back into the middle class from whence they came. The Clintonian neo-liberal tech-boom train was leaving the station, and “alternative” college rock enthusiasts rushed to get on board, following their hippie elders into the world of khaki pants and retirement accounts. The new breed of assembly line worker was being born. Not on the factory floor-  oh no, President Clinton made sure that those jobs went overseas- but rather in the climate controlled cubicles of the former punk outposts like San Francisco, Seattle and Lower Manhattan. But this assembly line is better! You could listen to your favorite punk tunes (through headphones), wear your Chuck Taylor Allstars (to signify that you are “thinking outside of the box”) AND the cafeteria has organic and vegetarian options!

Ex-punks had babies, and brought children into a future that just a few years before they thought would not exist. Back then, they were thrashing in a pit while the Circle Jerks sang “ I went to see a rabbi, but despite his advise, I want an operation I will not father life! Operation, operation, snip & tie, snip & tie!” Suddenly they are getting their musical cues from the bumper music on “All Things Considered” while they haul a van full of brats with food allergies to be coached by some stay-at-home dad, whose liberal arts college degree in humanities and ability to kick a soccer ball has drawn him the short straw while his formerly pink-haired, pierced-nosed wife (with an MBA) drinks single malt scotch in a hotel bar at a conference in Phoenix.

Through it all, a few aging punks keep the faith. They missed the train, or fell off the train, or in many cases, the train ran them over. They were born without the business gene, or they just never gave a shit about money. Some would sell out if they could, but addiction, depression, psychosis or other mental or personality disorders don’t allow it. The DIY spirit keeps them alive.  They do for themselves. They still know how to survive without the system promoting their own shit, selling their own shit, scraping by. Times are tough again, but they still know the ropes.

Now, in the era of “austerity,” jobs are scarce and the establishment is once again selling out the American people. But this time there is no youth movement in sight. Surveillance society and digital culture has apparently stolen the punk babies souls. They need to be shown the way. They can’t learn it all from reading Maximum Rock and Roll, after all.  It’s time for old punks to rediscover their roots. To re-activate. To take back the mantle of nihilism and rage like there is no tomorrow. What is there to lose? Jump off the train. Before it’s too late, before the anti-depressants, craft-brewed beer and vegan cupcakes take away the last of your will to fight. The punk generation needs to go “senihl”.

So here’s how it’s going to go down...

Political unrest in the Middle East drove up fuel prices and the cost of living.  A protracted war against a seemingly undefeatable indigenous guerilla force sucked the national coffers dry. A gutless democrat president was steamrolled by corporatist republicans and downturns in housing and manufacturing dragged the economy into recession and sent unemployment to record highs. And ??? will be elected President.

Time to dig out the Circle Jerks records.
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At Long Last! ObMag #4 Goes to Print!!!!

ObMag #4 Preview: The Canadian Tuxedo

Issue #4 (out in July) features an article on the “denim kit”- also known as the “Canadian tuxedo” or “denim sandwich”. The cheap and functional combo of jeans and denim jacket has been the uniform of cow punchers, construction workers, bikers, punks and metal heads. The timeless favorite of badasses and fashion rejects, ObMag pays homage to the blue suit in our summer issue- due out this month.

R.I.P. Flick Colby- Unsung Hero of Pop Music

From The Guardian...

When 15 million viewers tuned into Top of the Pops each week during the show's 1970s heyday, the appeal extended beyond the hitmakers on the screen to those who were not appearing, since an absent act's single was interpreted by the show's all-female dance troupe, Pan's People. Their silky routines were choreographed by one of their dancers, Flick Colby, who has died aged 65 of bronchial pneumonia, after suffering from cancer.
Colby, an American with long blonde hair and a megawatt smile, confected slinky, semi-risque and often extravagant Top of the Pops routines for Pan's People for eight years. She continued to work on the show with subsequent troupes, choreographing moves to suit a range of musical styles such as glam rock, folk, soul, disco and punk.

Full Story

Dumpster-Diver Gardening

from ObMag#1...


We began dumpster-diver gardening sometime in the early 90's, when we came across a vendor at the Brooklyn Terminal Market tossing flats of slightly wilted bedding plants into the trash. Neither Wildgirl nor I were strangers to dumpster diving (a proud trash-picking tradition that is now fashionably know as "Freeganism"), and W.G. immediately hatched a plan for me to distract the shop owner by buying a bag of peat moss while she filled the trunk of her '74 Valiant with rescued greenery. "It wasn't so much about wanting the plants," she recalls- "It was about the waste. It was about the disposable society."

Fast-forward 10 years. We no longer live in New York. We have a small organic farm, and grow a lot of our own stuff. On a blistering July afternoon in Coralville, Iowa, I noticed one of the seasonal garden centers set up in a grocery store parking lot was breaking down for the season and again, they were dumpster-izing flat after flat of sad, leggy, brown and bolting tomato plants, squash, peppers, herbs, and flowers. A lot of the higher-priced organic and heirloom stuff was left behind. I took as much as the old Subaru GL would hold. What I have discovered in the last few years that throughout the Midwest (indeed, much of the country), is that huge numbers of plants get dumped, given away or sold for next to nothing sometime in the last part of June to first week of July. If timed properly, a pickup truck can be filled with blueberry bushes, roses, prairie plants, perennials, and lots and lots of vegetable plants for less than twenty bucks- often for nothing more than the price of gas. If you are a non-driver and really hard-core, you can do it with a cargo bike, shopping cart, hand truck, wheelbarrow or travois. The keys to success are timing, speed, and a modicum of stealth. Despite the fact that the stuff is being jettisoned, employees, particularly middle managers, can tend to flex-out on people who want their trash. In most cases, though, if you time your arrival properly, the peons who got exiled to the sweltering parking lot to haul the stuff to the dumpster are more than happy to have you lighten their load.

OBSOLETE! is now accepting Bitcoins

If you haven't heard about it already, check out Bitcoins. This is an open-source, P2P currency that is making a very real attempt to do an end-run around the banking industry and create a "people's currency". Can they make the Fed obsolete? Probably not, and if they are successful, I'm sure the government will crush it....
...but for now, why not give it a try? You can find our Bitcoin address in the right-hand column of this page.

Warren Buffett's Radioactive Ronin Pillage Iowa

  Months  after massive earthquakes and Tsunamis crushed Japan, the "Fukushima 50" toil on. Crawling through darkened tunnels dangerously close to overheating radioactive reactors, the remaining nuclear power plant employees at Fukushima Dai-Ichi struggle to stop the worsening catastrophe that is spreading deadly toxic pollution across their already crippled homeland. The Fukushima 50 know that they have already sacrificed their lives. They know that the exposure they have already experienced will kill them.

Like samurai committing nuclear seppuku, radioactive ritual suicide, the 50 are driven by a sense of honor and loyalty.

Meanwhile, at the Iowa state capital, lobbyists for MidAmerican Energy continue to push for passage of Senate File 390, a bill that they say will send the message that "Iowa is open for business for nuclear power". They also work from a sense of loyalty, but not like the Fukushima 50. They are corporate ronin, political samurai with no loyalty other than to those who pay them to pillage.

Warren Buffett, who's Berkshire Hathaway Company controls MidAmerican Energy, has been obsessed with nuclear power for many years. In 2007 Buffet made an unsuccessful play to build a nuclear plant in Idaho. More recently, Buffett was outbid by French state-owned utility giant Electricite de France (EDF) for a 49% share of Constellation Energy's Calvert Cliffs III nuclear reactor. Now, Buffett hopes that the third time will be the charm for his nuclear ambitions and he wants to make his nuclear dream come true in Iowa.

Senate File 390 is a bill that seeks to raise MidAmerican customer's electric rates to cover the cost of Mr. Buffett's dream. Despite the fact that Fukushima now rivals Chernobyl as history's biggest nuclear power plant catastrophe, Buffet's Iowa statehouse ronin fight on, hiring more lobbyists to fight back the increasing resistance from "the little people".

Before Fukushima, MidAmerican anticipated easy passage of their bill, counting on republicans to vote "for" nuclear power (which they generally would do just to piss off democrats) along with a cadre of "pro-business" democrats (re: those who took MidAm campaign money).  They were confident that the tired, gray-haired, granola-eating "no-nukes" enviro-dinosaurs could surely be no match for the giant stick they swing at the Iowa statehouse. Surprisingly though, even since Fukushima, the groundswell of opposition has come not as much from enviros as from those who object to MidAm's financing scheme.

AARP (American Association of Retired People) state director Barry Koeppl was quoted in an April 11th article in the Des Moines Register as saying; “We oppose Senate File 390 and House File 961 because those bills substantially shift the cost and risk for nuclear power construction to ratepayers. Rather than rely on shareholders to finance a new power plant, this legislation shifts the billion-dollar-plus costs to ratepayers for a possible nuclear power plant, years before the plant is built, or the plant design has even been approved.”

Apparently, AARP is not alone.  Word has it that MidAm lobbyists are now feverishly counting votes- including republican votes. It seems that Iowa's new crop of Tea-Party Republicans also have problems with state government approving what amounts to a rate-payer funded subsidy for MidAms admittedly sketchy plans. Republican leadership is finding that some of the tea-partiers may be making good on their promise of less government- and the new influx of radical freshmen republican legislators may be a knife that cuts both ways.

This new alliance of populists from the far left and right may be a harbinger of things to come. Not unlike it the U.S. House where far-left Dennis Kucinich and far-right Ron Paul agree in a surprising number of cases concerning issues of personal freedom, the fight against nuclear power on economic grounds may illustrate that there is more common ground to be found in the future when "the little people" stop listening to corporatist Republican and Democrats talking points.

In the mean time, elevated levels of radioactivity are being found in milk in California. Nuclear experts predict Fukushima may kill as many as 200,000 from increased cancers in the next 50 years. Spent waste containment pools continue to fill up at sites across the world. And yet, a majority of Iowa's legislators appear to be willing to charge MidAmerican customers up-front for the privilege of hanging out the "Iowa is open for business for nuclear" sign, and making Warren Buffet's dream come true.

Call for Submissions: OBMAG! #4

We are now accepting submissions for the upcoming issue of OBSOLETE! Short fiction, essays on politics or culture, reviews, poetry, cartoons, photos and other original artwork are all welcome. The theme is The Senihilism Issue: In praise of old punks, cranks and crazies - but your work need not directly relate to that theme.

The deadline for submission is June 1st, so GET IT TOGETHER!

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Send submissions or questions to: obmag@feral-tech.com