I just watched Rev Al Sharpton sing "I Feel Good" on Saturday Night Live. Damn, but who would have thought it? He has a voice like James Brown -- plus the moves -- and I may have to revise my entire position on the 2004 election.

THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
Mick Farren

I HAVE AN AR15
AND FOUR BOXES
OF TWO TWENTY THREE
HIGH VELOCITY HOLLOW POINTS
AND I HAVE QUITE A LOT OF DEMEROL
LEFT OVER FROM MY HERNIA SURGERY
AND A PINT OF HIRAM WALKER'S TEN HIGH
SO I WILL FEEL NO PAIN
WHEN THE SHOOTING STARTS

AND I AM GOING
TO THE PLANT
TOMORROW MORNING
TO WASTE
AS MANY OF THE SONS OF BITCHES
AS I CAN
BEFORE THEY WASTE ME

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
I AM THE NEW FACE OF LABOUR RELATIONS

SINCE THEY BROKE THE UNION
WE'VE TAKEN THREE PAY CUTS
AND GIVEN UP THE PRODUCTIVITY BONUS
AND HALF THE MEDICAL PLAN
AND AFTER DARLENE LEFT
AND TOOK THE KIDS
I STARTED GETTING
TOO MUCH SUGAR IN MY DIET
AND TOO MANY PORK PRODUCTS
AND BEGAN
HAVING CONVERSATIONS
WITH THE JAPANESE GUY
INSIDE THE TEEVEE

AND I AM GOING
TO THE PLANT
TOMORROW MORNING
TO WASTE
AS MANY OF THE SONS OF BITCHES
AS I CAN
BEFORE THEY WASTE ME

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
I AM THE NEW FACE OF LABOUR RELATIONS

LAST FRIDAY
I SPENT EIGHTY SEVEN DOLLARS
PLUS TAX AND TIP
BUYING DINNER AND HARVEY WALLBANGERS
FOR JACKIE KOVACK
AT BIG BILLY'S
STEAK AND LOBSTER BARN
OUT ON I-7
AND AFTERWARDS
SHE REFUSED TO GIVE ME SO MUCH
AS A HANDJOB
SAID SHE JUST WANTED
US TO BE FRIENDS
AND THE NEXT DAY
I SAW HER
AND SOME OF THE OTHER WOMEN
FROM QUALITY CONTROL
TALKING AND LAUGHING
OUTSIDE THE FEMALE FACILITY
AND I KNEW THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT ME

AND I AM GOING
TO THE PLANT
TOMORROW MORNING
TO WASTE
AS MANY AS THE SONS OF BITCHES
AS I CAN
BEFORE THEY WASTE ME

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE
I AM THE NEW FACE OF LABOUR RELATIONS

AND TOMORROW NIGHT
WHEN YOU GET HOME FROM WORK
YOU'LL SEE ME ON TV

I AM THE DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE

I have never felt totally comfortable with the anti-globalization movement. Obviously I support its aims of stopping the WTO and the IMF in their despicable tracks, but, even before I could read science fiction, I consumed far too much Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, and was filled with ideas of World Government, the UN, and a one-planet utopia. Later my travels, Bucky Fuller, and the clear need to consider a fragile whole-earth reinforced this that we are all one on the spaceship together. Thus aspects of the movement can’t help but strike me, maybe incorrectly, as echoes of counter revolutionary, proletariat chauvinism. It also occurres to me that maybe globalism is the weapon to fight globalism, and there’s been a model around for a century or more that might the reexamined. Yes, my friends, the IWW – International Workers of the World – the Wobblies, one big union. Scoff as you may, they scared the shit out of the plutocrats back at the start of the 20th century. They stuck it to those boys worse than they stuck it to the Black Panthers fifty years later. They killed them. Must have been doing something right.

Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who voiced on radio that he would like to see the world united by an alien invasion. (Of course it was. The Deviants sampled the speech for the start of the tune "Aztec Calendar".

Let's never forget, Julius Caesar had the last word.

I’ve heard a great deal of gloom recently – relayed in no small part by the alternative press, who should know better – about how the Republicans and the loathsome GWB will prove unbeatable in the 2004 elections. The cries of woe echo all round me. “Redistricting” they cry. “The Diebold touchscreen voting machines are fixed.” In fact, all in all, too many comrades are seem in deep despair. Katherine Seelye in the Weekly Standard informs me that, due to population shifts, “Democrats know that white men in rural parts of states like Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin — all of which went for Mr. Gore are increasingly voting Republican, largely because of issues like President Bill Clinton's personal behavior and recent court rulings on gay rights. As a Democratic strategist said, "Older white Americans moved away from us on impeachment and guns, and now same-sex marriage is a killer."

All I can snarl in response is give me a fucking break, and ask what we are supposed to do about it? Distance ourselves from longtime queer allies to accommodate dumb white guys and rural loons, who want only to be armed to the teeth, and quake at some imaginary biblical horror that they can’t even fully grasp, and is none of their business anyway? Oh please. This is pure defeatism. And why bother making any adjustments, anyway, if the fix is already in?

To attend to any of this, and to be panicked into embracing Republican principles (if you can find one) or neo-con Newspeak and tactics, is to sell out before the auction has even commenced. There are worse things than losing an election. We can always return to the mattresses of bohemian anarchy, and then turn really ugly. Never forget that, at any given time, by his or her very nature, the fascist is more desperately frightened than you are. (Just have tea with Ann Coulter.)

In the meantime, the election is not lost. We have ten months to continue hammering at the great vulnerability. The President of the United States (POTUS) is an idiotic, half-formed nonentity who will bungle anything close to nuclear backed confrontation or global crisis, because he smugly believes he can lie his way out of anything. See how much the dumb white guys worry about gay marriage when they’re glowing in the dark, or when the insane weather patterns of threshold global warming have turned Kansas and Nebraska into a goddamned desert.

A believe Sun Tsu had a whole lot to say about the demoralizing of the enemy before any army is even deployed. I would also refer you to the words of ol’ Noam, below...

"I can only repeat what I've often written. The US, and the West generally, has become far more civilised in the past 40 years, thanks to the activism of mostly young people in the 1960s and since. It is easy to give examples, including opposition to aggression and massacre, but also in many other domains as well. Of course, every effort is made to induce hopelessness and despair, but there is no reason to succumb. The future is in our hands, and the opportunities today are far greater than they have been in the past."

-- Noam Chomsky (who is 75 on Sunday)

And now feeling obligated to post something with some content, here's the lyric of a fabulous old tune...

MAN THAT WATERS THE WORKERS' BEER
(Paddy Ryan)

I am the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers' beer
I am the man, the very fat man,
That waters the workers' beer
And what do I care if it makes them ill,
If it makes them terribly queer
I've a car, a yacht, and an aeroplane,
And I waters the workers' beer

Now when I waters the workers' beer,
I puts in strychnine
Some methylated spirits,
And a can of kerosine
Ah, but such a brew so terribly strong,
It would make them terribly queer
So I reaches my hand for the watering-can
And I waters the workers' beer

Now a drop of good beer is good for a man
When he's tired, thirsty and hot
And I sometimes have a drop myself,
From a very special pot
For a strong and healthy working class
Is the thing that I most fear
So I reaches my hand for the watering-can
And I waters the workers' beer

Copyright Workers Music Association

Check Funtopia

So, a new horizon of exploration? I stand mindless, but wait...

Something takes shape within the swirling mist.

(Voices off) -- "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake!"

Now where have I heard that before?