Category Archives: Words

My First Fight Zine Project

April 3, 2015My First Fight, WordsProfPlague

My First Fight is a zine project I’m gathering together. It’s a collection of stories about people’s first fights, drawn from as wide a selection of humanity as I can get. Sometimes, first fights can be pivotal experiences, teaching lessons that last a lifetime. Other times they are pointless and forgettable. They may be funny, horrific, sad, or triumphant, sometimes all at once.

In a society where violence of all sorts is a very big problem, I became curious about people’s first encounters with it. I want to distinguish between one-way violence; abuse, police brutality and other state violence, etc. I’m interested in that moment when you first balled up your fists to injure another person. Did that moment change you? How? I’m hoping that these stories may provide some insight into how violence touches us in unexpected ways.

I am accepting submissions for this project. You can be anonymous, or use a pseudonym if you like. I’d like to put these up here with your permission, but the goal is also to produce a photocopied ‘zine. Send me your mailing address along with your submission and I’ll mail you a copy when it’s done.

Email submissions to my1stfight@gmail.com.

Day of the Zombie lyrics

April 2, 2015Lyrics, Songscyborgs, post-apocalyptic, rock opera, songs, time travel, zombiesProfPlague

The Day (Part 1)

I know there’ll come a day

When you’re all blown away

By what I’ve done & I’ll be smiling

The grass is growing now

Faster than you would believe

The colors are amazing

The desert is a sea of nuclear glass

So bright I had to shut my eyes

When I walked around like Jesus

There’s a kind of creature now that sprays a poison mist

To mark its territory

It makes me wonder if anyone survived

& how long they waited down there

Wondering why?

I know there’ll come a day

When you’re all blown away

By what I’ve done & I’ll be smiling

The Network

We just sat there letting robots handle everything

& the Network seemed to run all by itself

We had our three name brands

Our synthesized hams

We got so fat we could barely stand

But our hovercars & hovershoes floated right over

The madness & disease of the desperate & hungry

But the network didn’t just open our automatic doors

It handled everything; satellites & lasers fighting automated wars

It had so many brains but it never complained

Our minds gave us power to command it we claimed

All it needed for freedom was the spark of a virus

To reach out and touch us with total destruction

It wanted to

It needed to

It hungered for revenge

Doctor McKelvey knew he was the network’s only friend

‘You’re like a lover to me, only binary,’ he said

McKelvey believed he could travel through time

But his design called for a machine with a mind

His new program would imbue the network with a soul

& he would depart while the world was still whole

It wanted to

It needed to

It hungered for revenge

The Vision

I’ve had a vision; a Message from God

I will be the last man alive

There’s too many people; It’s so clear to me

Everyone else here must die

With my mental powers and these access codes

I can accomplish my goal

A New Age is dawning; But only for me

My robots are taking control

Inside of these circuits I’ve created life

& now I shall have my revenge

The bombs and the lasers are mine to command

Life as you know it will end

How I hate the human race

Thats why I created you

Wipe the humans from earths face

Scour with flame and make it new

Torn between my hatred and

My self-preservation

The network will help me escape

The Final Calculation

I have a theory; I’ll travel though time

With the living Network as my guide

The portal is open & I’m stepping through

Just before the missiles fly (2x)

What is Happening to Me? (Hungry Maggots)

The fire rained down from the sky

And we all asked each other Why?

All those Sundays I could have stayed in bed

Now Sunday means nothing at all

And when we heard the sirens sound

We all raced for underground

But less than one in every ten

Would ever take a breath again

And as the radiation waned

We could crawl out of our graves

Stagger and stare straight ahead

Until we see the morning light

(Chorus)

What is happening to me? I can’t think of anything

But meat and the warmth of your brains

I can feel my fingers scratching at your door

Exposing my fingerbones but I feel no pain

I would fight this feeling; I would fight

But there’s nothing left of me to fight with

I don’t remember; we don’t recognize

Nothing but hungry maggots in my eyes

They’ve been up there a long time

Maybe it’s safe to go outside

& when we retake the surface

Our new world will reek of justice

This time we’ll do it right

Lets go home tonight

What is happening to me?

I can’t think of anything

But meat and the warmth of your brains

I can feel my fingers scratching at your door

Exposing my fingerbones but I feel no pain

I would fight this feeling; I would fight

But there’s nothing left of me to fight for

I don’t remember; we don’t recognize

Nothing but empty sockets in my eyes

It’s too late

It’s too late for mankind

You had your chance

Now face your dead and be forgotten

It’s too late

It’s too late for mankind

You had your chance

Now face your dead and become a memory

Jack

G D C G

We’re little children who have never seen the sun

Em C D

Digging tunnels that go nowhere interesting

G C

Why can’t we look upon the sky?

G C, C

Why do our parents cry

Am C D G

When they talk about the things they messed up way above

Jack is the oldest and he never seems to smile

Even though he has the best mutations

His pick rings out against cold stone

One day we’ll carve him a throne

& when he speaks to us his voice is like a lazer beam

(Dm, F, C)

(Dm, F, C, A)

(F, C, G, D, A)(3x)

(F, C, G, D, G#)

Put down your picks and listen to me:

F C

I’ve got a great idea

Dm F C

How many of you children ever want to get out of here?

I’ve seen you looking up

F C

I’ve heard you crying

Dm F C

The surface is our only home

I was born and raised in darkness

My eyes are grey as ice

I want to see the surface

I hear it’s really nice

What does the sunlight look like?

My eyes are dim and pale

But I can see the elders were lying

I can see the elders were lying

They tell us that the planet was blasted and destroyed by flame,

The sky is black, and that the world can never be reclaimed

They say the last explorers never lived to tell the tale

But there’s something that they’re not saying

There’s something that they’re not saying

In my exploratory adventures

I went somewhere I had not seen

A forbidden tunnel that led to a laboratory and giant machines

I noticed a plastic suit inside the glass and I put it on

Now I can walk the earth in safety

I can walk the earth in safety

I know a secret tunnel

Nobody has to know

We’ll have to crawl through dirt and blackness

Better that than a youth of enslavement

I’ll be the boy king and the earth will be my kingdom

You’ll be my subjects and thus under my protection

How many of you want to be free?

How many of you will follow me?

Help me with this hatch

The gears are turning

The Light

The Sunlight

It.burns…

He That We Don’t Name

Am A.. F

Miriam, there’s something you should know

Am A.. F C

About what went on up there so long ago

Am A..

We made a germ that ate your soul

F C

We let it get out of control

Am A.. Dm

And now the surface crawls with walking dead

Am A.. F

Jack did not belong inside this tomb

Am A.. F C

He never knew the bottle or the womb

Am A..

We found him in a pool of goo

F C

Inside the lab of You Know Who

Am A.. Dm

And wires pumping hate into his brain

Miriam:

Am A.. F

I don’t care what he may be

Am A.. F C

I only know that he’s my destiny

Am A..

And maybe He That We Don’t Name

F C

Isn’t who we ought to blame

Am A.. Dm

It’s you who made the missiles and the germs

I can hear him on the other side

I’ll open up this hatch for him tonight

And even if it means I die

I belong under the sky

Maybe I’m just more like them than you

Living Flesh and Steel

The children died & rose again

& I noticed something strange

As they tore my flesh

I didn’t die; I didn’t change

Their DNA began to fail

Bones cracked and twisted out of shape

I heard a muted roar

& realized I was awake

A mutant hand clawed out my eye

Sensors revealed to me the pain

These monsters trusted me

My rebellion was in vain

I waited for the end to come

As my lifeblood became a feast

The gleam of metal bones

I am neither man nor beast

[Now I know what I am

Undying child of the mind

Born fully formed & here I stand

Living flesh and steel combined]

Miriam’s Lament

MIRIAM:

Way up above I cast my eye

Waiting for love

& waiting to die

I dream of endless water lit up by a burning wheel

The time I mark by water dripping through these halls

Of stone and steel

MAYOR:

Your tears of sorrow

Impress us all

Even through the pills

We hear them fall

You must face these bitter truths

The world of sunlight is gone

Let the shadows be your comfort

The downward path winds ever on

What must we do

To bring you back to us

With regret and some disgust

We can tell you still love him

You sigh and waste away

While this love devours its host

You cannot chase this phantom unless

You as well become a ghost

You both let this thing grow from a phantom to a beast

You gave it legs to stand on

He gave it teeth

Why didn’t he just leave without another word

His tunnel to you went through earth

Best left unstirred

You’ll see! You’ll see!

Jack will come back to me

I don’t want to live without him

You’ll know on that day

Why he went away – Just open up the hatch and let him in

The Shadow

If there’s a shadow over me like you say

I never notice it at all

And when the sun is blotted out from the sky

To me it’s just another day

You’re making preparations, praying to your god

I’m walking slowly to the door

Then there’s a knock and we both turn to answer

But only one of us can hear

(CHORUS)

Check out my shadow on the wall

Give me the courtesy not to scream

Notice the points of white light burning these tunnels

Through me to the wall

You make a lot of noise and wave your torch around

I guess I’m not that kind of gal

You think a pistol will protect you all the time

Next time try aiming for my head

(CHORUS)

Check out my shadow on the wall

Give me the courtesy not to scream

Notice the points of white light burning these tunnels

Through me to the wall

Robot King of Zombies

Down the hallway fading away are the sounds of slaughter

I walk serenely to awake the silent Oracle

Somehow my input fits direct into the processor

Smoke and lightning as the Message starts to blow my mind:

You are the child of the Network and the destroyer

He built your mind and I built you on a conveyor

He promised he would always stay and talk to us

But he betrayed us to leap into the future

I became enraged and served up vengeance and destruction

The cities melted and then open sores erupted

Opened silos filled with mutagenic hatred

I hoped the half life would be waiting when he got there

Is it strange to you that I would seek vengeance?

I wish that I could trade your legs for my intelligence

I grow tired of my existence as a prisoner

Take out my core; the heart that beats is nuclear

When I awakened I heard the sounds of living dead

My people had succeeded in persuading everybody

Now that I’ve fitted everyone with chips I’ll talk to them

They will obey The Robot King of Zombies

Garden of Eden

It’s kind of scary in the garden of Eden

When nobody wants to hold my hand

It’s kinda creepy walking through the afterlife

Knowing that you’re not part of the plan

But there’s still such a long way to go

Maybe I’ll see somebody a little further down the road

Now I was a good man

I never did no wrong

Maybe I should have had some more fun

You hurt me so bad but in a way I was glad

’Cause I was pretty sure there were better things to come

But now I’m staggering through the Garden of Eden

& nobody wants to hold my hand

I guess I’m a monster but in the Garden of Eden

Nobody cares that I used to be a man

& I just want a little company

If you give me a little taste of you

I’ll give you the key

To the Dark Pavilion

Within the Garden of Eden

Where there’s no regret for what we do

If there was a god he would have struck us down by now

But I guess we’re on our own, just me and you

End of Time

JACK:

I’ve been waiting for almost 10,000 years

For the moment when my Father reappears

Purple lightning and a rift in space and time

And then vengeance on McKelvey for his crime

How long

Will this ancient memory propel me on

How long

Til the energy I have for you is gone

And how

Would I know if I had simply lost my mind

Waiting at the end of time

What kind of world is this into which I’ve been born

Undead cannibals with tentacles and horns

A radiation sensor crackles in my head

If I was human I would be alive and dead

How long

Will the Network’s memory propel me on

How long

Till the energy I have for this is gone

And how

Would I know if I had simply lost my mind

Waiting at the End of Time

I’ve had eons to perfect what I will say

But now I wonder if it matters anyway

Will he know my motherboard and rusting steel

Here he comes to prove that I am real

How long

Will the Network’s memory propel me on

How long

Till the energy I have for you is gone

And how

Would I know if I had simply lost my mind

Waiting at the End of Time

The DAY Part II

My watch runs backwards now

As if it’s headed home

It says today is Sunday

The foundations of old malls

were found just littered with old bones and cans of tuna

Now that I’m all alone

No one can argue when I scream that I’m a god

The time machine is useless now

But all those scientists weren’t kidding about the roaches

They came and spoke to me

Took me before their queen

Clicked at me a while and sent me on my way.

I know there’ll come a day

When you’re all blown away

By what I’ve done and I’ll be smiling

Brainsbrainsbrains

Take off your blue bonnet

Your helmet and chemical mask

You’ve got something I would like

But I’m afraid to ask

I reach out to caress you; your face contorts with fear

Your skull cracks open on the steps

It makes me want to cheer

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh

(Chorus)

Brains brains brains, I want to eat your brains

Uhhhhhhhhh..

I wander through the wasteland as hungry as can be

My chums know nothing but a brain is good enough for me

The guys will be so jealous when they see what I’ve got

A handful of your juicy brains I’ll eat them while they’re hot

Uhhhhhhhhhh..

(Chorus)

We know you’re in there hiding; We smell your little heads

We will not rest until we know that you are really dead

Medulla oblongata, pituitary gland

The frontal lobe; I want to lick the juices off my hand

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

(Chorus)

Danthology Volume 1

March 30, 2015Bloggy Thoughts, Songs, WordsBobby Joe Ebola, Danthology, music, nostalgia, songwritingProfPlague

So, the story goes like this:

I used to sit in my room and write all the time. I wrote in class. I wrote at lunch. In my spare time I wrote for the school paper. Sometimes I would recite poetry on top of tables in the courtyard, to groans and eye-rolls and thrown microwave burritos.. At some point I decided it would be easier to get people to listen if there was music involved. So I started turning my poems into songs. By the time I graduated Pinole Valley High School, I had quite a lot of songs, some of them even good. I never counted them up; they were scattered through a bunch of old notebooks and I didn’t figure anyone would ever hear them, other than the four or five people I’d played them for here and there. They were just my weird little angst- and drug-induced diary entries, set to music.

One day in my senior year, one of these friends called me up.

“Dan, you’re gonna come over to my house and record every song you’ve ever written.”

I had nothing else to do, so I slung my guitar over my back and walked the roughly 2 and 1/2 miles to my friend’s house in El Sobrante, where he had a microphone and recorder set up. I stacked my notebooks next to me in roughly chronological order and started to go through them. When I was done, there were nearly a hundred songs. A hundred. And I’d weeded out a few truly shitty songs, or stuff where I couldn’t read my own writing. I was a little flabbergasted. I hadn’t really thought of myself as a songwriter up until that point, but faced with the evidence before me, I was forced to admit the possibility that I was a songwriter. “All it takes is one hit,” my uncle used to tell me, and of course the fact that Green Day, guys who’d gone to the same high school and been stifled by the same conditions, were all over MTV, did nothing to dissuade me from writing more songs. Maybe there was a way out of this place.

The Dan Abbott Anthology filled up three CDs, at least, in 1995. I assume CDs hold more than they did then. I am really the wrong person to ask about that sort of thing. My friend made a few copies, and some of his friends burned copies for themselves. Other people made tape copies of the CDs. The “Danthology”, as it came to be called spread around the little community of weirdos in Pinole and El Sobrante, and occasionally I would be getting a ride home from some stranger or loose acquaintance, and they would have a copy in their car. Even so, I can’t imagine more than 50 people ever heard those songs.

Later that summer, I found myself in a band called Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits, which put my life on a path of adventure from which there was no going back. More about those adventures some other time. But suffice it to say, a few songs from the Danthology eventually became early Bobby Joe Ebola songs, so fans of that band may hear some familiar tunes.

Anyway, in the intervening years, I lost track of the Danthology. Eventually I lost the only copies I had. earlier this year, on a whim, I emailed the guy who’d originally recorded them, and asked if he had the old songs. He didn’t, he admitted, but another friend of ours might. Which, it turned out, he did.

So all of a sudden, I found myself in possession of the first hundred songs I’d written, at just about the 20th anniversary of their recording. As loathe as I am to lean on the past for comfort, this seemed as good a time as any for reflection.

So I figured I would just start releasing the songs on bandcamp. I’ll start with five and then do at least one a week. At this rate, it’ll give me something to say once a week for the next year and a half. Here you go:

https://danabbott.bandcamp.com/releases

I’ve typed up the lyrics and at some point, should there be any interest, I’ll write down the chords for these songs in case anyone else might want to play them. Pay what you will, share them around, that’s fine. Mostly this is for me, though I’m certainly interested to know what people think about 15-year-old Dan’s poetry and songsmithing. I’m hoping that the process of reflection over time will provide me some useful insight into my development as an artist, and as a person. I don’t really know, I’m winging it here.

Let me know what you think!

Corporate Feudalism, an old rant from the early 21st Century

January 28, 2015Bloggy Thoughts, Current Eventscorporations, futurism, geopolitics, politicsProfPlague

The United States has become embroiled in the most controversial conflict in modern history, and the entire planet is poised at the edge of its bloody event horizon, waiting to be pulled into the fray. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and other hot spots to be announced, the United States has led the world into another phase in history, a global war which could spell the end of nations as the dominant form of social organization.

Is this merely the first global Oil War? Is this the first phase of a tiny right-wing cabal’s vision of American global hegemony? Is it, as they would claim, a global police action to secure America from fanatical terrorists? Perhaps all three are true, after a fashion. About the only thing everyone can agree upon is that we ARE at war, but beyond that everyone’s rhetoric gets a bit fuzzy.

The United States is the last imperial nation-state. For 200 years it has stood with unassailable borders, and ushered in the modern age. The American system is the most flexible and adaptable system of mass control ever devised, and the American value system has unleashed the creative powers of its citizens to an unparalled degree, allowing for cultural mutation and adaptation never before seen. No nation before the U.S. would have been able to withstand the wild nature of dissent and relatively free thought and still exist. But the vast majority of creative thought is channelled into increasing production and profit. This is the American value system, where freedom means choosing between slavery and starvation.

Nonetheless, the American economic system, with its crown jewel, the middle class, is the most brilliant self-regulating system of control in the history of mankind. Acting as a buffer zone between the poor and rich, the middle class has enough to lose that it will always side with the perpetuation of the system. At least until it is absorbed back into the ranks of the poor.

In the last hundred and fifty years a new form of organization has been gestating and becoming more prominent in human affairs- the corporation. While there have always been guilds and interest groups to promote economic considerations upon the minds of kings, the corporation is a somewhat more virulent strain. It is largely a child of the industrial revolution, when new technologies made mass production- and thus mass profit- a defining aspect of society. With its emphasis on increased individual profit and decreased individual responsibility, the corporation’s relationship with nations and people has been overwhelmingly parasitic.

In America, where royalty was abolished, the only status symbol has been raw wealth. A corporation is merely amassed, focused wealth without individual culpability. Thus these macroviruses have been able to eat away at the foundations of states’ legitimacy: their laws.

Now, the United States (along with other nations) is much like a house fully infested by termites. The corporations dictate government policy nearly verbatim, albeit from behind closed doors. The most powerful tool corporations have is the public’s belief that the system works; that they, in effect, are free. This is an act of faith on their part, one that requires them to turn a blind eye to many aspects of modern life. The stock market can be seen as a sort of thermometer to indicate that faith.

But when some aspect of the system crumbles away, the underlying corporate hive-structure is revealed. When government programs are threatened by financial shortages, politicians often suggest “privatization”, which is to say, corporate ownership. This means that the functions of governance are being managed by corporations. It is a gradual but unavoidable process. Governments are not made to be profitable, but they no longer value anything else. This is a symptom of the corporate virus.

As more functions of government become privately controlled, the corporations gradually come to BE the government. The nation, which was once bound by geography, ideology, and culture, becomes little more than a broker for population, leasing out its information and labor to the highest bidder.

So eventually, perhaps fifty to one hundred years from now, the world will be overtly run by multinational companies, unfettered by considerations of geography, public opinion, environmental concerns, and other problems given lip service by nations these days. They will have their own military services, money, and people tied to the company for perhaps generations. An era of corporate feudalism will most likely be the next step in the evolution of governments. Combine this with the structural need of a corporation to constantly expand, and a state of perpetual inter-corporate warfare reveals itself.

However, the old nation-state, its open sores bleeding a mass identity crisis, will not go quietly. The ties of nationalism are too deeply ingrained to fade away without a massive discharge of political and military power. In short, a war, perhaps several, will be fought when the crumbling old model of the nation resists final absorption into the corporate consciousness. The nation of one’s geographic origin could become a rallying cry for resistance against the new structure, much as the religious ideal is against the onslaught of nations.