.------.

.-' '-. i
' .' .z$$$$$$$k. '. !
! / $$$$$$$$$$$$$ \ |
still strong... / j$$$$$$$$$$$$$l \ -- -- ---+-- -- - -
- -- --- -----'-- - d|b $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ d|b |
' $$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$ |
| $$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$ ...and | still fighting.
| '$$ '$$$$$$$$$$$$$' $$' | ! |
d|||i '$$$$$$$$$$$' i|||b . |
!|!_. magazine! ._!|! . +-- - -
__________________________________ '#$$$#' ______________________________

;z$$$$$$$b. .;d$$$$$$k. .j$| ;$$; $$$$

;$$| $$! .;$$' '$$. .d$$$$| ;$$$;. '$$' [-------------]
;$$| $$i ;$$f '$$| '''$$$| ;$$'$$k $$| [ ]
;$$| $$i ;$$| |$$| ;$$| ;$$| ;$$\ $$i [pa1n magazine]
;$$| .$$j ;$$j______|$$| ;$$| ;$$| ';$$\ $$| [ volume ]
;$$$$$$$$$$' ;$$$$$$$$$$$$| ;$$| ;$$| ;$$\$$| [ number 11 ]
;$$! ;$$| i$$| ;$$| ;$$| ;$$$$| [pa1n xi, 2004]
;$$| ;$$| ;$$| ;$$| ;$$| ;$$$| [-------------]
_;$$|_ _;$$|_ _;$$|_ __;$$|__ _;$$|_ __$$|__
'''''' '''''' '''''' '''''''' '''''' '''''''
___________________________________________________________________________
"we don't need to try to change the world,
only our perception of its boundaries."
-- --- ------------------------------------------------------- --- --

i [-----][ pa1n staff ][-----]

! [ ]
| [ editor in chief alienbinary |
| [ co-editor, co-founder turnspike i
! [ co-editor mephyt !
| [ deputy co-editor angel ice i
- - --+--[ editor nemisis !
| [ contributor danger girl '.
| [ editor red dragon
! [ contributor artemis | i
[ editor manuel o'kelly -+- - !
! [ contributor kello | |
| [ follow the... white rabbit -i----+--- -
| [ bandwidth warlord cheezi | |
[ contributor rumbling sky i |
! '
-[-------]-[ distro vigilantes, pa1n special projects... ]-[------]-
[
[ waste distro jibkat | special thanks...
[ distro vigilante c4rc4s |
[ print distro katana | cimmerian and the rest
[ random bits of wisdom zerachiel | of porn on beta for the
[ | newly released album.
[ | (see below.)
!
------ -- --------------------------[ table of discontent ]------ -

- pa1nv11x01 - letter from the editor alienbinary -

- pa1nv11x02 - letter from the co-editor turnspike -
- pa1nv11x03 - hackers for the homeless alienbinary -
 - pa1nv11x04 - writer's block angel ice -
- pa1nv11x05 - free or just dumb? alienbinary -
- pa1nv11x06 - edgeumekashion rumbling sky -
- pa1nv11x07 - another aside alienbinary -
- pa1nv11x08 - nomadic blood mephyt -
- pa1nv11x09 - fighting chronocracy caff31ne -
- pa1nv11x10 - by man shall his blood be shed... alienbinary -
- pa1nv11x11 - digital forensic watermarks alienbinary -
- pa1nv11x12 - get your kit in gear pt. 2 alienbinary -
- pa1nv11x13 - rantradio irc, summer 2004 rantradio irc -
- pa1nv11x14 - outro alienbinary -

-- - ------------------------------- ------ -- - -------- - --------

contact? email alienbinary at: pain@e-lite.org

email turnspike at: turnspike@spfd2600.org
email mephyt at: mephyt@nocturnalradio.com
email angel ice at: angel_ice@e-lite.org

[ for maximum reading ] ----------- - --------- - -- -- - - - -

[ pleasure, please ] 1. http://www.rantradio.com/rr-industrial128.pls
[ tune in to one of ] 2. http://www.rantradio.com/rr-industrial24.pls
[ the streams. - ab ] 3. http://www.rantradio.com/rr-punk128.pls
[ ] 4. http://www.rantradio.com/rr-talk64.pls
[ ] 5. http://www.rantradio.com/rr-talk24.pls
[ ] 6. http://www.nocturnalradio.com/listen.pls
[---------------------] ----------- - ------------- ---- ------ -

[ free the media. ][-][ rantmedia update! ][-][ spread the word. ]

new porn on beta album out! "brand new road to nowhere." free for
download, 11 tracks of pure industrial goodness. it keeps getting
better every time, this album is no exception. get yours while the
bandwidth is there and the pipe is open.

http://www.pornonbeta.com/audio.php

[-------------------]

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x01----------------------------------------------------------------[ 1 ]
[ letter from the editor ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 1 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x01
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

i'm going to make some tea.

then i'll order a pizza, even though the grease will form oil slicks on the
surface of the boiling liquid, making it more and more toxic looking with every
new sip.

perhaps, i'll read a book--

--or one of the short essays in the anthology i was given for my birthday
about the process of turning second-hand, used american excess into first-hand
ugandan treasure. i'll find myself fascinated by it, then i'll think about the
concept and turn it over in my head, trying to eek out some bit of wisdom from
this story. or, i'll watch another philip k. dick movie, and transfer my
schedule to the palm desktop da app., and try not to be dissappointed by the
large amounts of time i'm devoting to someone elses business.

i'm going to tell myself that i feel okay. i feel good, and i'll assure
myself that i'm confident and that tomorrow, when i get up at seven thirty or
eight o'clock, i'll be happy and pleased to go to work and be industrious.

after which, i'll write this introduction, and start passionately wailing
on the keyboard about the injustice of the world and my brain will spin.

i'm going to have an episode of severe cognitive dissonance.

dissonance, or cognitive dissonance, is when the brain can't correlate a

person's actions with their own beleifs. for example, when a person attends a
rally against nafta and the ftaa, and the next morning they put on an apron at
starbucks, they feel uneasy. it's a queasy sort of discomfort, it makes you
squirm. it's what you feel when what you're doing isn't consistent with what
you say.

this is the everday struggle for a lot of people. summertime for college
students is like the ultimate trial of fidelity, integrity and loyalty. it's
the time to attend rallies, to volunteer to serve food at the soup kitchen or
to go hand to mouthing it across the country or even europe, as a neo-bohemian
scholar. this is usually the time, however, when mom or dad tell you to get a
job, or your roommates remind you that you aren't 18 anymore when you could
afford to squander your time.

this is the way things are, and i'm not endorsing this, but i'm not
disparaging it either. simply put, it's what we do to survive. we have to
always keep our ideals in mind, but we cannot let them destroy us by preventing
us from making enough cash to survive and stay out of too much trouble. we
sacrifice the immediate gratification of volunteer work to fill our bank
accounts; all the while, we hate ourselves for it. it feels like hypocrasy.

but it's not.

we must do everything we can to make this world a better place. that is a

statement, a beleif and possibly a command, depending on how seriously you
actually take my writing. at the same time, you must do what you need to do to
get by so that you can most effectively help out the cause, and not fall in the
ranks of those who burned out trying to go all the way to the militant left.
our ability to plan and to organize cannot come from one type of experience
alone, it must be accumulated through years of working in all fronts, learning
the ropes of all the various courts of play. without knowledge of the enemy and
the system, you are hopeless in the battlefield. sun tzu told us this over 400
years ago.

if you don't know who sun tzu is, he was arguably china's greatest general,
and the author of "the art of war," an essential read for anyone in the
subculture or cyberpunk movement. if you haven't heard of the art of war, then
you have gone to one extreme or the other. only in the middle ground, somewhere
between being a productive citizen and a hardcore activist are you able to
sample all that the world has to offer. this doesn't mean to suck it up and
take it. this means that there are other ways to fight than to dedicate your
entire lives to every cause that crosses your path. in this issue you will find
peices on how to be a smarter and more effective person, activist, hacktivist,
or whatever your niche is. in these pages are assembled a multitude of
teachings that provide insight into how we can use the skills we have, the ones
that the world fears most-- our ability to communicate and our ability with
technology-- to master the world around us, to teach others how to get by, to
help be part of the solution.

the majority of this issue, like all issues, is entertainment. it is. who
the fuck wants to read something that bores them? however, don't think that
because we can make you laugh that we aren't deadly serious about our
intentions. pa1n intends to make a positive impact, and that impact will have
the blast of an atomic warhead, shooting new strength into the bodies of our
fellow man, electrically burning away any trace of doubt that it's possible to
make life worth living for yourself and other people as well. please read all
of this issue, and definitely give feedback to myself and turnspike. we want to
hear what you have to say.

but don't forget to do what you need to do to survive, because you do

matter, despite what you may beleive. if that means working a job you hate, i'm
sorry. but understand that our fight is toward improving the world to the point
where we don't have to wear these white and blue collars all the time, where we
can actually serve ourselves. by getting through the day, you're helping the
movement forward. thanks.

alienbinary, 2004.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x02----------------------------------------------------------------[ 2 ]
[ letter from the co-editor ]
[ turnspike ]
[ 2 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x02
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

"our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again;

we had longer ways to go. but no matter, the road is life."

-- jack kerouac

two weeks ago i had enough. my sanity was about to blue-screen. i had been
under a mountain of stress, and i could no longer function without some sort of
release. so, i did what i often do when things get the best of me, i went for a
drive. i drove around the outskirts of town with all the windows down, and
turned the radio off. i tried to just zone out and let the sound of the wind
and the tires on the pavement permeate my conscienceness.

i took the country roads i used to take when i skipped school with my
friends. roads where we used to bumper ski when it was icey, and burn doughnuts
at the intersections during warmer weather. and we had a bad habit of chain
smoking with the windows rolled up, which made our manuvers that much more
tricky.

then i stopped at a little known place by the river that used to be the
town dump back in the days before plastic and pop cans with pull tabs. a friend
of mine is a relic hunter. he pulled several old bottles from this place, and
invited me along during one of his visits. that day i found an orange crush
bottle from the 1930's and a small milk bottle from a local dairy, long since
gone. but this day, i found a recently snuffed bonfire, scattered beer cans,
and some assorted junk circa last freaking friday. and if the trash wasn't
enough to keep me from finding what i was really looking for, the weeds were
way to bad for a guy in shorts and sandals. back to the road.

i crossed over into city limits, and followed the river to the industrial
part of town, where it stinks of dead bird and cheese. there is a turkey
processing plant there that would have fiona apple in seizures. semis loaded
with cages of live turkeys go in, tasty meat comes out. and somewhere else at
the plant, stuff other than tasty meat also comes out. and the trucks that haul
that stuff out sometimes do a lousy job, which i know because i was once
bicycling by the plant and nearly lost control of the bike after hitting
several dozen severed turkey feet scattered across the road. the cheese plant
sits on the other side of the road. i have no tales of semis loaded with cages
of wheels of monerey jack, waiting to be sliced. i just know it stinks of
cheese, and if you work there, you can't help smelling like cheese yourself.

back out of the city limits, i drove along the mother road, route 66, where
relics of the days before interstate highways rust and rot along the roadside.
ruins of filling stations and motels hide behind the brush, and small tin
billboards whisper faint ads of bread and milk from the same local businesses
whose bottles now can be found at the old dump. the world has left these things
behind and moved on.

i took a side road off of route 66 that is sort of a backroute to my house.

not more than a mile down is a abandoned grain mill, that has been taken over
by ivy, sitting on the bank of the river. the river is damned there, but the
dam is in as nearly bad shape as the old mill itself. this used to be a great
place for the locals to fish, but they took the old low-water bridge out and
replaced it with a more modern bridge, which made it almost impossible to
access the river without tresspassing on someone's land. next to the mill is a
rather plain concrete block building that in the last 5 years has been a
restraunt, several different bars and nightclubs, and most recently a strip
club. somebody will eventualy get the hint that although the building is cheap,
it's a lousy place for a business. but the strip club just went under, and
another nightclub is moving in, so i guess history hasn't taught it's lesson
yet.

i am too close to home now, not to end my drive. my mind has been purged
from the stresses that bothered me so much, and filled with memories that have
been embedded in obscure landmarks that may only have meaning to me. i just
needed to drive by again and let them trigger my thoughts. i just needed to
relax, reload, and reboot.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x03----------------------------------------------------------------[ 3 ]
[ hackers for the homeless ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 3 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x03
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

"did you ever notice that we have no war on homelessness?

no war on homeless. you know why? there's no money in that
problem. no money to be made off of the homeless."

-- george carlin, 'golf courses for the homeless"

-------------------------------

important information and disclaimer. please read this first.

 it's important that i make a note to inform anyone who reads this that
i am in no way speaking on behalf of-- or under the auspices of having
an affiliation with-- any of the afformentioned groups or organizations
talked about in great length in this article. i have listed potential
resources to help anyone who would like to help out with the cause, in
order to provide a starting point. the ones that are mentioned are simply
the groups that i know of. if you disagree with anything in here, then
understand that i am just excercising my legal right to free speech,
and that these words are from me, not any group mentioned. if you
would like to help out with the pa1n hfth project, feel free to contact
me at one of the many email addresses i have supplied. - alienbinary

-------------------------------

introduction.

contrary to what many people seem to believe, homelessness is not an

insolvable problem in this country. i'll be the first to admit that it's a damn
difficult problem to tackle, but it can be helped, if not completely solved. as
it is right now, there are hundreds of projects and organizations worldwide
that are developing comprehensive and actually plausible methods of fighting
homelessness and unemployment in this country and around the world.

the first thing people think of when the word "homelessness" is most likely
"charity," which is exactly why no one pays attention. in america, we've been
indoctrinated to believe that charity for the homeless is a hopeless cause.
we're cautioned by our peers, our teachers, even sometimes our own parents that
the man on the corner that says he's trying to raise money to get a sandwich
is really most likely going to buy drugs or booze and that any contribution
would enable such behavior. on the one hand, this is true of a portion of the
homeless population, but it's also true of a much larger portion of the
workforce. let's be real people, it's not cheap to be a drug addict or an
alcoholic, so we're far more likely to find ourselves working side by side with
a junkie at our own jobs. whether you agree with this or not, you have to
recognize the stigma that exists.

so what if i told you that i could offer a description of organizations

that are currently making a difference? there's an old saying about teaching a
man to fish as opposed to just feeding him for a day, and that's the modus
operandi for the models i'll discuss.

empowerment.

i watched the people walk by as my friend-- a veteran homeless man of

several years-- held out issues of a magazine known as "spare change," a
publication put out by the homeless empowerment project in boston, ma. the
proceeds from the sale go directly to the homeless on the streets, no
middleman. the concept is quite brilliant, actually. the vendor-- someone who
is legally homeless or disadvantaged-- enrolls in the hep program, and is given
the job of vendor. they are given a photo id card which identifies them as
legally employed by hep, boston. in massachusetts, like many states, it is
illegal to "panhandle" (ask or beg for money on the street.) by granting them
employment status, it is a legal protection against these laws, providing them
with an opportunity to live without having to fear being hauled off by the
police for trying to make enough money to eat.

the newspaper "spare change" is a subprogram of the hep, which provides a

means of making a legitimate living to people who would otherwise be forced
into the ways of the streets. the vendor buys a stack of newspapers from the
project's distribution warehouse, and for every paper he or she sells, the
profit is split three to one. face value of the paper is one dollar, although
donations are accepted. that dollar is then divided into the 25 cents
production cost, which goes back to hep, and then 75 cents directly to the
vendor.

so what does this mean for my friend, other than the idea that he makes
money and can eat for a day? it means a world of difference when there is
another layer added to the situation that prevents this from being a permanent
job. there are a lot of things that many people don't even bother to ask
themselves; unless of course they should find themselves out of a job, with no
money, and on the street. for one, a job application is ten times more
complicated than a credit card application. when you interview for a job, you
have to provide important information such as work experience, an address, and
most importantly, a phone number. the first criteria isn't always impossible,
but if someone is in fact homeless, they probably don't have a gigantic list of
job references. as for the address and phone number? if you're homeless, you
don't have one. this is simple logic: in order for the company to offer you a
job, they must call you at home to set up an interview. if they hire you, they
usually call during the daytime, and tell you over the phone.

well common sense tells you that this is a really big problem already. by
definition, someone without a home has no legal address, and without a house,
they don't have a phone to call either. so, one thing i learned from my friend
was that a cellular phone is one of the best investments to start on
immediately when trying to get back on your feet. this seemed a little strange
at first, and i was kind of shocked when he reached into his topmost coat and
produced a samsung mobile phone complete with calling plan and everything. but
it made sense after a minute. if he's ever to get an apartment, to get a job,
or to really get anything needed to set his life back on track, he needs a
number that he can be reached at. so that's what he had been saving up for for
months. as it is, he's close to getting out of his situation and back on his
own two feet now, and i think we can give credit to both his refusal to give
up, and the project that offered him the means to get out of his rut.

but job experience, that's a difficult one. after all, skills are required
for any job whatsoever. if a person has grown up disadvantaged, they probably
haven't received the proper education to get these skills. even with contact
information, without the skills, getting a job is simply not in the picture.
this is where we can help-- and i mean everyone who reads this.

hacking for the homeless.

one of the first things that is required in the modern job market is
experience with a computer. having a computer is really fucking unlikely if you
also happen to live out of a homeless shelter or a cardboard box in an alley.
this means that they need access to the tools to learn how to use the computer.
and that, my friend, is precisely why hackers are the best people for the job
at hand.

consider what a hacker is: someone who is fascinated with technology and
knowledge; someone who seeks to gain more knowledge every day by pushing the
boundaries of technology and both distributing and receiving other pieces of
knowledge. we all started from scratch, remember that. no one was born with a
beige box or a keyboard in their hand, and anyone who is would scare the shit
out of me. i simply don't like the idea of a keyboard growing in the womb.
moving on.

so we are all, in the purest of definitions, devoted teachers. we seek to

learn and to teach others about the awesome power that a person can attain when
they master the tools around them. as 'the mentor' said, if a hacker is into
carpentry, suddenly the whole world seems like a nail. we want to explore
everything and talk to everyone. so let's do that.

currently, at the hep in boston, there's a computer center with 10 machines

hooked up to the internet, and proctors overseeing the operation who can teach
anyone who is interested how to use the major applications used by most
companies, and the services of the internet that they may employ. anyone
wishing to help out can simply write to the director of the homeless
empowerment project or a project like it, and offer just a little bit of their
time. think for a minute what it means to have an e-mail address. an e-mail
address, an aim screen name, a webpage, these are homes on the internet. so
it's only logical that a homeless person would benefit from having a home to
retreat to on the internet.

i'm suggesting to you that we should be offering our skills to these

organizations, or to individuals who would like to learn, much the way manuel
o'kelley discussed in "ivory towers." all we have to do is impart some basic
knowledge on these people, and show them the ropes of the internet and how to
use microsoft's office suite (as much as the software makes me cringe,) and the
student-- in this case a person who currently has no home or no job-- is a
hundred times more employable. imagine a wave of people going from cardboard
box to inbox, homeless to homepage, from having nothing to dot com. this is
entirely possible, and i've seen it happen. anyone who has done web design
knows that although making a beautiful, well rendered website is difficult,
simply making a site is incredibly easy and friendly to the greenest of
neophytes. if you still can't make the connection, i'll explain that my first
job was designing the html and java framework for the website of a company, at
a mere 20 an hour (yes, that's $20 usd.) i was fifteen at the time, with no job
experience, no house of my own, no private telephone, only a set of skills that
enabled me to offer a better prototype than anyone else who had applied for the
position.

knowledge is power.

one of the tools that people who don't face the question of where they get
to sleep each night have at their disposal is the ability to get information
fast. if i wanted to find out how many people were hiring 21 year old college
students to sell rat food pellets to pet stores, i have only to log onto
something like monster.com or simply do a google search. finding a job on the
internet is not only plausible, it's really simple. but remember, we first have
to know that these tools exist for us to use them.

a scenario that i find most helpful in explaining how to "teach a man to

fish" involves taking someone to the local library, and showing them how to use
one of the public access computer terminals. it's unfortunate, but true,
however, that most libraries require documentation of residence in the city
where the library is located to issue a library card. that's okay, though.
hackers have been getting around obstacles like this since the dawn of, well,
anything. i have library cards to major libraries in prestigious universities
and big cities all across the country, because i'm in a position to be given
such access. that being the case, i would have no problem securing a public
computer terminal for a couple of hours, and using that time, and that terminal
to teach a person how to use the machine, and more than that, how to use the
tools the internet can provide to get out of their bad situation and on their
feet, or at least on the road there.

"the greatest thing you will ever learn is to love,

and to be loved in return." -- moulin rouge (2001)

remember that the one thing besides food, shelter, and water that we all
need to survive is dignity. dignity is derived from respect and affection,
which can all be boiled down and traced back to companionship. no one can live
with a cold heart and connections to no one. with this in mind, imagine
yourself forced to leave the apartment building you've been inhabiting for
years, where you've made good friends- or having to leave home because there's
a bad situation, and you need to get out.

if you leave this situation, you're going to have injured pride,

self-esteem and a severe lack of dignity. everything you have ever known has
just mysteriously escaped your grasp and you're living on the street. it's hard
to feel loved when you have no one to talk to. this being the case, envision
the lifesaving qualities of communication long-distance. i don't mean the
ability to talk for ten cents a minute, and i'm not discussing calling plans.
i'm talking about e-mail, baby. as a coder, i often take it for granted that
anyone around the world can contact me. i have something like seven active
e-mail accounts, i have to keep the login and passwords on my zire71 just to
keep track of them all. i forget sometimes that there's something called smtp,
imap and pop3 that works behind the scenes to make my digital addresses
accessible and reachable from another digital address.

but i know that there's something powerful about receiving an e-mail from a
long lost friend. one of the greatest relationships and enduring friendships i
have ever had resulted from an e-mail that was something like five years after
i had lost contact with this girl. i was working all the time, and i didn't
have many friends around since i had come home from graduating boarding school.
one day, i found a message in my inbox from one "metalgirli." it turned out
that
she was the same friend i had lost contact with years ago, and it made my face
glow. i felt a part of me live again, i felt dignity. looking back on that, i
should register e-mail accounts on free e-mail servers and distribute them to
the people i seek to teach, so that while they are rebuilding a life for
themselves, they can also get back in touch with what it feels like to be loved
in return.

there are infinitely more things i could discuss teaching to the homeless
to give them a better chance of surviving and making it in this world--
programming, networking, graphic design, web design, computer security, www
navigation, page layout and design in popular software suites used by major
businesses-- but i don't think i have the patience at the moment to list them
all, and there are so many that i would need hundreds of pages just to list the
first 25 of the services i consider most important. instead, i hope you have
already caught on to what i'm trying to impart on you. hackers have the skills
to crack on of the hardest problems that faces society today, i think we should
lunge at the opportunity with the ferocity we put into our other pursuits.

conclusion... a new beginning.

as i wrap this up, i should list programs that provide the services i've
listed, so that anyone who is interested in taking part in becoming a mentor to
a person who absolutely needs the knowledge and skill sets we have to offer can
join and take part in the solution. first and foremost, i must encourage anyone
in massachusetts to look into the hep, or what's up? magazine, and to consider
taking a little bit of time to make a lot of difference.

[ http://www.homelessempowerment.org/ ]
[ http://www.whatsupmagazine.org/vendor.html ]

in addition, the boys and girls club of america, [ http://www.bgca.org/ ]

offers these tech centers and mentor programs as well, and to my knowledge,
they exist in every major city and some of the minor ones as well all across
america. likewise, you can find other programs like this at the ymca, or
conversely, the ywca.

at the same time, don't put it past yourself to be able to take on this
task by yourself. yes, there's always a chance that you could end up being
taken advantage of, which is why people almost never do anything like this. but
wake the fuck up, people: there's a danger in doing anything for anyone,
anywhere. there aren't any activities, be they altruistic, vocational or simply
recreational that don't have the chance of something going wrong. this is why i
suggest you take this one step at a time. get to know someone. i know my friend
the spare change vendor wouldn't take advantage of me if his life depended on
it, because i can already say that he's become a good friend since i met him
almost 2 years ago, and we both take turns giving and taking advice, being
there, and allowing the other to be there for us when we need it. if you should
develop a friendship like this, and there's absolutely nothing stopping you
from doing so except personal prejudice or fear, then consider going one more
step, and giving them the tools they need to get out of the homeless life and
back into the world of the upwardly mobile.

we all started out as newbies, people; with the exception of maybe kello or
cheezi, and we all needed someone who was in the know to show us the way.
maybe, just maybe, you should think about being that person.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x04----------------------------------------------------------------[ 4 ]
[ writer's block ]
[ angel ice ]
[ 4 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x04
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

do you ever feel like you've got something so important to say, but you just
can't get it out? something that's burning right beneath the surface of your
thoughts? well this is the spinning hell in which i am stuck at the moment. so
for now and for this issue i leave you with this ... don't let anyone stifle
your voice...
?
writer's block

have you ever been struck by the need to say something but silenced by the
loss of words? well that's where i am right now, just staring at my blank
screen trying to think of something profound to say. i've had the most insane
case of writers block ever since i arrived home for the summer 3 weeks ago.
it's like i've forgotten how to start one of these. i have so many things that
i want to say, so many words that need to be heard, but i can't remember how to
get them out. it's weird that my mind flashes from thing to thing but never
stays in one place long enough to write it down, or maybe it does but it just
doesn't seem worth the effort. maybe i've gotten lazy since i got here, or just
bland. nothing i think of seems even remotely interesting enough to want people
to read it. ok let's think of something worth while. what lesson can i teach
you? live life to the fullest... right how many times have you gotten that
speech? how about never let people change you, yea i guess that one's easier
said than done, but still not good enough. is there even anything left to say
that hasn't already been said? probably not... ok so here goes. here's my
brilliant message to the world that will live on long after i do. are you
ready? are you sure? ok here goes... let go. that's it, my whole message, just
two little words, let go.

let go of everything. you can't fix things by beating them to death. trust
that there are forces at work inside you that will not let you totally fuck up
and just take a leap of faith. you'll be so amazed at how much better you'll
feel when you stop worrying about things out of your control. stop worrying
about how other people look at you, it's so ironic that we as human beings try
so hard to set ourselves apart, but at the same time try so hard to fit in. who
the hell cares? i'll tell you who, the drones. you know the one's i'm talking
about the plastic ones that walk around like they own the world and always have
lackeys buzzing around them. it's pretty easy to tell who they are they are
usually branded with an a&f. now don't get offended if you yourself happen to
wear abercrombie clothes, i do too. but i don't have to i chose to, i don't
worship everything that is a&f, if i think it's cute and comfortable, which
they should be for the $50 you pay for them, then it's all good for me, but
that's besides that point. my point here is that you don't have to follow the
trends or wear the right colors or styles to keep people around you. wear what
you want and act how you are, if you do this you'll find more true friends then
the sheep could ever hope for.

but there's more to my message than just not worrying about what other
people think. i mean let go of everything. you think your life is horrible?
well let me let you in on a little secret... people are dying, people are
starving, people are fighting wars that they may not even believe in, people
are living in oppression everyday. when life gets so bad that you feel like you
can't even take one more breath just remember how privileged you are. let go of
your ideas of what horrible is because you probably don't know. have you ever
cried and didn't know why? well my theory is that we're crying for them, for
the people who truly know what horrible means. every time i've ever seen
pictures of 3rd world countries or any of those save the children commercials,
or even live shots of war i've always noticed a quiet strength, and have never
seen any tears. well, someone has to cry for them and why shouldn't it be us?

i know that this is going to be a random and rather sporratic change of

subject, but one of my friends just asked me a moral question and i realized
while trying to think of an answer for her that i'm not a very moral person. i
guess i just don't spend the time worrying if what i'm doing is right or wrong.
i'm also not a very spontaneous person but i would consider myself very
impulsive. for people that know me, they know that this is a very recent
development. i used to put other peoples best interests ahead of my own
happiness to the extent of giving up love. but i've realized that it's never as
bad as you expect it to be. just make yourself happy and if everyone else does
the same thing than it will be virtually impossible to hurt someone else.

so that's it that's my whole message, let go of everything you can't

control, don't be a sheep, and be impulsive. all of this will lessen your load
but there's one more thing, you also have to love. love so hard that it makes
you cry. that will keep you sane, and happy, and human. and i'm not saying that
you have to find the perfect person and fall in love, just love. love your
friends, love your family, love your pet, and yea i guess love yourself too,
just love. alright so i may not have rocked your world with this paper or this
advice, but if it made sense to even one person then i guess my job here is
done. just remember, no problem is ever as big as it seems and worrying never
solves anything.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x05----------------------------------------------------------------[ 5 ]
[ free or just dumb? ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 5 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x05
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

"a hungry man is not a free man."

- adlai e. stevenson

freedom. it's the first and most important concept upon which the united
states was built. i think. that's what i was told. but then again, i was told
that columbus was a good man who discovered the "new world" and no where did
they mention that he happened to be a pedophiliac rapist with a pencheant for
pouring liquid metal down the throats of his victims. i was also taught that
the reason president lincoln "freed the slaves" was that he felt it was a moral
obligation. i suppose that they left out the part where he used this as a
loophole, or rather a justification to invade the south which was trying to
seperate from the union. maybe that just wasn't an important detail. besides,
the story is so much more neat and clean when you leave out the critical
details...

i bought a drink today, and on the underside of the cap was a quote from
adlai stevenson, which said simply that "a hungry man is not a free man." i
looked down at this cap in astonishment. i was having trouble with the idea
that a fucking bottlecap would summarize my entire situation. i was working
from 3:30 pm to 12:00 midnight, which is a long shift. it's incredibly long
when you spend the whole time hungry. it's even worse when you spend the whole
time hungry because the corporation that you were dumb enough to sign your
summer over to has a policy against eating on the floor, regardless of the fact
that the sales floor in question was a fucking cafe.

i spent the day before yesterday, it being sunday already, in the triage of
the emergency room, because i hadn't been able to see my primary care pysician
(we used to call them doctors...) and i needed medical attention immediately.
at the time, i had a million theories as to what could have been wrong with me.
as it was, it appeared that my whole digestive system had decided to go on
vacation and would be back whenever i realized it was time to do the same.

why would this happen, and what the hell does that have to do with k-12
education dogma and well known mistruths in the history of america, let alone
my personal dietary habits? simple. i am not a free man. at work, i am not
allowed to eat, drink, smoke, chew gum or sit down. my shifts are roughly 9
hours a peice, and they run into the next day quite frequently. i get paid a
rocking 7 dollars an hour (only a third of what i'm used to), and i can't even
have a glass of water without my boss getting angry. so i didn't. i didn't eat,
just as they instructed. i starved the whole time like the rest of the
employees, and for fear of losing the meager wages i had just worked for, i
couldn't afford to spend money on the overpriced, stale and undercooked crap
that they sell at huge multinational chainstore cafes. so, according to
stevenson, i was, or rather am, not a free man. and there is nothing more true
about this. it took a trip to the er for me to realize this.
 so i was laying down, pretty much naked on a gurney in the hall of the
triage where all around me people lay dying or vomiting or wretching. there was
a glass catheder in my elbow, which would allow any intravenous drip necessary
should i go into shock or should they need to perform more tests on my gi,
pulmonary, cariovascular, immune or urinary tract systems. there was a recycled
hospital gown on top of my boxers, and my doc martens stuck out the end. i had
admitted myself because i felt as though i was being repeatedly punched in the
stomache, much the same way henry rollins described in his spoken word story
about visiting russia. i had come from work, delirious, and feeling slightly
tingly all over my body. this, it was decided by my bosses at work, was a legit
reason to go the fuck home and call a doctor. i did, sort of. my primary
care... my doctor was out. and no, he didn't care to call back, but his lovely
assistant suggested that i should try the local emergency room.

but it wasn't completely certain what had happened until i opened that
bottle of orange juice and read the inside of the cap. i had actually followed
the rules of my job so well, that i found myself in the fucking emergency room.
a hungry man is truly not a free man, by any accounts. that gnawing sensation
was my stomach digesting itself because i didn't have anything else in my
system. the abnormal ph in my urinalysis? what do you expect when companies
schedule you long hours late into the night and morning, with your only avenue
being caffeine addiction? i had quite literally been too good an employee for
my own health. so why was i working there, then? because i didn't remember that
you always have a choice.

i had reasoned, incorrectly in the following manner: if i wanted the money,

i would need to sacrifice some freedoms. adlai was right, and i was a moron. on
a brighter note, i'm leaving that company in 36 hours, because my guts feel
like they've been used in a full string orchestra then replaced back inside my
chest cavity.

so i've made a promise to myself that i intend to keep; i promise to never,

ever let a company put their needs before my own. i've also promised to spend
most of tomorrow being as honest as possible about the contents of our
products. hey, if columbus discovered america, then al gore invented the
internet and the signs above the death camps that read "work is freedom" were
absolutely true.

in case you were mistaken, that was a heavy "if clause." work is slavery,
don't ever let anyone tell you differently. the truth is, we should shirk off
everything we've been taught, seriously consider if the corporate world is
trying to kill us, and then, if we want to go any farther, work hard to fight
back against these bastards.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x06----------------------------------------------------------------[ 6 ]
[ edgeumekashion ]
[ rumbling sky ]
[ 6 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x06
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

the phooture of ammerika

part 1: edgeumekashion

when exactly did our public schools become prisons? every day, our children
are subjected to bag checks, locker checks, metal detectors, drug dogs and pat
downs. they are herded from room to room as they fulfill a daily schedule
directed around the varying pens by bells and teacher guards. our children are
statistics. they are substandard human beings who are misguided and
miseducated. they are herded around in their little social groups and told what
to think, how to feel and how to act toward one another.

i don't know why they don't just go ahead and make the kids live at school.
they could wear the same uniforms, walk on the right side of the hall and the
government can give the teacher guards guns. as a finishing touch, they could
put up some barbed-wire and make the transition complete.

under these conditions, our children are force-fed a government based

curriculum geared toward pumping out robots who are all programmed to desire
the same thing. money. why do you think they teach them how to balance a check
book? there are hundreds of other practical examples of mathematics they could
use. they just want better trained consumers.

home schooling is really the only viable option, yet our society demands
the parents are out there working and are forced to send their children to
these government indoctrination camps under the penalty of law. the government
isn't concerned about our children and family values has just been a
catch-phrase to manipulate the public into thinking they really care.

if our government really cared about our families and our children's
education, they would abandon the concept that our children must go to these
government schools. instead, they could funnel that money into making it easier
for parents to home school. why not give tax cuts to parents who choose to stay
home and educate their own children? after all, they wouldn't be sending their
children to school, so why would they have to pay for it? instead, they could
offer assistance to families struggling to spend more time together who
actually teach their children. isn't that what parents are supposed to be doing
anyway -- teaching their children?

look at that. i've offered a solution for two of the most devastating
issues in this country. families and education. not to mention how this would
solve the problem of over-crowding and eliminate the need for new school. those
children who still end up attending school would have more attention from the
teachers that do care so they can actually learn something since there would be
fewer students there overall. not to mention all of the social improvements
that would develope -- less crime, fewer drugs, children who would grow up more
individualized with better over all self-esteem. the benefits of families
spending more time together and learning from one another are limitless. it's
not difficult to come up with solutions when you aren't concerned about
impressing anyone or how much money it'll make you.

so, just remember. our children really are our future. take the
responsibility as a parent and teach your children what's really important in
life: love, family and happiness with themselves and who they are. could
anything possibly be more important? don't let the government become your
child's parent.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x07----------------------------------------------------------------[ 7 ]
[ another aside ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 7 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x07
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

"some of the best things in life are total mistakes."

 - paycheck (2004) [ p.k. dick ]

our mistakes are what make us real. in the search for a perfect life and a
perfect house and a perfect personal world to inhabit, we find ourselves put
off by anything that seems imperfect. it's a stab in the side, it's a reminder
that we aren't there yet. we are not quite at the destination we intend to
reach, and that ennervates us. what's ironic, is that we have no idea what it
is that we really want. for myself, i find every day that all i want is to have
a chance to simply figure out what the hell it is exactly that i'm looking for.

people often misconstrue mistakes, or abberant events as terrible things;

they haunt them in their sleep, and they drive the person whose role in the
mistake was it's commission to feel inept-- ill adjusted at life. the truth is,
we all have to fuck up sometime. in fact, i find that the only way i ever get a
chance to really learn anything about myself is when i can step outside of what
i consider to be my current situation. the times when i get to do that occur
most when i do the wrong thing for all the right reasons. i try to live every
day as though i was bound to the code of bushido, warrior code of honor. i only
do that which my heart tells me to do, regardless of whether my head disagrees.
the consequences can be devestating, this is true. the consequences can also be
unfathomably useful, a gift from god to his children so that they may learn
something about themselves.

tonight i learned that i'm not as audacious as i thought i was. i learned

that in many ways, i was always living an act, and that if i didn't cut the act
soon, the play would be over and the stage of life would crumble beneath my
feet. i can no longer pretend to be a person which is undeterred by any
negative event. i can't pretend that i'm fearless. the truth is, i'm scared.
scared of what, i can't tell. perhaps life itself is my greatest fear;
ironically the vast majority of people consider death to be far more
frightening. but you see, in death, we don't have a whole lot to do, so i
imagine it's difficult to screw up everything really quickly like that.

* * *

i bleed in sentences, rivulets of what i think is correct and beautiful and

true and all that other crap that we writers strive to put down in the perfect
order to communicate our very existence. but in doing so, we use such stupid
sentences as the one i just used, and we prove ourselves to be less intelligent
scholars and more haphazard performance artists. i prove every day that i don't
have the best judgement like i thought i did, and that perhaps it would be
wiser to leave the meaning of life questions to someone without an obsessive
personality.
* * *

nostalgia, however, is a sweet luxury, but it can sometimes leave you

feeling strange and ill at ease. it's got the same latent properties as a
potent narcotic: you get that feeling, you know how your stomach swells, deep
down in the pit? the fluttering and the sudden realization of euphoria, the
astounding, mind-blowing highs and then the crashing lows when you realize that
it's over-- that the drug of memory has worn off, and you are no better for it.
i try not to reminisce too much, i find that it's dangerous for me. i long for
the times that are long past or for a brighter future; but these things are
irrelevant.
* * *

it's been several weeks since i've worked on this peice. i'm writing
sections of this as i see fit, working on other aspects of the magazine and
also working three jobs just to keep myself occuppied. the paragraphs above
this one are probably going to be happier than the ones you might find below. i
no longer feel the burning desire to do really anything at all. in truth, i'm a
little concerned that nothing matters to me anymore and that it never truly
will. i still live by the creed that hatebreed put down in 'live for this'
about living for something or dying for nothing; that hasn't changed. it's just
that lately i've wondered if no matter how much i live for, no matter how
strongly i beleive in something, that i might not die alone and for nothing
anyway.

"hey saul, you ever wonder at what point you gotta just say
fuck it, man? like when you gotta stop living up here, and
start living down here?" - 8 mile (2002)

there's a lot of pressure on people these days to be sure of what they want
to do with their lives. people are supposed to be either in a relationship or
actively seeking one. people are always looking for work, or trying to maintain
a job that they have managed to find. we're supposed to want new things, to
keep up with the latest celebrity gossip as if we really care who got a fucking
boob job. we move in masses, herds of morons just waiting for the next stop on
our itinerary, because we've allowed our lives to become predigested and
predictable. the other day i got tired of all of this nonsense. i was tired of
being a slave to a corporation that didn't give a shit about me or what i went
through to make it through the day. i was tired of getting paid a meager wage
to be abused all day and to have to fight to be able to come back the next day
for the opportunity to come back for more. i was burning out, or maybe i burnt
out, i dunno. regardless, i started to wonder if i was letting my life be run
by someone else. it's not so implausible. my work schedule was becoming the
only schedule i had to go by, and even now, it still more or less is. however,
i had an epiphany at work about three days ago, or maybe i just got fed up.

three days later, now, i can recall fuming in the backroom, staring at a
cardboard box with a freshly punched gash in the center of it, where several
forks, knives and other assorted silverware had been thrown like shurukin by
myself as i tried to blow off some steam. a three hour rush of customers and
all of them abusive; that was becoming my life. i look back at what i did then
now, and i know i made the right decision. in the course of five minutes, which
is far quicker than i've ever made a serious decision that wasn't life
threatening, i resolved to tender my resignation from the job i was at. i just
decided that i had had enough of it. tomorrow will be my first day off in a
long time. too long.

but still, work has taken so much. in a rush to get out of the emotional
rut i was in, i dove head first into my work and each job so that i could
forget or at least push aside the way i was feeling. laying in bed roughly half
an hour ago, i was trying to push the feelings of loneliness and loss out of my
head, trying without success. at night, we can remember anything. it's the
nighttime that leaves me vulnerable. i can close my eyes, but i'll just open up
another view in the mind's eye and visit some corner of my psyche that's still
scarred and trying to heal. tonight, as has been the trend, i've been lamenting
over some friendships that time proved too difficult to sustain. i wonder how
these people are, what happened to them. i wonder if they still remember me, as
i think about them. i wonder if they care.

* * *
 i'm rocking back and forth eating a box of wheat thins and washing it down
with o'douls amber. why am i doing this? because i can't fuckin sleep. for some
reason, at about three or four in the morning, which is roughly what time it
is, i have to find the precise song to fit my mood. for reasons that not even
the most gifted astrologer could fathom, tonight's song-- the one that seems to
get me at the core of how i feel-- that song is "cleaning out my closet" by
eminem.

i spent the hour of two oclock to three oclock cleaning broken lexane glass
from the floor, where i had punched the frame in of a picture that showed me
when i was much younger. i had gone down to the basement for something-- i
don't remember what-- when my eye caught this photograph, and all i wanted to
do was bash the thing in. as i lay on the carpet, getting scratched by the
shards of plexiglass, i looked at the photograph closely. i wondered what the
boy in the picture was thinking. i wonder what he would say if i could tell him
that he would grow up to be me. i don't know if that's a bad thing, i just know
that given the chance, i'd make sure to properly warn myself of what i was to
become in only 18 years from the time the photograph was taken.

from the hour of three oclock towards the end of four oclock, i spent the
time cleaning up my room, straightening my bookshelves, trying to make the
place look like less of a mess. still, no matter how much you try to make your
surroundings pleasant... if you can't fix the landscape inside you, the world
around you will always look grotesque. i should sleep. i should, but like i
said, i can't.

* * *

the song i have rolling around in my cerebellum right now is "imperative

reaction - redemption." to me, this magazine, this writing, this is my
redemption. everywhere i go, i feel like i am a part of the problem, because i
cannot offer a solution to every issue i see, and therefore i feel criminal a
lot of the time. the reality is, however, that because i want to make a
difference, and because i'm trying to do that, i am. go for it, call what i
just wrote corny, call it down, call it lame, just try. you won't get far. i've
come way too far in my only 21 years on this earth to let some motherfucker
with a defeatist attitude destroy everything i've built.

i don't try and put off the air that my life has been one big round of
suppressive fire, but goddamn, some days i feel like i am indeed dodging hot
lead. when you go against the grain, when you start to think for yourself and
only yourself, you begin to irritate people. they become uncomfortable. they
see in you the qualities that they wish they could embody and they hate you for
it. cimmerian and sean kennedy were talking on one of the sktfm shows about
this very concept. according to sean, it's because people wish that they could
have the willpower to do things like devote themselves to a vegan lifestyle, or
live without using a car, or whatever sort of alternative lifestyle. when
someone with less will than say, cimm, sees that he won't eat meat, they assume
that there's a superiortiy dynamic going on, and they get defensive. i can
verify that with personal experience.

i don't drink or smoke pot; it's personal choice. at one point in my life,
it worked for me, i suppose, but i've grown to realize that it's not my scene.
but that's cool, i don't suffer for it. in my mind, i'm doing much better,
because if nothing else, i save a lot of cash. however, when i find myself in a
situation where my friends are going to drink, anyone who's with us starts to
get edgy. "want a beer man?" "c'mon, what the fuck, have a drink." sometimes
they start to assume that i look down on them because i can have a good time
without putting my internal organs through a paper shredder. but what these
people don't get is that i don't care. you do what you do to get through the
day, and you do what works for you. i don't smoke pot, but fuck, i have my
vices. i've quit smoking cigarettes 9 times, and at the moment i'm doing my
best to stick to the no-smoking routine i've had for a month and a half. no
one's perfect. but what about these people who get in my face because i won't
take a shot? these people feel insecure all of a sudden because they need the
buzz to be able to function in a social setting. they recognize that i don't
want a part of that, and the ones who really don't get it feel inept. they feel
like i think i'm better than they are. they're missing the whole point.

see, no matter what we do, someone's going to get in our face. i want to
make the world a better place, that's my deal. you have any idea how many
people give me trouble because i'm an idealist? it's rather astounding. so
here's a statement to the public. get your pens and pencils ready and get this
one right. as che once said, "a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings
of love." in this, guevara was trying to convey that people who want to make a
difference do so not because they hate people, but because they love them. i
don't want to see humanity flush itself down the toilet, i want to help be a
part of the vast group of people who are trying to find a better way to live
our lives. i do what i do because i care, not because i feel like my opinion is
always more valuable than someone elses.

so, back to redemption. this is my redemption. every month or two, a new

issue of this magazine comes out, and spiderwebbing from the epicenter that is
the zine, and the center that is rantradio itself, positive movements and
changes happen. people form alliances, they help eachother out. this is what
community means. we've spent so much time being a part of an apathetic society
that we have got to work together to reassess what we beleive. this is our
chance to redeem ourselves. this is our redemption.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x08----------------------------------------------------------------[ 8 ]
[ nomadic blood ]
[ mephyt ]
[ 8 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x08
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

over the last few years of my life, i've spent a good deal of time
searching for something. i've always been looking for it, but i didn't have a
grasp of what i'd wanted for a long time. an intangible concept, something that
most people seem to always have had, or never really cared enough to fret
about. i have been from one place to another, constantly trying to adjust to
the sights, sounds, and the general feeling of everything.

when i was a much younger person than i am today, and far younger than i
constantly feel, i never felt that i'd fit in. this is something that many
people express on a fairly constant basis. more likely one of the more common
issues that we, the poetic exiles, feel. the feeling wasn't just one of not
feeling that i was well liked, but more along the lines of my bed feeling
uncomfortable. the deep, almost instinctual feeling that i didn't belong where
i was. the feeling was somewhat disturbing, but nothing that i knew enough
about to actually deal with.

as i aged, i realized that this feeling wasn't exactly the same as everyone
elses desire to fit in. while i also felt plagued by that at times, it never
was my primary concern. the feelings of a lack of a home began to grow
stronger. i was about 9 when i'd travelled to florida with my family. we did
the normal family things, heading around to the tourist traps, and driving all
over the place getting lost. i'd felt the most found at that point. by the time
my father had made at least 3 turns in the wrong direction, i was intrigued
with everything that was happening around me.

a decade later, i'd embarked on my first trip away from home alone. i had a
plan to visit a few people from rantradio, and see as much as i could,
searching for somewhere to call home. as the trip started, i rolled out of gr
(grand rapids) and out towards chicago. i'd been through chicago a million
times at that point, and i'd never really noticed the people that lived there
before that point. i was looking at them, for who they were at that point. not
just some guy that was pumping gas at the local gas station, but as a person,
with a car with too many children riding along. his wife had a knee brace on,
and his glasses, as thick as coke-bottles, couldn't hide the weary look under
them. in that instant, the man changed from "just some guy", to another person.
he was an individual with his own thoughts, feelings, and memories. unique
within a collective. i watched out of my bus window, looking for more moments
of perfect clarity like that the rest of the ride.

through my travels all over, i'd met plenty of people, including one of the
only women i'll probably ever be able to get along with from now until the day
i die. if i could have lived there forever, i would have. invariably though, i
became tired of life on the road. it was my first trip, and i'd made a few
important realizations about myself. i grew up a lot, and at the same time, i
got a part of me back that i'd thought that i'd lost a long time ago. i'd
gotten back my "spark".

that was my first trip out. i'd thought at the time that i would have been
set, changed my wild ways, and could settle down and work towards the "american
dream" finally. this was not the case. ever since that point, there hasn't been
a day i'd not thought about somewhere i've never been. i haven't been able to
settle down since that point, and the longing for a place to call home hadn't
subsided. at that point, i had decided to try something a bit more drastic on a
whim.

apanthropy, many know through rantradio, and then nocturnalradio, invited

me to live with him on a cold night in gr. i'd made up my mind in less than 10
seconds, and told him i'd be there in 3 weeks. within that time, i tapped out
all my available funds, sold most of my possessions, drank a few down with my
friends, then headed out via plane with 2 duffel bags and a backpack. my entire
life, condensed down to 3 bags. mostly clothing, a few aesthetics, and a couple
slips of paper. i'd been told i couldn't open those until i'd already taken
off. later that night, i came into phoenix, unpacked my bags, smoked about a
half pack of cigarettes, and fell asleep reasonably pleased with myself.

it's an odd sense of satisfaction that you get when you have no clue where
you are in the morning, yet haven't had a drink in days. this feeling lasted
for a few waking moments each morning for a few weeks. i couldn't have been
happier. i'd gotten a job (with a bit of help and a few good words) paying a
reasonable wage to live on. i felt more content than i had since my first trip
out. the feeling lasted for a few months. i didn't have any friends there
besides my roommates, but it didn't really seem to matter much to me,
everything was perfect... but, i digress.

that perfect feeling lasted for a while, but i eventually found that i
still lacked the essential thing that i'd needed. i required some sense of
original identity there, something that i didn't have. i don't think anyone,
for the most part, had that there. an entire city of transients and vagrants,
simply surviving the best they could. this wasn't what i was looking for, and
the desire to leave again had returned.

so, now i've returned back to gr. it still isn't the home that i'm eterally
searching for, but at the same time, it's not as bad as i originally thought.
the satisfaction of everything didn't come back when i touched down in another
plane, but i feel alright with it. i still feel the calling to be somewhere
that i'm not, but for the moment, it's subsided a bit. i'm in the company of my
friends again, and that helps, yet i still feel the pull away from all of this.
in less than a year, i'll sell all i've accumulated again, and begin to search
for somewhere that i can go that feels like home. i don't know where that will
be yet, but when i see it, i'll know it.

so, for now, i'll bide my time.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x09----------------------------------------------------------------[ 9 ]
[ fighting chronocracy ]
[ caff31ne ]
[ 9 ]----------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x09
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

[ preface ]

i'm writing this preface long after i wrote the peice that follows; i
intended for this article to both amuse people and get them to think about
their lives, and how much control they truly have over them. today, at work, i
watched a co-worker waste an hour of her life doing nothing, because the
timeclock said so. meanwhile, i was only doing this observation, and nothing
else, because the timeclock had dictated that i was to wait around for quite a
while until the manager was free to help me go over my schedule, since i was a
"new hire." that's an entire afternoon spent doing the bidding of a machine.
are we really the masters of technology, or have we slipped?

i venture that there is no universal fear more powerful than the fear that
exists in every single human being regarding the passage of time. at some
point, every child realizes that their time alive is finite, and that they will
one day no longer be able to "waste" an afternoon. recall the last instance
where this fear took hold of you. it shouldn't be very difficult; it happens
anytime we wonder if we are on the right path in our lives or if we should
change some aspect of our situation, because these revolve around trying to
mold a more ideal life from the course of action we are trying to choose, and
onward. this fear permeates everything we do. it's effects are not benign, and
as much as i had fun with this article at some points, i strongly caution you
to consider the underlying message.

[ the chronocracy ]

the world right now is under the influence of a dictatorship with cogs and
gears that answers to no one, and rules everyone. it's metalwork is covered in
the machine oil of progress; fueled by the mechanization of the human race like
a beehive. yes, the illuminati is probably responsible for many of mankind's
stupider decisions, and it's not unlikely that only a handful of bureaucrats
have the ultimate power to steer humanity in any direction-- but they all
answer to a common master that they cannot escape-- they can rule countries and
continents, but they cannot master time.
 every person in the so-called civilized world now in the year 2004 is
required to wear a mandatory symbol of submission; a watch of some sort that
dictates their every move. hundreds of years before this peice was written, a
man sat down and created the most evil invention of all time, possibly
infinitely more destructive to the human race than the atomic bomb-- for only
time can break a man's spirit and his body. this man, or possibly a woman, put
together springs, cogs, wheels and sprockets to create the ultimate tool for a
society to enslave it's people.

the chronocracy is an elite few who have power over even the illuminati,
the skull and bones, and possibly even the mormons. they go by the names of
rolex, rolodex and timex. the "ex" prefix is their mark, they inscribe it on
their paraphanelia to remind everyone who their daddy is. i'm trying not to
watch the clock on my menubar, but it won't let me be. it's 6:30, or maybe 7:00
in the afternoon, i know this because i'm waiting for nemisis or artemis to get
out of work so that i might be able to escape my current prison cell, where i
sit rocking gently back and forth in my leather chair. the chair has a story to
tell as well regarding it's internment in the prison camp of time.

[ the battle ]

the office chair is a simple, overused utilitarian design of

infinite non-complexity, yet it's simplicity lends an elegance to it's
overall appearance. when i first set this chair up, in front of my
tower, i remember caressing the black leather, and breathing in the
smell. the intoxicating odor came from fumes used in the tanning
process that had been used to cure the hide of the poor creature whose
fate it became to turn into upholstery for the chair of a hack writer.

now the once polished suede finish of the chair sports deep gashes
up and down the spine and midsection from the slices of katanas,
wakizashis and throwing spikes. these scars are evidence of times when i
have become so frustrated by the timex cartel that i've lashed out
violently at the only thing that could possibly be as bored and tired of
sitting around as i am-- my goddamn office chair.

i've been meaning to patch up the scars, perhaps reupholster it with a camo
pattern as i have every other computer chair i own for the same exact reason
the necessity arises now; i've been meaning to, but i can't find the time. i
can't find the fucking time.

consider the absurdity of that statement for a little while. how could i
possibly be without the time to do such a chore if i'm not doing anything at
all right now? i'm doing absolutely nothing right now except writing about the
concept of the enslavement of the human race by a simple alarm clock and i
still haven't got around to fixing up my chair. either i'm a moron, or i've
become so indoctrinated like the rest of the sheep in the human race that i
don't beleive i have free time unless my daily planner, (dayplanner being a
trademark of rolodex, i beleive...,) says that i have nothing to do.

the single most satisfying part of packing up for the summer at the end of
this past semester was the chance to grab my alarm clock that had ruled my
academic life for a solid two semesters by the chord and yank it out of the
wall. i then proceeded to swing it hard on the rug, hitting the concrete just
millimeters below the institutional carpeting. i felt as if for the first time
in over a year, i was a living god, taking the role of kali the destroyer,
vanquishing my plastic and metal enemy. with a single open-fisted punch, i
broke straight through the thick glass led display, driving knives of silicon
into my flesh. the little blood that shed from my palm mingled with the
billions of liquid crystals now set loose on the carpet, freed from their
concentration camp behind the glass. pulling the glass splinters from my
righteous hand of death, i took a deep breath and made a loud, earshattering
kya (kee-yah,) that was heard all over the second floor of the immense cement
dormitory; the battle cry rang out just as my leather and steel shodden scissor
kick cut the entire clock into peices with a satisfying crunch.

i took a picture of the vanquished enemy, only to see that there was a
timestamp assigned to it; for i only use the digital camera on my palm in
circumstances that involve me taking violent upheaval against the chronocracy.
the timestamp burned my hatred and rekindled the irritation i had once felt at
the pitiful wreckage of the clock, and i had to drag the carcass out in order
to keep from systematically hunting down all clocks.

the irony of the last story is not lost on me, but i'm sure it escaped you,
the reader. you see, i'm always working. i work all the time, i work as if it's
the only thing i know how to do. i had to rely on a secondary alarm clock that
escaped the great purge to get up at five oclock in the morning to do a radio
show. a radio show entirely dictated by a format that has been determined
according to federal guidelines that say what is played when, depending on the
time of the broadcast.

[ epilogue: what now? ]

the upside of realizing that you are being subjugated by an outside force
is that this realization weakens the grip immediately. by acknowledging that
yes, you probably do make all of your decisions with the central factor being
time itself.

it's possible to fight back, i know it is, because i'm doing it right now.
it's a simple excercise i would recommend-- so simple, in fact, that it might
seem absurd. according to my list of things to do today on my daily planner, i
should be doing one of half a dozen unimportant tasks, and furthermore, that i
have no time to dedicate to writing or any other personal and/or artistic
endeavor. with that in mind, i have made the conscious decision to do this
because it's not on my list of things to do. confused? i'm intentionally
"wasting time."

now, let's examine the results of my wasted time. was it in fact wasted, as
we are indoctrinated to beleive? i don't think so. apparently, "wasting time"
is integral to the pursuit of knowledge, because this entire article was
written when i should have been, in theory, doing something else.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x10---------------------------------------------------------------[ 10 ]
[ and by man shall his blood be shed... ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 10 ]---------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x10
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

"whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood

be shed, for in the image of god has god made man"

-- genisis 9:6

a prisoner in a federal penitentiary recently killed his cellmate with his

bare hands, in an attempt to alter his sentence from life in prison to death
row. meanwhile, israel and palestine continue to pound eachother to death after
death with weapons provided by our own military. meanwhile, the brass on down
in the united states army are being raked over the coals because film was
loosed to the press, detailing the abuse of iraqi prisoners of war. and all
through it, no one has posed the most important question: what should we learn
from this?

i'm an advocate of human rights, no matter who that person is, they deserve
to be treated with dignity and respect. i beleive firmly that the soldiers
responsible for the abuse should be held accountable for their actions, and i
beleive in dissent. i'm not a patriot in the traditional sense, so i don't
automatically side with the choices of our leaders, but i generally side with
the soldier.

the soldier has about as many human rights as the average prisoner does in
the us, which is to say none at all. this being the case, conversely, prisoners
appear to have no rights either. have we forgotten about those that have been
wrongfully convicted, or those that have died at the hands of a select few bad
apple corrections officers? for a moment, my head was buzzing as i sat in the
studio. i realized that this scandal showed just how little we care, as a
society, for the rights of the people we consider beneath us.

contrary to the growing beleif that convicts have no constitutional rights,

every person in the united states, regardless of what side of the bars they
live on, is protected and guaranteed protection by the constitution. if this is
so, and it is for the most part, then why aren't there daily reports of prisons
being shut down and investigated for prisoner abuse? if we really care about
human rights, then why do we allow this smokescreen to keep our eyes from
wandering back onto domestic shores?

in his book "live from death row," mumia abu-jamal details the attempted
murder of a fellow inmate in philadelphia's corrections system, who was serving
a life sentence. i forget what his crime had been, but i do remember that he
required a certain prescription medication to keep him alive, for a medical
condition. according to abu-jamal, as well as a subsequent investigation, the
prison nurse took it upon him or herself to substitute his pills with a
concoction known to doctors and pharmacologists to be incredibly deadly. the
results of the switch were catastrophic. the inmate was denied access to
medical treatment when it became physically incapacitating, until he was taken
to a hospital where they found a dyspeptic liver, glossed over with a
glass-like coating, created by a toxic reaction specific to the deadly
concoction he had been dosed with. i don't remember if he died, but i know that
it's not easy to live without a liver, and essentially that's what he had to
do. this is not an over the line story, this is not sensationalized, nor is it
out of the ordinary for domestic prison life.

let me offer another scenario. in west memphis arkansas, three young adult
males are convicted of a crime they in all probobility did not commit. one--
determed to be the leader of the group-- has been sentenced to die. this kid's
name is damien echols, and he forms the first third of what has become known as
the "west memphis three." the crime for which they have all received the
maximum possible punishment for revolves around the unsolved murders of three
8-year old boys in wm arkansas. i say "unsolved," because i firmly beleive that
the crime was never fully investigated. some of the "evidence" used in court
included the musical tastes of the three, a knife that only had one of the
defendent's own blood samples on it, not the victims, and a cache of horror
books.
 soon, they will execute damien, and with it will go the entire
constitutional right to a fair trial. as it says on the front page of the wm3
website, soon echols will be removed from solitary confinement, strapped down
to a hospital gurney and injected with lethal doses of the three chemicals used
in lethal injection. as the site points out, we will be paying for this
execution out of our pockets using our tax dollars as resources. for all of our
supposed beleif in freedom and democracy, we care so little, it appears, for
those who don't have the money to earn it.

three theatres of news have just been laid before you. what do you find the
most intriguing? would you like to know about the man who killed his cellmate,
or the man who urinated on the prisoner? or do you not care? as far as i'm
concerned, every one of these issues is important, and every one of these
issues is simultaneously irrelevent in the grand scheme of things.

one person's life, be it the prisoner of the american court system or the
prisoner of the military tribunal, is not a simple thing that can be thrown
away and disgarded like trash. we have to remember that warfare indulges in
atrocities that are repulsive to the average person, and things happen that we
are lucky to never witness. likewise, we should remember that not every
prisoner has committed a crime, or been formally convicted of one. before we
are so quick to shed another man's blood, we should examine our motives.

i'm not going to attempt to make judgements or rulings on the actions of

any single person involved in the news stories above. it's not my role, and i
would probably irritate a great number of people for all the wrong reasons.

instead, i'm trying to show you just how dire our circumstances are on
this planet. we live in a world where the most powerful military force has
apparently treated those they were sent to protect in the same manner the
greeks treated the trojans they captured, and the people whom the force is
sworn to protect hide behind smokescreens to avoid doing any real thinking. i
don't buy into that. i like to think for myself.

i beleive that right now, we should be asking ourselves what we are

specifically repulsed by in what we see. if we don't use this particular series
of events to establish right and wrong, then these things will have happened
without rhyme or reason. i beleive we should pursue those who violate human
rights, regardless of what side of the war they are on, or what their job
status is. no matter who you are, you cannot evade the fact that as a human
being, you have a duty to look after your fellow human beings. so we can learn
from this.

instead of finding a new reason to condemn the war in iraq, then you should
be looking at an already crystalized reason to condemn war itself. is that to
say that war is wrong in all circumstances? i'm not sure, nor am i going into
that. what i want you to realize is that we treat events as if they occur in a
vacuum, as if there is no precedent. instead of trying to determine if the man
who strangled his cellmate should be sentenced to death, we should be seeking
to determine if there's not a more profound question to ask. why is death
preferable to prison life? such a question is rhetorical, it almost answers
itself, but it's real, it's here, and no one has raised it in the coverage of
this case. lastly, if the abuse of another human being is wrong in one context,
why is it okay in another? these are the questions we should be asking. what we
should get out of the iraqi prisoner abuse "scandal" is not a political agenda,
but a more profound question for all of humanity to ponder. for the millionth
time, we have the chance to learn from history, and for the millionth time, i
don't think we will.
sources regarding issues covered in this article:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/law/05/25/execution.florida.reut/index.html
http://www.wm3.org/live/newsevents/index.php
http://freemumia.org/penalty.html
http://www.onnnews.com/global/story.asp?s=1917137&nav=lqlcneue
http://www.adn.com/24hour/nation/story/1415796p-8720658c.html

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x11---------------------------------------------------------------[ 11 ]
[ digital forensic watermarks ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 11 ]---------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x11
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

a lot of people may have noticed recently that there are new and, well,
really ugly peices of anti-piracy propaghanda on the faces of cds now. some of
them take of up the entire circumference of the disc, while others merely run
along the perimeter, warning any potential pirate of the illegality of any
number of uses for the cd from every possible angle that the disc can be viewed
from. these are not only obnoxious, but they draw your attention away from the
audio, from the music.

let me draw your attention to the following images:

http://pain.e-lite.org/blackicecd.jpg - fbi anti-piracy warning around

the circumference of the cd
itself.

http://pain.e-lite.org/blackicecd2.jpg - cd jacket claims a forensic

digital watermark on disc.

http://pain.e-lite.org/blackice3.jpg - the whole bottom part of the

jewel case is taken up by
warnings.

http://pain.e-lite.org/blackice4.jpg - notice the data layers on the

inside of the disc.

http://pain.e-lite.org/blackice5.jpg - if you raise the contrast enough,

you might be able to make out the
warning that admits the cd may not even be playable in some car cd players.

i find myself worrying about whether the transfer from cd to ipod will
unleash some undocumented "black ice", and cause all sorts of havoc on my
machine. i used to find myself worrying about this all the time, i stopped,
however, when i ceased buying cds from major labels altogether. i stopped doing
this, it so happens, because of the concept of a forensic watermark, and what
that means for the consumer. it's the death of privacy, put down simply for
anyone to understand. that's it.

how does it work? go to a record store and open up a cd case. notify the
people who work at the store, or you'll find yourself in the hands of the
morons who created this 'protection' in the first place. remove the disc and
flip it onto the data side. there are most likely to be visible gaps between
the tracks, some in places that simply don't make sense. these gaps are
actually data tracks, and sometimes, these things are just scrambled data,
meaningless peices of data that don't mean anything to the machine, except
confusion. that's most likely the first layer of black ice. congratulations,
you've now found a solid reason not to buy a cd from a major label, and a great
reason to simply mail your favorite artists cash.

the watermark itself is a lot harder to find, unless you know where to
look. there's a style of cryptography known as 'steganography,' the process of
hiding private information inside graphics files, using the white space, the
peices of the picture that are merely placeholders. inside the bitmap of the
image, and i won't get too technical for fear of being misunderstood, a message
or messages are encoded peice by peice into the picture, not capable of being
seen with the naked eye. even the worst stego job will only cause slight
imperfections in the white and gray areas of an image.

now apply this to audio, and you have the concept of layers, white noise,
null space and useless data. audio cds are like pictures, in the same way that
you have to have a background to write the song on, and you need to write in
every peice of the song. you can't simply cause the song to be silent in a
certain layer without actually encoding the null spots (the exact binary combo
is probably null, meaning 00000, etc.) instead of encoding pure null audio,
companies that utilize digital forensic watermarks are actually putting
inaudible peices of data in the places where no one will hear it. using a
pseudo random algorythm, the encoder writes peices of the watermark directly
into the audio itself. with this in mind, it's important to recognize that
actually writing the cd bit by bit, the way cd-recorders generally do, insuring
that the watermark will carry over to every new cd.

okay, so what's so bad about these things, what could they possibly do with
them? in theory, using tracking software that's been around for ages, a
corporation would have to only set up a server to record every time and
location where the watermark is spotted. if companies such as microsoft comply
with this technology, it could possibly send a message to the server, noting
that a specific type of cd has been imported or encoded onto the hard drive.
according to the faces of the cds i examined at work, the companies involved
are going to forbid any and all uses for the cd other than through an approved
discman or cd player. if a record company wants to know where an advance
version of a soon-to-be released album was leaked from, they only need to
assemble the watermark from any pirated media, and look up the original owner
through a database. this would prevent any lawful distribution, such as the
transfer of any audio to a digital music player, such as an ipod, a rio, or
even a minidisc could be construed as unlawful piracy. now why is that
innacurrate?

i don't generally carry a cd player, but i have an mp3 player with me about
90 percent of the time, so if i'm given an advance issue of a new industrial
album by the music director, and i choose to listen to it and decide if it's
worthy of airplay in my car, on the train, airplane or even in the privacy of
my own bed, i could be considered a pirate. now, for the most part, this isn't
going to change a whole lot for consumers just yet. however, it could be used
in the future to literally fingerprint a consumer, and bind them to their
personal record collection. while i understand the reasoning behind the
procedure, i think it's an infringement on the privacy of the consumer. if the
watermark can be tied to something like an isbn, it's perfectly possible to
keep a record of everyone who ever owned what cd, and when. stay the fuck out
of my cds, stay the hell away from my ipod, and stop giving me reasons not to
buy music from stores, because you're killing the industry.

before i finish, i should also address the itunes music store copyright
protection scheme, which was probably the first watermark to be widely used. in
this particular case, a customer purchases the license to transfer the music to
five machines for personal use. the id tag is inside the mpeg itself, as they
don't use mp3, or mpeg audio layer 3 technology, instead, apple has used a read
only mp4 encoding, which enables other information to be written in as well,
such as the cover art, the actual production history of the album, the liner
notes, whatever. it keeps the track order and the album name in a database
inside the mpeg, so devices such as portable players like ipods can easily
access this information and display it onscreen, making it a lot easier to
select the song you're looking for. the id, or username, however, is your
personal email address. however you signed on to the apple store in the first
place, that's your id. that email address, to my knowledge, is stored in the
mp4 itself. for further information, the second to last 2600 magazine featured
an article on the itunes music store, it's encoding process, and even it's
copy-protection's defeat. because i don't advocate piracy, i won't bother to
list any of the methods prescribed by the author.

i think in conclusion, we all need to breathe a big fucking sigh of releif

that internet radio exists, that independent media exists, and that we have
other ways of listening to music than buying into the human barcode idea that
the riaa has cooked up most recently. if there are any questions, concerns,
fuck-you's, or even corrections on the technical side of this peice, please
email them to alienbinary at pain@e-lite.org; and for chrissakes, support
independent media online. a paypal account is worth it, if it means you can
download an untainted mp3 from the artist, and know that the artist gets the
money themselves. then again, you could just do what most people do, and let
them keep tabs on every single thing you do, it's your life.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x12---------------------------------------------------------------[ 12 ]
[ get your kit in gear pt. 2 ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 12 ]---------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x12
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

this is a continuation of my previous article bearing the same name, of course,

the title has a "part 2" in it for obvious reasons.

introduction to part 2 of "get your kit in gear."

it's probably pretty obvious by now that i'm into being prepared. there are
very few benign things on this planet that occur in everyday life that irritate
me as much as not having the proper tools for the job. it's a pain in the ass,
and it's avoidable. not to mention, since the days of canning deckers have been
universally prepared. it's what we do. how else are we supposed to gain
physical access to locked up systems or splice the neighbor's cable signal?
shit, for that matter, what if you need to remove a tick or dress a wound?
hacking is about knowing how to use the tools at your disposal; and when you
don't have the tools already, assembling them or creating them yourself. in the
world of meat, and for those of you unfamiliar with that term, i mean the
physical world, assembling a good solid kit and continually adding and
subtracting items, while constantly refining it and making it more accessable
is analogous to a physical program. instead of scripting in perl, vbs,
realscript, shellscript, or python, we're scripting tools physically to meet
the needs of the physical world.
 for those of you familiar with object oriented programming, as well as
visual programming environments, you know about controls. controls are the
tools that programmers can call upon to perform a task that's already been
coded at a lower level. in visual basic, controls are pretty much the building
blocks of any app. in perl, we have modules. being a perlmonkey, i'll use that
analogy for this. when i coded "method0ne.pl," a brute force des password
cracker and passwd deobfuscator, i wrote it in perl, primarily because of
portability. also, built into the language is a module that's standard to any
default install of the runtime environment, that being the
"crypt(salt,string);" function. crypt was so much faster than the previous
practice of implementing an onboard, in-program data encryption standard
encryption subroutine, that it cut the cracking time down to mere seconds-- to
seconds from hours, that is. so, by using smaller tools already available, as
well as several dozen other modules and functions that were integral into the
perl (practical extraction and report language,) i was able to put together a
kit that was designed for the purpose of auditing systems. this is the
programmer's equivalent of taking a set of tools that are used for say,
lockpicking, putting them in a small concealable pouch, and assembling a system
for accessing locked areas. that's what a kit is.

but what do you pack? i mean, after all, there isn't enough room in the
biggest nato/alice pack for what i'd like to bring with me. that's why i'm
doing this column. i doubt i'll do a third installment, but it's possible, if i
come up with some new gear. remember, like the programmer using controls in vb,
or the codemonkey calling perl modules, every kit is custom. you assemble a
list that works for you, because it's your gear. so let's get this kit in gear,
kiddies.

[ new general kit ]

whet stone dictation machine caribiner d-clip

krazy glue magnifying glass insect repellant
water purification system latex gloves cyalume sticks
fm transmitter pillbox

whet stone - if you know anything about knives, you'll know that there's
nothing more important than keeping your blade sharp. a good portable whetstone
is always handy to have laying around.

krazy glue - according to entropy, things break. it happens, i'm sorry. that
being the case, it's always a good idea to have a small amount of heavy duty
adhesive on your person. it should be noted that super glue was originally
created to dress wounds in battle. i find that krazy glue is preferable, but
you kind of have to decide for yourself.

dictation machine - when you're out on the go, it's often hard to find the time
to crouch down and record your thoughts on a pad of paper. although i do it
alot myself, i still wouldn't recommend it as a primary source of notetaking.
instead, i actually carry a sony microcassette-corder m-450, which has a built
in microphone, a system for cue, playback, rewind, fast forward, internal
speakers and a microcassette deck, all about the size of small cellphone. in
fact, my phone takes up more space, but i strapped that fucker to the side of
my bag, swat style. anyway, these can run anywhere from ten to fifteen to fifty
bucks. it doesn't really matter what brand you get, and it doesn't matter that
you get the one i mentioned. shit, if i was to get another one, i'd get the
ipod attatchment and go digital, but that's another story. regardless, for
anyone who frequently is on the go, i'd recommend at least trying out carrying
a little voice recorder-- especially if you're a writer. a lot of pa1n's
content is transcribed from microcassettes that litter my main computer bay.

magnifying glass - now a lot of you might be thinking that i'm stretching it
when i suggest carrying a magnifier around. after all, we're trying to minimize
(and optimize, to use another programmer phrase) your gear, not to bog you down
with useless weight. anyway, for those of you who don't do a lot of reading,
you should consider it, because that's precisely where i had the idea to add
"magnifying glass" to the list (that and if you don't read a lot, you're not
doing yourself any favors.) i'm in the process of reading michael crichton's
'prey,' although i'll probably be done by the time this reaches publication.
regardless, it occurred to me that trying to fix any hardward problem without
looking at a magnified view of the area isn't the brightest idea. more than
that, a magnifying glass or lens can double as a lighter provided you have
proper sunlight. mag. glasses and lenses when put in front of eachother have
the ability to also form monoculars, or single cylinder binos. you can do a
google search for that if you're interested, maybe i'll include a link at the
bottom of this segment. as far as other uses go, medically speaking-- and i am
a trained medic (or was at some point. the red cross assumes that we have the
time to go get recertified.. if i had that much time, i'd get my drivers'
license too.)-- a magnifying lens of some sort is critical in assessing flesh
wounds. from an epidemiologist/rheumatology point of view, the best way to be
sure to avoid diseases like lyme would include having something to scan your
body with that could illuminate otherwise too-small-to-see parasitic organisms
like ticks.

water purifier system - the best thing there is for a human being other than
oxygen is probably a glass of water. our bodies our estimated to be roughly 80
percent water. we sweat gallons of the stuff a day, so it's vitally important
to replenish our water resevoirs as much as possible. unfortunately, government
and industry have done an amazing job of destroying the natural reserves all
over the world. therefore, it doesn't hurt to invest in water purification
tablets. if you happen to live withing driving or walking distance of an army
surplus store, the military uses tablets that you can find in a yellow package.
they run for about 12 bucks and can fit in any kit without taking up too much
space.

insect repellant - now this one shouldn't come as any shock to anyone, period.
for those of you not paying attnetion, there is some scary shit that can be
carried through the thorax of an insect and transmitted to people. all it takes
is one bite from an infected mosquitoe, an oversight by your white blood cells,
and you find yourself talking to nobody and rocking a 103f temperature. now,
granted, west nile isn't as bad as it has been hyped up, but mosquitoes, gnats,
black flies, these things aren't any fun to have buzzing around. as for what to
do about them? granted, most of this stuff is absolutely horrific if you think
about what they use to make the shit, the best insect repellant is by far the
stuff made by the us army. no one has a more vested interest in keeping
mosquitoes away for long periods of time than gis in the field.

incidentally, if you've ever wondered what's in tonic water,

there's an ingredient called quinine. quinine was originally
derived from the bark of a tree in the rainforest, but it's
now synthesized for mass production to be used by people in
the jungle. the drink gin and tonic is actually a combination
of this and, well, gin.

[ http://sres.anu.edu.au/associated/fpt/nwfp/quinine/quinine.html]
latex gloves - these aren't critical to most people, but if you happen to be in
a position to be of medical assistance to someone, such as being red cross
certified in cpr, first aid and other first response skills, you should carry
around some latex gloves. because it seems wierd, admittedly, to just have them
floating around in your bag (maybe a little incriminating too...) you can buy a
nylon case for examination gloves at army surplus stores.

fm transmitter - in case you've been living in a hole for several thousand

years, the ipod has sparked somewhat of an obsession with portable digital
music players. such an obsession of course sparked several subindustries,
including one for integrating the ipod into the bmw. unless you happen to be
able to afford a bmw x5 sav, or a z4 roadster, you might invest in some
slightly less costly options, but i'll list the beamer one first, because i
think it's fuckin' tight.

the internal ipod dock system for the x5/z4 - made by bmw and apple
computer, this is a docking mechanism that is built into the glove
compartment of the car itself. the ipod can be controlled not only on the
usual stereo display, but on the actual steering wheel itself, a feature
that was probably added as an afterthought by the engineers for safety
reasons. there are enough things, already, to distract motorists.
[ http://www.apple.com/ipod/bmw/ ]

the other types of connectivity kits are divided into two primary
categories. the first category is the tape-deck cassette adapter, which has
been around for a long enough time that i don't think i need to even
mention the specifics. i did note however that belkin put one out recently,
and i happen to be a big fan of belkin components because as far as my
personal experience goes, they last. the other possible, and increasingly
popular adapter is a portable fm transmitter that connects to the device
usually through the headphone jack (line out.) for the apple ipod, there
are a few fm transmitters that work a little differently. the best one is
arguably the itrip or the belkin tunecast 2.0.

pillbox - a wet book of matches isn't a whole lot of good, and for that matter,
neither is tylenol that's half dissolved. one of the worst things that can
happen to someone when someone is taking medication is that the pills may get
damaged by water or moisture. what a lot of people don't know about medication
design is that it is a multidisciplinary field. when psychopharmacologists
manufactured the first batch of "concerta," often called "adult ritalin," they
didn't rely as much on the chemical recombination to create a better drug, but
the way in which the chemical compounds were delivered to the patient.
[ editor's note: this is not a medical text, and i'm not a doctor, i'm simply
using an analogy. the information about specific pill designs contained in this
article isn't the focus, it's peripheral information. the focus is on the
necessity of safe storage for said pills. - ab. ] anyone who has handled such a
pill knows that it looks like a fucking torpedo, and is about as hard to break
as a diamond. the pills are highly pressurized and packed, the density allows
for a slower metabolism that creates a time-release system.

so what does this have to do with pillboxes? take an extra strength tylenol
and leave it on your desk for an hour with just a little bit of water on the
surface. when you examine the pill later, you'll find that the thing has
degraded and at least a quarter of it is dissolved. this is dangerous for the
esophagous, so that pill is now useless. with this in mind, it's important to
find something small, durable, and watertight that you can conceal easily. if
you go to the aisle in a drug store where they sell medical alert tags and
bracelets, as well as other tools for aging people, you might find small
watertight containers for just this purpose. if not, improvise. i know this
seems pointless to go over, so i'll explain something about our most popular
medication, acetomemophin. acetomenophin is an active ingredient in tylenol,
sudafed, and a billion other painkillers and cold medications. it's also
incredibly corrossive to the tissue along your through, known as the
esophagous. the reason that they suggest you don't dry swall pills is because
should some of the drug rub off on the lining of your esophagous, over time it
can burn through the lining and pose an extremely high health risk.

caribiner clip - it's become increasingly popular to keep your keys on a peice
of climbing gear known as a caribiner, or "d-clip." the term d-clip refers to
the shape of the device, though, and there are several different designs for
caribiners. if you're curious about what they look like, here's a google image
search for you to look at. i'll include links to actual climber gear after:
http://images.google.com/images?q=caribiner+clip&hl=en&lr=&ie=utf-8&safe=off&
filter=0

caribiners are classified by strength, size, and weight. to know what clip
you need you can check out [ http://www.ems.com/ ]. you'll notice that they
indicate what is climbing safe and what isn't. the preferred clip when i've
been climbing had the threaded cover over the clasp, so that nothing would
accidentally get unhooked.

cyalume sticks - cyalume is the chemical name for that green shit we see when
we cut open a glowstick. like most of the stuff in this article, it may seem
like an odd thing to list, but that's because you may not be aware of the
reason lightsticks were invented. according to "omniglow," the company that
owns the patent to, and whose research was funded by the department of defense,
the lightstick, and all subsequent chemiluminescence is derived from a need by
the united states military to have an effective, non-electrical, cold light
source. the importance of the light source being cold is actually derived from
the need for stealth. when marine based infantry are approaching the target,
the last thing they possibly could want is another thing that could be picked
up on infrared.

stealth is possibly the most important aspect of an attack. with this

in mind, all traditional sources of light were abandoned. magnesium
flares, while capable of working underwater, burn at something like
3000 degrees when it hits the thermite. this will cause any ir camera
or lense to "flare," which is to say the viewer turns incredibly bright
and can even damage the retinas of the person(s) looking in. flashlights,

particularly the gooseneck was ruled out, because they don't stand up
well to moisture, and they aren't all that disposable. the glowstick
on the other hand provides a means of light that is bright enough to
be useful, but not extravagant enough to attract attention.

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x13---------------------------------------------------------------[ 13 ]
[ rantradio irc, summer 2004 ]
[ rantradio irc ]
[ 13 ]---------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x13
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

[ editor's note: this section contains selections from various internet relay
chat forums that are in some way associated with rantradio or pa1n. the two
channels i'll list are #rantradio and #nocturnalradio, but some private
channels might find their way here, if they prove worthy of it. - alienb. ]

command line brawling...

?1;33msuperdude/#rantradio sex0rs boofa

<kaboofa> cat /dev/urandom > superdude; chflag noch superdude; sysctl
kern.secure_level=3
<superdude> fu
?1;33mjibkat/#rantradio meows
?1;33msuperdude/#rantradio throws a firecracker at jibkat
<kaboofa> mv firecracker /dev/null
<superdude> lol
<kaboofa> echo "i hate you. i'm using unix commands to talk today." |
wall
<reddman> mv lighter /home/reddman/documents/pot
<kaboofa> unlink("/home/reddman/documents/pot");
<kaboofa> ;)
<reddman> heh
<reddman> bash
<kaboofa> no.. c

---------------------------------------[ getting heavy handed about movies?

<jibkat> naw
<jibkat> rambo
<superdude> yes
<superdude> rambos a pussy
<superdude> predator > rambo
<snake> its not just that
<snake> rambo used a fucking m60
<snake> like it was an m16
<superdude> predator has alien weapons
<snake> and u just dont do that
<alienbinary> this is true, snake.
<superdude> and cloaking
<jibkat> bah
<superdude> plus the predator has that awesome laff
<snake> whatever
<kaboofa> guy from army of darkness > *
<alienbinary> but the predator did that blowing up himself shit..
<jibkat> and a nuke on his back
<snake> ash
<snake> ash
<kaboofa> "there's something on your face"
<snake> chainsaw arm beats everything
<kaboofa> * ash shovels dirt on decapitated soilder
<snake> and he's got the double barrel for anything else
<jibkat> freddy vs jason vs ash is coming out
<alienbinary> what?
<snake> no its not
<superdude> lol
<evilsp0rk> o.o
<evilsp0rk> wtf?!
<jibkat> yes is
<jibkat> they have a release date
<kaboofa> ash would wreck everyone's shit
<superdude> link me
<kaboofa> you have no idea.
<kaboofa> this.. is.. my.. boomstick!
<snake> its not gonna happen
<snake> cuz if it did
<superdude> liiiiinnnnnkkk mmmmmeeeee
<kaboofa> ash would win, handsdown
<kaboofa> :)
<snake> there would be a god
<snake> and i would have to go to church
<alienbinary> hahahaha
<kaboofa> and we all know there are about 50,000 gods
<kaboofa> as for that issue, let's look to a topic of another channel
<superdude> who has ash again?
<kaboofa> #liek > god (disclaimer: this is not an endorsement of any
religion
nor does it imply
that god, in fact, exists at all.)
<jibkat> http://www.creature-corner.com/news3/aug11fvsj.php3
<jibkat>
http://www.themovieblog.com/archives/2004/03/freddy_vs_jason_vs_ash.html
<jibkat> http://www.cinemaeye.com/more/153_0_10_0_c
<jibkat> see
<alienbinary> holy shit.
<snake> unless sam raimi directs it, i wont see it
<superdude> whos ash?
<snake> evil dead/army of darkness
<jibkat> bruice camble
<kaboofa> i would trust any site with the word 'blog' in it
<snake> jesus himself
<superdude> nebar saw them
<snake> brisco county jr.
<jibkat> http://lightsout.movieweb.com/news/news.php?id=1821
<snake> the fairy theif guy from hercules
<jibkat>
http://www.oncial.com/coranto/zcomment.cgi?article=eplppfulzatlfyiyaq
<alienbinary> okay okay jib
<alienbinary> we don't doubt your cinematic omnipotence.

----------------------[ take a lesson from this one. deckers got attitude.

<kaboofa> i'm not allowed in the apple store

<alienbinary> then go to a different one.
<kaboofa> because the guy told me the new osx machines were uncrashable
<kaboofa> and i kernel paniced it
<alienbinary> :p
<alienbinary> hahahahaha
<alienbinary> that's hot.
<kaboofa> don't fuck with freebsd hackers.
<alienbinary> hell yeah.
<kaboofa> we are angry, as shown in exhibit a:
http://www.trancegeek.net/angrycoders/smash.jpg
<kaboofa> that is me in action.
?1;37malienbinary puts that in pa1nv11

-?------------?------------???????????????????????????-------------------??----
pa1nv11x14---------------------------------------------------------------[ 14 ]
[ outro ]
[ alienbinary ]
[ 14 ]---------------------------------------------------------------pa1nv11x14
-?------------?---????????????-----------???????????---------??????????????????

x-[o.o]-x
'''

xgrinreapr (2:28:21 am): i actually had the time to read a book.

it's odd. when you really don't have the time, and you stop reading
for a while, you forget that you really do have the time.

- zerachiel in a conversation
i was having with him at about
two thirty in the morning.

x-[o.o]-x
'''

the first thing that the average person notices upon entering my room in my
parent's house is that it's covered from almost floor to ceiling with books.
the whole place is one giant library and studio. where there aren't
bookshelves, the walls are decked in sculpture and metalwork or pen and ink.
the traditional kitsch, the posters, the chili pepper lights, the various bone
and skull shaped furniture, these add neo-gothic flavoring to the otherwise
very librarian quality of the space.

this is one of my many dens where i spend time meditating, scheming and
proposing ideas to the wax splattered walls by candlelight, answering in reply
for them, shooting down the negative aspects of one idea, or lauding the
qualities of another. this is one of the places i call home-- but only
tentatively. i can't call any place home definitively, because to do so would
be to nail myself down to one place. instead, i have multitudes of dwellings,
each characteristic of the occupant. you know a place where i stay often simply
by the feeling you get when you open the door.

my shelves are lined with hundreds of books, at the least. i have collected
these and organized them, salvaged them from the discard bins at libraries and
collected them at a small loss from various bookstores all over the world. you
can find anything from the entire collected public works of shakespeare in
leather and gold binding to the united states army special forces fm 21-150,
one of the "combatives" manuals. i have books on medicine, literature, art, the
occult, archeolgy, geography, cryptography, programming, chaos theory and
non-euclidean geometry. these are the sources of strength that i draw from when
i feel weak or ill at ease. knowledge, as the saying goes, is power-- the
ability incite change for the better through a keener understanding of the
world around you and the way the world around you could work if we were to set
aside our petty differences and get serious about what we do.

along these shelves, there are blinking lights and cables, attatched to
external drives, snaking through collections of 2600 magazine and various
activist pamphlets that i've collected by showing up at the right time to
certain rallies and protests and looking a mixture of skeptical and receptive.
i am, for all intents and purposes, a librarian for the new age. it's only
recently that the rennaissance of the reglorification of the intertwined arts
of reading and writing that i have felt this to be a potentially winning
battle.

when i was in grade school, i watched, appalled, as the whole of my

generation became fascinated with, and then more or less enslaved with a
pathetic obsession with so-called "reality tv" shows, where the program on the
tube is hyped as being a broadcast of someone else's life, without any changes
from spin doctors or publicists. the "real world" and "road rules" turned my
generation into morons who beleived that people always had refridgerators that
were well stocked, when nobody ever visited the grocery store. they seemed to
expect to always be dating, and for their dates to be so romantic it would be
"fit for television," a phrase i'm unanamoured with to the extreme.

one of the most liberating experiences of my youth, and possibly one of my

fondest memories was when my roommate at the time, who some of you know from
past issues of pa1n as zerachiel brought his mother's digital camcorder, and we
filmed the systematic destruction of a rabbit-eared tv set, complete with
faux-wood paneling. we started by panning the scene up the height of the
building, and stopping-- then zooming in on whichever one of us was holding the
doomed set at the time. then the ground was surveyed, the film rolled as we
centered on an "x" painted in red spraypaint on the black-tar asphalt. seconds
would go by, leaving the viewer wondering what we were instructing them to
watch, and then from out of nowhere, with no warning, a television set was
slammed down by vengeful force by gravity itself straight into the tar below.
the carnage was so sudden and contraditory-- especially when viewed on another,
less doomed tv set in the lobby of our dormitory after the proper cables had
been spliced-- that the viewer would cringe. it wasn't american some said. it
wasn't very nice, ventured another. i offered that it was actual film footage
of their emancipation from the routine they had devised for themselves that
included almost nothing but television and video games.

for those that could see the artistic viewpoint, they would still wretch
when the footage of myself in combats with a huge metal staff and a can of
spraypaint, stomped on and desecrated the remains of the ill-fated household
appliance. this, they suggested, not entirely incorrectly, was a little past
decorum. i was stomping in the wreckage of an inanimate object. it was not a
victory dance, it was gloating.

yet again, i should point out that, besides getting off track with this
tangeant, i'm neglecting to point out what i consider to be implied irony. i
should tell you that the tv screen this was debuted on for the public was about
30 inches, and much more chic. it was a panasonic matte black cathode ray tube
joint receiver and vhs deck, a devilish monolithic box of black matte finish
with wires running from it's innards to the external video playback of the 8mm
video cassette featuring our artistic statement. we had to use a tv to promote
anti-tv sentiment. weak. fucking hysterical, but kind of weak.

so, getting on track with the actual subject again, i'll return to the
panorama of my bookshelves. remember when i mentioned the section on chaos and
non-euclidian geometry? euclid was the greek guy who suggest that geometric
shapes were composed of lines and all sorts of really droll things. he didn't
see past, and look into the realm of fractals, which chaos and the aptly named
science of non-euclidian geometry embraced. inside this science is the theory
of entropy, george carlin's favorite mathematical principle. it's the study of
the collapse of a closed structure, and it's perfect for the study of the death
of television but falls short when it comes to knowledge itself. there is no
end to that which we can learn, so there can be no end to that which can be put
down on an eternal medium like a book, and therefore the library is eternal.
when one day we are drying clothing on the towers of defunct tv stations, we'll
be using crt housing to make bookshelves for our growing libraries. when people
stop watching "the apprentice," and begin to realize that they can get a job
themselves, or stop watching "road rules" and realize that nearly a hundred
years ago, jack keruoac laid down the point that there were actually no rules
on the road-- then people will begin to take to the open terrain to explore for
themselves. and that, my friends, will be a great day.

in the meantime, it is us who will keep the knowledge flowing like water
from the nile. we are the flesh servants of a digital euphrates, flooding the
germinated seeds of dissent, so that our children might have a future.

- alienbinary, 2004.