Birds Before The Storm

The Sound of Resistance volume 1

magpie — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:38:53 +0000

My gothic breakcore band Nomadic War Machine has got a song on the new compilation put out by The Art of Dismantling.

The Sound of Resistance Vol. 1 by various

Clock Tower tour dates!

magpie — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 15:48:09 +0000

I’ll be touring with What Lies Beneath the Clock Tower, my anti-colonial steampunk adventure-of-your-own-choosing book. These are interactive readings in which the audience has to come to consensus on what path to take our absinthe-drunk protagonist through, and they’re a lot of fun. I’m really excited to take this on tour. I’ll also be tabling a lot of Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness and Combustion Books.

Dates

(more on the way)

April 21 at the Big Idea Bookstore & Cafe in Pittsburgh, PA. 5pm.
April 23 at the Wingnut in Richmond, VA. 7pm.
April 24 at Internationalist Books in Chapel Hill, NC. 7pm.
April 28 at the Steampunk Ball at Davenport & Winkleperry in Pittsboro, NC. 9pm.
April 30 at Firestorm Cafe & Books in Asheville, NC. 6pm.
May 2 at the Iron Rail in New Orleans, LA. 6pm.
May 3 at the East Side Social Center (4202 canal street) in Houston, TX. 7pm.
May 4-6 I will be performing as an accordionist and presenting and tabling at AetherFest in San Antonio, TX.
New: May 7 in Denton, Texas, location TBA (facebook event link).
May 9 at Random Row Books in Charlottesville, VA. 7pm.
May 13 at Back Pages Books in Waltham, MA as part of the Watch City Festival. 11am.

Steampunk III: Revolution

magpie — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 04:56:32 +0000

Ann VanderMeer, hugo-award-winning editor of Weird Tales, is editing a new steampunk anthology, Steampunk Revolution. And it’s promising to be the best yet. (Not just because I’m in it!) It’s founded on the idea that steampunk needs not be stagnant and that it can actually have something to say.

Today, she posted the Table of Contents. I’m incredibly happy to be being published alongside Cherie Priest, Bruce Sterling, Catherynne M. Valente, and Jaymee Goh.

ROME – anti-fascist neo-folk.

magpie — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:48:38 +0000

My new favorite band ever.
Neo-folk is an offshoot of goth and industrial that is “folk” in the context of european military folk traditions. It’s usually dark and militant and creepy and beautiful… and fascist. Or “I won’t say I’m not a fascist…” And honestly, is it so much to ask that someone is willing to disambiguate themselves from genocidal racist authoritarians?

So earlier today I was bemoaning how a band I had just started liking was a bunch of fucking nazis, when my friend Unwoman turned me on to Rome.

YOU ADMIRE THE LIONS
YOU DESPISE ALL SHEEP
BUT FOLLOWING LIONS
MAKES NOTHING BUT SHEEP
YOU ARE ALL BENDING IN THE WIND

And also this one, that sounds like Leonard Cohen but even spookier:

Markets Not Anarchism – a panning

magpie — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:02:57 +0000

I had the opportunity last fall to have a look at Markets Not Capitalism, released by the otherwise-excellent Minor Compositions, an imprint of Autonomedia. My comments, however, didn’t make it into the book.

Markets Not Capitalism (or Markets Not Anarchism as I grew to call it in my head) is anything but anti-capitalist and anything but anarchist, despite the explicit claims made by the editors and contributors. Now, to be clear, while I am not a market anarchist, I have no objection to the idea. Enough mutualists and the like have convinced me that an anti-capitalist market economy could be part of an anarchist society. (Basically, such a society would still operate using money but would be setup in such a way that one cannot make money with money but instead only make money by actually doing things.) So I picked up this book feeling hopeful. I thought it would better help me understand my market anarchist comrades.

What I found was disgusting. Here is what I wrote in response:

This book makes the basic assertion that a free market economy will set us free. I consider this to be a remarkably dangerous fallacy.
I do not believe that anarcho-capitalism is a part of anarchism. And despite the protestations one might find within these pages, Kevin Carson’s understanding of capitalism as “government interference with the market” means that much of the “anti-capitalism” involved is simply “capitalism” under some weird up-is-down, war-is-peace, rightwing-is-leftwing double-think.
I do believe that there are a wide range of anarchist ideas, and many of them include market economics, and many of the essays within these pages touch upon them. But anarcho-capitalism is outside of anarchism. An economic system that allows the centralization of power is not an anarchist one, and the ability to make money from your money will do just that.
[This is] a book that makes the claim that black civil rights activists would not have had the right to “resist arrest” when protesting segregation, or claims that libertarian thinkers should defend to the death a bigot’s right to his or her bigotry.
I have no interest in a book would pretend to be anarchist while making such bold claims as that the first enemy of the environmentalist is environmental law. As an environmental activist myself, I know full well that the anarchist position is to use the laws against our enemies when they are useful and to never be constricted by them ourselves. It’s a hopelessly reformist idea to claim that the Clean Water Act should stand between us and the people who are destroying the earth. Anarchists will violate the law and the sanctity of property to destroy what is destroying them.
It was a market anarchist who said it best: property is theft.

Another highlight from the book is the idea, disguised as leftist, that welfare is the anarchist’s first enemy in the fight to destroy economic inequality.

Comments for this post are now closed.

Super Happy Anarcho Fun Book is coming…

magpie — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:48:06 +0000

Word on the street is that this thing is dropping really soon.

Digital mockup of one of the covers of the book

I just heard from LBC Books that the collected Super Happy Anarcho Fun Pages is coming really soon. Like in the next week soon, probably. Above is a digital mockup of one of the covers of the book. Perhaps the best review of the comic is available from a few years back by crimethinc.

Jake von Slatt’s Steampunk Workshop

magpie — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 05:25:25 +0000

Martha Swetzoff is currently shooting a documentary on steampunk, and about a month ago she interviewed me and Jake von Slatt for the project. Which meant I got to go on a tour of Jake’s steampunk workshop, which is pretty sweet. The whole place is filled with junk from floor to ceiling and he’s got a stroh violin! This is also the first time I’m trying this new flickr plugin. I’m not convinced I like it, but my old one is broken.

Dealing with some stuff with the site

magpie — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:03:15 +0000

Sorry about the temporary ugliness. Will get it back to normal, and hopefully better, in the next few days.

Acadia!

magpie — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:33:27 +0000

Acadia National Park sits off the coast of Maine in all its frozen glory. Lakes, carriage trails, weird-ass yuppie-looking towns that are probably actually really nice to live in, and a coast that finally makes the American Atlantic have something worth saying to the Pacific. Also my friend brought a horn the likes of which you don’t really get to blow when you’re in civilization. But frozen lakes, on the other hand…

[flickr album=72157629264504661 num=22 size=Medium]

That other Portland

magpie — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 04:22:28 +0000

The other Portland is actually really beautiful! (Yes, yes, I know it’s older than the one in Oregon, but having spent many years of my life living in the West Coast one, Maine has “the other Portland.”)

Any how, we walked around and I patiently listened to my friends extolling the virtues of eating the flesh of slaughtered sea creatures. And I liked this sticker so much because I was in the middle of reading REAMDE and kinda not-so-secretly just wanted to be reading. But okay seriously Portland was pretty and the weather was cold but lovely.

We also went by Occupy Maine and I met a silly counter-protester all by his lonesome who was sad that someone had burned the flag. What I really love about this guy is that he totally groks the aesthetic of bad-grammar signs on cardboard. This fellow is missing an article.

[flickr album=72157629264512871 num=11 size=Medium]