Counterforce

Just a quick note here, from Shoplifting From American Apparel to the book I’m currently reading over the holiday…

It’s Cyclonopedia by Reza Negarestani, which I first discovered in a quick mention on Warren Ellis’ website, and the description of it alone told me that I just had to have it. That description:

Cyclonopedia is theoretical-fiction novel by Iranian philosopher and writer Reza Negarestani. Hailed by novelists, philosophers and cinematographers, Negarestani’s work is the first horror and science fiction book coming from and written on the Middle East.

‘The Middle East is a sentient entity—it is alive!’ concludes renegade Iranian archaeologist Dr. Hamid Parsani, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances. The disordered notes he leaves behind testify to an increasingly deranged preoccupation with oil as the ‘lubricant’ of historical and political narratives.

A young American woman arrives in Istanbul to meet a pseudonymous online acquaintance who never arrives. Discovering a strange manuscript in her hotel room, she follows up its cryptic clues only to discover more plot-holes, and begins to wonder whether her friend was a fictional quantity all along.

Meanwhile, as the War on Terror escalates, the US is dragged into an asymmetrical engagement with occultures whose principles are ancient, obscure, and saturated in oil. It is as if war itself is feeding upon the warmachines, leveling cities into the desert, seducing the aggressors into the dark heart of oil …

At once a horror fiction, a work of speculative theology, an atlas of demonology, a political samizdat and a philosophic grimoire, CYCLONOPEDIA is work of theory-fiction on the Middle East, where horror is restlessly heaped upon horror. Reza Negarestani bridges the appalling vistas of contemporary world politics and the War on Terror with the archaeologies of the Middle East and the natural history of the Earth itself. CYCLONOPEDIA is a middle-eastern Odyssey, populated by archeologists, jihadis, oil smugglers, Delta Force officers, heresiarchs, corpses of ancient gods and other puppets. The journey to the Underworld begins with petroleum basins and the rotting Sun, continuing along the tentacled pipelines of oil, and at last unfolding in the desert, where monotheism meets the Earth’s tarry dreams of insurrection against the Sun.

I can tell you right now that comparisons to Danielewski’s House Of Leaves aren’t too off the mark, but this is much more “theory” than “fiction” in the “theory fiction.” And a lot of it is scary true.

One review, by Pamela Rosenkranz of Artforum International’s best of 2009 gives an even more descriptive review:

An American artist, Kristen Alvanson – out of curiosity or simply boredom, it’s not clear – travels to Istanbul to meet a mysterious online contact. The contact never turns up. However, Kristen, as she relates in her jour­nal, does find a manuscript called Cyclonopedia, which in turn purports to be based on the disturbing and dis­ordered notes of an Iranian archaeologist who disappeared while researching a very eccentric theory about oil’s role in history. So begins Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials (published by Melbourne’s re.press), a nihilistic but fanciful tour de force of meta-­fiction. Kristen, in addition to being a character, is the creator of the book’s magnificent cover; she is credited on the title page beneath Reza Negarestani, who is the book’s author – and also the author of the manuscript Kristen finds. In this welter of attributions, of course, it becomes doubtful whether Negarestani really wrote the book at all, but whoever the author is, he or she has a profound knowledge of, or a profound imagination about, Middle Eastern archaeology and Islamic mythol­ogy, to say nothing of contemporary petropolitics.

Apocalyptic visions and solar catastrophes have been making their way into my own work, so Cyclonopedia feels especially resonant to me, but its urgency isn’t just personal. The text strips away its own layers to reach a bedrock of premonotheistic symbols and tropes subverting, as it goes, common understandings of “East” and “West” and the relation of these ideas to each other. Creating its own lexis via a Deleuzian philosophical constructivism, building a quasi-scientific machine with madly beautiful illustrations, Cyclonopedia is marked by a peculiar theoretical style. It discovers hid­den paths to a kind of chthonic knowledge; from its speculative abyss issues a horrific “philosophy of oil.” Gazing into this confounding complexity of groundless grounds thrilled my new awareness.

Clearly, the fact that all of that interests me confirms that I’m possibly insane. But it’s fun. And being an fun mental case means you need interesting things to read. I wasn’t feeling too well last night and was up most of the night with this book keeping me company. Perfect late night reading.

from here.

I may talk about it more when I finish it, but as of now (and I should hurry so that I can actively follow the progress of the sequel, which is currently being developed), I’m enjoying it. And… I’m terrified of it. And that’s perfect.

Let’s face it, Hollywood is never going to fund a big-budget original movie ever again.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Marco and I have been talking for a while about doing a series of posts on movies that should be made. Now don’t get me wrong, the projects we’ll be proposing shouldn’t actually be made. In a better world, the budgets would go to real artists who do good work, but that’s not the world we live it, and at Counterforce, we believe in making the best out of a bad situation. Just like Liam Neeson.

no thank you

So, let’s get right down too it. You know, you know they’re going to make an ID4:2 some day, so we might as well make it enjoyably bad. Hell, just the idea of watching this movie instead of some Michael Bay cartoon-adapted crapfest gives me a boner. You can never ever go wrong blowing up as many international landmarks as possible.

Thus, The Counterforce Casting Couch: Independence Day 2

PREMISE:

This is gonna be a little rough, we can fill in the blanks during lighting shifts on the set. So, it’s like 20 years after the event of ID4. Will Smith is the President, obviously. The White House will have just finished being rebuilt and look exactly the same as before. Jeff Goldblum will basically be playing Al Gore. Sorta Green Living Apostle / Technocrat in Chief. Shia LeBeouf is Goldblum’s rebellious kid and Aaron Yoo is his buddy who films all their wacky adventures on his Flip Camera. There will be some drama because Shia doesn’t know his dad was a hero because Goldblum’s role was classified or something.

Ryan Kwanten from True Blood will fill in the Hick Character contingent with his little jailbait sister, Dakota Fanning. I threw a lot of brits into the cast so there can be other groups of characters in the UK and Australia, Iraq, etc. Famke Janssen will play somebody’s wife. Maybe Bill Pullman’s.

So, the Aliens come back, only this time, they come in peace and claim to be seeking asylum. Apparently these aliens are the not-evil faction of the bad guys. Will Smith will have all these mixed feelings because he hates aliens, but doesn’t want to be prejudiced to the nice ones. It will be like that scene in Star Trek 6 where Kirk talks about the klingons who killed his son, only this time it will be Will Smith saying it, and he’ll be talking to the First Dog.

Obviously, the bad aliens come back and destroy a shit-ton more monuments and landmarks. They’ll be led by Nic Cage, who is some kind of evil billionaire who helps the Aliens in exchange for world domination. Definitely gotta sack the Burj Dubai, the White House, Big Ben, the Golden Gate, the Vatican, etc. But this time, the good aliens have shared some of their technology, so the fight is slightly more fair, but earth still gets its ass kicked and the bad aliens occupy the planet. This would all take place on July 2nd.

yeah, that shit's gonna fall

The next day would be a lot of failed counter-offensives and characters hiding from Alien stormtroopers. Then Shia LeBeouf will decide to form a resistance and Aaron Yoo will do all the tech shit to get the word out on the internets. Ryan Kwanten will be there with Dakota, and he’ll turn out to be some kind of hillbilly ass-kicker. I see a scene with him, shirtless, feather tied to the back of his head, destroying enemy food supplies boston-tea-party style. Then we’ll cut to Said Taghmaoui in Iraq with a British accent and he’ll be all, “It’s the Americans, they want to organize a resistance, about bloody time!”

And then July 4th will be the big counter-attack. Aaron Yoo will die. Will Smith will fly an alien fighter ship with Bill Pullman as his wingman. They’ll fight their way to the mothership, land on it, then fight their way to Nic Cage’s lair on the bridge. Somehow, Jeff Goldblum will be there too. A big fistfight later, Will Smith wins, then escapes and Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum pilot the Mothership into the sun, sacrificing themselves. Shia hooks up with Dakota Fanning, and then after the credits roll, Samuel L. Jackson walks into a bar to talk to him about the Avengers initiative.

And… scene.

Fuck yeah!

You know you’d pay to see it.

The other day someone came up to me and asked about the continuing fire situation in the southern California area. “It looks like the end of the world,” they told me and were then shocked when I wasn’t shocked by that statement. They asked me if it was still going on, if the fires were still burning, and they asked this as if I knew the answer. Being primarily a still a Californian deep down in my weird little DNA, I’ll constantly let people know where I’m from (in case it’s not obviously and readily apparent why I’m better than them on a variety of levels), but it’s a double edged sword in that I’m expected to have an answer everytime some new weird or stupid piece of news comes out of the Golden State.

So, my answer to this question about the fires was simply: “I don’t know.”  Then the question came: You know a lot of people there, right? Wouldn’t they know from the constant smoke in the distance? Me: “If you live in LA, or spend signifigant time there, I think you make a kind of peace with a lot of things there being perpetually fucked up. The air, especially.” This answer only prompted confusion.

So I attempted a clarification: “Listen, here’s the thing about how people in California operate: Unless your house is on fire, or you’re personally bein evacuated, or it’s fucking up some sex you’re trying to get or, I don’t know, your pot delivery, or something, you don’t really care about a whole lot of other people’s tragedy.”

That’s of course both true and not true. Californians are not that soulless, not really. On the surface, maybe, but deep down… they’re primarily still human beings. Don’t ask me for evidence of their humanity, but just take my word for it, okay? And if you don’t, I’m sure someone will come along soon enough to make a movie with heart that proves me right. But recently, I saw someone put the situation best: “Because the world is always ending in Los Angeles, we are not necessarily surprised when it does. We are also not surprised when the world keeps going on after that.”

from here.

Anyway, after the question and answer exchange about my home land, I came back to my lair, the whole exchange floating around in the back of my head, and I put on my music player, hit random, and the first song given to me was Death Cab For Cutie’s “Grapevine Fires,” from their nice enough last album, Narrow Stairs.

The video for the song, see above, directed by the Walter Robot duo, is a lovely affair, very nice and effective, but as with so many music videos, it doesn’t follow the lyrical narrative of the song, which is especially a shame here, I think. Particularly since, for me, one of Ben Gibbard’s strengths isn’t just the sonic aspect of his songwriting, the chords he chooses or how well he plays them, but just the way he manages to capture a tone to flow through his short stories.

The songwriter and his brand new bride.

And “Grapevine Fires” is one of the most lovely, most melancholy short stories I think he’s ever released, a beautiful song, drenched in a harmony fit for a funeral, a juxtaposition of the beautiful and the tragic as a man, a woman, the woman’s daughter, all go for a picnic in a cemetery in the Los Angeles area to watch the fires in the distance. There’s wine and some paper cups for the couple, who may have already been evacuated, as they watch the desolation unfolding and the young girl, not aware of the seriousness, or perhaps despite it, just dances around. “The northern sky looks like the end of days” as the man watches her and realizes that, no matter what, everything’s gonna be just fine. Even when it isn’t. Maybe it’ll rain, maybe it won’t. Either way, it’s only a matter of time. And you’re alive today.

Press play and scroll!

Maybe it’s part of my deep-seated sociopathic tendencies, but I’ve long daydreamed about a lifting of the veil. There’s something seductive about the idea. Much in the same way that Lost mines a collective inner desire to get marooned in a plane crash; the end of the world — deadly chaotic as it may be — feels like our best chance to relax and escape the rat race. When faced with mortgage payments and performance reviews, wouldn’t we all rather be siphoning gas, looting abandoned houses and hiding from feral catamites?

Horrible Disasters seem to mark my life. A few days after I moved into a house in Santa Cruz, some religious assholes flew planes into the World Trade Center. While I was driving down I-5, moving to San Diego, New Orleans was getting obliterated by Katrina. Shortly after I moved back from San Diego, the town threatened to burn itself down. Then, a year later, I was choking on smoke fumes as I walked across the parking lot to a job interview in Northern California. I got the job. And now, it’s LA’s turn again.

Sidebar: this is the fourth catastrophic fire to hit California in the past seven years. And the third year in a row. At what point should we start getting concerned?

Anyway, The night before Katrina wiped out New Orleans, I wrote a blog wherein I expressed my hope that the approaching hurricane would cause catastrophic damage. I got my wish! So let’s give it another shot. I would very much like to see the current fire burn the Hollywood sign. Make it happen!

Before we get into this here Auteur Theory thingie on the biggest movie event of the summer, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, let’s get one thing out of the way.

1)      There are major spoilers here, so if for whatever reason you’re some kind of anti-social non conformist who hasn’t ran, nay sprinted out to see the biggest movie event of the Summer, well, there’s ‘bout to be a whole shitload of spoilers up in that ass.

Now, I’m no film scholar, that’s not what I went to school for, but sometimes aren’t the ones who aren’t the professionals the best at what they do?  With that in mind I’m here to blather on about Sir Michael Bay’s Magnum Opus, the biggest movie event of the summer; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. T:RotF is the sequel to the biggest movie event of the summer of 2007, Transformers, which in itself was a live action movie adaptation of the biggest syndicated television event of many a 80’s baby childhood afternoon and accompanying Hasbro toy line, Transformers.

Now the 2007 film came under much fire and duress from many critics, stating hurtful things such as “that was completely retarded,” and “what the fuck was going on,” or “Someone help, my husband is epileptic and is going into a seizure!”  And to the critics credit they were not totally at fault for the bile with which they spewed.  True, John Tutturo was criminally underutilized and not allowed to reach such Corinthian heights of acting which he displayed in You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.  True, the character design for all of the transformers looked like they done by an agitated autistic kid.

But that’s not why we are here, we’re here to dive head first into the dirty details of T:RotF (carefully, for the exposed nails).  Not only is T:RotF the biggest movie event of the summer, but it is also a very nuanced FILM that deigns to take on even more social issues and commentary than its biggest movie event of the summer status could even belie.  From my limited screenings numbering in at only half a dozen or so I have pinpointed three main themes throughout this film.  The first two will be discussed tonight while we will parse through the third this Thursday.

Race Relations: Mudflap and Skidz

Skidz and Mudflap

Minstrel Shows began to take form sometime around the 1830s and exploded in popularity on through the Civil War, dying out sometime after the turn of the century, before making a nationwide comeback in the 1990s with the formation of the UPN and WB television networks.  The main point of the Minstrel Show, of course, was white actors and entertainers performing in blackface and portraying blacks in insulting stereotypes.  All the more damning was the practice after the Civil War to have black actors perform in blackface as well.  A more recent example would be the guy who voiced Jar Jar Binks.

In the first Transformers movie the lone black Autobot was Jazz, a Pontiac Solstice who transformed into a breakdancin,’ sass talkin’ and confident young black Autobot.  “What’s crackin’, Bitches!?” being his trademarked catchphrase.  And like so many other blockbuster fare of yore, the lone black Autobot was the only one to meet a violent end when he was ripped asunder by Megatron.

For T:RotF Michael Bay wanted to address race relations in a post-racial America, and he did so with the inclusion of the characters of Mudflap and Skidz, twin autobots who start out as two integral parts of a Chinese ice cream truck, then take on the form of Chevy’s concept cars the Trax and Beat, GM’s foray into the red hot sub-compact god awful gaudy tuner market currently monopolized by Toyota offshoot, Scion.  Bay has come under fire for Mudflap and Skidz, who many cite as being yet another example of Hollywood style Minstrelism.  Both characters share a face that is reminiscent of an R. Crumb caricature of a black person mixed with a monkey, both talk in outdated “urban” slang and cadence that would find a home somewhere between Do the Right Thing and Boyz N the Hood.  Skidz has a gold tooth that he unfortunately loses in the climactic battle and at one point it is revealed that neither could read.

Of course the chattering classes have raised their swords high and sounded the battlecry, to which Bay responded, a bit coyishly, stating that Mudflap and Skidz were just “good clean fun.”  But really, Bay knew what he was doing.  I mean look at one of the voice actors.

Skidz, the "smarter one."

Bay’s inclusion of Mudflap and Skidz was his defiant stand against the contention that this is a post-race America.  Apropos that this would be the biggest movie event of the same Summer that Sonia Sotomayor faces hearings for her appointment to the US Supreme Court.  Because afterall, if this truly is post-race America, then why is there a minstrel show going on right in the middle of the biggest movie event of the Summer while Congress argues over whether or not someone can use their latina vagina and the life lessons it has brought them to judge whether a person is guilty or innocent just by looking at them.

The Relevance of Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand

While working on Around the World in Eighty Days author Jules Verne was lobbied by transport and shipping companies to be included in the story.  Thus the concept of product placement was born, and it has evolved from cigarettes in the early movies to such eventual overuse that it resulted in lampooning by Arrested Development and 30 Rock. (Quick tangent, NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman’s main decree when taking over the post in 2007 was to find new revenue streams through product placement in the shows he developed.  Nissan automobiles in Heroes, the Ford Mustang in the failed reboot of Knight Rider, the snarky Snapple and Verizon jokes in 30 Rock.  We might all think we’re impervious to these transparent pitches, but I can tell you personally that the Chili’s franchise has experienced a good deal of business from the writers of this very site thanks to a joke from The Office crafted around the very idea of product placement.)

If 30 Rock and Arrested Development’s use of product placement were examples of a clear disdain for the practice, than Bay’s 2007 Transformers film could would be a clear example of joyful willingness for product placement.  In this case the product was that of the largest car manufacturer in the world, the mighty General Motors.  Ironhide transformed into the GMC Topkick, a big rig truck with a pick up truck bed.  Ratchet transformed into a Hummer H3 outfitted for search and rescue purposes.  Jazz the aforementioned Pontiac Solstice and Bumblebee into, first a rusty old Chevy Camaro and then finally the then concept version of the new rebooted Camaro.

The product placement was so strong in the 2007 Transformers that it appears the entire climax of the film was written AROUND the ability to have a long form GM commercial in the middle of it all.  At one point in the movie the Transformers and their human buddies come into possession of what everyone was fighting over in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  For some reason, even though they want to keep their presence a secret, everyone gets a big ole convoy going so they can drive to a surprisingly crowded downtown LA.   Nothing happens for the several minutes or so everyone is driving there, just a bunch of good looks at all these GM vehicles driving around in the desert.

Now in 2009 things have changed, the mighty GM has fallen.  First GM went with the other two of the Big 3, Ford and Chrysler, to beg America for money.  Then Obama fired GM’s CEO, who had the audacity to name a vehicle after himself, and GM ended up filing for bankruptcy.  Now the future is uncertain for GM, many of its different brands have already seen their ultimate demise, such as Hummer (Sorry Ratchet) and Pontiac (I guess its good they killed off Jazz, then).  GMC has discontinued production of the Topkick (I’m pretty sure the only person who actually drove one was Ashton Kutcher, anyway).  The new concept  Chevy Camaro sits in limbo as no timeline has been set to start full-scale production.  You can say that’s some pretty bad luck for Michael Bay that in 2 short years his movie is full of dated vehicles, but Bay turned these lemons into lemonade.

Adam Smith is the world’s first economist, in fact I think he invented economics, or something like that.  In his seminal work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations he posited the theory of the “invisible hand” of the market that everyone has since taken and run away with.  In short order the invisible hand of the market is the theory that the market will self regulate itself because everyone will be acting in their rational self-interest.  The invisible hand will be later fleshed out when Russell Crowe develops his game theory.  In a relevant instance the invisible hand is moving the domestic automobile market away from large gluttonus corporations that produce overlarge, overpowered and over…gas guzzling jalopies.  It’s in the markets best interest because capital is scarcer and therefore should only be spent on efficient automobiles made by efficient companies and, oh yeah, THE SPECTRE OF PEAK MOTHERFUCKING OIL!

Faced with the market adapting to poo on his product placement parade, Bay could’ve just sat there and took it.  Writing in nonsense reasons why Ironhide is now all of a sudden a Honda Ridgeline and Bumblebee a VW Beetle (now THAT would be preposterous) into the storyline.  But no, he did not do that, and not only did he keep everyone the same vehicle, the new transformer characters took on the form of MORE GM vehicles.  The aforementioned Mudflap and Skidz transform into the Chevy Trax and Beat, respectively, two haphazardly thrown together concept cars that hope to wedge Chevy into a market that is already completely owned by a foreign competitor (also, if you google either you don’t get any hits after their unveiling in Spring 2007, which does not bode well for the likelyhood you’ll ever see one on the road).  Sideswipe transforms into a fancy new concept Chevy Corvette,  which is probably sitting between the Trax and Beat cars and the Camaro in the Never Going to Be Built wing of the Library of Congress.  And finally Jolt transforms into Chevy’s misguided attempt at resurrect the electric car, the Volt, which wouldn’t be so bad if they hadn’t killed the electric car with the EV1.

A big theme for the Transformer universe, something that runs through all the television shows, comic books, toys, movies, etc. is robots in disguise.  Even more specific to the movies the Transformers are hiding on Earth, their very existence being safeguarded by President Obama and his best men.  By embracing the failed economics of GM product placement, Bay is providing a little thought exercise for the audience that I have decided to play along with.  Now on average the lifespan of a vehicle is 7-10 years and it usually takes 15 years or so for the US auto market to fully overhaul the fleet of vehicles used.  Think about it, when I started driving in the mid-90s the oldest cars that were driven by poor people and new drivers were late 70’s/early 80’s clunkers that were falling apart.  Nowadays if you look around you the majority of clunkers you see poor people and new drivers in are from the early to mid-90’s.  So let’s say that the Autobots are entering America’s fleet during the 2007-2009 stretch.  First thing that will seem odd will be the large amount of concept cars that never saw full scale production, but the average American driver really doesn’t know what a concept car is, so they can get away with it for a couple years.  Then in 7-10 years the last remaining Pontiacs, Hummers and opkicks start to leave America’s roads it will be a rare occurance to see a fully functioning GMC Topkick out and about.  By 15 years the disguises the Autobots have chosen will be what makes them stick out.  Michael Bay is asking the audience if one should ever try to hide who we truly are on in the inside, because even if we are able to disguise that, Adam Smith’s invisible hand is just gonna pull our pants down for all the world to see, like that Kevin Bacon movie.  Footloose, I think it was.

For Thursday: And, oh yeah, PEAK MOTHERFUCKING OIL… and energon!

This blogpost was written on Occam’s iPhone somewhere on one of the many clothing optional beaches along the California coast.

Keith Olbermann wishes he were this generation’s Murrow. This generation’s Beale. But he’s not.

Jon 1, the Whoring Financial Media 0

A fascinating thing is occurring on television right now. In the midst of the Second Great Depression, Jon Stewart has been absolutely dismantling the Financial Punditocracy. Tonight featured an extended interview between Stewart and newfound rival Jim Cramer of “Mad Money.” You should just go watch it here.

I really do think Jon ought to get Pulitzer consideration for his takedown of CNBC over the last two weeks. What you’re seeing play out on the airwaves of basic cable and the Internet is the sudden and furious dissolution of an entire paradigm of financial “wisdom.” Stewart and his writers do a great job of boiling down the economic collapse to its essential elements without disregarding the complexity of the situation. Plus, it’s painfully funny.

We here at Counterforce recognize there are many reasons to fear tomorrow. Terrorists living next door, government agents listening to your phone calls because there are terrorists living next door, climate change, Bravo’s never ending parade of reality competition TV shows based on the pastimes of homosexuals and the hags who love’em, a possible McCain presidency, a possible offspring of Madonna and A-Rod, a possible Bravo reality TV show based on Madonna and A-Rod raising said offspring (sure to feature lots of underwear swapping). We also realize that some of you might need your worst fears assuaged and advice on how to cope with these coming atrocities. Well, we’re sorry but you’re a big boy/girl and you’re just gonna have to learn how to deal with it.

…

We’re sorry, that was mean. We’ll tell you what, to make it up to you we have invited world renowned Zoologist, European playboy and World Champion Gitin’r Doner, Occam Razor, to write a weekly column on what you can do in preparing for a Post Peak Oil World, titled What You Can Do in Preparing for a Post Peak Oil World. Occam suffers fools lightly and will not be taking any questions at the end of each column.

—

One day a long time ago all these French lady fishmongers were sitting around bitching and moaning how high the price of bread was. Finally someone tired of listening to them squawk on and on endlessly told them to do something about it or shut the fuck up. So they probably squawked on and on endlessly about whether they should take that person’s advice, and after a coffee klatch or something they decided they were going to do something about it. They had it in their mind that the hoity toity of France had shacked up with all that bread in the suburbs of Paris, Versailles. So they strapped up and marched on Versailles with the aim of gafflin’ that bread.

Once there they started a lootin’ and a shootin’. They made it to the royal palace and captured two of the guards, beheaded them, and stuck their heads on pikes. That’s pretty hardcore, especially for French people. Then they called for Marie Antoinette and she said something about eating cake, which the mob found fairly cliché so they all pointed their iron at her, but she didn’t fake the funk, so they left. Personally, I think they just got tired of looking at Kirsten Dunst’s janky ass mouth. Marie Antointette then went on to live a long happy life, I’m pretty sure.

I mean really, it was her or Kirsten Dunst.

Well now, as we have discussed there’s a time of hurt on the horizon even worse than hedge fund swindles, housing market collapses and Jennifer Anniston and John Mayer break ups. I really thought those two kids would last, they seemed so in love. James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency details the many ways us US Americans have mishandled our resources since the WWII. The end result is a sense of entitlement that has been marinating several generations deep. Chief among them the real American dream, no not home ownership (though somewhat related), but that you can make a dollar out of 15 cents. Through environmental degradation and obscene labor practices the Industrial Revolution in America was actually geared towards the manufacture of things of worth, the automobile withstanding. Soon people didn’t want to break their backs in the ole broom factory when they could go to college and become a systems analyst. So they did, and then they bought their kids Howdy Dowdy shit, or something. I dunno, I’ve missed the last two episodes of Madmen.

He still totally owns.

Point is, US Americans got leather so soft. And spoiled, spoiled rotten. Let me ask you a rhetorical question that I expect to have answered, when you encounter a spoiled child with a sense of entitlement who is used to having nummy nummy High Fructose Corn Syrup Aid all the time, and you tell them that the Mexicans and Arabs can’t produce anymore High Fructose Corn Syrup Aid and the Africans will only sell what little High Fructose Corn Syrup Aid they have to the Chinese and the Russians will never in a million year share the last remaining reserves of substance of High Fructose Corn Syrup Aid with that spoiled child with a sense of entitlement, what do you think that spoiled child with a sense of entitlement will do?

I’m going to assume you said throw a fit. Kicking. Screaming. Banging their head on the floor and then eventually coming at dear ole Mum with a knife. So it is only natural that a nation full of spoiled children of all ages with a raging sense of entitlement will react no differently when the life they know can no longer run without that sweet sweet oil. They will be a lootin’ and a shootin’ and placing heads on pikes. Which means you the reader will have to be prepared how to deal with the angry mobs, and that’s what we will discuss in this article. After all, the point of this column is what you can do in preparing for a Post Peak Oil World, that’s why it’s called What You Can Do in Preparing for a Post Peak Oil World.

I was almost there, manne!

The plan of attack is to hide amongst the unwashed (we’re talking literally in the absence of proper infrastructure) masses. While hopefully at the end of this column’s run you will be fully prepared to live well adjusted lives, you cannot live in complete isolation and you will have to interact with what remains of society once in a while. The easiest way would be to adopt some retarded sob story about how close you were to realizing the American dream. Phrases such as “Some future, huh? I was this close to finish paying off the Denali, I was totally going to hop on a flight to Vegas and bet it all on red. But unfortunately Southwest went out of business mid-flight and I crashed landed on this mysterious island that demands sacrifices.” will totally help you fit in with the others… who aren’t as well prepared.

They key thing that will you need to do in order to fit in with the torch and pitch fork wielding set, is how to either properly disembowel or behead someone loosely associated with present day authority or aristocracy. I got this lesson from Remarque: always aim the blade for the stomach, if you aim too high your blade will become stuck in the ribcage and that will slow you down and perhaps piss off the group of former real estate agents and home furnishings salesmen you’re raiding the gated community with. Beheading is simple, it’s much like laying a good hit in football, aim for several inches behind the neck, so that when you make your fatal blow you go through the neck, and a sound like wailing winds could be heard, but if you mess up you could have that happen to your own, which… would… be… ridiculoussssssss…

Protect your neck.

Well there you have it, the easy steps for survival if you have to come out your compound to hunt down rabbits and find yourself in the presence of an angry mob ready to lay siege on Piedmont.

Next Week: Beans, rabbit and maize: The dietary choices you must prepare yourself to make in a Post Peak Oil World.

Gold Medal Winner. Seriously.

India won their first individual Olympic Gold Medal ever the other day. Dude by the name of Abhinav Bindra. You know what it was for? Air-rifling. What a disgrace. Just look at the picture of that guy. My sympathies go out to you, peoples of the Indian nation. If I were from the sub-continent, I would demand that this dork decline the gold metal. This is like a home run ball that you throw back. Poor Indians, now their only claim to world sports fame is a fucking gold medal in fucking BB-guns. This dude looks like he practiced for the event by going paint-balling and having LAN parties with his buds from the dorm. That, sir, is not an Olympic athlete. Right now, Curling medalists are snickering “pussy” under their breath and feeling better about themselves. BB-gun shooting is an Olympic event? Fuck. How the hell has a big, modern country like India not won a real gold medal yet? Shouldn’t the other big nations bag it in like shot-putting or something just as a matter of courteous diplomacy? France has a shitload of gold medals, wtf? (editor’s note: with the Democratic Party sweep of Congress in 2006, it was once again deemed okay to make fun of the French.)

If any of our fellow world citizens of Indian descent are reading this, please offer up your own takes. Would you rather India won the gold in a cheesy event for the symbolism of it, or would you prefer the slate was clean until a more impressive victory came along?

On the other hand, I would totally watch an international competition of Nerd Games featuring paintball, Halo 3, Mario Kart, Mini-Golf, Street Fighter II, water-balloon launching and the like. That would kick ass. But only if the nerds had to play in every event. You wouldn’t want some ringer who was only there for the air hockey to skew the results.

I can has gold medal?

In other news, Counterforce apologizes for the lack of an update from Occam Razor this week on Living in a Post Peak Oil World. Mr. Razor shall return next week. Suffice it to say, the ability to shoot an air-rifle with extreme accuracy is not one of the life skills needed to survive in a Post Peak Oil World. Especially if you’re shooting plastic pellets. Which, as we all know, are made of oil. Mr. Bindra had better hope he can parlay that shiny medallion into some big-bootied ‘tang if he wishes to make it in the Post Peak Oil crisis.

Not as rare as you might think

Yahoo always runs such great AP headlines. There is really not much else to say. I like that after the crazy Chinese guy beheaded the dude, he then proceeded to cut off other body parts and eat them. That’s an A for effort. But the ad campaign: that’s just stupid. Nobody ever calls it “car rage” or “bus rage,” they call it “Road Rage.” And busses are on roads. Unless they’re AirBusses (then they’re nationally subsidized and anti-competitive).

Besides, I once did a cross-country 60-hour deal on a Greyhound and there’s nothing fucking relaxing about that. For one, you don’t sleep. Not if you want to keep your stuff. And even if you wanted to doze, the chairs are too uncomfortable for it. Plus, I think they stopped every four hours to refuel and you had to get off.

The moral of this story is that knife fights are totally in!