Smart Quotes

Quotes from Double Duce, by Aaron Cometbus
I'm a big Cometbus fan. Both the author and the zine of the same name (or pseudonym, as it were). I started reading his stuff, which is about the punk lifestyle in Oakland and Berkeley, when I first moved out here, and was living my sanitized healthier happier version of said punk lifestyle. Enjoy these quotes from Cometbus's latest book, Double Duce [sic].

15. Frail Eels
Sluggos new girlfriend Vanessa was really, really loud. Late at night the
house would be dead quiet except for her howling and, occasionally, a tiny
rustling sound like someone blinking. Sluggo. He kept up the façade of
privacy against all odds. It was silly, because Duce was a big house, but
the walls were awfully thin.

When the screaming had momentarily subsided, I would hear whispering. It
was little G in the kitchen, Hey, does anyone have a cigarette they could
spare?

Yes, I would whisper, sitting at my desk in the attic at the
opposite end of the house. Come up and get it.
Sluggo would whisk Vanessa in and out of the house so fast that we barely
saw her. But, we heard her.

Hey, phone call for you, Sluggo, Id say. One more poser hobo
calling for train hopping advice. Hey, has anyone seen Sluggo?
I couldve sworn he was here a few minutes ago. Vanessa, what are
you doing in there? It sounds terrible. Sluggo will be mad if youre
messing with his cat.

When Little G and Jody first got together, they made no pretense of being
secretive about it. In the morning when he called out for a light, I
brought in a huge pot filled with lighter fluid. He invited me to down and
smoke with them. Even without three foot flames, I could se they were
glowing.

Everyone has a right, and a reason, to do it their own way, but I like it
when people are able to share that most private part of their lives.
I like seeing the charm and warmth it brings out. Not just sex, but
romance, and the crazy mix of emotions that come with it.

Too much energy focused in on itself destroys itself, in relationships
especially, so its good sometimes to have an outside party around to
bounce that energy off of. I like being that outside party, the third
wheel. I like the way I can team up with the girlfriend to tease my
friend, or team up with my friend to help him or her impress the girl.

I just figure, if you're going to share the bad times with your
friends, you should also share the good. If you're going to come to me
later when you get dumped and need to be cheered up, come share a little
of the happiness first.

37. Jed
Jed didn't have a bad thing to say about anyone. He just rattled on for
hours talking around the subject, dropping hints and asking questions
until you figured out the bad thing for him. Then he would go through
great lengths to deny it.

Don't you think, I mean I don't know, I'm probably wrong, But
I mean, no, you know how it is for some people, I'm not trying to,
like, claim my fame on the mike, you know, like the fucking ultimate, you
know, whatever, like, writer or something, but don't you think, I mean, the guy at Amoeba [record store], I guess he's pretty cool.

He wouldn't take your fanzine, even on consignment?, I said. Yeah, that's lame.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all, Jed said.

It wasn't what he was saying, but it was exactly what he meant. The
victim of a northern California upbringing, Jed couldn't state a fact or
even an opinion for fear that it would offend and oppress someone.
Speaking your mind was hatred, hatred was violence, and violence was
always wrong, especially in self-defense. It was a struggle just to get
him to apologize after, instead of before, something there was no reason
to apologize for in the first place.

Jed had an incredibly strict moral code, but he kept it to himself. You
never knew his rules and the reasoning behind them. Like my cousin Jana
who kept kosher, when she said, Oh, let me do the dishes, she really
meant, Don't touch the dishes. Jana would never let me do the dishes or
serve food, and Jed would never sit down and relax. Both made me really
nervous. Finally figuring out the reasons behind their stubbornness didn't
make me less nervous, but it did make me think they were less crazy.
Jed had been a vegetarian all his life, and he took it upon himself with a
kind of fanaticism. You would see him riding around town, standing
straight up with his legs out, making sure not to touch the leather
bicycle seat. Jed wouldn't use the upholstered chairs or couches at our
house, preferring to sit on the table or on top of the fridge. Not leather
guitar straps, no gluestick, no beer with pictures of hunters on the
label, no books about fishermen. No food, almost, since anything more than
two syllables on a list of ingredients was assumed to be a meat byproduct,
and anything processed probably had feces in it from rats in the
factories. Ink and gasoline were his two exceptions to the rule, necessary
evils which he still felt guilty using.

A strict moral code does not necessarily lead to paranoia, an overactive
imagination, and ridiculous judgements and assumptions. But, theres an
undeniable connection. Jed assumed the worst at all times. Maybe he
conceded, the world was only half rotten. He even once admitted that it
might be wrong to always expect someone with a gun to pop out of the
bushes and kill him.

It was exhausting because Jed wasnt interested in having his fears calmed
or soothed. It got old trying to explain that Sean wearing sleeveless
shirts did not, by implication, make him a perpetrator of domestic
violence. Jed loved to talk, but wasn't much of a listener. You walked
away so burnt out after talking to him, but Jed burned on and on.
He was committed to pacifism, yet everything about him was so strong and
forceful. Every gesture and every fear was exaggerated. Still, he went out
of his way to make his fears worse, always going to the most dangerous
places, the most uncomfortable spaces. In his duality he was both paranoid
and completely fearless. Pacifist, yet the last person you would ever want
to fight, because his determination and nervous tension were unstoppable.

That was Jed. One of the most timid and caring people I had ever met, one
of the most overbearing, close minded people I knew. The unstoppable,
ungovernable, unintelligible force. Jed.

84. Knock on Wood
Ada and I were together, and the closer we got, the closer I felt to
becoming part of the WDH family in a new way. We had always shared
a life, but one dark, passionate, psychotic part of it was missing for me.
Now I could cook breakfast not only for my hungover roommates and their
girlfriends, but for my hungover girlfriend as well. When we all drove
home from a long miserable night together, Ada would come along, and not
even as an outsider. Then for a change, they would have to listen to me
fuck. I tried to be extra loud to make up for lost time.

When I told my friends how good I felt, how proud and lucky
to have such a great girl hanging out with me, they didn't want to know.
Good news like that has to be a secret, or masked in cynicism, or saved
for later in hindsight when everything is fucked up.

I didn't want to wait to complain or reminisce about it later, I
wanted to shout it out and tell the world. If it should happen to go
wrong, let the world laugh at me. None of that Don't say something good
or it won't happen stuff. No knocking on wood, I was kicking down the
fucking door.

What a perfect time for something new, a fresh light to shine into the
corners of my life, and our life at Double Duce. What a terrible time for
something new, trying to build it upon a foundation that was quickly
rotting away, a beautiful plant growing in a pile of shit. How could I
explain all the mixed feelings, the expectations and disappointments, the
jealousies and animosities? Then again, what made me think she was an
escape from the stress and confusion, instead of an integral part?

Shitty title but good article.

Associated Press
Violent Protests Targeting Biotechnology
Tuesday October 14, 6:36 pm ET

By Paul Elias, AP Biotechnology Writer

Violent Protests Erupting Over Biotechnology As Growing Militant Opposition Grows [sic]

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A growing militant movement opposed to genetic engineering in agriculture and medicine is turning to violent and criminal sabotage -- from the bombing of a Bay Area biotech company to the destruction of genetically modified crops.

As a result, targeted companies aren't just taking extra security precautions but also often altering business strategies. The violence, which the FBI says suddenly became more serious this year, stems in part from frustration that peaceful protests have failed to slow the pace of biotech's progress.

"We've seen a drastic escalation in the use of violent tactics in the past year," said Phil Celestini, head of the FBI's domestic terrorism unit in Washington.

A range of militant environmental, economic and animal-rights activist groups have used the Internet to organize around biotechnology, first in Europe and now in the United States. Many fear the technology will forever harm nature while others object to how animals are treated in drug experiments.

A 25-year-old Californian, Daniel Andreas San Diego, is wanted by the FBI in connection with some of the most recent attacks: the bombings in August of the biotech company Chiron Corp. of Emeryville and last month of a nearby cosmetics manufacturer. Aside from a few shattered windows, little damage was done to either company.

The group that claimed responsibility for the blasts, the previously unheard of Revolutionary Cells, vowed more bombings were to come.

Authorities consider the bombings to mark a new chapter in anti-biotech militance in 2003 that included the vandalism of a Chiron executive's car and the trashing of a biology lab at Louisiana State University last month.

In France, an estimated half of the 100 plots of experimental biotech crops were destroyed this year, prompting some 1,500 scientists, including two Nobel laureates, to demand an end to the vandalism.

Genetically modified crop experimentation in Britain is also in danger due to sabotage and political opposition.

"Peaceful protests aren't ending the suffering," said Danielle Matthews, a spokeswoman for Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal rights group that supports property destruction but not human injury. The group has waged a four-year harassment campaign to shut down the Lawrenceville, N.J., laboratory of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company that tests drugs and chemicals on animals for companies including biotech firms.

"The companies say they care when they're faced with nonviolent protesters and then do nothing," Matthews said. "Maybe the companies will start caring when they have to pay to replace a few windows."

Almost since James Watson and Francis Crick discovered DNA 50 years ago, scientists have been exploring ways to manipulate and exploit those building blocks of life for everything from boosting crop yields to germ warfare.

But questions didn't arise about biotechnology's safety and impact on nature until San Francisco area scientists Herb Boyer and Stanley Cohen succeeded 30 years ago in splicing genes from one species into another. Since then, opposition to biotechnology research, first in agriculture and later in medicine, has grown, especially in Europe.

Now the criminal attacks are increasing in the United States. Chiron spokesman John Gallagher said attacks on the company, including the alleged unauthorized use of an executive's credit card, haven't changed the way the company does business.

But there is evidence that these "direct action" campaigns are having an effect on other companies.

The accounting firm Deloitte & Touche severed its ties with Huntingdon earlier this year because of harassment of its employees. Huntingdon itself moved its headquarters from the United Kingdom to Baltimore last year because of increasing violence against it.

In Britain, Bayer CropSciences said it no longer will plant experimental plots of genetically engineered crops because the government has declined to keep the locations confidential.

Bayer was the last company carrying out such trials in the United Kingdom. Other agricultural biotech companies had previously pulled out because such experimental plots were routinely destroyed by protesters.

And the biotech company Biogemma is contemplating leaving France because its experimental crops keep getting destroyed.

The unrest is also extending to the developing world, where biotech is heralded by proponents as a panacea for famine and pestilence but where anti-globalization activists fear corporate control of their livelihoods.

Last month, police in Bangalore, India arrested 29 people on riot charges after protesters injured two workers and destroyed a greenhouse at a research facility belonging to Monsanto Co., which sells genetically modified seeds.

That attack came a month after another mob in Bangalore attacked a warehouse once owned by Monsanto.

Ranjana Smetacek of Monsanto Bombay's office said the violence in India is the result of a single group's campaign against multinationals.

"I do not agree that protest against biotechnology is becoming violent in India," Smetacek said. "Most people who oppose biotechnology and Monsanto have expressed themselves in a peaceful way."