- Don’t think too much.
- Always deny.
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Manifesto #7: A Short Manifesto
Stanley Brouwn, 1964
NO MUSIC
NO THEATRE
NO ART
NO
THERE WILL BE SOUND
COLOR
LIGHT
SPACE
TIME
MOVEMENT
Manifesto #6: Dogme 95
The Vow of Chastity (abridged)
I swear to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by Dogme 95:
- Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in.
- The sound must never be produced apart from the image or vice-versa.
- The camera must be handheld. Any movement or mobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
- The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable.
- Optical work and filters are forbidden.
- The film must not contain superficial action.
- Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden.
- Genre movies are not acceptable.
- The film format must be Academy 35mm.
- The director must not be credited.
Furthermore I swear as a director to refrain from personal taste. I am no longer an artist. I swear to refrain from creating a ‘work’, as I regard the instant as more important than the whole. My supreme goal is to force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations.
Manifesto #5: The SCUM Manifesto (abridged)
by Valerie Solanas
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore.
It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so.
The male an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage.
To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can’t relate to anything other than his own physical sensations.
He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming.
He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings — hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt — and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn’t.
To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he’s a machine, a walking dildo.
(He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men).
Women, in other words, don’t have penis envy; men have pussy envy.
He would rather go out in a blaze of glory than to plod grimly on for fifty more years.
Niceness, Politeness, and `Dignity’: Every man, deep down, knows he’s a worthless piece of shit.
Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society: There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most.
Just think of what you could do with 80 trillion dollars — invest it! And in three years time you’d have 300 trillion dollars!!!
Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually — he givers her hand in marriage; the other part is for him.
being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness.
The effect of fatherhood on females is to make them male.
The effect of fathers, in sum, has been to corrode the world with maleness.
Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood), and Functionalism: The male is just a bunch of conditioned reflexes.
Passive, rattle-headed Daddy’s Girl is easily reduced to a hot water bottle with tits.
actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm.
We now have sperm banks.
In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music — all with love.
In other words, create a magic world.
Prevention of Privacy:
Isolation, Suburbs, and Prevention of Community:
every man is an island.
The `hippy’ isn’t quite as strong as the average man.
A true community consists of individuals.
The `hippy’ babbles on about individuality.
Each `hippy’ will, in panic, grad the first simpleton who digs him.
Conformity:
The farthest out male is the drag queen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all the other drag queens like the functionalist, he has an identity — he is female.
Authority and Government:
There’s no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders.
Philosophy, Religion, and Morality Based on Sex:
(the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd)
Most men men label the male condition the Human Condition, as a philosophical dilemma.
that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love.
Prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc): The male needs scapegoats.
Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes:
The purpose of `higher’ education is not to educate but to exclude as many as possible from the various professions..
No genuine social revolution can be accomplished by the male.
The male `rebel’ is a farce; this is the male’s `society.’
If women don’t get their asses in gear fast, we may very well all die.
Prevention of Conversation: Male `intellectual conversation’ is a strained compulsive attempt to impress the female.
Daddy’s Girl, she believes she’s grooving on what bores the shit out of her.
Prevention of Friendship (Love): love can’t exist between two males, between a male and a female, or between two females.
Even amongst groovy females.
`Great Art’ and `Culture’:
The vast majority of people are easily conned into believing that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, ambiguity and boredom are marks of depth and brilliance.
A `male artist’ is a contradiction in terms.
The true artist is every self-confident, healthy female, and in a female society the only Art, the only Culture, will be conceited, kooky, funky, females grooving on each other and on everything else in the universe.
Sexuality: Sex is a gross waste of time.
Boredom: Life, an utter bore.
Secrecy, Censorship, Suppression of Knowledge and Ideas, and Exposes: Every male’s deep-seated, secret, most hideous fear is of being discovered to be not a female, but a male, a subhuman animal.
The bugs up his ass aren’t in him, they’re in Russia.
Distrust:
Ugliness:
Hatred and Violence:
Disease and Death:
Just as humans have a prior right to existence over dogs by virtue of being more highly evolved and having a superior consciousness, so women have a prior right to existence over men.
The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act.
Eventually the natural course of events, of social evolution, will lead to total female control of the world.
But SCUM is impatient; SCUM is not consoled by the thought that future generations will thrive; SCUM wants to grab some thrilling living for itself.
SCUM is too impatient to wait for the de-brainwashing of millions of assholes:
SCUM will become members of the unwork force, the fuck-up force; they will get jobs of various kinds an unwork. For example, SCUM salesgirls will not charge for merchandise; SCUM telephone operators will not charge for calls; SCUM office and factory workers, in addition to fucking up their work, will secretly destroy equipment. SCUM will unwork at a job until fired, then get a new job to unwork at.
SCUM will forcibly relieve bus drivers, cab drivers and subway token sellers of their jobs and run buses and cabs and dispense free tokens to the public.
SCUM will destroy all useless and harmful objects.
Eventually SCUM will take over the airwaves.
SCUM will couple-bust — barge into couples, wherever they are, and bust them up.
SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: `I am a turd, a lowly abject turd.’
Dropping out is not the answer; fucking-up is.
SCUM will enthusiastically encourage it.
If S SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.
SCUM will always be furtive, sneaky, underhanded.
A completely automated society can be accomplished very simply and quickly.
The elimination of money and the complete institution of automation are basic.
Men who are rational won’t kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise.
– end –
Psst: there’s a TACO TRUCK in La Verne
Less than a year ago, as we were driving home down Arrow Highway (probably from Costco – we might be the record holders for annual Costco visits), we passed the same nondescript neighborhood market we’d passed hundreds of times, the one that sells beer, lotto tickets, has a faded Corona girl cut-out leaning a bit asway out front. We’d never gone-no real reason save we don’t do a lot of tiny neighborhood market shopping (did we mention our Costco addiction?).
This time, there was a taco truck.
We happen to like tacos.
We stopped by a few weeks later and tried a variety of tacos. We’ve gone back now many times. It’s a mile walk from our house, which is sort of the perfect distance to both work up a taco appetite and then walk off a bit too much of taco eating, the sort of thing that happens when we get tacos. (It’s literally across the street from the University of La Verne, so it’s even closer from work. I’ve seen colleagues there, picking up orders–we exchange knowing glances.)
Here’s the menu:
We have tried: the mulitas (a mini-quesadilla on corn tortillas; slight, greasy, delicious), the BRC burrito (huge, delicious: we suspect that the beans at Tavos are *definitely* larded; this is good, in our minds); the chicken and al pastor burritos (also great: the chicken at Tavos is the most consistent protein we’ve tried; nicely spiced, big chunks, you can watch the cooks going to town on the meat with a cleaver order by order, and somehow their whack-chopping makes it taste better; the al pastor is non-traditional: well-spiced but not rotisserie; it’s fine); we’ve had all the tacos save chicharron and buche (sorry: we’re lame, but if there were suadero or cabeza or lengua, I’d be all over it): the carnitas is, alternately, the best protein or not, depending on how well trimmed the meat is (they cook it a long time: it’s almost flaky in its consistency, which calls to mind good old Tucson carne seca); the carne asada is tasty but consistently inconsistent, with a bit too much ligature. The salsas are excellent – the rojo smoky and could be a little deeper (roast those chiles!), but the verde is piquant, spicy, savory, fantastic.
We can walk in the evening hour a mile through our odd little burg. We can order a BRC burrito, a couple chicken and a couple carnitas tacos, drown them in verde salsa and lime juice, and then sit back with our neighbors, eating al fresco, drinking a beer from the market and assuming it’s legal, all as the sun sets and the football team practices across the street, their helmets clinking, their voices murmuring, a whistle going off now and again, and the tacos, one bite after the next, going down.
And we are happy.
Alert: 99¢ Tacos Still Exist
A few years ago, all of two miles from our house, a carnicería opened up, or reopened, or was bought and reopened–something, anywat. We aren’t much for meat grilling at home, so we never had much reason to go inside.
A few *months* ago, they started advertising a new item: 99¢ tacos.
Still, for some reason, we didn’t go in.
Why? Partly suspicion: no taquería sells tacos that cheap anymore. Plus they seemed a little desperate, as they put multiple signs out all the time (sometimes employing people to wave said signs around). We’d already completed our taco quest–it’s possible that we (I) felt a little too certain about where one could find the best tacos. And all that was combined with the opening of our first local taco truck only one mile from our front door (post yet-to-come), kept us away.
Today we went inside, entering Raffa’s Carnicería Panadería Taquería #3. We found a great little shop: other customers seated inside, eating lunch (there’s a shaded outdoor seating area); a few rows of shelf-stable foods; a solid selection of produce, a gorgeous display of pastries, great ready-to-grill meats (asadas, pollos); beautiful pre-packaged freshly made tamales, salsas, guacamoles, and ceviches; and the biggest single piece of chicharrón I’ve ever seen (sorry no pic, but picture a state-fair-pig-sized piece of fried skin).
And these:
This is an easy thing to write: Raffa’s is really good. Two excellent salsas, one richly hot rojo and a nicely tangy spiced verde. The pollo: we don’t recommend-not bad, a little bland. Same with the al pastor. But those aside: the carne asada has more flavor than any other carne asada we’ve tried in the Pomona Valley area (were there some chewy/tendony bites? There were. Oh well). The chorizo was absurd: savory, spicy, grilled to a slight char. And the carnitas (which they sell by the pound) was as good as the carnitas you’ll get at Border Grill … for, again, less than a buck.
So we learn again: random little pop-up parking lot tacos … of course we should duck in immediately and try them, wherever they are, whenever we come across them. You should, too–we’ll see you there next time?
