Spider Jerusalem Wack

Since my beautiful girlfriend left for Zoland, I’ve been an image of lethargy personified by such anti-politically correct heroes as Spider Jerusalem. Means I’m lazy, I feel like everything I do is a waste of the things I could’ve done, I’m unfree in the liberty that perpetual self induced anonymity brought on my life. I’ve been listening to suppressive adult alternatives and drinking tropicana and nimbu pani with the illusion that they’re going to give me enough spunk to crank the juice one last time every evening before bed. A dreamless sleep and endless void, away from systematic carnage and one shots.



Speaking of Spider, I’ve been meaning to write a little about Transmetropolitan since I got hooked awhile back when I was scouring the web for Warren Ellis material. When I first saw the naked Spider with his tattoos flipping the birdy, the first thing that came to me were those old 2000ad publications of pseudo futuristic apocalyptic aftermath cyberpunk anti heroes and some of the Tank Girl issues. But I was surprised at how different Transmet is from the typical Garth Ennis type science fiction, although I respect Ennis and think highly of his works, after reading too much of it they’ve became boring and bland. Maybe its got to do with the lack of real purpose of his protagonists. There is no real sense of achievement after finishing an issue these days. Spider on the other hand is a ball to read, everything he does is contradictory to his personality, but there’s always that underlying suspense that everything in the whole damn place is going to implode on itself anytime. And he doesn’t give a shit as long as there’s truth in what he gives. He was driven to achieve this one deal with himself and that was his purpose.


Spider is a hard-hitting gonzo journalist and a reluctant political hero, in the wake of him covering a pro genetic modification movement which culminated in him stopping a state stimulated riot. The shape the city was in will be more then satisfactorily explained my this ad of cola on the preview issue.


The theme is a post cyberpunk dystopian comic noir society where morality is defined by your stance on genetic engineering, technological innovation and the resultant social disintegration that human advancement is supposed to bring about.

I have always been a fan of gonzo journalism, I like the cynical presentation and in-your-face sarcasm and mostly, the sense that the piece is written by an opinionated jerk who’s going to stand by his story no matter what. There are times when you just want opinions because you’re either too lazy to form your own from the average news or you don’t trust your instinct or you feel less informed. People like Spider Jerusalem make comprehending the complexities of the world a little bit easier by being honest to themselves and to us. I especially love the ending, without spoiling it for eanyone you can rest assured Spider doesn’t disappoint even when it seemed like he’s going to fade out he will light things up until he burns away.

Censorship, Death and Che Guevara

One thing that struck me while reading 21 Techniques of Silent Killing by Master Hei Long was the descriptions of the techniques were as cold as the title. Considering the sensitive nature of its subject (Killing, Death) the Master’s words were so literal and industrial that you wouldn’t be blamed if at some point you thought you were reading a recipe from a cookbook. If you’re interested in these kinds of things and have the tendency to imagine yourself in the shoes of the person you’re reading about, the book pulls you in, rolls you around a bit and just throws you out disoriented, into the faggot that you have become in your mind. It’s not that this is so different from all the murder inc type instructional books out there in what it contains and traditionally, most of these books give the impression that everything in them are theoretical and that actually doing them hands on are plain crazy and if some crazy guy actually does them for kicks they’d be sorry it happened, but in 21 TSK forget about the friendly metaphors and parental warnings, the assumption is if you’re such a morally binding citizen why the fuck did you read this book, now fish out your trusty nunchaku and sharpen that shiv cos you’re no longer looking in.



I was thinking about it and I realized that, bearing in mind the serious business that killing is, books like this have a reason for being banned as oppose to how determined and stupid we all are to demand censorship be lifted on all things people like Master Hei Long throws at us. The military precision of the writing is well deserving of the seriousness of the subject. It diverts the generally gullible minds to straggle away to greener or sorrier pastures. Anyway, let’s digress a little here, let’s lift the damn censorship and hawk the Anarchist Cookbook in the next book fair for instance; it becomes a best seller because people buy them as survival guide. Then popular publishing houses started rolling out books about killing with funny anecdotes and college friendly manga type figures come next winter. Then just when you thought it’s the best thing since discovery channel some crazy nerd went John Rambo on his high school friends because nobody likes him and he stinks. Fact is when people started explaining about the gravity of the subject at the prologue of instructional books, they only spur interest, it’s like smoking is cool when you’re in high school and stupid high school kids think you have street creds or whatever but not so much when you’re addicted to it and you can’t shit unless you turn your toilet into an indian smoke signal.



Let’s be fair to our senses and think about what we’re fucking with before we shout ‘Ban Censorship’ to everything. We are slaves of generalization, we tend to worship everything new without thinking about what we really want. A few years back we saw Che Guevara as some sort of cool public enemy type revolutionist, sure he’s a great guy with great ideas, utopian but great anyway but many of the people sporting Che’s Ts don’t know anything about what he stands for or what the trend was all about. And people who think they’re above the rest delved too much into the little details and realized that he was all about torture and didn’t give a cow’s backlight about them. We either hide behind our ignorance to find the ultimate coolness or we dig up the reason the rest of the world is not and fail to see the big picture. Some of us are so blinded by the trend that we’d mistake a nipple suction for a bong pipe while some of us read too much into stuff to be a little more obscure that we’d masturbate with it. The upshot is that we trivialize the ideals behind great ideas and pass them off as seasonal whim for peer conscious pricks to boost their ego with. Somewhere along the line we just played down what could have been more to us then we never knew when it hit the air in a big way.