Rock ‘n Roll DYSTOPIA–Billie Joe Armstrong, famed pop punk rock teen idol, cursed at the audience and smashed his guitar in a totally inappropriate meltdown which threw the band’s public relations agents into a tizzy. The other members apologized on behalf of Armstrong, who is currently in ‘rehab’.
“I can’t believe he said the f word. He was scary,” said one twelve year old fan.
“The violence was just too much. Breaking things? That’s a no-no. I took my daughters home immediately,” said a concerned mother. “I’m glad he’s getting help, but that’s the last time we go to any more Green Day concerts.”
Promoters no longer allow slam dancing at Green Day concerts, and all stage dives are a total sham. Each show, Billie Joe coerces one audience member to jump into a ready group of stage-hands who are all properly insured and trained for catching stage divers.
“It used to be smashing guitars and cursing at the audience was rehab. The token trip to ‘rehab’ is a sham and everyone knows it,” said Iggy Pop, who is no longer allowed to smear peanut butter on himself and the audience because of insurance concerns about severe allergies.
Billie Joe failed to break the guitar with a single blow.
Internet legend John Tiessen spoke in defiance of IRC bans and IRL double trouble Barrett “The Wild One” Brown Monday. During his Internet podcast, Tiessen once again decried the rats amongst us, referring to undercover agents at Occupy meetings, and outlined the divide and conquer mentality of government opposition, referencing Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
Barrett Brown is in police custody after threatening the children of federal agents.
Tiessen quietly yelled to his audience of no one, “We’re rootin’ for Barrett Brown to get out of jail, and we’re fuckin’ protesting against that. They say they’re protestin’ against them but they’re not – they’re tryin’ to stop it. They’re tryin’ to stop the movement and they’re winning. They’re winning and people are listening to ’em. We are the pee-pool! We are the pee-pool!”
As something resembling emotions rose up within him, Tiessen got carried away with himself and, remembering why Brown, on whose behalf Tiessen is speaking, was arrested, corrected himself midstream: “We have our minds and we’re going to do what we want to do. If we want to take down the feds– if there’s five people that want to take down the feds . . . they’re gonna do it, leave ’em alone!”
Tiessen concluded by encouraging his presumably sleeping audience to “wake the fuck up.”
The following is funnier than anything we could possibly write ourselves
“What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”, he answers “Whaddaya got?”
Every prominent arrested Anonymous figure becomes the instant object of Photoshop transposition with heroic figures. In the case of the “Fuck Sabu” poster taken from freebarrettbrown.org, we see Brown’s face transplanted onto Johnny (Marlon Brando) from The Wild One, a stereotypical rebel biker without a cause. Our link to Brown is mediated through this character, and the qualities of the biker hero completely and utterly replace those of Brown. Similarly, Sabu’s identity is superseded by the role of a subordinate police officer who stands behind Brown, grinning victoriously. In the far background, the solemn parents watch the scene, powerless and blinded.
“Inasmuch as photography is an ellipse of language and a condensation of an ‘ineffable’ social whole, it constitutes an anti-intellectual weapon and tends to spirit away ‘politics’ (that is to say a body of problems and solutions) to the advantage of a ‘manner of being’, a socio-moral status … Photography is therefore above all the acknowledgement of something deep and irrational co-extensive with politics.” ~ Barthes, Mythologies
The ‘original’ image.
The faces of Brown and Sabu are such poor fits they indicate the mask of this myth with flagrant, blatant, and comedic effect. Sabu’s face is crisp, yet his body is blurry, as if he is seen but as yet partially unresolved. The beaten, remorseful face of Johnny is here covered with Brown’s bovine glance, which like Sabu’s is fixed knowingly towards the camera. These two are foils: Sabu smirking, self-satisfied, smug, contemptible, completely despicable, his head bizarrely enlarged, and Brown determined, resolute, now subtly smiling, now angered, his expression shifting with each glance like the Mona Lisa, the perfect image of a trickster, the cat with the canary. Brown wanted to be arrested, he has done something right to be in such a position. He’s been plunged into this quaint, inverted, black-and-white fantasy of yore where nothing is fair and the only figure unmolested by the Photoshopper is that of authority. The angered old sheriff, completely impotent without Sabu, castigates Brown before certain punishment; the powerless public stands by but cannot watch because their eyes are blacked out.
“SOLIDARITY WITH ALL ARREST ANONS” also appears to dispense with the mythical mask, perhaps in an attempt to show contempt for the slick, well-disguised myths propagated by the ‘opposition’. Yet such labeling is overt misdirection. The image denies Sabu, a former Anon, with solidarity only to contrast the glory and heroism of Brown. The subtitle, “Fuck Sabu,” delivers this denial again with a cursive flourish.
Solidarity is only denied to Anons after the fact, even in the face of solid evidence of wrong-doing and cooperation with law enforcement. Gabriella Coleman, academia’s most prominent media expert on Anonymous, said in regards to Sabu, “I knew he’d been arrested. But of course, I couldn’t tell anyone. And that was really hard.” She’s right, of course, as all who sounded the alarm about Sabu, including myself, were met with derision from the Solidarity police in Anonymous.
