A Hypothetical

You’re wandering around your neighborhood and you see a swastika spray-painted on the wall of your old school. You walk up a block and turn the corner only to see that every second lamppost and telephone pole has a flyer full of racist garbage about immigration and crime rates. You shake your head in disgust and continue on your way. Another two blocks up ahead in a city park, you hear yelling. As you get closer, you see three tall white kids kicking the shit out of a black kid. The three white kids are yelling all sorts of vile racist shit as they put the boot in. As they’re running away to celebrate, one of them puts up his arm in a Nazi salute and yells “Sieg Heil”. Your adrenaline is pumping as you run over to the victim to offer him help. He’s out cold. All you can do is call the ambulance and hope for the best for him.

Read more: Damien Inbred's Column for PE #58/59

The Rise of the Martial Punks

Starting at age nine, I felt a spiritual connection to the martial arts through a sense of beauty and purpose that was conveyed by some of my on-screen heroes. As a pre-radical American male child, my options for a sense of purpose in life included: sports jock, cop, fire-fighter, military service man, and martial artist vigilante. Luckily due to a lack of role models in my life, my allegiance to the system was weak so it was easy to decide to be want to be a rebel against the “bad guys” of the establishment. I was most enchanted by Bruce Lee. Though not a “revolutionary” per se, he was very radical in his own way and fought for peace, justice, and liberation inside and out. I was also highly influenced by the rebel archetypes found in many Sci-Fi flicks that brought Phillip K. Dick's very radical anti-state/anti-corporate/anti-tech themes into mainstream consciousness.

Read more: Ben Axiom's Column for PE 58/59

It’s February 28 and I’ve been sober roughly nine months. People still ask how it’s going if it’s okay to sip a beer in my presence, and yes it is. I’m totally cool with it and I’ll have a coffee thanks, if you’re buying. I’m beyond the point where it’s hard to go to shows or hang out with friends, though I did go through that some at the beginning, the first show I went to was definately weird. It’s strange to think of myself as someone with any social anxiety but I found it difficult going out for a while. I hadn’t been out much in a year or more, I was anxious about people offering to buy me a drink, not realizing a simple “no thanks” would suffice or letting them buy me a Redbull…I’d a saved a ton of cash on Redbull letting other people buy them.

Read more: Stinkbot's Column for PE #58 Pt II

Sad day. A short phone-call later and the last year’s worth of hard work has turned into dust. The venue where I used to organize punk-shows with some of the best kids ever, is dead. I think about all the hours we put into that place during last winter’s renovation. I think about the positive environment this group has been for me and how, during those months in that basement, made me feel well enough to finally get off the pills and even give up drinking. I think about Steffi, Erik, Sara, Sofia, Ekkö, Simon, Tilde, David, Robin and all the other kids around. My thanks to all involved for the best punk organization I’ve ever been part of. My thanks to them for being positive and good people willing to fight for DIY/Punk-community.

Read more: Potin's Column for PE #58

Since the last issue came out I have just turned the wrong side of 40, well 40 to be exact. Now any of you reading this that have just turned 18, 21 or whatever and feel old just give a thought for the really old people like me who just cannot seem to drop out of hardcore punk. Whether we want to or not, it seems like I’m stuck here for life. I don’t know if this is good or bad? I’m hoping it’s good, well the kid inside me thinks that, whereas the grumpy old man on the other shoulder says time to grow up you old fucker.

Read more: Mel Hughes' Column for PE #58

I’m working hard to get my shit together and stay on top of my life so I’ve decided to by-pass my usual column of anarchy and rage for a Fall 2008 “To Do” list.

I’m going to get in shape! I used to run and play sports a lot when I was younger. Even two years ago I was regularly running. Since starting a newspaper and touring all over the country, I’ve found myself with less and less time (not to mention desire) to get in shape. I’m tired of feeling like crap, and as I creep closer to the big four zero, that’s gotta change. I’m gonna eat better too, including more vegetarian food. I spent three weeks on the road this summer on the West Coast eating some of the best food I’ve had in ages. I’m not a strict vegetarian anymore, although I was for seven years in the 1990’s (it’s a long story why I’m not and that’s a column for a different day). But I still prefer vegetarian food. For the entire tour I was vegetarian because it was easier and cheaper in Oregon and California. Here in Mississippi it’s a lot harder to find vegetarian food, let alone cheap vegetarian food. I plan to cook more and get back to basics now that I’m home.

Read more: Newt's Column for PE #58

I watched it grow over a course of a couple years and did nothing. When I was a few years younger I would see older punks develop them and scoff, thinking that there was no way it could happen to me. Then people started making remarks. One day I realized things had begun to spiral out of control, and I feared for my future. I knew I had to do something. I’m of course talking about my beer gut.

The first one I ever saw was on my father. My sisters and I used to joke and ask him how far ahead he was in his pregnancy, and when we could expect a fourth sibling. All that time I could tell my Dad was laughing in the back of his head, knowing that one day my fate would follow suit. “Just laugh it up son, one day this will all be yours.” Thanks a lot, Dad.

Read more: Rob Hanna's Column for PE #58

In writing this column for Profane Existence, I’ve been trying to steer the focus away from whatever is going on with me personally and instead provide something that whoever is reading can use to improve their all-too-fleeting time on this planet. I would hope that my last column about working out can be included in which I think is a more positive bent that PE is taking in recent issues. I would also hope that, along with Ben Axiom’s killer “Holisticore” column, I could be thought of as a provider of worthwhile insight as to how we can build a movement, “punk” or otherwise, that can survive whatever is thrown at it whether it is from the government, the police, or any other body that exists to support a ruling elite in the United States or otherwise. It has indeed been a luxury to write for a zine like Profane Existence for the past six years, and the contributions that I’ve been asked to make for PE are something that I take seriously. If you had told me when I first started checking out “crust” and “anarcho punk” that there would come a day where I would be writing a column about going to the gym for this zine, I would have told you that you were out of your tree, in so many words. I think of this in particular as proof that the most fucked up shit can and probably will happen. This, of course, can be both good and bad.

Read more: Diamond Doug's Column for PE #58

There were years spent in my life where I wanted no more and had less than what would fit in a single room. If those things began to spill out into other areas of a shared household, I grew nervous, I had too much. I wanted the ability to store a few crates and boxes in a basement somewhere on a whim. I craved the freedom and lightness of ‘have not, want not’, with the idea of living out of a backpack and worrying about job and roof later.

Read more: Mollie Hatchet's Column for PE #58

“Holy shit, Bitty, recognize him?”

My co-worker, Tracy, asked me as she held up a newspaper. A client and friend of mine, Scott Benson, was on the cover with his bail set at 50 million dollars.

“What the fuck!?” I said.

I tried to figure out why the bail set on him was higher than the current price on Bin Laden’s head. What could he have possibly done? He is one of the nicest people I know.

Read more: Bitty's Column for PE #58

My name is Jeremy and I’m an alcoholic.

Punks like to say shit like that it’s a part of our culture. We have songs and records devoted to drinking, so do the civilians but it’s so ingrained in everything we do.

Punk is about rebellion and one of the first things all kids do to rebel is to sneak that first drink. There is a kind of thrill when you’re young and you discover the kick that booze gives you. That euphoric sense of superhuman awesome-ness; followed by projectile vomiting.

Read more: Stinkbot's Column for Profane Existenced #58