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Supporting Caste

by Propagandhi

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  • Signed By the Goddamn Band edition! Oh my fucking god!!!!! Can you believe it??? I CAN'T!!!
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1.
Your world was blown right apart on a night of sickening death. You went running for your life and never went home again. I spend sleepless nights as my head swims worrying about you. You work the night shift so you won’t be alone. I am adept at cold. You have travelled so far from home. Sorrow has followed every step of the way. You’re caught between this life and the one left behind. I see it’s burning you inside like some exploding sun. Your mind constantly returns to a place that’s not so fucking cold, but on fire with war. You’re starting over from scratch, sending your money home. You’re working as hard as you can while life hangs in the air. I see distant lights up ahead but I’m worrying about you. It’s all taking its toll and you can’t concentrate. You are being crushed by the world. I have gotten lucky so far. We sit at the end of this night dialing. An answer finally reached through a long distance line. News of threatening night letters. Stones tossed over the fence. Your loved ones taunted by murderers. Tell them it’s three years that they’ll have to wait as their whole world implodes.
2.
When the credits finally roll for this, the worst story ever told, don’t bother sifting through the names for yours or anyone you know. Unless they were by chance a shepherd king, a virgin birth, a resurrection, a messianic prince or some such childish thing. You can storm the edit suite or move to block its theatrical release, but I think we can safely guarantee that there will be no revisions to the script made on behalf of a supporting cast(e). Because history exalts only the pornography of force-that of murderers and psychopaths (the rest of us, of course, stricken from the narrative wholesale: a back drop to the tale)-as we, the two-bits, are ushered on and swiftly off this stage with the jawbones of asses. No stirring curtain call for the masses. No floral bouquet. No breaking of legs. No recurring role. No artistic control. And so in these days, in this terminal phase, it’s all left to chance. A piece of advice: if you’re cast on thin ice, you may as well dance. Do what you feel you must, but as for me I was not put upon this earth to subjugate or serve.
3.
All the sucked thumbs and held skirts and blankets so secure that they block out the sweep of the floodlights that could free them from the darkness that surrounds them. From the demons that keep hounding them and gouge their eyes until all they can see are rigid dichotomies of the sacred and the profane. Of salvation or shame with fuck all in between. The human impulse to explain hijacked: a controlled flight into terrain to ensure no passenger ever makes any connection between the proscription of mystery and their malaise. Tidy pairings of inverse binaries. We all seek meaning in our lives, but when every shadow of doubt is denied the sanctification of hatred thrives on every sucked thumb and held skirt and blanket so secure that they block out the sweep of the floodlights that could free us from the darkness that surrounds us. The demons that keep hounding us. We put out our own eyes and reproach the blind.
4.
Dear Ron MacLean. Dear Coach’s Corner. I’m writing in order for someone to explain to my niece the distinction between these mandatory pre-game group rites of submission and the rallies at Nuremburg. Specifically the function the ritual serves in conjunction with what everybody knows is in the end a kid’s game. I’m just appealing to your sense of fair play when I say she’s puzzled by the incessant pressure for her to not defy the collective will, and yellow ribboned lapels, as the soldiers inexplicably rappel down from the arena rafters (which, if not so insane, would be grounds for screaming laughter). Dear Ron MacLean, I wouldn’t bother with these questions if I didn’t sense some spiritual connection. We may not be the same but it’s not like we’re from different planets: we both love this game so much we can hardly fucking stand it. Alberta-born and prairie-raised. Seems like there ain’t a sheet of ice north of Fargo I ain’t played. From Penhold to the Gatineau, every fond memory of childhood that I know is somehow connected to the culture of this game. I can’t just let it go. But I guess it comes down to what kind of world you want to live in, and if diversity is disagreement, and disagreement is treason, well don’t be surprised if we find ourselves reaping a strange and bitter fruit that sad old man beside you keeps feeding to young minds as virtue. It takes a village to raise a child but just a flag to raze the children until they’re nothing more than ballast for fulfilling a madman’s dream of a paradise where complexity is reduced to black and white. How do I protect her from this cult of death?
5.
You’re not really mad at Iran or Afghanistan. You’re mad at the fact that your wife can’t stand you anymore. You don’t know where she is. You’re going crazy in your basement hole. Clicking your remote control. Spitting insults at the screen because tomorrow you’re back at work, where you can’t stand being the little man. Despite your groveling you can’t get ahead. No one really laughs at your stories anymore. You’re too cynical and mean so they’ve fucked off bored. Your kids are at the mall. They just sit and stare at the walls. You think you tell it like it is. You say you can’t stand bleeding hearts but every single day you just sit there bleeding for yourself. You whine and cry in your manly voice. This is your life. You do it to yourself. Take the load off your mind. Go out into the world. You’ll see you’ll probably survive. This is your life.
6.
“I swear I did my best to ensure that his final moments were swift and free from fear. But consideration should be made for the fact that Sandor Katz was my first kill, so I trust the reader will understand that while his screams may well have seemed like conscious objections they were in reality simply a request to honour his strength and speed! With gratitude and tenderness I singed every single hair from his body, gently placed his decapitated head in a stock pot, boiled off his flesh and made a spread-able head cheese! Because I believe that one can only relate with another living creature by completely destroying it! I’m sure Sandor’s friends and family will appreciate this!” (ahem) A rationale so moronic it defies belief. Post-vegetarian I must submit to you-respectfully-be careful what kind of world you wish for. Someday it may come knocking on your door. “Lemme in! LEMME THE FUCK IN! I just wanna ‘fully relate.’ I swear I’ll do my best to ensure that your final moments are swift and free from fear!”
7.
Francis didn’t give a fuck about the rollbacks, the overproduction, the reduced demand. He never gave much thought to disputed contracts. In his short life he’d only ever known panic, fear, pain, darkness and pandemonium (in the hell that was his home). Fourth quarter earning expectations expedited his demise. The panic grew as the humans stalked among them. When the screaming began, Francis shut his eyes and felt the hand of inhumanity brush over him. But his would-be killer’s back turned for a moment and a blinding ray of light spread across the floor. In a crimson pool he saw his own reflection as he bolted for the door. Not just some fractured fairy-tale although I wish that that were true. This is a fable far too real. Yet we somehow still cling to the story lines that bridge the chasm between cognition and belief. Any old implausible denial that might offer some relief from the dissonance that Francis left screaming in his wake as deep into the heart of the city’s park lands he made good his escape. And where for 5 months he ran free and replayed his only fond memory-just a warm and distant dream of his mother’s loving eyes upon him. Francis made it farther than she did-a quarter mile just short of the city limits they finally captured him. There’s a statue that the abattoir erected to remind us all of their contributions. To me it marks Potemkin City Limits, this Francis cast in bronze. Not just some fractured fairy-tale, although I wish that that were true. This is a fable far too real, yet we somehow still cling to…
8.
The funeral procession passed by here today. Confusion and questions left strewn in its wake. But I feel like I knew his pain-a mechanical failure while enduring the norm. Some of us fracture, others simply deform and lose their elasticity, never to return to the shape they were. I wonder which is worse? I try to keep my composure amidst the insanity, resigned to the truth that I will not live to see the dawn of a better day that might wash away the sadness of this age. I try to keep the voices calling me at bay, desperately clinging to any futile act of human decency. The voices love to remind me of my futility. Sitting on my hands hoping anyone else than me will do what should be done, it’s hard to not succumb as they call my name. You gotta keep on truckin’ anyways.
9.
Without Love 03:50
All in nature ends in tragedy and I was the first to finally fade away from my grandfather’s memories. How long ’til the day my memories of him finally fade away? Dissolving into gray. Is breathing just the ticking of an unwinding clock? Just counting down the time it takes for you to comprehend the sheer magnitude of every single precious breath you’ve ever wasted? I did everything I could. I bargained with the universe to take my life instead of hers. But no amount of money, drugs or tears could keep her here. What purpose did her suffering serve? Is breathing just the ticking of an unwinding clock? Just counting down the time it takes for you to comprehend the sheer magnitude of every single precious breath you’ve ever wasted? So much misery. So much indifference to so much suffering that we can become tempted by appeals to hatred. But this world ain’t nothing more than what we make of it. Revenge ain’t no solution to the inevitable pain that every single one of us must face in losing the kindred spirits in our lives. Lives so brief, so disappointing, so confusing. As Cronie slipped away I held her in my arms, reduced to “Please don’t leave me. What will I do?” But this cosmic sadness is just here to remind you that without Love, breathing is just the ticking of…
10.
We were all together in the pouring rain. Solvents being passed around to dull the pain. The air was choked with the dismal smell. The reek of sadness and despair. Minds fucked-up beyond repair. She said she just turned six. She’s got some good jokes for a kid. She’s working hard to avoid a woman bleeding from her teeth. Her life goes on despite the fact her mom sleeps fucked-up on the cement. She flashed a look, an image burnt into my mind. I know that sinking feeling all too fucking well. Shame, frustration setting in. Confusion that burns us inside out. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t know why she can’t wake up.” Her life goes on despite the fact. Her mom lays fucked-up on the cement. It’s an ugly fucking world.
11.
The day The Equinox arrived our pilgrimage began: 1200 miles, a cruise missile to our unholy land. We were fucking stoked unlike we’d been since we were pimpled, pubeless teens. From every corner of the world our fellow maniacs arrived to prove the meaning of the tunes had not been lost through time’s antiquity, but had survived to leave this monumental sign. They say you can’t relive the past, but as the lights went down it all came rushing back: half a life away, the night, for the first time in a lonely life, a young soul took flight. They stormed the stage a thrashing rage, we all screamed, “Terminate!!!” A half-head in a whale shirt went and breathed it in face. I didn’t care. It could not impair this rhapsodic, transcendental state. When the music died, two ends of time had been neatly tied. Descending lights had scorched the plains. Returning kings back to reclaim lost disciples that remained to tend the flames. We stormed into streets a pack of raging troglodytes! We waited for our bus then rode it hard into the night! Far beneath the cold, robotic sweep of the radar operator’s pale green glow. 20,000 leagues below. To the place where all the best bands go.
12.
Here in the few remaining moments we have left, just what do you propose we say in our defense? That much was decided before any one of us were born? That we were nothing more than objective observers to the madness and throw up your hands in sadness? “We’re powerless to change anything anyways.” So just lay back upon your death bed and gaze idiotically back up the chain of command from which we receive our directives. I guess it’s just common sense to preach what ought to be but ensure it never is in the present tense.

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our 5th full length. our 1st with the Beave!

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released March 10, 2009

recorded and mixed at The Blasting Room, Ft Collins CO, by bill stevenson and jason livermore. mastered by jason livermore. additional recording by chris and beave.

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Propagandhi Winnipeg, Manitoba

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