Queeruption 7

The Queeruption 7 experience for me was basically breathtaking and wonderful.
The venue problems were only a relatively peaceful reminder that subversive action will by its nature face resistance. What did we lose? Time? Two or three days we could have set up and carried on with more productive fun and tasty activities? Nathanwi said to me one night “no expectations, no regrets.” And the phrase has stuck in my mind. I know quite a few of us were thinking at times that friendships are formed stronger under adversity and also that ideas thrive from being stepped on.

Nothing really went according to plan but of course nothing was ever going to. How can you map out and prescribe for a temporary autonomous zone? It was erratic and multifaceted. At times difficult and frustrating, but very rarely dangerous and above all, fun! Creative, passionate and free people, when they come together, tend to broadcast laughter and song that will reverberate through any concrete jungle.

Never in my life had I been surrounded by such a fascinating shifting collective of such beautiful, sweet, naughty and often fiercely independent individuals. To everyone involved I say thank you thank you thank you for Queeruption 7. It was really amazing and reaffirming for me to be able yo meet and play with so many other cool queers who stand for peace, love and subversion!

Audrey Autonomy
Adelaide, March 2005

Check out Queeruption 7 (Sex & Anarchy in the Antipodes)

ENGL 2503 – WORKSHOP EXERCISE ONE

“I’ve never told this to anyone, but I live in my head and not my body.” Kali the insatiable black princess dances with one shoe crushing glass underfoot her dirty blue black hair her acne her fishnet stockings she says: “No one has ever let me out of their sight Audrey, that’s why I can’t take care of myself. I don’t know how. No one ever lets me out of their sight, so don’t you dare leave me my kitten or I’ll cut your throat while you sleep.”

Cigarette smoke follows her everywhere her blue grey guardian angel. She sleeps through the morning an unconscious state of reptilian anaesthesia. There are no tricks up her sleeve and she suffers bouts of absinthe induced amnesia. She bites her lip snarls out of sharp bright blue eyes. I remove her silver adorned paw from my crotch. “I’ve got a bad disease princess. Freedom is in my blood.” I tell her frankly, offering a cigarette the third last one in my packet.

“I warned you my child…yes yes I warned you and you said yeah yeah yeahs and you did play cool with the agreement. We agreed upon no expectations no infatuations and no regrets. Just the plates we’re tastin and we gets intoxicated and we laugh and grin when jissom spills out onto a colourful vibrating glistening wasteland. We flip a coin see who fuck who.” She squirms on her seat and bares her sharp extended canines in a manic hungry grin and I scratch at my chest wounds under my t-shirt. “You wanna live this lifestyle baby safe and fun or are ya gonna soon know the park bench in victoria square? You know the churches in this city close their doors on the homeless? You gotta learn how to take care of your own self cause I only known you two weeks girl and I gotta get back to mindin my own business sugar…now don’t worry your pretty head cause we’ll play again sometime for sure baby some other time.”

She falls of the bar stool, valium catches her before she shatters, sparks fly metal rhythms crash around her. “But you are my punk boy my boy toy my bundle of gluttony lust and joy! I’ve decided that I want to be a dominatrix. You will be my plaything. You will be my canvas. It’s the job of my dreams for fucks sake and I’ve been swimming towards it all my fucking life! And don’t you try and tell me how to just keep breathing cause I know whats what!” Kali picks up a jug of beer and pulls it to her lips. The bartender flashes me a disapproving smile. “This is this!” She slams the empty jug down and flourishes a cigarette. “Don’t think for a minute that you’ll scare me Audrey cause nothing does you know. Its all bullshit and lies and I know cause i started drinkin when I was seven.”

I soon leave the dreary stale timelessness of the pub about three hours before Kali calls me from the payphone outside the building. She’s lost in the concrete jungle without money, phone or identification. I’m her only contact my home phone number scrawled in black texta on the inside of her thigh.

Audrey Autonomy 2005

Warm orange lap light the blue smoke in he suburbs somewhere the bluescreen the blue smoke thick red merlot bites the mouth a cigarette."…uu sseee tis jus like i always say boys theres only three types off people in this fuckin world that's people who've never smoked weed before…therez cuntz who've smoked weed once or twice nnd dissliked it…and therez others who smoke it constantly to maintain their goddamn sanity…"

AA 2005

squashing dissent the new fashioned way

Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon

The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture.

...One document, a research contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, is entitled "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas".

Read this article in New Scientist here

Hunter S. Thompson Interview

Well I don't, I'm past, uh, fearing things. I'm old enough to, not really uh, worry about some of the things that maybe I once did. I'm a successful writer, I'm out here, I'm you know...

BY ADAM BULGER
Read the interview here

Build your TV!

As the FCC and the entertainment biz get ready to end home recording as we know it, a bunch of radical geeks are working on a solution or two.

'ALL I WANT is to make a high-definition copy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, save it on a DVD, and loan it to my friend," says Sarah Brydon, looking up from a long table covered with half-built computers. These sound like the words of a science fiction nerd, not a revolutionary. But Brydon is a new breed of protester – and she's expressing her discontent with the U.S. government by building a television.

By Annalee Newitz
Read this story here!