That's the spirit, Aaron!
I want to thank you for an enjoyable recap of the Florida's Dying Rock Fight (or the "Horriblefest," depending on who was asked) `Notable Noise, Nov. 10`. As a judge, I'm sure you had a good time meeting Rich, a very nice guy indeed.
I will be forthright and tell you that I was the leader of the youngest of the two "serious" bands (as you put it in the article) that suffered quite a righteous dose of humiliation that night. I had been wrongly led to believe that Florida's Dying wasn't an exclusively punk label and that the Rock Fight wasn't going to be more riot than concert. My fault entirely there.
The criticism I got from people who could actually walk the day afterward was extremely valuable, and fiasco or not, I am pretty happy that I took part in the event. No number of strawberry daiquiris in my face will stop me from pursuing some creative venture.
And as long as you keep writing Rock Band 101, I'll keep reading.
Aaron Amram, via the Internet
Sex offenders are people too
Thank you so much for your recent column regarding sex offenders `Dog Playing Poker, Nov. 3`. I know it was "tongue-in-cheek," but it's almost too true to be funny. However, it did make me smile.
As the wife of a registered sex offender (whose crime consisted of sending four pictures of a nude "model" of "questionable" age to an undercover law enforcement officer in 1998), it is good to see that some of you in the media are beginning to understand the absurdity of passing knee-jerk-reaction, feel-good laws that actually protect no one.
I know that this column puts you in the "pedophile lovers" class for many people, but we thank you for maintaining an unbiased, open mind.
Allison Metcalf, Ocala
Red scare
Since the Orlando Weekly inexplicably chose to promote World Can't Wait in its Oct. 27 issue `Happytown™`, I wanted to inform your readers that World Can't Wait (along with NION – Not In Our Name) are front groups for the Revolutionary Communist Party, although for reasons known only to them they choose not to disclose these connections.
The RCP is a Marxist-Leninist Maoist sect (yes, the same Chairman Mao whose policies led to the deaths of tens of millions of people between 1949-1976) that builds a sickening cult of personality around its leader/guru/Jesus Bob Avakian (author of such soporific works as The Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era).
WCW is not about resisting the Bush regime – which, incidentally, thousands of groups and millions of people around the world somehow have managed to do for almost five years, even without any help from the corps of professional Avakianite revolutionaries – but building the RCP. Indeed, some anarchist wags have suggested that the proper name of WCW should be Can't Wait To Tell the World About Bob Avakian.
As an anarchist I urge people to reject the failed paradigms of the state and capitalism, but, based upon the harsh lessons of history, I also urge them to reject the failed paradigm of authoritarian communism, which during the 20th century brought nothing but one-party tyranny (in the false guise of the "dictatorship of the proletariat") and abject misery to the hundreds of millions of people upon whom it was forced by vanguards claiming to act in the name of the working class.
The only path to a better world is building a society based upon the values of freedom, equality, mutual aid, community, co-operation, nonviolence, decentralization and nonhierarchy in which everyone gets to directly participate in making decisions about the things that affect them, without being told how to think or what to do by a state, a boss, a "red bureaucracy" or a vanguardist party hack.
Ben Markeson, Orlando
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