Punk Rock pessimism best describes Arthur contributor Aaron Lake’s Smith narrative of the anguish of being an aging, unemployed, punk. After receiving a zine written by German squatters titled “Happy Unemployed” Smith is forced to realize that the punk rock fantasy of outsmarting the work-world and eradicating deadtime do not so easily go hand in hand. Unlike the happy squatters, Smith is too old to be a crusty, too ambitious for some sort of career success, and too not-German to suckle off a welfare state.

Published by the zine world’s HarperCollins, Microcosm, Unemployment is formatted in the style of a Jack Chick tract. The story reads nothing like a classic Evangelically-polemic Jack Chick storyline until Smith turns to Crimethinc’s Days of War Nights of Love like the Good Book, and is climactically visited by its messianic author in a dream. The religious turn cements Smith’s pessimism, both for integration into capitalism and the faith that his ideals will deliver anything better.

Perhaps Unemployment’s thematically closed approach lead Smith to release it as a single issue instead of as a regular issue of Big Hands. The punk zine form reminds us of a collective project underway, while Unemployment is the isolated story of an isolated person that is lacking something far more significant than a paying job. It’s the perfect read for urbanites like myself who appreciate allusions to Black Flag and Nietzsche within pages of each other, drinking black coffee, and waxing endlessly about the ugly confines of civilization.

Buy it from Microcosm press for 2 bucks.

August 5– Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx’s partner, provider, and sometime heir. Theorist of the origin of property, marriage and state.

August 5, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*U.S.: National Failures Day.

ALSO ON AUGUST 5 IN HISTORY…
1890 — American utopianist Adin Ballou dies.
1895 — Communist theorist Friedrich Engels dies, London, England.
1962 — Sex goddess Marilyn Monroe dies in an affair-of-state.
2000 — Indonesian activist Jafar Siddiq Hamzah disappears, Medan, Sumatra.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

August 4– Percy Shelley
Romantic atheist, pagan pamphleteer and poet.

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.

Read more from Shelley on Project Gutenberg.

August 4, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Norway: Peer Gynt Festival Days.

ALSO ON AUGUST 4 IN HISTORY…
1578 — King of Portugal and his court killed in failed crusade in Morocco.
1792 — Poet, anarchist Percy Shelley born, Sussex, England.
1875 — Storyteller Hans Christian Andersen

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

August 3– WAHHAB AL-BAYYATI
Urbane Iraqi left-communist writer, exile; he revolutionized modern Arabic poetry.

The dictator hides his disgraced face in the mud.
Now he is having a taste of his own medicine,
and the pillars of deception have collapsed,
his picture is now underfoot,
trampled by history’s worn shoes.
The deposed dictator is executed in exile,
another monster is crowned in the hapless homeland.
The hourglass restarts,
counting the breaths of the new dictator,
lurking everywhere,
in the coffeehouse, the brothel,
in the nightclub, and the marketplace.

Read the rest of Bayyati’s poem The Dragon (with commentary).

August 3, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Feast of Caligo, mother of Chaos.

ALSO ON AUGUST 3 IN HISTORY…
1821 — Knights of Labor founder Uriah Stephens born, Cape May, New Jersey.
1922 — “The Wolf,” world’s first radio play, presented, Schenectady, New York.
1931 — Chicago eviction riots leave 3 dead; 60,000 march for anti-eviction laws.
1954 — French novelist Colette dies, Paris, France.
1971 — Golf… on the Moon!
1999 — Modernist Iraqi poet Abd-al Wahhab al-Bayyati dies in exile, Damascus.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

August 2-- JAMES BALDWIN
Suave, gay proponent of the fire this time

August 2, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Australia: Picnic Day.

ALSO ON AUGUST 2 IN HISTORY…
1776 — U.S. Declaration of Independence signed.
1876 — Wild Bill Hickok killed in poker game, Deadwood, South Dakota.
1924 — Black, queer American writer James Baldwin born, New York City.
1931 — Albert Einstein urges scientists to refuse military work.
1972 — Anarchist cultural critic Paul Goodman dies, North Stratford, Connecticut.
1976 — Filmmaker Fritz Lang dies, Beverly Hills, California.
1997 — Experimental Beat writer William S. Burroughs dies, Lawrence, Kansas.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

August 1– HARKISHAN SURJEET
Indian communist leader, prisoner, independence fighter.

August 1, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Southern California: Laughter Day.
*Ghana: Homowo, or “Hooting at Hunger,” in which the Ga people feast and mock famine.
*Lammas, a Druid Harvest Feast. First-baked bread of new harvest blessed, effigies of corn spirit, called maiden corn, carried in procession.

ALSO ON AUGUST 1 IN HISTORY…
1744 — Naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck born, Bazentin-le-Petit, France.
1819 — American novelist Herman Melville born, New York City.
1916 — Indian communist leader Harkishan Singh Surjeet born, Jalandhar, Punjab.
1942 — Grateful Dead ‘Captain Trips’ Jerry Garcia born, San Francisco, California.
1983 — U.S. resumes making chemical weapons after 14-year suspension.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

July 31– PRIMO LEVI
Italian-born chemist, Auschwitz survivor, writer… suicide?

JULY 31, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Always Live Better Than Yester Day.

ALSO ON JULY 31 IN HISTORY…
1777 — Marquis de Lafayette commissioned major general in Continental Army.
781 — Earliest recorded eruption of Mt. Fuji, Japan.
1703 — Writer Daniel Defoe, pilloried for seditious libel, is pelted with flowers.
1919 — Auschwitz survivor, chemist, writer Primo Levi born, Turin, Italy.
1944 — Antoine de Saint-Exupery disappears on flight over southern France.
1957 — Non-commercial radio pioneer Lewis Hill dies, Duncans Mills, California.
2006 — Cuban jefe Fidel Castro cedes state power to brother Raul.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

July 30– THORSTEIN VEBLEN
Iconoclastic, sardonic theorist of profit, status and class, he probed the irrational forces of capitalist culture.

JULY 30, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Virginia: Crater Day. Civil War holiday.

ALSO ON JULY 30 IN HISTORY…
1857 — Economist and social theorist Thorsten Veblen born, Valders, Wisconsin.
1889 — Radical woodcut artist Frans Masereel born, Blankenberge, Belgium.
1925 — Rootless cosmopolitan Alexander Trocchi born, Glasgow, Scotland.
1938 — Hitler presents highest non-citizen award to Henry Ford in Berlin.
1958 — Left-wing coup in Iraq arouses Western fears of domino effect.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

July 30– THORSTEIN VEBLEN
Iconoclastic, sardonic theorist of profit, status and class, he probed the irrational forces of capitalist culture.

The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.

Read more Veblen on Project Gutenberg.

JULY 30, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Virginia: Crater Day. Civil War holiday.

ALSO ON JULY 30 IN HISTORY…
1857 — Economist and social theorist Thorsten Veblen born, Valders, Wisconsin.
1889 — Radical woodcut artist Frans Masereel born, Blankenberge, Belgium.
1925 — Rootless cosmopolitan Alexander Trocchi born, Glasgow, Scotland.
1938 — Hitler presents highest non-citizen award to Henry Ford in Berlin.
1958 — Left-wing coup in Iraq arouses Western fears of domino effect.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

July 29– JEAN BAUDRILLARD
French cultural theorist, media philosopher, art critic.

Our point is not to defend radical thought. Any idea that can be defended is presumed guilty. Any idea that does not sustain its own defense deserves to perish. But we have to fight against charges of unreality, lack of responsibility, nihilism, and despair. Radical thought is never depressing. This would be a complete misunderstanding. A moralizing and ideological critique, obsessed by meaning and content, obsessed by a political finality of discourse, never takes into account writing, the act of writing, the poetic, ironic, and allusive form of language, the play with meaning. This critique does not see that the resolution of meaning is right here, in the form itself, in the formal materiality of an expression. As for meaning, it is always unfortunate. Analysis is by its very definition unfortunate since it is born out of a critical disillusion. But language on the contrary is fortunate (happy), even when it designates a world with no illusion, with no hope. This would in fact be here the very definition of radical thought: an intelligence without hope, but a fortunate and happy form. Critics, always being unfortunate (unhappy) in their nature, choose the realm of ideas as their battle field. They do not see that if discourse always tends to produce meaning, language and writing on the contrary are always a matter of illusion. Language and writing are the living illusion of meaning, the resolution of the misfortune of meaning operated through the good fortune of language. This is the only political or transpolitical act that a writer can accomplish.

From Baudrillard’s article Radical Thought, read more Baudrillard online here.

JULY 29, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Norway: Oslok, the festival of Saint Olaf the Fat.
*Quimperle, Brittany: Pardon of the Birds. Festive fair and picnic with a bird theme.

ALSO ON JULY 29 IN HISTORY…
1883 — Italian Socialist Party leader turned fascist Benito Mussolini born.
1890 — Dutch crackpot painter Vincent Van Gogh dies, Auvers-sur-Oise, France.
1921 — Adolf Hitler becomes president of the German Nazi Party.
1929 — French media theorist, art critic Jean Baudrillard born, Reims, France.
1979 — New Left theorist, radical hero Herbert Marcuse dies, Sternberg, East Germany.
2006 — French radical historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet dies, Nice, France.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

July 28– MARCEL DUCHAMP
French dadaist and surrealist, cultural iconoclast.

Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase.

JULY 28, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Brussels, Belgium: Kermesse. A 600-year-old spectacular parade featuring elaborate floats and enormous balloon creatures and characters.
*Virgin Islands: Hurricane Supplication Day.

ALSO ON JULY 28 IN HISTORY…
1794 — French Reign of Terror plotter Robespierre goes to the guillotine himself.
1804 — German Christian socialist Ludwig Feuerbach born, Landshut, Bavaria.
1887 — Dada post-artist Marcel Duchamp born, Blaineville, France.
1922 — Anarcho-Marxist theorist Jules Guesde dies, Saint Mandé, France.
1945 — B–52 bomber flies into Empire State Building in a fog.
2006 — American anarchist illustrator Richard Mock dies, Brooklyn, New York

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

July 27– GERTRUDE STEIN
The Mother of Us All. American writer, lesbian, art patron.

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.
What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

A Long Dress from Stein’s Tender Buttons, 1914.

JULY 27, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Cairo: Caravan of Pilgrims sets out for Mecca with the new Kiswa for the Kaaba. With cannon, kettle drums, camels dyed with henna, they proceed to the Lake of the Pilgrims, stay a few days and then set out on the long road to Mecca.

ALSO ON JULY 27 IN HISTORY…
1656 — 24-year-old Benedict Spinoza excommunicated by Jewish authorities.
1794 — Maximilien Robespierre arrested as new tyrant in French Revolution.
1946 — American poet, lesbian art collector Gertrude Stein dies, Paris, France.
1953 — Korean War ends after 575 meetings, Panmunjom, Korea.
1980 — Deposed Shah of Iran dies in exile, Cairo, Egypt.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective