Rag Mag 46

What's up rag mag? Summer is heating up, the world is full on insane, and there's a sick punk gig with Fan Club (Seattle) and Abyecta (Chile) Tuesday night at A1 (ask a punk). Look at that poster for Abyecta, gotta see that live. This week we have Medium Regular with Dottie, Creature on the Road - The Malt Shoppe by Mr. Mittens, The Fight Report with Chessy Renee, Wasteland Chick, and Creature's Double Feature.

Soundtrack to this week's issue: No rhyme or reason this week, just some LPs that have been staying in the now playing box for awhile. Tozibabe 1984-1986 Collection Lp (so sick), White Heaven - Next to Nothing LP (counting this psych rock LP as punk solely because I first heard them on an EP put out by HG Fact and that's punk as fuck), Crudity - The Total End, and Tiikeri - Punk Rock Pamaus!!! LP (maybe best punk band going?).

Hit us up at ragmagclub@proton.me with flyers, art, feedback, column idea, or just to say hi and let's talk about PUNK! We archived columns and music reviews on the new site (rag-mag.ghost.io), so check it out.

Whats up hun ? Your cosmic sister Dottie is back to spiritually guide you . Lately I feel like I've been walking around in a haze. Truth is I have. The smoky air has been giving me flashbacks to working at Friendly's in the 90's and that ain't great hun. Whether you're physically or mentally in a haze I'm here to help! We're still in Cancer season for a few more days so I figured they need all the help they can get! Goodbye crab , hello lion as the old saying goes ( so I'm told) .

Cancer June 21 - July 22

Here we are. Crab season is coming to an end but you still gotta get in one more pinch if ya know what I mean. I don't know what I mean , honestly its the baileys talking. Anywho , we all know you've got a protective shell and are hard on the outside , soft inside. But have you ever thought about being soft on the outside ? When I was younger I thought sensitivity was a weakness , softness a slur. But ya know time carries on and I'm thinking more like a octopus than a crab. Octopus are soft on the outside , but strong , intelligent , majestic creatures. Yeah maybe Ol' Dot got high at the aquarium last week but so what. Anyways , I urge all you cancers out there to be kinder and gentler in the last few days of your season . But also don't be afraid to give some people a lil pinch - some people deserve it!

Creature on the Road - The Malt Shoppe - by Mr. Mittens

The rain was everywhere, it had been for a straight month now, Nothing but relentless heavy drizzle, the damp seeped into your clothes, the sound seeped into your brain. It made me feel itchy and surrounded. I had only one more delivery left before I logged off for the day. I’d been doing extra deliveries for two weeks, I told myself it was for the credits, but really I couldn’t stand that constant drip drip drip. I burned every credit I had on 2 albums telling myself that at the very least with all the extra work I might break even by the time the rainy season ended. Man, the first week had been great, I took everything I had, drove for 12 hour days just belting my lungs out, but now everything in my spine ached and my lungs felt like balloons filled with concrete. I could barely speak, and my nose had started dribbling in time with the rain since this morning. I looked at myself in the mirror trying to assess if the bags under my eyes had always sunk this low, or was the runny nose and the sore lungs just trailmarkers for a cold soon to come. I probably deserved it, I’d been drinking nothing but sodas and whatever it is that Bug’s been calling “octane”. I managed to get three bottles off of him as a favor for running the rest of the case up to Zone 3 checkpoint. I don’t make it a point to linger around checkpoints, especially Zone 3, they freak me the fuck out, but I will make a delivery there if I have to, if there’s something in it for me. 

Zone 3 is for the most fervent believers. The Church of America stuck like glue to these people, You could find true believers in Zone 4, there were some spattered about I’m sure, but the boundaries of Zone 3 had been drawn around an area high enough to withstand the worst of the spills, and just healthy and well fed enough to have survived the years after. They had sturdy houses and good teeth, and when the Church named them as the “little children” spoken of in the bible they willingly burrowed into their Zone and never poked their heads out. Of course, they did have help in the form of nurses and nannies from the lower Zones, but only the cheaper types, the kind that go home every night across the gate back to their own places in their own Zones. If you stop at Zone 3, maybe exit your van to check the rear tires, you might catch a nanny waiting beside your cargo door for a pick up. 

“You could’ve given this to me on the way in, you know.” this particular nanny had said to me on my arrival. 

“No way man, I deliver evening of, not day of. Dropping off a box a booze in Zone 2 after shift is a lot less dangerous than morning of. I’m not getting involved in some bullshit Zone 3 decency charges along with unlawful distribution. If you get caught on the way in, I don’t want to be anywhere on this stretch of road.” 

The nanny had done a weaselly little shrug and then taken the case in tired, wobbly hands back to wherever it was he laid his weasley head at night. I probably shouldn’t been so angry with him, but theres something about pencil mustaches that make me feel unreasonably superior.

The Fight Report by Chessy Renee

Get out there and break shit - it’s the fight report!! 

What’s up RAGE-ERS?! Who’s ready to break shit?!? It’s MONDDAAYY 

Hey… break shit any day of the week, okay? There are endless reasons to do so. First off, America!! Land of the 21 century technofascists!!! I got an email the other day from a group which I was a member of during college; they are organizing meetings about how to create community solutions to what they called technofascism. I had to look up the term to educate myself. It didn’t take much reading though to understand and to relate to the reality of this being our current state in this country. 

Out of what I read, I found this article the most illuminating. It fucking sucks. Obviously. It’s why I want to throw my phone into the charles every day. It’s so crazy how political so many aspects of everyday life have become. But I guess that is what makes technofascism so insidious - the ubiquitous and dependable nature of the technology that is being created to simplify or innovate our world is also undermining us. Are we handing over our power to E. Muskrat, M. Zuckenberger, and J. Bumbaclot? 

I mean probably!!! Jesus. FUCK THOSE GUYS. And everyone who ever believed in them. 

I think honestly one of the best things to do to resist is to meet up with people in person, talk about shit like this, and figure out what you can do. Take care of one another. Take care of your neighbors, and strangers. Don’t let all this bullshit get you down, cuz that’s where they want you to be, pummeled and defeated. Fuck that man!

FUCK THE TECH COMPANIES and their power over our gov. - GET OUT INTO THE COMMUNITY and BREEEAAK SOME SHITTTT 

Last vid: https://youtube.com/shorts/9i4VPn0RLzM?si=fFTd7cmzmnm_g3j3 

And some familiar fights to join: 

Fighting hunger - Food Not Bombs, Community Fridges in your area, or the Greater Boston Food Bank, RI Food Bank 

Boycotting Citizens Bank because of their support of private prisons that are operating ICE detention centers, as well as a boycott of Capital One for their credit lending to Elbit Systems, the largest weapons manufacturer for the IDF 

And hellll - divest from big tech while you’re in the boycotting mode - here’s a redditor who has some suggestions on how 

Alright dudes - see you out there in the streets!!!

Wasteland Chick

This is going to be kind of short and unprofessional, especially since the only essays I have ever written are RACES style (ugh that name alone gives me flashbacks), but I’m going to just explain some thoughts I have creeping around in my head about the Futurama episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”, that is definitely not just me hyperfixating on Fry. Anyway, the episode provides the basis for Fry being the most important being in the universe, and some media-illiterate individuals may be saying to themselves upon discovering this plot twist: “But W.C.! Having the main character of a show being the most powerful or important character in the show’s universe is such a bad and overused trope that makes the main character seem less relatable or more over-the-top!!”

But, as someone who is DEFINITELY a certified and totally professional media critic because I watch video essays and read TV Tropes, I say to that argument: Making the main character of a TV show be more powerful or “special” in comparison to the other characters within the show is vital, as this is what makes the main character the main character! If the main character of a show is exactly like every other character in the show, then the audience no longer has a reason to care about the character and thus want to see more of the show and what the character does; With the character no longer having any importance to the story for the sake of not being overpowered. Granted, many shows do suffer from the problem of having main characters that are basically Superman in ability levels or are the most important living creature that has ever existed, but this is found more in shows that already suffer from the issue of overpowering or underpowering characters for plot’s sake. Too many people immediately disparage a show for having its main character have something special about them that is designed to get the audience interested, when this is incredibly vital for a show to be a good show.

Getting back on topic, I love that Fry in particular is Futurama’s embodier of the MVP trope because, as stated by Nibbler in the episode itself, Fry is somewhat of an idiot (or, more kindly and episode-specific-ly, he lacks the delta brainwave that the Brain guys can use to make people stupid) and is the only one that can help the people of Earth during the episode’s stupidity crisis. Also, to sidebar, I love that when Leela finds this out in the slideshow from the Niblonians, they’re just playing a video of Fry examining his foot on the couch with this, just, weirdly hilarious muted series of blank expressions. I can’t with this character. Moving on to the plant-based meat and potatoes of this essay, while watching this episode at 3 A.M. like a normal person, I noticed something potentially ~angsty~ about this episode, and angst is a very important part of my diet: See, in the scene where Leela returns to Planet Express from her conference with the Niblonians, her and Fry immediately rush to each other (and have an adorable ship moment of Fry telling her how worried he was with her gone, my heart <3) with Leela desperately trying to tell Fry that only he can stop the Brain creatures while being limited by the veil of stupidity placed onto the people of Earth besides Fry, and Fry not really understanding what she’s saying at first.

This scene got me thinking because, it has been stated many times in this show, especially in this episode, that Fry is kind of stupid and often says many strange and unintelligible things towards others. But, are these things unintelligible in general, or just unintelligible for those around him? Why am I purporting this question? Well, my darling reader, this is because everyone in this episode says many strange and unintelligible things themselves towards Fry. Now, particularly with Leela’s attempted important conversation with Fry about his importance in mind, it seems that the stupid and confusing things people in this episode (Leela most importantly) are a representation of how Fry tries to communicate with the other people in this show. 🤯

For example, in his conversation with Leela in this episode that I keep mentioning, Fry comedically tells her that she is talking a mile a minute while Leela is explaining things very slowly. But, what if this is actually how it feels for Fry to explain something to another character? What if this episode and this scene in particular are a demonstration of the communication issues Fry is often explicitly stated in the show’s continuity to have, just from a different perspective? Woah! Also, the ending of the episode with Nibbler’s monologue noting that no one else (aside from, presumably, Leela because she went through the whole Big Brain defeat ordeal along with Fry) cared what he had to say about it. This moment in itself also provides, from the reasoning of this essay, a demonstration of Fry’s communication issues with others full front. Hmmm. Not sure if the Futurama writers did this on purpose, or if these moments I’ve overexplained are all just gags in the COMEDY show (though it is known to have bits of heartstring pulls peppered throughout) that are meant to be taken at face value… Whatever, this concludes my weird random-thing-I-wrote-down-at-3-A.M.-based essay about a Futurama episode that is mostly known as outwardly comedic rather than mostly known as outwardly heartwarming or outwardly heartbreaking. 

Sincerely, Wasteland Chick <3

Summer keeps melting my brain, so gotta blast punk records to stay sane. Politics in PVD are going over the top with an actual progressive candidate running for mayor (go David Morales). Dunno who has seen it, but the Brett Smiley campaign just released an attack ad video against David that is sickening in its racism. Even ignoring the clear darkening they did to David's photo, the whole ad's point seems to be that if Morales wins, POC youth will run wild in the city. Fuck that raggedy bitch and vote him out.

Anyways, back to the regular column, starting with a shameless self plug. My noisy punk band Tigers on Vaseline is playing a show at Ask a Frog on Friday July 24th. Should be a fun night and I love the flyer.

There's a cool new exhibit "Piece" up at the fuller speedshop this month by Mira Haddad. Really cool seeing all these skateboards and the trays are really cool. That chair is so sick too. Love staring at all these well used boards.

Found an old little Lulu book last week and this panel made me laugh.

Records of the Week

First up is the s/t debut 7" from Boston's Adult Learners. Fast, catchy punky power poppy garagey indie punk sounds with members of Kathy Snax, Puke Pisstols, Pledge Pins, Life Partners, etc... Way too many bands to list. 5 short catchy tunes, that'll get caught in your head in no time. Think world of pooh indie meets pointed sticks powerpoppy punk with keyboard driving the way. So good.

Next up is the new Abyecta 7" - Intentalo o Muere b/w Amo y Esclavo single. This Chilean 2 piece has a few eps but this is the first one I checked out. Absolutely ripping metallic hardcore punk. A little more metal than my normal taste, but the raw riffs give it the punk edge I need. Also, the packaging on this is gorgeous and the poster insert is a thing of beauty (see cover image for this week's issue). Psyched that they are playing in PVD Tuesday night so I can see this live.

Soul Song of the Day

Soul song of the day is Na Allen's Every Time It Rains. The second Na Allen (brother of Detroit legend Denise LaSalle) single recorded at Hi Records in Memphis. Killer tune and I think I mainly just like the wordplay in the chorus. Great song.

That's it for this week's Rag Mag. Here's some flyers and keep sending stuff in (ragmagclub@proton.me).