Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Dino Wars, Dinah Wors, Dinah Wars. Hello
Speaker 1: and welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club, the only
Speaker 1: book club where you don't have to do the reading
Speaker 1: because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: And this, as you might have guessed by the title
Speaker 1: and the introduction, is another Dino Wars episode. Because it's
Speaker 1: been exciting, you all have reacted positively to Dinah Wars.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we did get these podcasts from
Speaker 1: thirty years in the future, and obviously it would be
Speaker 1: immoral of us to not play you all of the
Speaker 1: podcasts that we heard from thirty years in the future. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here's that. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone twenty fifty five,
Speaker 1: How to Survive the Dino Wars. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 1: And this week, well, dear listener, I have been stretching
Speaker 1: these missives from Mixed Bunny Face Murder as long as
Speaker 1: I could because I've been hoping against hope that Moore
Speaker 1: would arrive. It's a strange thing to be writing my
Speaker 1: parts of these episodes. Safish from the other side of
Speaker 1: the Iron Curtain. We've had a rare actual winter this
Speaker 1: year in Helsinki, and I've mostly been based out of
Speaker 1: a friend's family lakeside cabin in an undisclosed location near
Speaker 1: one of the largest dinosaur breeding facilities in the world.
Speaker 1: I've been working on a series about that, which will
Speaker 1: be running soon. I've also, I have to admit, been
Speaker 1: feeling introspective myself while presenting to you these missives from
Speaker 1: Mixed Bunny Face Murder when they talk about the old
Speaker 1: person that they met, who'd just barely been born in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. Well, I spent my entire childhood in
Speaker 1: the twentieth century being old rules. I'm proud that I've
Speaker 1: made it, but it just brings into stark relief all
Speaker 1: the thousands of people I've known who didn't make it.
Speaker 1: I want so badly for Mixed Murder to make it
Speaker 1: out of the iron curtain. I see so much of
Speaker 1: myself in them, and I think about all the ill
Speaker 1: advised adventures I've survived. I thought I was too old
Speaker 1: to shake my fist at the heavens and shout it's
Speaker 1: not fair. But here I am leaning on a cane
Speaker 1: in the frozen forest, looking up at the beautiful skies.
Speaker 1: I tell myself that were I younger, I would be
Speaker 1: on the front lines with them, but it feels like
Speaker 1: a cop out. It isn't one, as my producers remind
Speaker 1: me constantly, but it feels like one. I need to
Speaker 1: do what I am best at, not what my ego
Speaker 1: insists I ought to do, and what I'm best at,
Speaker 1: apparently is podcasting at putting together and presenting stories. A
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, I interviewed the science fiction author Ursula
Speaker 1: le Gwynn when she was my age and I was
Speaker 1: mixed Murder's age. I asked her about the role of
Speaker 1: the fiction writer and social struggle, and she said something
Speaker 1: that will stay with me forever. I paraphrase here because
Speaker 1: I don't have my notes in front of me, but
Speaker 1: she said she was happiest when people let her alone
Speaker 1: to do what she was good at, to contribute in
Speaker 1: her own way. But that also didn't get her off
Speaker 1: the hook for doing the grunt work. For her, the
Speaker 1: grunt work meant marching in peace marches, and it meant
Speaker 1: stuffing envelopes for planned parenthood. No matter what, I'm not
Speaker 1: off the hook for showing up to be useful when
Speaker 1: it's raw numbers that we need, when grunt work needs doing.
Speaker 1: But I'm not a soldier, not anymore. I'm a cheerleader,
Speaker 1: an old trans bitch with pom poms. And it's not
Speaker 1: fair that mixed murder is in more physical danger than
Speaker 1: I am, because realistically, I've only got a couple decades
Speaker 1: left in me in the best of cases. But that's
Speaker 1: the way with war. It's not fair, it's not right.
Speaker 1: It's never been right that the young people are doing
Speaker 1: the dying. When I was younger, I didn't understand Ursula
Speaker 1: le Gwin's pacifism. I'm still not a pacifist. I'm about
Speaker 1: as support our troops as it can get in this
Speaker 1: world wide revolution. But I understand on a gut level
Speaker 1: how looking at this century of slaughter leaves you feeling terrified,
Speaker 1: even hollow. Those who make half a revolution dig their
Speaker 1: own graves. Though, or to throw another cliche at you,
Speaker 1: the only way out is through. We are so close,
Speaker 1: my friends, my comrades. In particular, I can say on
Speaker 1: air finally, that there's a call for internationalist fighters to
Speaker 1: gather at Camp Rex in southern France. The beacons are lit,
Speaker 1: dear friends. I'll be there at Camp Rex myself, though
Speaker 1: I've been told I'm not allowed to self indulgently ride
Speaker 1: into war and death, but I am more liability than asset.
Speaker 1: There are millions of people trapped in Catalonia, and they're
Speaker 1: doing an incredible job of holding on, and hopefully they
Speaker 1: won't need to hold on much longer. So if you
Speaker 1: want to break the iron curtain, make for Campres join
Speaker 1: the new Darruti column. If we can break the Iberian
Speaker 1: phalanx once and for all, something beautiful will blossom on
Speaker 1: the peninsula. I will say, as much as I long
Speaker 1: for a bit of glory, that dangerous thing, I'm quite
Speaker 1: enjoying my time on this frozen lake. My friends here
Speaker 1: still don't understand that I'm still vegan and don't want
Speaker 1: to eat the fish they catch. But I have spent
Speaker 1: hours lately on the ice with them, not talking much.
Speaker 1: None of us talk much, just looking at the trees.
Speaker 1: My hosts, my friends live in the ring of Vishnu
Speaker 1: that surrounds the breeding facility for about thirty miles in
Speaker 1: each direction. Living here is a beautiful way to contribute
Speaker 1: to the war effort. A crew of old Finnish women
Speaker 1: cysts and trans moved into these old cabins by these
Speaker 1: old lakes, just to keep an eye on the roads
Speaker 1: and the skies. They call themselves the Friends of the Bear,
Speaker 1: some reference to something in Finnish animism I don't understand
Speaker 1: quite well enough yet to talk about more. I almost
Speaker 1: feel like I belong here as much as I've ever
Speaker 1: felt like I belong anywhere. We heat the cabins with wood,
Speaker 1: most of them get around. It's got that most of
Speaker 1: my friends get around by skis, But frankly, I'm not
Speaker 1: so fit as the seventy year old fins around me,
Speaker 1: and most days for work I head off by sleigh
Speaker 1: into the dino facility. But that's a future episode. For now,
Speaker 1: we've got one more story from Mixed bunny Face Murder.
Speaker 1: I hope, as much as I've hoped for anything, that
Speaker 1: this isn't the last we'll hear from them. I hope
Speaker 1: one day they'll be my age, and I'll be dead
Speaker 1: and happy, and maybe fifty years from now people will
Speaker 1: be able to be pacifists again. Maybe Nazi zombies will
Speaker 1: sound as fictitious to the people of twenty one oh
Speaker 1: five as they would have sounded to me in two
Speaker 1: thousand and five. But if you want to help make
Speaker 1: nazis just a fiction. Again. If you want to ride
Speaker 1: courageously into war against half tree squid monsters, if you
Speaker 1: want to sit atop an ankloosaurus and guard the cities
Speaker 1: and towns we freed in this wide and beautiful world,
Speaker 1: then you need to attend classes put on by our
Speaker 1: most generous sponsor, Dino Cadence. That's right, Dino Cadence, the
Speaker 1: world's premiere chain of dinosaur riding academies. Tuition is free,
Speaker 1: but spots are limited, so apply today. And I guess
Speaker 1: we have other sponsors too. This podcast is brought to
Speaker 1: you by tooth So White Dino dental Paste. Did you
Speaker 1: know the dental problems are the number one cause of
Speaker 1: disease among carnivorous dinosaurs. With tooth so White Dino dental paste,
Speaker 1: you can keep your dinopals of razor sharp teeth glistening
Speaker 1: and ready to chomp on the heads of fascists. The
Speaker 1: use of dino dental paste does not mean that you
Speaker 1: do not need to take your dinosaurs for regular dental checkups.
Speaker 1: Do not attempt to brush the teeth of any carnivorous
Speaker 1: dinosaur you have not properly bonded with the Council for
Speaker 1: Preventing the Consumption of Dinosaur Riters by Dinosaurs would like
Speaker 1: to remind you that even fully bonded dinosaurs, if hungry
Speaker 1: or irritated, they may not want their deep brush. This
Speaker 1: podcast is brought to you by Gary. That's right, a
Speaker 1: guy named Gary. He gave us a lot of money
Speaker 1: and said, write me an ad about how this podcast
Speaker 1: was brought to you by a guy named Gary. You
Speaker 1: might think that this is a secret code to tell
Speaker 1: some unit of pleasiosaur writers to attack some fascist held
Speaker 1: port somewhere. What actually it really is that a guy
Speaker 1: named Gary walked into our headquarters in Portland, Oregon with
Speaker 1: a briefcase full of cash and said, I've been listening
Speaker 1: to the Cool Zone media for more than thirty years,
Speaker 1: and I live a very simple life, so I don't
Speaker 1: have many expenses.
Speaker 2: And I just think it would be cool to hear
Speaker 2: my name on Aaron. Thank you, Gary, and we're back,
Speaker 2: and without further ado, here is the rest of that message,
Speaker 2: smuggled to us by our correspondent mix bunny Face Murder.
Speaker 2: It takes a bit of a toll.
Speaker 1: On your mental health when half your family dies in
Speaker 1: a drone strike. And I was never going to forgive
Speaker 1: the people who did it. If I was rewriting my
Speaker 1: history to sound heroic, I would have at this point
Speaker 1: thrown myself into the movement. I would have dedicated myself
Speaker 1: to the destruction of the government that destroyed my family. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm being honest, I dedicated myself to well, the destruction
Speaker 1: of me. That's not how I perceived it at the time.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was basically like, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to die soon, so I might as well have fun.
Speaker 1: I wasn't the only person to come out of World
Speaker 1: War Three with a hedonistic lust for life and death,
Speaker 1: and the punk revival spread across the world. If I
Speaker 1: get out of this alive, then one day I'm going
Speaker 1: to write a nice, cozy history of ninth wave punk
Speaker 1: and how it tied into the liberation movements and philosophical
Speaker 1: tendencies that led to the uprisings of the late twenty forties.
Speaker 1: If nothing else, I'm sure you remember when that band
Speaker 1: No Thames Like Now went on that Arson Spury across Belfast.
Speaker 1: Ninth wave punk wasn't all positive. Right wing shit came
Speaker 1: out of that culture too, like fucking New varg Army.
Speaker 1: They got theirs, though they jumped a bunch of trans
Speaker 1: men in Paris, and that was the last thing they
Speaker 1: ever did before they died. Though they started that whole
Speaker 1: eco fash now movement that sadly outlived them, and many
Speaker 1: of the officers and nationalist armies cut their teeth burning
Speaker 1: down social centers as a result of their music and culture.
Speaker 1: I wasn't in a band or killing Nazis or doing
Speaker 1: anything meaningful during most of the twenty forties, though I
Speaker 1: was doing horse drugs and fucking strangers. I even had
Speaker 1: an okay time. Horse drugs can be fun, Strangers can
Speaker 1: be fun. I moved to Baltimore. I got a job
Speaker 1: at a collectively owned cafe for a while until I
Speaker 1: decided I didn't want to go to meetings, and we
Speaker 1: all me included, voted to fire me. I moved into
Speaker 1: a squat and fell's point with some folks. It was fine.
Speaker 1: I'm not ashamed. It's not what I'd tell younger me
Speaker 1: to do. It was during this time that I started
Speaker 1: going by mixed bunny face murder. But if this is
Speaker 1: the last thing I ever write, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: focus on those sort of lost years. I'm going to
Speaker 1: focus on. When I found myself, I'm going to focus
Speaker 1: on well, dinosaurs. March thirteenth, twenty forty nine, I was
Speaker 1: twenty years old. With the rest of the world, I
Speaker 1: saw Trike for the first time. The first modern triceratops
Speaker 1: ex Vivo Genesis was thrust upon the world, and I
Speaker 1: fell in love. When I saw Trike and Pale that assassin,
Speaker 1: I knew this is the future of force. I'd been
Speaker 1: a bit of a dino kid, to put it mildly,
Speaker 1: but like half of the rest of everyone, I started
Speaker 1: reading everything I could about dinosaurs. At that point, I've
Speaker 1: got a tattoo Trike on my belly with three horns
Speaker 1: for stab and written over it in black letter font
Speaker 1: To jump ahead a bit, when that first anti fascist
Speaker 1: dino unit, the Iron Dino Front, came out of Germany,
Speaker 1: I got their three horns logo tattooed on my thigh too. Anyhow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was obsessed, and once I had something to focus on,
Speaker 1: I started living a little better too. Who says obsession
Speaker 1: is bad for your mental health, Well, I guess a
Speaker 1: lot of people say that. I even got my old
Speaker 1: job back at that cafe for a while and started
Speaker 1: putting together community events talking about de extinction and its
Speaker 1: relationship with the Collectivist Left. What really changed my life, though,
Speaker 1: is when all my interests came together at once. I
Speaker 1: walked into work one morning and there was a flyer
Speaker 1: taped to the glass. Dino Cadence, the world's first collectively
Speaker 1: run burlesque sex show dinosaur circus, was coming into town
Speaker 1: and they were looking for people to join them. I
Speaker 1: wish I could say I handled leaving my job that
Speaker 1: second time responsibly, but I didn't. I hope my former
Speaker 1: collective mates forgive me. I had a hard time understanding
Speaker 1: that with freedom comes responsibility, and I left people in
Speaker 1: a lurch. But yeah, I ran away and joined the circus.
Speaker 1: I joined Dino Cadence. I fell in love with everyone there.
Speaker 1: I fell in love with Donna the MC when she
Speaker 1: did pirouettes around the floor between a fantastic menagerie of
Speaker 1: tooth claw, feather and scales, singing and shouting in her
Speaker 1: five octave range. I fell in love with Hurley the
Speaker 1: Dino Keeper, a surly they them who liked dinosaurs far
Speaker 1: more than they liked people, who would physically attack anyone
Speaker 1: who suggested mistreating the animals. I fell in love with
Speaker 1: Arlo and Spike, the exotic dancers, and I fell in
Speaker 1: love with Grubby the merch girl. What I did didn't do, though,
Speaker 1: was well be very good at my new job. It
Speaker 1: turns out there's way more involved in burlesque and live
Speaker 1: sex shows than just being hot. I like to think
Speaker 1: I'm hot, but I'm not a performer, not really. After
Speaker 1: a few mediocre to disastrous shows around the mid Atlantic,
Speaker 1: I realized I was much better at writing than I
Speaker 1: was publicly fucking. Mostly, I wrote over and over again
Speaker 1: about how committed we were to dino rights, how the
Speaker 1: animals were not involved in the sex parts of the
Speaker 1: show in any way, and how we were simply doing
Speaker 1: what we knew how to do, to try to offer
Speaker 1: levity in dark times and teach about the care of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: I started writing little dirty story zines to sell at
Speaker 1: the shows, and I started writing little dinocare zines. I
Speaker 1: was only with Dino Cadence for about six months, but
Speaker 1: I traveled around half the world in that time. I
Speaker 1: met some of the best musicians and performers in the world,
Speaker 1: and I also met some of the world's best dino
Speaker 1: keepers and revolutionaries. People would join and people would leave
Speaker 1: as suited them. And after about six months, while I
Speaker 1: was in Lagos, I fell in love yet again with
Speaker 1: a Pan Africanist organizer. I dropped off the dinocadence circuit.
Speaker 1: But what I didn't drop off of was these goods
Speaker 1: and services. No, what I also fell in love with
Speaker 1: was these goods and services. Jesus might be the last
Speaker 1: ad transition I ever write, and I did not nail it,
Speaker 1: so it goes. This podcast is brought to you by
Speaker 1: pancakes in a literal sense. Well, I Margaret was editing
Speaker 1: this podcast for my cabin in that undisclosed location in Finland.
Speaker 1: Someone I care about made me pancakes with blueberries baked
Speaker 1: into them and cherry jam on top, and it gave
Speaker 1: me enough energy to finish. This podcast is not brought
Speaker 1: to you by fresh caught fish, much to my host displeasure,
Speaker 1: because old habits die hard and I'm still vegan, so
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe mix money face iterate some fish,
Speaker 1: and therefore this podcast is brought to you by fish.
Speaker 1: But I'm guessing this podcast is brought to you more
Speaker 1: by Hardtack hard Tack. It's easy to make. It never
Speaker 1: goes bad. And you can chip your teeth on it.
Speaker 1: If you're not careful, try Hardtack Today. This podcast is
Speaker 1: brought to you by the Council for the Reintegration of
Speaker 1: X Fascists into Polite Society. The Council for Reintegration of
Speaker 1: X Fascist into Polite Society would like to remind you
Speaker 1: that our goal is not the eradication of fascists, but
Speaker 1: instead the eradication of fascism. This will involve eradicating a
Speaker 1: lot of fascists by necessity, but that is simply a
Speaker 1: means to an end. Every ex fascist is one less
Speaker 1: enemy for us to fight. Remember when you make people
Speaker 1: pick sides, you have to let them be able to
Speaker 1: pick your own sign and we're back. During my time
Speaker 1: in Dinocadance, I met some of the cool Zone media folks,
Speaker 1: becoming especially close to Mia and Molly. No offense to Margaret,
Speaker 1: who I assume is the one who is going to
Speaker 1: be stuck voicing these episodes, or at least compiling them
Speaker 1: and adding the ads or whatever. So in the Council
Speaker 1: in Lagos meant to talk about the ethical limitations of
Speaker 1: ex vivo genesis, I was the they them on the
Speaker 1: ground with writing experience, in a pretty deep understanding of dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: They tapped me as a correspondent, and I will say
Speaker 1: that I've finally found what I was put on this
Speaker 1: earth to do, travel around the world, talking to and
Speaker 1: sleeping with anti fascists, and then writing about the experience.
Speaker 1: If I'm writing this whole thing to kind of try
Speaker 1: to cement my place in history, I will say that
Speaker 1: at the Council of Lagos, I was there as a journalist,
Speaker 1: but during my reporting, after the first day, I was
Speaker 1: the first one to call what they were working on,
Speaker 1: the no Monster's rule, and that Phrasings stuck. That's my
Speaker 1: contribution to history. It's minor, but I'm proud of it.
Speaker 1: In the great, big, eternal etching of history, I left
Speaker 1: my little scratch. I hope my life isn't over. I
Speaker 1: wish I didn't hope that. I wish I had the
Speaker 1: courage or foolhardy resolution of the people around me with
Speaker 1: spears and stegosauruses, who seem to chase after death, who
Speaker 1: want their only legacy to be the freedom of those
Speaker 1: who survive them. Sometimes I even manage it. My resolution
Speaker 1: comes and goes in waves, and right now it's receded
Speaker 1: a bit. I think back on my life and frankly,
Speaker 1: it just hasn't been long enough, even though it's already
Speaker 1: been longer than many people's. There are no guarantees, but
Speaker 1: I've gotten to see an awful lot of the world,
Speaker 1: and maybe I've helped in my way. After the Council
Speaker 1: of Lagos, well, you can track my work on this
Speaker 1: very network, to the Pan Africanist conference in Cairo, to
Speaker 1: the fall of Saint Petersburg, all kinds of places. And
Speaker 1: here I am in Catalonia, trying desperately to keep Catalonia
Speaker 1: Catalonia instead of Spain, or if the rest of Portugal
Speaker 1: falls like it might Iberia. I think Ercho would have
Speaker 1: been proud of me, probably no matter what I did.
Speaker 1: But here I am full circle, fighting a losing war
Speaker 1: against fascists in Catalonia, just like the anarchists did one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixteen years ago. Everything goes in circles. We
Speaker 1: lost in nineteen thirty nine, but we didn't lose so
Speaker 1: completely that we haven't had another go of it. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll lose in twenty fifty five to two, but honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't think we will. I think things are different
Speaker 1: this time. I think the anarcho syndicalus lost in Spain
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine because too much of the world
Speaker 1: ignored their s struggle, because there weren't enough internationalists, because
Speaker 1: the world was trying to fight fascism one country at
Speaker 1: a time. Now now we're everywhere, and it's not just
Speaker 1: the anarcho syndicalist alone against the world. It's truly a
Speaker 1: popular front. It's people who not only don't agree on
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty details of what a better world could
Speaker 1: look like, but people who don't agree on really broad strokes. Yep,
Speaker 1: those people were working together. We're fighting together because a
Speaker 1: horde of fascists, nationalists and undead are threatening to drown
Speaker 1: the world. I think we'll win because we have to,
Speaker 1: because there are enough of us, because we're good at
Speaker 1: what we do, and because we've got fucking dinosaurs. At
Speaker 1: the Council of Lagos, people talked extensively about how fascists
Speaker 1: struggle to wield dinosaurs in the war, in agriculture, really,
Speaker 1: just anywhere they struggle, they struggle with dinosaurs. They can't
Speaker 1: seem to detain them. T Rexes turn on Nazi handlers
Speaker 1: every time Nazis try to handle them. Why, Because dinosaurs
Speaker 1: are not domesticated animals. They are not pets. They are
Speaker 1: stronger than us and more toothsome than us, and they
Speaker 1: know it. They do what they want to do, and
Speaker 1: they don't respond to intimidation or fear. They're not mammals.
Speaker 1: We're going to win because the dinosaurs are with us.
Speaker 1: The dinosaurs are our friends, and together we'll build a
Speaker 1: new world in the scorched ruins of this one. We
Speaker 1: didn't stop climate change, but we'll adapt and we'll ride
Speaker 1: triceratops into a bold future of mutual AIDS solidarity and
Speaker 1: what's that old slogan? A free association of cooperative autonomous
Speaker 1: groups working together for the purpose of mutual aid And
Speaker 1: if you're listening and you're one of my old coworkers
Speaker 1: from Baltimore, sorry I know, called no showed and join
Speaker 1: the circus. That wasn't me being my best self. Well
Speaker 1: that's what we've got from mixed bunny face murder. I hope,
Speaker 1: against hope that we'll hear more from them, but satellite
Speaker 1: imagery of the region isn't promising. Still, dear listener, if
Speaker 1: you join me at Camp Rex, we will see what
Speaker 1: we can do about breaking the Iberian phalanx and tearing
Speaker 1: down the Iron curtain and letting Catalonia be Catalonia, and
Speaker 1: see if Mixed Bunny Face Murder can write their punk
Speaker 1: rock analysis of the twenty forties and fall in love
Speaker 1: another fifteen or fifty times. In the meantime, we'll be
Speaker 1: back next week, probably with my report about all the
Speaker 1: latest innovations and de extinction. Lots of cute baby dinos
Speaker 1: and megafauna coming to you next week on cool Zone
Speaker 1: twenty fifty five, How to Survive the Dino Wars. It
Speaker 1: could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources where it Could Happen here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening