SHRIMP ANARCHY
1½ cup onion
1 cup celery
2 medium green peppers
4 cloves garlic
1 lb. cleaned raw shrimp
¼ cup margarine
2 cups tomato sauce
1 cup water
2 tsps. minced parsley
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
3 cups rice (prepare separately)
Chop onion, celery, peppers, and garlic. Cook in margarine fat for about five minutes. Remove from heat; stir in tomato sauce, water and seasonings. Simmer about ten minutes. Add shrimp, cover and cook for ten to twenty minutes until shrimp are pink and tender. Serve over hot rice.
While shrimp are in preparation have your local troop perform the following actions:
I. Begin calling all local branches of the federal government and tell them that their department has come under fire in the national budget cutting process. Advise them that the only hope for their jobs is an immediate flight to Washington to testify before the Senate finance committee. The bureaucrats will then flee their offices. As they abandon their offices, send paint crews to rename the offices for plumbing and artistic firms. Change locks. The resulting confusion will end federal control of your area.
II. Blow up all cable TV facilities in your area. Call all local TV stations. Threaten them with destruction unless they agree to show nothing but the “What Makes Auntie Freeze?” episode of My Mother the Car. This will cause all but the most brain damaged among the local populace to turn off their sets and begin to think. For those who still remain addicted to the tube, there isn’t any hope anyway.
III. Call up all the local schools, identifying yourselves as the local fire Marshall, tell them it is time for an impromptu fire drill. Call up all firms which provide ice cream refreshments from trucks. Tell the trucks to head to the schools, that a special school holiday has just been declared and the kids will want to celebrate. Remind them to announce the holiday over their loud speakers as the they approach the schools.
IV. Call the local churches, synagogues and mosques. Tell them that the largest churches in the city have started a raffle program that gives money to a random church goer. Ask them if they have a statement on the how much money They would pay to have someone to attend their church. Tell them that all the other churches are making statements at the local radio stations. Call all the local radio stations and tell them that church groups are making a hostile march on them en masse. Tell the radio stations the only way to avoid religious attack is to quickly found their own religions and start broadcasting them right away. Tell them that the churches won’t attack their own. This will cause the state’s greatest ally in enslavement, the churches, and the state’s second greatest ally, the media to fight amongst themselves.
V. Call up local government offices and tell them that the feds are planning to absorb all their functions in a few days. Say that the governor/mayor has said that the only way folks may keep their jobs is if they picket all federal buildings, with placards marked “Power to the People!”. The federals will have all left, and the arriving picketers will be picketing the locksmiths and painting crews. Call the local newspapers and ask them why all our local government is downtown picketing honest working men and women? Why is local government opposed to Labor? Express a hope that the local newspaper will cover the story, since all the radio seems to talk about any more is religion.
VI. Call the police and announce that the biggest shopping mall in town is offering a free fifty dollar gift certificate to the first two hundred police men who show up in uniform at the mall. Call all the malls and tell them that the police are in a state of revolt, and are coming to mall after mall to loot freely. If they doubt the story call up the biggest mall and ask if the police are coming in number. Tell them that to avoid panic, they should leave the malls—keeping all the doors open and hope that the police will take what they want and just go away. Tell to the homeless in your neighborhoods, that it’s a good day to visit the malls for a clothing upgrade.
VII. At this point shrimp will be done, go home, eat shrimp, start next batch.
VIII. Go to all the empty churches, synagogues, and mosques. Put large hand lettered signs on each. “Going out of Business sale! All furniture free for hauling.” Give everyone that shows up some of those anarchists zines,you’ve been storing for years. Numerous copies of The Stars My Destination are also nice gifts. Help people loot the churches, synagogues, and mosques. Tell each one of them, “Well we’re going to have start figuring this stuff out for ourselves now.” Mention that all the local government offices have gone out of business too, and that everything there’s free as well.
IX. Get a large electromagnetic crane, such as the kind used in car demolition lots. Use its mighty magnetic field to wipe away all records at banks, courthouses, and taxation offices.
X. Storm the electric power station. Turn all power of in the city for twenty three minutes.
XI. In the instability that will follow use your judgment and creativity to change a mindless falling away of the system into an individualistic small scale society unlike any that have existed in history save for our dreams. Some ice-cream would be nice too, since the shrimp burns a little. Maybe served with out anarchy. Serves four.
THE GAME
In all other respects he is a benevolent conformist. He decided that all men are allowed one vice. Open or hidden. The best vices—although, he would admit that one doesn’t rationally choose one’s vices—the best vices are the ones that do not destroy the practitioner or permanently injure his victim. Although he gave little thought to his victims. He dealt in fear. He stalked women. He never did anything to his victims. He never even caught them. Or attempted to do these things. Or thought of these things.
Anytime can be a beginning. He would sit on a bench in a park (or an airport, or a shopping mall) and wait. Something would catch his eye. A startling silhouette or a dress ablaze with purple. Then he would rise—quietly, discreetly. He would follow the woman. Never women or a woman with a man or men. Such things could lead to consequences that could disturb his real life. His eight-to-five job forty-nine weeks a year. He relished the backward glance. He could detect the whole continuum: notice, curiosity, confirmation, alarum, fear, flight. The women didn’t cry out to security guards or passersby. He never pressed that close. If she paused to study mannequins, he paused to review the wares of B. Dalton. If she stopped for a drink in a fountain, he would admire the maidenhair tree. If she ran, he would return to his bench. Never, never run in public. The woman would go to her car, he to his (in his college days a ten-speed racing bike sufficed). He would follow her to her house or apartment through labyrinthine suburbs and careful turning tricks. The more elusive she was the greater his excitement. He can’t stand it when some great event occurs and interferes with his ploys.
Today, this brilliant Friday, seemed as good a day as any. Summer chases could be very long as wily women led him into the twilight. He sat on a boulder in a pocket park in LaGrange Park. He waited. It had been a busy day bristling with office politics, vague corporate depravities, and hour-long calls to Japan. All of this tension slid from his back into the gray slate. He was ready. He spotted a young woman feeding pigeons. She looked intelligent, enough. Hope she doesn’t live here. She looked up and smiled. He smiled. She glanced up from time to time. Each time she caught his eye. Nervousness began. She quick walked to her car—a red BMW a sign of upward mobility and great resourcefulness. Good.