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the
current
Monday
Report
below!
This week's report by Patrick Simonelli, ULA
2006 State of the ULA Address
Distinguished low-rent writers, small press denizens, honored
zinesters and comrades, welcome to the 2006 State of the ULA
Address! (click for applause) Today I stand before you with
burdened mind and leaky pen. Don't worry, i'm taking
medication for the latter, [insert laff track here] but my deviant
mind refuses to be fixed! Over a year ago i joined forces with the
Underground Literary Alliance, a group of literary freedom
fighters who leap up and howl as others sit silently by, afraid to
rise for principles or risk stirring up trouble. Our fight is against
the rampant injustice and mediocrity stifling today's literary
world! Our members and allies are writers, readers, activists,
optimists, passionate vanguards of the lively arts who demand to
be heard!
American society is in grave danger of losing the tough minded
independent spirit that has made this country great for over 200
years. Multi billion dollar media conglomerates employ
advertising propaganda and gatekeeper tactics as Weapons of
Mind Destruction against millions of innocent citizens on a daily
basis. The Corporati want us to be complacent and drooling,
confused and lost in a world of advertisements, with brand-name
recognition as our only beacon, a world where our options are
Coke or Pepsi, Borders or Barnes & Noble, McDonalds or Burger
King, Oprah's Book Club or the New York Times bestseller list.
Complacency abounds, encouraged by daily worship of
computer, television, and movie screens, we box ourselves in,
moths intoxicated by the artificial light of corporate glitz. After
years of such brainwashing, authentic real world alternatives
seem unreal, impossible. We laugh and scoff, and submerge
ourselves into the safe soup of the status quo. The incessant
babbling of fools drowns out the inner voice of reason until our
bullshit detector rusts into the off position. We live in fear of
ostracism, and abandon the narrow path of individualism for the
congested and sluggish single lane highway of our clueless peers
and predecessors. Only the foremost few have an unobstructed
view of where they're headed, while the rest of the pack gets an
extended eyeful of the asshole in front of them, nodding in
anticipation of the stale implied promise of someday running
alongside these overdogs, yet never making any real progress.
The first step to escape pack drudgery veers off that single lane
highway. Any reststop will do! Remove the corporate chip from
your spirit, and remember what unfettered thought and
creativity feel like! Writers, artists & readers, Do-It-Yourself
ethics are the liberating mojo of the Underground Literary
Alliance. Don't follow us, join us!
As i stand before you today, the ULA is poised to take our next
bold leap of progress. A rigorous search is underway for a
Director to spearhead our fight, and indeed the merits of several
potential leaders are currently being debated. We expect to name
the new Director this spring, and by the end of the year, ULA
membership could very well surpass 50 activists. The time is
right for the ULA to return to our radical roots. We wasted too
much time in 2005 fending off the limp-wristed internet-based
attacks of lit-bloggers and other nonstarters. We of the ULA have
bigger fish to fry. Our battlefield is the real world, our true
enemies the Lords of publishing palaces in New York City, of
mega-chain bookstores, of corpo-coffee houses, trendy bars,
exclusionary public libraries, and visionless mock-indie venues
across America and beyond! No longer can corrupt millionaire
authors and publishers hide behind hired vipers and brown-
nosed garden snakes. The ULA has passed through the foul
steam of their writhing pit. Overdogs, expect us at your doorstep
soon! Give old slithery Jeeves his pension, and send him to the
country estate, because our boots won't be knocking politely.
2006 will be a year of unprecedented Action, as ULA members
are more organized and united than ever before. We hope to
work shoulder to shoulder with local activist groups, if any can
keep up with us! The new Director and regional bureau chiefs
will extend the reach of the ULA to all corners of the United
States, and in time the "black flag" of the ULA shall be flown
around the world.
Our lit-zine, SlushPile, will enter its fifth edition later this year,
joining ULA book projects Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in
the Life of an Underground Writer & His Family, by Jack
Saunders, Game Quest, a groundbreaking novel by Leopold
McGinnis, and Wred Fright's classic saga The Pornographic
Flabbergasted Emus. We're also releasing a series of postcard
size ULA Literary All-Star Trading Cards. On the internet, our
Monday Reports continue to throttle the lit-world every week,
and each Wednesday new audio and video files are added to our
spectacular Multimedia page.
Comrades, it is a great time to be an underground writer! The
mainstream has shown the so-called best of what it has to offer:
illusions, fluff, and bluster. The charade is breaking down, they
are getting sloppy and losing their grip. Time to leap from the
balcony and throw these clowns off the stage. In case you haven't
heard, WE are the ULA and we're already in a city near you!
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Pat Simonelli joined the ULA in February 2005.
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