CZM Book Club: Cool Zone 2055: The Last Report from Mx. Murder

Margaret from the future relays the last message from Mx. Bunny Face Murder.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Dino Wars, Dinah Wors, Dinah Wars. Hello
and welcome to Cool Zone Media book Club, the only
book club where you don't have to do the reading
because I do it for you. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
And this, as you might have guessed by the title
and the introduction, is another Dino Wars episode. Because it's

(00:25):
been exciting, you all have reacted positively to Dinah Wars.
I mean, you know, we did get these podcasts from
thirty years in the future, and obviously it would be
immoral of us to not play you all of the
podcasts that we heard from thirty years in the future. Anyway,
here's that. Hello and welcome to Cool Zone twenty fifty five,

(00:48):
How to Survive the Dino Wars. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
And this week, well, dear listener, I have been stretching
these missives from Mixed Bunny Face Murder as long as
I could because I've been hoping against hope that Moore
would arrive. It's a strange thing to be writing my
parts of these episodes. Safish from the other side of

(01:10):
the Iron Curtain. We've had a rare actual winter this
year in Helsinki, and I've mostly been based out of
a friend's family lakeside cabin in an undisclosed location near
one of the largest dinosaur breeding facilities in the world.
I've been working on a series about that, which will
be running soon. I've also, I have to admit, been

(01:31):
feeling introspective myself while presenting to you these missives from
Mixed Bunny Face Murder when they talk about the old
person that they met, who'd just barely been born in
the twentieth century. Well, I spent my entire childhood in
the twentieth century being old rules. I'm proud that I've
made it, but it just brings into stark relief all

(01:53):
the thousands of people I've known who didn't make it.
I want so badly for Mixed Murder to make it
out of the iron curtain. I see so much of
myself in them, and I think about all the ill
advised adventures I've survived. I thought I was too old
to shake my fist at the heavens and shout it's
not fair. But here I am leaning on a cane

(02:16):
in the frozen forest, looking up at the beautiful skies.
I tell myself that were I younger, I would be
on the front lines with them, but it feels like
a cop out. It isn't one, as my producers remind
me constantly, but it feels like one. I need to
do what I am best at, not what my ego

(02:37):
insists I ought to do, and what I'm best at,
apparently is podcasting at putting together and presenting stories. A
thousand years ago, I interviewed the science fiction author Ursula
le Gwynn when she was my age and I was
mixed Murder's age. I asked her about the role of
the fiction writer and social struggle, and she said something

(02:58):
that will stay with me forever. I paraphrase here because
I don't have my notes in front of me, but
she said she was happiest when people let her alone
to do what she was good at, to contribute in
her own way. But that also didn't get her off
the hook for doing the grunt work. For her, the
grunt work meant marching in peace marches, and it meant
stuffing envelopes for planned parenthood. No matter what, I'm not

(03:23):
off the hook for showing up to be useful when
it's raw numbers that we need, when grunt work needs doing.
But I'm not a soldier, not anymore. I'm a cheerleader,
an old trans bitch with pom poms. And it's not
fair that mixed murder is in more physical danger than
I am, because realistically, I've only got a couple decades

(03:45):
left in me in the best of cases. But that's
the way with war. It's not fair, it's not right.
It's never been right that the young people are doing
the dying. When I was younger, I didn't understand Ursula
le Gwin's pacifism. I'm still not a pacifist. I'm about
as support our troops as it can get in this
world wide revolution. But I understand on a gut level

(04:08):
how looking at this century of slaughter leaves you feeling terrified,
even hollow. Those who make half a revolution dig their
own graves. Though, or to throw another cliche at you,
the only way out is through. We are so close,
my friends, my comrades. In particular, I can say on

(04:31):
air finally, that there's a call for internationalist fighters to
gather at Camp Rex in southern France. The beacons are lit,
dear friends. I'll be there at Camp Rex myself, though
I've been told I'm not allowed to self indulgently ride
into war and death, but I am more liability than asset.
There are millions of people trapped in Catalonia, and they're

(04:53):
doing an incredible job of holding on, and hopefully they
won't need to hold on much longer. So if you
want to break the iron curtain, make for Campres join
the new Darruti column. If we can break the Iberian
phalanx once and for all, something beautiful will blossom on
the peninsula. I will say, as much as I long

(05:16):
for a bit of glory, that dangerous thing, I'm quite
enjoying my time on this frozen lake. My friends here
still don't understand that I'm still vegan and don't want
to eat the fish they catch. But I have spent
hours lately on the ice with them, not talking much.
None of us talk much, just looking at the trees.

(05:36):
My hosts, my friends live in the ring of Vishnu
that surrounds the breeding facility for about thirty miles in
each direction. Living here is a beautiful way to contribute
to the war effort. A crew of old Finnish women
cysts and trans moved into these old cabins by these
old lakes, just to keep an eye on the roads
and the skies. They call themselves the Friends of the Bear,

(06:00):
some reference to something in Finnish animism I don't understand
quite well enough yet to talk about more. I almost
feel like I belong here as much as I've ever
felt like I belong anywhere. We heat the cabins with wood,
most of them get around. It's got that most of
my friends get around by skis, But frankly, I'm not

(06:20):
so fit as the seventy year old fins around me,
and most days for work I head off by sleigh
into the dino facility. But that's a future episode. For now,
we've got one more story from Mixed bunny Face Murder.
I hope, as much as I've hoped for anything, that
this isn't the last we'll hear from them. I hope
one day they'll be my age, and I'll be dead

(06:43):
and happy, and maybe fifty years from now people will
be able to be pacifists again. Maybe Nazi zombies will
sound as fictitious to the people of twenty one oh
five as they would have sounded to me in two
thousand and five. But if you want to help make
nazis just a fiction. Again. If you want to ride
courageously into war against half tree squid monsters, if you

(07:07):
want to sit atop an ankloosaurus and guard the cities
and towns we freed in this wide and beautiful world,
then you need to attend classes put on by our
most generous sponsor, Dino Cadence. That's right, Dino Cadence, the
world's premiere chain of dinosaur riding academies. Tuition is free,
but spots are limited, so apply today. And I guess

(07:31):
we have other sponsors too. This podcast is brought to
you by tooth So White Dino dental Paste. Did you
know the dental problems are the number one cause of
disease among carnivorous dinosaurs. With tooth so White Dino dental paste,
you can keep your dinopals of razor sharp teeth glistening
and ready to chomp on the heads of fascists. The

(07:53):
use of dino dental paste does not mean that you
do not need to take your dinosaurs for regular dental checkups.
Do not attempt to brush the teeth of any carnivorous
dinosaur you have not properly bonded with the Council for
Preventing the Consumption of Dinosaur Riters by Dinosaurs would like
to remind you that even fully bonded dinosaurs, if hungry
or irritated, they may not want their deep brush. This
podcast is brought to you by Gary. That's right, a

(08:16):
guy named Gary. He gave us a lot of money
and said, write me an ad about how this podcast
was brought to you by a guy named Gary. You
might think that this is a secret code to tell
some unit of pleasiosaur writers to attack some fascist held
port somewhere. What actually it really is that a guy
named Gary walked into our headquarters in Portland, Oregon with
a briefcase full of cash and said, I've been listening

(08:38):
to the Cool Zone media for more than thirty years,
and I live a very simple life, so I don't
have many expenses.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
And I just think it would be cool to hear
my name on Aaron. Thank you, Gary, and we're back,

(09:07):
and without further ado, here is the rest of that message,
smuggled to us by our correspondent mix bunny Face Murder.
It takes a bit of a toll.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
On your mental health when half your family dies in
a drone strike. And I was never going to forgive
the people who did it. If I was rewriting my
history to sound heroic, I would have at this point
thrown myself into the movement. I would have dedicated myself
to the destruction of the government that destroyed my family. Instead,
I'm being honest, I dedicated myself to well, the destruction

(09:42):
of me. That's not how I perceived it at the time.
At the time, I was basically like, well, I'm going
to die soon, so I might as well have fun.
I wasn't the only person to come out of World
War Three with a hedonistic lust for life and death,
and the punk revival spread across the world. If I
get out of this alive, then one day I'm going

(10:03):
to write a nice, cozy history of ninth wave punk
and how it tied into the liberation movements and philosophical
tendencies that led to the uprisings of the late twenty forties.
If nothing else, I'm sure you remember when that band
No Thames Like Now went on that Arson Spury across Belfast.
Ninth wave punk wasn't all positive. Right wing shit came
out of that culture too, like fucking New varg Army.

(10:26):
They got theirs, though they jumped a bunch of trans
men in Paris, and that was the last thing they
ever did before they died. Though they started that whole
eco fash now movement that sadly outlived them, and many
of the officers and nationalist armies cut their teeth burning
down social centers as a result of their music and culture.
I wasn't in a band or killing Nazis or doing

(10:49):
anything meaningful during most of the twenty forties, though I
was doing horse drugs and fucking strangers. I even had
an okay time. Horse drugs can be fun, Strangers can
be fun. I moved to Baltimore. I got a job
at a collectively owned cafe for a while until I
decided I didn't want to go to meetings, and we
all me included, voted to fire me. I moved into

(11:12):
a squat and fell's point with some folks. It was fine.
I'm not ashamed. It's not what I'd tell younger me
to do. It was during this time that I started
going by mixed bunny face murder. But if this is
the last thing I ever write, I'm not going to
focus on those sort of lost years. I'm going to
focus on. When I found myself, I'm going to focus

(11:32):
on well, dinosaurs. March thirteenth, twenty forty nine, I was
twenty years old. With the rest of the world, I
saw Trike for the first time. The first modern triceratops
ex Vivo Genesis was thrust upon the world, and I
fell in love. When I saw Trike and Pale that assassin,

(11:53):
I knew this is the future of force. I'd been
a bit of a dino kid, to put it mildly,
but like half of the rest of everyone, I started
reading everything I could about dinosaurs. At that point, I've
got a tattoo Trike on my belly with three horns
for stab and written over it in black letter font

(12:14):
To jump ahead a bit, when that first anti fascist
dino unit, the Iron Dino Front, came out of Germany,
I got their three horns logo tattooed on my thigh too. Anyhow, Yeah,
I was obsessed, and once I had something to focus on,
I started living a little better too. Who says obsession
is bad for your mental health, Well, I guess a

(12:34):
lot of people say that. I even got my old
job back at that cafe for a while and started
putting together community events talking about de extinction and its
relationship with the Collectivist Left. What really changed my life, though,
is when all my interests came together at once. I
walked into work one morning and there was a flyer
taped to the glass. Dino Cadence, the world's first collectively

(12:57):
run burlesque sex show dinosaur circus, was coming into town
and they were looking for people to join them. I
wish I could say I handled leaving my job that
second time responsibly, but I didn't. I hope my former
collective mates forgive me. I had a hard time understanding
that with freedom comes responsibility, and I left people in

(13:18):
a lurch. But yeah, I ran away and joined the circus.
I joined Dino Cadence. I fell in love with everyone there.
I fell in love with Donna the MC when she
did pirouettes around the floor between a fantastic menagerie of
tooth claw, feather and scales, singing and shouting in her

(13:39):
five octave range. I fell in love with Hurley the
Dino Keeper, a surly they them who liked dinosaurs far
more than they liked people, who would physically attack anyone
who suggested mistreating the animals. I fell in love with
Arlo and Spike, the exotic dancers, and I fell in
love with Grubby the merch girl. What I did didn't do, though,

(14:01):
was well be very good at my new job. It
turns out there's way more involved in burlesque and live
sex shows than just being hot. I like to think
I'm hot, but I'm not a performer, not really. After
a few mediocre to disastrous shows around the mid Atlantic,
I realized I was much better at writing than I

(14:21):
was publicly fucking. Mostly, I wrote over and over again
about how committed we were to dino rights, how the
animals were not involved in the sex parts of the
show in any way, and how we were simply doing
what we knew how to do, to try to offer
levity in dark times and teach about the care of dinosaurs.
I started writing little dirty story zines to sell at

(14:43):
the shows, and I started writing little dinocare zines. I
was only with Dino Cadence for about six months, but
I traveled around half the world in that time. I
met some of the best musicians and performers in the world,
and I also met some of the world's best dino
keepers and revolutionaries. People would join and people would leave

(15:03):
as suited them. And after about six months, while I
was in Lagos, I fell in love yet again with
a Pan Africanist organizer. I dropped off the dinocadence circuit.
But what I didn't drop off of was these goods
and services. No, what I also fell in love with
was these goods and services. Jesus might be the last

(15:25):
ad transition I ever write, and I did not nail it,
so it goes. This podcast is brought to you by
pancakes in a literal sense. Well, I Margaret was editing
this podcast for my cabin in that undisclosed location in Finland.
Someone I care about made me pancakes with blueberries baked
into them and cherry jam on top, and it gave

(15:46):
me enough energy to finish. This podcast is not brought
to you by fresh caught fish, much to my host displeasure,
because old habits die hard and I'm still vegan, so
I don't know. Maybe mix money face iterate some fish,
and therefore this podcast is brought to you by fish.
But I'm guessing this podcast is brought to you more
by Hardtack hard Tack. It's easy to make. It never

(16:09):
goes bad. And you can chip your teeth on it.
If you're not careful, try Hardtack Today. This podcast is
brought to you by the Council for the Reintegration of
X Fascists into Polite Society. The Council for Reintegration of
X Fascist into Polite Society would like to remind you
that our goal is not the eradication of fascists, but

(16:30):
instead the eradication of fascism. This will involve eradicating a
lot of fascists by necessity, but that is simply a
means to an end. Every ex fascist is one less
enemy for us to fight. Remember when you make people
pick sides, you have to let them be able to
pick your own sign and we're back. During my time

(17:12):
in Dinocadance, I met some of the cool Zone media folks,
becoming especially close to Mia and Molly. No offense to Margaret,
who I assume is the one who is going to
be stuck voicing these episodes, or at least compiling them
and adding the ads or whatever. So in the Council
in Lagos meant to talk about the ethical limitations of
ex vivo genesis, I was the they them on the
ground with writing experience, in a pretty deep understanding of dinosaurs.

(17:36):
They tapped me as a correspondent, and I will say
that I've finally found what I was put on this
earth to do, travel around the world, talking to and
sleeping with anti fascists, and then writing about the experience.
If I'm writing this whole thing to kind of try
to cement my place in history, I will say that

(17:57):
at the Council of Lagos, I was there as a journalist,
but during my reporting, after the first day, I was
the first one to call what they were working on,
the no Monster's rule, and that Phrasings stuck. That's my
contribution to history. It's minor, but I'm proud of it.
In the great, big, eternal etching of history, I left

(18:17):
my little scratch. I hope my life isn't over. I
wish I didn't hope that. I wish I had the
courage or foolhardy resolution of the people around me with
spears and stegosauruses, who seem to chase after death, who
want their only legacy to be the freedom of those
who survive them. Sometimes I even manage it. My resolution

(18:40):
comes and goes in waves, and right now it's receded
a bit. I think back on my life and frankly,
it just hasn't been long enough, even though it's already
been longer than many people's. There are no guarantees, but
I've gotten to see an awful lot of the world,
and maybe I've helped in my way. After the Council
of Lagos, well, you can track my work on this

(19:02):
very network, to the Pan Africanist conference in Cairo, to
the fall of Saint Petersburg, all kinds of places. And
here I am in Catalonia, trying desperately to keep Catalonia
Catalonia instead of Spain, or if the rest of Portugal
falls like it might Iberia. I think Ercho would have

(19:24):
been proud of me, probably no matter what I did.
But here I am full circle, fighting a losing war
against fascists in Catalonia, just like the anarchists did one
hundred and sixteen years ago. Everything goes in circles. We
lost in nineteen thirty nine, but we didn't lose so
completely that we haven't had another go of it. Maybe

(19:45):
we'll lose in twenty fifty five to two, but honestly,
I don't think we will. I think things are different
this time. I think the anarcho syndicalus lost in Spain
in nineteen thirty nine because too much of the world
ignored their s struggle, because there weren't enough internationalists, because
the world was trying to fight fascism one country at

(20:06):
a time. Now now we're everywhere, and it's not just
the anarcho syndicalist alone against the world. It's truly a
popular front. It's people who not only don't agree on
the nitty gritty details of what a better world could
look like, but people who don't agree on really broad strokes. Yep,

(20:27):
those people were working together. We're fighting together because a
horde of fascists, nationalists and undead are threatening to drown
the world. I think we'll win because we have to,
because there are enough of us, because we're good at
what we do, and because we've got fucking dinosaurs. At
the Council of Lagos, people talked extensively about how fascists

(20:50):
struggle to wield dinosaurs in the war, in agriculture, really,
just anywhere they struggle, they struggle with dinosaurs. They can't
seem to detain them. T Rexes turn on Nazi handlers
every time Nazis try to handle them. Why, Because dinosaurs
are not domesticated animals. They are not pets. They are

(21:12):
stronger than us and more toothsome than us, and they
know it. They do what they want to do, and
they don't respond to intimidation or fear. They're not mammals.
We're going to win because the dinosaurs are with us.
The dinosaurs are our friends, and together we'll build a
new world in the scorched ruins of this one. We

(21:35):
didn't stop climate change, but we'll adapt and we'll ride
triceratops into a bold future of mutual AIDS solidarity and
what's that old slogan? A free association of cooperative autonomous
groups working together for the purpose of mutual aid And
if you're listening and you're one of my old coworkers
from Baltimore, sorry I know, called no showed and join

(21:58):
the circus. That wasn't me being my best self. Well
that's what we've got from mixed bunny face murder. I hope,
against hope that we'll hear more from them, but satellite
imagery of the region isn't promising. Still, dear listener, if

(22:18):
you join me at Camp Rex, we will see what
we can do about breaking the Iberian phalanx and tearing
down the Iron curtain and letting Catalonia be Catalonia, and
see if Mixed Bunny Face Murder can write their punk
rock analysis of the twenty forties and fall in love
another fifteen or fifty times. In the meantime, we'll be

(22:39):
back next week, probably with my report about all the
latest innovations and de extinction. Lots of cute baby dinos
and megafauna coming to you next week on cool Zone
twenty fifty five, How to Survive the Dino Wars. It
could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.

(23:00):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources where it Could Happen here, updated monthly at
Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening