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Everything You Know is Wrong
by Russ Kick, Various Conspiracy Theorists
Did you know that everything you know is wrong? Well, now you know.
No bookshelf accoutrement has proven to be as able an aid to the faux intellectual as the alternative socio-political anthology. Burgeoning with various factoids and a range of sweeping pronouncements on the latest “burning” issues by esteemed academics, renowned windbags, or both, volumes of these works have appeared in increasing number since 9/11 and practically burst the discount aisle since the election fallout. Perhaps in the long scheme of history the trend is nothing spectacularly new, but given the glut and apparent power of these books on the modern market, publishers seem to have gone the way of cable in their attempt to sex up the genre and make it more accessible to the general public. This drift makes it possible for even the most incompetent of dullards to drop those taxing newspapers and magazines and take in concise, ostensibly thoughtful opinions about the world that can be easily echoed around the water cooler. If the Hollywood elite can do it, so can anybody. Examine a copy of Everything You Know Is Wrong and one witnesses a result that this democratization of information regarding the presently pertinent has yielded.
If nothing else, the shrewd will come to appreciate Everything You Know Is Wrong for its impressively gutsy title. Ostensibly a motley amalgam of non-mainstream ideas, exposes and tell-alls, the entire production swirls around the perennially restated assumption that everything that spews from the acid flecked lips of the established media is a vicious half-truth perpetrated to keep a mysterious coalition of monolithic corporations firmly ensconced on top of the little guy. Of course, leave it to Russ Kick and the rest of the editing staff at Disinformation! (that is with an exclamation point) to kick start the revolution already begun by their initial foray into the same subject, You Are Being Lied To. Kick, whose previous works include a “taboo-shattering” collection of erotica, Hot off the Net (1999), and who was once described by Detail magazine as “happily mal-adjusted” spared none of his talents on this fringe work and therein lies one of the publications biggest faults.
In the struggle to bring these censored gems to the fore, Kick went to extreme pains to make sure his audience would not shy away from the forbidden knowledge his internet exploits had collected. Like an auteur director hoping to mold the difficult to digest Ayn Rand or Isaac Asimov into a film that can draw crowds of salivating enthusiasts, Kick’s use of the editorial scalpel in many pieces is uninhibited and obvious. Every piece has been rearranged, altered and severely shortened to the point where little more is left to some of the selections than a few catch phrases and what might be construed as a topic sentence. Some poor sod, for instance, is tasked with informing the world that every cop on the corner is a direct participant in a conspiracy involving a secret, officially supervised drug coalition with street gangs all in the length of a page.
Even this book’s intended audience, hoping only to experience the apparent thrill that accompanies wallowing in the forbidden and shocking fringe aspects of modern culture, will feel unfulfilled by the end. With the exception of Mickey Z’s amusing tirade against the villainous scourge of meat consumption—“The hidden ingredient in all animal derived food (as well as clothing, entertainment, etc.) is cruelty”—a perpetually depressed Nick Mamatas’ exhortation to rid the world of the passé and imaginary, concepts of good vs. evil, as well as a triumphant celebration of Mo Kadaffi and the veritable utopia of modern Libya by Robert Sterling, there is little shock and awe present in any of the pieces. Most of the subjects revolve around some relatively mundane inequity in criminal justice, or a list of examples as to why you should go ahead and finish that Bush effigy you made in the fall out of mop heads and gorilla glue and catch the bus for the next G8 protest in Milan. The most interesting stories are sadly the ones that never get told (such as what qualified Mickey Z, among all of the investigative journalists, researchers, and academics to speak as the authority on proper foodstuff consumption, except for the fact he claims to be a vegan and has access to the internet).
Perhaps most distracting in regards to content is Russ Kick’s ubiquitous implication that all of this free information coalesces into a general truth about the clamp companies have placed upon all fringe media. Never mind the fact this publication relied upon more than a few such unquestionably vile organizations to reach the consumer (a fact whose power is not dissipated by Kick’s own sheepish admission of the many companies he relied upon to produce his books). The contradictions continue, as both Kick and Richard Metzger point to the absolute necessity for fringe media to push its way into the limelight, while simultaneously admonishing such outlets for losing its fringe status on its journey outside of the shadows. Fox is to be congratulated, Kick explains, for taking on the big networks and its work expanding the power of alternative cable television. On the same page he excoriates the station for essentially becoming one of the bearers of standard media in the confrontation with network TV (and also because its politics just “don’t jive”). I wonder then how Kick or Metzger would care to explain Disinformation!’s own leap into Borders Bookstores everywhere and the companies current goals to radicalize your television set with scores of DVDs and a television deal? Actually, now that I really think about it, I don’t care.
There were some good times to be had with my copy of Everything You Know Is Wrong. The selection of independent texts in the back are very thorough, and provide some interesting pictures, such as the team photo of the Lady Swastikas, a Canadian women’s hockey team that played in the early twentieth century when the whole of North America was gripped by swastika fever. That stuff sometimes makes interesting conversation points at cocktail parties, or when everybody is wrapped up in another round of Trivial Pursuit. Mostly this section reminded me what other books I could have been whittling away my time with, but then again until I found this book I had almost given up on finding anything that I could wedge underneath the wobbly leg of my bed post.
Title: Everything You Know is Wrong
Author: Russ Kick, Various Conspiracy Theorists
Publisher: The Disinformation Company Ltd.
ISBN: 0971394202
Review written by: Alexander Rogers
Reviewer's Rating:4
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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