Spite Magazine presents an interview with:
Unamerican.com
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  Products from
unamerican.com's catalog:

Fuck Decaf





Reboot America





I Guess I Was Punk Once





Destroy What Bores You On Sight





Jesus Hates Me





I'm In Scenester Hell

 
 
SM: Have you been changing the site?
SK: We do about 25 new stickers a month.

SM: Royal we?
SK: I have a partner.

SM: I'm amazed at how much stuff there is on your site.
SK: The whole idea of the web is to reward people for getting deeper, a lot of the best content on our page is hidden. I don't want to say that's deliberate because that would say that I'm a little more manipulative than I could take credit for. One hand kinda washes the other. The more people read the content the more they get into it.

SM: Any new projects in store for you guys?
SK: I'm doing this book called Fuck Work and the idea of the book is to teach kids to start small businesses. I mean you can have a job for someone else and it can be fun and that's great and that's not really work, but if can start your own business when you're a kid then when you're an adult you will have opinions, you'll have some real live experience.

SM: When's it coming out?
SK: Very soon. The book is in its final revisions right now. We're going to publish the first 5,000 or so. I believe we'll blow through those pretty quickly. I have an agent that thinks we'll be able to...the idea is we'll change the title for a major publisher. But I will always sell Fuck Work on my web site.

We want to show that a good job is one you absolutely enjoy doing so, and I like to think that people who create those kinds of jobs are a cut above. I want jobs to steadily improve in quality... And the way you do that is to address the people who are going to create the jobs.

SM: You talk a lot about punk music on your site. Do you think punk rock still exists?
SK: Yes, though I define it very widely. I mean, even Stereolab is.

One of the tag lines in the Fuck Work book is "small business is the new punk rock." I want to see people really embracing that. Partnership and a commune are really close to each other. And when you start your own business and you're constantly engaged and you're constantly thinking and you're living really close to the bottom of the economic food chain. Vegetarians and vegans like to say they're eating "very close to the ground." I like to advocate the same thing economically. Be really close to the ground.

SM: So the web site and the book. Anything else?
SK: I'm also going to be doing a road trip from Minneapolis to Boston. I'm going to ride Amtrak of all things. I'm going to stop in NYC on the way.

Also, lots of little things: at the end of October, we're going to try and give away 100,000 Fuck Work stickers during Friday's evening commute. Hand out to people getting on the BART system [that's "subway" to non-San Francsicans - ed.] Carry signs that say "Fuck Work." This is the weird thing about Fuck Work: Republicans love Fuck Work.

I've got something to say, and what I'm really looking forward to is having a budget for advertising. The posters I have are so crazy. I have one of me putting a flyer on a flag pole. "Dear America, Game Over. unamerican.com" I'm really looking forward to assaulting the general public.

SM: How do you deal with the contradictions on your site (like telling capitalism to fuck off, but selling things)
SK: Two responses to that: one of the paradigms when I was writing was the Bible. How does the Bible work? Why is the Bible one of the few books that people still read and check out and read for 2,000 years or whatever? And I discovered several different ideas about that. First of all, it allows for tons of contradictions. It allows people to have widely different views and still subscribe to that same book. Contradiction that inspires discussion. As long as the art spurs something outside of the art itself.

The second thing, and this is going to be one of the focuses of the Fuck Work book, people like us who have been into alternative culture -- we tend to suspect anything that makes money. What I want to do is encourage that and dispel it at the same time. Money in its zen form is a way that people can express respect for a creation, like if you're a farmer and you make money off of something that tastes good, -- you feel good. One of my phrases, and I think you'll understand this: Free Enterprise Will Destroy Capitalism. The way I see things is as an anarchist I'm in favor of anything that liberates anything.

We try to emphasize unamerican as being a totally patriotic thing. Its a good and healthy thing that creates good and services that actually are valuable to other people.

The goal in my life on a spiritual level is to give a fuck. We run into people every day that don't give a fuck. All I know is I don't want to talk to people like that anymore. I don't mean they should die or anything, but I would like to buy groceries from people who are interesting.

If you look at Walmart, Walmart being your classic capitalist company, they come in and they kill all the differentiation in your town and what I'm about is what can rise from those ruins, all Walmart can do is compete in price and convenience. But getting to know the people behind your products is something we can do.

SM: Let's talk about a few particular stickers. How about the first one people see on your site: "I represent God, you fuck."
SK: You can freak Christians out and make money. But that sticker is lot deeper than just freaking out Christians. I mean I'm selling that so I'm letting anyone represent God.

SM: What are your big sellers?
SK: "Bomb the Mall" is one of our biggest sellers, though it doesn't sell in the cities, like San Francisco. But in Oklahoma, it's revolution! Like: "You've gotta 'Bomb the Mall' sticker? You're dangerous!" Also "Whitey Will Pay," "I Represent God You Fuck," "Fuck Work"...

SM: So how big IS your site? How many hits?
SK: I don't know. I have like 48,000 people on the mailing list. I create a lot of tools that let people be part of unamerican. (Science Fiction author) Philip K. Dick -- at a certain point in his career he stated to get messages from God -- which is very weird for a science fiction guy -- and wrote about what would God do if he had the task of saving democracy, and I like to think that we thrive on that tradition and in my opinion democracy and a lot of the institutions in America have ceased to operate correctly. They doesn't advocate anyone's personal will. We style ourselves as anarachy's ad agency. A set of glasses where you see things that are hierarchies and you try to fix them.

That's a way of transcending death. If you come up with really good idea and you can work it for a few years, than you've achieved immortality in way. A good idea well-implemented, it's sort of like a symbiosis... ideas exists and they don't exist, you know, and when you inspire a real idea you're more than human for that moment, and if I can teach someone how to do that, that's fucking cool.

Go back to the start of the interview with Srini!

Will Hines conducted this interview with Srini Kumar at around 7pm EST on somewhere around October 15, 1998.


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