Nazi Business Cards

There comes a time in everyone's life when they have to talk about their collection of Nazi business cards. My time is now.

The first one: I'd borrowed Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi
from my local library - an excellent autobiographical piece by an East German Nazi skinhead who gradually began to find his ideology first embarrassing then repugnant. He turned to the side of light, but clearly one reader didn't, and tucked this little present into the book for me.

www.creativitymovement.us is long gone, but you can find old copies of their site on the wayback machine around early 2006. I wouldn't bother though - it's nasty muddled ranting with no amusement value.

While it fails in its aim of reawakening me to my white destiny, it has several points of interest. The logo itself is quite charming with its poor use of white space (lebensraum as I guess I should call it), very basic font choice and the jaunty devil-may-care angle of the stamped on url. The stars at the side are a nice touch, and remind me of the converse gym boots I used to wear.

I'm particularly touched by the way the crown is topped by a crude tv aerial made from a bent coathanger.



As you can see, the back of the card is blank. But just look at that texture - you don't often see carboard that's been aged so beautifully. These cards have spent a long time in my wallet - most of a decade by now.



The second card: I've told you a small lie here. Carl of Caveat is not a Nazi, but rather their implacable enemy.

I found this card in my letter box one day, a year or so after I first read the words "White People Awake!". Though he was clearly a little odd, I was glad to see that someone was fighting the good fight.

Carl seems to have a lot to recommend him. For a start, he's not a Nazi. Secondly, he's not scared of adding ex'tra ap'ostrophes, if that's what it takes to save the world. And there's something about the phrase "being against nazis information provider" that catches on my imagination, like a poorly trimmed toenail snagging on a sheet. Thirdly, when he talks about informing "on the roll of the Fifth Reich" I just have to say "That's how I roll baby!", and that makes me feel hip and tough at the same time. So that's good.




"What happens when black ops go bad and you're not black?" What indeed. It turns out Carl is kind of famous as a roaming pamphleteer, and other samples of his work have been archived here and here. His business cards are stamped with a variety of interesting extras, and are well worth reading.

The back of his card has taken on the some of the design of the first card from many years of close proximity in my wallet. I hope that Carl hasn't been similarly tainted.

On a final note, only marginally related by eccentricity:

When I was ten years old I used to read "Science Digest". Every month at the back of the magazine, among the classified ads for model rocket kits and the like, there would be this phrase, followed by a P.O. box to write to:

"Ressurected billions will farm sea bottoms when oceans removed by coming whirlwind."

I'll see you when the whirlwind arrives.

Shopping Baskets

Whenever I'm waiting in line at the supermarket, I can't resist looking at what the person (or turtle) in front of me is buying, and trying to deduce the story of their life.

For instance, the strained looking woman buying a number of bags of pasta, a large bottle of premade pasta sauce, and a box of bath salts: I see a stressful and probably dull job that eats away at her life and an apartment where she lives alone. She will have a nervous breakdown within the next five years. I am surprised by the lack of small tins of gourmet cat food, but I can only report what I see.

What am I to make, though, of what I saw tonight? A man buying two boxes of plain household candles, two containers of silly putty, and a deck of playing cards. He's got something on his mind, but I can't say what.