During the 1998 tour, a young man in Florida asked if he could do a one minute contortion act in that evening’s show. Within a week he had moved out of his place, sold his belongings and followed the Cirkus to New Orleans.

In Denver, Colorado, another undercover keystone kop inquired if the Bookmobile had any literature about making bombs or bathtub meth. In Long Beach, California, a guy came up and said "You have anarchist stuff, don't you? You're anarchists. You shoot people, right?" In San Diego, the truck was visited by a vice cop who ordered that the book Teach Yourself Fucking by Tuli Kupferberg be taken off of the outside table or it would be confiscated. What had ired the officer was the front cover, which depicts Tuli holding a banana and two plums in place of his genitals. The officer was duly informed by the law abiding Mr. Dingle that there was, at that very moment, an obscene display of a similar nature at several nearby produce stores. Similar reactions to Bookmobile literature have occurred before. In '97, when the B.F.C. was crossing over into Canada for a show, border cops went through three crates of books, photocopied each book cover, then denied entry to the books (as well as a case of condoms). One officer was overheard saying to another, "They have an agenda, and the circus is their medium."

Both Dr. Flummox and Mr. Dingle have worked in anarchist, collectively run info-shops, and see the Bookmobile as an extension of this interest, as basically, it is an info-shop on wheels. There are some advantages to this type of rolling autonomous zone. While many info-shops struggle to pay storefront rent and utilities, purchase stock and find enough volunteers to keep the store open – all for a venture of a decidedly unprofitable nature – a bookmobile needs only to make insurance payments and gas to the next town. Although there are other expenses as well (the Bookmobile is currently well into the red and is always seeking tax deductible donations), they fall considerably short of the yearly budget of renting a space. Ultimately, the Bookmobile hopes to convert a diesel engine for using bio-diesel fuel, trading literature and sideshow antics in exchange for deep fryer oil from greasy spoons along its tour route. There's a certain irony in that the Bookmobile brings literature which critiques both the state’s right to power and the established structure of social relations, in addition to providing a context for grand spectacle and play which in itself is an amplification of the notions contained in the literature, all in settings not normally associated with such notions and to folks who might never step foot in an info-shop. The Bookmobile in effect becomes a Trojan horse, smuggling impossible situations into a context made predictably, mind numbingly, possible by order imposed at the point of a gun.

As Dr. Flummox and Mr. Dingle see the Autonomadic Bookmobile, it is a splinter in the paw of the death culture, delivering revolt at 65 miles an hour.


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