“It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,” said Marlene Dietrich’s seductress in Shanghai Express. And no doubt it did. But here at the Shackle Report, changing our name was a simpler and quicker, if less lubricious process. We just went and swapped our old prefix, “Crawford & Cutler’s” for a snappier, yet more anonymous “the”.
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We feel much lighter for the change, and the act of re-naming ourselves brings us closer to our guru, Houdini, and to the principles of escapology and self-creation he embodies. He changed his birth name, Ehrich Weiss, to Harry Houdini, and married a woman who had changed her birth name, Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahmer, to Bessie Raymond (before becoming Bess Houdini). Also: The famous French magician whose name Houdini appropriated, Robert-Houdin, re-named himself. He was born Jean Eugene Robert in 1805 but added the surname of his wife, Josephe Cecile Houdin, to the end of his own for his stage act. Patriarchy takes a hit.
Well, okay, you’re not. But now at least you’re free to comment on our posts.
All you have to do is register. Just click in the last box on the left where it says “Register” and give us some info. Your name doesn’t have to be real, but your e-mail does. We promise not to share any of your info with anyone.
We can’t speak for the NSA.
Shop yourself into submission, at. . .
. . .The Chain Store.
Shackle Report’s online shop is open for Christmas, featuring all things shackle-related (however obliquely) accompanied by our painfully honest product descriptions.
For now we are pushing books and a bit of jewelry. But eventually, we hope to seduce you into buying a wide range of items that will help you escape the humdrum world of paying for things you bought in an effort to avoid thinking about how deeply into debt you’ve fallen.
And now, for a sample book:
Cosmos-politan
If you’ve ever wondered whether the human mind is a sort of shackle all on its own, this is the book you can’t finish that thought without. It is a new translation of Witold Gombrowicz’s classic (40’s) excursion into the joys and pitfalls of obsessive paranoid narrative, the nearly universal impulse to imagine that one thing leads to another. Droll, sexy and smarter than a slap, Witold has . . .
continued at "the chain store"
For those of us who feel compelled to fight for freedom and liberty, no matter how ineffectually, we are starting a page called “Do Something.” Please tell us about groups, organizations, Websites and actions that you think can free us all up a bit, and help us evaluate them for effectiveness and style.
For example, the Committee to Protect Bloggers gives you petitions to sign on behalf of imprisoned, threatened and persecuted bloggers from places as far-flung as Egypt, Iran and New Jersey. 
Unlike Reporters Without Borders (RSF), whose aesthetic of outrage inflicts as much agony as it protests, (their poster, shown at left, is one of the more soothing graphics they offer) the CPB site numbs your agony with the soft, featureless greige of a dentist’s waiting room. If you can stay awake long enough to read about all the injustices against bloggers they post, CPB’s perverse blandness comes as a relief. And, whereas RSF is not really interested in any blogger not under lock and key, CPB features a category called “freed bloggers” to add a fizzy dash of hope to your dram of despair.
CPB will also link you to instructions on how to blog anonymously if you live in some repressive place where you might be persecuted for what you post.