RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Tuesday, May 31

45s on 33 – #98: “Paradise City”

As I got close enough to the glowing orb of this Heart Star super nature ass thing floating in the bottom of the field behind my house, I could start to make out the warbled sounds of singing. Unlike earth animals, afraid of human assumed superiority, it didn’t bolt as I got closer. Instead, it sort of enveloped my head, like a colored fog swallowing the entirety of my skull, neck, upper shoulders and internal organs entrapped inside the rib cage.

I’m not sure how to describe what I was seeing, because I’m not sure if it was a vision from elsewhere, or if it was the real physical world I know on daily basis being filtered through something else, or if it was just pure mental illness hallucination. I am not above suggesting that as a possibility. Logical mind and critical thinking tells me what I was seeing is not scientifically seen, so I’m not sure how to square it all within the expanding realm of what we call “real”. But there was a bright green grass, a color my earth brain has been trained to associate with toxic, a neon ultra-bright green that seemed unnatural, although in this context it didn’t look toxic or chemical or “day-glow” at all but more the color of greens in those pictures where people say they took Polaroids of their aura. The grass was an exciting , almost dick hard stimulating aura green, waving in the breeze. The contour of the grasses was like my actual field, sort of how when you have dreams that the geography of dream you later realize was based off actual maps of your every day life, just altered by dreamy subconscious. This had that feel – it was really my field, leading down to my rock altar, but altered by this Heart Star orb fog. 

I looked up the sky was perfect light blue, but as if a million layers deep. Clouds, all of them wisps and puffs and balls of organic cloud, not a single straight line to be seen, blotted the unblemished blue. I do not believe in god and shit like that, but the whole scene had a heavenly feel in stereotypical heaven sense in that I felt completely calm, and completely safe, as if wrapped up in psychic grandmother’s quilt.

Then I noticed the girls – beautiful, pretty little girls, fields of them, not crowded but clustered with plenty of space, even though there together, cartwheeling in spirals, skipping over rocks, picking at daisies and black-eyed susans – just the prettiest purest girls I’d ever seen, other than my own children when they were still young enough to not know about the larger manmade world enough to have that shine of the eyes stained with fear.

One of the girls cartwheeled my direction, with a large glowing purple rock sitting where my actual rock altar in my actual real life field would be, sort of occupying that parallel space, sitting between me and all the children. This one girl cartwheeled closer, landed on her feet near the glowing purple rock, dashed up it in one leaping step, and did a flip in the air, landing right in front of me. I never even flinched, though in my mind it was fairly startling, but nothing ever felt threatening about it. The girl stared at me, through me really, for the longest split second I’ve ever known – her blue-green eyes piercing into my own, channeling up my optical nerves right into my brain. A chill went down my spine, shivering my to my guts, and my heart skipped a beat. The girl said, “Hi, I’m Ellabell.”


during my second tour of 
chinese buffet steam trays, I 
discovered joys of dim sum

S14: Top 14 Metaphysical Powers For This Copa America Centenario Thing About To Happen

(I originally had started writing this for a new sports website trying to claw into that realm of “the New Grantland” but honestly, I wasn’t feeling it, and didn’t like having to tone myself down or limit my nonsense rambling, so it ends up here, in obscurity, where I will likely always remain, because I don’t know how to pimp myself.)

Aristotle first gave words to the concept of metaphysics, when he attempted to break down in a scientific manner “being qua being” or what comes with existence that we may not be able to scientifically quantify. Islamic polymath Ibn Sina expounded upon Aristotle’s foundation, furthering the contemplation of that grey area between what is experienced by the senses (science) and believed to be truth (spirituality). And being we live in a highly polarized quantity-driven age of dichotomies (science vs. religion, black vs. white, man vs. nature), it seems that perhaps logically putting thought to the unexplainable might be more important than ever, if for no other reason than to find how instead of separate polarized bubbles, we are all actually part of universal interdependent Venn diagram with hella crossover, universally.
“Wait… I thought the title of this thing was about soccer?” you are thinking. Well, my particular field of analysis is Football Metaphysics, which attempts to find that middle ground between the data analytics of human brain (i.e. Moneyball or sabermetrics, in all its myriad forms) and gut intuition (the old school way, having “a feeling”). Usually the halfway point between brain learnings and gut flora is halfway up the spine at the top of the heart. This is where we find Football Metaphysics.
The Copa America Centenario is being held in the United States, and the story is this is the 100th Anniversary of the South American football championship. That is true, as the first official one was played in 1916, when it was called Campeonato Sudamericano de Futbol (South American Football Championship). In 1975, when the 10 nations that currently make up CONMEBOL all competed together for the first time, it became known as Copa America. Starting in 1987, it started to be held in a host nation, like the World Cup. In 1993, two invited nations (normally Mexico, plus one) were added to make it 12 teams. 2015 was the last time, following that schedule, but CONMEBOL, in the spirit of profit and untapped markets (meaning get them dollars where them dollars are) decided to expand the tournament to 16 teams and hold it in an off-year in the United States, for (hopefully) a giant smorgasbord of corporate cash and gringo dinero.
I have found in my self-scientific studies that Football Metaphysics works best in lists of 14 for some reason, so for the brain foundation to this, I calculated how many points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) each nation earned in the last 14 Copa Americas (going back to 1979), averaged that out per game, weighted the more recent averages more heavily, and spreadsheet functioned that whole nonsense into this list of the 14 most powerful teams, metaphysically speaking, going into this Copa America Centenario festival cash grab.

#1: BRAZIL (won 5 times since 1979, the last time in 2007): Brazil was shockingly knocked out in the quarterfinals by Paraguay last year, although the nature of this tournament has been that it is just as common for someone other than the Big 2 (Brazil and Argentina) to win as not. This is the Neymar era of Brazilian soccer, and thus far, there’s not much to show for that in terms of national team successes. There will be no Neymar (nor Oscar nor Kaka) meaning this tourney will be Brazil developing younger supporting cast because Brazil has struggled in World Cup 2018 qualifying thus far (currently sit in an unheard of 6th, which would miss the World Cup finals). They’ve been drawn into a group featuring Haiti (jobbers) and Peru, so they should be able to at least coast into the knockout rounds, and hope to avoid repeating last year’s immediate failure once past group stage.

#2: ARGENTINA (won twice since 1979, last time all the way back in 1993): No better example of Football Metaphysics is there in the world than the comparison between Maradona and Messi, the two greats of Argentine football. Maradona was a mess of a human being – drug-addled, loved wild women, his most famous moment on the pitch (the Hand of God) was technically illegal. And yet there’s nothing he didn’t win. Messi, according to technical aspects and all post-modern matrices, is likely the greatest ever. And yet Messi has not won the World Cup, has not even won this tournament before, which one may assume is why he is on their roster for the summer showcase in the U.S.A. It’d be nice to believe that but more likely this is a branding move for Messi (who, it should not be overlooked, was caught up in the Panama Papers leak), who will look to further his endorsement deals and establish a soft landing place in the MLS for his twilight years. Argentina would like to win this tournament, but beyond club, Messi has never seemed overly possessed to win for country like Maradona was. This is why, despite the cultivated image, despite the mathematical indexes and statistics, despite it all, Maradona remains the greatest from Argentina. If you don’t believe me, ask their fans.

#3: COLOMBIA (won once since 1979 – 2001): For sake of full disclosure, one of the people I talk most about the football with is a hilarious Colombiana Loca who works at the little coffee stand at the medical complex I call “work”. Her passion for football is amazing, situated firmly in the middle of Atlantic America, but still wearing Atletico Nacional (her home city home team) jerseys on big game days. And her love of Colombian football is unconditional. She pulls for certain teams because prominent Colombians play for them (oh the discussions we’ve had about Falcao’s downfall). And while it’s a beautiful thing, it leaves me feeling pretty conflicted, because I don’t have that same passion for my own nation’s football team, and maybe not even my own nation. Why is that? I mean, with the football it’s obvious. Colombia plays an exciting brand, with a healthy mix of established stars playing in big Euro leagues and rising stars who still ply their skills in the domestic league. And with the standard for Copa America in recent goings being that Brazil and Argentina both crash out, Colombia could be the third that steps up to take first this summer. Or maybe I am just excited to be happy for a friend’s potential happiness.

#4: URUGUAY (won 4 times since 1979, most recently in 2011): We in America will be blessed by the most metaphysically powerful player on earth – Luis Suarez. On a Barca club with perhaps the two biggest superstars on earth in Neymar and Messi, Suarez has still somehow staked his space as THE Eternal Scoring Threat, despite all the analytical negatives. Uruguay defies logic in similar ways – tiny coastal nation with a total population smaller than all the metropolitan areas hosting Copa America Centenario matches, and yet there are only a handful of nations with a larger international presence. Ignore Europe, and really the only two bigger are Brazil and Argentina. Thus, regardless of situations or scenarios or match-ups, should Uruguay make it to the knockout stage (they will), and Suarez gets unleashed in primetime America (without injury, or vampiro suspension), and Uruguay will be THE Threat To Win It All.

#5: PARAGUAY (won once since 1979 – in 1979): Paraguay maintains a somewhat unknown but consistent presence within CONMEBOL. Usually, Paraguayan clubs find themselves in the final stages of Copa Libertadores (South America’s Champions League) most years. And Paraguay has remained a solid international force. South America, as a whole, plays far above their international political prominence, and you start to wonder is it Brazil and Argentina pushing the others to higher levels, or the entire continent rising thus pushing the top tier as high as it is.  Despite all this gloss though, Paraguay was drawn into a strong group with Colombia, Costa Rica (more on them later), and the host nation. That’s as close to a Group of Death as 16-team tournament covering less than half the world’s gonna get.

#6: PERU (ain’t won it since 1979, but did in ‘75): Peru has consistently done fairly well, and was a surprise contender in last year’s event, finishing third, exactly where they finished in 2011 as well. But they’ve not qualified for the World Cup finals for over 30 years, so that pick-up the past two Copa America hopefully (for Peruvians) means they can make the push for Russia in 2018. Honestly though, they’ve done too shitty in that to make up ground against the quality of teams above them in the table, so it’s probably best for Peruvian national pride if they go all-in on this tournament again. 

#7: CHILE (won it once since 1979, and all-time – the last time, last year): It must feel like kind of a rip-off to Chile football that after struggling for nearly a century of battling, to finally achieve winning a Copa America championship last year, it happens when they squeeze a cash grab tournament in America in the middle of the usual biennial cycle. Thus, with little time to bask in their continental conquest, Alexis Sanchez and Chile are forced to go at it again. The key difference is manager Jorge Sampaoli, who pushed Chile’s game to be true to The Beautiful Game philosophies, resigned, and has been replaced by new manager Juan Antonio Pizzi, who will be installing his own belief systems in his first major tournament run-up to the 2018 World Cup. Just as individual matches are lost in transition, so are larger endeavors. But Chile has the same core to their team, and figure to run off the fumes of what is already in place. Their Group D opener against Argentina (in a re-match from last year’s Copa America final) should be the prime game from the first few days.

#8: MEXICO (never won it, runner-up twice since ‘79): Mexican football is perhaps the most beautifully anarchic version on earth. Their domestic season is broken into two halves, like many other Latin American domestic leagues are, but unlike all those other leagues, there is no year-capping championship. Instead they hold wild elimination tournaments for each mini-season. Their top clubs don’t just qualify for their continental version of the Champions League, but for the South American one as well. Mexican football has been two-timing with South America for a while, and Mexico has been one of the two invitees to the normal Copa America tournament every occasion since 1993. One could suggest this was because Mexican national team football had been far above its continental counterparts, but being they’ve competed against the likes of Brazil, Argentina, and the rest every other year for the past two decades, it has helped enable a higher level of Mexican national football than regional conflicts with Honduras or Costa Rica (or the USMNT) would have. And with the large presence of fans who identify as Mexican in America, expect every Mexico game to be a raucous, home game environment, regardless of who they play (including the USMNT).

#9: BOLIVIA (never won it): The fact Bolivia got beaten by the USMNT, 4-0, even if a friendly before the actual tournament, tells me Bolivia is probably fucked.

#10: ECUADOR (not won it since ’79, or before then, but 4th in ’93, at home): Ecuador’s been a surprise at the top of the table for World Cup 2018 qualifying thus far, halfway through, so this event will be a tournament challenge to see how real they may be. Behind the star tandem of real life bros Enner and Antonio Valencia, they play an upbeat style. Drawn into a group with Haiti, and Brazil (who is sending young, second level team, to an extent), they stand a good shot at finally making some noise in this event.

#11: VENEZUELA (not won it since ’79, but 4th in 2011): In case you weren’t geo-politically aware, Venezuela the government is in serious jeopardy right now, after a combination of oil price downturn as well as high-level corruption has left the streets filled with angry people who can’t get their daily bread. This makes the national football team’s trip to the U.S. a little more financially interesting. The team already is positioned squat at the bottom of World Cup qualifying for 2018 (0-1-5 thus far), so jaunt to America for three-games in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Houston is going to be expensive, with national stability to the point they could have their own Venezuelan “Arab Spring” really any week now. Thus, they are the most expendable of all South American teams in the field of 16.

#12: COSTA RICA (only been in it 4 times, made it to quarterfinals twice): Costa Rica (aka Los Ticos) was a pleasant surprise during World Cup 2014, nearly making it to the semifinals behind the exciting play of Joel Campbell. This will be the largest stage for Los Ticos since that quarterfinal elimination to the Netherlands on PKs in Brazil, and the fact it’s a chance for their continent to shine against the more illustrious neighbors to the south will not be lost on this team. They’ve been drawn into the toughest group though, with the US, Colombia, and Paraguay, meaning there’s not an easy game to be found in that batch, with all teams having varying amounts of pressure on them to do more than just show up to Copa America Centenario. But with Costa Rica’s style, that should make for at least three entertaining group stage games (and hopefully more).

#13: UNITED STATES (been it three times, never made it to knockout rounds, ever): US soccer, at all levels, is in an internal conflict between Haves and Have-nots. Haves tend to dominate soccer here, while Have-nots don’t really care, because American football or basketball is more important to them (and available on free TV in abundance). While this works well for the Haves up through the collegiate level, it doesn’t translate well beyond that, or on the World stage, where America has felt it just has to be the next big thing in soccer for twenty years. Enter Jurgen Klinsmann, who recognizes the limitations of the insular Haves model once it is taken outside that insulated realm. He has recruited heavily on dual nationality players, specifically those competing in top European leagues (where the best players from all over the world tend to be paid to play). This has ruffled the Haves mightily, most notably lead US fratbro-cum-sport hero Landon Donovan, which culminated in Donovan getting left off the World Cup 2014 USMNT roster. That stone cast has rippled ever since, beginning with Donovan in whatever talking expert role he has on TV, through old stalwarts of the USMNT Haves system, and even caused women’s hero Abby Wambach to fire off shots at Klinsmann upon her own retirement. What all this means though is that regardless of how right or wrong Klinsmann may be, he is under the microscope at full magnification this summer, in home showcase for the USMNT to show how far it has come, how it can compete with the more dominant teams from South America. But sadly, all the negative talk thrown down at Klinsmann has likely undermined his own efforts within the team as well, and that compounded with the fact that US soccer is just not nearly as good as a lot of the teams from South America, means we will likely witness Jurgen Klinsmann’s suicide mission this summer. Perhaps he pulls off an unlikely pure-American Rambo resistance to the inevitable, but anything short of the semifinals will be seen as failure of not only the team, but also Klinsmann’s vision, especially when the Haves will have a constant televised voice in Landon Donovan the entire time.

#14: JAMAICA (been in it once, last time, failed): Jamaica is an international lightweight in football who is flirting with CONCACAF relevance, which doesn’t really translate into anything beyond the region. Jamaica navigates the football metaphysical matrices by virtue of having been to Copa America 2015, in which they lost all there of their games 0-1. This alludes to a competitive nature, but international football tournaments are pretty great at having better teams exude the bare minimum of energy, being composed of top professionals technically on their “summer break” from their paying job, to move past inferior competition. Jamaica is textbook definition of that inferior competition when it comes to South American national teams.

Monday, May 30

yesterday's forgotten shit, 
collected with inflated 
price tags in rundown buildings

45s on 33 – #99: “Sunday Morning Coming Down”

When looking at this planet we owned the hell out of, it’s impossible to imagine another creature being quite equal in terms of maddening monkey mindframe. And even when you look to the night sky, with what we’ve know about our solar system from shooting our robot rockets into space (monkeys included sometimes), it seems like we are also the greatest conquistadores of overly complicated life on all these eight or nine or however many the planets the eggheads have determined are actual planets by their overly complicated criteria at this point. We fucking rule.

But look, I am a realist, and when you are sitting there staring up into a clearest of clear night skies, seeing all those stars, as I often do down in my field near the magic jukebox, because it dips low on our property and gives the celestial night’s domed appearance extra dome, I don’t know, it seems simple and idiotic to assume we are the only ones like us, who can do these things we do which we think (with our brains) makes us so amazing and unique. If each star is a sun and each sun an anchor to multitude of planetary bodies, law of averages says there’s other species existing out there doing what we do, easily, and perhaps having gone up and over that. I mean, when you say it all out like that it doesn’t seem that far-fetched, and seems kind of like some dumbass kid telling you some scientific fact they learned in 2nd grade as if nobody else in the universe had ever learned that. Feels like it should be accepted common knowledge. But it’s not, apparently, probably since it’s not apparent.

Thus all this was in my mind after a Saturday night sitting in the field, staring at the stars, contemplating the insignificance of all I worry over as important and necessary and immediate. I am six years sober, but the Saturday night/Sunday morning 69 of debauchery and spiritual awakening still tends to happen. There’s probably something innately chemical about that, not just in the substances we take for those Saturday night degenerate epiphanies before Sunday morning spiritual savings. Something in our molecular structure must make those broken weekend nights without work the next morning extra-wild, and make those broken weekend mornings without work that day extra-sacred. I wonder if we lacked the structured gridlock of finance and “work” and every day was more attuned to basic survival, in more native ways, would we be more sacred and profane all at once? Can’t say.

But I had been contemplating that under the influence of massive star explosion on a cool night, early season lightning bugs rising out the uncut grasses, occasional human manufactured car machines thundering by, and just wondering, until very late, so late that I left a notebook of idle numbers (I jot numbers down in a composition book, no real reason for it, nor known pattern, but I figure it’ll become clear to me at some point later in life maybe; and if not, fuck it, somebody’s gonna think I was writing strange indecipherable coded number poems when they find it after I’m dead) down in the field.

So on this Sunday morning, coming down into the field, for the first time I saw the source of what my daughter had heard when she was talking as part of her game. It was a glowing orb, which I came to call a Heart Star, almost immediately. As I was walking down, the Heart Star orb was floating from the broken jukebox over to my stack of white trash quartz rocks and then hovering between, all while floating, fairy-like to put it in terms our human minds would understand. I stopped, and felt it had seen me see it, but I started walking slowly towards it, kind of how you’d approach a baby deer if trying to get a closer look, without scaring it, though I had not informational pre-conceptions as to how a glowing orb floating in the Sunday morning daylight would react to me.

boombox bigger than Sunday 
afternoon by chill lake could 
contain, cookout with cousins

Sunday, May 29

45s on 33 – #100: “My Prerogative”

As a human, it’s my prerogative to assume civilized superiority over even my own sensory perceptions. After all, humans made jukebox, not just one but armies of them, scattered throughout the civilized world. We had the ability to take bits and pieces of this and that in the natural world, reshape it, configure it together, and manufacture the existence of jukeboxes. We still do – though tiny little electronic devices with trace amounts of minerals from one continent, trace amounts of ingenuity from other continents, assembled together on even another continent, and then sold throughout the universe. Even if the spiritual aspect of earth dominion has been abandoned in most of our minds, we still seem (it seems) to possess a scientific as well as manufacturing dominion over the earth. We can definitely make some shit. None of it is simple, as we are very effective creatures in taking the complex intertwinings of natural biosphere, separating out components and then reconfiguring them through overly complicated procedures into bold new creations which do things like spin etched pieces of wax vinyl that when you have a special (overly complicated) needle poked into, it makes sounds which when filtered through a giant box are than amplified into loud sounds which recreate original recordings done somewhere way the fuck away on space-time continuum.

So despite the overly complicated often times self-serving complications of human manufacturing creation, it remains my prerogative to assume initially my species is the number one species, because ain’t no species like a human being species since a human being species don’t stop. We make all kinds of amazing shit, which we deem amazing because we are amazed by it in our simplistic overly-complicated ways, but also we did it. Not nature, but us.

Except where does nature end and we begin? When you analyze our overly complicated ways, at what point does the complication step from natural to manmade in that nature vs. man equation (of which religion gave us dominion over, as science does now)? Is it the separation of raw components? Probably not, because simply having coltan dug out the earth from deep in the Congo alone does not make it unnatural. What about after the raw rocks are crushed and separated in simplistic enough means this can be done near the scarred pits where it is harvested, and additional chemicals are added to create new chemical compound tantalum? This certainly seems complicated enough to not seem natural? Or perhaps once the tantalum is created, so to speak, and then used as a small tantalum capacitor – a tiny but powerful integral piece of all our new-fangled human handheld computerized robot talking devices? This certainly seems to cross the lines from natural to magic, designed by the minds of us super monkeys, to the point we have to be given credit. What other species on this planet would not only separate a rock into a substance to help make a tiny doohickey even more powerful, and then combine this with a slew of other similarly overly complicated pieces, send them all to a corner of our planet where there are people who simultaneously smart enough to slap them together according to instructions but also still simplified enough (natural) to do it as cost effectively as possible? Each little robot phone we all have is an amazing testament to the magical ability of us humans to manufacture something nearly immortal by all humane matrices.

And yet the irony of our mad minds – also having created mythology and the story of Tantalus, with his unsustainable desires, standing in water beneath a fruit tree for eternity, never able to reach the fruit, and never able to drink the water. Tantalus, according to mythology, was the offspring of one god and one mortal. And if you think of man vs. nature in religious dominion sense, we were given that eminent domain due to our being created in fake god’s image, over all of nature. We are, similar to  Tantalus (although we made him up), the offspring of god and nature together. But certainly we get to taste the fruit and drink the water, unlike doomed Tantalus. Right?

middleweight world champion, 
little space dirt challenging 
mental place worth channeling

Saturday, May 28

illuminati shadows 
lurk within elven woods, as 
resin buddha prophesied

45s on 33 – Introduction

The jukebox that occupies some sort of mystical properties ever since I sat it in a field underneath a protective red maple didn’t exactly start out that way. I bought it for $10 from a junk store in the nearby (8 miles away) small town that is considered my “hometown” because our rural postal mailing address utilizes that zip code and is sorted out there. The jukebox occupied various corners of our aging farmhouse abode over the years, but my grand designs to have it fixed and be centerpiece of kitchen table relaxation moments were stymied by lack of availability of the old dude who was able to fix such things (as well, probably, as the fact that such old men stopped existing in any multitude in current American world). So once I finally gave up and put the jukebox in the field, my ol’ lady was pretty happy, because all it had done thus far was accumulate a thousand stubbed toes in the darkness of night.


I didn’t think much of plugging the cord into the dirt by base of red maple, other than “Wouldn’t that be funny if I plugged the jukebox cord into the dirt by the base of this protective red maple?” so when music started playing from the jukebox on nights when I was sitting in the field, that was magic enough for me. When you are culturally trained to believe shit like that doesn’t exist, and then it actually does exist, you don’t automatically jump to the notion of tinkering with the unbelievable. How can you even control the unbelievable? You don’t believe it, or aren’t supposed to. So I just sat in the field and listened to whatever the magic field jukebox played.

A few months back though, I started playing around with actually selecting buttons on the panel of A-J and 0-9. (Actually, my youngest offspring, who is some sort of solar ambassador from spirit peoples, did it, explaining to me, “If you hear me talking, it’s part of my game,” then turning and saying, “How do we dial the proper soundtracks while trapped in these earth pens? These buttons? Okay. Thank you, Ellabell.”) Initially, there was a period of joy behind new discovery, and I’d just click button combinations to see what type of slurred music would begin playing. But eventually the novelty of even magic jukebox music combos wore off, and I started trying to be more methodical, going through each combination, beginning with A1, to see what would happen. Sometimes, I made notes for a couple of evenings, and other times I heard what came out and didn’t care too much, so moved on immediately. I knew nothing about how the letter-number pairing had to do with the music that suddenly appeared in my sensory perception, and still don’t really. (I call it “my sensory perception” because other than my daughter who talks to Ellabell, nobody else has necessarily heard the music. And after a couple of quizzical “Okay, Raven” looks, I stopped asking other people to come listen to the jukebox.)


Thus, when I got to F-9, I didn’t really expect anything like what happened. My sensory perception of music was blasted, but more internally, with echo-heavy sounds that felt like they were happening inside my head, except from my rib cage, if that makes sense? And the music was in a foreign language, seemingly similar to Spanish (which I can cuss in, and ask you “Where is my ladder?” but not much more), but not really anything I recognized, it what I’ve always felt compelled to call Space Espanol, even if that’s a stupid way to label something. But it’s definitely Space Espanol, even if that seems stupid to our learned sensibilities. (It’s not like a jukebox left in a field plugged into a red maple making music that not everybody can hear isn’t outside the realm of learned sensibilities already, though.)
existing along the edge 
where outline drips across white fill - 
symbology of dirtgod

Friday, May 27

the obesities of joy 
starved away by constant scroll 
of other curated selves

Thursday, May 26

domino heiroglyphics 
chronicle hipster tea spot 
back deck Friday lounge sessions

internet reading list of late

(triplicates of links that occupied my mind at *work* recently)

The Empty Brain aka YOUR BRAIN IS NOT A COMPUTER from Aeon website

I used to have Aeon on my google reader (which is now old reader) because I loved that site enough to keep up with that shit like so. But it started to suffer from Short Quirky Smart Website Blast Syndrome to speak to our lower attention spans, and it got cut from my old reader starting line-up. Perhaps I've missed a million articles like this (but I doubt it). The main concept behind this article is not all that shocking to me, nor to anybody tuned into the good living of wild natural bullshit (which includes manmade things like abandoned factories and railroad tracks and little children playing with imaginary friends), but still, the level of explanation of how during various times of humanity's civilization, we regarded the brain as different important technological progresses of that period was very interesting to me.
The weird thing is, I had this on my internet reading list checklist since late last week, and then an author guy I know put a link to this on his various social medias, and I momentarily thought "well now I can't use it because he used it," which is ridiculous as fuck. We've somehow started to put stock in this notion that our digital curation is an extension of ourselves, that This is who we Are. We are literally making ourselves believe we are computers and shit. Ultimately I came to my senses (y'all probably don't know that author dude anyways) and included this article in this list of three links for you read-y types, because honestly I'm not sure anybody even sees this. I mean the data suggests somebody might but I don't have any real life verification of that.

The Short Life of Deonte Howard by stupid ass Buzzfeed

Generally there are a list of historically trash websites that I won't visit even if longforms suggests one or somebody sends me a link. All the gawker sites are part of that, also Bleacher Nation SB Report, and also anything that considers itself some sort of Grantland. And definitely Buzzfeed is on that list, in fact it probably tops that list. I can't take seriously anything that used to be the bread and butter (and might still be) of all the grandma's facebook page. But for whatever reason I powered through my personal bias for this one, and found it worthwhile. (The writing is not so great - very basic, but whatever, whoever the kid is who wrote it at least forms sentences without needing animated gifs of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.) The story is one that could probably be told over and over and over again, in various cities. Right now Chicago is that place most obviously in the news with high murder rate, but also Baltimore. It has also been closer to me in DC and even Richmond was always right at the top of this list when I first moved there for college. Now when you live in a place like that you know the boundaries, where people get killed and where they don't, but those boundaries blur and shit creeps over from time to time. If it creeps too far into a safe (white, or more appropriately wealthy, which usually is majority white) then it'll blow up into Serious Public Safety issue.
But an interesting component to this story, which also was the same component to the explosion of gang murders in L.A. back in the mid-80s, was how the breakdown of older gangs and elder gang members actually contributed to a fracturing of traditional codes which caused a spike in murders and assaults. In L.A. this involved them clearing the streets of known hoodlums before the '84 Olympics, which reverberated for the next half dozen years, and only really stopped because of the post-Rodney King verdict riots gang truce. (Man, what a fuckin' pure American sentence that last one was.) This is not to blame the problem on policing alone, but the combination of no future, no hope, plenty guns, plenty drugs, is always gonna ferment into shit like this. I can't help but believe there's some hidden methodology behind the whole thing, because how the fuck do you have so many guns in the street? Like when you think about it logistically, it's mind-boggling. Same with heroin/coke/crack... for something allegedly completely illegal to not only be distributed but broken down to corner level, consistently, despite decades of arresting those corner level people and ruining the rest of their lives, I got no idea how it's been maintained without some hidden methodology behind the curtain that keeps it going.
Nonetheless, this is (another) sad story. Local to me, earlier this year there was a young man who was a 19-year-old senior in high school (this was pointed out, to shine bad light on the kid) who was all-state in football still, and had gotten scholarship offers to attend Division II colleges for football. Something happened, he attached his mom in a store and ran off and ended up getting shot dead by local sheriffs. It sounded like synthetic drugs to me, because even if you have hard drugs, you know what you have and don't flip out on your mom at Ali's Country Store (great fried fish in there, by the way), so I'm speculating synthetic shit. But still, how do you end up shot dead that easy? So many guns and so much self-medication, including by those who are the alleged good guys according to the storyboards.
They said after the shooting state police were investigating the incident, and then there was no more news about it at all, since February. I actually emailed the state police PR person last week to get an update. They are still investigating, she said. Synthetic drugs don't always show up on toxicology reports clearly so I imagine that might've confused their original autopsy-proves-drugs-so-then-say-police-acted-on-threat standard play.
I don't know... the cheapness of human life is bothersome, but I can't but help think there's something institutionally behind it all.

A Severed Head, Two Cops, and the Radical Future of Interrogation from Wired magazine

Speaking of institutional bullshit, this article really lays it all out, but under the pretense of bold new copping maneuvers that listen and allow the truth to be revealed. But let's be clear about a few things - first off, this is handed down from Department of Defense. When you see those huge military budgets, people think it's all about drones and bombs but we all have no idea how much medical research, psychology research, all types of weird shit like that is done off what it technically military budget. Most historical medical advances have come from such research. (I got no proof on that but a PI I worked under told me that one time, and those fuckers think they know everything.)
But secondly, this article basically says the best defense against cops in the old way was don't say shit to the cops. Any even petty criminal knows this. My own father taught me this at a young age (speaking of petty criminals) (me, not my father) (but him too). But even with this new age "let's have a little talk" method, YOU'RE STILL OKAY IF YOU DON'T SAY SHIT TO THE COPS. I guess it's easy to believe that if they're yelling at you, but easier to forget if they're all chummy inviting you into a hotel suite for warm cup of chai.
But even more than that, here is the thing that gets me about this article - it basically accepts the old ways were bullshit and not built off any real proof they worked. So they've now, with the help of top level intelligence fuckers from the military, started to utilize this new method. But the end result is still you get some dude who chopped up his lover to admit guilt, inadvertently, and then get thrown into prison system. The prison system is still very much built off those old broken ways too. So if you want this new age let's listen and let people say their full story, you need to do that shit in prison system too. You might actually be able to apply that and actually rehabilitate somebody, instead of making things worse (which often happens) and also giving them a government paperwork black mark forever which makes it three times as hard to get a job with. So ultimately, my reaction to this article is, "wow, cops doing some new shit, fuck the police though" and I remember my father's voice (he's dead now, been dead for a while) saying "never tell the police anything, ever". You stick to that, and you're still okay, despite their new-fangled psychological tomfoolery.


between the horseshoe bend and 
bremo bluff, where I wander 
and contemplate - wandemplate

Wednesday, May 25

take me down to paradise 
city, where the grass is green 
and the goats are pretty, oh…

Tuesday, May 24

majestic chivo lounging 
upon detritus shelter, 
contemplating that real shit
yard piano strings slowly 
rust, get dusted with cobwebs - 
an instrument of demise

Monday, May 23

solar light bulb full moon 
hovering over "shelter" 
keeping monkeys safe from fear

Sunday, May 22

TOP TEN MALL HIP HOP STREAMLOADS OF THE FISCAL YEAR


#1: reviews from the 6:/ppl discussing wack shit/as if it wasn't
#2: I don't need to step/into dogshit to know it's soft/disgusting useless
#3: the life of pablo/empowerment plan seems to/me pyramid scam
#4: shiny suit syndrome/now full-blown Reality/Deficient hip hop
#5: the future pretends/to lean, all for marketing/& marks eat it up
#6: simon mall muzak/hip hop synthesizing minds/into softened place
#7: reality dark/as fuck still, it's just we all/so medicated
#8: medicated by/muzak, medicated by/algorithmic sleep
#9: lemonade is nice/but I'd rather be mixing/molotov cocktails
#10: mall muzak hip hop/soothes, suggests "don't burn shit down"/subliminally

TOP TEN WORKING WHITE UNDERCLASS PRESIDENTIAL POLL FACTS


#1: w0rk1ng wh1t3 Vnd3r/cl4ss w0nd3r whY j3rk1ng r1ght/ch01c3 w1th c4ll0Vs3d h4ndz
#2: tr41n3d t0 trVst th3 b0ss/tr1ckl3 d0wn r34g4n0m1xxx/bVt w34lth g0dz d4mm3d 1t
#3: w0rk1ng wh1t3 Vnd3r/cl4ss "n33dz t0 r3l0c4t3" s4Y/3xp3rt pr0 f3ss3rz
#4: Vpr00t3d tr4nspl4ntz/d0n't 4lw4yz t4k3 w3ll t0 n3w/s01l 0r str4ng3 l4nd pl0tz
#5: rVr4l 0r Vrb4n/- 0pp0rtVn1t13z 4r3 th1n/- w3 l1v3 1n m4rg1nz
#6: 1f 4 l1t3r4l/l3dg3r - pr0f1ts g0t h1gh3r/- w3 l1v3 1n m4rg1nz
#7: w0rk1ng wh1t3 Vnd3r/cl4ss n0t r34llY w0rk1ng s0/mVch 4s g3tt1ng "bY3!"
#8: d1rtY wh1t3 Vnd3r/cl4ss 0ccVp13z Vnd3r p4ss/0ccVp13z d34d sp4c3
#9: w3 w3r3 b0rn w0rthl3ss/- l1v3st0ck tr4pp3d 1n flY0v3r/c0VntrY; "sh33p!" y0V s4Y
#10: jVdgm3nt tr1ckl3z d0wn/t00; w3 l34rn t0 h4t3 0Vrs3lv3s/d13 1n sh4m3, br0k3n

TOP TEN BUT I AIN'T LISTENS


#1: cr0w c4llz th1s m0rn1ng/s0Vnd3d l1k3 "DON'T WORK, DON'T WORK"/bVt 1 41n't l1st3n
#2: gr3Y sk13s w4s l1k3 "LAY/BACK, EMBRACE POWER OF LOUNGE"/bVt 1 41n't l1st3n
#3: cr33k bY s1x-tw3ntY/c0VntrY st0r3 s41d “TURN AROUND”/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#4: r3d-br34st3d r0b1ns/w4s l1k3 “TITS, MOTHERFUCKER”/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#5: pr1m0rd14l fr0gs/p33p1ng kn0wl3dg3 “CHILL CHILL CHILL”/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#6: d4mp f4n b3lt sqV34l1ng/l1k3 “THIS IS ALL A MISTAKE”/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#7: 0ld trVck t1r3s cl1ck3d 0n/1nt3rst4t3 “BULLSHIT BULLSHIT”/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#8: gVt cr4mp1ng Vp, w1th/b1ll10n fl0r4 scr34m1ng “NOOOOOOOO”/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#9: h34rt w0n’t f33l1ng r1ght/m4k1ng Vnn4tVr4l f1st/bVt 1 41n’t l1st3n
#10: br41n r1ght jVst1f13d/“THIS IS RIGHT & RESPONSIBLE”/l1k3 f00l, 1 l1st3n3d
spirit warriors acquire flare 
through osmosis of earth fire; 
heart as warm as solar shine