GR13V1NG 4 R0M4NT1C1Z3D...

grieving a romanticized

ideal of America

which never really was real

TH3 S0L3S 0F MY B00TS C0M3 L00S3...

the soles of my boots come loose

long before the tread wears down;

"don't tread on me" misses truth

TH3 1NDVSTR14L W4ST3L4ND...

the industrial wasteland

includes me - part and parcel

of diminishing returns

PR0M1S1NG 0BL1G4T10NS...

promising obligations

that I'm eternal machine,

producing wealth, ceaselessly

VND3R C0V3R 0F N1GHT, 1...

under cover of night, I

wander aimlessly, seeking

escape, while conscious of plague

S0M3 F0LKS ST1LL R41S3 TH3 FL4G; 1TS...

some folks still raise the flag; its

colors fill me with fear of

angry faces who fly it

P1MP1NG MY P1LGR1M4G3 0FF...

pimping my pilgrimage off

into oblivion with

thrift store Adidas shell toes

SVN S3TT1NG 0V3R W4ST3L4ND...

sun setting over wasteland;

badgeless stormtroopers arrived -

manufactured human walls

3V1CT3D FR0M TH3 C0MF0RT...

evicted from the comfort

of merit mythologies

exempt from reality

SONG OF THE DAY: The Champ's Pain

Not really much to say but of this mindset where I gotta say something. Mostly I’ve been writing graffiti on apples lately, then throwing the apples out my car window while driving down the interstate. Some might think that’s wasteful of apples but most the apples I have are old and mealy. It’s difficult to write good graffiti on mealy apples, but if you do it just right it’s worth it because it looks good sitting in the dollar store plastic bin in the passenger seat as you go down the road, big old beautiful ACAB 1312 in black sharpie and purple paint pen on an ugly old Fuji apple, and you pull it out because you’re about to go under a local road overpass bridge, and throw it perfectly timed and it hits the concrete support pillar that nobody else has ever graffiti’d yet, and makes a wonderful splat you hear briefly before you’re already another mile into oblivion.

TH3 3ND 0F 4M3R1C4N...

the end of American

empire ain't one of glory;

suffering neglect's slow death

TR33S GR0W T4LL3R TH4N T0PPL3D...

trees grow taller than toppled

monuments; history's shown

us this time and time again

4B4ND0N TH3 P0L1T1CS...

abandon the politics

of claiming space which ain't our's;

release all ownership claims

W34P0NS W1TH0VT 4W4R3N3SS...

weapons without awareness

manufactures false sense of

expensive security

TH3R3'S N0 S3CVR1TY L1GHTS...

there's no security lights

in the wild; allow your eyes

the time to adjust to see

VNS33N, DW3LL1NG 1N SH4D0WS...

unseen, dwelling in shadows

of undeveloped spaces,

simple resistance still breeds

34SY T0 0V3RL00K H0W...

easy to overlook how

intertwined with nature our

human life actu'lly is

4RM3D M1L1T4NTS GV4RD1NG STR1P...

armed militants guarding strip

malls - performative acts of

American Eagle free dumb

SONG OF THE DAY: Party Wit Pop Smoke

The smell of barrel fire on fresh clothes, meaning that $20 t-shirt you bought from your boy who has “a clothing line” that took five reminder texts despite your completely laid back nature to get him to remember to drop it off, that you figured was only for weekend fresh fits, but you somehow found yourself wandering the tracks beneath the interstate bridges and found fellow souls of deep-patterned solitude standing around a metal barrel lifted off the ground by two sideways cinderblocks (safety first), so you kicked it with them, because fireside ciphers are incomparable – the free styling of human words from your barely conscious brain as flames suck oxygen and flash the promise of cleansing it all and archiving all the world’s wrongs into ash so that we can begin again, freshly, and see if we don’t get it more right than last time this next time. The flames hide the stank of pallet scraps and found volunteer kindling and empty cans and taillight covers that floated down from the heavens above, and the barrel fire smell of all of our manufactured plastic ass existence blends into the fibers of your fresh $20 shirt from your boy’s line, and it’s like the DNA inside your body, full of the smoke from your pop and his pop and the pops before that, plus the moms… oh fuck the glorious persistent moms that had to endure all those explosive self-destructive pops and try to hold shit together just well enough that the family tree grew out into you, and you’re stills standing here, a goddamn wreck of human existence but wearing that fresh shirt and the same grey-scale camouflage cargo shorts, freestyling those same prayers you’ve been freestyling for years, falling on deaf gods who never hear dirtgods. And that fresh shirt meant for Saturday afternoon cookouts that don’t happen because quarantine feels permanent is relegated to long solitary walks of pimping through the wasteland, and the shirt stinks of burned plastic and ragweed blunts and to be honest, of you. The freshness is worn off, but you tell yourself it’s still fresh, you’re still fresh, there’s still hope, keep walking, keep freestyling those prayers to the gods above, dreams only come true if you naively keep believing in them.

C0VNTRY 41N'T C0VNTRY N0 M0R3...

country ain't country no more;

suburban bourgeoisie with

air conditioned 4x4s

TR4V3L1NG TH3 0P3N R04D...

traveling the open road,

searching for grapes to eat straight

off the vine - a fool's errand

SONG OF THE DAY: Break-Out

It always gives me pause when I hear someone say "I really wanna break out of my shell" because it worries me that they're actually a sci-fi rock person hybrid of some sort and they crack little layers off themselves. I've never understood the internal cellular breakdown of this because I assume they have to regenerate internally in order to replace that physical presence, or else they're just slowly making themselves closer to not existing each time they break out of their shell. But is the rock/human hybridization evenly mixed throughout, or do parts of them have more rock and other parts more human? This has also always worried me about cybertronic robot cyborgs, because I don't know, if I was a robot but with a human heart and human internal organs at least to have gut flora, but with a robot's brain, that might be tight. But I also believe my mind is like a mix of my heart and gut and brain, and one of the biggest problems with current civilization is we worship brain thinking far too much and forget to think with our heart. I don't know how robot brain and organic human heart and gut would mesh together. Oh wait, yeah I do, its' basically like having seven social media accounts you think about like they matter.

Anyways, I too want to break out of my shell, which is this horrible human skin shell. I need more pelts. If I could mix the cyborg recipe up to have some sort of animal pelt combined with human heart and internal organs and robot brain, that'd be perfect. Is there an animal with lavender velour skin?

M3CH4N1SMS 0F R34L W0RK...

mechanisms of real work

long abandoned; we labor

under weight of abstractions

SONG OF THE DAY: When My Fever Breaks

Is this a Covid anthem now? Anthem is also health insurance and I passed a sign they had of five things to remember during the mystery plague we're having, but it didn't ring out well enough to be remembered, especially when the Krispy Kreme was right there putting distracting smells into the air. Ain't no mask gonna stop donut smell. Health insurance doesn't really ensure anything anyways. It's amazing to me medicare for all is some crazy shit here and people get mad about wearing masks and also there are spikes in people getting sick and we don't even know if immunity happens or is permanent or what. But people are mad about wearing masks and are okay with taking a chance on kids dying by going to school. Speaking of ensuring shit, is there a co-pay to exist here in this country? Have I met my deductible yet? Am I free until January 1? Have I made enough minimum payments to not die in debt? Or will my children inherit my worthlessness? Sometimes the plague seems like relief, but there's the lottery ticket of it'd kill you right away or run up a ton of bills you'd leave behind that stack way higher than any paychecks or insurance checks that'd still come your family's way after you've gone from this mortal coil to wander the clouds playing horseshoes with Tupac and El Santo, $5 a game.

H4RD3R 4ND H4RD3R T0 G3T...

harder and harder to get

by, as American pie's

been lacking fruit for some time

4M3R1C4'S PR0VD F4C4D3...

America's proud facade

don't flap for ev'rybody;

out back, digging through the trash

TH1NK1NG L1K3 4 P00R P3RS0N...

thinking like a poor person,

stepping aside as Amtrak

dashes past, headed eastbound

SONG OF THE DAY: Run For Your Life

They've been building walls all along, the whole time, and they keep building them closed in just a little bit more as they split us apart and find space enough to put up another wall. We are all in a simulated solitary confinement already, and I know a lot of people are saying you should buy guns and learn how to use them, but I really just wanna remind everybody how great and effective arson is.

CL4VSTROPH0B1C R3CKL3SSN3SS...

claustrophobic recklessness

of being broke never leaves

your DNA completely

GV4RD R41L M3M0R14LS W3R3...

guard rail memorials were

my birthright - live fast, die young,

fill your gravestone's dash with fire

SONG OF THE DAY: El Diario de un Borracho

YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK LOUDER
I AM WEARING NOTHING BUT MESH BOXER BRIEFS AND TRYING 
TO DO KETTLEBELL SWINGS IN MY BASEMENT APARTMENT 
LIVING ROOM WHILE WATCHING LUCHA LIBRE 
BUT BLASTING NORTEÑO MUSIC LOUD AS FUCK 
BECAUSE AMERICA HAS TOO MANY LAME ASS 
NEIGHBORS; I SHOULD BE BACK IN THE 
COUNTRY BUT NOBODY CAN AFFORD 
ANYTHING IN THIS PLACE AND
NOW NOBODY CAN LEAVE BECAUSE 
WE'VE FUCKED UP THE PANDEMIC BETTER THAN 
ANYBODY ELSE. AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM 
HAS LEFT US MORE DOOMED THAN EVER 
OH WELL, KEEP SWINGING THIS KETTLEBELL 
STUDYING THE TECHNIQUES OF FABY APACHE 
AND THE IMPECCABLE FASHION OF MAXIMO 
AND KEEP TRYING TO GET STRONGER 
AND STUPIDER AND GROW A LONGER BEARD 
AND AVOID DEATH FOR AT LEAST 
ANOTHER 69 HOURS 

SONG OF THE DAY: Drug Dealer

Used to be a sworn boom baptist, but in recent years I've definitely loosened my rigid hip hop morality to expand worldwide. Sadly, there's no real good source of worldwide hip hop exposure; it's all geared to specific scenes based on geography or corporate ties. Definitely when the early wave of what's derogatorily called mumble rap started to raise up, I found myself loving British grime music way more, because it had that gritty feel that I love, and is very tied to a feeling in the American landscape when boom baptistry was prominent. The foggy autotuned vocals of mumble rap make sense though, because we live in this highly developed era of forced order, many of us pharmaceutically manipulated into accepting it all without suicide, so there's a very literal fogginess to our existence that makes the sad autotune wails of mumble rap very relevant. Gotta admit though, through my oldest kid's studies in South Asia, I've tended to find autotuned hip hop from other places more enjoyable than American autotune, with some exceptions. It all goes to further prove how our media, even corporate music media, is all tied to the environment of where we are. Can somebody point me to a cultural anthropological compendium of ongoing hip hop expressionism globally? Anyways, here's slowthai, who is fucking great.

MY 1NN4T3 M0RT4L1TY...

my innate mortality

always lurks, threateningly;

cheated death multiple times

CH4S1NG D1G1T4L DR4G0NS...

chasing digital dragons

only makes it worse, finger

poking for dopamine fix

SONG OF THE DAY: Stargaze

Fool moon rose over the Earth where I lay my head last night. It was hot and box fans pushed warm air over my naked body. I walked outside and looked at the moon, and the stars, and listened to all the night sounds, and didn't really sleep no easier than normal. But it's nice to have survived another fool moon.

4NYB0DY'S 1NT3RN4L...

anybody's internal

emotions are a tangled

mess of trauma, fear, and hope

SONG OF THE DAY: What It Do (Sean P Energy)

Updated white rappers rankings:

#1: Paul Wall

Fin

SONG OF THE DAY: Maheyega Assouf Igan

I listen to a lot of wedding music from other parts of the world. I'm also trying to work through a divorce right now, which isn't really contested so much as a bunch of stupid paperwork, which neither of us is ever all that amped to dig into. We got married justice of the peace with a dude who was about to die from cancer back in the day. Then when we finally had a ceremony many years later, I got drunk and passed out on homemade tomato wine in my overalls which I had put rhinestones all over as my wedding outfit. I am thankful to be sober, thankful I have been able to move on from my marriage, and hopeful that if I ever go to another wedding, it's not in America, or for Americans, nor if I am there do I have to come back to America. America is cancelled. Marriage is cancelled. Drunkenness is cancelled. Everything is cancelled except for playing hyped the fuck up wedding party music all weekend long, stripped down to my mesh boxer briefs because I don't think anybody will actually call the cops on me if I'm at least wearing these in the yard.

SCR1BBL1NG R.1.P. D1RTG0D...

scribbling "R.I.P. Dirtgod"

to remind myself that my

autonomy's temporal

SONG OF THE DAY: Anythang (Chopped Not Slopped)

Tomorrow is a holiday since the 4th of July (which if you heard I was celebrating, that's a worldwide lie) falls on a weekend, and I’m on furlough all next week, so when I shut this bitch down at work earlier today, I ain’t doing shit for nobody for a whole goddamn ten days. Gonna hop in my Toyota Spaceship and fly the friendly back roads, scribble a few dirtgods on whatever trains got stuck the same nowhere as me, watch the sun moon and stars circulate overhead, and cast these intentions of “fuck the bullshit” out upon the universe as a whole. If the people are marching in my path, as long as they’re for the people, I’m gonna jump out the spaceship and walk with them. Time is only too short if you get too caught up in the hours and minutes. I hope for a life for all of us where we chop and screw our days away, sharing lifetimes full of Sundays, where we do the work necessary to provide for each other and self all that we need, without nobody getting so goddamned greedy they gotta fuck it up for anybody else. Salaam, motherfucker.

SONG OF THE DAY: Orosi

There’s a lot of talk about the removal of dumbass Confederate monuments that suggests if you don’t have shit like that around, you’ll forget history. The obvious flaw in this is most folks supporting Confederate monuments already don’t remember the actual history of the Confederacy. On top of this, the histories we’re told are so often skewed from the perspective of the victors, even in the context of progressive histories. As an example, until digging deeper into the things this “Orosi” song talked about, I had no idea about the Filipino farm workers who initiated the grape protests back in the ‘60s, for better working conditions for farm workers. Now Orosi is central California, but mostly populated with Filipino people who have resided in the area after migration related to farming jobs. The small city is actually majority Filipino. The Delano grape strikes happened in the same region, about an hour south of Orosi, back in the ‘60s, and were started by a group of Filipino farm workers, who eventually called on Cesar Chavez to aid in their movement. Chavez initially refused, because he didn’t think they had the money to support their own movement’s goals, but other members of the group Chavez was head of forced him to take part, and he led a long distance walk to the California state capitol in support of the grape workers. I knew about Cesar Chavez, but only recently realized he was involved in outing people as Communists, that he wasn’t supportive of outside movements too easily that didn’t support his own image, and had quite a cult of personality that grew up around himself, which he used to his benefit. Nothing is simple and straightforward, not even resistance to obvious bullshit like the current American empire as it holds itself up in the highest positions. But even dissecting the patriarchal elements to black resistance or the inequality involved in white women’s feminism is necessary shit, because we’ve got a whole slew of shit woven into our society that fucks people up and holds them down. Many people we’d prop up on pedestals, literally, even by right now’s standards, are gonna end up flawed down the road. Cesar Chavez is a good example of that. Doesn’t mean what he did accomplish wasn’t good.

The same is true of individuals. I’m a white dude. I also do not necessarily have the economic benefits born to me the average white dude would have. But I also do benefit from outsider perspectives judging me as a white dude in many situations, and probably wouldn’t have the good job I have now if I wasn’t a white dude. I’ve done fucked up shit in the past, far from perfect, and have done a lot of work to try and be a better human being. I’m still not perfect, and still got shit I need to be better about, and past bullshit I need to try and heal myself over so it doesn’t keep coming back up as a negative ripple in my here and now. But ain’t nobody perfect that’s truly human. I’m gonna allow others the room to grow, gonna try my best not to judge nobody unless they’re so over the top in militantly enforcing their beliefs on others that don’t seem right that I have to judge them, and either keep a distance or stand against as protection for myself and others. It’s a lot of shit shifting rapidly right now, which is such a good thing to see, and be a part of and experience. It’s historic. But if we keep growing as humanity, I’d expect sixty years from now, even some of what we’re seeing today is gonna seem like bullshit in retrospect. That’s good. That’s hopefully gonna be a sign of continuous growth towards betterment.

By the way if you don’t know by now, you should support Bambu on Bandcamp. Dude’s one of the top political MCs there is. I’m anxiously awaiting Exrcising A Demon: Article III, even if it don’t exist yet.

43R0S0L R3V3L4T10NS...

aerosol revelations

sprayed upwards towards heavens

full of martyrs who lived fast

SONG OF THE DAY: Free The Robots

Too many people think they know, which is not to say I know better so much as they don't know all they think they do, and I know I don't know, but I'm not trying to have nobody think I know more than they do. There is a confidence of outlook that exists in too many people I have to interact with that lacks humility and an acceptance that by being human you don't really know shit. I am glad the racist patriarchy is falling, but I'd prefer we not have an emulation of the shithead mediocre white male boss who has to have everybody either repeat back his ideas to him as brilliance, or just restate the work of others in a barely different enough way to claim at his own. Seems like that's where we're moving though, to a great congress of judgmental mediocrity. I don't think enough people have been hungry, or known struggle, or been trapped in an existence they know they can't easily escape, if at all. Shit like that makes you way less likely to be so sure you know what's best for everybody else. Unfortunately, this is America, and we are still ruled by people who think they know better than everybody else about what everybody ought to be doing. That's our entire political system. I'm very thankful for the people who just do shit, completely not giving a fuck about politics. This world needs a lot more doers of shit, and far less people who think they know all the time.

SONG OF THE DAY: Lost

Max aka Millz passed earlier this year, and had been half of the tag team champs of our local War Games battle rap league, where we had hip hop battles inside an MMA-like cage. Him and his partner Chuck Nasty made up GRYSCL, who dropped a project after Max’s death, which hurt his creative community. In the recent protests in Richmond, at the very beginning, on the Lee Monument (which is now known as Marcus-David Peters Circle, in honor of a man who was shot and killed by police a few years back), someone sprayed “MILLZ” high up on the monument. It survived the first few weeks, but now the monument has become a layered message board of graffiti messages. Many of us who knew Max were stoked to see his name up there posthumously, still being part of the revolution. RIP Max.

HVM4N'S 1NN4T3 D3S1R3 T0...

human's innate desire to

be one with the wilderness

traded in for fool's comfort