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.

Saturday, July 30

SONG OF THE DAY: Chippy, Chippy


Spent another hour today fighting the push mower, as I made it do things the modern American push mower is not designed to do without falling apart, because they're mostly for looks, not function. Got me to thinking about progress, as Frank Sobotka's voice echoes in my mind, talking his shit about how we used to make things. Progress in America with regards to the fucking lawn is you used to be able to pay a neighbor kid $20 to cut your grass. Now you gotta pay some Polo shirt landscape company dude $120, so that he can maintain payments on his zero-interest if paid off in six months credit on latest piece of power equipment, and he pays some Honduran dude $20 to cut it for you. It also subsidizes two or three weeklong vacations in Rodanthe, as seen by the prominent Salt Life sticker in his work truck's back window. Both political parties support this alleged progress - only difference is one party's landscape company owner/manager is more likely to use an electric weed eater.
I hate the fetishization of riding mowers, as seen by those stupid fucking "middle class fancy" shirts, which is way too bougie for my tastes. Riding mowers are too goddamned expensive, which is why I keep pushing this push mower. And even buying them used, you have to get a good brand you know will last, and you can't tell if the good brands are actually good any more, because all of them have a cut-rate version they sell at the big box hardware stores, so your John Deere may not be a legit John Deere because it came from Lowe's and is about to fall to shit anyways, so you'd be wasting $300 on a used one. Just get another fucking push mower.
I've done a lot of class transition in my adult life... I mean, not really a lot, but I'm not as fucked as I was growing up. You know what middle class fancy is to me? My cats eat wet food. And not pate, because they hate it, but that shredded shit, in the can. Their favorite is turkey and cheese, but you can never find it because the logistics of having cat food at the grocery store has gotten complicated as fuck. There's always nine rows with like two in stock if you're lucky. Whenever the turkey and cheese shreds are there though, I load the fuck up, thinking I'll go ahead and do the 10 for $8 (which used to be 10 for $6.50 like last year, what the fuck), but then go ahead and get two more, because stupid math rules everything about my life, and the wire shelf I stack the cat food on is underneath a cabinet, and I can stack cans of wet food three high, but the stacks have to be same flavor. That's the rules (in my mind). Been noticing the upward trend of prices too, through the advanced sale mode. Wet cat food was 10 for $6.50, then they bumped it to 10 for $7, but kept it "on sale" at $6.50, to cushion you for the actual price raise. Then it was on sale for 10 for $7, but actual price got bumped to $8. Now it's just that price, not on sale, which I guess means in a couple weeks, it'll be on sale for this same price, but the "regular" price will be 10 for $9. Squeezing us blind, little by little, in the tiniest of increments, like the walls closing in an eighth of an inch a day, until one day we realize we're fucking crushed.
Anyways, fuck the United States of America. Even though it's gonna be a horribly painful shit show when it finally falls apart, I sometimes we think we need to go ahead and rip the scab off, and get it over with. We won't though, because we're all afraid of how much it's gonna bleed.

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