SONG OF THE DAY: Dizzy (kudzu'd)

Sometimes I wish I could move to El Paso, and grow a short and long haircut and wear silk shirts, and maybe live in that little sliver of a neighborhood that is somehow squeezed south of the rail yard but north of the Rio Grande, by the water treatment plant. I walk around there a lot in my dreams, I guess maybe I got a spot in alternate realm I live at on Charles Road there. There’s a garage backed up to the alley but all I’ve ever seen in there is giant speakers and some turntables, and there’s like 4 or 5 wooden picnic tables in varying states of weathered disrepair, with all sorts of names carved into them. And in the dream strolls, I feel like this spot is mine, whether I’m renting or just long term crashing out with somebody, and the garage with speakers and music feels familiar, but I’m never in there playing records. Usually just walking around the neighborhood, by the train tracks, looking through the fence, then I cut through the alley to walk through the simple chain link gate to the yard of the place that’s familiar, and I sit at the picnic tables, listening out for train sounds, while cumbia music plays slowly. I can never tell if it’s coming from the garage or just generally blowing out over the whole neighborhood, and I always wanna go mark trains, but it’s a big ass BNSF yard, and it looks like I could sneak in one end. But in my conscious life, I don’t know the vibes of BNSF yards, so I just wander my way back to the place I seemingly stay at, and sit at the picnic table, and start carving a “dirtgod” into it. In my dreams. So I guess it would be nice if I could actually move there, and grow my hair out again, and wear silk shirts, and do that. One can never tell if the dream alternates of themselves are from the future, the past, or just a parallel twin that broke psychic containment. Maybe I’ll get dream El Paso Raven, and here Blue Ridge Raven (which is not the “here” to all the other Ravens) to start putting up flyers for a big Reunion of Ravens, across the times. I hope they let me DJ. Although that’s pretty self-centered, because how do I know I’m even the best Raven for the task?

SONG OF THE DAY: I'll Keep Searching (kudzu'd)

I had planned on writing something intelligent here when I woke up this morning, but then I fissured my brain with work (the things I do to make a paycheck to allegedly “make a living”). And in the gaps in those responsibilities, I further fissured my brain by looking inside the internet, seemingly for things but more truthfully at things, most of which I didn’t need to see. In fact, that’s likely why you are here now. We (people) really fucked up somewhere along the way. Not really feeling this big rah rah America 250 bullshit, because it feels way more like we fucked up than we got it all right.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Only Have Eyes For You (kudzu'd)

Blind spots in the surveillance state should not be shared with everybody. Toys will burn your best liminal semi-autonomous zones by telling the wrong people about it, or using the wrong robot technology to talk about it. You should be in the practice of visiting at least 3 places a week where everybody knows that not only is it expected you won’t have a smart phone on you, but you should’ve cut it off at least 2 (urban) to 10 (rural) miles away beforehand. The surveillance state will never figure out how to capture data of the entire Earth, and it will struggle to keep up with sorting through the data it can capture, even with the flawed aid of artificial intelligence. Exploit the margins, As it’s always been, when you find a crack in the systems built around us all, rather than point it out, you should stick something hard into it and start wiggling it to make the crack bigger and bigger. “But what if the system is good?” Lmao, don’t be a mark.

SONG OF THE DAY: Le Spank (kudzu'd)

I could never roller skate regular style but I could do tricks. My favorite trick was jumping over barrels, except instead of roller skates I used a dirt bike, and we did it in the yard instead of a roller rink. But we built a tall enough stack of cinderblocks and triple layer plywood scraps that we could launch over three rusty barrels. Using back roads mathematics while drunk at age 14, we realized that we could set the middle barrel upright and use it for its rightful purpose of burning household garbage, and still likely jump that. My partner in stupidity was 9 months younger than me, so as the eldest, I had right of going first or refusal to pass along, but we all know that refusal to do such a thing was a huge red flag of deep character flaws, so of course I went first. It didn’t go well. I hit the ramp awkward, might’ve been a bit nervous, and I remember thinking, “Why didn’t we do a test run without the barrel fire going?” and that was my last conscious thought as I wobbled off the ramp and fell directly into the barrel fire. Turned out the barrel fire was actually a portal into America, which is how I ended up here. All that we know is actually the ass end of a portal opening where they burn the trash of a better place. I miss it there, but I don’t know how to get out of this shitty portal.

SONG OF THE DAY: Peg (kudzu'd)

lol "peg". The Doobie Brothers were wild.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ice Cold (kudzu'd)

I love little microslices of Americana to show how doomed and cursed we’ve always been, instead of it just being a recent trend. For example, one of the great minor league logos after the rebranding era of the 1990s was the Carolina Mudcats, from Zebulon outside of Raleigh. The logo had a big red C, with a big ol’ fat almost smiling catfish peeking through the hole in the C. It was glorious. Well, that team had been in the Southern League from its move to Zebulon in 1991, until 2011, when it got demoted (so to speak) from Double-A baseball to Single-A in the Carolina League. Earlier this decade, the team said it needed to update the Five County Stadium it played in, which had been specifically built in the early 1990s to get the team to move there from Columbus, Georgia. Minor league teams regularly do a smaller version of major league clubs holding localities hostage, sort of like the monorail episode of the Simpsons, selling them on paying for a baseball stadium that the team struggles mightily to get people to come out for. Well, when Wake County resisted pressure to throw more money at a stadium renovation, nearby the town of Wilson pushed to snatch them away, with a $280 million development built around a $70 million baseball-specific stadium. And as Wilson explored this, the plan had been to market it after the Whirligig Park of Vollis Simpson’s art that has made Wilson a tourist destination. The club was gonna be called the Wilson Whirligigs. Somewhere along the way though, some dork ass branding expert was consulted, and he convinced the team that “whirligigs” made no sense, so the name got switched to Warbirds, due to World War II pilots being trained at a nearby air force base. So the Carolina Mudcats were sacrificed, and we got a tease of having the Wilson Whirligigs, as a small sugar coating to another municipality being fleeced by a minor league baseball team for a for-profit stadium to operate out of, and instead all we got was some corny patriotic bullshit Wilson Warbirds.
But get this, the little slice of Americana’s weirdness goes further than that. Just before the Mudcats moved to Carolina, they played two seasons as the Mudcats in Columbus, Georgia, which is right on the Alabama state line, as one of the earliest minor league clubs to rebrand themselves from the previous era’s names which just adopted that of their major league associate. Before that, the Columbus team had been the Astros from 1970 through 1988, and the Columbus White Sox in 1969. But get this – in 1967 and 1968, the Southern League had dropped from 8 to 6 teams, and Columbus was a return in 1969, because they’d previously been in the Southern League from 1964 through 1966, as a farm club for the Yankees. But since they were in Georgia, they were called the Columbus Confederate Yankees. Officially, the team name was always the Columbus Yankees, but because they feared rural Georgia/Alabama would be haters on such a team name for a local club, they chose to sew Confederate flag patches on the arms of the jerseys. The logo on the hat was the Y like a New York Yankees hate, but with a C for Columbus. The NY on Yankees hats is not for Yankees, but New York, and somewhere along the way, a sportswriter or somebody wrote that the CY was Confederate Yankees. Previous to having the club in Columbus, the Yankees same level farm club had been in Augusta, Georgia, known as the Augusta Yankees, and had the lowest attendance in the Southern League, and that lack of care about going to the games caused the Yankees to cancel the affiliation with Augusta. And in order to not replicate the same level of Southern indifference, around the time of the centennial of the Civil War, and coinciding with the Civil Rights movement happening to a major level in nearby cities like Atlanta and Birmingham, they chose to throw the Confederate flag patch on the jerseys. Attendance was much better than in Augusta. (Perhaps the only name as ironic as "Confederate Yankees" was the Negro League team from Atlanta called the Black Crackers.)
Thus, we get a little slice of long sordid history of America, through the marketing of minor league baseball, from the Columbus “Confederate” Yankees, to the Carolina Mudcats, to the godawful Wilson Warbirds. We can’t have nothin’ nice, and also never have apparently. And you can’t get peanuts, and a box of Cracker Jacks is $4 (last time I checked). Probably $5 this year, because my most local to me minor league team rebranded as some sort of collective of monsters from the graveyard.

SONG OF THE DAY: Mr. Telephone Man (kudzu'd)

I have a land line phone again, except it's not to this land. I've built this thing I call a Tesla coil of lounge in the backyard, which is an empty metal spool from them running broadband fiber, and I've laid it sideways, hung a bunch of pentatonic wind chimes on it, and dead center in the middle, as I've done a number of places around the house, I set up a big ass railroad spring I found (like 15 inches tall) and stuck a hefty quartz rock on top. This particular quartz was retrieved by my ol' lady from my ancestral lands up in Wards Gap when we were down there one time, going down the dirt road my kin would've lived on, except I had to stop because my Corolla was not gonna handle that incline safely, on a dirt road, and we were at a small enough pull-off to turn around, or likely be committed to going to wherever that road took us, against our will (point of no return). But she made me stop as I was 7-point turning it, and she hefted a big ol' chunk of quartz into the trunk. So even though I have a number of railroad springs with a quartz rock on top of it, this one is especially strong, and it's positioned in the middle of this metal spool contraption with pentatonic clangs going all the time. Plus, I've put painted bottles and animal bones and turtle shells and railroad spikes and other magical ephemera on top of it. Plus there's more quartz rocks being dumped from time to time in the middle, and we planted tulips and daffodils around it, and a giant forsythia already touches it nicely on the clothesline side of things.
Well, there was some old satellite cable or something that runs beneath the ground right there that got uncovered. I cut it near the Tesla coil of lounge, and spliced it over to the center part of this growing contraption. Then I ran the other end from where it was going to the house, traced it to the inside, and hooked up a phone jack there, just connecting wires all willy nilly, because conceivably they connect to nothing manmade. But I got an old phone (of course) that I went ahead and plugged in, you know, just because. If you're gonna build an elaborate nonsense, you gotta sell the angle all the goddamn way.
Here's the thing though... the fuckin' phone actually rings from time to time. Despite the shocking nature of this, I of course answered, because it also makes perfect sense. I went, "Hello?" the first time, and all there was on the other end was a humming sound, I guess organic (natural) but also with a weird harmonics to it. Over time, I've kinda deduced that maybe this is ancestral spirits calling in on me, or it might just be the general magical energy of the Earth. And honestly, from the moment we moved into this house, with the weird shit that's going on in the woods down behind us, the kids automatically said it was like we had moved into a Miyazaki movie, so it could just be generalized Earth spirits of ignored eras and planes.
I've come to understand the tone of the hums better. Certain harmonic hums mean I'm mostly doing okay, so I can ask for blessings to paths and projects I'm already on. But other harmonic tones I can tell have concern to them, and this means my paths and projects might need adjustment. So I ask the questions that come to mind to try and figure out what the Universe is trying to tell me. This isn't always easy, communicating in my version of English language, to spirits that may or may not even have ever used this particular tongue. One time, notably, the phone rang a couple times a day for four or five days in a row, with a concerned hum, and I kept asking questions to try and figure out what I needed to adjust. I started with bigger things, and it never stopped the calls, and I kept spiraling the questions I asked to the hum, until I ran out of major things and dialed it back down to less cataclysmic concerns, and seemingly it turned out, I just needed to stop wearing blue so little. Like, I used to rarely wear blue clothes, because I just didn't rock with that color. But in all my wondering what I might be doing wrong, we somehow got around to asking about wearing blue, and the hum softened, after a few days of these calls. So I started wearing blue. And to be honest, it's been pretty great. That color unlocks a whole different vibe in a lot of spaces, which I had been closing myself off to, unnecessarily.
Don't take that as me suggesting you should wear more blue. We all have different congresses of spirits speaking a chorus of guidance to us. I don't really know how to tell you to try and build a phone like this. Mine happened accidentally, but also looking back, was just as intentional with purpose even if I didn't know the purpose. So I guess just attune yourself to building energetic contraptions in your life that are intentionally purposeful by accident. And then listen for the calls. And if you get them, you gotta answer. A whole lot of people get these calls, all the fuckin' time, but never bother answering. Why would you diss your chorus of unexplained spirits like that? That's crazy.

SONG OF THE DAY: Turn My Back On You

Many years ago, when I was younger and dumber, I drunkenly disparaged Sade’s beauty, mostly to be contrary to a friend. It only happened one night, during one drunken conversation while playing cards. But I carry the memory of these words with great shame. So I am apologizing to the Universe. I’m not sure if doing so on an obscure blog does the trick, but I would imagine the ripples are similar. At least, that is my intention.

SONG OF THE DAY: Leila (kudzu'd)

Did you know that Kourosh Yaghmaei is still alive, but never left Iran, even after the Cultural Revolution meant much of his music was no longer allowed? He’s run a private music school all these years, and has been allowed to perform outside the country in the past couple decades. But in the liner notes for the release of Back from the Brink: Pre-Revolution Psychedelic Rock from Iran: 1973-1979 (of which there was a 45 release, which this slowed down rip comes from), Kourosh admitted how hard it was to live under state censorship, but choosing to remain in a place he loved and was his home. He wrote, “Even a pet bird must fly, as to not to forget how to fly,” in a metaphor similar to Maya Angelou’s 1983 “Caged Bird” poem.

SONG OF THE DAY: Run It On Down, Mr. D.J. (kudzu'd)

Not enough crazy people make their own radio stations anymore. And I don't mean digitally, but real life radio waves through the sky shooting through antennas so people sitting on a porch on a Thursday night can vibe the fuck out to it radio stations. All the ones we do have are either owned by two evil global conglomerates, or are "community" stations commandeered by the longest term local gatekeepers around. We need chaos radio... it is good for us all. Then again, judging by all the spotify wrappeds I see every year, culturally we seem attuned to the false quirkiness of streamed basics. There is no chaos to an algorithm, ever.

SONG OF THE DAY: Rock the Beat (kudzu'd)

The tip top of the cap on the gold spray paint can I had left in the shed broke off, so I had to push it down with a railroad spike to get it to spray halfway right, thus I got gold speckle splatters on my glasses. It’s improved my outlook immensely. Also got a bunch of it on my charcoal Dickie’s pants, which is good, because I ain’t had a real job in decades. Gonna take a nap on the back porch now, but I sleep with an agogo bells and stick like they're my teddy bear, so I can wake up (which I do often times due to sleep apnea) and bang out a couple measures worth of metronome bells, then doze back off. I truly believe this helps my dreams have better rhythm.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ke Suene Machin (kudzu'd)

I’ve had a pretty giant HO scale large town/maybe even corner of a small city scene set up, and it had been pretty nice for a while. I got a large number of little 1/87 size plastic figures from eBay in bulk – like a giant set of 300 workers, city figures, etc. These folks had populated the city for a while, and things seemed to be fine. I don’t get to go down there and run the train that often, but I hadn’t noticed any problems, with these Chinese manufactured migrants to my basement HO city.
The problem came up when I got some higher-priced Woodland Scenics hobos. I specifically wanted some hobos, and though it did seem counterintuitive economically that I could get like 300 figures for $10, but a set of 5 hobos was $19, what can I say, I wanted some hobos. There were two sitting hobos you could put in an open box car, but I put them on a bench in front of the corner store. And then three more meant to sit around a fire I guess, as one of them is cooking something on a stick, another is sitting on a crate, holding a can, and the last guy is standing there with a stick and bindle over his shoulder. But I hadn’t taken into consideration the differing economic status of these fancy Woodland Scenics hobos, as compared to all the plastic proles I’d gotten off eBay. And I hadn’t been running the train enough, I guess. When I came back one times a few weeks ago, there were all these little mailers about wanting to tear out the rail line on the far end of town, and change it to a biking and hiking trail, to try and attract tourism. The little mailer mentioned how the factories and offices on the far edge of town had been closed down for as long as anybody can remember. But these aren’t even full HO buildings, but just a façade I have set up against the wall. You can’t even get in these places; it’s just decorative background! Nonetheless, it seems someone was trying to initiate tearing out the tracks for tourism. And I’d noticed the bindle standing hobo was outside the one government building I had built, with the two sitting dudes now sitting on a bench beside him (with, for some reason, EVERY SINGLE police officer from the bulk package off eBay, even though I’d purposefully never put those in my little city). Thus, I suspected these guys as being the ringleaders of whatever was going on. But I hadn’t gone into the basement to get involved in HO scale politics, or tinker with my city… only to retrieve a couple milk crates of Easyriders from the 1970s, for a project.
Well, when I went back to put the milk crates full of old ass Easyriders back down there, half the train tracks were gone. I have no idea where they are. And like little brown sand/pebble trails are in the place. The track doesn’t even connect anymore, which means I don’t have a closed circuit for the train to run I wanted to run it. And I can’t find the fuckin’ track. Not only did these little assholes tear out track, but they destroyed the possibility of it ever working again, unless I find what’s been taken away, or figure out a way to replace it.
Those three dudes were there again, at a little gazebo they’d moved from a park across town to by the new hiking paths, and being I figured the bindle guy was the leader, I plucked him out the city, and took him upstairs and tucked him into a drawer in my desk, without thought. But then, he ended up back in the city again, which I only knew because I happened to see one of the police figures in my hallway, which made me go check the desk drawer again, confirming he was gone from there, and then going to the basement to confirm he was back in HO town. So I took him again, and this time snapped him inside an empty Altoids container which I store my thumb drives of scanned naked Polaroids. I figured the little plastic police officers couldn’t open the Altoids tin, so I had him trapped this time.
But then, of course, I saw TWO little police figures in the hall, plus one in the kitchen. I ran to the Altoids tin in my desk drawer, and not only was the bindle figure gone, but so were the three flash drives full of naked Polaroids. But here’s where it got fucked up. I went immediately to the basement, and looked for the bindle asshole Woodland Scenics fucker, and he was over by the weird little slummy hotel I built, which is my favorite piece in the whole city. I spent so much time on it to make it look perfectly fucked. But this bindle leader guy was standing over there, by the tracks that still existed, and a gondola was sitting alone there, which I love because I did a graffiti piece that says PONYO because I like to pretend my cat Ponyo is a graffiti artist in this HO town. Well, the gondola had two of the missing flash drives, but not the third, which has scans of a lot of naked Polaroids of me with previous lovers, all taken with consent, but not something either I or they would want shared openly. It was lime green, which I knew had the best (wildest) stuff on it. And there was that little asshole, with his nonchalant stare, knowing damn well he’d taken these, and was withholding the most sensitive one. And to what purposes? Like, I assume I’m being blackmailed by this little fucker, but how do I know? And what does he want exactly? No idea, but I’ve let him have the run of HO town for now, until we can figure this out.
Anyways, the whole thing sucks, because normally having little magical people would seem to be a blessing. But instead it’s just caused me worry and anxiety, and I can’t even play with my damn HO scale town anymore. And I’m afraid to rip the thing apart because then they might leak this flash drive onto the internet. Not sure why I admit all of this to you, other than to say, be careful of the magic you conjure in your life. That shit’s way more complicated than you realize oftentimes.

SONG OF THE DAY: Queen of My Double Wide Trailer (kudzu'd)

I dedicate this song to every big strong woman caked in dirt and mud wearing raggedy ass jeans, but then cleans up real nice in a beautiful sundress, and doesn’t dry off after their shower, so the dress is clinging to their cleavage just right. C’mon girl, let’s go listen to them spring peepers, and stare up at the stars, and if we’re lucky, go try to knock the master bedroom end of our Clayton home two-piece off its foundation blocks just a little bit more.

SONG OF THE DAY: Neon Moon (kudzu'd)

We always long for a past that was once a shitty future. As a young drunken adult, Garth Brooks & Jimmy Dunn were hated by me (as well as my pops) as False Country. And now here we are 30 years later (300 in digital years), and “Neon Moon” sparks nostalgia. “These guys aren’t all stupid like shitty ass Coy Caldwell and Austin Brody” and whoever else is the cyborgian Wal-Martinized suburban cosplayer of rural identity flavor of the month. The enshittification of our culture (which has been primarily consumer-based for well over half a century) has been going on long before some dork claims he created the term “enshittification”. Plus, you know damn well that was a joke term in a groupchat, and somewhere there’s 7 other people going, “Damn, can you believe Cory (Doctorow) acts like he came up with that? We all saw Sara using that before he was even in the Discord?” But that’s the reality now… a nostalgia for an earlier shittiness we have somehow strayed even further from.

SONG OF THE DAY: Tired of Being Alone (kudzu'd)

I’ve taken up playing Torricelli’s trumpet, an old acute truncated hyperbolic solid brass one, but so far all I’ve learned is Al Green’s “Tired of Being Alone”. It’s hard to get used to, because of the finite volume, so no matter how hard I try to blow (which is hard for me, due to my advanced age and sleep apnea half-choking in the middle of the night ass). But mostly, all my neighbors are frustrated by it, not due to the noise, but because of the infinitely long shape. It’s not so bad in the woods behind the house, but by the time you get to the end of Schuyler Road, it’s a few hundred feet high I reckon. Ultimately, I’d like to be able to make cosmic cumbia music if I can find some like-minded people, or even non-people to be honest. Not robots though. I ain’t making no new-fangled mathematically nonsensical space funk with no goddamned robots. Well, at least not Earth robots as designed by humans here. Maybe there’s more soulful robots designed by other intergalactic species in other systems, but I’ve seen nothing with a copper heart that has the fingerprint of homo sapiens upon it. I heard tell, talking to an old dude on the Greyhound riding between Dayton, OH, and Charleston, WV, one time, that there were space robots who could play the horn really well. But this dude told me that like how on Earth, fleshly humans play brass instruments, there were robotic creatures with brass veins (aka wires) who played horns made of a flesh-like material, so it wasn’t rigid, but they were. At first, I was like, “Whatever, weird old dude I’m stuck beside on the bus for a long time,” but when I gave him a look like that, he jumped right into talking about bagpipes from Scotland and how they were made from sheep intestines originally, and it all started making sense. That’s how the Greyhound used to be… it was a podcast before podcasts existed, and you couldn’t change the channel until the next stop either one of you got off on. Or sometimes, a new guest would show up and enter your podcast (Greyhound conversation). Late at night, at the back of the bus? Man, those were some of the best podcasts I ever heard in my life. Crazy shit. Anyways, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Torricelli’s trumpet I got at Motleys in Farmville.

SONG OF THE DAY: Is This The Future? (kudzu'd)

I got a lottery ticket at the robot kiosk the other night at the grocery store and tucked it into my wallet and forgot about it. I like to forget about them, because you have the moment of getting the ticket where you can briefly imagine not being crushed by a thousand minor debts all at once and then the big one comes along and bankrupts/homelesses you… that’s normal. But forgetting about it is great, because then I’ll remember, and for a few days I can be like, “Oh shit, what if I won?” and go back to that fantasy of not slowly being hustled and ground to death by capitalism. And there’s no need to rush off to my robot phone and check the ticket… let that bitch simmer with possibility in my wallet for a while longer. Eventually I’ll check it, and so far, I’ve never won anything more than a few dollars (which actually, the tickets I got the other night were cashing in a pair of old $4 winners from last fall), but it’s a good distraction from regular affairs. And sure, the lottery is an ignorance tax on people who don’t understand odds, I know that Smart Guy; but also, for I never spend more than $10, and the fantasy of not being stretched fuckin’ thin like a peasant on a medieval torture rack but one made of modern economic abstractions is a pretty fun fantasy, and way better than any movie I’ve seen in the past decade of my life, and those fuckin’ tickets are more than $10 these days, to watch some goddamn boring ass predictable movie. So being I have an imagination that gets bored with the basic predictability of movies, it’s a better use of my meager extra dollars to let that imagination run wild on escaping the reality of American economics. Anyways, I just remembered those lottery tickets I got from cashing in the old lottery tickets, just sitting in my wallet, while I was washing dishes just now, and I got excited about telling everybody at work to fuck off, and being able to finally afford that militia of orangutans armed with Kalashnikovs led by three rhesus monkeys with gold-plated 9mms. Their names will be Thought, Memory, and Corpus Callosum, and anytime there’s an important decision, I’ll consult with them, and we’ll do what Thought and Memory decide, unless there’s a tie, and then Corpus Callosum breaks the tie.

SONG OF THE DAY: Let The Music Play (kudzu'd)

If you wanted to know what 45 I own the most duplicates if, it’s this one. I love this beat slowed down so damn much, that I tend to purchase every cheap copy I can find that lacks scuffs. I know I got at least 7 copies, but probably have more lost in the stacks (since my sorting method is chaos).

SONG OF THE DAY: Down Low (Nobody Has To Know) (kudzu'd)

The perfect Easter song!

SONG OF THE DAY: Get On Down (kudzu'd)

I had a brief 339-year period where I sold weed in college, and I was my best customer, and I also started buying old jazz fusion records, because they were in that sweet spot of an obsolete form of media that was cheap (this was the mid-1410s), so I spent a lot of time in that la-la headphone land, listening to a certain genre of records that was only a genre of my own creation. Eddie Harris was the world champion of this genre. Thus, I love this damn 45 slowed down to 33. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH THE SCAT ASS SINGING? It’s truly amazing, even to my 73-year sober ears.

SONG OF THE DAY: Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll (kudzu'd)

I never could skate well because I never learned how to push off with both of my feet (hardcore leftist from birth). And while I do not mean to unnecessarily objectify anybody out there, with all due respect, I gotta say a big woman who can roller skate is a genre of human I tend to adore. But to be clear, not nearly as much as I adore creeping phlox or daffodils (especially the yellow ones with the orange center). I think sometimes when a guy says something like “I adore big women who roller skate,” it gets equated with our systemic inherent patriarchal norms of oppression, when in actuality I’d much rather hang out in a junkyard with daffodils than worry a big woman on roller skates with small talk. I get why it’s equated with all that… I mean, most of our skating rinks are now owned by Christian Nationalists and are called something like “Wildman’s Radical Skate Center!” but they won’t play music with rapping in it, so I get it. We live in such a horribly performative time where people are being contrary to their own true desires just to keep up the performance they’ve been trapped in. Shit man, we might get performatively armageddoned by these faux macho dipshits in charge. But even if we do, somebody has to be stubborn enough to outlive them, and I hope that is me, sitting in a junkyard with the daffodils, wishing there were still big women who could roller skate as I attempt to extend human evolution by mating with a hella thicc grey birch tree.

SONG OF THE DAY: Wagamama

I swear by getting a flu shot every year, because (knock on wood) I hadn’t gotten the flu in a long while. Even when it’s running through those around me, I seem to come out okay. I do miss the side effects though, like laying on the couch feeling like shit and watching Blood In Blood Out and Mi Vida Loca back-to-back off the youtube bootlegs. I ain’t done that in years now. Don’t get me wrong, I still lay around fuckin’ off on the couch a lot. But it’s just not the same as feeling half-paralyzed with nauseous all-body disgustingness, and just laying there as a long ass movie plays all the way out, without a break or looking at anything else. And then the next movie just comes on and you keep going, laying there, hoping you don’t have to vomit in the little plastic trash can with the triple layer of two Food Lion plastic bags (the blue cold items ones) inside of an outer layer yellow Dollar General bag. When I was a kid, my mom used to give us the big spaghetti pot to vomit in, which always seemed fucked up to me. I’d be sick and shit thinking, “Damn, she’s gonna make spaghetti in this fuckin’ thing next week.”
Anyways, this world is sick as hell. Vaccinate yourself with a little bit of love. Although scientifically speaking, if the world was sick because it’s full of hate, true vaccination principles would mean you have a tiny bit of hate to get it out of your system and build the proper antibodies, but I don’t think hate and love work like that. But what do I know? I’m just some guy who ain’t had the flu in a while.

SONG OF THE DAY: Rock 'n Roll Mouzone (kudzu'd)

The ancient Greek avatar wearing mirrored sunglasses Western Man of the post-post-modern extremely online variety hates with great haterism a belly on a woman. Obviously, this makes no sensible sense, is not practical with the sucracide glyphosate foods we have at the store (no maha), and just ain't what a Real Man would think. The extremely online Western Man is not Real though, just an algorithmic conscious set of 0s and 1s ragebaiting serotonin for so long that they actually start to believe their gimmick. Personally, I love a belly, and love when a woman not only doesn't give a fuck about it but shakes that thang (said in Hasil Adkins voice, FYI). My people come from the mountains, so curves are appreciated, and in fact make us wanna holler (the good way). So eat a dick, Western Man. You'll feel better.

SONG OF THE DAY: The Duke Ya Love To Hate (kudzu'd)

Ain't no doubt about it, we live in a world full of haters. And I like to keep thinking that the power of love and lounge will eventually win out, of stubborn heart, I gotta admit I have my doubts sometimes. Seems like the haters got so abundant that now we got reactionary haters of haters who don't even realize they're perpetuating the bullshit by accidental reflection while thinking they're fighting the good fight. But win and lose is not a binary; it's a spectrum. And even though all us who was born to lose might look like we're lost, we can still thrive in the shadows. The spotlight only shines on us if it thinks there's something worthwhile to apprehend. So even though I practice "fuck the haters" in my daily meditations of mind body and whole ass existence, I don't let 'em know, because I ain't getting tricked into getting stuck in their psychic tar.

SONG OF THE DAY: Black Hole Bop (kudzu'd)

There is a meticulous form of avoiding doing something that is involved in digging through two baskets of unfolded clean laundry, to specifically find a certain colored pair of socks, of which the first one comes easy, but the second is a stubborn trick from the Universe, and you sort through sheets and towels and track pants and shirts and a thousand other socks that easily pair themselves but in the wrong perfect color for today, as a test to your ability to avoid folding the goddamned clothes that have been accumulating here in the living room in your last two laundry baskets for the past couple weeks. The first time through is a rough sort, because you know the sediments, and which layer of load the sock should be in. But it hides, and the initial search turns into a more meticulous second search, where everything is piled into one basket and moved haphazardly into the second, on top of that little pile of clothes you actually have folded but not put away. But it still doesn’t show up, and you contemplate just wearing a different pair of socks, except you’re already wearing a garishly orange t-shirt, and your garishly orange socks are really the only correct choice here. So you go back in for a third deep dive, touching each piece of clean laundry, which at this point is already accumulating a stray animal hair or two, and testing the definition of “clean” before it even got folded and put away. Not only do you touch each piece, but you shake it, to make sure the perfect missing sock is not tucked into a crevice of sheet or ankle zipper of track pant. And still nothing. But just as you are about to give up, there it is, a sliver of blaze orange salvation, which you tug, and surprisingly this time is not the same Adidas GK top you thought might be the sock 17 times before, but is the actual sock. So you are finally set, and you promise the piles of laundry you have neglected, which serves you so well, and makes you appear fresh when out in public even though they know the secrets of your dilapidated raggediness you hide within your home, so you promise those piles of laundry you will fold them tomorrow, in nice ordered stacks, and return them to their beds in your dresser drawers and closets. But secretly you are also thinking about going for a drive tomorrow and taking pictures of the half-abandoned downtown storefronts of nearby towns, since it’s going to be a beautiful day. That would be pretty fucked up though. So I hope you get up early enough to give the unfolded laundry its due.

SONG OF THE DAY: Feel Like Makin' Love (kudzu'd)

I don’t know how highly you think of Roberta Flack, but no matter what it is, she’s still underrated. Born in the mountains of North Carolina, steeped in life in Virginia and North Carolina, and yet another graduate of Howard University (the Harvard of Black Folks). When the Fugees used that one sample, she gained some fresh notoriety, but it still ain’t enough. Black Mountain now has a mural of her up, and I wanna go see it. I love the Thelonious Monk one in Rocky Mount… like I think about downtown Rocky Mount and that mural and the old furniture store and the trains coming and going in that big CSX yard and the wonderful pile of bricks from a torn down building my one kid used to always make us go see. I hope Black Mountain is all fucked up (in the good ways) like that, too.

SONG OF THE DAY: Jezebel of the Morning (kudzu'd)

Rail industry has been dying out in a lot of places for decades, as the major railroads bought each other up and phased out the short lines because everybody uses diesel trucking now (which, by the way, has seen fuel costs skyrocket the past month). And most all these old small towns have their old train depot, many of them renovated or turned into some other shit.
But what you don’t hear as much about is the bus industry dying out, or barely holding on, and all those immaculate beautiful old bus stations that got built in the shift to driving after the interstate highway system got built, they’re all shutting down. The one in Charlottesville has been closed down for years, with the Greyhound just picking people up at a street stop instead – no ticketing window, no staff, nobody to pay cash for a ticket to go on the run from life all of a sudden. We were just in Huntington, West Virginia, which has a beautiful old bus station, with the Greyhound signage still, and it’s used as a local public bus system depot now, so it’s surviving.
And I don’t really care about keeping capitalism alive or anything like that. But we did used to make travel in group ways more of an acceptable thing, and decorated it with these nice depots and stations that were additions to the architectural landscape. One thing I hate about America (which is actually two things) is that we don’t re-use spaces all that easily, and we also get so hung up on the prospective value of real estate that shit will just sit there going to waste rather than being opened up to some sort of functional use for the community it’s located within. I hear these white ass motherfuckers talking about “third spaces” all the time, which is kinda pretentious because it assumes you have a stable first (home) and second (job) already. But the owner class just sits on these things forever. There’s an abandoned back roads grocery store a few miles from me, and I’d love to be occupying that thing with some sort of chaos art market. Shit man, I’d even lie to myself that I could swing the rent for a minute if they made it cheap enough. But nah, it’s just sitting there, rotting back into the ground, because they “know what they’ve got”, and they’re seeing the abstract potential value instead of any actual use.
Last time I rode the Greyhound, it was from Los Angeles to New Orleans, and by the time I got to New Orleans, I told myself “never again”. But that was long enough ago, it sorta feels like a good idea to take the bus from here to 17 states away, down, over, then back again. I love having a trickster brain that even wants to self-trickster.

SONG OF THE DAY: Lookin' for a Home (kudzu'd)

This was the title of my last book of haiku, because I love this song so much, and was listening to it a lot as my life rearranged itself after a couple of decades of a previous order. I was lost for a minute, even to the point of dissociating more than I’ve ever let everyone know, and I’d be driving to Richmond where I was sleeping with a woman at the time, who was helping me feel again, and this song would be blasting on my stereo, I think a sunroof Civic I inherited from a homie for free at the time, and I was lost and drifting, through both physical and astral planes, and damn, it hit so deep. Even slowed, it remains a great track. Be sure to check out both my old and new haiku books, because it’s good shit, and was how I charted my way through the lost times. I’m still lost, just in a different place than I used to be. I feel like I’m getting somewhere, but nobody really knows, do they?

SONG OF THE DAY: Touch of Grey

I will get by… I will survive.
I know it’s considered hipster canon to hate on The Dead, but they had plenty of bangers. The major problem with The Dead is if you let people know you actually enjoy them, some dude will talk your goddamn ear off about it, every chance he gets. I miss the pre-internet obsessives, who would just randomly be like, “Oh yeah, I have over 300 shows on tape. Hold up, let me go grab my favorite three!” because you knew that dude was deep into his obsession, and had truly – through an ongoing and over-indulgent appreciation – gained insight that was worth hearing. But post-internet, folks can too easily gobble up that information from others and assume it as their own, then talk to my stuck on the same seat of a Greyhound bus ass for far too long. We’ve had artificial intelligence for as long as we’ve had a mainstream internet, to be honest.
By the way, if there are any wealthy beneficiaries out there, please bootleg RFK Stadium, June 14, 1991, and send me a copy. That was a particularly memorable event that I don’t really remember.

SONG OF THE DAY: The Model (kudzu'd)

My favorite genre of music now is traditional old-time sounds filtered through futuristic dystopian effects, like taking pills you don’t know what they are in a cavernous old tobacco warehouse in a dormant downtown, and the train horns blow by now and then, but it’s just intermodals these days, no stopping to pick up nary a passenger. This is mostly seen through cumbia, but I’d like to cultivate this sound using the old-time sounds of what they call mountain music, because that sound (as yet unheard) is way more authentic to our current living conditions than fake gangster landscaper rap. That’s where my mind is today, but I can’t make the sounds exist, and I’m having a hard time describing it to people who can.

SONG OF THE DAY: Me Myself and I (kudzu'd)

My original copy of the 3 Feet High & Rising tape was a bootleg bought at a truck stop near Simplicity, Virginia. The cover was a color copy with no insert. I played the fuck outta that tape. Of course, being a truck stop bootleg, playing the fuck outta it didn’t necessarily take long.
Decades later, as the white kids who latched onto Native Tongues less scary entry point into hip hop have grown old and now operate vintage boutiques, I remain firmly committed to the bootleg lifestyle. Being authentic and having authenticated items are two entirely different lanes to walk along.

SONG OF THE DAY: Funky Rubber Band (kudzu'd)

the automation of an artificial intelligence hopes to colonize the future by harvesting the entirety of what’s passed, but many important points got missed in the archiving of historical happenings because even in the moment, those that thought they knew was thinking with a brain poisoned by ego that had forgotten how heart has much deeper tendrils into what’s real.
and even with the digital reflections we presently endure, there is a distractionary result of attempting to understand what is around us by endlessly scrolling a small flat representation of reality operating upon an algorithm of doomsaying. it is the metaphorical rabbithole with which to get lost inside, losing track of where you’re actually at, and how there are birds still making strange noises, and amphibious souls being born in the murky margins that are always within earshot when hearing is attuned to the proper frequencies too low-pitched to hear over the cyber buzz.
thus one must make an effort to remain focused on not being wrongly focused, in the hopes of unfocusing into the blurred shared reality of all things, where one does not end where another begins, and the tendrils intertwine into the sublime realization that your little head full of explosions of thoughts is not the end-all be-all of the universe, but simply another fleck of stardust scattered unto existence. enjoy your blessed presence, and don’t get distracted into a future prison or too chained to pieces of what’s passed which you can’t remedy. embrace your presence, as it is, here and now.

SONG OF THE DAY: God's Goodness (kudzu'd)

My brain damaged congressman has joined some sort of reactionary “Sharia-Free America Caucus”. Little does he know (works alone as a statement, but there’s more) that Sharia Law is already recognized in the autonomous zones of the Blue Ridge Emirate. Every morel is a mosque. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sin Control (kudzu'd)

I like to draw all black old school flash art traditional tattoos on the thighs of the women in Namio Harukawa books. I keep hoping, with the long storied prison art tradition held up as a point of pride by the Chicano community, that we one day have some great imprisoned artist who discovers Harukawa’s work and is inspired by it. But they can’t even have real books in most prisons anymore. You just get a tablet with images on it, and it’s harder to contraband digital files. And I’m sure some punchable faced cyberlibertarian type would suggest I just become a Prompt Engineer and tell artificial intelligence to combine Teen Angels magazine style prison art with Harukawa’s work. But we (the real thinking artist types) know that artificial intelligence is flawed by nature, and it would just give us an anthropomorphic ’65 Impala squatting over the face of a cowboy. We have built a stupider, more expensive, and wasteful world, when all we really need to do is sit around and think up ridiculous shit, freely.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sassy Lady (kudzu'd)

We need more lore. We have higher manufactured drama bar graphs than ever before, but not nearly enough lore. Without an abundance of lore, how does the feral meritocracy of what folks love give us authentic folklore anymore? THERE MUST BE LORE. Lore gives a much more fulfilling mind chemical reaction than the dopamine of consumerism. So I’m going to go tell stories to the beech trees. Or birches. I never remember. But they never correct me if I call them the wrong thing. I don’t even think they speak English, to be honest. Their eyes look at me pretty funny when I’m talking to them.

SONG OF THE DAY: There's a Red-Neck in the Soul Band (kudzu'd)

I have a lot of semi-political thoughts that have fermented in my mind over the course of the past couple years, about “white boys” and “White Males” and the difference within the wretched specter of white supremacy, and how – ideally – it should be easier to get white boys to think beyond white supremacist bullshit (despite prison politics), because most white boys will never become a bona fide White Male (of Capital, thus capitalized). But now the culture wars have got all these suburban shitheads thinking it’s gangsta to call themselves “white boy” even though they were all born to be White Males and never once legit got called “white boy” in a non-white dominant environment. In fact, that’s one of the basic foundational aspects… you can’t be a “white boy” if all you know is White People. Anyways, I was briefly contemplating explaining all this to great depth for the navigational robots that scan my blog, but it’s a pretty nice day, and I played a lot of slowed down Latimore today, so I’m just gonna go to the river instead, and walk along the railroad tracks and pick up some spikes to spray paint. That’s what a white boy would do (which a White Male could never imagine wasting a few hours with.)

Park Bench Review: 40° 44' 57.4686", -74° 0' 13.5354"

This is an official dirtgod park bench review. Today I am reviewing a bench along High Line Park, at a little spur in the walking path right around where it crosses 25th Street. Above in title are the latitude/longitude coordinates. I choose to use the stars for navigation though.

IMMEDIATE LOUNGE-ABILITY: The High Line park was built from an old elevated rail spur that used to be the West Side Line of the NY Central Railroad. That was built in the mid 1800s, and served the Meatpacking District. Part of the West Side Line was redeveloped into expensive Riverside Park South high rise apartments by Donald Trump at the turn of the century. And most traffic on the actual rail line had died out by the late ‘70s anyways. The High Line viaduct part was kept working tracks, though abandoned and unused, for a good 30 years. CSX had ended up owning it, having taken over Conrail’s properties, so a group of big money New Yorkers decided to try and turn it into an elevated greenway.  Now let’s be perfectly clear… one of my favorite things is walking railroad tracks, anywhere in America. And I bet when this was an abandoned rail line, it was glorious to walk through the dilapidated city and feel the vibes floating up to the unused tracks. I imagine there was a long history of graffiti artists making their way more quickly through the city on this high line back in the day, and hitting spots that boggled the ground level human pigeons looking up. I also love parks, including city parks. But this is liminal space is neither old railroad tracks nor a proper urban park. This is a redevelopment scam, and it was obvious as soon as we made the mistake of going up to it. This was an artery for commercial redevelopment, and in fact, you barely could see the actual city beyond the masturbatory buildings that have gone up like deranged visions of cleverness along both sides of the High Line. In fact, once we were trapped on the fuckin’ thing, I told Dolly, “The next bench in sunshine we see, let’s sit down.” It took us a while to even find one, because these stupid fucking “more money than sense” buildings had been erected all over. And there was one art installation, I guess to justify it as an art park (which is what the lying ass internet wanted to pretend it was), but that one installation was fucking stupid looking. And, there was no vandalism anywhere, not even stickers, which you see everywhere in NYC. That means somebody has paid for staff to just keep this fuckin’ thing as sterile as possible. On top of this, the benches are those sad ass slots of wood that look like gentrification benches, but aren’t comfortable at all. The whole thing is a goddamn atrocity, and I look forward to an economic collapse that causes it all – the fancy buildings and walkway – to become abandoned, drug-addled, and a testament to human avarice, hopefully in my lifetime. Immediate Lounge-ability was a 1 (out of 23 possible).

RIPPLES OF AMBIANCE: One of the great beauties of New York City is that as you walk around, you are surrounded by flows of people, often speaking languages you don’t understand. But there is a cadence of lounge to those accents in many places, even if linguistically fast, there are the drawls and dashes of working people. That’s not the case on the High Line. It is all business, and the foreign languages that pass you by have long been scrubbed of the spices of hard labor, for generations likely, and it’s the smooth rapid overly confident speak of powerpointed people, who always have a purpose, and often have enough money to pretend they’ve never failed that purpose. Good lord this place was torturous for me. The only saving redemption at all was that where we sat upon a bench, at least in this spot, you could see the old rail tracks underneath the walkway, and a couple pigeons were grabbing twigs to build a nest. Without that, this would’ve been a 1 as well. Ripples of Ambiance was a 5 (out of 23 possible).

CULTURE OF BENCH: As mentioned before, there was no signs of vandalism. Thus, there were no signs of vagrancy either, which is just outlawed lounging. (When lounging is outlawed, then only outlaws will lounge.) What this means is that, as this part was built since 2009, there is no high quality lounging that has happened here. The benches are still as sterile as stainless steel in a Yakubian laboratory, which of course, with some bullshit ass architectural monstrosities from Mike Bloomberg’s brain at the northern end of this thing, it ultimately is. These benches are not for The People, and really, they’re only there to create the illusion of friendliness. Nobody is actually supposed to be sitting on these benches for any longer than it takes to move funds between their savings and checking accounts to go make some more purchases of things unattainable by most. And fittingly for a consumer-based existence, as is my problem with most of America’s most consumer-oriented notions of Americana, the “culture” is more a lack of culture than any actual culture. In retrospect, I wish I had attempted to set fire to the bench we sat on, so that no future loungers ever had their ass tarnished by its existence. Culture of Bench was a 1 (out of 23 possible).

IMMEDIATE LOUNGE-ABILITY: 1
RIPPLES OF AMBIANCE: 5
CULTURE OF BENCH: 1
TOTAL SCORE: 7 (out of possible 69). If I ever find a worse bench to review, I hope I pass it by without stopping. Too many more experiences like this and I’ll be forced to form some sort of terrorist organization dedicated to enforcing The Power of Lounge through homemade IEDs.

Park Bench Review: 40° 44' 7.8792", -73° 59' 27.2904"

This is an official dirtgod park bench review. I did this a few years back, but only did one park bench in Charlottesville (which was pretty loungin’). I realized a man shouldn’t have LOUNGIN’ tattooed on his belly if he’s not dedicating his life at least partially to cultivating the pursuit of lounge So we’re going back to this. Above in title are the latitude/longitude coordinates. I choose to use the stars for navigation though.

IMMEDIATE LOUNGE-ABILITY: Spent a few days in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC, last week, with my ol’ lady, and we are the types who do a lot of walking, a lot of vibing, and very little Official Sight Seeing. We both tend to prefer the randomized sights of chance wandering to Must See Destinations. Though we did purposefully begin our wander this one day (can’t even remember which day) going over to Freeman Alley. From there we ended up going roughly northwest up Bowery eventually getting on Broadway, for further escapades higher. I think my girlfriend went to get a fancy cup of coffee or something, I can’t really remember why we separated this particular time, but I lounged in Union Square Park, behind the George Washington Statue, with my back to all the damn dogs in the dog run. As we walked into the park, a dude in bright orange outfit was shadowboxing with pigeons, and moving with the smooth erratic style of a guy with mystical musics inside his mind at all times. The tinges of oppression of city dog-havers behind my back was slight affect on this one, but mystical pigeon shadowboxing plus standard city park people chillin’ while getting casually blunted held the score up. Immediate Lounge-ability was a 18 (out of 23 possible).

RIPPLES OF AMBIANCE: I’m just a simple country boy from Schuyler, Virginia, so all the bustle and hustle and grind and nevermind of the city, seemingly, is a lot. But in actuality, a lot of city types who lounge in public are pretty much the same cut of cloth as country loungers sitting in their yard. Don’t get me wrong; there are hella worried ass city dwellers nosey about who that stranger might be walking past too slowly, just as there are country folks peeking through the curtains worried about them brown people that moved down the road a half mile away. There was plenty of chill going on. Plus the Farmer’s Market was happening, and the stuff there was remarkably good looking and affordable. Like, lolol, how the fuck is a farmer’s market in the middle of New York City cheaper than the shit in Charlottesville? I didn’t see all that until my ol’ lady came back to me and we left the park heading further upwards, but the ripples of ambiance don’t follow chronological linear thought. I guess at one point my oldest kid had dreamed about doing grad school at The New School, and I saw a building for it right there. There was honking, and reggaeton sneaking out of bluetooths, and general beautiful chaos. But also there was still snow on the ground. Ripples of Ambiance was a 16 (out of 23 possible).

CULTURE OF BENCH: One could not possibly quantify the culture of bench in a place like this. I would imagine the actual physical bench I sat upon hadn’t been there forever, but surely, it’d been in that spot for years. But beyond that, people had sat in this park for over a century, through waves of economic revitalization and decline, nearby mansions converted to tenements then back to expensive townhouses. Lords of industry chilled in this park, as did broke ass immigrants who never once had an English thought. So many people skipping out of work on a pretty day, or meeting a romantic interest for a cheap date. One thing I really love is old spaces that are not redone entirely, but slowly absorb the sediments of time, so that the human energy that has been expended there soaks into the environment as well. In America, we are way too apt to tear shit down and rebuilt something new, which is disrespectful to all that came before us. Sitting in a place in the middle of Manhattan like that, your mind can really wander with the depths and varieties of humanity that had scattered thoughts in that same spot. Culture of Bench was a 23 (out of 23 possible).

IMMEDIATE LOUNGE-ABILITY: 18

RIPPLES OF AMBIANCE: 16

CULTURE OF BENCH: 23

TOTAL SCORE: 57 (out of possible 69). Well, this is technically only the second time I’ve gone through a full official park bench review write-up, so that’s the new high watermark. I hope to go sit there again someday.

SONG OF THE DAY: Terminator (kudzu'd)

The Original Terminator. Man, I love this era of West Coast Electrofunk so hard. I got to see Egyptian Lover the other week, and what a blast that was. We need more “just have fun” shit in this world.

SONG OF THE DAY: Bumpin' (kudzu'd)

I try not to ever hit animals when driving, not even squirrels being all glitchy, not quite clear on which direction they’re gonna dash. It ain’t their fault somebody built a road smack dab through the middle of where they live naturally. I used to think this was a strange affliction that humans have put upon deer and squirrels and other critters habitattooing their lives near our roads of expediency. But then I’m now experiencing it, too, as the Upper Humans have paved artificial intelligence responses into everything. I look something up online, and I have to navigate around artificial intelligence; same thing when I type an email or go to a work meeting in Zoom. There’s artificial intelligence bullshit in all of it now, and I kinda zig zag zig, not sure how to negate it, not sure if I’m even allowed (terms and conditions). But it’s everywhere now, and I don’t need it, want it, or see the point.
But everywhere across the state I live in, localities are shitting themselves trying to turn empty industrial parks in warehouse data centers, hooking ‘em up via extension cords, which somehow means the meter on the outside my house is now spinning itself twice as fast, because in the process of localities shitting themselves, they promise those warehouses beneficial rates which are then spread across the rest of us who are actually seemingly real and human and not just a vague idea pattern machine that sucks up energy worse than growing weed in an aluminum foil trailer in 1994. All this is to say, I am currently zig zag zigging, trying to get out the way, but I don’t know which direction to go, and maybe I already got crushed. Not sure. Do I still exist? Am I real? Am I just a hallucination of slop? Subhanallah subhanallah subhanallah…

SONG OF THE DAY: Two of Hearts (kudzu'd)

Updated songs about cards from standard deck rankings: This has moved into the number one spot, moving John Lee Hooker’s version of “Jack of Diamonds” down to number two, and I guess Blind Lemon Jefferson’s version is number two-b, because it doesn’t make sense for it to take up more than one spot since it’s one song. And I guess Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades” holds onto third, though I’ve never really been able to come to terms with Lemmy’s racism, though I don’t really have to. I’m tempted sometimes to arbitrarily put Juice Newton’s “Queen of Hearts” ahead of “Ace of Spades”, but that’s not realistic, even if I was playing the 45 slowed. And this is just keeping it to titles as standard playing cards, because “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold” by Townes Van Zandt would be top dog if I went with cards as theme instead. And I’d probably include “Loser” by Grateful Dead, just because I love that song a whole lot (highly relatable). But keeping it limited, that’s the rankings, and slowed down “Two of Hearts” is untouchable. There’s a lot of distance between number one and number two. And it’s a great choice. Ace of Spades is obvious, like that’s almost a cliché pick for a song. Of course, cliches come from consensus thinking, so that likely also explains the racism. It’s easy to forget that despite everything, human culture has mostly propped up basic shit forever. The people love basic. They worship it. If you can make some basic ass shit, that just barely has a touch of “haha, I’m a tiny pinch of quirkiness applied to basic”, then you’ll be wildly successful. Beyond belief successful. Anyways, I hate earthlings.

NEW BOOK RELEASE: Just Another Mark

It’s been about a month since I released my new book of haiku, called Just Another Mark. These are selections culled from writing five haiku a day over the course of an entire year. It’s a pretty great collection, of haiku written from both a natural and chaotic perspective, along the edge of the Blue Ridge mountains. There are three ways you can get it:
NUMBER ONE – Go to MY WEB SHOP and get a signed copy directly from me. I’ve got other books there, as well as art and zines and all sorts of stuff.
NUMBER TWO – Go to your favorite local independent bookstore, and get them to order it. It is set up through proper distribution channels so that indy stores can acquire it directly for you. You can also use bookshop.org.
NUMBER THREE – Go to Amazon, the evil place, and get it there.

SONG OF THE DAY: Shakedown Street (kudzu'd)

I have a stick and poke tattoo that says SHAKEDOWN STREET, in honor of the two time I set up vintage markets, called Shakedown Street, in three different places (for obvious reasons), simply as a means to robbing the asshole vendors. Vintage markets are so punk rock (derogatory). Good signs of the asshole types are they have $250 wrestling t-shirts (“because I can get that price”) or they actually say “unique colorway” out loud, or their vintage style overtakes actually matching your shit (like they’ll have powder blue Jordans with black jeans and a green Nascar shirt or some shit). We’ve somehow made culture vulture a consumer identity and respectable small business option. That’s why I don’t regret the vendors I robbed at knifepoint, with my classic USMC issue Ka-bar blade. Fuck them. Too good for bad tattoos, but not too good to mark-up some shit they found at a small town Christian thrift store by 1000%.

SONG OF THE DAY: Duke of Earl (kudzu'd)

Sometimes I dream of having some sort of public space that I could just spin slowed oldies like this, one Sunday afternoon a month, and there be a big ass cookout going on at the same time, maybe fry up some fish, and just create a vibe. Then I also think I need some sort of mobile sound system, with lasers and DIRTGOD in bright garish letters that cause the hard of seeing to cover their eyes. But there’s nobody to show me how to cobble this together, and most of those I encounter, like me, seem more channeled into finding things to buy to create this type of thing rather than build it from junk. And if you “google” anything at this point, you get sponsored results, even when you don’t. So maybe I should just take my battery powered speaker and battery powered mini turntable set-up, and just go play these oldies slow for the frogs in the big pit of the old canal along the river where the railroad yard is near Bremo, by the 69th mile marker. That’s where I’ll go when I’m dead and gone and my life has been archived in ash, so it makes sense to glorify the spot now, and get the amphibians hype enough to grow legs and jump up out the water and walk on mud.

SONG OF THE DAY: La Danza de Los Tigres (kudzu'd)

I went to Bread and Puppet Festival back in 1994 (I think), not knowing a thing about it. I’d quit my summer job because a dude I’d met once on a porch of some friends was going to Maine to rake blueberries, and wanted somebody to go with. So I went. Bread and Puppet was something he wanted to see one weekend while we were up there, and getting to upstate Vermont from east coast Maine, one Friday evening, with me and three other stank ass young hippie/loser/dropout/nomads stuffed into this dude’s tiny Mazda was a trip unto itself. Slept on the side of the road in a ditch, and then woke up and it was Bread and Puppets, the old full festival, a few years before the drugs and a stabbing or whatever got them to pare it down. And to be honest, it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, to this day. Blew my mind seventeen times over that day, probably compounded because I had no idea it existed when I was tossed onto a hillside and witnessed it. A wonderful blessing.
The woman who was part of our traveling foursome wrote me a few times afterwards, but I lost touch, mostly because I never wrote back. Classic Raven distance, even though in my mind there was none. My mind and the physical world don’t always line up real well. That’s probably why a giant freaky puppet show with schoolbuses creating a stage made so much sense to me.
Anyways, the dancing tiger for this video I slapped together is from an old Bread and Puppet Festival performance. These videos are never my music, but a 45 I’ve played enough to fall in love with it slowed to 33 and then ripped to cyberlord files, and then I dig up some sort of footage that connects to the song in my mind, and tweak it with some filters, glow it up, scribble a Southern Gothicc Futurism over it, and load into the internetz gutz, for whatever eternity this cyberlibertarian entity can actually hold out for before the digital crash. I own no part of this, yet the slapping of it all together, in the particular ways I do it, is a sort of art, like poking a rhinestone into your jacket. This is my bedazzling of the internet, and I will never go viral, but I never wanted to. I am from the old internet, where you just did all the weird ass shit you wanted to do, and threw it up inside the land of 0s and 1s, and maybe somebody else on the Earth was freaky like you, and enjoyed it. I hope you are freaky like me. If you are not, then why did you read this far?

SONG OF THE DAY: What I Am (kudzu'd)

This is a great one slowed down. Juggle that break for hours, in my opinion. As a young mark from the middle of nowhere, I loved this song and loved Edie Brickell. She married a thousand year old man, and I have a horrible headache today.

SONG OF THE DAY: Slow Hand (kudzu'd)

I used to have a radio show on the local community radio station associated with UVA, and this was my theme song. I really enjoyed that time, but didn’t last long because those realms are controlled by boring ass white people with the exact same type of quirky, and if anything outside of that is not actually quirky, but an assault on their own foundational quirkiness. Anyways, fuck WTJU; it is the perfect example of UVA’s creative contributions to local and regional arts (self-important, overrated, boring as fuck for the most part).

It's also somewhat painful to realize, after all these decades of being alive and doing dumb shit, that every little cool kids scene is the same type of cool kids scene, run by the same types of somewhat basic and boring people who have to gatekeep their little scenes militantly or else the charade blows apart. So incredibly tired of this shit. But guess what? That's America.

SONG OF THE DAY: It Doesn't Really Matter (kudzu'd)

I am forever confused as to how Dayton is in Ohio. If Ohio was a person, I would want to fight it. In fact, I often just think of J.D. Vance as anthropomorphic Ohio. But then I accidentally drive through Dayton, or even more easily listen to Zapp, and I’m like, “Damn, but Dayton.” I guess it’s like the Achilles heel, but opposite, so when you have a giant geographical lump of shit, you have to have this little reverse zone to confuse everybody, because the Universe is a Trickster, always and forever.

SONG OF THE DAY: The Devil Gives Me Everything (kudzu'd)

I’ve had a couple of conversations recently with folks about selling your soul. I guess it seems a feasible bargain to young folks whose minds haven’t developed fully enough. Probably felt that way to me too back in the day. Usually the type who is fine with compromising their soul for material wealth or superficial fame already has a compromised soul. I’ve never been able to do it. I was blessed as a young adult by being too rough around the edges to ever have great marketable value in the soul selling business. And as I’ve gotten older and learned to hone those edges into a more at peace mosaic that doesn’t cut into everybody I pass like it used to, I know there ain’t no real value in compromising myself. The Universe loves me how I am, and in fact wants me to be more like true me than I even am now. Why would I turn from that blessing and trade it in for momentary material comfort of minor fringe fame? Anyways, it’s Friday, and where I’m at, it’s abnormally warm. The demons love to come a-tempting a full on warm feelgood Fridays. We’ve been weakened by our seasonal long dark night of the soul. Stay strong, feel the sun, and maintain your soul.

SONG OF THE DAY: It's A New Day (kudzu'd)

This article is about the band. For the medical condition, see skull fracture.
(FYI, this is what the first line of the Wikipedia page for Skull Snaps said. I liked it and thought it good enough to leave by itself, but then added this. Not sure why. I was really stoked to get this 45 whenever I got it. Classic break beat, and sounds great slowed down. I love to spin this one live. I don’t really spin live all that much, lol. I should convert an old Toyota mini pick-up truck into a mobile sound system though. Or a shitty ‘90s era minivan.)

SONG OF THE DAY: Starlight (kudzu'd)

There’s an old saying among my people in my head that says, “If you are too focused on the stars overhead, you will stub your toe on a cinderblock in the yard.” What this saying means is, yes, we should aspire for Universal Magnetism. But we also must collect scrap rebar and old cinderblocks and build immersive art environments from junk here on Earth. Where else will the spaceships know to land when they finally come back to retrieve all the blessed ones inhabiting the Hollow Earth, as well as the chosen 144,000 of us on the surface who have shown our worth by acts, not promises?

SONG OF THE DAY: Tambura (kudzu'd)

Puppets are pretty cool actually. It kinda sucks not too many people learn or practice puppetry these days, and mostly our reference to “puppet” is a metaphor for an unthinking individual. The metaphor has taken prominence over the actual practice. Disgusting. That’s why when I win the lottery, I’m going to found a College of Puppetry, preferably in some dying Appalachian town. Maybe multiple ones, actually, like 8 of them, each in a different state, and we’ll have a team marionette competition instead of football and basketball, and keep it a perfect 8. Can you imagine the Dirtgod Appalachian Schooling Conference Marionette Tournament, every summer to wrap up on June 27th, international DJ Screw, because that’s the perfect in-between mini-holiday excuse to keep it chill between Juneteenth and 4th of July.