SONG OF THE DAY: Noncipher

Do you listen to this dude? I do. He’s got like 5000 albums out under 9 different names. My favorite podcast is just listening to him instead. My second favorite podcast is the clanking whirligigs in the front yard. I don’t have a third favorite podcast because that would be weird as hell. Who the fuck has ever listened to three podcasts before?

SONG OF THE DAY: Going Back Home

This song features one of the greatest gimmicks in modern music history – using an electrified guitar to mimic the sound of a bunch of chickens cackling in the yard. I maintain a Heavily Researched and Highly Informed list of the Top 100 Songs of All-Time featuring this technique, although that title is misleading because it truly only covers the era of electrified guitars being played. But this song has been in the Top Five for nearly six years now, ever since the Back to the River (More Southern Soul Stories 1961-1978) Kent Soul release from late 2015. This is as close to a Spotify Wrapped as you’ll get from me.

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

Updated white rappers rankings:

#1: Paul Wall

Fin

The Doogie Howser - 03/24/11

(daily top 10/intentions for my tomorrow, but not necessarily "daily")
#1: Felt crazy tonight - crazy from two months of house arrest due to health, too long in the same incubation chamber, not enough world soaked in by my eyes, not enough foreign smells and sounds and splashes of realities outside my own to feel right. It sounded like airplanes rolling upon us in some sort of formation, and I went outside and it was wind and weather with an ominous but good feeling coming towards us. My wife followed me outside because you could feel it, and I think she could feel me being crazy too and was worried I might wander off in deliriums. I wanted to just run out in the yard and throw my arms up and scream at the skies, loud as fuck, for ever, but didn't, because I could feel her feeling me feeling crazy, and man, the woman has done so much to take care of things around here while I've been hurt the past two months - feeding hogs she is afraid of, taking care of ragged chicken fencing and coop structures that are fine-tuned with my half-assed precision, stacking wood and building fires... all while still doing what she would've been doing anyways. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her worse. So I figured I'd drag the drop cord from the front porch out to the camper, plug in the power strip, and sit out in the camper trailer tonight, listen to the rain, let the music blare through my brain... fuck it, you know. #2: I am comfortable in this camper trailer, more so than most people probably would be. There's a leather chair we inherited from somewhere, a component stereo system, then a table with a couple of factory bench chairs with cushions that make you ass hurt like a movie theater seat from 1989. Beyond that, there's not much room in the camper trailer as it's stuffed with things not necessary enough to be unpacked in the house proper. But I have lived in trailers more than once in my life, and it is a psychology that I am comfortable with, in fact feel good about at times. #3: People often make fun of trailers or the people who live in them, but there's some serious psychological factors to living in a trailer. First off, it's a narrow life, so when the halls are covered in framed pictures, like my grandma's trailer was - and still is, as my aunt and her two boys sort of took it over once my grandmother died of breast cancer a few years back. Being my dad had already died, my sisters and me were part of the group that could inherit what my grandma had owned, but we all signed our rights over to my one uncle with the best credit because he was the only one who could get a personal loan to pay off the debt on everything so that we could keep the land and my aunt and her kids wouldn't get kicked out of the trailer. #4: When I was a teenager and my parents split up, my dad moved into a trailer down the road from my mom, so I would bounce between places as convenient for my teenagerly lifestyle. My room at my dad's was tiny, and we had no heat there for a while, so we slept in all our clothes with winter jackets on. We had no dryer either, so we'd wash our clothes and hang them on the line and they'd just freeze and hang there for two weeks until there was a warm day. When that commercial came on the TV about the little girl getting bundled up and her mom putting her to bed and it being an ad for broke people who can't afford heat, we'd laugh at it. I sold weed a little back then, and would keep my weed there so that my mom wouldn't worry about it, and one time sold a bag to a dude at the other end of the county, like a half ounce maybe, who then turned around and sold an eighth to my dad. I thought it funny how far that little bit of weed travelled and the money exchanged just to get fifteen feet around a couple of faux wood paneled walls no more than an eighth of an inch thick. #5: I also lived in Lindy Hamlet's Trailer Park in Hampden-Sydney, Virginia, and the guy next to the trailer I shared with a dude would always beat his wife and yell at his dog. Oddly enough, when playing horseshoes with "Pops" and the other dudes in the trailer park, they talked shit about the guy yelling at his dog but not beating his wife. I mean, you could tell they didn't like anything about the dude, but what happens outside the 1/4 inch walls with the dog on a chain is public, what happens behind the walls, regardless of hearing it, I guess that's still private. #6: One time playing horseshoes with those dudes, Pops son was there, and I was on man. We played $20 a game and I whooped them, partnering with the dude in the trailer two over from us who had twins that we always thought were named Jesse and James. Pops son wanted to play me one-on-one, for $20. We did, I beat him. He wanted another one, $5 per ringer thrown to the winner. We did, I threw four ringers and a point. Pops' son was pissed, but impressed. Me and the dude with the twins who we thought were named Jesse and James went back to his trailer and smoked a fat joint and I had an extra bottle of Beam back at my trailer, so I got it, and we got thoroughly fucked up, taking Sunday night far enough into Sunday morning that I contemplated just not going to bed, but decided to anyways as a two-hour nap while stone cold fucked up would probably do me more good than a pot of coffee. #7: Behind my dad's trailer back then, we also had a pop-up camper that I would hang out in and wrote some of my first zines in actually. It was my first personal studio I guess, which is probably why I still love having my camper trailer, no matter how crooked and fucked up it is. When my dad couldn't afford his rent on the trailer anymore (he was small engine fixing shit for the landlord there for a while, but I think the dude ran out of charity machines to get my dad to twist wrenches on), he moved the pop-up camper behind my grandma's trailer, and lived there for the most part, though he also found a woman to hang with that he stayed at a lot of times. My uncle Ricky ended up shooting himself in the head behind the pop-up camper (dad was at that woman's house), so once the cops were done with their shit the next day, my two-step grandfather Bob burned the pop-up camper up. No one wanted to see it anymore. #8: When I was a kid, Bob would go to the country store and take me with, which meant I would stand around looking at shit for like two hours while these old dudes would sit around and talk about a whole lot of nothing. I liked when people came in to get meat cut because they had an actual meat locker with curing hams and deer meat and all types of shit, and you could get pork chops cut on the spot or bologna sliced as thick as your thumb if you wanted it. I remember when my dad was fixing lawn mowers for the landlord, we'd go to the country store and get a couple pounds of bologna from them on credit, which was a little spiral notebook under the counter. We also got fresh duck eggs from old ass Ms. Pugh, whose son was in jail and was good friends with my dad, because we'd move things around the house for her or whatever. My dad also would bring home the welfare cheese and butter from the woman he was seeing. Good times man. My dad could cook up a helluva good breakfast, usually for dinner. #9: Not sure why I care to share all this shit. I was reading Deer Hunting With Jesus in the camper trailer as I had started it a month ago but it got buried on the couch underneath a pile of clean laundry. Our washing machine had been broke, so I think we kinda kept that pile of laundry on the couch to pick through for what we needed to feel like we'd never have to go to the laundromat again, because the laundromat sucks. Most of them do at least. I had ordered the parts, but like I said, been hurt and can't do shit. My wife and I fixed it last weekend though, me kinda getting her pointed in the right way, but her doing it with her own two hands - replaced the coupler and the clutch, because if the coupler's been wasted for long enough - like our's was - the clutch is usually shot too, which means it'll stop agitating completely. Took us an hour and a half, but we got it done, me doing nothing but picking out the right socket drives and helping her with anything she couldn't figure out, which wasn't much. Like I said, she's been doing it all. #10: Anyways, when we started tying up the laundry's loose ends with our newly working old washing machine, my center child found my book, so I started reading it again, like tonight. But then "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd came on my gaypod and I kinda felt like writing this instead of reading that. That's basically why I don't read anything too much. So yeah, I'm sitting in my camper trailer on a leather chair with a pilfered laptop on top of my actual lap, and I did this instead. In the time I wrote this, various other songs came on, but now it's somehow shuffled itself back to "Tuesday's Gone" and I am still feeling crazy but not so much but goddamn man, I need something to break for me. But I should probably go inside and have my wife repack my fucking oozing wound in my side with gauze before she falls asleep from exhaustion and has to get up tomorrow to do it all again.

S14: Best College Football Teams

May not do it entirely all year long, much less weekly, but I was fucking around the other night and calculated the best and worst college football teams thus far in the young season for 2010, so I figured I’d make a pair of stupid posts about them. These are the teams winning by the most, called the Bully List, because they be fucking people up without remorse.

#1: OREGON DUCKS (3-0, 58.667 avg. margin of victory) – In three games, the Ducks have beat two inferior teams at home 72-0 and 69-0, and gone on the road to Rocky Top to tear up the Tennessee Vols. They open up Pac-10 play (and hopefully a run to the title with USC out of the way by their own legal undoing) at Arizona State this weekend.

#2: BETHUNE-COOKMAN WILDCATS (2-0, 47.500 avg. margin of victory) – Early HBCU frontrunner in the IAA MEAC… I just like writing nonsense like that with a bunch of abbreviations and acronyms and shit. Sports fandom is a very serious nonsense gibberish to outsiders, and at this moment, it seems completely ridiculous to me. Why do I do shit like this? What the fuck is wrong with me?

#3: LINDENWOOD LIONS (3-0, 47.000 avg. margin of victory) – Not only is Lindenwood again a terror of the bizarre NAIA league, but their win last weekend was against a fellow top 10 team in Missouri Valley, who they barely beat 45 to 27.

#4: TRINE THUNDER (3-0, 46.333 avg. margin of victory) - #12 Division III team in the country, from somewhere in Indiana, where I would bet small college football is really popular until just after Halloween, when everybody is like, “Fuck this shit, basketball season is starting.” It’s very strange that there still exists a predominantly white people enclave in this country where basketball is immensely popular.

#5: DAKOTA WESLEYAN TIGERS (2-0, 45.000 avg. margin of victory) – This is some bullshit. Dakota Wesleyan isn’t even in the NAIA Top 25. They must not really exist or something. Andy Kaufman’s kid has pretended them into existence as part of his pop cultural studies class in college.

#6: MAINE MARITIME MARINERS (2-0, 44.500 avg. margin of victory) – Well, their first win was on the road against one of the most consistently notoriously terrible college football programs since I ever started doing this in Anna Maria, so the ol’ Mariners may not be around in a few weeks.

#7: SALISBURY STATE SEA GULLS (3-0, 43.667 avg. margin of victory) – There is some disparity in the interwebs about whether they go by Salisbury State (which could never be taken seriously) or simply Salisbury at this point, but the fact of the matter is they beat a team called Husson, 84 to 7, at Husson (wherever that may be), last week. And yet with NCAA Division III being such a giant clusterfuck of teams like it is, they’re still not ranked.

#8: WISCONSIN-WHITEWATER WARHAWKS (3-0, 42.667 avg. margin of victory) – The Warhawks are ranked in Division III football though, at the very top. They played their closest game of the young year last weekend, only beating Campbellsville on the road by 30 points. In Division III football, there are the Warhawks and there are the Mount Union Purple Raiders. Those two are like the Ohio State and USC of Division III.

#9: WITTENBERG TIGERS (3-0, 41.333 avg. margin of victory) - #6 ranked Division III team, and another yearly power in that underclass of college football. I imagine you could get a good book out of just being drunk and travelling between small college Saturday afternoon showdowns throughout the state of Ohio. Of course, I am of the belief I could get a good book out of just being drunk and travelling anything. The key has been to find a rich benefactor lady to help cover the life costs that not having a for-real job would create by me doing such things. But all it takes is one. One benefactor and/or one book. WORK, BRAIN! WORK!

#10: UTICA PIONEERS (3-0, 39.000 avg. margin of victory) – A domineering team thus far this year, yet not ranked in the top 25 for Division III. This leads me to wonder about the types of guys who actually are forced to vote in the Division III poll. Like, I’m dorky enough just looking some of this shit up casually, but to be completely immersed in it to where you have to have a valid opinion on the matter… it’s a scary world out there for some folks, trapped inside of terrible microcosms. Then again, maybe it’s not so bad. Like, I might end up being invited to vote in the poll by the end of the year simply because I know more then 12 NCAA division III teams by name.

#11: NORTH CENTRAL CARDINALS (2-0, 38.500 avg. margin of victory) - #8 in Division III, and I love reading those polls because it goes like #6: Central (Iowa), #7: North Central (Missouri), #8: Indiana (Pennsylvania), #9: North Central (Illinois), #10: Trinity (Illinois), #11: Trinity (Texas), #12: Central (Ohio), #13: Trinity (Wisconsin), #14: Bilderberg, #15: MK Ultra, #16: Sirhan College, and so on.

#12: ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE (3-0, 38.333 avg. margin of victory) – Hey! A football team you’ve heard of finally! They are #1 in the NCAA’s premier class of allegedly amateur athletics, and I fucking hate them, just because I hate everything that is either good or popular or both.

#13: STANFORD CARDINAL (3-0, 38.000 avg. margin of victory) – Ranked #16 in the AP poll, and it’s a down year for the Pac-10, so if they can upset Oregon, they could win one of these two “USC doesn’t count” years coming up. Head coach Jim Harbaugh has solidly established himself as a solid dude at the collegiate level, so much so he is no longer the head coach flavor of the month every off-season in the NFL.

#14: WALSH CAVALIERS (3-0, 38.000 avg. margin of victory) – Your #8 ranked NAIA football team, from somewhere in the bowels of Ohio. It was founded by something called “the Brothers of Christian Instruction.” I like that because I am a big fan of just making shit up and pretending it’s all serious business.