SONG OF THE DAY: Killing Time

I will still listen to shit like this, and drive down back roads with the windows down, and it’s still a reckless life, but in different ways than it would’ve been thirty years ago. You gotta change, and challenge the universe is different ways, because if you were lucky enough to roll the dice certain ways and never crap out (die), you’d be pushing your luck too far to keep it up. So I’m still getting stupid (because I know how), but I try to keep it fresh. Just killing time until eventually I’m freed from this spiritual prison of a body.

a freestyle sonnet about being a yard art freak

Manmade world is riddled with manufactured sleights 
of hand (and mind) designed to confound and entrap. 
I'm inclined to not give a fuck - the sounds and sights 
of half-abandoned happenstance entrance. The scrap 

and detritus of industrial purpose (less) 
decorates my simple existence; one man's trash 
becomes environmental blessings once the mess 
is rearranged to be physical balderdash - 

nonsensical contraptions spinning and clanging 
in the winds of change. Rebar clankyjangers bloom 
throughout my yard, greater Appalachian twanging 
of unseen Blue Ridge back road far from highway's zoom 

between far more important places to extol; 
meanwhile, this shiftless prole maintains his aimless stroll. 

SONG OF THE DAY: Nobody's Clown (kudzu'd)

This has been heavy rotation the past six months around the dirtgod compound, both the regular speed and kudzu’d version. Such a great track. Regular speed is dope, most definitely, but slowed down it’s straight up windows down flying down a back road to nowhere type Friday afternoon when you ain’t got no work banger. I rank it five out of five burn barrels (meaning you got all five of them going at once).

SONG OF THE DAY: I'll Never Grow Old

Another Wu sample, and though this is the original song, I did recently get a bootleg 45 with this on one side and “C.R.E.A.M.” on the other side. It’s easy to be a digital bootlegger but it takes dedication to the underlying philosophical foundations to transition into physical media world with bootleg 45s. I appreciate people who do that, to be honest. A lot of shit is unnecessarily expensive or impossible to find, and bootleggers fill an important purpose. And the idea that bootleg shit is lesser quality frankly overestimates the morality of the legal manufacturers, who often times are not moral at all, and cut any and all corners possible to increase their own profits. Anyways, this is a great song, and this has been a Saturday blurb on a minor old style “blog” website that very few people ever see because the means for communicating digital information has left this lane by. But I gladly occupy the front porch of my little back road blog still. They called it the “information superhighway” at one point, then built social media interstates around those old superhighways, so I’m a back road of a forgotten road now. That’s okay. Fuck false progress.

SONG OF THE DAY: Beautiful Eyes of Virginia

Been having to pull more and more P4TR10T FR0NT stickers off stop signs around here. The one at the end of the road I’ve took it off a few times, to where there’s layers of sticker remnants now, and somebody keeps putting that shit back up. But then today going the back way to the store, past the railroad tracks, saw one on a side road, so looped back around and scraped that one off. Sadly it means somebody around me is brainwashed and throwing that shit up everywhere. It also sucks because to a regular redneck passing by, it looks innocuous enough (by design) – just an American flag acting like “hey man, I love this country!” But I don’t want any more people than already have falling down them rabbitholes to where they think people that ain’t white and whatever from of christianity these weird evangelical prosperity types are who have completely overlooked like 2/3 of the bible for the couple of passages they wanna get mad about all the time. My girlfriend’s uncle lived in the nearby town, and he didn’t even wanna put out American flags this year for the little town’s big 4th of July parade, because of how the flag’s been co-opted and completely lost to the prejudiced types in the past half-decade. Fuckers out here flying half-confederate half-American flags, unironically thinking that shit represents them. And now it does. My girlfriend said her uncle said to her, “once you’ve lost the flag, what do you have left?” Anyways, that’s what’s going on along the back roads of rural Virginia today. Some folks got way too much time and way too much internet and it’s made them think they know some raw, unfiltered truth, when it ain’t even close to that. No common sense to none of it. Country comic Jerry Clower had a line I always think of where he says somebody was “educated beyond their intelligence”. In his simple country comic context, it was likely applied to a college boy pontificating on some political shit, and I know these country boys these days think it still applies to that. But damn if most these folks ain’t educated beyond their own intelligence, too. Brain thick with bullshit, but somehow thinking it’s better than somebody else’s bullshit. Fuck it, maybe I’ll just print up some “educated beyond your intelligence” stickers to start slapping on stop signs, giant ass F150s, and Teslas, too. Slap one on my own forehead three days out of five, too.

SONG OF THE DAY: Maiden's Prayer

Nice, chill, back roads Virginia music. Used to bump some earlier releases by this dude before I realized he was actually local. Just great shit to vibe to. Kinda feel like you can study Americana music and learn acoustic instruments all you want, but if you don’t know legit back roads lifestyles at least a little, it’ll never sound right. Bachman hits that sweet spot with one foot in knowledge but the other in intuition.

DR1V1NG F00L-SP33D T0W4RDS TH3...

driving fool-speed towards the 
flat earth’s edge (which isn’t there), 
hurtling through oblivion 

1'LL 4LW4YS PR3F3R TH3 B4CK...

I’ll always prefer the back 
way, as mainstream thoroughfares 
remain clogged with know-it-alls 

SONG OF THE DAY: These Things I've Come To Know

I saw seven different James McMurtrys this evening, the first one at Shady’s when I stopped to get gas. Some chump was in front of me behind a work truck in one of them new fangled Corvettes, easily the stupidest fucking fake muscle car out of that whole genre of stupid cars. But James McMurtry had him hemmed in with the work truck while he paid for his gas and got a ice cold Mountain Dew. James came out smiling, even chatted up some dude next row over before finally driving off. Got my gas and went to the Food Lion and saw four more James McMurtrys there, one of them mad dogging me, maybe because of the mask I still wear (fuck y’all, gonna wear this shit til I die at this point, fuck your feelings about masks), then another was hilariously looking for marked down chicken, just like me, and we cursed the price of existence. I knew one of the James McMurtrys, saw him while I was checking out and he came, guess ol’ boy lives in that town now, like 15 minutes from my place. Told me his girlfriend lives up near me though. Then riding home, saw two more James McMurtrys, the next to last one sitting on his porch as I drove the back roads back home to my simple assed house in this little ass town famous for the Waltons. That last James McMurtry was sitting there the other day too, vibing on the porch, and we waved the knowing wave that James McMurtrys gives each other. And then I saw the last James McMurtry, as I was backing around the dead tree with the hubcaps nailed to it in my front yard, looking back from the rear view mirror, with his ridiculous beard and amethyst crystal necklace and worn out embroidered Celtics jersey from seven lifetimes ago. I smiled at him, took the groceries inside, changed into the tiniest Nike shorts I got, and started making dinner. Spaghetti tonight.

BEEN B4CK R04DS 4ND TR41N TR4CKS S1NC3...

been back roads and train tracks since 
the day I gained consciousness 
(which remains work in progress) 

SONG OF THE DAY: Wrong Crowd

Easy to forget how many obscure soul and R&B and even rock and country groups there were back in the day. But think about how many soundcloud rappers there are in every corner of the American Earth, getting cursive letter face tattoos just above their eyebrow, thinking that’s the magical missing piece to becoming the Next Big Thing. Capitalism still eats up people’s dreams, as we get trained to think our dreams need to turn into money, and somebody exploits that weakness in vision to their own benefit. This track is from an old Virginia soul compilation that I couldn’t even find to illegally download online, so somebody sent me a burned copy. Prince George is the county southeast of Petersburg, south of the James, headed down to Nat Turner country – a wonderful expanse of rural Virginia that I’ve often wandered through, and in fact prefer to the interstate if I have to go to dreaded Virginia Beach. Shit, at this point, I don’t even like riding 460, so I jump onto 10 for as much as I can. That’s state highway 10, not even a US highway – places even more littered with ancient dreams where folks sitting at a picnic table beneath LED lights on a warm Saturday night break into mythical “remember back when…” and memories of those dreams float back up to the aether, one more time, to give the night stars just a little more shine. Or maybe not. All I know is sitting at a picnic table talking shit with folks who have lived real lives is much preferable to capitalism and this fuckin’ abomination of a cultured life we have to lead now. I fell in with the wrong crowd, just by being born in America during this period. Still hoping for a miraculous recovery though, because at my heart, I’m just a country bumpkin, and a born mark. Some of us are dreamers more inclined to get exploited than connivers meant to profiteer. I'm okay with how I am and who I am.