L1F3L0NG JVGGL3RS R3C0GN1Z3...

lifelong jugglers recognize 
it’s nigh impossible to 
successfully hand balls off 

R1D TH3 S4M3 R04D F0R N34RLY...

rid the same road for nearly 
two decades, but Earth shifted - 
signaling time to move on 

SONG OF THE DAY: My Empty Arms

Been thinking a lot lately on the effects of the internet and social media in poisoning the thinking wells of country folk, and how a lot of rural people are pretty adamant there’s a socialist conspiracy and covid is all a devious master plan, and it’s just absolutely wild to me how country people have lost all sense of compassion, of caring about anything other than themselves. This perverted notion of freedom which claims anything as “a right” excepting whatever you may not agree with (which is just “feelings”) has just completely fucked up people’s collective brains. Country folks ain’t really country no more, because they’re too on facebook, or reddits, or I don’t fuckin’ know to be honest. But it definitely feels like you if you broke down on the side of the road, you’d have a lot more people drive past you looking suspiciously as to what you might be up to, rather than actually stop and offer help. It’s depressing, but it’s also by design. I’d like to assume a lot of people’s great grandmas would be horribly disappointed in the way they carry themselves now, but then again, a lot of people’s great grandmas were racist as fuck.

L1V1NG L1F3 0N 4 D41LY...

living life on a daily 
basis, trying to ignore 
calendar boxes flipping 

SONG OF THE DAY: Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore

video link

Went to Goodwill last weekend, kids trying to find clothes but couldn't, I got a bunch of bright ass dishes because five for a dollar's hard to beat. Covid got those that can afford it on a "nothing but new shit" tip, but I can't do that. A lot of shit I still need in this house, but we're just gonna have to get it little by little, over time.

All of America has deteriorated in the past decade with regards to public buffoonery, but Fluvanna County, USA, seems an especially ignorant place. I remember back in the day, as a kid, with my high school in the same district, there was something about Fluvanna that wasn't like the rest of southside. Maybe a little too segregated, or not as many black folks as Buckingham or Cumberland or Prince Edward, or maybe it was just the weird putting on airs way of the white folks there. Suburban rednecks, who aren't really country, but don't realize it, and think they're HOA redneckery somehow is what real country is all about. And I'm probably wrong, by popular consensus, because certainly the sounds that come out of your average country radio station seem to agree with these don't-tread-on-me-but-keep-your-grass-cut ass fools. Nothing is more performatively country than driving a $75K truck to the Wal-Mart/Lowe's combo shopping center.

Anyways, there was a dude in front of us in the distanced checkout line, unmasked, strapped with a nine, patriotic neck tattoos, standing in front of me looking like a damn fool. The ladies who were working the register were masked up, behind a homemade plexiglass wall, both Winter's Bone people, working retail at the Goodwill. Nobody was going to ask this guy to wear a mask, even though there were signs everywhere, and he just stood there in front of me, holding a stack of DVDs. My kids were worried about going past him, and I told them how to walk around him in a wide path, and they could go wait in the car, which they did.

Guess I'm getting older, and more mellow, because despite wanting to really fuck with this guy, I didn't say shit. I didn't even take a picture to mock him online either. I'm trying to be better, not so judgmental of others, keep my heart focused on good philosophies to live by instead of letting my brain get hung up in the fear and division that leads to panicked thinking and panicked decisions which inevitably leads to tragedy. I don't need any more tragedy in my life than what's been dealt naturally; no need to call in wild cards too.

But what the fuck goes through a guy like that's brain? At that point, you're just being a dickhead, no patriotism or believing in freedom or anything. I grew up around guns, and you only carried them where you needed to carry them, even with a permit. You don't just go walking through the fuckin' Goodwill looking at old Van Damme movies strapped up. And the whole mask thing is just another layer of the not giving a fuck, where somehow freedom has been warped into these people's heads to mean, "I'll do whatever the fuck I want, fuck you if you disagree." It's not very community-oriented. But these assholes think they're still the salt of the Earth, because of the combination of internet propaganda and horrible pop country music themes for decades. He left, with his stupid fucking stack of DVDs and girlfriend or wife or whatever, and I moved up to the other lane of checkout, where a scrawny redneck woman, looking like every other Aunt Kathy from Virginia to Mississippi, was talking to the other Goodwill worker about their co-worker who had been out sick. "I'm bringing in bleach spray and spraying everything," she said, laughing. "No doubt," I said. She looked at me and said, "I can't afford to get sick." "No doubt, me either," I answered.

I guess if you got it, and can afford new shit, you can live in politically invested oblivion that election and democracy are still real. And I guess if you're a brainwashed dumbass who still mistakenly believes one half of that political system actually gives a fuck about your throwaway ass, you can walk around proudly with your pistol and no mask, a 21st Century foot soldier of the empire, continuing that pioneer settler/colonial front line. If you don't die, you've just proven your own point about how bad ass you are. And if you do die, they don't give a fuck.

I guess ultimately that's where I've broken from most of these people that consider themselves red state rural folk - I actually care about people, not in some abstract narrow economic evangelical way, but in a very general and broad way. If I see a person, I hope they're okay, and everyone around them is okay, and so on and so forth, like ripples of giving a fuck. So when I see somebody openly not giving a fuck, it bugs the shit out of me, because in a social contract where all of us living in geographic proximity of each other are supposed to give a fuck, the contract gets broken. And then everybody starts putting asterisks on when the contract is applied, whether someone is appropriate, or justified, or a respectable option, and the asterisks just start adding up, and soon you're standing there in the Goodwill checkout line not giving a fuck about anybody but yourself.

Anyways, my new old dishes are nice. I finally have enough of a matching set for five people to have a plate, bowl, and whatever that kinda bowl/kinda plate serving dish is, all at once. Just gotta get a table big enough for five people now. And maybe chairs that all mostly match. And have this fucking pandemic settle down. And then we'll have a big ass dinner together.

SONG OF THE DAY: King of the Swamp Rats

PPL PROCLAIM POLITICS IS EVERYTHING BUT I COUNTER THAT WITH FUCK Y'ALL SHUT UP.

I was at the Goodwill yesterday and there was a quaint Fluvanna County Virginia America family, dad in fascist iconography t-shirt, faux tiny military back pack with American flag in olive green patch on it. The mom was bulging at her leggings, the smiling weasel face of pre-diabetic judgement. And the boy was a monstrous young teen, smiley with dimples, both he and pops wearing Houston Astros hats. They were so perfectly rural suburbs, so perfectly making America great again quietly, but the dad was friendly with the older African-American checkout woman, and the mom said "Bye Shirley!" to the old dusty woman in line behind them, in front of me. The line was long because only the one checkout woman, but a seemingly young gay whiteboy came out and cleared all the hangers off the counter to open the second register, and checked me out. I got a cheap ass Adidas jacket, to sew a baphomet back patch on, plus put DIRT GOD on too. Everybody was friendly, doomed, and trying to find pleasure in a world gone simultaneously mundane but entirely fucked. All our digital opiates were briefly not in the front of our mind, and everything was fine to be honest.

As I drove off I thought a lot about the smiling dimpled teen boy, giant for his age, babyfaced, and such a sweet nature. How do we let people like that remain sweet, and not poison them with all our toxic shit, including the shit that claims it's a reaction to the obvious toxicity? America is fucked at such a deep psychological level a lot more has to happen than just elect a fuckin' socialist wannabe. And I don't have the answers either, never claimed to. Shit, I'm not even all that smart I've come to realize. I've stumbled through life, simple as fuck, blind half the time, and half-blind the rest, and all I want is some peace. For all the transmogrification of idealistic shit into warped corporate oligarchies that America has become at this point, such a young empire so deluded with its own permanence, one of the best that got written likely as propaganda but fuck it remains true is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Like every basic foundation to all religion, all nation-statism, all if it just wants those things. Let me be alive, let me feel like I can do some shit, and let me fuckin' be happy. I'd say America right now has me feeling like 1 out of the 3 (life) and since it's only one, that one feels compromised as fuck most days. How must it feel to the young, not the always hyped (for marketing purposes) millennial class, but the younger than that, kids still developing who they are in this constantly buzzing over-"connected" world. Every day I pray/hope/holler at the sky for the buzzing to shut the fuck up and there to be some quiet, and then hopefully peace. Just some simple ass peace and quiet.

L1TTL3 G0LD R3S1N BVDDH4S...

little gold resin buddhas

scattered around Fluvanna

woods, laughing at my folly

SONG OF THE DAY: Cutting Down the Country

Did that momentary disappearance down to the 69th mile marker along the James again, to scribble out some prayers, and stumbled upon a cookout full of kinfolk with different bloodlines, at least as far back as we know. When I first moved to Fluvanna in Scottsville, it didn't feel like country how I know country - yards too military cut, too many cops living nearby… felt more like that fake country shit I so detest because it doesn't feel comfortable at all, and yet somehow between sterilized right wing rural Americans or shineface left wing urban American playing country, it remains a constant. We were a blight in our community - too weird and loud and goats and chickens everywhere, yard going wild with plants we ain't want to kill, even when I disappeared along the paths I made in the woods, I was always afraid somebody might shoot me on land that my name was on the loan payments at the county tax house building (I put it that way because I know I can't own that land). But back in the day when I was riding all the roads in the county, trying to find corners that felt comfortable, I was drawn to the end of this one road, and in fact not too far from the end was an immense compound of pure Power of Lounge - cars, campers, animals, sprawling two story house growing how it needed to grow… that professional lounger class compound.

Turned out, years later, found out some folks we became tight with, the man of that clan was child of the compound I speak of. That was his folks' place, and where he grew up, so they knew all about the 69th mile marker by the Shores Yard on Rivanna sub-division. And as I wandered for a momentary meditation along the river, they had a cookout popping, so I stopped in. Shit like that's always weird at times, because I'm sober, and it's hard to handle how you supposed to hold yourself, but won't no judgement, and I'm a talkative ass dude anyways, so it was fine. But mostly, sitting there listening to the patriarch of the compound see the back porch light was out, and they was trying to dissect if the breaker blew out, following all the things plugged into the right or wrong socket, hoping the AC in the pop-up camper running from an extension cord out the window hadn't messed up the balance of electrical currents - that shit reminded me big-time of how I grew up.

The failures of family has had me wrestling with the full context of how I grew up, because there's a lot about it that shaped me into who I am in good ways. Specifically I think of one dude from back home who died - Jesse - who always was a positive voice of creativity and keeping everything chill, big looming figure, one of them dudes who I saw as 8 feet tall because of his aura (does everybody do that? I just see some folks as huge because of how they carry themselves metaphysically; I've always assumed everybody has that ability but I don't know), and the combo of Jesse's passing and sitting on the back porch watching an old lounger try to figure out why the yellow bug light on the back porch wasn't working - it was the universe reminding me it ain't all bad. A lot of shit could've been better, and some of it absolutely should have been better - adults have to step the fuck up sometimes and do the hard work they're supposed to do, and not hide in self-medication or avoiding real work on their own insides. It's like termite damage actually - if you don't treat that shit, the traumas and bullshit that you went through, it starts to rot your own foundation, and then you fucking up other people's lives who are dependent on you. And just because you might be sharing a partnership with someone potentially more fucked up than you don't give you an out to not do that work, ever.

But at the same time, running around compounds as a kid, all the wild shit we was doing, batch of kids playing around junk cars while the grown folks was all sitting inside at the kitchen table playing cards and drinking and carrying on, I loved the freedom and the creativity it created in me. I wouldn't be who I am without all that shit. So it ain't all bad - it never is, and it feels like we lose sight of that a lot in today's digital environment of algorithms focusing our brain's microscope on the negativity. If you chill the fuck out, pan that focus back out, to where it's the heart seeing a little more than the brain (which often is a poisoned well to a certain extent anyways, regardless of your political leanings), the Universe provides. It always does. It's just a matter of letting the Universe do what it does, and stop trying to force order and answers on every goddamned thing.

L0C4L C0RRVPT10N H3LPS...

local corruption helps

enable regional dreams -

quarter mile oligarchies

C1ND3RBL0CK R34L1TY...

cinderblock reality

in earth tone vinyl siding

world, never quite fitting in

C0VNTY F41R D3M0L1T10N...

county fair demolition

derby primal bashing of

American traditions

B4R3LY ST1LL TH3R3 SM4LL T0WN P0ST...

barely still there small town post

offices occupy space

leftover, not yet condemned

SONG OF THE DAY: It Ain't Fair

Was reading about a local ass unite the right organizing ass chump this weekend, who was schooled at same shithole rural school which had harassed my offspring this past year, and contemplating the subtle differences between whiteboy and white male, how the entitlement of white male is often lost thru transition to whiteboy status, going from male to boy, economically emasculated, often times within penal system, but also learning not as much difference between skin tone as most assume. Being this is the internet, plz allow me to clarify not denying the presence of white privilege, but just saying even within white spectrum there’s difference between white male and whiteboy and also not even really trying to discuss it unless some white dude wants to argue, and even then I ain’t arguing pon the internet.

I say all this because I’ve seen a number of white males, seemingly progressive, do the social media two-step joke complaint about not being able to have free speech enough, or “lol am I not supposed to buy a second house is that too capitalist for you lefties?” or “wow don’t wanna trigger anybody” and this is ppl who consider themselves progressive or the voices of righteousness or at the very least in that choir. Guess what? It doesn’t fuckin’ matter what you think, and sure you can say or do whatever the fuck you want ultimately, law is just some shit to dance around nobody knows that more than white males, but there’s always repercussions. And sometimes you got no control over those repercussions, and yeah sometimes it’s not even fair. That’s because fair is a myth, and entirely subjective, and law never has anything to do with fair, ever, unless it’s lucky. Neither does social media. So if you say or do some shit and ppl get ruffled or you look like a bougie ass fucking white male because your hard work coming up honest sweat looks like gentrification to somebody else, fuck it. If you’re living decent, in your actions, decent folk will treat with you respect. This tip-toeing into alt right talking points about free speech or bootstraps is some bullshit. Stop being so fucking white male. There is nothing fair about life other than what we all build together, and even that’s bound to get fucked up. You are owed nothing, I am owed nothing, none of us are owed nothing, other than the respect we earn from others. Yeah, ideally at basic sense we all treat each other with basic levels of respect as fellow humans with valuable life and human potential, but to be honest that’s been pretty fucked up in all levels of civilization, so hard to understand why anybody would be shocked by the lack of that, much less white males. Of course it ain’t fair. It never was.

And if you see dirtgod and gotta identify me by race, please out of respect, if I’ve earned it from you, call me a whiteboy not a white male. As a whiteboy, I fuckin’ hate white males. That’s boss culture, khaki and polo shirt culture, docksider culture. I’m way too cursive tattoo to identify with that shit. But also, life ain’t fair, so judge me however the fuck you feel compelled to. I’m gonna be the same raggedy ass dirtgod raven mack regardless. Salam.

F3T4L 4LC0H0L SYNDR0M3...

fetal alcohol syndrome

Scooby Doo stuffed animals -

Hyundai Accent back window

TH3 S1MPL1C1TY 0F Y0VTH...

the simplicity of youth

not as hard to maintain as

we lead ourselves to believe

M3T4L C0NTR4PT10NS WH1CH C4N...

metal contraptions which can

be folded up and driven

away, spinning our children

F0RK VN10N GR0C3RY ST0R3...

Fork Union grocery store,

bought two Perrier bottles, green

glass, plus some chicken gizzards

P4SS1NG THR0VGH C0LVMB14...

passing through Columbia

around midnight - town shut down

but people still on porches

P1NN4CL3 0F RVR4L S0VTH...

pinnacle of rural south

done-came-uppance - work van

with some rims motherfucker

N0TH1NG SP3C14L 4B0VT WH3R3...

nothing special about where

I'm at; enjoy anywhere

when the trip is what you love