SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Let It Go To Your Head (kudzu'd)

No lie, one of my all-time favorite snacks is peanut butter, preferably crunchy, straight out the jar. My house has for decades had one jar of peanut butter marked for me (because people will be like, “ooh, that’s nasty, you’re eating out the jar”) plus one for the mouse traps (gotta have a separate one for the traps, because that way you don’t have to use a clean knife between setting each one of 17 traps stacked up like country mouse, city mouse ninja warrior show obstacle course at the back of the cabinets). And as a high-level peanut butter connoisseur, it’s annoying how so many of the high profile brand name peanut butters got all kinds of other shit in them, especially sugar. What the fuck do I need sugar in some peanut butter for?
Well, just over the mountain, there’s a discount grocery store, a regional outfit called Sharp Shopper, which already is a plus-sized business operation. But it being located in Waynesboro – a somewhat bizarre small city itself, full of future ghosts – adds to the psychic draw. Plus, it’s directly beside a giant Amazon warehouse distribution center, which is of course the darkside of rampant capitalism. So I enjoy shopping at the Sharp Shopper, even though for some reason, a couple months back, I made the joke to my girlfriend of pronouncing Sharp Shopper like how Cheech Marin would comedically Hispanicize “shoes”, so I always call Charp Chopper now. I guess that’s not an “even now” phrase, because honestly it adds to the overall aesthetic enjoyment. Anyways, the Charp Chopper has all this about to expire or just expired or vague ass things in giant bulk amounts. The other day they had a whole huge cooler full of that nice ass Talenti Mediterranean Mint Gelato for like $1.50 each. And in this economy, the only way to afford nice treats is to be on the discount hunt, or rob the second homes of people that are down the road from you that have lapsed security systems even though the sign is still out front. But they, from time to time, have these wonderful peanut butter brands that I’ve never heard of, maybe they come from some tourist spot or are packaged for Mennonite stores or I don’t know. But they had one with these cheap ass paper labels that said The Perfect Peanut this past weekend, and it said, “INGREDIENTS: PEANUTS; CONTAINS: PEANUTS” and that was it for the list. That’s the peanut butter I seek in life.
But here’s the great thing about buying up a dozen jars of $1 peanut butter with nothing but peanuts as ingredients. It doesn’t remain congealed, so the cheap ass label tells you to stir it to reconstitute it. Except I instead chose to open all 12 jars, and pour out the peanut oil into a widemouth quart jar, which I can use for cooking now. And now I got 12 jars of concentrated ass crunchy peanut power, that type of shit that kept George Washington Carver up at night. And that’s how I prefer my peanut butter – just a pasty concentrated crunchy version that has trickled down through late stage capitalism, somehow accidentally devoid of the standard additives. And every time I spoon a globby chunk into my mouth, I wonder why we made all this so goddamn complicated and convoluted?

SONG OF THE DAY: Cruisin' to the Park (kudzu'd)

It ain’t easy being half-assed fresh when you’re born greasy. This is a recipe actually. Your psychic yokefellow is gonna do a produce order last week, because why buy produce at the grocery store when you can wholesale that shit and go straight to the produce man? You ask for turnip greens (feeling like an alternative to your standard bearer mustard greens), some mushrooms (maybe lion’s mane, or shiitake, the good shit), and fresh peas (meaning the little ball bearings of deliciousness). You end up getting collards, because they don’t have turnips, and your partner has them put back the lion’s mane, because it’s like “Epstein is my financial advisor” expensive. And you get sugar peas instead of ball bearing peas, but that’s okay, because you love them fuckers. You forget about the collards for a day or two, but then remember they’re about to go bad, so you gotta cook them. But then you see some smoked turkey legs on markdown at the grocery store, so you gotta get that to flavor the green. Anyways, first thing is you chop up a couple big ass sweet onions, like either the biggest two left in the onion crisper drawer, or if you don’t have big ones, then three of the other ones (2 bigs = 3 mids; standard dirtgod measurement). Let them sizzle on high heat in olive oil from the Afghan store (big glass gallon jug). Watch ‘em, because you don’t want them to burn. Start chopping collards. If the leaves are big as fuck, slice ‘em down the middle, then slice up the greens, keeping as much of the stem as you can. Stems are good, just slice ‘em thin enough to cook down. Your cutting board ain’t big enough to chop all the greens, so add it to the pot with the onions as necessary to keep the cutting board open for more super destruction of collards with your best knife (the one that can still accidentally break flesh, and nip off part of a fingernail). But you don’t wanna fry up greens necessarily, so keep the pot on high but add just enough chicken broth to almost cover what greens is already in the mix. Let that boil up while you keep chopping greens until you run out. My measurement for all this is for one big ass head of collards. If you have more than that, double up on the onions and other shit, but if you have any common sense about the kitchen, you already know that. Actually, if you know your way around the kitchen, you’ve probably already tuned this out, which is fine. I hate long ass explanations of recipes like you read online myself. But this isn’t actually a recipe; it’s about how hard it is to stay half-assed fresh when you’re born greasy. Once you got all the greens going, don’t let it boil on high, go ahead and cut it down to medium heat, or your preferred simmering heat. My “burner is on” light on the left side of the stove got stuck on last weekend, so it fucks up my flow on the stove. Shit freaks me out when I walk in the kitchen in the middle of the night when I wake up and need a drink because the CPAP cobra clutches all humidity from my body like an evil demon of medical advance. I go medium at this point, maybe a little less. Then you bust out the turkey legs, which to be honest, are one of the most annoying entities on earth, with all that succulent dark meat all weirdly entangled with those gristle bones that turkey legs got – too soft to be a full-on bone, but too cartilagey for my human teeth to gnaw through. And see, this is where the problem arises, because you’re in your fuzzy “I look like a teddy bear” Polo hoodie, which you wish you had 37 of, in a full array of colors, but you only got the one, so it’s gotta last you the rest of your life, since this is what you hope to be cremated in, this hoodie and your orange patch motif overalls. You kinda like the purple patch motif overalls more, but that one has base layer of blue denim overalls, while the orange patch one has base layer of that brown duck fabric, so it matches the brown “I look like a teddy bear” Polo hoodie better. Anyways, you don’t wanna be stripping turkey meat from cartilage with your bare hands, getting greasier and greasier, while wearing the Polo hoodie, so you take it off, and drape it over a chair. But you’ve got a Polo long sleeve like fake long john material underneath, and that’s pretty nice, too, and mostly white, which good lord, why would somebody like me even try to own white clothes? It’s a losing effort. So you take that off, too, and drape it over the chair as well. Now, it’s like been cold as fuck, so you’ve got the heat set at 60, because you can’t afford to be heating the whole ass house all the time (again, Epstein is not your financial advisor; empty pickle gallon jar in the bedroom, half full of change is). But you find yourself wrestling the meat off some smoked turkey legs, to chop up and put in the greens, bare-skinned from the waist up, as all good men in the kitchen should be ideally. I actually think the toxic masculine-induced shame most men feel about not wearing a shirt, which has led to a whole slew of dudes going swimming with shirts one (which is weird as hell), also contributes to how we are not comfortable being shirtless in the kitchen. Fuck that shit, let your gut out, and get to fixin’ some more things to stuff into it. Eventually you get most all the good meat off the turkey legs, and into the pot, which is now in that like 1/3 of the way between medium and low but on the medium side of my stove (fancy people may have fancier dials where the “in use” light actually goes off and them flat stovetops that look like spaceships have, so adjust my dial instructions as your current economic standing in the dying American empire dictates). The dog that’s been on the runner out back can smell all this shit going on inside, so is barking to come in. Go ahead and throw the smoked turkey bones into another small pot to boil up briefly, to drive the dog crazy. But then cool that pot down, so you can put the dog back on the runner and throw the turkey bone out to them. Bougie folks (dog moms and dads) don’t like to feed their dogs poultry bones, because they’re afraid it’ll do damage and they’ll have to take the dog to the vet, but true country people never take their animals to the vet, and also know life is a gamble, but you gotta live the way you wanna live, and that dog wants them turkey legbones. So you throw them in the yard, with the dog back on the runner, and the collards are slow cooking on the stove, filling the whole house with smells, so that when you walk to the back door to make sure the dog didn’t choke on a turkey bone and is dead out there, you think, “Haha, no Xes on the dog’s eyes,” like they are a cartoon. But then the smell is so good that when you turn around, you float up into the air and your nose pulls your body back into the kitchen, nose first, like six feet in the air, and you almost hit your head on the top of the doorways because your eyes are closed, and your nose is leading the way, but somehow you don’t, and it smells so fuckin’ good. But you can’t eat it for another 4 or 5 hours. In fact, the true cook time of collard greens is sort of like a mini-Ramadan, in that you deny yourself the indulgences of the greens for as long as possible, so that it can cook down to its purest essence, and be entirely flavored with the turkey as well as additional spices you add (black pepper, definitely some cayenne), so that once you finally break your temporary fast and enjoy a flat bowl (not a deep bowl, but not a plate, somewhere in the middle aka a flat bowl) of collards, it has cooked for so long and you are so hungry that it’s the greatest goddamn thing you’ve ever eaten in your life. This is best served with nothing, you don’t need 3 or 4 goddamn things in every meal. The empire is dying, lol, start controlling your desire for a smorgasbord at every moment. But if you absolutely have to have something with it, I’d suggest making a little round cast iron frying pan of cornbread. I think there’s still old buttermilk in the fridge, and technically buttermilk that you’d use for cornbread never goes bad, like for years you can still use it. But I don’t personally feel like making cornbread, and you’re not here to make it (I feel your judgment), so I’m just having a couple flat bowls of collard greens, while I listen to Motley Crue’s Too Fast For Love, with the pitch shifter on the turntable slowed all the way down. (I will leave the concept of “Too Slow For Love” unmentioned – inside these parenthesis don’t count – so that you can have that idea. I hope you do something with it, I really do.) Oh yeah, don’t put your hoodie back on ‘til you’re done eating greens, but you can put the long johns Polo thing back on. It’s cold in here, and white clothes should know better than to be around you.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Be Free (kudzu'd)

There’s a watermelon on the counter I need to cut up and eat, but I just haven’t. I love watermelon, and wanna get a seeded watermelon (honoring the ancestors, who cherished seeds) but can’t bring myself to buy a second watermelon when I ain’t ate the first one yet. It’s a vicious cycle, due mostly to my lethargy of spirit, which watermelon would also help fix.
Anyways, I post this today instead of any actual mention of the song being included, even though I do wanna be free of this ridiculous fucking patterns I cultivate in my life. Figured I should break the seal on inactivity and get something up in this place again.

SONG OF THE DAY: Steppin' Out (Campfire Tapes)

Usually, I always post a video with the song of the day. Years ago, I posted download links to share the mp3s, but everybody stopped keeping actual files and just streamed, so I switched to YouTube links. But I can’t do that today, because it’s a Michelle Shocked song, and she keeps all her stuff from being available anywhere for streaming. And I get where she’s coming from, so I didn’t feel like forcing the issue by uploading my own video and have it get a copyright strike, either immediately or eventually. So I let it be.
I get the distrust of all the improvements to our culture that are supposed to make life easier, because that ease don’t always fulfill its promise. I got mad earlier today because a ghost knocked the fan out the kitchen window, and it flipped some stuff off the counter, including a watermelon, which split and rolled across the floor. Being its guts got exposed, I had to go ahead and chop it up, even though I probably would’ve waited another day or two, because I still had some muskmelon to finish off in the fridge. But I chopped it up. It’s a seedless watermelon, because that’s all they had at the store. Juices had leaked out everywhere when it split on the fall, but it was still pretty wet inside as I chopped it up, as one would expect from a watermelon. But when I ate a couple pieces (standard tax while chopping), it wasn’t sweet. I mean, it was, but not like I would have hoped. Them old seeded watermelons was way sweeter, juicier too. Sure, you had to spit out seeds, but honestly, how difficult was that? Plus, being they had seeds, it means biologically, it won’t sterile. Conceivably, you could throw the seeds at the edge of the woods, and next year, like magic, you might have a watermelon vine growing out the woods. That actually happened at my old house one year, and that watermelon vine grew all over the edges of a hog pen. I only got one small melon out of all those vines, but it was pretty magic just to watch it grow through the summer, sprawling itself out everywhere.
But all I got now is these sad ass seedless watermelons, which all the marks love because we’ve cultivated a society of toddlers who want seedless watermelon fruit and an endless supply of chicken tendies. And I’m guessing this also means that every year, actual watermelon farmers, all the little Mr. Majestyks out there, have to order a new batch of freshly fertilized melon seeds, to grow a new crop. Of course, there are few Mr. Majestyks farming… it’s all giant farmaceutical corporations, and even the smaller farms are the petty bourgeoisie doing the Sylvanaqua thing and cosplaying as farmer off the saved up money from their early retirement working for defense or intelligence contractors. We’ve created such a completely clusterfucked society, with nothing but consumer cultural identities, so that it all falls apart so easily. That’s why all them assholes were so mad about the fake threat of “cancel culture” because when your cultural identity is consumer-oriented, if somebody points out the products you’ve built your existence off of are flawed and potentially corrupt, then you’ve fucked up the plastic foundation of their own self-identity.
Oh well, fuck it. If freedom is outlawed, then only outlaws will be free. I’ll still eat this non-sweet ass seedless watermelon, out of respect for the hungry, for a day or so, then give the rest to my girlfriend’s chickens. Or I’ll throw it at the edge of the woods for the critters back there. We’ve been having a mama and fawn deer hanging the past couple days. I bet, despite the seedless non-sweet ass nature of it, they’d be stoked about a little watermelon. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d nibble some, and the mom would say in deer to the fawn, “Damn, this triflin’ ass man eats nasty.” Maybe that’s why they galloped over the neighbor’s yard when I saw them earlier today. Fuck. How embarrassing.

SONG OF THE DAY: Barnyard Banjo Pickin'

Stringbean was sagging before any of y’all was sagging. To be honest, when I tried unsuccessfully to learn banjo last year, I just wanted to be the New Stringbean. I guess I’m more of a sugar snap.

SONG OF THE DAY: Chicken Heads

Now I might not be the sharpest throwing star in the ninja fannypack, but I think this song might be a metaphor for something else.

SONG OF THE DAY: A&W

I listen to newer music, too, especially when I think it's love songs to root beer.

SONG OF THE DAY: Saturday Night Fish Fry

I got a fish fryer out in the shed, that had lived in the camper behind the old house when I was still married. I ain’t used that thing nearly enough. Might have to bust it out for my birthday next month. Winter birthdays are tough because it ain’t cookout weather, and you can’t properly celebrate a birthday unless you’re in the yard with a speaker dragged through a window somewhere blasting music. I do got a burn barrel though, which is the winter equivalent to a yard speaker I guess. Anyways, I need to fry some fish.

SONG OF THE DAY: Upside Down (kudzu'd)

Once the water is boiling whenever I’m making pasta, and I’ve dumped all the noodles in, I spike the empty box on the floor like a football and then kick it over towards the laundry room. That’s just how I am. It can’t be helped.

SONG OF THE DAY: Wanted Dead or Alive (kudzu'd)

Slowing music is like frying foods where you make something disgusting okay. Thus, kudzu’d Bon Jovi is like fried okra… just barely tolerable, and even then, only occasionally.

SONG OF THE DAY: Nak Deranine

Every time I eat a big juicy apple, I immediately wonder why I don’t eat apples way more often. And then I also understand that if biblical mythology was truth, I can get why them apples was so damn tempting, especially if you’re just sitting around naked with the only other human and y’all are naked. Who wouldn’t eat that apple? And what kinda deity is like, “Okay, I know y’all are naked, and there’s this juicy ass apples just dangling here. But you can’t have none. Cool?” Hell nah.
Side note, my favorite obsessive dork of recent memory is the “apple variety” dork – them rare souls who go wandering around, seeking out forgotten and obscure varieties of apples, as our post-modern agricultural practices have narrowed everything down to an easy to control handful, and thus eliminating a wealth of apple varieties, in the name of progress, which tends to crush a whole lot of great shit just to make everything easier to produce at a greater profit.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cheating In The Daylight

Been doing a radio show called Slow Hand on WTJU out of Charlottesville, where I play old 45 singles at 33 speed. I was going in every other week, then got knocked out by covid for a month, but have been doing it weekly the past few weeks, and really enjoying the vibes of it all. I'd say it's been over half old funk, but a lot of other stuff feels funkier slowed down, because the bass thickens and the vocals turn into ghostly warbles. Last night, I dip dip dived through some old country, because I ate some fried chicken gizzards from the Valero last week, and it reactivated my bumpkin soul. I love that stretch of southern Virginia/eastern or central North Carolina that has unique vibe to it, where you're bound to still find chicken gizzards at a gas station, and the racial mix between black and white was always a lot closer to an even break than the rest of the country. It's Swamp Dogg country.

SONG OF THE DAY: Quicksand

 

Despite all the historical racism and national geopolitics which seems somewhat Jesse Helmsesque still, Carolina is a whole vibe. It’s fucked up too, because there’s no real identifier of that whole vibe (which I’d dare say is its own culture), but it’s where the edges of New York influence and Dirty South ambiance bleed together, perhaps at the margins of both. I grew up in southside Virginia, which feels far more like Carolina than the more known geopolitical parts of Virgina (northern Virginia’s affluent DC suburbs and Hampton Roads military industrial complex of a whole bunch of lives spread wide across multiple cities). As a young delinquent, we were at first always more apt to roll up to Richmond than south, because those artificial borders create big psychic walls. But as I got older, I’ve come to see how that whole Piedmont Carolina vibe is steeped from the same sludge that I was in southside Virginia. And with the steady influx and influence of migration from further south, turning large parts into Carolina del Norte, it’s gotten even more Southern Gothicc Futurist. You might just zip through on the interstate, or skirt through the edges trying to get to Charlotte or the OBX, but if you slow down and slide in deeper, you’re gonna experience a beautiful place with a unique vibe. I love that shit, and with the weather turning warm, it’s got me daydreaming of meandering cruises through that whole area, windows down and AC running on high, at the same damn time because fuck it, blasting Morray’s “Quicksand” and trying to decide if I wanna get chicken gizzards from the gas station deli or pupusas from the back of the tienda. Can I do a gizzards/livers combo? And get two lorocco pupusas too? Damn, true and living Southern Gothicc Futurism is already here, and it’s a glorious goddamn thing.

SONG OF THE DAY: The Champ's Pain

Not really much to say but of this mindset where I gotta say something. Mostly I’ve been writing graffiti on apples lately, then throwing the apples out my car window while driving down the interstate. Some might think that’s wasteful of apples but most the apples I have are old and mealy. It’s difficult to write good graffiti on mealy apples, but if you do it just right it’s worth it because it looks good sitting in the dollar store plastic bin in the passenger seat as you go down the road, big old beautiful ACAB 1312 in black sharpie and purple paint pen on an ugly old Fuji apple, and you pull it out because you’re about to go under a local road overpass bridge, and throw it perfectly timed and it hits the concrete support pillar that nobody else has ever graffiti’d yet, and makes a wonderful splat you hear briefly before you’re already another mile into oblivion.

SONG OF THE DAY: Lucid Slowed

Richmond is infinite muscle arm emojis with a thousand purple hearts and two thousand fire emojis. It gets into your soul in ways other places don't. Even after two decades living away from there and further west, I still feel a stronger connection to Richmond than Charlottesville. Lake trout is exotic in Charlottesville, and I find that bothersome. Can't get goat anywhere either. Tear all them Richmond confederate statues down, and tear down the next ones too. Turn the strip malls into community centers and the median strips into flea markets. Build a monument to the big dude who used to give me extra potato wedges at the Cary Street East Coast every fuckin' day when I was broke as fuck. Used to stand by the Community Pride doing that "You have a collect call from '434 555 4269!' do you accept?" trick on the pay phone so my folks could call me back immediately and know I was still alive. Now that spot's a gentrified fuckin' beer garden or some shit. Oh well. I guess you can't fight progress, especially fake progress that's not progress at all just different assholes getting in on the pyramid scheme than the old school hog-jowled whitefaces who used to dominate the pyramid scheme on this American continent.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Did

Woke up this rainy morning imagining what if I operated a food truck except it'd be a food winnebago, and I know I'd have to sell chicken gizzards, and it'd be an anti-hipster spot, and I'd be bumping Choosey & Exile this morning most likely. But of course being anti-hipster ends up becoming hipster because in this day and age of self-loathing, where few things are whiter than white people making fun of white folks, and nobody decolonizes so much as recolonizes in a different more exciting way, and I'd hate my own creation and set it on fire one night, by accident on purpose, to save me having to interact with the filthy self-important privileged human beings that one is required to interact with to have a successful business in late stage capitalism.

But I'd definitely have chicken gizzards, because nowhere makes good gizzards. There was even a soul food spot in the gentrified portion of Belmont, and they had gizzards, and I got them, thinking they'd be great, but they wasn't. Most places don't even fuck with them. My favorite gizzard spot right now is a gas station outside of Dillwyn, true Southside Virginia, where the last time I stopped they still had peach Perriers a dollar each if you got two, and the lady working the food counter was talking shit to a logging trucker who stopped in for lunch and threatening him with the butcher knife, and he was like "You see how she do me?" to me, and then I got involved, and we all talked shit together like a bunch of bumpkin ass multi-racial hicks in true and living southside Virginia style, while she filled up styrofoam clamshells with gizzards and livers for the both of us. That's my five-star review, but I ain't telling you what gas station outside Dillwyn, or where Dillwyn is. Find it, then try all the gas stations that got gizzards. Do your own research, bitch.

My dad's favorite meal was fried chicken livers, made them on his birthday every year, big heaping plate full of livers with onions and mustard. I always preferred the gizzards but looking back I wonder if that was one of those trickle down things, like I knew he was gonna eat all the damn livers so I trained myself to love the gizzards. Although I guess nowadays livers are sold separately, and gizzards and hearts come in packs together.

I love chicken hearts too, from when I was younger at a big ass drunken cookout as a kid, and one of my dad's friends put the hearts on the grill (which was an old grate from a long gone kitchen stove sitting on cinderblocks over a fire), and at first I was like "eww, hearts," but then I had them and loved them.

The process of writing is always beneficial because some barbaric shit will make itself obvious when you type it out. Reading "I love the hearts of chickens grilled over a fire on an old stove grate" is kinda shocking to the cultured ass word typing side of me. But then again both sides aren't really sides, and it's all 69ing inside of me - big ol' spiraling ball of dirtgod energy. All of this is who I am, and I love it.

TR4D3R J03'S P0T ST1CK3RS F0R...

Trader Joe's pot stickers for

breakfast before sun rises,

long day of meandering

1NT3RN4T10N4L M4RK3T...

international market,

Lynchburg side street, offering

halal goat meat, mashallah

4NGRY 4N1M4L MVR4L...

angry animal mural

on side of small town butcher

shop - QUIT EATING US YOU BITCH!

1ND3P3ND3NT GR0C3RY...

independent grocery

store with a meat counter you

can ask for more chicken feet