SONG OF THE DAY: Tip Toe

It’s really fucked up that there’s not a Suga Free fishing show yet. (This is a great article on the elder wizard era Suga Free.)

SONG OF THE DAY: Vuelve Mi Negra (rebajada)

Seent a news story this morning about a state record blue catfish getting caught in Tennessee, well over 100 pounds, and those stories always bum me out, because all they focus on is the size of the now-dead catfish. Those bad boys are likely well over 20 years old, and could be as old as 40 to be honest (we don’t know, and have no easy way of knowing). Imagine being some fat ass catfish that’s been poking around, bottom feeding in some giant ass lake since the drunks on the shore blasted Bell Biv Devoe, since before the age of “Chattahoochee”, and some overzealous redneck with three month’s pay worth of fishing equipment “lands” your big ass, bringing to an end a long and wild run, thriving in the subaqueous crevices men neglected to get at. If you catch a fish older than yourself, in lieu of actually executing you as a crime against nature, I think you should lose all right to fish for the rest of your life. So go for it, oh ye of mirrored sunglasses dominion over the semi-rural Earth… but beware the glories you seek, for there may be dark consequences.

TH3 S1MVL4T3D C0D31N3...

the simulated codeine

experience of going

fishing on warm spring Wednesday

Nagoya Basho 2017 Honour Tanka Day 3: ISHIURA (1-2)

oh Ishiura, 

why won’t you eat your fish broth? 

you are so tiny 

the McLaren sponsorship 

claims you both are light, speedy 

but this is not a 

car race, Ishiura, it’s 

giant men thrusting 

these are not refined pistons 

of lightest aluminum 

your super sleek lime 

green McLaren’s not smashing 

into coal mine trucks 

fish broth or sports car? - perhaps 

cultural question’s at hand 

young Ishiura 

perhaps doesn’t recognize 

fish broth’s tradition 

(I am projecting here, from 

outside, as life scientist) 

an island nation 

literally surrounded 

by the sea (and fish) 

at one point in history, 

this meant secluded culture 

now is not that time - 

globalization has made 

the whole world the same 

not entirely, but enough 

so that I watch same day sumo 

my chunk of rural 

America is known for… 

I don’t even know 

we used to have tobacco, 

and slavery, and work 

I don’t smoke, have no 

interest in slaves, and hate 

working for most part 

Ishiura has 

rejected traditional 

bulk of his fish broth 

Ishiura instead has 

accepted sports car promise 

Raven Mack rejects 

tobacco and well-defined 

class roles and “real” work 

Raven Mack instead watches 

sumo wrestling and writes words 

in sumo context, 

tiny Ishiura appears 

an annoying gnat 

he flies round as Aioyama 

swats him away with broth hands 

despite this fish broth

disdain, Ishiura has 

never ranked higher 

his sports car sleek sumo style 

has achieved some successes 

but is there time for 

sports car to overtake fish 

broth before the end? 

another chunk of ice shelf 

broke off, adding to sea’s broth 

continue our mad 

float towards oblivion, 

all fish broths be damned 

where I sit, slavery is 

gone, so is farming, and “work” 

work has no purpose, 

I pretend to produce while 

waiting to go home 

there I watch silly sumo 

and write pointless words in bulk 

my sports car escape 

is this, also rejecting 

my needed fish broth 

my mind a processed mess of 

nutritionless food for thought 

I have no thinkpiece 

about sumo, fish broth, and 

sports car sponsorships 

there’s only escapism - 

denying reality 

outside’s a wasteland, 

neighbors fly confederate 

flags, my grass is tall 

no one sponsors my madness - 

pale blue broke down minivan 

tomorrow, I’ll drive 

back-and-forth to purposeless work, 

waste most of my day 

get home, consuming cultures 

in digital increments 

none of this is real - 

primordial hearty fish 

broth traditions dead 

I’m so fucking hungry, but 

can’t remember how to cook 

TOP TEN PERSONAL MANTRAS WHILE CHOPPING DOWN SENSELESS CRAVING VINES WITH A KUKRI MACHETE

#1: TiP TOEiNG iN MY/MOCCASiNS MADE FROM MOONSHiNE/& BAREFOOT CALLOUS
#2: CAPiTAL JiHAD/LiME GREEN SHEMAGH TiED WiTH PRiDE/JUST LiKE HUNTiNG DEER
#3: ASSASSiNATiON/HASHiSH KUKRi MACHETE/MASTER AMAZiNG
#4: GRACE ACHiEVED THRU ACTS/OF REAL SHiT NOT ABSTRACTiON/OF $$$ TRiCKLES
#5: CHARiTY BEGiNS/iN THE HEART NO (bank) ACCT/OTHERWiZARD TRiCKS
#6: TiP TOEiNG THRU BLOOD/STAiNED STREETS iCED-OUT HEARTS FORGOT/HOW TO FEEL REAL FiRE
#7: PURCHASiNG PRE-FAB/SUPER-FiCiAL HEAT WHiCH WARMS/SURFACE BUT NOT BONES
#8: i AM OF THE FiRE/TRiBE CAVEMAN MOLECULES STiLL/BURN iNSiDE MY HEART
#9: YOUR PURCHASED SCiENCE/MOCKS CAVEMAN MOLECULE THOUGHTS/AS LESSER THAN ZERO
#10: THUS i’M TiP TOEiNG/iN MY CAVEMAN MOCCASiNS/WiTH WELL-HONED KUKRi

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #7: The Ballad Of Curtis Loew" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

At one time in my life, I lived in a dilapidated trailer number seven in a magical trailer park run by a chill ass old dude along the edge of his tobacco farm. A trailer park is often looked down upon by the socio-economic types who proliferate the interwebs, as is a single solitary trailer, but there's something really stimulating psychologically when living inside of one, which I have done multiple times in my life. A trailer is a pretty bare-bones, so it's not too far from rustic camping at times, and true to this, our trailer had a busted doorknob, so we kept a butter knife hidden under a cinderblock outside the door to open the door with. It was our key. But the cramped confines of a trailer make your brain go in strange patterns, which is why I think so many people who live too long in trailers tend to have fairly wild personalities, which of course just reinforces the negative perception of trailers. But when you are cramped into a long, slender rowhouse of a home that you can feel shake when the wind blows too strong, that'll create in you the type of attitude that tends to holler loudly at full moons or large crowds and will make you think wearing shirts is not a requirement for public appearances. I understand this, because I am this.
Anyways, in this trailer, we tried to spruce it up, with nice shit like a Steve McQueen tapestry, leopard print fabric over most of our sitting furniture, and I think some sort of weird ass velvet painting. But the main piece of decor ended up being my roommate getting a fish tank. Fish tanks are a funny thing.
The hobbyist ownage of a fish tank is as close to being a stoner that a non-stoner person can be. In fact, you will find fish tank enthusiasts to really mirror the behavioral patterns of actual stoners, but without actually smoking reefer regularly, if at all. I mean, what do you do to enjoy a fish tank? You look at it, and watch the fish. Apparently, this has some sort of scientific therapeutic value, which is why everybody had those stupid fish tank screensavers briefly, or at least I think that was the justification. But there's no doubt sitting around watching little tiny neon fish pop around in some water will put you on chill mode, much like weed smoking, but without the weed. This is probably why a lot of professional athletes have ridiculous fish tanks, because they are drug tested but want to be high, so the do this instead. And there can be no one to deny it is a stoner-style mind that can ramble on and on about the fourteen different types of tetras floating around in his tank, with personality traits for each one, even if that person does not or has never smoked weed. It's still the same type of dude in the brain.
So in our decrepit little trailer's fish tank, we had a pair of really bright ass tetra that were named Curtis Loew and Kurtis Blow, because honestly you couldn't tell them apart, no matter how stoned you got, and that's a funny pair of names. If I ever had twin sons, that's what I would named them - Curtis Loew Stone Mack and Kurtis Blow Nation Mack. But I never had twin sons, though I tried many many times. Zygotes are hard to train with internal thought processes.
So Curtis Loew and Kurtis Blow were pretty chill, and we had those slave scrub fish that never get names because they are basically just weird little wretched of the fish world fish that just suck the scum off the edges and you ignore because they look like shit eels or something. And we added a couple other small bright fish I think. But then we got a channel cat, for whatever reason, probably because they looked gangsta as fuck, and if you are going to have a fish tank and look at it instead of getting stoned, you will eventually want something gangsta as fuck in there. This is also why professional athletes end up having shark tanks. It's all a very logical progression.
The channel cat we got was a dick though, and started eating everything, but not like whole. He'd just kill them and leave them floating as a warning to the others, which I guess was gangsta as fuck. Eventually I came home from work one day and there was either Curtis Loew or Kurtis Blow laying there sideways at the top of the tank, both his eyeballs gone, and the other one hiding in the little castle that had a Lexus Hot Wheels parked out front (which I still have, and my kids play with, oddly enough), and the channel cat just lurking along the bottom of the tank. Next thing you know, Kurtis Blow or Curtis Loew or whichever one was the other one was dead a few days later, and nothing was left - no scrubs no tetras no nothing, but the goddamned channel cat.
So we figured it was survivalism, and put a second channel cat in there to keep each other company. Except the first channel cat was more gangsta than the second and killed him too. I did not get to see this happen, or else perhaps we would have encouraged fish fights as a gambling activity while we drank Private Stocks on our leopard print covered furniture, but it sort of was the final straw with that channel cat. He was too gangsta for this earth, at least the little part of the earth that was a 10-gallon fish tank in trailer number seven of Lindy Hamlet's trailer park. So I took an empty coffee can and scooped out the channel cat, and then flushed him down the toilet, to give him a fighting chance.
I often imagine that channel cat grew to be 100 pounds, and is still alive (because catfish can live for upwards of 40-some years) and he's lurking in a river bed somewhere in southside Virginia to this day, fucking up everything in sight. And he probably acts this way because he spent so much of his formative fish years living in a trailer. That's just how things work in life.
STEAL "The Ballad Of Curtis Loew"
NEXT: another awesome song no one's ever heard from Heartworn Highways!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #5: "Crossroads (screwed & chopped instrumental)" by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony

For a while there, Syrup & Soda was my favorite screwtape I had on the robot machines, but lately the respected classic of June 27th has vibrated back towards the top of my personal list. (Although it should be noted the camper has been plugged in lately and that's where my tape deck is and my actual bonafide DJ Screw tapes that my wife ordered me from the Screw Shop, and there's one there that I can't remember the name of that's awesome as fuck as well. I also found a data disc of Screw tapes I bought off the ebays one time while cleaning out a box the other weekend, and that has like 90 Screw tapes on it.) The thing that makes Screw so much greater than pretty much anybody else who has ever tried to co-opt his codeine-laced slowed down, pre-chopped style of playing music is he has such a great DJ's ear for what sounds good, and what you can just let play and play and play for like nine minutes in a row and nobody will get tired of it. Most DJs - shit man, most humans - can't tap themselves into that higher energy where it feels right and you know how long to go, and then you switch it when it feels necessary. It's how Dickey Betts plays guitar, it's how John Coltrane blew into a saxomophone, and it's how DJ Screw made fucking mixtapes.
This instrumental is the perfect example. He has the regular version of "Crossroads" on this mixtape as well, but still, rocking the instrumental for five minutes makes sense. And I'm sure there were a slew of Screwed-Up Click members milling about, just waiting to throw down a freestyle about this or that (which they did eventually on the B-side of the tape, in the infamous "June 27th freestyle" which sort of makes this tape such a classic... man I wish somebody would make me a screwed and chopped mixtape for my birthday), but Screw just lets the instrumental ride right here. And that piano from "Crossroads" all warbled down to a holy speed, it's so fucking mesmerizing. Not to sound too much like an old man, but I'm not sure the synth-heavy sounds of today's hip hop could get hyped up with the slowed treatment, as the pitch modulation that came about would just get all weird and German clubby most likely.
Anyways, it is Friday and spring time, so if you are planning on maybe eating a handful of mushrooms and going catfishing tonight or tomorrow, I suggest you download this song and just let it play on repeat for like three hours in some shitty $10 boombox from Wal-Mart, sitting by your bonfire next to the cooler with the raw chicken livers for bait and your beer. It would be preferable if it was on cassette so as the batteries died, the cassette just played slower and it sounded even more screwed and chopped, but mostly there's just CD players now, and I'm starting you with a robot file anyways, which puts you a couple steps removed from getting it to cassette. CD players just cut out when batteries run low... no awesome drag that gives you an added 20 minutes of sounds. Often times, more better is actually worse. And progress sucks.
STEAL "Crossroads"
NEXT: More warbled music, but from straight out the camper trailer behinds my house this time!