TH3 1NT3RN4L J1H4D...

the internal jihad of 
thoughtful seekers hoping to 
arrive at peace continues 

THR34TS 0F C0NST4NT SVRV31LL4NC3...

threats of constant surveillance 
are superficial worries; 
internal jihad remains 

SONG OF THE DAY: Shady Blues

Been writing the same intro to a new zine over and over and never quite getting it to feel right. Been slogging through the fog mostly, and it never quite does feel right, but thus far I’ve gotten through the daze. Been maintaining some daily practices, and been letting a few others fall to the wayside temporarily. Been trying to envision the future I want while also tending to a present I don’t feel completely immersed in all the time. Got the mud brain, which can be a negative if you’re trying to maintain industrialized mindframe schedules, so I’ve gotta come to terms with that. But a mud brain is a blessing as well, if you use it right, because it puts you closer to the primordial essence of all things, human and other wise. So that’s what I’m trying to do, shifting the stacks of oppressive stuff around, and finding reason to set fire to enough of it that I got more room to breathe and am able to dust off cobwebs that’s been hiding out for a long minute. It’s that internal jihad of positive and negative at atomic level, that manifest into physical jihad between motion and stagnancy.

SONG OF THE DAY: Balkan Teleskop

I often daydream in my mind how the universe inside is as big as the universe outside. Ain’t no telescopes pointed into our universes though; in fact, it often gets obscured and blurred and fogged out in order to encourage us building material identities instead, and when we get sick of a material identity, we just start piecing together a different one. Kinda fucked up actually, because there’s never satisfaction involved. I hadn’t been able to explore my internal universe all that easily lately, kinda in a fog myself, feels like everywhere I’m wandering internally is places I’ve seen a whole bunch already, and no real meandering into unmapped territory yet. There’s also spaces which I know I’ve been but I don’t got no recollection about so am afraid of accidentally stumbling back into some shit that my internal cartographer (utilizing universal magnetics) aided me in forgetting about, and I’m gonna remember some shit that fucks me up even worse than I already am. (Some things are best left forgotten to be honest – knowing all doesn’t make us more functional all the time, in fact, the history of human progress is pretty good testament to the fact knowing more actually creates dysfunction.) I don’t rightly know how to point a telescope into my self that easily – used to be substances helped, but I try to not fall down those hills anymore. Gonna try just sitting in the yard I guess, because even if nothing comes from it, sitting in the yard is good practice, especially if nothing comes from it.

M4K1NG SVR3 BR34K1NG CYCL3S...

making sure breaking cycles 
ain’t just a false blossom during 
times of internal hardship 

TH4T 1NT3RN4L J1H4D 0F...

that internal jihad of 
either escaping your self, 
or doing the deeper work 

SONG OF THE DAY: Watermelon Sugar (Slurred & Blurred)

My man dj_brilliant just sent me a whole new rar full of a concept he's cooked up, and as much as I hate the internet's effect on all our lives, I can't deny the beauty of finding long-term fringe community in certain ways. There's gotta be a fine line between finding shit on your own and having the algorithm try to push you towards shit to buy. At times I think the algorithm pushes too hard and ruins the experience, but it's a constant ebb and flow between people and mechanisms trying to pull shit back into capitalist place. Shit, I remember how it was following Ferguson on twitter before they post-BLMed the algorithms then so that organized shit like that couldn't pop off anymore. And it still pops off, in other ways. Humans adapt, always, and those adapting trying to corral us back into fences and sell us shit we don't need can never adapt as fast as those of us in need or extreme want of some shit the algorithm and structure and design is trying to refuse us. I hope you still bootleg music and torrent it and all that shit. Streaming is a trick. All of its a trick. Steal anything you can, for as long as you can. And when they don't have anything real left for you to steal, rip people off on the fake shit too.

34CH D4Y 4 N3W B3G1NN1NG...

each day a new beginning,

but each night another fight

with the internal jihad

SONG OF THE DAY: H.O.O.D.

Nothing to say today, just an excuse to use ÆSTHETIC with the dope ass dipthong, which of course now has been ruined forever by Elon Musk and Grimes. Elon Musk disturbs me because he looks like a wax museum figure brought to life by robotics. Also Pops Musk ran an African mine, that’s how Elon is wealthy enough to be so goddamned progressive and know how to not only fix the fucking Earth but outer space as well. Fuck him. Now I can’t even keep using ÆSTHETIC without thinking I’m a fuckin’ Tesla truck ad. GUESS WHAT ELON MUSK? DESERT GUERRILLA FREEDOM FIGHTER TERRORISTS WILL NEVER STRAP ANTI AIRCRAFT GUNS TO YOUR PIECE OF SHIT TRUCK. And to me, honestly, that is the ultimate sign of a truck’s authenticity.

S0 4FR41D 0F 0VR 1NN3R...

so afraid of our inner

darkness because we never

sit with it, adjust ourselves

CR0SSR04DS CH01C3S B3TW33N G00D...

crossroads choices between good

and bad never consider

ladders' possibilities

P3RS3CVT10N 0F CHR1ST14NS...

persecution of christians

overhyped on internet

to motivate all the marks

R3FL3CT10NS 0F P4THS TR4V3L3D...

reflections of paths traveled

always filtered through often

twisted internal angles

SONG OF THE DAY: Space

Occupying physical space, but metaphysical space cluttered, everything seems to be closing in. No longer have access to the woods and advanced mushroom technologies (send microdosing capsules plz) and even walks becoming harder to find time for, immersion into city’s (large town?) ebb and flow. Not to mention the wireless unseen spiderwebs woven all over which are far thicker among the settled environs of Charlottesville – less woods, less lack of power lines and satellite transmission; thousands of cables and cords and satellite frequencies and wireless routers each one an invisible line through the air, weaving stick thicky space which is not there physically but head begins to feel gobbed and gobbed and gobbed, and they (the eternal “They”) will say “that’s not scientific” but science is not altruistic and I can feel the gobs and I can feel it all closing in and I can feel the frustration not just my own but other people too, the suicide and depression and angst and fear and loathing and worry the big stifling worry of it all is growing and choking people, whether science has caught up to reality or not is not my concern, just want some space for me for others to fucking breath. Doesn’t have to be physical, physical Earth is limited, we all know that, and they (the powerful “They”) have put claim stakes on most all of it, fences around much of that, and razor barbs along wide sections of the fence. Don’t care about physical space necessarily, clear the air, wipe the gobs from my head and stop gobbing it up more, which I need to tell myself, stop pushing all this misinformation and mundane nonsense into brain which floats out to internal sea and creates giant swirling islands of garbage floating in heart, the brain being the land we’ve charted scientifically in our internal Earth, and the heart being the vast unknown ocean which we sort of know but not really because we identify ourselves as brain creatures. But all that brain trash floating into heart, and internet poisoning humans into manufacturing more and more brain trash, in fact believing the best way to counter brain trash is to make better brain trash, and many hearts have become trashed, but if the internal Universe is as vast as the external – if each of us is that single drop in the ocean, then there’s unlimited space, right? Right? Unify and spread out, rather than divide and “but…” up against, right? Right?

Right doesn’t matter. Many are left behind. Many were never asked to go, or to be involved. Many are left on the outside, in fact there’s more outside than in most places, far more, and I guess (I tell myself) it’s not that we need space so much as the claims are false, and the fences are false, and the razor barbs put up to delineate the fences reality in sharp contrast to nature are definitely false, so fuck it. Can’t escape the psychic gobs unseen overhead and all around, and can’t escape the brain trash constantly fed me because it is the basis for which people are tricked into enabling this false “make a living” mythology. But I can try to remember to baptize myself in small moments – yard rabbit, or kid spinning in rain, or laughing with crazy dude on bus, or eye contact with beautiful gaze at the DMV waiting for two hours for very little so might as well love that two second gaze – baptize myself in those moments, and try to do so five times a day, at least, inshallah.

SONG OF THE DAY: d0wn 0n th3 c0rn3r (45s on 33)

Had an epiphany last week about why I hate the hipster bearded, and it relates entirely unto Jimmy Valiant, who is depicted in this video I slapped together for 45s on 33 DJ 1000 Featherzzz slow down of CCR song. My childhood was shaped pretty hard by pro wrestling in general, but to be honest by Jimmy Valiant in particular. He was my Hulk Hogan, because he literally looked like a dude who would be drinking Miller pony bottles playing Spades with my folks. And Jimmy Valiant’s long-running feud was with Paul Jones, who in my mind, represents boss culture, supervisor culture, blue lives matter culture, that whole poison culture which seems to reign supreme right now and likely always has we just were better at deluding ourselves with a black President to pretend Public Enemy’s music actually made a difference.

Paul Jones wore a stupid tuxedo, and had masked assassins cut off Jimmy Valiant’s beard of power, beard of street people symbolism, beard of not give a fuck about mainstream ideals. The long unkempt beard is resistance to shineface philosophies, which want everything polished, new, redone, and valuable. And that is exactly what Paul Jones represented, which is why I was so emotionally invested in Boogie’s War with Paul Jones back then. It was the jihad of street people versus establishment, of dirtgods and earth goddesses vs. normalcy’s enforced order. This is still a theme, and we actually live in super perverted twisted times where people who think they are regular people have had their minds hijacked (or retrained, or poisoned too badly) into believing shineface interests actually represent the people. Both establishment political parties actively pursue this agenda, one more ominously than the other, but neither is down for truebeards or dirtgods or earth goddesses.

Anyways, it occurred to me last week in random twit-exchange with other twit compadres, that this is why I so strongly dislike hipster beardists, because they actually represent shineface philosophies (hence the “traditional” barber shops and beard oils and shit like that which makes economics somehow pop out of NOT FUCKING CUTTING THE HAIR ON YOUR FACE), and thus are part of Paul Jones Army. But they are performatively acting as though they are Jimmy Valiants.

Realizing this made me feel deeply unsettled, and I can’t promise I’m not gonna reverse the thinking behind part of this generated video I made, and study Hassan-I Sabbah’s teachings and attempt to develop cells of masked assassins to cut off falsebeards under the cover of shadow. I mean I probably won’t, because I don’t like forcing order on anything else, because I’ve seen how the universe has a way of checking that when you do it pretty quickly, and in fact I just barely avoided felony conviction at age 18 while attempting that. (Reduced to misdemeanor because white kid in college – the first time that being the first person in my family who went to college benefited me. Kept me out of jail. But also Paul Jones Army tempting me to switch sides, tempting me to take the gains and do like the Ragin’ Bull Manny Fernandez or Pistol Pez Whatley, and switch sides. But fuck that. Destroy this system – destroy the whole fucking thing.)

0R4L ST0RY 4B0VT TW1NS...

oral story about twins

named Satellite and Fennel -

allegory for jihad

MOTYOTD: Rhodes vs. Flair (September 17, 1981)

The internal jihad of creative ambitions is Art vs. Commodity. The innate desire to make art has existed as long as humans have, and in fact many theorize is as close to that God nature as we can get in our existence, long before there were towns or cities or economies. The act of making commodity of art was later, after some of these so-called civilized steps had been taken collectively. I think about this a lot, especially when I undergo the task of writing a bunch of nonsense stream of conscious philosophisizing gibberish about something like professional wrestling for free on an open and ancient looking website, when the commodity thinkers (and thoughts planted into my own mind) tell me “you should be writing a book” or working at building some sort of *career* with whatever the fuck it is I do. Except I’m not compelled necessarily to do the things that such actions would require. I tend to read ridiculous nonsense, from throughout history, way more than I read novels, which are a relatively new genre if we’re thinking long-term. Ibn al-Arabi wasn’t writing novels, nor was Aristotle or Avicenna or Tu Fu or Santoka or and so on and so forth.

This relates to this project and tonight’s match because I chose the Wrestling Observer match of the year awards as a list to remark upon because Dave Meltzer has encouraged his year end awards to honor greatness in terms of the art of the theatrical fighting act, more than the commodity, although he gives mixed signals about this due to his penchant to speak so heavily about what draws and shit like that. But ultimately the goal seems to be the positive superlative “of the year” awards are supposed to go to excellent shit, not just something that sold a ton or generated more revenue. And being from the southern NWA territorial days, specifically the Mid Atlantic region (which I watched religiously at 12:00 pm on Saturday afternoons on channel 6 out of Richmond, and then would try to stay up late until like 12:30 on Saturday nights to catch World Wide Wrestling – their second hour of TV – on channel 13 out of Lynchburg), Ric Flair is the true God of this Professional Wrestling. There is no equal. None. I mean sure you can be a completely immersed wrestling dork and make well thought out arguments about how someone else might be better artist in the squared circle, and have valid examples to prove these arguments, perhaps not beyond reproach but well enough I ain’t gonna argue with you. But when it comes to taking that internal jihad of Art vs. Commodity, and becoming a master of both sides, yet somehow still being more of an amazing artist rather than just a commodity, nobody has excelled at that like he did.

The 1980s in professional wrestling were a philosophical battle itself, one that echoes my comparison to this internal jihad, because World Championship Wrestling was led more by that Art argument (in my opinion) as exemplified by Ric Flair. Meanwhile, the WWE was pure commodity, at least once Vince McMahon’s demented genius took over the program, complete with cartoons and cereal and music videos and well-known wrestling names repackaged as trademarks-filed new characters. This was exemplified by Hulk Hogan and Hulkamania, which was purely a marketing angle that was repetitively beaten over children’s heads as they grew up that eventually the marketing took hold and Hulkamania was real, in a manufactured sense. Ric Flair was Art, and Hulk Hogan was Commodity.

Thus, as commodity, you can easily find Hulk Hogan’s first WWE title victory over the Iron Sheik at Madison Square Garden, both in owner hosted format with the WWE network, and also quickly bootlegged over and over in video formats online, where commodity is circulated as fast and free as possible.

Art, however, is harder to find. This 1981 victory by Ric Flair over Dusty Rhodes, as shown on TV in Greensboro, North Carolina, for his first NWA World title reign, I could not find in its entirety that easily. In fact, I gave up. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe the WWE owns it and is sitting on it, which is weird in itself because it means Commodity has won the Art vs. Commodity jihad if actual art is possessed legally by an entity which had nothing to do with it in the first place, and then shelved to increase Commodified Value for some later point. That’s actually really sad.

Ric Flair did not become the greatest because of marketing. He traveled the Mid Atlantic region with unparalleled charisma, as Mid Atlantic champion (the first step), then U.S. Champion (the next step, and one that legitimized regional star as World title contender), and he did by criss-crossing the Carolinas and Virginia for years. He survived a plane wreck and came back more charismatic than ever, and his star kept growing and growing. Though a Minnesotan by birth, he put in the miles on the roads and the years in the region to become a naturalized Carolina man. (Not sure on his stance on waving his shirt around his head like a helicopter, though.)

The story behind this match is Rhodes already had signed a rematch with Harley Race, so he perhaps was looking ahead to that showdown. Flair was a heel in the Carolinas, and Rhodes a hero in Florida, so this took place in Kansas City, Missouri, which at that time with the territorial system, meant it was somewhat removed from immediate attention of local fans, so the good/bad dichotomy could be blurred just slightly enough for the live crowd, who were obviously pro-Rhodes, but not out of control like they would’ve been if this was a home match for either man. It is almost as if it were neutral ground for their characters at the time.

There, of course, is a long sequence where Flair has Rhodes clamped down in a Figure 4, and Rhodes does not surrender, does not get counted out, but his knees are weakened by the move. He finally reverses it, and Flair breaks, rushing out the ring for an early career version of his mad dash up to the top rope from outside the ring, but Rhodes catches him and goes for a suplex.

But Rhodes’ knees are too weak, and he crumbles underneath Flair’s weight, who lands on top for pinning position and gains his first ever World title reign, in a way at this neutral territory that is not outright bad or good for either man. The time stamp tells me this was a 20-minute match but that’s twenty minutes I’m not going to get easily inside this commodified internet.

The details of the art are lost for the highlights, the big moments. Even within the context of this piece, I’ve taken what was a 20-minute match condensed to a 3-minute video, and broke that down further to a bunch of words and a few five-second gifs. And to what end? Shouldn’t I have been working on a novel? Outlining a fake world instead of writing about a fake one from almost forty years ago? But what is the point of any of that? To make money by creating commodity from the words that shoot into my mind without thought? Who the fuck cares? Fuck novels and published books and projects with purpose that ends in some sort of bank deposit, which seem to be getting more and more meager anyways. Even the commodities have been chipped away, so that the worker gets less and less while the conduit through which these works are delivered gets more and more. In the Art vs. Commodity jihad, Commodity is winning super fucking hard right now, to the point that shitty Art seems amazing to us, and we throw around the word “genius” about every one-project wonder we accidentally stumble across on our social media feeds.

And while all this can be depressing if you get lost in meritocracy myths and believing that mark Sisyphus’s delusion that there is purpose to life, it also does not matter, because if I have a haiku event, and a small crowd of people are gathered to share their words, their own little literary snippets of self art, and I say something about how we shall all “whoo!” like Ric Flair, people from all walks of life know what the fuck I’m talking about. That is the essence of Flair, in a single syllable, and it has transcended commodity, and no person or entity can ever truly own it, despite all legal claims otherwise, and to Whoo! is to be free of all that bullshit. Fuck you commodification of all creative impulses, and fuck your claims of intellectual property colonizing every creative act since the beginning of American time. Whoo, motherfucker. Whoo.

1NN3R-CR1T1C STR0NG, S33K1NG...

inner-critic strong, seeking

external validation,

fighting internal jihad

M4NM4D3 TR4NSM1SS10NS FR0M SP4C3...

manmade transmissions from space

competing for control with

Earth tendrils' reclaiming grip

BL0SS0MS 4ND SVNSH1N3 B4TTL3...

blossoms and sunshine battle

zeros and ones hidden in wires

for control of my mind state