RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.
Showing posts with label purranoid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label purranoid. Show all posts

Friday, September 13

Friday, February 24

hiding behind dusty-assed
window shades, hoping the black
helicopter scanners fail

Wednesday, August 31

TOP TEN SUPREME MATHEMATICS OF BIG DATA











#1: dIgItAl dEAf dVmb/& blInd; dIgItAl dEAf dVmb/& blInd; clIck rEfrEsh
#2: lIfEhAckIng clImAx/AlgOrIthmIc mIcrOchIp/jIhAdI hIjAck
#3: Is zErO AllOwEd/tO sElf-IdEntIfy As/OnE, & vIcE vErsA?
#4: InnEr-crItIcAl/jEzEbEl ExIstEntIAl/crIsIs prIvIlEgE
#5: dEvIl trIck-knOwlEdgE/smArtphOnE trAckIng dEvIcEs/"all your base belong..."
#6: EvEn (((kEEblEr ElvEs)))/hAvE IntErwEb prOtOcOl/sOcIAl mEdIVms
#7: If OnE cAn't trVst ElvEs/In thIs All tOO I{n} R{eal} L{ife}/wOrld, whO cAn OnE trVst?
#8: An ApplE A dAy/InstItVtEd scI-fI flIck/As rEAlIty
#9: "I always feel like..."/plAnEt rOckwEll prOphEcIEs/sVm bOdIEs wAtchIng
#10: 85%/VsEs IntErnEt dAIly/10% lOllIng

Saturday, May 14

data demons demand we 
unmask anonymity; 
they’re funded by police state

Thursday, January 29

TOP TEN JEWELS IN THE DATA MINE

#1: big data minework/searching all the fucked up things/floating thru my head
#2: umbilical cord/from googlebox to belly/of CIA beast
#3: “if you have nothing/to hide…” begins predator’s/reverse psychosis
#4: LibertAryan/Resistance ortho-doxxing/thought minorities
#5: *opens googlebox*/*all the world’s miseries fly/straight into my brain*
#6: information for/consumption - comprehension/left to dead elders
#7: consumption of nets/creating intelligence/for your big brother
#8: paranoia’s been/justified - still encrypted/with condescension
#9: ol’ dirty bastard/said it best - if I die the/CIA killed me
#10: remain calm & keep/consuming & re-searching/inner-verse outward

Monday, July 29

what I read in bed last night

Today's cavalcade of links is depressing, and yet uplifting, or at least I hope so. Individual results may vary.

WILDCATTING: A STRIPPER'S GUIDE TO A MODERN AMERICAN BOOMTOWN from stupid Buzzfeed
Perhaps this has already made the circles with you, but if not, you should check it out. All too often in our condemnation of the corporate kleptocracy, we tend to dwell on shit like the environment or how the earth will be unlivable and shit like that. But forget the future - in the here and now, for most everybody who breaths oxygen and is an upright human being (in physical sense, not moral sense), life can be a pain in the ass. And the wonderful promises made by the Demon Beasts of Capital very rarely add up in the end.
Williston, North Dakota, freaks me out. I was contemplating a bus trip out there earlier this year, just to vibe on the vibe, because I know a few people who have justified to themselves working there. And this article by this stripper chick is a good example of that as well. She was drawn by money. (By the way, any overarching condescension displayed by me the curmudgeon known as Raven Mack, is in no way a negative perspective on this article - this is one of the more enjoyable reads I've had in months, and it's always nice to read a writer that I don't think I'd want to stab in the fucking laptop if I sat across a kitchen table from them.) She was in the trenches of trying to make money in an American way, albeit along the edges of what is acceptable and proper. The thing is, pretty much all of us are operating along the edges of what is acceptable and proper. And the fact this article does nothing with regards to arguing against fracking or corporate systems, and just lays out the realities of getting by as a stripper in Williston, it's a much stronger argument against capitalism. We're all spinning our wheels nowhere. And the author is right - the CEOs of these corporations extracting oil will never live in North Dakota; they'll never have corporate headquarters in Bismarck; this is an extrapolation of resources that will tax the area (literally at times, figuratively mostly), then leave it a battered mess. It's like a game of musical chairs, but as an economic policy, as all these people roll in looking for easy work, many get it, and at some point the shit will dry up and boomtown will go bust, and there's going to be a sad batch of fuckers stuck in North Dakota, begging for bus fare back to parts unknown. The author is right (her name is Susan Elizabeth Shepherd, by the way, and she's some sort of stripper blogger) - this is more like the Grapes of Wrath than people would have you believe. This whole fucking deal is exactly like the Grapes of Wrath, and it's getting more like the harshest parts of that book every month.
Economic indicators keep telling us shit is kosher - profits are way up and consumer confidence (aka desire to use consumer credit) is on the upswing like a motherfucker. But actual people - if you bother talking to them - are kinda fucked right now. People are pretty fucking tight at the time. Perhaps you are tight right now; I know I fucking am. Stretched thin, and one bad accident is gonna fuck my family right over. This is the actual American way - living check to check, hand to mouth, and hoping the worst doesn't happen. If it does happen? Oh well, you probably won't have internet any more so nobody will know about you.
It also is interesting to note how the stripper is already losing its luster by the time the public knows about Williston, or has seen the CNN story where strippers allegedly (meaning no they don't) make $3000 a night simply stripping. This is the nature of what we live - prospectors and those tapped into what's going on (often times in nefarious ways) get in on things in the beginning, and by the time the public is made aware of it, it's already peaked and shit is going downhill. Look at Facebook stock. Shit, look at Facebook. Look at anything. If you are not tapped in so as to know beforehand, you will find out afterward, and you will be fleeced, chasing last year's American dream. Or you will be crushed by it moving onto the next thing.
There is this accepted notion commonly used by our leaders that when you allow for economic growth, those who build that growth and are the corporate structures that benefit from it happening then spread the wealth and "create jobs" that give the rest of us great benefits to our weekly lives. We all allegedly (meaning we don't) have an overall increase in our quality of life by these job-creators and economic heavyweights. Any maybe that's how it happened at one point - I don't know, I only live at this point - but that's not what happens nowadays.
Look at this shit...

A SHUFFLE OF ALUMINUM, BUT TO BANKS, PURE GOLD from The New York Times
In a nut shell, this article lays out how investment groups bought up aluminum companies, sat on aluminum, shuffle it between warehouses in Detroit, and drove up the price, all of which happens unnecessarily but creates billions in additional wealth, spread paper thin across the entire planet, so that when it's a tenth of a cent per aluminum can, the individual doesn't notice it. This is called skimming, and it does nobody any good, at least no living person, other than those sitting at the top of the pyramid scheme called capitalism as it is known in 2013. These efforts are expanding into our mineral resources, and were a major contributor to food price spikes a few summers ago. In fact, similar hoarding of the seed industry by Monsanto has led to rising food prices rather than increasing efficiency and making everything more plentiful for everybody. I understand making an honest dollar off what you are adding to the overall pile of bricks called civilization, but when you get into establishing rules of law and ways of doing things that don't actually add to the overall pile of bricks, and instead are shaving an unfair sliver off of everything, simply because you have figured out how you can, well that's not right. And again, illegal and legal have little to do with right and wrong at this point, and there's a lot of wrong shit happening legally, and a lot of right shit being outlawed, all so some corporate citizen motherfuckers can fleece the fucking human race of their abstract wealth built off the plunder of the earth ball's limited resources.
"But wait Raven Mack, these rich assholes give back to us in many ways, and aren't actually rich assholes but great men of vision who help out all the rest of us." Oh yeah, motherfucker? Well look at this op-ed piece by Warren Buffett's (he's the rich old dude who knows everything and is tapped into it all more than anybody else who makes themselves publicly known) son...

THE CHARITABLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX also from The New York Times
Basically, charity makes the ultra-wealthy feel better about their ultra-wealth by fooling themselves into thinking they are making things better for the less fortunate. And ultimately, whether you are signing up to work in North Dakota oil boom or a billionaire giving out a couple of inner-city scholarships, we are all trying to justify the fucked up ways we make money. I mean, that's what it comes down to. We've been completely pushed into this philosophy of capital at this point - because even if there are people flying different flags, the Russian oligarchs or new Chinese businessmen or whoever is considered an alternative to American capitalism, they are all buying into (pun intended) the same philosophical system of wealth and how it is distributed (or not). It's fucking weird.
Real talk: when I was a house painter, I ended up going into business for myself because I had a ton of work to do at John Kluge's Virginia estate. Mr. Kluge was at one point the wealthiest man on Earth, and even at that point he was still high as fuck on the list. I met him a number of times, and was very impressed by him, even in his old age. He was not an outright evil person, and thus, he did a ton of philanthropic work with his money. In fact, in his death, that's where most of it went. But he still was rich beyond any human necessity, and I can imagine might have found philanthropy as a way to potentially do something with all that money just laying around breeding itself into more money like abstract rabbits in a vaulted hutch.
The help - meaning contractors like myself as well as estate staff - were regularly cycled at his place, and that tends to be the case, because the wealthy assume the non-wealthy are trying to take advantage of them. And they're right a lot of times. The reason I did well for myself before the economy bottomed out was I tended to be honest. I charged more than most painters, but I did complicated work (as complicated as painting a fucking house can get, granted) and could be trusted. Still though, I had to work my ass off in order to make money. Hustling was easier. Hiring a few dudes to work where you bill more than you pay, and you also make money off the completion of projects, that makes more money. But the quality was less, so I never could roll that way. And thus if I wasn't working, I wasn't making money. It was honest, but it wasn't the American dream.
As a worker, whenever I'm not working for myself, I assume my employer is taking advantage of me. And I'm right a lot of times. The business of business is to make money off of everything, increase the efficiency of how shit works so that you can smoothly skim off the process. If you can shave a nickel and two dimes off of material costs, you make that as profit. If you can shave half a dollar off labor costs, that becomes profit, according to our thinking now. That does not get returned in lower cost any more. The price of gas went up astronomically after Hurricane Katrina. The price of gas after Hurricane Katrina is still cheaper than it is today, or where it's been at its lowest in the past six months. There's a reason corporate profits are higher than ever - they've squeezed nickels and quarters off processes and dollars off labor, and the price has not fallen. On top of this you have speculation and profiteering by investment groups that make the price even more arbitrarily northward. It's fucked up.
So philanthropy is basically the perverted capitalism version of socialism. The wealthy give back to the poor through charitable deeds, instead of everybody having what they need to start with. The wealthy take all they can, and then look around them to see where shit is most fucked-up, and then hand out some token payments to make those things more improved, though still broken, and get their name on something associated with good.
Peter Buffett is very right in this op-ed piece when he says we don't need a 2.0 or 3.0 of this system - we need something completely new. This shit is fucked. But we still try to convince ourselves that we can progress our way out of how fucked up it is...

O.K., GLASS: CONFESSIONS OF A GOOGLE GLASS EXPLORER from The New Yorker
So what has bothered me a ton after this whole Edward Snowden leak thing is how people are clamoring to be living in a benevolent panopticon. How so many people have been so trained to be afraid of a non-existent terrorist threat that will dirty bomb all your babies forever that we willingly cheer on being watched, and even manipulated (propaganda being disseminated by government was legalized on American soil for first time starting July 1st, although with the blurred lines between corporate influence over government and corporate media's influence over people, it can probably be argued this has already been going on... still though, giving themselves legal approval to do things makes them less self-stifled in how they do it).
This Google glass article is no different, and honestly, fuck this guy. I know he's being clever and whimsical and shit, but fuck him, and fuck what he's doing, and fuck Google. This is a process of making self-surveillance seem cool and trendy. In fact, there's even a Cuban lady in the article taking part in the fun of using Google glass so that you can contrast that with the real evil of having lived in oppressive evil ass Cuba. Fuck these suggestions and insinuations and straight up propaganda. I know this is a real author and all he wrote about is most likely real shit that happened, but being it COULD be straight up propaganda but is real doesn't mean it's not fucked up. We are basically being conditioned to accept our own stifling ass, domesticated ass, wage slaving ass, bullshit. We are being trained to think being stifled and domesticated and operating hand to mouth is a great thing, and we should wear fucking CCTV cameras on our forehead and gladly not only live in the panopticon but be a living breathing snitch as part of that eyeball. Fuck that. Mother fuck that.
But hey, people know the deal I guess. It's easy to feel lost and crazy with the way the world is full-court pressing up upon our collective hearts, but there are comrades. And even though there's a lot of banter in this thing, check this out...

QUESTION IN THE FORM OF AN ANSWER: AN INTERVIEW WITH RUN THE JEWELS from Passion of the Weiss
Run the Jewels is Killer Mike and El-P, and though I've had stylistic qualms with El-P over the years, I enjoy what these two are doing together. And reading this interview, I enjoy the mental make-up of the two dudes doing what they are doing together. There's a ton of great parts to this interview, from both guys, so I just suggest you read it (which is the point of all these article links anyways). But between these guys, and the stripper writer in the first article, I feel a little at ease even amidst the worry that, you know what, motherfuckers recognize the bullshit. People will always recognize the bullshit, no matter how hard the bullshit propagators try to explain away your doubts. You can fool most of the people for a little while, but you can't fool them forever. You can engineer diet and media and systems of propaganda and patriotism to have them believe the unbelievable and unsustainable and non-true for a long ass time, but people - by way of living their life and seeing the real every day shit they see - realize when you are full of shit. And a lot of people realize what's going on right now is full of shit, even if we can't put our finger on it more specifically or even figure out a way to do anything about it. You don't have to do anything about it in any grandiose way though. Just live your life as right as you can. Don't justify bullshit actions on your part as making a dollar to do something else. Don't complicate your morality to incorporate immoral behavior that is justified by a more complicated long-term plan where the ends justifies the means. The ends doesn't justify the means. The means could be the ends, none of this is permanent, and what you are doing today is who you are. If you don't like it, do it different. Today, even if only in little ways. Unfuck the world however you can.

Saturday, December 1

simple things in life

expensive but busted up american girl dolls
outlaw jack of diamonds, which is a hard card to play
hiding behind the chaos pole, spying on my house
while I'm at work to see if the DHSes
come in like I suspect they do,
those motherfuckers

Friday, September 11

Friday Love/Hate

I love the fall weather, cool times, windows open on the old ass house I'm painting, DJ Screw shit pumping through my gaypod, getting my shellac primer on while the world spins past. Youth soccer started up again and I'm hyping the under-sixes right up, and all seems good with the world. I'm broke as fuck still, but living pretty damned good on the surface of this crooked fucking world.

I hate massive fucking debt. It crushes my soul like concrete stonehenges. Well, not really. But I like to pretend I care about stupid fucking money since I know the Dept. of Defense created the internet, has the Patriot Act behind itself, and be pumping up the quiet weapons for silent wars like crazy.

Wednesday, August 19

100 VINYLZ: #67 - Shadowboxin' 12-inch by GZA/The Genius


(1996, Geffen Records)
I have been brain-working (meaning plotting out in my mind) a screwed and chopped paranoid as fuck Wu-Tang mix lately, so this showing up on my old list seems appropriate. In making the mix, I’m not sure if to leave it strictly Wu, since I am going for the ultra-paranoid anti-Illuminati style raps that were once so popular around the mid-’90s, or to include other groups to weave in Behold a Pale Horse tracks by groups like Goodie Mobb, Jedi Mind Tricks, Binary Star, and Scienz of Life as well. But the Wu, especially B-level groups like Sunz of Man and Killarmy and especially Killah Priest were really great at that 5%-infused polysyllabic fuck the one world attitude. As for major league Wu releases, none really capture that style as well as the “4th Chamber” song, which is considered the B-side of this single, although the video made for it at the time morphed both songs into one video, so as to feature all Wu guests (Ghostface, Killah Priest, and RZA on “4th Chamber” and Method Man on “Shadowboxin’”). For me though, and as good as “Shadowboxin’” is (Liquid Swords is a white dude rap nerd with internet access staple, so I won’t expound upon that), “4th Chamber” is the shit. In fact, I would call it my shit. GZA, for me, was great, but like a role player, albeit a more solid role player than any other role player around. But he never took the highlight reel lines after I played a song, a steady Scottie Pippen on the mic. He does that here too, even from the clean-up spot on the track. RZA’s verse, third in order, is my favorite RZA verse ever, and really what I built up in my head as to what he was all about - crazy paranoid militant fuck you rich fuckers type shit. I was incredibly disillusioned after Bobby Digital times two and that Wu-Tang Manual book to realize RZA was nothing more than another salesman who conned me with a great marketing angle. I felt betrayed and hate him to this day, which is stupid, I know, but that’s how I roll through life when it comes to the pop cultures that sneak through my anti-everything contrarian nature, ahead of the curve usually in my mind, but probably not in reality. Prolo, way back, even had a really slow meandering guitar-driven song called “Shining Eyes” with the “you can see the weakness of a man right through his iris” line chopped and slow-mowed in the chorus. Killah Priest was second, and Killah Priest is always good for something really predictable and lame, as well as something amazingly ridiculous and unbelieveable that a dude even thought of, usually within four lines of each other. Me and Boogie Brown, after Guru’s single of the same name, for better or worse incorporated “loungin’” into our vocabulary much like the Smurfs used “smurf”. (I have LOUNGIN’ tattooed across my fucking beer belly.) Killah Priest drops “loungin’... between two pillars of ivory,” in this song, which of course became an immediate hit soundbite inside my brain’s electronically cluttered membranes.
And then there’s the first verse by Ghostface Killah. I had liked Ghost, especially when he had yet to stop wearing the pantyhose over his head all the time, but he never stood out beyond being another solid ass Wu-Tang guy that helped make them the Bestest Rap Group Evar at that point in my life. But in this song, it was the first time I really caught notice of his insane style, weaving high fashion, cryptic religion, and his strange self-confidence that went far beyond street style to more like a self-ordained King of some twisted sorts. I would say, even though I would’ve bought it anyways, this verse got me geeked in anticipation for Ghostface’s solo LP, Ironman, which to this day, I’d honestly consider the best solo Wu-Tang album that ever came out. I mean, Brooklyn Zoo was great too at the time, but there’s a lot of filler in there fifteen years later. And Liquid Swords, well, like I said about internet whiteboys, but I saw GZA perform live, which sucked because the most notable part of it was a fifteen minute diatribe against all sorts of shit he deemed not real hip hop, which included freestyling and other things that just drained me of any respect for him whatsoever. He went from idol to shithead in the matter of 45 minutes. But Ironman is fucking rock solid, and Ghost finding his style in full that he’s run with and expanded upon in different directions ever since.
Many of the hip hop singles I have, including the ones on this list, sometimes make it to ebay when I want to downsize or get rid of some of the clutter in my life, or just bust a quick lick online for some cell phone bill money. This single will never fucking go there, no matter how much more wack GZA and RZA end up being in their older age. This was a single snapshot from the Wu in their prime, before they lost their hunger and started infighting half the time, and splintered into a hundred different motivations. This was a bunch of awesome fucking fuckers with hollow point mindframes pointed in the same direction with a brutal yet hopeful crush. This type of shit was the soundtrack of anthems to an armageddon that never came about. I still like to pump it up though, and pretend that one day the wretched of the earth shall inherit it all, and those who have always had will finally be “out of luck, like two dogs stuck” and I can drink rum out of the Stanley Cup, like I’ve always known I deserved to.

Friday, August 14

Friday Love/Hate

I love football season starting up again, so that I can torment myself with yet another shitty Redskins season, because I am completely unable to emotionally detach myself from something I have zero control over, simply because I've invested so much time over the course of my life into it emotionally, that I hold out hope it will eventually pay me back with a momentary euphoria that will, in reality, maybe last a week or so if they win the Super Bowl, and then I'll be kinda high about it until the next season starts, and then it fades. It's like really slow-moving crack, except Dan Snyder won't let me get high, even though every year he's like, "I got the good shit right here," switching the color of the caps like Stringer Bell and shit.


I hate the continued presence of liquid polymer application processes in my daily life. Hate it. I think it is giving me the dizzy spells lately, like my brain is kicking into some bizarre human safety mode. Maybe a terrible accident is about to befall me while applying liquid polymers and I have a guardian angel like that little green dude Fred Flintstone saw after taking too much jimson weed and the guardian angel is trying to make my brain hurt to keep me from experiencing the terrible destiny I would otherwise fall victim to. Or maybe they've just cranked up the HAARP project to a higher electromagnetic frequency. Who the fuck really knows? Speaking of silent weapons for quiet wars, I just stole "Wake Up" by Killarmy from inside the internets last night, the 12-inch single including the instrumental. I think I will delete everything off my gaypod except for the "Wake Up" instrumental and just ride around aimlessly all weekend.

Friday, August 7

Friday Love/Hate

I love the unclogging process. I have been denying myself words because I haven't been working much, and I have this fucked up thing where if I'm not providing for my family, I feel I should deny myself pleasures. But writing the words that constantly clog up my brain isn't really pleasure so much as necessity. Those things get backed up to the point I get all self-destructive and reckless, except I sort of quit drinking for the most part, which usually unlocks my recklessness, so instead of self-destructive I just get all depressed and half-suicidal-by-chance reckless, meaning I'm less worried about falling off ladders 32 feet in the air or stupid thangs like that. Plus, in all that backlog, I lose so much - stories, articles, instant haiku, tons of rhymes - it just clogs up as a dam in my mind and I tell myself, "Remember to jot this down" in one of the 37 composition books I have stashed everywhere in my daily routine, but I don't take the time because I know if I start, I might not stop for a while. But letting it loose makes me a happier human being. Not so much so people can see it, because honestly that's not important to me, but it helps. Sometimes I wish I could just be locked up somewhere, writing, or etching my word devilry out onto old pieces of cardboard, or something. But I realize we don't really have mental institutions for lightweight screwballs like myself anymore in this country, and for real jail is too real for a lost in thought idealist whiteboy like myself. Plus, I got a family. My house has cluttered energy though, and I'm not sure why because it's not that cluttered. It used to be haunted, but we moved the ghost along, but I think there's some psychic cobwebs still hung up around the place. So I kick it in the camper the gypsy lady left here five years ago, and hope the skunks that live somewhere on our property aren't out as I walk back across the yard through the just past full moon light and spray my retarded ass with skunk evil.

I hate having air conditioners put in my house finally, even though we made it till the beginning of August at least. It changes the feel of a house, like a fucking space pod separate from your outside world. The freon also weakens the bones, and used in accordance with fluoridated toothpaste and HAARP beams from the angels humming nationwide through cell phone towers, leaves you susceptible to watching too much TV or goofing off on Facebook for two hours when you should be re-writing that one stupid thing to submit to the Oxford American since you are what half of those fuckers want to be. Conditioned air? I have become far too soft.