SONG OF THE DAY: You Bring Out The Freak In Me (kudzu'd)

When you read the actual U.S. Declaration of Independence, it lists out 27 specific grievances the colonists had against the King of England at the time. Many of them outright describe things that the Trump regime is doing now. "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance." Obviously, the language is dated, but I'd say he's infracted well over half of these historical infractions that caused an American revolution. And yet, the last grievance was, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us," which sure, he's still in on this one. But that one goes on to say, "and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions," which sounds a good bit like something I'd expect J.D. Vance to be saying on a podcast tomorrow. All this is to say that yes, things are looking bleak. But I'd say the time of talking about what is isn't constitutional is probably over, because this system was flawed from the beginning. And obviously, we now have a menagerie of half-witted authoritarian wannabes trying to do it, in the most bumbling, shoot themselves in the foot way. We are actually lucky for that, because if a next time is allowed to happen (assuming we survive this time), that authoritarian wannabe may end up be far more intelligently evil. Nonetheless, it's time for a reboot, a new constitutional congress. I'd suggest we're fine with the geographical House of Representatives, but I'd switch the Senate into representation by wealth - divide the whole population up according to net wealth, split it into 100 equal groups, and each one gets one Senator. Imagine a chamber of Congress with economic representation, and how different things would be. Plus term limits, you can repeat one time as Representative, one time as Senator (except all the Senators would move to different groups due to being a Senator, and couldn't run again for like the bottom 80% of the economic strata), and one time as President. Also there should be three Vice Presidents, from the three most popular (vote getting) political parties. And anyone who identifies as an Indian savage should be able to fight the President, one on one, no weapons, naked, in Lafayette Park on Saturday afternoons. And if that savage can pin the President's shoulders to the dirt, for three strikes of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court's gavel, then that savage becomes President, and the former President takes over the Vice President spot of his political party. The former Vice President is forced to fuck off forever. And that is the platform I am running for fake Congress on, in Old Virginia's 67th District. So be sure to write in "fuck all y'all!" this November! Because "y'all" means "all"!

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse - Winter 2026 - Week 1

Just wanted to give a head's up that last night, a project called Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse returned, for a new 7-week series. We've had a few seasons of these before, but the last one was in the Spring of 2024. This project takes place in an abandoned concrete factory at the edge of town near where I live, and 27 different characters from across the political spectrum come and fight each other, to control The Discourse. For the first 6 weeks, they battle to accumulate points, to be entered into the season finale in Week 7. So we should have one of these every Monday night for the next 6 weeks as well. This is one of the bizarre things supported by my Southern Gothicc Futurism Patreon.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cumbia Pa Morirme (kudzu'd)

I was thinking back on the first older folks I encountered who had been brainwashed by too much Rush Limbaugh radio or Fox News tv, and how they were seemingly normal people who just got worse and worse as the diminished cognitive ability and disinformation seepage into their stream of consciousness made them unbearable to even casually talk to. I was thinking on this because there’s a pretty large abundance of people like this, who you can’t even discuss anything with, because if you disagree, they immediately flip on some reactionary defensive counter accusation based on the binaries they’ve been programmed with, which generally speaking have nothing to do with what I’m saying. And in all the fear and loathing about how quickly the illusion of American democracy is being destroyed, very little is being said about how many people are brainwashed by digital media sources, much less how we can ever get beyond that. And there were people pointing this out in 2016, but instead of doing anything, it’s just been left unchecked to get worse over the past decade.

A woman who used to watch my oldest when she was younger has been lost. She even took my kid to Great Britain with her daughter… that’s how much we trusted her. But she got lost to the rabbitholes and is now a Make America Healthy Again wingnut who has lost all real friends and mostly just posts to an adoring bot community on X. I saw her last fall at an opening of a play, but didn’t say hello because she had that mentally ill thousand yard star in her eyeballs, that I knew I wouldn’t be talking to the person I used to know, because that person has been altered into something else, a hollow shell of a human that still walks and talks and shits and eats and thinks it’s thinking when it’s actually just regurgitating the programming they’ve willing consumed.

I was thinking about this the other day talking with my girlfriend, too, and how bluesky can feel so demoralizing because there’s such a sense of doom, with little joy. And also how Palestinian activists, during the height of online protests, were demanding we all watch the atrocities seen in video clips, as if it was our duty to witness those horrors. There is no gauge on these things that tell us when we’ve reached our limit, that we’ve had enough. There’s no bar at the top of our screen letting us know, “Okay, you’ve consumed enough horror for the day… log off for the night.” We just keep sucking from the demoralizing tit of social media, feeling worse and worse about it all.

Today’s horror of the day is the dimwitted devils are threatening to cut the VA staff by a large chunk. Anybody who’s ever gone to a VA hospital knows it’s already a slow and tedious process, but depended upon by a lot of people. Bob was my step-grandfather, and I have fond memories of riding with him in his truck to the VA hospital off Hull Street in Richmond – over an hour drive each way, which he had to do in order to get the care he needed. He’d take me to an all you can eat cafeteria style buffet afterwards, and it was such a treat. He was a good dude, and for all intents and purposes all of our grandfather. But we just called him Bob, and he had throat cancer but the trach never healed so he had the voice box you stuck under the tongue, and he’d click it at us.

Bob and my grandmother lived in a trailer most of my life, after the first few years. The trailer was in a segregated trailer park in Farmville, Virginia, through the woods from the projects. I spent a lot of time there, and it was exciting on weekends because they had cable and I could watch World Championship Wrestling on Saturdays. Wasn’t no cable at my country house, not even possible. It didn’t exist. Even when they moved their trailer to down below my mom’s house, they got a satellite, which was much cheaper by that time, and Bob and Gramma would watch baseball. My grandma loved the Braves, but they’d watch the Cubs too… basically if baseball was on, it was in the background.

A lot of what we’re filling our time with is just that – filling our time as background. I wonder if old people could’ve just had free access to baseball all these years, would we have less brainwashed folks? They could be mad about free agent signings instead of tricked into thinking Venezuelan gangs were taking over cities.

I actually watched like 5 minutes of Fox News a few weeks back, just to see what it was bantering about. I found it shockingly hateful. It was some sort of pseudo-talk show trying to be funny, but all the jokes were cruel, and it all was just sugar coating for driving home talking points for the bullshit going on right now by the dimwitted devils. It was well produced bullshit, basically, but I imagine if I left that on in the background every night, thinking it was useful, I’d start to think like that. That’s how propaganda works. None of us are impervious to it. It’s not a free will thing the entire way, as it eventually turns into neurological manipulation. And with long covid and how much digital consumption we all have now, who knows what early dementia rates are going to look like in a decade. And of course, the act of scientific study itself is being dismantled at the same time. It’s all pretty crazy to be living through, and wondering how violent the summer is going to be, whether there’s going to be elections in 4 years, or 2 years, and if so, how many among us will still be allowed to attend the theater of voting.

I guess I say all this as a reminder that you don’t have to absorb all the seepage from the poisonous political swamp that is the United States right now. It may not do you any good to do so anyways. And I also remind you that America, the land and place, had people here and existed before the United States. And using history as a guide, it’s more likely than not going to still exist after the United States is gone. That’s likely hard for some folks to accept, because we’ve so deeply internalized this notion that the United States is a uniquely special snowflake amidst human history, that shall never be melted by the political hells known to all other people throughout time. I find myself still untangling some of those meritocracy myths lately, expecting checks and balance might still check and balance, when in actuality, like every other government or empire or nation-state throughout time, all it takes is one small group to aggressively put their thumbs on the scales to fuck it all up. The propaganda, the dehumanization of your actual neighbors, the steadfast denial of reality until the horrors swallow you personally… it’s all been seen before, many times over.

And people lived beyond it. They still had moments of joy amidst the worst times, for the most part. There are pretty horrible atrocities that have happened where it’s hard to imagine folks still finding joy in there. And I still tell myself these dimwitted devils aren’t competent enough to create that level of atrocity; they’ll just smash a bunch of shit thinking they can do it better, and make a few dollars off the upgrade, until they realize they can’t easily replicate a labyrinth of public service that took centuries to build.

I don’t really have nothing hopeful to end this on. I’m just sharing my thoughts today. All of what’s going on is hard for many people in many different ways, and to varying levels. I know of people who have lost jobs already. I also know folks struggling with their health right now, so the politics is background anxiety to life and death worries. Life remains life, and if you still got it, you gotta live it. I hope you are still able to practice finding joy in your life, and I hope that never stops. I hope you are able to share joy when possible. I know I hope I do. I want the world to be better, and feel better, because of my actions and how I am. Not worse. And I just can’t understand how people can think they make the world better through cruelty. I hope they have to answer for it at some point down the road, but that’s not my role in this universe.

SONG OF THE DAY: Easin' In

Despite the wonderfully funky suggestion of my man Edwin Starr, we do not appear to be easin’ in to all this new shit going on in the world. But then again, we knew these dipshits were gonna come in with heavy hands and dark hearts. Fuck it. Lounge will always prevail.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cumbia de los Ovnis

I hope that racist America’s love of taco trucks eventually allows cumbia music to be more prominent as well. I want local cumbia acts far out of traditional Mazatlan. It’s impossible not to think about what an idiot J.D. Vance is when discussing such a subject, but if the U.S. Senate was made up of more cumbia musicians than venture capitalists, we’d have a much better legislature. Of course, cumbia musicians know better than to be politicians. Only assholes wanna make rules over everybody.

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse - Winter 2024

So if you are the type to fuck around on youtube, or care about the political discourse (or I guess, not care), then I was commanded to begin another 7-week series of The Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse for Winter 2024. Last week was Week 1 of the 7-week series. Tonight at 10 pm EST will be week 2. Plugging it here because I know everybody goes different places to see different things, and I'm a force of chaotic good who always forgets to scatter his nonsense in all four directions. This may end up being the last season because it's not clear if this stupid game is going to work on my computer anymore in two months (part of the side effects of using obsolete machinery beyond its intended lack of usage).

SONG OF THE DAY: Beautiful Eyes of Virginia

Been having to pull more and more P4TR10T FR0NT stickers off stop signs around here. The one at the end of the road I’ve took it off a few times, to where there’s layers of sticker remnants now, and somebody keeps putting that shit back up. But then today going the back way to the store, past the railroad tracks, saw one on a side road, so looped back around and scraped that one off. Sadly it means somebody around me is brainwashed and throwing that shit up everywhere. It also sucks because to a regular redneck passing by, it looks innocuous enough (by design) – just an American flag acting like “hey man, I love this country!” But I don’t want any more people than already have falling down them rabbitholes to where they think people that ain’t white and whatever from of christianity these weird evangelical prosperity types are who have completely overlooked like 2/3 of the bible for the couple of passages they wanna get mad about all the time. My girlfriend’s uncle lived in the nearby town, and he didn’t even wanna put out American flags this year for the little town’s big 4th of July parade, because of how the flag’s been co-opted and completely lost to the prejudiced types in the past half-decade. Fuckers out here flying half-confederate half-American flags, unironically thinking that shit represents them. And now it does. My girlfriend said her uncle said to her, “once you’ve lost the flag, what do you have left?” Anyways, that’s what’s going on along the back roads of rural Virginia today. Some folks got way too much time and way too much internet and it’s made them think they know some raw, unfiltered truth, when it ain’t even close to that. No common sense to none of it. Country comic Jerry Clower had a line I always think of where he says somebody was “educated beyond their intelligence”. In his simple country comic context, it was likely applied to a college boy pontificating on some political shit, and I know these country boys these days think it still applies to that. But damn if most these folks ain’t educated beyond their own intelligence, too. Brain thick with bullshit, but somehow thinking it’s better than somebody else’s bullshit. Fuck it, maybe I’ll just print up some “educated beyond your intelligence” stickers to start slapping on stop signs, giant ass F150s, and Teslas, too. Slap one on my own forehead three days out of five, too.

SONG OF THE DAY: Caravan of Fools Remix

Ain’t no qualified Working Class Whisperers because our concept of what’s working class has been distorted. Labor Day weekend is perfect example, because the notion of a three-day weekend is alien to a vast expanse of wage laborers working in the sprawling and rootless suburbs that all look the same no matter which city they’ve show up as freedom tumors upon. We got two political parties deemed feasible in American life, and both of them speak to fake working classes that have middle class wealth – one not necessarily with college education and living off the actual land and coin wealth of their earlier generations, and the other often depending upon a college education but still lifted beyond the crushing struggles of actual daily poverty. It’s all so performative, and these dueling middle classes – both of whom manipulated to the benefit of the actual hyper-wealthy, spit and jeer at each other, and it’s become a dueling vision for America’s late empire fascist state. And I want to be clear – I’m not “both sides”ing this thing, because the right gives zero fucks about destroying us all who don’t fit their vision of a pure American future. But the liberal left, despite (in my mind) being the lesser of the two evils, is still a very evil and entirely unsupportable entity as well. The Dark Biden memes gave way to him living the gimmick, standing in front of red and black background with Marines flanking him this past week, looking like the bad guys from V for Vendetta.
Riding actual roads (not interstates), walking actual streets (not cul-de-sacs), and talking to other people is the only thing that will ever break through this. And I’m not even sure that’s as possible as it was even 6 years ago. I remember reading a dude who engineered some Latin American elections through use of digital means how the Clinton/Trump Presidential campaign was, to him, very clearly two propaganda machines working double time to defeat each other. Neither was benevolent, or resting on their own good; they both were manipulating human consciousness as best they could, with the digital tools at their disposal. That has only worsened in the ensuing six years, and people’s brains are heavily poisoned at this point, to where they don’t even see the strychnine in their thought processes. I still think actually talking to folks long enough to break through the politics can help, but also folks are so heavily poisoned, that there’s fewer and fewer folks willing to entertain your conversation from the beginning, because they look at you and decide who you are by the stereotypes the poisoning has implanted in their thinking, and they might not even be listening to you even if they let you talk. Shit is fucked.
But like always, when there is too much chaotic undergrowth, some sort of cultural fire will come along and clear it out, open the landscape back up, and folks will see more clearly again. That fire might be destructive, and painful, but at this point, ain’t no way around it. Too much shit has been allowed to digitally grow, creating a tinder of kindling for some sort of cataclysm that’s always just around the corner right now. We can’t escape it; just gotta keep an eye out for the smoke and make sure you keep yourself from getting consumed in the actual fire when it inevitably happens.

B3N34TH TH3 P0L1T1C4L...

beneath the political 
divisions, mycelium 
tendrils prepare for what’s next 

SONG OF THE DAY: Oldie Kinda Lovin'

Some would argue it’s in bad taste to enjoy yourself as your mythologically moral institutions fall apart before your eyes. But ultimately the institutions are not compromised so much as they were never what we were told in the first place. Thus, I’d say it’s more important than ever to find ways to enjoy yourself as our late American institutions continue to fail the majority of us. Like think about throwing a Molotov cocktail, and imagine doing it stressed and angrily. But then imagine performing the same act with joy and a touch of whimsy, how easily the arm rotates to fling the bottle with lit wick at a higher, more exuberant arc. I’d say it’s in bad taste to be too serious about shit like this because it gives the institutions we need to replace too much credit for being serious. They’re not. Many of these hallowed institutions are pretty hollow. Fuck ‘em.

SONG OF THE DAY: Funky Virginia

This is a song about Virginia being funky, by a band or dude called Sir Guy, and this should be the official state song. Of course, “official” anything as determined by the state requires a bunch of mostly white people, mostly men, to hash it out in Richmond while wearing suits, and none of them get falafel from Aladdin’s, like ever, and most all of them are assholes because why would you be a politician if you weren’t? But even beyond that, the boundaries of a map are a fuckin’ lie too, and just because of this, and the inherent regionalistic pride that comes with a fucking map, if you rocked this song at a party just across the border in like Roxboro, unloungers would be tempted to complain. That’s the problem with the way our society is structured – politics is made by unloungers, and those philosophies become encoded as law, which means all the legal shit we have to navigate around to enjoy our lives, to the fullest extent possible. So then regular folks have that shit trickle down into their brain, because news talks about that dumb shit all the time, and cops enforce that stupid shit, and the notions of legal states just poison a regular person’s fucking brain. So then regular folks, even amongst true loungers, trying to have a good time, might be gathered hypothetically in Roxboro, which is North Carolina, but just barely across the border, and hear an old ass jam like “Funky Virginia”, and somebody might be tempted to talk down on it. That’s why the Power of Lounge is more important than ever before, because technology has enabled unloungers to just run rampant, in the opposite of wild, but coordinated engineered bullshit. One must practice the Power of Lounge as much as possible to combat all this unlounge. And today, I do that by playing “Funky Virginia” on the yard speakers, pointed down towards the river, 69 times in a row, while the clankyjangers spin and I sit there spray painting more railroad spikes, because I got a fresh batch out the 5-gallon bucket of Coke yesterday, that had been sitting on the porch, “conditioning” for a month or so.

SONG OF THE DAY: Tragico Destino (45s on 33)

White people seem to be up in arms about how white people might get replaced by non-white people, but to be honest, look at the accordion. White people had control of that shit forever, and then non-white people had it for like what? A couple decades? And absolutely fucked up everything a white person had done on an accordion. Now instead of working in a communal sense, and thinking, “Oh shit, who knew all my accordion needed was a horn section with a little bit of flair?” instead the type of white people being up in arms (all too often literally) about this type of shit get mad, and don’t want nobody else to play an accordion. What the fuck kinda shit is that? Who benefits from that? Just a bunch of lame ass fuckers sitting around with musical instruments they ain’t even learned nothing new on. The shit pisses me off to be honest. Loosen up a little bit, stop being afraid of every goddamned thing. Here’s a new 14 Words for y’all: Sit your stupid ass down, and listen to someone else for like twenty minutes.

SONG OF THE DAY: Done With This

Just another cabin boy on a ship of fools, waiting for the water to fill my lungs. Everything is completely obvious, yet everyone wants to get lost in the semantics of how you get around to pointing at the obvious, until we’ve talked ourselves into oblivion, the acts of the oblivious, purposefully ignorant to the facts in front of us, and I don’t even know why. So mostly I think, “fuck it,” and cosplay like my job is important enough to justify riding along until I die. Maybe we won’t hit the iceberg in my lifetime, not until my kids are older, maybe not ‘til my grandkids exist. Just another cabin boy on a ship of fools.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Was Framed

 

Hey man, let’s take it easy. Fuck the police, the politics, the politicians, the news, fuck people who worry about that shit so much they jump in your face about some shit that ain’t here or there. I ain’t saying let’s not do the work but saying let’s stop pretending your grandstanding is the actual work when it ain’t nothing more than another wannabe boss trying to set an agenda to outline a bunch of shit your hands will never actually touch. Systems always end up crushing folks, that’s just how it ends up being. Sledgehammers will never become dysfunctional though. Scythes either, though they do lose their edge.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sad Sad Songs

Wow, there are so many experts on Middle Eastern policy, and Afghanistan, and Lebanon, and really everything today. You all should learn the valuable lesson of Shutting The Fuck Up. US Imperialism and dogmatic conservative Islam neither benefit the average person struggling to survive. And if you think the late American Empire hellscape is bad here, please consider the fact we have it amazingly comfortable by Global Southern standards. So again, please practice Shutting The Fuck Up. Practice it daily, and often each day. It’s very beneficial to your environment, whether IRL or extremely online.

SONG OF THE DAY: Deal

At this point in my life, there’s only two types of Grateful Dead songs I still like – ones directly related to amazing drug memories, like “Tennessee Jed”, or ones that would’ve made their way eventually into a Sam Peckinpah western had he ever done one with Pigpen in it because in this alternate timeline Pigpen didn’t die. Thus, I’ll listen to a fuckin’ “Deal” recorded at stupid fucking William & Mary a thousand years ago, back before Deadheads became libertarians and bankrolled self-justifying their own greed through legal weed shops because they were able to cover the immense application fees. Like the video reminds you, never forget Tucker Carlson is a huge deadhead – about as black an eye as a fan base could get.

N0T SVR3 1 B3L13V3 TH3R3'S SVCH...

not sure I believe there’s such 
a thing as good flag; ego 
and/or profit makes politics 

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse - Episode 10

Made it to 10 episodes of this ridiculousness. We've expanded the field to 25, because there's too many people that deserve to be up in this bitch. Be sure to consider supporting my patreon (which supports this project).

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse - episode 8

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse was an all women's rumble this week, after last week's finish which saw the Twitter Communist beat Super Bluecheck. President Biden signed up to be special referee for this one.

Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse - episode 7

We returned to our abandoned concrete factory repurposed as a battleground for The Discourse last night, after taking last week off in observance of the spring equinox. Comments sent in to our team complained about the lack of female representation, and the fact a woman has yet to win The Discourse. This became a theme in last night’s episode. Drop your thoughts on any of this in the comments.