STR34M 0F C0NSC10VSN3SS FL0W1NG...

streams of consciousness flowing 
through fertile crescents of raw 
creation give birth to progress 

SONG OF THE DAY: Learned the Hard Way

Thought I lucked out and snagged this from the Mango Hill bandcamp a while back, but they were actually out of it. The plate tectonics of physical music trickle down into used bins means there’s a lot of stuff I love that ain’t gonna show up nearby. That’s good though. No matter how global and know-it-all we think we’ve gotten, the physical world still depends on physical movement of matter. The revolution will not be digitized.

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Make Me Creep

I’ve been cheating on the internet with real life lately, as I had the week off and was wandering. Today was back to work, which interestingly enough means I am once again bombarded with things I don’t need to know about, and also faced with the existence of people who seem to be more important or successful than me, and I don’t know why. The resentment machine is cranked back up, by design. Digital world is meant to demean us. Creep away from it whenever you can.

S3LF-1MP0RT4NT 3V1L CL0WNS...

self-important evil clowns 
manufactured with a great 
abundance, digital age 

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: Git Ya Sheta

There is a digital cyst at the front of my forehead, and it’s making it so I can’t think clearly. I am applying yarrow tincture and various world funks in the hopes of breaking up the invisible wireless growth.

SONG OF THE DAY: Long As I Can See The Light (45s on 33)

I have temporarily or permanently disabled a couple of my social media accounts, and for some reason that makes people worry about me. Is that a requirement, to be as online as possible now, addicted to the dopamine of social media notifications popping up on our smart phones in our hands constantly, an umbilical cord to the digital ouroboros scroll of nothingness? I can't say I've really done anything better with my time - not outside more, still got grass to cut, haven't broken into any abandoned factories or anything. But I feel better not worrying about dumb shit like I did. I also feel that social media encourages resentment, and hatred, and is very much integral to fissuring society into these hateful little factions that we mistakenly feel are far greater and more powerful than they are in the physical world. But it also creates a way more extremely online mentality in the real physical world, so that what is real is further distorted by digital propagandas. But I don't really give a fuck. I'm just one person; I can't fix the world, and even if I tried, I'd only fuck it up in some weird other way that would be symbolic of my own failings.

Anyways, I assure you I'm okay, in fact pretty good. Real still recognizes real, except nothing is real either, so it's all fuckin' weird and dysfunctional and held together by cyber-duct tape. But if it all fell apart tomorrow, it wouldn't be nearly as bad you think, although also worse than you think, both of those at once. But it's never the end, no matter how much folks wanna believe that shit. The sun will turn the sky light again tomorrow morning, and every day I get to fuck around is a blessing, even if I don't get to do shit I want to most days. I'm still fucking around, and that in itself is the blessing.

SONG OF THE DAY: A Wonderful One

A beautiful Saturday which I have hopefully spent at a car show in Carolina. Or in a secluded railroad yard scribbling dirtgods. Or just laying around as if I lived on clouds. I think one of the great abominations of modern human language is calling the unseen places we store all our digital data a "cloud". In fact, they're on giant energy-sucking server farms, not up in the sky, so it's false in that sense. But it's also just fucking disrespectful to actual clouds. Man is such a narcissist.
This song is a from a Marvin Gaye/Pink Floyd mash-up, where there was a write-up about how they actually performed a live sound check to record this in London or some shit back in the day. It was a wacky made up story, and I'm all about mythology, but basically just some white dude did a mash-up of Marvin Gaye and Pink Floyd, and created the story. That's not necessarily outside the realm of dirtgod industries, but it also feels a little hollow heavy-handed to me. But what do I know? I'm just a dumbass country boy from Meherrin, Virginia.

SONG OF THE DAY: Caravans in the Desert

glitch in the fabric of the universe 
gotta keep moving or else we fall into 
black holes designed like land mines 
digital vines wrapping all around 
unseen and wireless 
gotta keep moving 
keep deleting accounts 
answer data phishing with lies all the time 
post confusing messages to clog 
the algorithm's security guards 
they can't keep up with it all 
techno logic has its limitations 
glitching as much shit as we can 
throwing rocks at the cameras 
pointed inside of ourselves 

SONG OF THE DAY: Godless

 

Been in need of new hip hop. Not new releases that are known, because that shit is always the same. Somehow we have this entire big ass world with hip hop having reached every far flung culture there is, and yet it’s the same little slices of shit we get served and everybody is talking about. I don’t know at this point if popular culture influences the filter bubble or the filter bubble influences pop culture – that post-digital chicken and egg dilemma. But I know if I say “tell me some new shit” nobody tells me new shit. You gotta go excavating and digging and tapping on shit outside of your filter bubble you wouldn’t expect but you might like, hoping to see the recommended shit beneath that to link a second skipped stone across the algorithms of maybe that. I want that whole fucking scene, whole genre, bubbling up somewhere like Mongolia or Malaysia or Madagascar or Montana, who the fuck knows? Shit, it might be an hour away in Carolina, but nobody heard of it yet, even though all of a sudden it's 7 new artists who have like 20 releases over the past decade. That’s what I need.

I’ve fiended through Bambu’s catalog the past few years, even though he’d been around forever. I think I might’ve remembered him from his old days as freestyle-ish rapper West Coast version during the Rawkus uprising period, but I might just be making that memory up in my own head to act like I was always down. Whiteboys into hip hop do that shit. But I do know I seen this Baton Rouge rapper Marcel P. Black play at a local hip hop festival I was part of organizing for, and I loved Marcel, so followed his ass on social medias. And as he was hyping up a bandcamp project he was about to release, he hyped up Bambu as a must-hear favorite. So I went to go hear it. That shit blew me away, whatever first album I went to. And he had a whole fuckin’ catalog. Sharpest Tool In The Shed came out last year, felt like a tease because I was fiendin’ for like a triple album, but artists ain’t artists full-time, and they’ve got jobs and families and lives and bills and the crushing immensity of living in late capitalist era America (if they’re from here). Shit was great though. I love some fuckin’ Bambu, and in the long line of rappers whose words have had thick influences on my brain thinkings, Bambu’s probably held that title belt (made of pyrite and cardboard) the past few years.

SONG OF THE DAY: s0Vl p0W3r pt 11

When songs I write about for song of the day from the J.J. Krupert machine don’t exist inside youtube, because it’s a 45 I’ve recorded at 33 rpms (like this one), or some weird ass vaporwave from Lithuania, or beats my boys have made, or shit it might just be some fucked up shit I came across inside the dark tunnels of the internet, and no video exists on youtube for it, then I make one. This used to be just stitching gifs together with the audio, but gradually I started taking chunks of clips from elsewhere and slapping the music on it. It’s very little effort to be honest, but looks pretty great when you blur it out and glitch it up and throw it all together – kinda like knowing your way around a kitchen, in that if you get all the right ingredients and throw them together with even a little bit of competence, then the shit tastes good. This old Maceo & the Macks jam slowed down to 33 speed with a bunch of clips of Jim Kelly kicking people’s asses is the perfect example. This shit is like the fried egg sandwich of digitalia.

SONG OF THE DAY: John Brown

I am tired, but the world doesn't stop. Here's the lyrics to John Brown.

my people are from southside by way of appalachia
vagabond spirits always seeking greener pasture
family so dysfunctional no cousins with my last name
my mother's worthless son, all I got from her is blame
so making my own way, about seventh generation
scot irish scandinavian german polish mutt caucasian
with a college education, my path away from the dirt roads
except my trust in well meaning well to do white folks constantly erodes
in this system which ain't giving shit but diminishing returns
the only dreams I'm believing in is I pray it all burns
down to ground, a place built on the backs of black folk
with me rapping in broken english, which wasn't even spoke
on this continent before prominent pyramid plans was established
but the destinies manifest for my bloodlines been tragic
so if I'm gonna think like a white man it's gonna be john brown esque

rough around the edges because I'm southern grotesque
can't be your rural noir hillbilly novelist class apologist
my thinking's too busted up can't afford all the consonants
just a colloquial country yokel with penchant for burning bridges
and walking through back alleys or hiding between blue ridges
I recognize my white privileges since ain't no cop shot me in the back
but I ain't proclaiming america's greatness since all I've seen is lack
of justice and equality from the fuck y'all I got mine philosophy
which is un-American but buried in the etymology
of United States, so I pledge allegiance to the people
this edition is overrated and we're ready for the sequel
so tear down all these monuments and these deeds of dominion
we ain't hit a wall saying end times, it's just a fenceless new beginning

MVTV4L 41D R3PL4C3M3NTS...

 

mutual aid replacements 
of failed government efforts; 
might as well overthrow shit 

TH3 D1STR4CT10NS 0F DY1NG...

the distractions of dying 
empire have been digitized 
to seemingly endless scroll 

CH4S1NG D1G1T4L DR4G0NS...

chasing digital dragons

only makes it worse, finger

poking for dopamine fix

SONG OF THE DAY: Back Then

Yesterday I walked with a protest, and being UVA hovers over everything in Charlottesville, VA, there was a high petty bourgeoisie factor to it, and I’ve definitely been feeling my class more than ever lately. But I kept my mind focused on the people I care about and love who were also walking, instead of the abundance of folks who may or may not realize their existence’s own complicity in the inequality that pervades American existence in 2020. Got burned out on the open mic format of sharing, because we don’t really need white folks telling each other how using the n-word is bad at a Black Lives Matter march. That work can be done elsewhere.  So I walked back home, along the railroad tracks, then cut past Garrett back through Belmont. Cookouts were popping at Garrett, and a sedan was sitting there double parked, windows open, nobody inside, blasting go-go music. “Ahh… summer in Virginia is official now” I thunk to myself, and a couple kids were in the soccer field there playing tug of war with a long strand of caution tape. I hope your revolution includes the poor, and not just the people you think have obvious value in your existing way of life. I hope your revolution has go-go music, and a fish fry or two. The revolution still will not be televised, no matter how much some people like to convince you we’ve progressed. We ain’t done shit yet.

SONG OF THE DAY: African Hustle

Right now can feel overwhelming because it’s a pretty thick barrage of images and videos of police state brutality, as well as a lot of radical information to digest. You don’t have to digest it all this weekend. 500 years is not undone by the 4th of July. But don’t do the consumer-based thing we’re all trained to do, to put it all in a box, or closet, or desktop folder, and promise to go back to later only to forget it all until we dump it out or drop it off at a thrift store. A long term hope of mine is we lose track of time too. Time fucking sucks, forcing industriousness on me, guilt as well. Much like money, it was a unit for comparing and organizing that’s been just brutally overused in all the wrong ways. I’m afraid of time. I hate time. Fuck, it’s only Saturday and I’m already fearing a specific time on Monday. Of course, I’ll be fifteen minutes late, like always.

If you’ve ever known immigrants from Africa, you might’ve heard African time, which is an even stronger version of what we know in America as black time (which like many things considered black, has a lot of crossover with southern traditions due to the heavy cultural influence on the south), where specific times can be a goal you shoot for, but not necessarily met. This challenges a lot of the shit built here around order and productivity. “Well what would people do?” You’d wait. Read a book or something if somebody hadn’t shown up yet. “Oh, so you’re time is more important than mine?” No, not at all. I’m just not there yet, so you can do something else. Or maybe I’m already there, and you’re not. No worries. I always keep notebooks and books and magazines laying around or at least one or two of these things in a backpack on me while on foot. Just sit there, and do “nothing”. This is the only doing of nothing that should be tolerated. Then get back to the barrage of radical information. In fact, you can even combine the two. YOU COULD ACTUALLY BE DOING AMAZING WORK TO CHANGE THE ENTIRE WAY OUR SOCIETY IS BUILT, all by doing “nothing” in those moments. So I think in a roundabout way I’ve somehow talked myself into doing nothing as a revolutionary act, so long as the nothing I’m doing is a conscious act of nothing, rather than the fake nothing of avoiding actually addressing things in my own life.

B4RB3D W1R3 T3CHN0L0G13S...

barbed wireless technologies

distract me with digital

opiates to join the buzz

SONG OF THE DAY: 1'll T4k3 Y0v Th3r3

I am remarkably bored by life right now. Where I am feels like an anchor, an old rusted weight of an existence that I'm tired of dragging along behind me, or pushing in front of me is probably more realistic. What do I do? Nothing. Distract myself. I mean I guess I did walk step by step about 15 miles this weekend, but all of it looped back where from I started, so I don't know. I get this urge from time to time to walk to the horizon, for days, months. This shit we're living is not satisfying, even for those who have shit it seems. The whole thing needs to go ahead and break down. Whatever fog machines they've had cut on and has been pumping up the fog the past twenty years, I wish it'd go ahead and break, and they don't have a replacement part. Might feel ugly briefly… all these distraction addicts having to quit cold turkey is gonna cause some serious freak outs, probably with lots of fire and bullet wounds. But once we all detox, it'll be better. Right? RIGHT?

D1G1T4L P0L1C3 ST4T3 D1GS...

digital police state digs

deeper into subconscious

of these blue lives bootlickers