SONG OF THE DAY: If You Wanna Get To Heaven (kudzu'd)

My wishes are to be cremated, and have my ashes stored in a Timberlands box which is accidentally donated to the thrift store, as has been the way of my people since the beginning of time.

SONG OF THE DAY: Rollin' On

My grass is blue, and it’s not artificial turf. It’s also tall, and it got tall enough some nosy ass neighbor rode up on his riding mower and asked if I needed help, so now I can’t cut it even longer, out of stubbornness. You know that fucker runs a leaf blower? Use of a leaf blower at home is class treason if you consider yourself a redneck, in my opinion. Leaf blowers are the polo shirt of yard equipment, meaning the shitty collared shirt small business bossmen types and “friendly” sales dudes wear, not Polo brand shirts, which is pretty much exclusively worn by people who listened to hip hop a lot from 1985 through 1996 and have been poor at some point in their life, so like to feel like they’re fresh, even though let’s be honest, we’re probably not. I mean, my raggedy ass is out there sitting in knee-high blue grass, wearing a Polo rugby long sleeve with the skull and crossbones patch that I got for cheap off a antique store booth, in one of those blessed places where the antique store emporium is still a lot of junk and the vintage reseller vibes haven’t poisoned it with, “Well, now I can’t afford this shit no more”ness. Anyways, fuck leaf blowers, fuck vintage as a means of making dope shit impossible for ballin’ on a budget types to get. But thank god for shoplifters, and vandals, and mandolin players who are 6 years sober but still crazier than fuck, and thank god for all the goat-headed resistors to proper order and curation of all of society. If we can’t have nothing nice, then neither can y’all.

SONG OF THE DAY: Tulsa Turnaround

“If a man’s gonna eat fried chicken he’s got to be greasy” is tattooed across my shoulders in Olde English 800 letters. Ever since I was a kid, and the power went out at our house I grew up in, down in Meherrin, Virginia (the home of Roy Clark), right as that song was playing and Kenny Rogers was singing that line, so it warbled down slow and ominously – “IF A MAN’S GONNA EAT FRIED CHICKEN HE’S GOT TO BE GREEEEEAAAAAASSSsssyyyyyyyyyy” – I hear it in my mind as a warning, and yet also a proud mantra. If one loves fried chicken, they should not be ashamed of the grease on their fingers necessary towards the joy of fried chicken. Just be careful not to wipe your fingers on your Homestead Grays throwback. There’s napkins from Subway in the glove box, get you a couple of those. No, don’t use that towel, that’s my shoulder towel for walking around. Why would you think it’s okay to wipe your greasy fuckin’ fingers on my lavender shoulder towel? What the fuck?

SONG OF THE DAY: Tricks of the Trade

The other day me and the 18 year old swang by the Goodwill in the nearby city somewhat ravaged by its best years being a century back (like many places). These are always strange lands of sadness, but I kinda dig that city because it’s not as pretentiously self-important as the college town about the same distance from us, and I love the train yard there. Some dude was buying a giant ass telescope for $20 in front of us, and the dude at the register was talking to him about it. “I’ve blown way more money and less useful things, so even if it doesn’t work, it’s worth it,” the guy buying that thing said. Ol’ dude working the register was talking about the Hubble telescope, and how this Webb telescope was about to drop its first pictures ever in a couple days (that day being today), and how it took ten years for it to happen. I just kinda stood there patiently waiting for them to finish so I could buy a dvd copy of Friday and some Nike track pants, but it was interesting to me in this fucked up little city which once housed a giant Dupont carpet fiber factory but now mostly houses lost dreams could have this scene pop up in a thrift store checkout line. It was all very interesting to the observational chaos theoretician in me. Telescope guy hauled his giant telescope off the counter, register dude checked his phone notifications with the quickest of ease, got briefly distracted looking out the front window, then says, “Imagine the crazy shit that happens in the Wal-Mart parking lot,” before ringing up Friday and the track pants.

SONG OF THE DAY: Fat Man in the Bathtub (live)

I really wanted to write something, maybe even specific to the actual song here, but then I just got sad the old K-Mart in Charlottesville didn’t converted into a flea market, with at least two African stalls, a Latin vegetable store (with a giant paleta cooler, but there’s probably going to be more than one paleta option if the flea market’s being done right), used power tools stand, phone jailbreak stall, and hopefully the flea market has turned the delivery bay by the old garden center into a used tire/secondhand rim shop of some sort. My old old iphone I use as an ipod is starting to turn into robot alien hieroglyphics all the time again because the battery swole up and I’m holding it together with binder clip and rubber bands, and I’ve got a new old iphone, version 6, but it’s locked behind an activation code for somebody, I don’t know who, and it’s pissing me off, and there’s no flea market that would handle this type of shit in an actual open and free society, but I’m trapped in this neoliberal hellscape where you can’t unlock an activation locked iphone because it might be stolen even though the model is so out of date I literally got given it by somebody who had it laying around after somebody else gave it to them. Y’all think everything’s got to be owned and wanted. Let people exist, please.

T33TH CR00K3D 4S 3V3R; B34RD...

teeth crooked as ever; beard 
more grey than not; but my eyes 
still got those wildfire embers 

BR4ND N3W CHR0M3 R1MS BR1GHT3N1NG...

brand new chrome rims brightening 
up a hand-me-down beater - 
our performative thriving 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mentiroso Boquisaboroso (rebajada)

daydreams of digging through crusty ass boxes 
at some back roads flea market 
that's only back roads to you 
but a main thoroughfare to locals 
whom you've never seen 
all their oldies but goodies 
barely sorted into empty boxes 
and milk crates 
and scattered across cheap plastic 
banquet tables underneath 
back yard pop-ups 
the great american dirty southern 
flea market 
actual antiques and implements 
of useful life from back when shit got made 
with metal or wood but also 
a bunch of useless shit piled in 
many decades of american empire 
prevalence of having shit 
all which got left behind 
and brought here together 
in this holy trinity of the post modern 
american experience 
poverty 
necessity 
and time 
the time to wander slowly down 
aisles built mutually 
actual community 
time to dig through the shit that looks good 
or worth your while 
coming out of it all with 
a bunch of kitchen utensils 
including a fat skimmer your ex wife kept 
plus an empty kitty litter tub 
full of 45s mostly old country hits 
but also some bluegrass and gospel 
including long distant cousins 
allegedly 
according to your dead dad 
who you think of lovingly 
as you look at the glass bowls 
which is longhaired redneck slang 
for weed pipes 
the swirling colors inside the glass 
like marbles you lost in the backyard 
back in the day 
back in the far corner 
of the late american empire 
digging through displays 
of better than nothing 
at the big ass 
flea market 

SONG OF THE DAY: Slow Flow

 

the newness of nostalgia

a decade beyond my own cultural relevance

reminiscing over you (old shit)

cursing the unrecognizable ways of now

praise being that old shit

one more time

old as fuck

my nicest sunday afternoon fit

for the back yard is straight

off the goodwill racks

my metaphysical pockets

are flat

not fat

fuck it

there’s still majesty

in a grey beard

because it

signifies

survival

SONG OF THE DAY: For The City

 

Friday vibes, with a fresh orange polo pullover from a deep dive thrift store score to match the blaze orange polo socks from the outlet store where I splurged for 3 pairs of socks for $8. Ballin’ on a budget, since birth, from the time I first sprouted til they scatter my ashes back around the Earth. A natural born dirtgod – can’t have nothin’ nice nor keep nothin’ clean, born with fried chicken thighs grease inside my fingerprints, but a forsythia heart that stays golden this time of year.

SONG OF THE DAY: Dickies Black Chucks

 

As a young poor, I never had brand name shoes as a kid. Motherfuckin’ kids were relentless too, even poor kids who somehow had nice shit. In fact, those kids were the worst about being relentless, mocking your “bobos” back in the day. Where I grew up, 8th grade was in the high school, and I begged and pleaded with my folks to buy me a fuckin’ pair of black Chuck Taylors for 8th grade. They weren’t but like $20 back then, but I guess that was still big money to my folks, with three kids, and a mostly unemployed dad who also had drinking and drug habits. They got them though, and man I was so fucking proud. Some rich kid had a summer pool party at his house, and I convinced my mom I could wear them early to that, like a couple weeks before school started. I swore I was styling. I don’t think nobody noticed shit though to be honest. That’s the problem with norms – you don’t notice normal shit, but man do you ever fucking clown on abnormal shit. Anyways, fuck norms. And sadly, there used to be a couple things I stubbornly prided myself on – never having paid for a haircut, never having bought Nikes, never having flown on an airplane. The past decade’s class transition into bougie-adjacent bullshit, has meant I’ve done all three, though still pretty minimally. I’ve got some work to do to get myself right again. Honing the machetes as we speak though, so don’t worry. You can’t ever assimilate fucked up feral hearts whose mind won’t listen to their brains, which get washed too regularly. Heart remains dirty with the truth. That’s why “brainwashed” is a word but “heartwashed” ain’t. Heart is pure (if you have it still) and ultimately doesn’t need cleansing, because all that dirt and grime that gives you heart, that’s reality. Or some shit. Who the fuck knows?

SONG OF THE DAY: Do Ya Think I'm Sexy (Rebajada)

Lately I’ve been wearing overalls and silk boxers a lot. It feels like a good look for cold ass winter in this cold ass country house. I’m cultivating a good space heater orgone arrangement combined with heavy blankets nailed up in doorways to section off a part of the house to not waste heat on. A good country house is solidly built, and all sorts of inefficient and fucked up. And yet it doesn’t fall, like the stubborn mule-headed people who once built it. It is difficult to be both mule-headed and sexy, but I’m pretty sure my bushy blackberry beard hiding fully ripe dimple fruit in overalls and silk boxers is navigating that fine line quite nicely, at least judging by the way the rural mail carrier lady’s eyes twinkle as she stuffs ebay packages and cut-off notices into my mailbox. That’s not a euphemism. That would be a gross fucking euphemism, to be honest.

SONG OF THE DAY: Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore

video link

Went to Goodwill last weekend, kids trying to find clothes but couldn't, I got a bunch of bright ass dishes because five for a dollar's hard to beat. Covid got those that can afford it on a "nothing but new shit" tip, but I can't do that. A lot of shit I still need in this house, but we're just gonna have to get it little by little, over time.

All of America has deteriorated in the past decade with regards to public buffoonery, but Fluvanna County, USA, seems an especially ignorant place. I remember back in the day, as a kid, with my high school in the same district, there was something about Fluvanna that wasn't like the rest of southside. Maybe a little too segregated, or not as many black folks as Buckingham or Cumberland or Prince Edward, or maybe it was just the weird putting on airs way of the white folks there. Suburban rednecks, who aren't really country, but don't realize it, and think they're HOA redneckery somehow is what real country is all about. And I'm probably wrong, by popular consensus, because certainly the sounds that come out of your average country radio station seem to agree with these don't-tread-on-me-but-keep-your-grass-cut ass fools. Nothing is more performatively country than driving a $75K truck to the Wal-Mart/Lowe's combo shopping center.

Anyways, there was a dude in front of us in the distanced checkout line, unmasked, strapped with a nine, patriotic neck tattoos, standing in front of me looking like a damn fool. The ladies who were working the register were masked up, behind a homemade plexiglass wall, both Winter's Bone people, working retail at the Goodwill. Nobody was going to ask this guy to wear a mask, even though there were signs everywhere, and he just stood there in front of me, holding a stack of DVDs. My kids were worried about going past him, and I told them how to walk around him in a wide path, and they could go wait in the car, which they did.

Guess I'm getting older, and more mellow, because despite wanting to really fuck with this guy, I didn't say shit. I didn't even take a picture to mock him online either. I'm trying to be better, not so judgmental of others, keep my heart focused on good philosophies to live by instead of letting my brain get hung up in the fear and division that leads to panicked thinking and panicked decisions which inevitably leads to tragedy. I don't need any more tragedy in my life than what's been dealt naturally; no need to call in wild cards too.

But what the fuck goes through a guy like that's brain? At that point, you're just being a dickhead, no patriotism or believing in freedom or anything. I grew up around guns, and you only carried them where you needed to carry them, even with a permit. You don't just go walking through the fuckin' Goodwill looking at old Van Damme movies strapped up. And the whole mask thing is just another layer of the not giving a fuck, where somehow freedom has been warped into these people's heads to mean, "I'll do whatever the fuck I want, fuck you if you disagree." It's not very community-oriented. But these assholes think they're still the salt of the Earth, because of the combination of internet propaganda and horrible pop country music themes for decades. He left, with his stupid fucking stack of DVDs and girlfriend or wife or whatever, and I moved up to the other lane of checkout, where a scrawny redneck woman, looking like every other Aunt Kathy from Virginia to Mississippi, was talking to the other Goodwill worker about their co-worker who had been out sick. "I'm bringing in bleach spray and spraying everything," she said, laughing. "No doubt," I said. She looked at me and said, "I can't afford to get sick." "No doubt, me either," I answered.

I guess if you got it, and can afford new shit, you can live in politically invested oblivion that election and democracy are still real. And I guess if you're a brainwashed dumbass who still mistakenly believes one half of that political system actually gives a fuck about your throwaway ass, you can walk around proudly with your pistol and no mask, a 21st Century foot soldier of the empire, continuing that pioneer settler/colonial front line. If you don't die, you've just proven your own point about how bad ass you are. And if you do die, they don't give a fuck.

I guess ultimately that's where I've broken from most of these people that consider themselves red state rural folk - I actually care about people, not in some abstract narrow economic evangelical way, but in a very general and broad way. If I see a person, I hope they're okay, and everyone around them is okay, and so on and so forth, like ripples of giving a fuck. So when I see somebody openly not giving a fuck, it bugs the shit out of me, because in a social contract where all of us living in geographic proximity of each other are supposed to give a fuck, the contract gets broken. And then everybody starts putting asterisks on when the contract is applied, whether someone is appropriate, or justified, or a respectable option, and the asterisks just start adding up, and soon you're standing there in the Goodwill checkout line not giving a fuck about anybody but yourself.

Anyways, my new old dishes are nice. I finally have enough of a matching set for five people to have a plate, bowl, and whatever that kinda bowl/kinda plate serving dish is, all at once. Just gotta get a table big enough for five people now. And maybe chairs that all mostly match. And have this fucking pandemic settle down. And then we'll have a big ass dinner together.

SONG OF THE DAY: Curtain Call

Just moved into a house, bigger than the basement apartment, and there’s no curtains. I don’t have a brain that’s ever thought about curtains beyond “I guess we tack an old sheet up” but I don’t have this many old sheets. Trying to be normal is weird as fuck. I also realized my class transition in terms of Adidas tracksuits. Most of my life I was poor, so had no Adidas track suits. You didn’t even bother thinking about shit like that after a couple back to school shopping trips where the name brand shit you wanted was secretly replaced with bo-bo shit that you had to work pretty hard to freshen up. Sometimes (like me) you gave up on freshening up and just assumed a derelict look out of ease. But you learned to scour the thrift store racks for them Adidas garments, and eventually built a little arsenal you could mix and match to a semi-decent freshness.

In recent years, I got to the point I actually bought a couple of nobody-else-ever-wore Adidas garments, but always at outlet stores on their downward spiral through the consumer ranks. And even then, that shit had to be on the clearance rack usually, because the full outlet store price was still too high for my barely treading water allegedly middle class ass with no safety net. Sometimes the purchase of Adidas basketball shorts that nobody else ever wore would trick me into thinking I was more than just barely middle class, and when I’d go into a store with the kids to gawk at shit we couldn’t buy, I’d see the Adidas over there in the men’s athleisure world corner, and think, “wow, look at that orange track suit… how obnoxious. I should buy it.” But then I go over there and that shit’s like over $140 for the pants and jacket? Fuck that shit. I ain’t no goddamn Rockefeller. And that’s why I’m wearing black Adidas basketball shorts with white stripes and a clearance sale Scotland GK jersey, orange as fuck with black stripes, right now, looking fresh as shit, all by myself, nowhere.

F0R TH0S3 WH0 C4N'T 4FF0RD TH3...

for those who can't afford the

facade, a destiny of

picking through scraps left behind

W33K3ND W4ND3RS 4L0NG TH3...

weekend wanders along the

James River, tapping railroad

ties with my thrift store Nikes

GR1M4C1NG 4T TH3 PR0SP3CT...

grimacing at the prospect

of buying more button-down

shirts at Goodwill for work clothes

C0NSVM3 4N 1D3NT1TY...

consume an identity,

building a personal brand,

living a vacuous life

BLVRS FR0M BVST3D C4M3R4S...

blurs from busted cameras -

just dropped another one while

getting out the car tonight

S1MPL3 BRVSH STR0K3S 0N V3LV3T...

simple brush strokes on velvet

make immaculate aura

accessible by all us