SONG OF THE DAY: Make You Sweat (kudzu'd)

Never really jammed Keith Sweat back in the day because I was too cool for R&B. But damn if Keith Sweat don't go hard as fuck slowed down. All that New Jack Swing stuff does. If I can fix my time machine, I'm gonna go back and tell 1991 Raven that it's okay to rock this shit, and also ask him for something from downstairs, and then I'm gonna steal a bunch of his old metalhead and Grateful Dead shirts to bring back to now and sell to these vintage vultures. Oh yeah, speaking of fashion, I'm gonna let 1991 Raven know everything is going to turn out okay (inner child work) and also get a couple pairs of airbrushed overalls, even though that feels like something out of his fashion sense back then. "Trust me, young me, you're gonna be glad you did it. But size 'em up. There's a lot of Chinese buffets in your future."

SONG OF THE DAY: A Freight Train In My Mind

A freight train in my mind is about all I got most days, wishing these damn hoppers would move, or I had time to go spend the night at my boy’s house where all the coals are, or even that I had bought a house right by a yard somewhere. Or that I had known about all the coals lined up at the plant down in Bremo back in the early 2000s, when I first lived that way. Can’t wait for time travel to be real so we can indulge our obsessive compulsions across four dimensions instead of just three.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Sex You Up (kudzu'd)

C’mon girl, let’s take my time machine back to the jacuzzi room in the 1996 Comfort Inn just outside Myrtle Beach. Bring the coconut oil, and that lime green silky outfit I love.

SONG OF THE DAY: Eternal Ridin' (XL Middleton remix)

[Wrote this all out because XL Middleton is the purveyor of a genre of funk I like to call "driving a customized van through the hills of Appalachia in 1978". It's an unparalleled vibe.]
As some of y’all may or may not know, I got a time machine behind my mom’s house that’s an old ’69 Chevelle Supersport. Unfortunately, like most things in my life, it’s raggedy, so my time machine only goes to the Food City in Pikeville, Kentucky, around 1978 now. (You can keep turning the dial to the left to go further back in time, but now that I’m not floating bad check at the Food City for groceries, I hadn’t been turning the time machine dial back anymore, for fear of hitting the end. 1978, where I’m at, is about 91/92 on the old school FM dial, so it ain’t gonna go too much further back, and I don’t know how to calibrate timeframes on my haphazard time machine.)
I think at some point, while getting mad about vintage clothes resellers, specifically selling old biker and wrestling t-shirts at astronomical prices, I got to thinking about old school customized vans from the 1970s. (No diss to vintage resellers, but I just can’t abide those prices. I know folks can get it, but just as there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, not sure there’s ethical vintage reselling either. But I also accept the fact we’re all just trying to survive capitalism, too, so I’m more pissed off that this is the shared collective existence we have, more than individuals selling old school redneck shit at astronomical prices to extremely online hipsters.) And since I could always go back ton 1978 Pikeville, Kentucky, I decided, what if I got a custom van?
The problem is, well first off, money. Today money don’t look like back then money. But I had found a meticulous workaround (buying old money) that took a lot of time. I saved up money to get a car, but they didn’t have a lot of nice custom vans in Pikeville, Kentucky, back then, at least not like what I hoped to get. So I bought a ’72 AMC Matador instead, blue, because I briefly had one in the ‘90s, and it was an awesome car, even if I pretty much blew it up the first month I had it. Once I had my ’72 Matador in ’78 Pikeville, I realized a much quicker way to get old money that worked in those days was to steal it, not really robberies, because that’s not cool, but stealing it from unsecure stores because they didn’t have the same surveillance technology back then. But I usually tried bigger places away from Pikeville, kind of finding the sweet spot being going up 119 toward Charleston and hitting bigger towns in southern West Virginia (Williamson, Logan, Madison… where I contemplated trying to find a young Jesco White before realizing I probably didn’t wanna get involved in some 1978 White family chaos and derail getting back to nowadays indefinitely over some stupid shit). I mostly did my robbing there, and right before coming back to the time machine in Pikeville, so I’d park my Matador, and come back to now with the old cash, which remained old. Later, in a few days, after I knew any heat that might’ve arrived at the time died down, I’d go back. Eventually I’d built up enough of an old money nest egg through various robberies in southern West Virginia, I could go looking for an old school customized van.
I was hoping for the full deal – bubble windows, shag carpet, wizard murals on the side… all you’d imagine if you used your now brain which has been polluted with the faux infinite possibilities of digital imagination. But that type of van, customized to that level, wasn’t easily found in Kentucky. I also didn’t wanna go looking for vans in West Virginia with money I’d stole there (because maybe I was wanted, which also lolol imagine my simple 2024 ass being wanted in 1978 West Virginia). I started creeping up 23 on the look, and actually found the first cool customized van I wanted in Prestonsburg, not far from Pikeville. It was basic customized, with captain’s chairs and nice powder blue shag, and a spade bubble window, but no mural, nothing too outlandish. So I bought it.
The problem was, my time machine was just a ’69 Chevelle Supersport, so I couldn’t bring the customized van back in the time machine. So I bought it and left it parked at the Food City in Pikeville, Kentucky. And I’m not really gonna be able to bring them to now, ever. But I did keep looking. Well actually, I started going to Ashland, Kentucky/Huntington, West Virginia area, more to draw dirtgod monikers on the coal and freight cars there. I hadn’t done it ton, maybe only a couple thousand monikers there in 1978, enough that’ll be known to train riders and railroad workers of that time frame, at least there, but not wider. I hope to eventually get thousands and thousands more in those yards. That Ashland CSX yard was just a Chessie yard back then, so it’s got those beautiful yellow cabooses, which I never mark on, out of respect for the workers, and to keep them off my ass. But hopefully eventually I’ll hit enough freight cars back then that the dirtgod moniker will become known as a famous old school one like Bozo Texino or Palm Tree Herby, and the ones I do now will be disregarded as some new school hipster copycat stealing from the old legend. I don’t mind getting cancelled in the nowadays if I can thrive in the past though.
But I found a really nice customized van for sale, with a Frank Frazetta Death Dealer style mural on both sides, which this was even before Molly Hatchet had come out, so that was ahead of its time there in Huntington. I definitely bought that one, and got it back to Pikeville and parked it by the other one at the Food City, on the far corner of the lot furthest from the road, so kind of out of the way to be safer, although leaving a car parked somewhere like that was way safer back then I think. The worst person around was most likely modern me when I went back looking to rob stores in West Virginia lol.
I tried to be happy with the two vans, and my time machine fits another person, so occasionally I’ll take one of my homies with to go driving in the vans, but only certain people, because most folks can’t handle time travel and will blow up the whole thing by telling too many folks about our secret spot. Mostly, it’s made best sense to take the graff crew homies, one at a time, because they enjoy going to the Chessie yard and doing panels on old school freight in ’78, putting them way ahead of the freight graffiti movement, and actually happening at the same time graffiti was blowing up in New York City on the subway trains. Eventually, that’s gonna fuck with somebody too, to “discover” there was full-blown graffiti happening in Appalachia at the same time it was blowing up in New York City. But the graff homies know how to not run their mouth, and it’s fun to drive the vans around the mountains, even though instead of each of us driving one, it’s more fun to both ride in the same. Kinda weird to have one dude per van tooling around like that, lol, but we did it for a while before realizing that shit was weird.
But I did get to wandering on my own, and once I got to Lexington, Kentucky, the customized van scene was strong enough there were more options. I actually bought two more in 1978 Lexington, also now parked in Pikeville at the Food City, because again, I can’t transport them back. I actually put the first one I bought up for sale again, by the road, but I’m never actually there in 1978 for the most part to meet anybody to buy it, and I don’t have a phone number back then, especially not one that would work now so I could answer it here and be like, “Yeah, I can meet you on Saturday morning” to somebody from 1978 Pikeville. It’s a lot to juggle. But I’ve got it parked by the road, with a For Sale sign on it, and the other three just sitting there in the back corner of the parking lot, chilling, three nice ass customized vans, like the nicest vans in all of Pikeville.
So anyways, if you end up having a weird ass time machine that’s calibrated all fucked up like that to go to Pikeville, Kentucky, and you see the three vans parked in the back corner of the lot, with the Frazetta mural and wizard mural and bubble windows and purple to pink fade glitter paint on the one, those are mine. Leave a note for me if you want.
And even though already having four old ass vans in the parking lot there feels like a lot, I’m already contemplating driving all the way to Louisville, or maybe even taking a long week off and going up to Cincinnati and seeing what I can find. I know there’d be some wild shit in Cincinnati, for sure. But again, as always the risk with that type of trip is knowing how I am, and I could get too intricately wrapped up in some 1978 bullshit that I never make it back to 2024. And while that can seem enticing, the lack of family support and real roots in that time period leaves me feeling very out of place a lot of times driving around. If I got stuck there, it’d be way worse. And I guess once I started thinking about, “What if one of my vans got stolen?” from the Food City parking lot, it dawned on me that while I was galivanting around robbing stores in West Virginia or cruising in a van or looking for shit to get into somewhere further away, that would be massively fucked up to come back to Pikeville and see my time machine Chevelle gone. I’d be trapped, and limited to whatever I had on hand. I’d have to get a job in that time and live the rest of my life in the past, which would absolutely suck. A lot of people act like they might want that, but it’d drive them crazy if they actually had to do it. Trust me… visiting for a day or two is more than enough.

SONG OF THE DAY: Go Steady (kudzu'd)

Futurism always seems to be set in space, and in positions of authority, or at least controlling the destiny. I’ve been thinking about true funk Southern Gothicc Futurism is gonna be right here where I already am, not in space, not escaping the mess already created, but living with what’s left of the messes that got left behind. There’s never any science fiction about the kitchen workers on a spaceship, always the officers. Give me a thousand page novel of the random stormtrooper on the Death Star, fourth generation stormtrooper, don’t even like them fuckers but didn’t have no choices in life so just ended up being a stormtrooper, but before the Death Star got blow up, he could tell the vibes were off, and went awol with a few co-conspirators, and they’re living on one of them junk planets, just vibing, banging on old gas tanks to make a beat, building synthesizers out of spare parts, pitch shifted theremins the size of radio transmission towers with old cranes dangling a wrecking ball to adjust the sounds. That’s what I envision my Southern Gothicc Futurism to be, right here, down in the woods, or over there, too. My mother just passed, so I finally get to go back to the woods I fucked around in as a kid, and the old Chevelle carcass is there that I wrote all these myths about it being a time machine that goes to the Food City in Pikeville, Kentucky, so I can get with that environment again, too. The time machine is broke right now, but I can fix it. It’s gonna take a decade or so though, but I got time, even if I don’t.

SONG OF THE DAY: Drip Drop

Another Cadillac spaceship banger perfect for time traveling because the audio is skewed ever so wonderfully as the 4th dimension recalibrations happen upon re-entry to earthly atmosphere. If you've never experienced it, it's like the sound of having done 17 whip-its all at once, but it doesn't hurt your head and feels like you just dove off a cliff into deep mountain spring. Pretty great, except for the realization that, "Oh fuck, here I am back to my normal base life, back to work, no more playing dominoes with 1971 Pam Grier lookalike in Dayton, Ohio, motel." Hate that shit.

SONG OF THE DAY: I'll Keep Searching

Often I think about being Time Machine True in my own personal behaviors, so that if we end up with time machines for regular people (and not just space lords), I’ve acted throughout my life in a way that won’t cause me to end up murdering myself. One of the biggest adjustments to time travel is going to be figuring out fourth dimensional consequences, and there’s going to be so many cases of time travel suicide, where older versions of yourself come into the future to murder you for being a sellout, or newer versions of yourself go back and kill older versions of yourself for being a dumbass. It seems like if you killed your older self, your newer self wouldn’t exist anymore, but that’s likely not how that shit is gonna work, and there’s going to be a whole bunch of each of us running around a whole bunch of universes, you know, the string theories. I’m honestly not smart enough to figure all that shit out, but I would like to take a time machine to like 1977 or 2429 or whatever. I mean, I figure if time machines become more common, and I actually get one, it’s likely going to be a raggedy time machine, with a cracked windshield, that can only go to like five states around here, and only go back or forward 75 years, so I’d probably have to limit myself, so that I don’t accidentally break down in 1958 Charleston, West Virginia, or some fucked up shit like that.
But even in acknowledging my own intellectual limitations when it comes to four dimensional existence, I do know it’s fairly easy to be Time Machine True, meaning always act in a way that no other version of myself would be so ashamed of he has to kill. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done some stupid and ignorant shit, but I’ve tried to learn from it, and have that be part of my growth as a human. So I have to assume, with my limited intellect, that bodes better for four dimensional existence, should that become a reality I’m confronted with at some point. I think that’s important, and often think, “What would 17 year old Raven think about this?” or “What would 79 year old Raven suggest I do here?” It’s helped me tremendously to take into consideration their feelings and input, and also know when I should give them suggestions. Shit, 9 year old Raven is way more at ease now that I’ve been telling him for a couple years that shit’s gonna eventually work out, don’t get too stressed. I wish that little motherfucker had a time machine so he could see it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Candy

I was introduced to this song first as a sample used by 8Ball & MJG, but then that same song as heard a thousand Screw tapes, so that the regular speed 8Ball & MJG song sounds fucked up to me. But then a lot of Cameo tracks show up here or there on the full DJ Screw tape selections, so I either got used to listening to a version of it on a Screw tape, or I played the 45 myself on slow too much. Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and to be honest, I’m not even sure I have that specific Cameo 45, but I know I got a few of them, and I only play 45s at 33 speed, because the world’s spinning fast enough as it is. And yet here is the regular version of the Cameo song “Candy” at regular speed, and it’s pretty fuckin’ great. Ultimately, I think the in order for humans to better adjust to time travel, and navigating a fourth dimension, we have to let go of this notion that everything should enjoyed at regular speed. What even is regular?

SONG OF THE DAY: I'd Rather Be With You

Now That’s What I Call Love Songs For Big Women And The Goofy-Assed Men That Love Them, Volume 8, was always in heavy rotation around the time machine parts factory I worked at outside of Kenbridge for a couple months in the spring of 1998. We made kerfufflic coils, and I was managed by a guy who had Rudy on his name patch but everybody called him Toots, and he was chill I guess, so far as managers go, but there was a big rush in people trying to refurbish old time machines in that period before Y2K, and I definitely didn’t have the same grasp on kerfufflic coils back then that I do now, so I kinda hated that job. I mean, I’d still hate it, because all we did was making a tiny coil for old time machines, no time travel involved, in fact, it was really quite boring. I think minimum wage was still around $5, because I know they paid us $9 an hour, which was actually great money for Kenbridge back then, but I’d complain, “Sitting here making shit for a fuckin’ time machine, making $9 an hour,” and Toots would go, “Shit boy, that’s double minimum wage. You way too much college boy sometimes.”
He was probably right. College changed me. I wasn’t Southside Virginia anymore, briefly tricked into having dreams and hopes which replaced getting high at lunch (we all need our delusions). But Toots controlled the boombox, and he kept Now That’s What I Call Love Songs For Big Women And The Goofy-Assed Men That Love Them, Volume 8, bumping regularly. If you’ve ever seen me do my weird, shit-eating grin shuffle dance/creep thing, I learned that from Toots. New guy always had to sweep up at the end of the shift, which meant me the entire couple months I worked there, and Toots would just shuffle dance across the concrete factory warehouse floor with 15 minutes left in the shift, singing, “Time to sweep up, boy… time to sweep up all this shit. Time to sweep up, boy… get that push broom Raven.” That was my favorite part of the day, him dancing and singing, me pushing the thick bristled push broom forward, with a whoosh, then a lifting THUMP to quake the dirt out of it, before pulling back for another big whooshing push, all of it going to the middle, everything moving to the center, then dust panning all the day’s dirt out of existence, like none of it ever happened. We’d all stand around that last couple minutes, boombox still blasting, shooting the shit, waiting for Toots to get up and hit stop on the boombox. Clock on the wall was five minutes slower than him, but we went by Toots watch, even though he didn’t wear one that I ever saw. But he’d hit stop, and the first musical silence of the day meant we all grabbed our coats and started heading to the door. He’d be standing there waiting to lock up.
I didn’t quit officially, just stopped going, because I woke up the next day and didn’t feel like keeping down that particular dead end, hoping for a different dead end to get lost on. I was the last one out that last day I went in though, and as I walked past, and Toots moved to lock the door walking out behind me, he sang sort of so I could hear but also just as much to entertain himself, “Have a good night, motherfuckin’ college boy.”

MY F1RST T1M3 M4CH1N3 W4S 4N...

my first time machine was an 
old Chevelle Supersport left 
to rust in Meherrin woods 

SONG OF THE DAY: Wallet Won't Fold

My wallet won’t fold… too full of grocery store IMPORTANT CUSTOMER cards. Not to brag but they send me individually selected special deals JUST FOR ME every fuckin’ week, right in my inbox, which is a digital mailbox of sorts. Took my time machine back and tried to explain this shit to my great grandma but she was just like “what the fuck?” except some other word because they weren’t allowed to have fuck as a word back then yet. She asked me if I could get her some cornmeal because they just don’t get good quality cornmeal at the store there, and I told her sure but told her it cost like $4 and she was like, “what the fuck?” again but with that other word, “Four dollars? I’m not trying to go to Europe for it.” She’s funny. I always steal something when I visit to come back and sell at the vintage store, that’s how I can afford organic vegetables at the grocery store.

SONG OF THE DAY: Loc'in On The Shaw

Tone Loc's tape gets overlooked a lot because he's seen as a one hit wonder by our fickle ass culture, even though he was still making music, voicing cartoon dogs, and getting into shootouts with the Boo-Yaa Tribe years later. Before The Dust Brothers got famous helping hone that wild ass Paul's Boutique sound for the Beastie Boys, they worked on Tone Loc's first album, which means there's all these amazing but forgotten beats. "Loc'in On The Shaw" is exactly that too, one of those "let's ride forever" beats that a person can freestyle to for at least 7000 miles before getting tired. I once woke up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and my alarm clock ipod randomly played this to wake me up, so I called in sick, and took a leisurely drive west, ending up in Montevideo, Uruguay, thirty-seven years later, having lived three lives along the way, in eastern Kentucky, the borderlands near McAllen, Texas, and finally in Montevideo, walking to see matches played at Estadio Cenentario when possible, sight of the first World Cup, spray painting haiku on alley walls in my horrible mangled Spanglish. Finally, I had to work on Monday, so I drove back home, playing the beat almost the entire way back as well, but deciding when near Texas to play DJ Screw's Syrup & Soda mixtape instead. When I got to Virginia though, I was worried my racist ancestors would be mad, so I put on some Willie Nelson for the last stretch. All of that happened in 2018, which shows you the timelessness of these beats lost on a Tone Loc album nobody will listen to because they think all he did was "Wild Thing".

TR4V3L1NG TH3 Z0N3S 0F T1M3...

 traveling the zones of time - 
no minute's ever wasted 
unless you're watching the clock 

SONG OF THE DAY: Sky Turned Cry

Humans are highly melodramatic animals, bless-cursed with synapses sparks that suggest there is purpose to existence beyond simply existing. Because of this, humans will lament the smashing together of their broken systems, which have long been failing them in any deep or meaningful sense, and indulge worried proclamations of end times, which are not even true callings of an observed event on the horizon, but just the cries of child creatures hoping to scare away their own fears in the dark of what they cannot comprehend. These are not human systems of existence breaking apart, but human systems of comfort, which not everybody even has anyways. American prosperity got a better view of the world by stepping a jackboot on the throat of the global South, which has continued to this day. Anti-everything activists make their social media calls to arms and plot their secretive signal conspiracies on handheld computers full of conflict minerals, exploited labor, and innate material privilege. Nothing is ending. The something you think needs fixing never existed in the first place, beyond the schoolbook lessons sown into your young fertile minds anywhere on the planet from the most tender and pliable age.

I have helped procreate three children, the oldest of which I remember wondering if it as appropriate or not to watch George Bush the Younger give televised justifications for wars on the global South after Hulk Hogan kicked over the towers on 9/11, when he joined the New World Order for good (but bad), while they were just a toddler. Back then, they were she, because pronouns were binary and we hadn’t all been distracted by a google of digital streams to confuse our own innate stream of consciousness. The younger two of my offspring have lived in a confusing and unsettling time. A thing I always tell them (once they are old enough to handle this, and I don’t think I’ve said it to the youngest yet, who is only 12 still) is that even if we have population cataclysm, and 80% of humans die off in a decade, that’s still a billion people on this planet. People will keep walking into the future, stubbornly, and piecing together new shelter from the rubble, and slowly rebuilding that shelter into something comfortable, and repeating the same settled patterns humans have done ever since they stopped wandering and planted corn in abnormal rows.

“Why not you?” I ask my children, because fuck it, somebody has to live through tomorrow. I’ll do my best to trudge into as much future as I can, but my knees and ankles ache more than they used to, and if it’s too cold and damp, I get a limp to my right hip a little bit, like god has slapped a metaphysical ankle monitor on me to keep me from running away too far too fast. That’s how age does. But fuck it, I can stubbornly walk more miles than most hominid creatures half my age too tethered to rapidly deteriorating notions of home, which are starting to have those diminishing returns of empire’s that are still trying to ride the ripples of splashes from previous eras. The names given to the land I live on might change – no government is eternal, and fuck it, I might even have a handful of aliases to go by myself, depending on the circumstance, but the end ain’t fucking here yet. Not today, not in November, not in the next decade, never. Time is bullshit – just those same ripples of empire trying to force order and productivity and industrial mindset onto once natural human beings. Even if I die, it’s not the end, so fuck it… I’m gonna keep walking.

SONG OF THE DAY: g01n' d0wn sl0w

The act of screwing previously recognizable music is an intentional act of sabotage upon the defining shackles of accepted time management. The concept of time is taught to us at a very young age in order to stifle our innate desire to play and wander and roam and explore life, and is the beginning of tethering our human existence to the mechanistic expectations of productivity. The creative act of song composition, as originally done, was potentially a shot at breaking free of these confines, but generally speaking if you’ve heard a song from back in the day, it was already compromised and perverted by the materialistic and exploitative actions of the music industry. Why would anyone make an “industry” of music? What a horrible idea.

Taking this original composition and then further fucking it up, altering the speeds at which it is heard adds nuance, and also resists the notion that an accepted standardized length is the only one acceptable. The single beginning length can be altered longer or shorter (longer is always better in my opinion, it jibes with my personality which has been baked into loving sloth by the southern humidity for over four decades). It is often argued that the human mind won’t be able to handle time travel, because we are three-dimensional creatures (x-axis, y-axis, z-axis… so firm in this belief we make them the end of our alphabet) and time travel is a fourth-dimension, where you exist along multiple points on the time continuum. I’d suggest even further that true transcendence of three-dimensional slavery is to accept there are no longer even points on that space-time continuum, to be charted like a colonizer’s map, but instead just the full oneness of time itself. This is the abolition of time, and true freedom. Fuck your clocks, and fuck your appointments, and fuck your expectations that I be “on time”. I am always on time, simply by being alive.

T1M3 TR4V3L1NG 4DV3NTVR3S...

time traveling adventures

of Dirtgod and Pam Grier,

in our Impala spaceship

TH3 1LLVS10N 0F R1GHT N0W...

the illusion of right now

often gets overwhelming;

disappear for a long walk

T13D T00 T1GHTLY T0 TH3 P4ST...

tied too tightly to the past

stifles future endeavors;

remain lost in blind todays

SONG OF THE DAY: 224 May Block

the stress and tension of fourth dimension which you get trapped in but don’t exist

time travel demanded of working ass struggling to pass the hourly clocks test

but ain’t got no time machine, never enough time, never enough money

wish I had clones to send out and work for me, repeat the failures of colonial thought

a hundred, then a thousand, then a million enslaved versions of me

enslaved by the most powerful me

but of course

if I had that technology, for time travel or cloning, I’d be struggling to make payments

like everything else, and it becomes easy to see why so many

turn to illegitimate practices in this system

which is not broken

but relentless

demanding more more more more more more

and offering less less less less

lessening the quality of being alive

until you’re not even sure any more

and the nihilistic fantasies of blasting everything in sight

start to feel dreamy and lucid

within the relentless fog

of free dumb

thought

T4K1NG 4N0TH3R TR1P B4CK...

taking another trip back

to the Pikeville, Kentucky,

Food City in time machine