SONG OF THE DAY: Is It My Body

I still listen to Alice Cooper, though to be honest, it's the Alice Cooper Band. The real decline in Alice Cooper music happened when it became just the guy Alice Cooper as opposed to the Alice Cooper Band. I bet the guy Alice Cooper is a flat earther or Covid hoaxer or some crazy shit, so I'm not gonna look it up. Nobody comment either. Ever again. Nobody ever comment on anything online ever again, for all our sake.

3V3N TH3 M0ST B4S1C F0LKS...

even the most basic folks 
got artistic gibberish 
inside them; it gets stifled 

SONG OF THE DAY: Breaking Up Somebody's Home

Another anthem to poor choices, which sometimes are our only choices. We all must play the cards dealt to us, even if we know we're doomed. One can't fold when they were born already all-in. (Also, let this be yet another example of how Hi Records from back in the day did not fuck around.)

WH3N3V3R 1'M S1TT1NG 0N...

whenever I'm sitting on 
back porch, it's in purple light; 
chop and screw environments 

SONG OF THE DAY: I Like It (Soul Synopsis Mix)

Black Friday is a cruel joke when you're flat broke. Y'all can extend the once in a lifetime deals all you want, this man living this lifetime is irrelevant to your messaging. It'd be nice if I could block it or cut y'all off, but I can't, because our system is one of incessant messaging causing neurological damage which makes one consume an identity of self. Well fuck y'all. I'm putting on some chill music and going the fuck outside.

C3LLVL4R M3M0R13S 0F...

cellular memories of 
self-medication to aid 
fade into oblivion 

S4D H0W TH3Y T1LL3D 1 N33D T0...

 

sad how they tilled "I need to 
be more productive" thinking 
into the back of my brain 

SONG OF THE DAY: Listen To My Song

Darondo makes me want to fuck. Not creepy power fucking or weird collecting Pokemons fucking but good ol' greasy fucking in purple lights, everybody involved being all about it, no hidden agendas or hang-ups, everything out. It's a fucked up world right now, although maybe it's always been this fucked up, here or there, and it's all relative. Either way, there's enough art to make us feel like shit, to make us feel hopeless, to make us feel inspired to aspire to motivationally inspirate. Good ol' fucking art gets left out the conversation, which is unfortunate, because damn if we don't all need some serotonin still. And if you're out there not getting that serotonin release, stuck in a situation where it doesn't happen, or you accidentally ended up in a routine where the other side of the bed realized they don't like your type no more, recognize it's a big ol' world out here. Somebody wants to fuck you, in a most wonderful way.

C0NT1NV0VSLY P3RPL3X3D...

 

continuously perplexed 
by how we stacked all these bricks 
into boxes we don't like 

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".

FR33D0M'S JVST 4N0TH3R W0RD...

 

"freedom's just another word 
for nothing left to lose" tat 
across my pineal gland 

SONG OF THE DAY: Angel From Montgomery

I ain’t much on Sturgill Simpson, on the surface because his music felt like that forced “I’m different than regular country music” style anti-country music. “Even a black sheep is still a sheep” is a saying that has stuck with me about being too reactionary forces you to be attached to that which you’re reacting to. But beyond the surface level, he wears a cop mustache, which I never trust, even ironically, but especially in his case because his dad was actually a narcotics officer in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. You should not ironically be looking like a cop when your dad was an actual cop, and one of the most dishonest and deceitful sort. But Sturgill Simpson does, and I’m supposed to trust that. What my father taught me might’ve been discombobulated, chaotic, and filtered through the haze of drugs and alcohol, but one thing I remember clearly is DON’T TRUST COPS, OR PEOPLE WHO TRUST COPS.

I say all this because they had some sort of bullshit country music awards show a few weeks back, and some people had retweeted a Sturgill Simpson opinion about how disappointed he was at the fake ass country music awards show, they didn’t take a minute to mention the deaths of John Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker. Of course he positioned it in that cooler than thou light, that he only watched for a few minutes to see if they did it, not like he watched the whole fake ass thing. Of course he watched the whole thing though. But it’s also not like the fake country music industry gave a lot of love to guys like Prine, Hubbard, and Walker while they were alive, to be honest. Why would you expect different in death? Country music has always been fake as fuck, but since the ‘90s, after the rise of Garth Brooks in Nashville, it’s turned into even more of a mechanistic churning out of neurological trickery that sounds like music, behaves like music, so it must be music, when in actuality it’s just Wal-Mart muzak meant to market the American Empire. And it’s worked. The majority of people who consider themselves "country” are more likely to identify with sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot than sitting by a creek, and they consider that to be what country means, especially when the Lowes is right there too. Wal-Mart/Lowes combination strip mall developments are a thousand times more country than a tobacco field in 2020 – ain’t no recount on that vote, because that’s how the majority feels.

So Sturgill Simpson taking his social media soapbox stance against the ever-present hypocrisy of country music industry just made me think, “lol, of course Sturgill Simpson did that.” His whole angle is positioning himself as a manufactured black sheep in opposition to the regular sheep. And he’d be played heavily at hipster breakfast restaurants in gentrifying spaces right now, if it wasn’t for the pandemic.

Anyways, John Prine died from complications related to Covid, which of course all those Wal-Mart parking lot country folk don’t think is real. All the sheep think they’re black sheep, overthrowing the wolves, but it’s just a bunch of fucking sheep, rambling around in various strip mall parking lots, lost in the buzz of late capitalist empire.

4LL TH3S3 N0 TR3SP4SS1NG S1GNS...

all these no trespassing signs 
have little authority 
with nobody else around 

SONG OF THE DAY: Colors

Stayed up too late the other night watching Boyz In Tha Hood again. My kid came down for a late night snack, and starting interrupting and asking questions, right when Tre and Ricky were in the alley and Ricky got shot. My kid’s like, “You look like you’re about to cry?” I was like, “Damn, Ricky just got shot.” I told her the basic layout of Tre, Ricky, and Doughboy, then she goes back into the kitchen. As she comes back out, they’re putting Ricky in the Impala to take home, and my kid goes, “Is that Bread?” I’m like what? She goes, “Bread? Dough? Whatever it was?” And then we talked about the plastic on the furniture at Ricky and Doughboy’s house for a few minutes before she got bored with my existence, like any tween would with their dad watching some old ass movie, and left again.

TH3 HVM4N BR41N K33PS TH1NK1NG...

the human brain keeps thinking 
it has to do something, it 
has to get somewhere - fools task 

TH3 P0W3R 0F L0VNG3 D03SN'T...

the power of lounge doesn't 
look like much, because it's not; 
somehow, that's hard to maintain 

CVLT1V4T1NG MY 1NN3R...

cultivating my inner 
weed mentality - fuck it, 
I'm gonna grow wherever 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mosquito Loco

Fuck it, no write up with this one. Just the most annoying beautiful cumbia song that was ever made (as far as I know). If you have MAGA neighbors, TURN IT UP LOUD AS FUCK, and shoot your guns into the ceiling. Or at least have a barrel fire. I've been in this new home of mine for almost three months, and still ain't got no burn barrel. Neighbors down below me by the river are burning trash, detritus, and scrap limbs every Friday night. Got the sky filled with trash fog now. And me up here, looking simple, ain't even got a burn barrel. Damn. Played myself again.

TH3 SVNS3T 4ND SVNR1S3 L00K...

 

the sunset and sunrise look 
similar, just coming from 
two different perspectives 

SONG OF THE DAY: Samuri Da Yan Matan

Walking the narrow road of “holding my shit together” in a society that seems hell bent on squeezing as much literal blood from folks stoned by hopelessness. I’ve wrestled with guilt lately for having brung children into this world, who will have to survive it after I’m gone. Haha, what a swerve – previous generations looked forward to playing with their grandchildren, and I’m sitting here feeling guilty I gave life to my children. I mean, I know it’s all perspective, and maybe all those times I stood in front of people babbling about how we don’t actually get to an end, there’s no wall that says “It’s over” for humanity, but that stubborn and persistent souls keep pushing forward. I guess I don’t feel that stubborn, or persistent right now, which also is probably normal, because we’ve been living in this fucked up purgatory, hiding from potential illness, as well as medical debt in America, and I still ain’t dug out from the debt that came about years ago.
That’s what’s so depressing about life in America now – it’s a burden to be alive. Most of us are losing money every day we remain alive, with no hope of that figure ever changing, so no wonder suicides are rising and people feel guilty for procreating. I just want to sink into a cocoon for three months, be left the fuck alone, zero expectations from anybody, and come back out with the redbuds, and see how shit feels at that point. But I can’t, because in America any day you don’t at least tread water to where it’s risen, you get flooded a little bit more. I can’t wait for this country to dissolve from what it is now. It’s going to be a great relief to a lot of people, even though it feels scary since it’s all we’ve ever known. But this shit ain’t working no more.

TH3 L3SS0NS 0F GR4FF1T1...

the lessons of graffiti - 
yesterdays get covered up, 
but also builds foundation 

SONG OF THE DAY: Why Do Everything Happen To Me

The guy that puts out the vegetables at the Food Lion in Scottsville is never wearing a mask over his mouth and nose, just sort of dangling, strapped to his chin, usually with a shit-eating grin on his face. I’m not the type to snitch to a manager, and the manager there has that redneck hip hop dude from 1991 who got a woman pregnant and is gonna do right by her the rest of his life look anyways, so he probably wouldn’t even care the guy wasn’t wearing his mask, and would just do that, “Look man, people complained. You just gotta be cool about it.” And fuckface would still be wearing his mask as a chin strap a week later.
The weird thing about our culture – if you can call it that – is how proudly stupid people have become. Even smart people. Shit everybody. If our culture is anything it’s one of self-importance, where we think we have to share our goddamn idiot thoughts on every single subject on social media. And then trending topics force us to give opinions about shit we didn’t even think about or care about otherwise. And it all gets to feel so stupid and overwhelming that when I’m trying to get through the stupid fucking Food Lion during a pandemic with rising numbers, and just grab the things I need, and I see the idiot pear-shaped redneck produce man standing there looking like a goddamn cartoon warning against electrocuting yourself from 1949, setting bags of onions out, I just wanna stomp him and the whole world into pulp. But I can’t, and don’t. I just buy my useless shit and go home, like everybody else, until the credit behind my name runs out, and I’m sleeping in the cold earth again.

TH0S3 WH0 P4SS10N4T3LY GR1P...

those who passionately grip 
at the past get trapped thinking 
tomorrow won't have sunshine 

SONG OF THE DAY: I Wanna Be Where You Are (Underboss Remix)

Yesterday, left work early to go walk through the yard and scribble my dumb shit into the industrial æther, performing such hits as "November in Railroad Earth", "Southern Inshallah", and "Nature Boy Whooo". After that, as the sun set, meandered in the direction of the new moon's silver sliver through the cybertron power lines carrying buzz over the Blue Ridge, and went to the nearly abandoned mall in Staunton, presumably to scope out old magazines at the junk book store that has overtaken the former J.C. Penney end, spreading into the concourse even. But they'd gotten rid of all the magazines, except for piles of National Geographics. I looked through the survivalism and art and photography sections, and almost bought a classic on ninja invisibility by Dr. Haha Lung, but chose not to, even though my girlfriend had store credit I could use. Is it true ninja invisibility to purchase a book on store credit in a dying American mall? I actually walked through, trying to find a bathroom. There was the inner side of the military surplus store, looking like it had cool shit inside but also that I might have to fight somebody for even considering to wear a mask. Not much else left in this mall other than a Jesus thrift store, cell phone shop, and the saddest Bath and Body Works I think I ever saw, like still hanging on but running with decor from four seasons ago maybe. My youngest loves that store so I've been in them way more than I care to admit, but fuck man, this one was doomed, beyond life support, just waiting for somebody to add the right function column to a spreadsheet in some far off building and go, "Wait! Why the fuck do we still have a store in Staunton?" and then it'll be gone too.
Nowhere to go, nothing to be, so I meandered my way back on 11, then 250, in the early evening winter night time, taking pictures of dying strip mall stores with bright lights but dead dreams. Stopped at the Sheetz, where of course covid doesn't exist for these rednecks, who aren't even rednecks anymore but some weird suburban wannabe hybrid that was steeped more deeply in the internet than back roads, and when their drunk uncle took them to the river to sit there and drink and get high, they must've been looking at social media more than the river, because these folks ain't rednecks, or country. But they also don't wear masks, and walk around like too many roosters in a chicken pen, so I wanna slit their throats, because that's how I was raised when there's too many useless fucking roosters strutting around the chicken pen, making things hard for everybody else.
Sadly, I'm probably wrong, and that is "country" in what this country is now - all of us penned up in our chicken runs, too many goddamned self-important roosters flapping around, making noise all the fucking time but got no real fight to them, and would die in the wild with the quickness. Me too. There's a dude living down below me by the river, and I walk past him and we go "hey!" at each other, but two or three nights down there in the cold November Blue Ridge foothills nights would destroy me. I'm too weak for this shit, to be dealing with all these dumbass roosters and dying malls and machetes that aren't sharp enough to cut through bone and winter in America.
Strangely, the military surplus store had lockers for rent on the concourse, with proceeds going to the Dolly Parton Literary Fund. It seemed interesting the store that appeared to believe antifa was a George Soros-funded militia, also supported Dolly Parton charities, but I have to remember not every living person gets feed the same digital stream of memes I do. They may not realize Dolly is a lesbian at heart, and rides rainbow candy-painted Harley Davidsons over the new moon every month. But also, who is going to use a locker at the mall? Only thing I could think of was nearly homeless people, who are likely not far from that mall, by the looks of things. I also tried to find a bathroom, which was at the far desolate end, by the movie theater I couldn't tell if it was actually operational or not, but also some claw machines, all by themselves. The bathrooms were blocked off with warning tape, and had OUT OF ORDER written on them. I started to walk away but a black dude popped out of some lavender bakery place and was like, "Oh you can use it, man. I was just trying to clean it up. It was fucked up in there." "Alright. I'll try not to mess it up," I answered. "Oh, you ain't got to worry 'bout it; you're good."
The floor was still wet, and my boots left black marks on the floor, and I felt horrible about it. He popped out as I was walking off and said, "Take it easy!" and I said thanks and also took it easy as best I could.
The whole thing was sad, because we're all out here still trying to feel good, still trying to survive, and I'm not sure where all the people who can afford things are. Downtown Staunton has become more gentrified, housing prices going up, pushing people into the suburban areas, which are spiraling downward, like that mall. Some lady was sitting at the desk and said over the PA that the mall was closing at six and to wrap up your shopping. I thought the book store was open til 8, but I also didn't want to find out if they were going to kick me out or not, because it gave me an excuse not to disappear like Dr. Haha Lung. So I did.
Also, I did not break up my conversation with the dude who cleaned the bathroom into multiple paragraphs, because it was all one conversation, and just like with malls, and American flags, and "country" people at the Sheetz, that 1950s shit doesn't apply anymore. Sorry, that's just how shit is.