r i v z p

the way I think: together
we shall blemish the world with
beautiful nonsense; that's it

f e n c h

weight-lifting, bible-thumping
dude used to be metalhead
bro back in our teenage days

p n t a a

wandering old hospital
corridors, sterilized and
disinfected of all soul

g r f a s

a kid's simple scribble, but
with shaky spray can right hand,
left behind abandoned house

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 Intro

June is here and June is almost gone and it is the beginning of summer though summer humidity arrives earlier and earlier each year it seems as I get older, and I am accustomed to putting in the window units earlier without hassle because the Owl and the River cannot function well in extreme heat, though it upsets me because I do not like the catacomb nature of an old farmhouse with window units loaded up like homemade hollow points in a six-shooter, as the house becomes separate from the outside. The AC in my truck died and I am refusing to fix it because I feel that if the faith of science is informing us correctly for once on this global warming trend, then it is my duty as a human being of the animal world to condition myself as much as possible to harsh heat waves, to initiate the process of adaptation so that my offspring - even though I am done with that - are more apt to survive. Most of us fat, smooth-handed Americans live a conditioned air lifestyle, from vehicle pod to workplace cubicle to home environment, all of it with air reconditioned and cooled or heated to dull our sensory spectrum.
So it is June, it is hot, and it is storming. Rivers are flooding and nuclear plants are exploding. Man is dying and man is adapting. I say to you dear friend of Rojonekku, take yourself outside, sit in the sun, listen to some music, sweat, suffer, remove articles of clothing (as much as you feel comfortable with), enjoy yourself - and by that I mean your "self". If you live close enough, go dip yourself in the re-ionizing waters of the various oceans on this earth, though you should probably beware of the Pacific because the full impact of Fukushima is not yet known, and will probably never be revealed until we are all dead, and then the last ten people will have the last remaining bureaucratic overlord admit some mistakes and then shoot three of the people to feed the other seven. Or more likely shoot seven to feed three.
The symbolic frenzy of 4th of July is almost upon us in America, and as you pretend to be free - and that is no political statement or me trying to be all "lolol sheeple" at you - try to be free. Detach from your smart phone shackles, and unplug as much as possible inside the house. Carry an old chunk of bald tire, preferably without exposed steel cables. The rubber is a great blocker of harmful EMF rays. In fact, I encourage you all to make homemade sandals out of an old tire just like an old Vietnamese lady would do, and just walk down whatever road you live on that hopefully doesn't have so much traffic you could get killed by a logging truck. I prefer night time strolls along the median strips of the interstate because it's a calmly wild place with very little, if any, large threatening wild life, and there's a strange meditative nature to getting pricked by blackberry bushes and sharp pine needles when you are hiding from what might be a cop while a constant mechanical bzzzz and rush of machines goes on along both sides of you. This is very much like conditioning yourself by sitting outside in the sun, yet you are conditioning yourself for the world we are already trapped in. The best access points are wherever the interstate overpasses a lower road or train track or river with two separate bridges, because often times you can climb up the embankment between bridges from underneath without jeopardizing yourself to Predator Drone attacks by crossing the actual interstate asphalt, which is speckled with the glass shards of obsolete slave eyeballs.
FIRST UP: A band so simple in nature that it gave itself the simplest of names!

m u d a z

you wander far enough off
the grid, man becomes wildlife
as much as anything else

t r e z t

some hug trees for power; I
lean against boxcars and soak up
man's beautiful madness

g r f a q

born, bred, buttered, and battered;
back road scattered and smothered
but still strutted and swaggered

c a r z p

blogospheric writers are
toys, weaving elaborate
false impressions, wasting times

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #1: "Tennessee Pusher" by Old Crow Medicine Show

Old Crow Medicine Show are part of that tour circuit jam bandy old timey genre, of which I am usually suspect, being I live around Charlottesville where there's more than a few faux-country hipsters strolling around in vintage shirts and straw hats with smooth-lined faces that lack the pain and torture of actually struggling. I automatically can't stand that shit - and this has been a running theme of my words forever really, way back to when I did The Confederate Mack, at one point trying to brandish my white trash heritage as a badge of honor, back before that was really a thing people did, and then realizing that when shit like that happens, the masses latch on for the ride, and you end up with guys like Johnny Knoxville and Shooter Jennings on your pop cultural commodities. So I resent people pretending they are some sort of grown up white trash of an odd vintage year like 1979 or 1982 or whatever the fuck they find first at the thrift store. And I fully realize this makes me judge and sometimes hate things that are maybe authentic, but hey, I can accept that in the process of self-preservation. I don't need somebody to tell me about that shit or that life, as I wrestle with it daily. Shit, that conflict is the daily struggle between opposing forces in my life, as I don't have the god-fearing good vs. evil. I have "if you become one of those people you are a sell-out" vs. "those people pretending to be what I am piss me off" - and neither one exactly allows me long-term personal success.
So yeah, this song leads me to believe somebody in this group had a crazy uncle who snorted crank lines off of Molly Hatchet mirrors from the county fair, and that makes me feel more comfortable listening to it over and over, which I did at one point. O.C.M.S. has blurred together in my digital library, and I basically remember that every CD has a couple of really great songs, a couple that sound like Emmett Otter's Jugband, and some real boring ass things. But I don't look too hard at it, since I like them, and just assume that all their great songs are off of their first full-length CD, and then they quit drinking and got a real job and started making music that was okay but not really the same. Kind of like my writing.
STEAL "Tennessee Pusher"
NEXT MONTH: Same as it ever was!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #2: "All By Myself" by Haystak

Haystak gets not much love so far as I know about, probably because he is a fat and ugly white dude who has always rapped about same base sensory shit, unapologetically, and has never pushed the whiteboy guilt angle too hard. Hell, he even made three records that comprised a White Boy Trilogy. I've got no problem with this because fuck it man, white people are white people, and we are not necessarily the polar opposite of the wretched of the earth. In fact, many of us ARE the wretched of the earth, waiting like all the rest of the oppressed for our turn to inherit the earth, not realizing the overlords are strip mining of all great value on their way out this atmosphere into space via German engineering deals made with aliens the same time we were busy splitting atoms.
This song is my all-time favorite by Haystak, because usually he's on some party party party wind up the night either with a honeydip or at the Waffle House tip, so when he busts into mellow man introspective mode, this is close to outlaw country music as hip hop gets - fiercely independent, and not giving a fuck. It actually surprises me Haystak doesn't have a ton more music like this, growing up in the shadow of Music Row in Nashville and all. And while Yelawolf is getting the Shady Records hype every now and then in magazine pictures and prominent music blog postings, Haystak has quietly been that country ass white rapper for over a decade. He can't twist a tongue like Yelawolf, and he never had a hit as big as Bubba Sparxxx did with Timbaland providing musical MSG for the masses behind him; but ain't no other southern white rapper ever made a song like this - chill enough for funerals, but hype enough to keep the Budweisers flowing around the pool table in the dirtbag club on a Friday night.
Perhaps part of the problem with me loving this song so much is me missing the dirtbag in my life. Since I quit drinking and have a fucking responsible ass job, my inner-caveman ain't getting fed. I feel a rebellion coming up inside of me, and I'd like to keep it off the self-destructive end of the spectrum, but hey... sometimes you've got to have forest fires to clear out all the brush.
STEAL "All By Myself"
NEXT: Another song about Tennessee, and one I thought should've been in Winter's Bone!

t r k a k

sad but beautiful redneck
chick slow drags a cigarette
with shoulder tattoos exposed

p i g z l

pig smoker smoking all day; old
dudes chilling, conversation
meanders in slow circles

o w l a c

got some raven medicine
ramping up strongly as this
world settles into next phase

r a v e h

mind running in circles; noose
tightens, neck turning purple;
when does struggling seem worthwhile

p h n a a

phoenix rose from the ashes
of my old man's passing; I
feel our auras intertwined

g y p a f

I miss clicking polaroids
of my life - immediate,
oddly-colored square boxes

w i n d c

storm rolling in, sky rumbling,
tin roof gonna be tapping
tonight, with windowpane strobes

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #3: "Dirty Old Town" by The Pogues

I used to not like The Pogues because of the type of people who liked The Pogues. I was quite the contrarian. I try to not like too many things that are liked, especially when they are liked by normal people, unless it's something old or obscure, and then it's okay to like it, because it's not like I really like it for what it is. Then, it's more like I like it for what it ain't, which is what there is now, which obviously sucks, and that's why I don't like it.
STEAL "Dirty Old Town"
NEXT: The white Frank Black (as opposed to the black Frank White, who used to play second base for the Kansas City Royals)!

t r k a j

multiple eighteen-wheeler
common law relatives, not
by blood nor legal contracts

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #4: "Lounge Like You Mean It Freestyle Screwed & Chopped Song" by Prolo

I don't really remember when this happened, other than a vague Prolo recording session in the 18 foot camper trailer at one point, but the "lounge like you mean it" line must have been something I was enamored with because it ended up being a Solaris Earth Pipeline CD title. Don't really lose whole windows of things I did anymore now that I don't drink myself up into frenzies, which is good for the most part, but there was a twisted beauty in being as shocked and entertained at what I read as a stranger would be, even though I wrote it. Now I don't write much of anything that speaks to that person that would be that twisted up. Not quite sure whether I'm moving to a next phase or I'm a punk ass bitch that would get killed by my 1999 self in time machine wars or what. I feel like there's a certain impossibility in remaining anti-structure and anti-the way things are without the convenience of being fucked-up by substances, but that could just me trying to flaunt. Hard to say. Shit man, hard to say anything when you get self-aware, and hard to not be self-aware when everyone's got a video camera on their hip and there's cameras pointed in three directions on the corner of most big box commercial neighborhoods. Motherfuckers is facial recognizing me whether I'm self-aware or not.
Completely unrelated to anything, this morning flying in to work, fifteen minutes late, which seems to be my standard time for ten years now, I got stuck behind an old dude and his ol' lady in a faded white Ford Futura, probably a '69, because it looked just like the beige one I used to have in high school. My dad got that car for me from my grandpa for free by installing a new stereo in my aunt's car. I had some times in that car, speaking of fucked-up and twisted, and wrecked it or got it stuck in strange places multiple times, and it never gave up. Actually the biggest wreck I had in it was some other dude's fault down the road from me, and the insurance asshole came out and deemed the Futura totaled, so we got $400 for it (the blue blood value) and my dad and me took off the one busted up fender, hammered it into okay shape, and shit was all good, plus we had $400.
My dad has been dead for a while now, and he was a fucked-up dude in his own right, both bad and good, and caused me a lot of internal stress patterns that I could've done without. But he also taught me how to talk shit with swagger, which is one of my greatest skills, so props to that motherfucker, who was known as Tuna so much that it's on his grave marker, along with a chainsaw image. And when I think about a dude who had a 7th grade education (if that) who was known by street name and died with nothing more symbolic of his life than his ability to work on both two- and four-stroke small engines, and I see where I'm at, even if it ain't far to most, shit man, I done come some long ass soul miles on my pecking across the top of this earth rock. And with Father's Day on my mind because that's the made up holiday going on this weekend, I'm good with what I do with my genetic offsprung little humans, Plug One, Plug Two, and Plug Three. I still can't play an acoustic guitar, but I'm plug tunin' out some sweet sounds.
STEAL "Lounge Like You Mean It"
NEXT: Drunken Irishman music, but hipster and shit!

t r e z r

the eyeballs of my elders
stare down through my thought process -
some of it learned, some beat in

Friday Love/Hate

I portend to hate many things in life at times, and shit has been truly frustrating and tension building in my humble compound for me and the ol' lady, yet I can't say I hate anything for real. It sucks to be surrounded by the emotionally crippled who don't see that in themselves and are all confident they are in a rock solid upright place, when it's obvious to anyone looking in they are fucking disasters at navigating interpersonal relationships. But somehow my wife and I found each other and have enabled ourselves to be ourselves, if that makes any sense. There will always be fleeting physical attractions and chance encounters that tempt a man or woman into stray situations, but I can honestly say that I would not be who I am today without my ol' lady being there, not so much because she made me be anything in any particular way as the stereotype would suggest, but because she enables me to find myself, and actually encourages that shit too, no matter how ridiculous I get. In fact it seems we are both very young on our own ridiculous journeys into personal stratospheres, and yet completely conjoined on those paths at the same time.

I love feeling the aura rays shoot. I love feeling the energetics soak back into me. Walking the freight yard and abandoned power plant and sitting in the field underneath the crazy moons and floating on top of the river waters, these things have infused me. There are many other spots in mind to soak up the energies of this crooked world. I have been running on battery power for a long time, and am weakened considerably (yet still stronger than most, even in this vulnerable 2011 state), but it doesn't take much when you efficient with soaking it back in. It's also fairly amazing to feel these energies for the first time really in my life without the added haze of self-medication. I do not understand why so many people who give up drinking or drugging turn to bullshit religion because submission to a god is a sign of weakness and needing empowerment through others. I feel more fucking powerful than ever, though I ain't not atheist non-believer either. I don't believe in no god that they name, but I don't have faith in science to be telling the whole story either. There was an AM radio "debate" this week I caught part of on the local station that did that, and it was interesting. Actually the god dude had better points because you could tell he was prepared to answer what the science dude would say, with valid and logical questions, although ultimately his ending argument was basically, "how could there not be a god?" which of course is not so logical. Science depends on you having faith in the scientific process, which, with me being a research scientist, I can tell you is not so solid a foundation to be building your life's philosophies upon. Science will push itself as this ultimate authority that cannot be questioned, but that's what god used to do.
I guess I kinda think that there's got to be some sort of power that engineered shit a little, more like a stoned artist than an actual scientific engineer though, and mostly that source of things doesn't give a shit about what we do or what we are. So we evolve and adapt and believe the wacky things our brains think up or studies and fight each other over it. But if you get in a zone and shoot some of your own wacky power back up into the space side of things, sometimes that power - whatever the fuck it is - it catches sight of you and is like, "Oh snap, check out holmes down there doing his thing," and you get a little zap of daps back at you, and you can feel it, and I love that.

f e n c i

honeysuckle vine fence line -
white and yellow blossoms - spring
time aroma therapy

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #5: "Crossroads (screwed & chopped instrumental)" by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony

For a while there, Syrup & Soda was my favorite screwtape I had on the robot machines, but lately the respected classic of June 27th has vibrated back towards the top of my personal list. (Although it should be noted the camper has been plugged in lately and that's where my tape deck is and my actual bonafide DJ Screw tapes that my wife ordered me from the Screw Shop, and there's one there that I can't remember the name of that's awesome as fuck as well. I also found a data disc of Screw tapes I bought off the ebays one time while cleaning out a box the other weekend, and that has like 90 Screw tapes on it.) The thing that makes Screw so much greater than pretty much anybody else who has ever tried to co-opt his codeine-laced slowed down, pre-chopped style of playing music is he has such a great DJ's ear for what sounds good, and what you can just let play and play and play for like nine minutes in a row and nobody will get tired of it. Most DJs - shit man, most humans - can't tap themselves into that higher energy where it feels right and you know how long to go, and then you switch it when it feels necessary. It's how Dickey Betts plays guitar, it's how John Coltrane blew into a saxomophone, and it's how DJ Screw made fucking mixtapes.
This instrumental is the perfect example. He has the regular version of "Crossroads" on this mixtape as well, but still, rocking the instrumental for five minutes makes sense. And I'm sure there were a slew of Screwed-Up Click members milling about, just waiting to throw down a freestyle about this or that (which they did eventually on the B-side of the tape, in the infamous "June 27th freestyle" which sort of makes this tape such a classic... man I wish somebody would make me a screwed and chopped mixtape for my birthday), but Screw just lets the instrumental ride right here. And that piano from "Crossroads" all warbled down to a holy speed, it's so fucking mesmerizing. Not to sound too much like an old man, but I'm not sure the synth-heavy sounds of today's hip hop could get hyped up with the slowed treatment, as the pitch modulation that came about would just get all weird and German clubby most likely.
Anyways, it is Friday and spring time, so if you are planning on maybe eating a handful of mushrooms and going catfishing tonight or tomorrow, I suggest you download this song and just let it play on repeat for like three hours in some shitty $10 boombox from Wal-Mart, sitting by your bonfire next to the cooler with the raw chicken livers for bait and your beer. It would be preferable if it was on cassette so as the batteries died, the cassette just played slower and it sounded even more screwed and chopped, but mostly there's just CD players now, and I'm starting you with a robot file anyways, which puts you a couple steps removed from getting it to cassette. CD players just cut out when batteries run low... no awesome drag that gives you an added 20 minutes of sounds. Often times, more better is actually worse. And progress sucks.
STEAL "Crossroads"
NEXT: More warbled music, but from straight out the camper trailer behinds my house this time!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #6: "Free Born Man" by Jerry Reed

I never really talk too extensively on this site about what Rojonekku really is, for various legal reasons. But my Rojonekku compound has produced a few "graduates" so to speak, who have gone on to settle in different parts of the country (that term is used both in reference to the geographical entity that is the ol' U.S. of A., as well as in that city mouse/country mouse dichotomy), and we circulate songs amongst each other, and the kid who ended up starting the satellite branch in Wyoming, he was always way into that clean guitar picker style of Wes Montgomery, Chet Atkins, Jerry Reed. He also used to fucking blast Jimmy Smith every Sunday morning at like 7 am in the coophouse, which was fine by me, but annoyed others present at times, usually those who had been too far up inside the tail end of Saturday night. Anyways, that kid out in Wyoming got me hyped on this song for the modern day application of it, how Jerry Reed is talking about knowing every mile of road and inch of railroad track, and we were philosophizing and comparing it to the world of Google street views, how these rolling machines with super cameras stalk every road they can and capture what is considered public but very much private moments (if you've never seen the 9-eyes tumblr/website, you should scope that out - I'll probably forget to insert a link so google that shit, which is kinda ironic since a big part of my thinking here in this write-up is how ultimately evil google is... which also means fuck the fact I was in the middle of a sentence and had a parenthesis tangent, because now this tangent becomes the point - correct punctuation practices be damned. Oddly enough, that Sergei google dude was outed at the big Bilderberg meeting this week in Switzerland, which saw public protests for the first time, which I guess makes sense as the Greek economy might just collapse (there are riots in the streets there right now, which are a little more newsworthy than shitty hockey fans being drunk in Vancouver), and that could (hopefully) set off a domino effect of collapsing economies that ultimately would fuck the world's money system and pretty much prove that, for whatever reason, everybody cannot continually get richer and richer and better and better in a capitalist system. Also of note today, there was some weird rolling cloud HAARP beam chemtrail bullshit on youtube that got pulled almost immediately. Now I understand pulling questionable material under the guise of protecting the public from pornographic images, but some clouds rolling in a fucked up way? I don't know man. People tend to have this misguided notion that only right wing Republican dudes want to be world overlords. The leftist elite of wealth certainly have their own world domination faults in abundance, and one man's Bill Gates African health initiative is another man's Bill Gates eugenics campaign; it's all in how you look at it.
Anyways, "Free Born Man" is a great great song, and different from the Google street view knowledge of things because let's say you decide to drive through Google street view on U.S. 1 from the Canadian border all the way down to Florida (which I actually started at one point, before realizing it was fluoride for my mind so to speak)... you are not really knowing anything about that road at all. It's all just a distraction. And why the Wyoming kid brought this song to me and the lyrics behind Jerry Reed's little ditty (which he may or may not have written) is a lesson from the Rojonekku training where you can't ride the interstate and know the path from Virginia to Wyoming. You can't ride the back roads and "know" that path. You can't even walk it and truly "know" it. On one of the properties we use for Rojonekku schools, there are seven trailers/campers/Unabomber shack in a row, and the kids (who I refrain from calling "students" because shit man, I learn more from them than they do me, especially since there's only one me and there's always at least four or five of them, if not twice that) are expected at some point to move through those seven structures, starting with the first trailer (which is actually the nicest probably), and then moving on as they are told to, to really get to "know" that little community as much as possible - every nook and cranny of every trailer, every thin corner of the two camper trailers, the lack of protection felt in the pop-up camper, the strange comfort of the Unabomber shack at the end of the row - because in your travels, you don't know shit except right where you step, when you step it. If you haven't touched that mile of back road, then you don't know it.
That's the essence of this song to me, and that's why it's such a great goddamned song. Fuck your airplanes and interstate system and most definitely fuck your Google maps and smart phone directions. You're just getting yourself further and further lost, and farther off the needed path.
STEAL "Free Born Man"
NEXT: Slowed down by the master!

f e n c f

taking pictures of old things
with a robot phone, missing
preservation's whole damn point

f a m a c

little house on the piedmont -
the toddler makes us call her
"carrie"; of course, I am "paw"

s t a r b

star mentality - idols
don't exist, only equals
not realizing who I am

h r s a a

"what's up dude from across the
street; you don't ever cut your
grass; I wish I could eat it"

m i n i f

gamblerokku ain't about
history - I make my own
format, story, and future

s u z z r

collecting eggs, feeding pigs,
hauling emptied sheet rock mud
buckets full of well water

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #7: "Country Girl" by Shuggie Otis

This is a song about two urban men stalking a fine-looking woman who just got to the city from somewhere out in the sticks. And although it's a great ass song, I can't help but wonder what sort of mean and nasty psychologically demeaning things they would do to this country girl, in the ultimate hopes of prostituting her to others. Like I don't think if they talked to her they'd take her out for a burger and try to be cool and lay in the bed listening to Sly & The Family Stone together. Seems more like that predatory thing where they'd do something fairly fucked at first, though systematically, to weaken her will to resist, which is easier with her fresh off the bus from the country, because she has no support structure most likely set up where she's now at. And I feel sorry for this country girl, obviously built more curvaceously than scrawny ass city women, probably from the abundance of fried foods and lard in her country diet, biscuits for breakfast with sausage gravy, old tin full of bacon grease to use a spoon full to cook the supper greens (I hope it's mustard!) in a skillet, just fleshing the body out with healthy fats. And then that curvy body is worked into perfection because a country girl has to work, do her chores, probably why she went to the city in the first place, to find an "easier" life. Simple ass country girl hitting the concrete with sexual predators circling the block like turkey vultures, on the hunt. Poor lost country girl, I lament what the future holds for you after this song ends and Shuggie Otis and his homeboy are done talking each other up about who would do what and how if they got you in the right place - physically or mentally or a combination of the two. Go home country girl, as fast as possible, because once you get the city inside of your soul, you can never get the city washed out of your soul. Things will happen that can never be undone. Never.
STEAL "Country Girl"
NEXT: One of only four certified guitar pickers on planet earth!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #8: "El Cuerno De Chivo" by Los Huracanes Del Norte

"El Cuerno de Chivo" means the horn of the goat in a literal sense but is street slang (or road slang, depending on which part you're from) for AK-47, because the banana clip looks like a goat horn. Now I'm no Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, but I played enough of Sid Meier's Civilization games to know there should be something more in between having goats and having machine guns, so obviously there's a developmental gap in the upward mobility of certain segments of Mexican society for this to have happened. You should probably go from herding goats around to building cities from shaped stone to some sort of industrial "progress" and get yourself to machine guns. Of course, Mexico has forgotten pyramids, and one of the most advanced ancient cultures on the early human days of the earthball, so that place is all sorts of all over the place when it comes to things like this.
I google image searched "el cuerno de chivo" and the first thing that came up was a gold-plated machine gun. (First off, this may not happen for you, but that's what I got, and I tend to keep my google account logged in, which is probably stupid, as all my results are skewed by their internal data, which sucks. I remember being high on acid one time back in the day, philosophizing with some homeboys also on acid at the same time, about this world of our's, and I rambled about how commercials with their highly targeted demographic data would one day be different on each television, like I'd get different commercials from you because they'd tailor each one to our individual viewing preferences. And I guess they were working towards that, but then the internet came along and made it easier, and now that's accepted normalcy. It goes so far as to have your search results polluted by what they think you might think you want to know about. This makes me think "Fuck!" really strongly inside my soul.) The fact there's a solid gold machine gun got me thinking about that being a funny display of how much you have. Somewhere in this world (most likely Mexico), there is someone who owns a solid gold dildo, which in itself is a funny thing to happen. Because it's not like there's a store where you just go buy a solid gold dildo if you so want. Most likely there's some sort of indiscriminately rich person, maybe a woman or maybe a dude in a very sexually open relationship with a woman, but someone with money and the power of fear was like, "Yo, I want a solid gold dildo because that's how fucking rich I am... I can think of absolutely ridiculous things and make them happen." So then that rich dude told someone who does things for him, basically a personal manager type dude, but for the criminal element most likely, and that guy had to hand off the task to someone else, or ask around about what type of jeweler or gold merchant or sex toy factory manager could make such a thing become reality, and more than likely involved multiple people like this. So now you've got this person, acting on command of his insane criminal bossman, finding a gold dealer and finding someone who fabricates sex toys or at least knows how, to go through the motions of actually building or using a dildo mold, making it work with hot melted gold instead of just poisonous plastics (ladies - I know it feels weird but glass is better, or at least go phthalate-free - your yoni will thank you in the long run), and has an actual solid gold dildo made.
Now you would hope that it would be a gag purchase and the guy would be straight with just the existence of the solid gold dildo. But who knows what else could be involved? The lady who ultimately uses it may not like the first one and demand a different shape. Or perhaps the person ordering it wants it to match his own penis and needs a special cast made of his dick. In fact, I could see someone with ridiculous money wanting a solid gold cast of his own penis made... I know I would were I in that position.
So the solid gold machine gun picture that comes up for "el cuerno de chivo" kinda trips me out, way beyond the initial, "Oh my god Myrtle, can you believe somebody actually made themselves a solid gold machine gun?" because that's what google with its racist ass wants you to think. It trips me out on the whole logistics of how a solid gold (or gold-plated) machine gun came to be. And it trips me out on whatever circumstances of conversation and streams of thought took place before that strange set of logistics was set into motion.
And yes, I do actually ride around in my old ass cameoneta listening to foreigner songs about machine guns, in real life. So there's a lot of strange logistics going into my day-to-day routines as well. It just hasn't resulted in an awesome first result for a wacky google image search yet. But I'm still young.
STEAL "El Cuerno De Chivo"
NEXT: It's fun to make that old "you can take the (item A) out of the (item B), but you can't take the (item B) out the (item A)" saying into a sexual euphemism!

MNZ: American Photo May/June 2011

A very brief page hyping up recent photography art books in this thing had some dude who does journalistic picture taking that had spent a bunch of time taking pictures of the homeless and downtrodden somewhere or another, of course in black and white. About the same time I saw that, I was in supervisor training where I work at now, and in the midst of cleanface people with cleanface futures and pasts, who feel comfortable in business clothes, making corny ass jokes about dumb shit. It occurred to me how exploitative it is to have these photo books, under the guise of photojournalism, of the poor and downtrodden wretcheds of the earth, because it's not for those people to see - it's for the more affluent to get a glimpse into something they don't want to dirty themselves up with in real life.
Actually this line of thinking got me to really question what I'd like to do with my talents in life, and whether finishing up the novels I'm working on and trying to be a successful fictioneer is really worth it, because if I give my unique voice a larger forum, is it really for the benefit of those I'm speaking about (and hopefully for)? Or is it to give someone who has no fucking clue a glimpse into that? And if I'm just selling off a glimpse into the freak show that is my real life's set of experiences and existences and interactions, aren't I really just selling off some of my people's soul? Aren't I just letting other's steal my swag so to speak, let the palefaces steal my soul with their clickboxes that show my image on paper? It's caused me to do some serious re-evaluation of the end goals of my personal dreams.
Anyways, as I sat in one of those bullshit supervisor classes, listening to a cleanface yammer on about management buzzwords and increasing the efficiency of the overall work-life of everyone underneath me and my cheap psychological tactics on the authority scale, it got me to wishing I was clicking pictures of these people in this environment, making their world a show. And then I'd blow the pictures up to like 3 foot by 5 foot and we'd have a show along the river somewhere where the homeless hang, and let the roles reverse. Or throw it up in the middle of a housing project basketball court for the weekend, and have a big ass cookout in the middle of it all as the opening event, eating lots of pork heavily coated in various sauces, with coolers full of canned beer that ain't PBR. Switch the fucking roles.
In fact, it was thinking about that last week when I was walking by one of those nice open-air restaurants with all the people sitting in clusters outside but on the other side of a fairly sturdy fence that you have to go through the restaurant to get through that caused me to just pop out my shitty handheld homepix camera (sporting some new brown duct tape to hold it together) and start clicking pictures of people sitting at the tables, including this one big group of about 10, most of them looking to be in their 30s, and comfortable. Two of the dudes saw me and were like, "waht the fuck?" but I kept taking pictures. One of them said, "Hey! What are you doing? Would you stop doing that?" but I just ignored them and kept taking pictures, concentrating on the other end of their table where most of the women were sitting. One dude got up first and the second got up with him as he came over the fence. "Stop taking our picture you asshole!" but I kept taking pictures. It was open space, fuck him. I saw the petite little waiter girl looking my way worriedly and then head inside the restaurant proper, probably to tell her authoritarian about it all, and the one more upset dude by the fence started leaning at the fence like he was gonna jump it, so I took off running down the street. He yelled "Fuck you asshole!" and when I got about 30 feet away, I saw he was still on his side of the fence, so I stopped, turned around, and clicked one more picture, and then walked away. And perfectly enough, there was a raggedy, bearded, homeless-looking ass dude sitting on some steps of a building across the side street from where this happened, looking at me, and laughing a deep and soulful belly laugh, tickled silly by what he'd just watched.
Now that's fucking art photography. All the pictures I took sucked - just a bunch of white motherfuckers eating while trying to not look like they're eating. Still though, I am comfortable with my artistic process. I'll probably try it again this Thursday as I have to be in that general vicinity again.

d e v z z

high school metalhead buddy
is on facebook, testifying
about jesus, with short hair

p h n a i

wild-eyed visions - young mind full
of relentless storms - trying
to channel the energy

a r m z z

college educated but

back roads polluted - skill set
of a good-hearted con man

g r f a o

each spray paint layer barely
a fraction on the ruler;
over years, concrete gains girth

c u r t a

late night eyeballs tweaked out by
mushroomed pupils filtering
bug-stained overhead dome lights

p a m p b

I'm reinventing the wheel
because civilization
is overrated as fuck

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #9: "Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies

There is an abandoned mental hospital in Staunton that I've been wanting to break into and scope out forever, right by the Frontier Culture Museum, probably like a bunch of other people. I wonder what it is that causes us all to want to vibe in these old sanitarium buildings where the mentally fucked were chilling. The dude this particular hospital was named after was the same guy who had come up with the whole eugenics idea that the state of Virginia had employed way back in the day, and in fact this dude was fairly inspirational to the Nazis, which is probably why the building sits there decaying as opposed to being fixed up as a museum to madness. From talking to one of the dudes who works at the Frontier Culture Museum one time, I guess that abandoned hospital was for paying customers, voluntary folks, whereas the old public free one where you got put when you were so fucked civilization wanted to lock you away to either get better or not disturb the rest of us, that one got torn down and actually is where the Frontier Culture Museum is now located. I guess it was a mental health farm, and the dude said sometimes up by the 1850s American house, you can hear kids laughing in the yard a lot of the times.
I've been surrounded by some literal madness lately, outside and inside, and I was thinking on the changes in America, how there used to be sanitariums around run by the government, usually state ones, but then they sort of got their funding clipped in the '80s under Reagan, so you had cities shipping their homelessly demented on Greyhounds off to other places somewhere else down the line (this was notorious on the east coast for contributing to Richmond's huge mentally ill homeless population, because RVA was considered to be better equipped with nonprofit groups than most other eastern cities), and people were fucked. Then Reagan got Alzheimers. Kinda funny when you think about it. Now they pull his carcass out all the time as the Noble Warrior of Right Government. Fuck people.
At one point I was having a long series of recurring dreams about this railroad tunnel me and my man D-Mo went into up near Waynesboro that they're gonna turn into a hiking trail or some shit, but I was imaging this underground world where another shadow society was going on, and Reagan was still alive but still looked young but he had grown his hair long yet had no facial hair. I somehow ended up being part of his tribe, like helping him try to win the underworld elections, and he had told me one time that he had no facial hair because he made himself an Indian when he came to this underworld. And I would catch him looking at my beard all the time, except there were no electrical lights anywhere, just candles and barrel fires and shit, so it was always that dancing flickery light.
My man D-Mo in these recurring dreams had joined up with the other tribe, that I didn't know so well, so we were stuck in this underground shit, but didn't really kick it together too much because we had become parts of rival factions. I kinda realized D-Mo was sort of brainwashed by his side, which got me to thinking maybe I was brainwashed by my side, so I had this plan that we'd both kill the dude running for underground President in each of our groups, since they were the two big groups (there was also a third group of people who were aboveground homeless people who only came into the tunnels at night through the carpet factory on 810). Then me and D-Mo would climb back out the hole and go back to the regular world. Except then I thought about the fact that in the timeline of the dreams, we'd been underground for four or five years, so my truck was probably gone from the side of the road. Then I'd realize my family hadn't seen me in four or five years and had probably gone through the entire spectrum of freaking out, mourning me, and then moving on. This part would always freak me out and I'd wake up. So I never got to kill longhair Indian Reagan in the underground world on the other side of that old Claudius Crozet railroad tunnel through Afton Mountain.
STEAL "Institutionalized"
NEXT: Mas grandes exitos!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #10: "I Wasn't Born To Follow" by The Byrds

Got myself four milk crates stacked upside down with the robot laptop spread out across the topside, set to go dark right away on ninja mode, stalking around the back yard under a waxing ass gibbous haynes moon, an acre off the road, looking like a badly tattooed ghost torso floating to the random drunk driver who occasionally meanders past, post midnight on a Friday night which is technically a Saturday morning but technical motherfuckers get no respect along roads with no lines painted on them. Thought about a ride to the train yard I found last weekend, to kick it by the riverside, rolling water cleansing my dirty soul, too grimed up from staying in the lines, doing the responsible things, walking the world of the cleanfaces. There's a freight car that was there last weekend that said ANOTHA DAY ANOTHA DOLLA and I was like, "no doubt freight train, no fucking doubt." But that's also a wack exchange rate because dollars are fake value and days are for-real, and pretty limited. When you run out, you can't increase your debt limit or print up more or ask for some overtime. So check that graffiti, and remix it to ANOTHA DAY FUCK A DOLLA.
My dad used to have a motorcycle helmet just like Captain America, and it hung in the shed long after he no longer had a motorcycle, and that thing was cool as fuck. Bunches of dudes' houses we went to had motorcycle posters like Easy Rider, including this one dude named Winkie who had that famous two bikers riding across that bridge poster stretched out across his living room wall. Weren't no domineering TV influences back then. He also had some Easyriders centerfolds up, and I remember his wife/ol' lady or whoever catching me with wandering eyes and she was like, "Yeah, you shouldn't look over there at that one." When I got a big batch of old Easyriders last year, there was plenty of David Mann artwork, but no literal photographical posters.
That being said, the giant flathead cybertron brainwashing TV machine in our current farmhouse living room, it's nice and big and all that whatever that makes us feel occupied when we don't want to think and just want to suck on entertainment's various titties for a few hours, but I'd trade that motherfucker in a heartbeat for a giant ass David Mann painting to take up that wall. In a heartbeat.
STEAL "I Wasn't Born To Follow"
NEXT: A song that wouldn't exist nowadays because Mike Muir would've been put on psychotropic drugs!

f e n c e

liberated slop bucket -
sometimes a pig snout soccer
ball - sits still in shitty mud

Friday Love/Hate

I hate dramatic individuals, bringing dramatic interpretations to every day affairs all too often. Seems like I've had a lot of them around me in recent years, allowed into my inner-circle of weekly experience, and I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps it's a character fault on my end, or a Universal Magnetism lesson I had to learn. But I've sworn it off, being straight up brutally forthright with some of these emotional tornadoes trying to toss up my good times with their nonsense. And I can't really say I hate it either, because people can't help how they are a lot of times. Most folks ain't honest with most other folks, but especially themselves. I'm trying to be straight up brutally forthright with myself more than anyone else, which is why I probably been pulling the curtain closed on them dramatic individuals, because I just don't need it, ya dig? Can't be raising no drama-free children unless my skull is a drama-free building. I want them getting old, thinking that straight up and from the heart is how it's always been.

I love feeling my flow grow - word flow, aura flow, life flow, luck flow, all of it flowing. I do find it notable that I floated on top of the river last weekend just as all my flows started ramping back up again, to where it overwhelms me and I can't even sleep because it's in zones like this where sleep is the most definite cousin of death. Hard to figure if floating on the river boosted me or I felt the need to get on the river magnetically because my flow and it's flow were out there being like, "Yo, what's up? Let's chill." I know most folks I know probably don't believe in a god, and I don't believe in one with one of the names that has bunches of people sitting down together to worship upon, but there's more to this thing than straight science can slice and dice explanations for. (Right as I typed that, sitting on a plastic adirondack in the back yard, there was a blast flash of lightning, and now the sky is rumbling; I can feel the cool blowing in... I wonder if science is vengeful and angry?) I ain't believing in now bearded old dude standing around in a king-sized top sheet and cloud flip flops, making sure everything is straight down here. But I also ain't believing it can all be explained by rational scientifical processes. Because a lot of it happens in strange and magical ways, and what I love is feeling myself be all up inside that strange magic right now, like riding a wave at the ocean, and that's what you gotta do is ride it, as far as it takes you. If it throws you under in the end and you're choking and gasping for a long minute, fuck it, the ride is gonna feel like it's worth it, while you're in the wave and just getting pushed along perfectly.

c o o p f

flexible like bungee - let
apocalypses launch; me
and my bird tribe shall survive

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #11: "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne

I am a research scientist so since everybody knows that Ozzy is Ozzy and this is like the ultimate Ozzy song (hence it's inclusion on Ultimate Ozzy), I figured I'd share some scientific data with you as it relates to this song. The first time I smoked weed, I was 12. The year before I had taken a copy of Blizzard of Ozz on vinyl from my uncles. That album was 17% responsible for me smoking weed for the first time. (A lot of it I learned from watching my dad though, just like that commercial.) Randy Rhoads had a short career being awesome for Ozzy (which, judging by Zakk Wylde's full career discography thus far, is probably not such a bad thing) and is, when scientifically analyzed through audio software, the 3rd highest-shredding guitarist ever (behind only Mick Ronson and Yngwie Malmsteen). Had he played in Slayer, they would have been 7% more awesome than they already were. Had he played in Metallica, and lived, current Metallica would be 19% more awesome here and now. However, the addition of Rhoads to early Metallica would decrease the effects of Cliff Burton, which would actually negate that 19% increase in the here and now by 22%, meaning they actually would have been less great in the long run had Rhoads been in the band the same time Cliff Burton was. If Randy Rhoads was still alive, there's a 6 in 7 chance he'd have a beard, and a 3 in 5 chance he'd perform onstage in camouflage shorts. If Randy Rhoads had not died, Ozzy would have had continued his most intense periods of drug abuse for an additional four years, which combined with Rhoads' presence, would have contributed to three more albums that would have fallen somewhere between Blizzard of Ozz and The Ultimate Sin in how great they were. (That is an amazing stat, by the way.) "Crazy Train" the song causes roughly around 17 people a day to headbutt something (though that figure is skewed towards the end of the calendar week: Sun=13.6 - mostly after midnight early Sunday morning; Mon=11.2, Tues=8.1, Wed=8.4, Thur=17.3, Fri=29.8, Sat=30.6). Because of this, "Crazy Train" is the cause of around 419 mild traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) annually, and around 17 severe TBI per year. Though "Suicide Solution" off the same LP had that famous court case where some dude killed himself because of it, and is a song about alcohol abuse, in the course of listening to this classic Ozzy album, more alcohol is drank to "Crazy Train" than any other song (seconded by "Goodbye to Romance"). In the average driver, when in open driving conditions without physical impedances, they will speed up an average of 11 mph when this song starts, then level off to about 6 mph faster after the initial rush. This is done regardless of legal limitations, so long as a police presence is not noted. Relatedly, criminals in stolen cars running from the cops are 7 times more likely to attempt to stop the car and run on foot through urban or rural wilderness to escape the cops when they've been listening to this song. No other popular music comes close to increasing that, not even gangsta rap. "Crazy Train" has been played at 19 actual funerals since 1987, 18 of which were tragic accidental deaths involving vehicles of men between the ages of 15 and 24. The other was a guy who died in the first Desert Storm. If you play "Crazy Train" backwards, no obvious messages can be noted, but if you take 200 mg of painkillers, it sounds 12% more interesting than without the influence of them. If you take 400 mg of painkillers, it's 39% more interesting than without, and 800 mg = 86% more interesting than without. A hipster dumbass is 123 times more likely to draw OZZY on his fingers in a sharpie as a Halloween costume than a dirtbag redneck kid is to use a jailhouse tattooing rig to actually tattoo it on his fingers. OZZY finger tattoos are covered up in various ways, but the O is turned into a weird little skull of some sort 73% of the time. The Y is turned into a guitar 61% of the time. People under the age of 25 from families with a household income over $40,000 identify Ozzy Osbourne as a "reality TV star" instead of "musician" 84.1% of the time. People under the age of 25 from families with a household income below $40,000 identify him as a "reality TV star" only 41.3% of the time, and as a musician 47.9%. Eliminate all races except white and Hispanic, and the musician identification goes up to 63.4% of the time.
(I've got notecards stacked up in the second drawer of my desk at home that have sources and documentation and study parameters if you need them. Beware of the dog.)
STEAL "Crazy Train"
NEXT: I can't believe they killed Jack Nicholson, and then I can't believe Captain America and Billy the Kid just left him there!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #12: "Recline & Shine" by DJ Screw

Screwed and chopped music is one of those more base forms of wild music that really only speaks to dudes. Something in it is inherently unappealing to womenfolks, and I don't know if it's the drug-base it's built upon or the broken slurry damn sound of it all, but that's just how it is. But at this point in my life, I can't even begin to explain how huge a part of my music-listening life the pre-chopping/pitch-shifting sounds have become. DJ Screw is such a huge figure in the history of simple ass DJing to me that I actually am often confused no one has really stepped up in a serious way to continue what he started. I mean there's dudes who do what he did in a simple way, to try and make a dollar of the style, but not many are really stepping the fuck up. (Allow me a moment of Xpert Whiteboyishness, because I felt OG Ron C was the man after Screw's death, but a lot of what OG Ron C does now feels uninspired; I also dig the fuck out of whatever Babe Rainbow s&cs, and have found a lot of the latin mixes that DJ Dreemz does to be like someone took a slice of my brain and made what it thinks should exist actually exist.)
Anyways, as I was just getting through my initial bed-ridden stage of surgical infection earlier this year, to where I could get up a little, and move around the yard, to see the sunshine, I would pop a couple painkillers, throw on my headphones, and go sit by the pigs, sinking into hydrocodone lala-land, feeling the sun, and idling away my recovery hours. This song would come on from time to time, because I just straight up filled my J.J. Krupert shuffle up with nothing but DJ Screw shit at one point during that process, and there's a line in here by one of the dudes (other than Lil Flip, I'm not sure who is who... I think it's ESG maybe) where he says "run a tunnel through your abdominal" speaking on shooting your ass, but I always imagined those little bacterioidi viruses inside of me that had to get flushed out by basically slicing a hole into my abdomen muscle singing this song, with that line on loop and the same meandering beat, all warbly and holy, but in a high-pitched little bacterioidi voice, going "run a tunnel through your abdominal, run a tunnel through your abdominal, run a tunnel through your abdominal," over and over, happily trying to make me die, even though there was no malevolence in what they did. They were just a virus, doing their thing. Not their fault surgical procedures dragged them into a different part of the body they don't usually breach.
Now when I hear this song, whereas before that I always focused more on Lil Flip's verse to start the song, I just think about those little viruses, sing-rapping that looped line like Oompa Loompas, me sitting on a plastic chair by the pig pen, brain foggy as fuck, sky sunny enough to cut the chill in the spring air, just sitting there, waiting to be physically upright again. That's some shit etched into my memory with laser precision, and I almost feel like just vibing out with my head on nod whenever this song pops up into the Krupert cycle.
STEAL "Recline & Shine"
NEXT: Teenage anthem #9, 1980s version!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 #13: "Otha Fish (Fly As Pie Remix)" by The Pharcyde

Briefly, before I go into one of my barely-connected tangents, let me speak on The Pharcyde, and how the 12-inch single this version of "Otha Fish" comes from was really the pinnacle of that group (which is a great and classic group, to be sure). They came out with the wacky-voiced goofiness in full-court press of various characters, but by the time they were laying down the remixed versions of the vocals for this song as well as the Fly as Pie mix of "Passin' Me By", they had hit that sing-song serious but not serious rap greatness. By the time that Labincalifornicationalschool tape came out, they'd kinda already peaked out and started to sound tired of what they were doing, which led to crack addictions by various members, one of them fucking some chick on The Real World, and shambles. I'm sure they've already reunited and played Coachella and then went their separate ways again, and there was a documentary about one of them being a crack addict that I wanted to see but I think it's one of those documentaries that gets made about something awesome but nobody ever sees it because the execution of the film is not as great as the subject of the film, so it never moves beyond the first three local arthouses the dude or chick who made it got it played at. But really, the 12-inch single this song comes from is the pinnacle of The Pharcyde, without a doubt.
That being said, fuck America, and people who are all like, "We are the greatest country on earth, and even though I am an open-minded person who pretends to be liberal about causes, I still think this is the greatest country on earth, because I can say and do the things I want to say and do." Whatever. No one has a choice in what arbitrary geographical border they were born within, and every country on earth tries to hype its people up about how great where you are is compared to everywhere else. Every country provides the greatest freedoms on earth. In Taliban Afghanistan before 9/11, you were provided the freedom from the devilish influence of American godlessness. Nowhere else did you have that freedom. Anywhere you go, it can be good or bad, mostly on how you let yourself swing. Like, I don't mind America when I'm hunkered down on the compound, surrounded by my own madness. I can kinda dig it then, and be proud of what America is shining in the moonlight at that odd angle. But man, drop me in the middle of like Short Pump on the west end of Richmond, or really any pre-planned new school of suburban thought pseudo-community with apartment buildings shooting up like concrete bamboo stalks, just as invasive and non-native, and I get white knuckled out, needing three xanax, and am thankful there's no Al Qaeda recruitment offices next to the Starbucks because I might at least check out their literature, especially if they have falafel sandwiches. (I haven't had a good falafel sandwich in a long time. That makes me sad.)
Meanwhile, the American myth of being this great Freedom Machine is pushed onto us public people all day long, around the clock. All while it's hard to even keep track of who the fuck the American government is bombing. (I no longer refer to the activities of my government as something "we" are doing because they don't represent me with their decisions, and I don't recognize their authority to act on my behalf.) There's for-real, in-the-open conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, predator drones flying over Pakistan, bombs going down on my man Gaddaffi's head in Tripoli (even though assassination is illegal), and now they seem to be running a covert bombing operation on Yemen, not to mention who knows how much the CIA is probably involved in what's going on in Syria, especially since Iran has said CIA's been running through it for years and years. It's a fucking mess. And not so many of those countries are like, "Hells yeah bro, rock-n-roll America, number one!" about it all. Mostly because they have been raised to not like America, but also because the American Myth is not Universally accepted as factually factual. (Which makes me want to trip out on the alleged of science of capitalism/economics, yet somehow the entire global economy can be in crisis. How the fuck can that be? Just like we can't all get rich, we can't all get poor, and obviously the system itself is warped plywood being improperly used as a floor for everything else.)
Anyways, what I am saying is how do I know America is the best? Maybe sitting in the heat of Belize might feel good to my soul, or avoiding the wrong tribal roads through Ghana, or kicking my feet up off the southeast coast of China, or really anything else. It's all so subjective. But when you marry yourself emotionally to this idea that your country that you were accidentally born upon is the greatest thing ever, fuck anyone who disagrees, you get militant and wanna fight other dudes over saying or doing disparaging things to your country. But bro, there's hella otha fish in the sea. Fuck America. Let's move to New Zealand.
STEAL "Otha Fish"
NEXT: Oompa loompas in my gut song!

e x p a b

assorted power idols
stare down from shelf tops -
inanimate elders

t r l e r

seven a.m. - country boy
looking out his trailer door,
white tee packed into blue jeans

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - May '11 Intro

If this was for real though the first of May, as one would expect being I am stone cold launching the start of the May J.J. Krupert Countdown of Background (noise to my day-to-day travails and travels and tall tales and soul rattles/cybertron battles), then today would be Beltane, a traditionally pagan ass day which pagan used to mean big bonfires and probably some nudity and drinking fermented things but now unfortunately mostly means people with dark hair with too many bumper stickers on the back of a late model Honda. We had a marriage ceremony of public spectacle on Beltane weekend a while back, complete with masked women calling in directions, rhinestone overalls, 5-gallons of tomato wine, bluegrass music, and ridiculous explosions. It was tight.
May first was also May Day which was when communist Russia had it's pimp parade of military might. I live in a small town that always thinks it is about to do awesome things but never does, mostly because the people are transplanted without vision and kind of think if you sweep the streets then everybody is going to parade through for no reason with their Visa cards sticking out their pockets like a $100 in the front pocket of a man trolling for gay sex at medium-sized city public parks. I think it would be a most beneficial thing to have a public kinetic sculpture race of some sort down the main thoroughfare (which oddly enough intersects perpendicularly with Main Street), on Beltane/May Day weekend, and make a big affair of it. Throw some music in the park downtown where they try to do that when they can, and just get busy. We have a big 4th of July Fireman's Parade, so you make up some sort of public spectacle to go with the fishing tournament on Labor Day, and we have the summer bookended with a sweet day in the middle.
These are my ideas on the world, and I am a man who could make things happen if properly enabled. My contact info is in the right sidebar if you are the town planner of some sort of small Southern town looking to declare sovereignty and absolve yourself of the sins of the Federal American Empire.
Oh yeah, May music coming at you.
FIRST UP: If you can't be with the one you love, then fuck it, be sad about that shit!