D0WNT0WN D0LL4R G3N3R4LS...

downtown Dollar Generals

along dilapidated

red brick Main Streets forgotten

SONG OF THE DAY: Nine Steamin'

Contemplating a continent as a planet is an interesting concept, because obviously the first issue with this is the planet we live upon (which is the foundation for most all our human knowledge of planet life) is more water than land mass. So you’re taking a small part of the whole and amplifying it as the whole. But fuck it, let’s do that. Planet Asia we don’t really need to discuss, unless you’re not aware, because Planet Asia as a theoretical entity is already a sick ass rapper, and one of the best MCs going, for a number of years. Planet Europe also doesn’t need a lot of theoretical exploration due to the historical colonial exploration (aka conquest) that shot from Europe which essentially has given us more of a Planet Europe than any other type of continent as planet. In fact, Planet Australia would just be a sliver of Planet Europe anyways, and also using football (the United States’ soccer) as example, Australia considers itself part of Asia anyways, which also is weird because it means it’s a tiny Europe pretending to be Asian. So Planet Australia would probably get called out on Twitter tbh.

Planet Antarctica is mostly non-inhabited, and also becoming irrelevant due to climate change. Is there land under there? I don’t know, I’m pretty far removed from my school days, and no longer trust Wikipedia to be any better of a source of truth than subreddits, so I’m not gonna search internet boxes for the answer. I was always led to believe by pictures that it’s just a chunk of ice, so I assume it will melt and be gone entirely and then they will drill for oil and accidentally puncture the inside of Earth and our entire planet, the whole not the theoretical continental versions, will deflate like a balloon, and our best hope is that flat earth theory becomes true and we can continue to exist on the deflated Earth.

Planet Africa would actually probably be pretty lit, but Planet Europe would never allow that to happen. Plus Planet Europe already pillaged Planet Africa, so it would be existing off the remnants, which is also kinda nice because it would be that rundown strip mall with the tienda and Roses and thrift store and Dollar General grocery store, but at a planetary level. That’s probably unsettling to a lot of folks, but that’s also a sign of how badly Planet Europe has actually been created on Planet Earth. Stop being so white.

This leaves us in this theoretical exploration with Planet America, because obviously it doesn’t make sense to split it into Planet North America and Planet South America. I’m not sure if there are two planets in the Universe who are referred to as north and south, because how do you use compass points at universal scale anyways. What’s the center of the universe? I’m gonna have to consult my 120 lessons pamphlet again, but I don’t think it’s in there. Thus we combine the two continents into one America to think of Planet America. Now there are some who will say Planet America in fact already exists, as the United States has exercised its military might across the globe since the fall of the Soviet Union. I used to think this way myself. But in recent years I’ve shifted my thinking, because there was a history on these continents – a very deep and rich history – before the United States came to be. In fact, just like Planet Australia, the concept of Planet America being the United States hegemony over the globe is in actuality just a baby Planet Europe. An actual pre-United States and non-Columbian Planet America would be a very different thing than US military bases around the world. Oddly, as life in this false Planet America notion which is actually just the United States empire being a last gasp expression of the racial culmination of Planet Europe philosophies feels more and more doomed, as it does under current leadership, not just now but really since the 1980s, and actually likely all along if we start pulling the tendrils out the ground, thinking of America as the pre-Columbian land masses on this half of the Earth, and imagining those philosophies and motivations for existence returning to these land masses, but also (hopefully) strengthened by the people here now, including those brought from Africa, as well as the Europeans who can get along with it, because even in the growth of Planet Europe into the false Planet America (US Empire), a lot of various breeds and broods of European were cleansed, killed, and beaten into submission for assimilation to create this sense of American whiteness used to create this shit coming to a head now. And to be honest, it is also in that line of thinking of Planet America as not being tied to US Empire but to the land itself, and the deeper and longer history, as revitalized but with the added hands of American immigrants of a resourceful and economically neglected nature (black and white and brown and other), which is what I’m conjuring in my heart when I say “Southern Gothic Futurism” because it’s thinking not in terms of the American (US) South, but the Global South. So it is an application of the theoretical Planet America, which ultimately overtakes from the Planet Europe which is now masquerading as a Planet America when actually it’s just the last dying gasps of European thinking being performed with US military might and self-importance, under the assimilated European identity of whiteness. So when the Global South is allowed to reclaim Planet America, I feel like that’s a beautiful possibility, and it gives me hope, which is hard to find if you’re looking at the blip bloop machine news feed nowadays. So don’t look at it. Go outside and stick your fingers in a creek, stack some rocks, go walk from here to where you were born and back, or if it’s not on this land mass, walk to the edge and look out over the water and contemplate how the land mass is just a small part of the whole, and there’s not whole worlds out there you don’t know about, just the one world you live in, but it’s depth is far greater than your fears and loathing and worries and hard-earned anxieties. Life is still a beautiful thing, even as forces of order try to squeeze every free and easy breath out of you with further constricting psychic gridlock. Fuck them. They don’t own shit except paper they printed themselves like a five-year-old petulant child saying THIS PAPER MEANS I OWN EVERYTHING NOBODY ELSE ONLY ME. It feels like it rules everything, but it doesn’t. Life is still beautiful if you look for glimmers of light within the crushing darkness. And if you’re able to see those glimmers, be a prism and shine it out there for others, if you’re able. Hopefully, if my nonsense heart philosophy of Southern Gothic Futurism works out like I hope it will, all the glimmer folks who shine it back out through their own prism of beautiful existence are gonna turn all this darkness into world full of rainbows. That’s my hope at least.

VN4B0MB3R'S "SH1P 0F F00LS"...

unabomber's "ship of fools"

story remains relevant,

perhaps more so than ever

SONG OF THE DAY: Cell Therapy (Chopped Not Slopped)

I miss the days of conspiracy theories requiring books, or at the very least printed matter. The entire Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars reveal of the pale horse allegedly came about because of a surplus copy machine with a manual copy left inside by accident. It was born from printed material. Whether that story is true or not is beside the point. Conspiracy theories were slow burners shared with meticulously created materials culled from sources both real and imagined to manufacture this aura of credibility to the notion that there were dastardly humans concocting and perpetuating bastard master plans to influence the course of history, in large or small ways. The pulpy fleshiness of actual books made it seem possible, and yet hardly anybody believed it, because marginal books put out by questionable outlets were laughed at by right-thinking people firmly washed in the mainstream of western civilization.

Fast forward to now, once the idea of books (and most forms of artistic culture) have been fragmented into shards of information stabbed into the internet’s relentless shit storm of pseudo-knowledge, which don’t have to be well-researched and believable to become absorbed by the critically thinking psyche; they just have to stab through the cracks in a person’s metaphysical make-up. And because of this, conspiracies run so rampant that they actually have taken hold in a sizeable part of the public, where some dude you work with might suddenly secretly reveal he’s red pill woke to you in private conversation (at least to me, as I am a white dude), and start dropping Qanon mentions as if there’s some credibility to any of it.

I used to love conspiracy theories when I was younger, and a big part of that was the unstable background I came from, attempting to transition upwards in class and station, and that brought up internal questions like “how come I’m not where these other people are already?” Conspiracy theories gave an explanation, which fuck, we all want explanations for the unexplainable. That’s the reason we have religion, science, and conspiracies – to explain the shit that makes no sense. Obviously the underlying fault in this process is that everything is supposed to make sense, and that there is an actual foundational “sense” that even exists in the first place.

Oddly, as internet culture became more pervasive than weird ass book shop culture, and conspiracies started to thrive in the petri dishes of message boards becoming mainstream, I believed less and less in them. At one point, I wondered if this was just me being contrarian, thinking “oh well if any random motherfucker on reddit can believe a conspiracy theory now, why bother?” but I came to realize it’s because I no longer believed in the foundation of conspiracy theories, which is that a group of human beings could conceivably plan and execute such complicated plans secretly, without fucking it up. The biggest fault in thinking conspiracy theories might work is basic human nature – people are always flawed, and tend to fuck things up. So if you have a large group of people attempting to do some secretive shit, they will fuck it up.

Another aspect to human nature, which goes back to that desire to make “sense” of everything, is that we can find meaning in everything, as a means of manufacturing that sense. I remember being an English major undergrad doing explications of old ass poems, and how we were trained to discern deeper meaning from a poet’s lines. As a poet, it always seemed like such a bullshit task because a lot of times, as a poet, you’re not really thinking too hard so much as being a conduit for some unexplainable shit shooting through you that comes out as words. And you might tinker and concoct and add some direction and meaning to it, but that’s very limited and also an accidental combination with the raw flow that just pops the fuck out your heart and mind when writing. But yo, you could easily bust out a three page explication of a twenty line poem. You can drill in and find deeper meaning in anything.

And this is exactly what online conspiracy theories have become. The entire Qanon phenomenon is very basic cryptic messages being hashed out by a crowd of message board explicators into a deep and significant meaning. When you add in the bonus ego-chemical boost of being able to figure out something regular (normie) people cannot, it’s no wonder digital conspiracy theories have spread so widely that we have an actual President who hints at these somewhat preposterous notions openly. But there’s also this overload of data to cull through, so that when you see a kid from a mass shooting high school show up in a vacation video across the country, people grasping for meaning will decide crisis actors are real and mass shootings are made up.

But as someone who used to sell drugs, carefully and selectively, do you realize how fucking hard it would be to actually have crisis actors to play these manufactured roles in manufactured situations, and have all of them do their job without fucking up obviously, so that these alleged false flags could be flown? That shit is literally impossible. In fact, I fucking dare you to perform the following test – the Saturday afternoon cookout conspiracy theory test. I want you to have a cookout with twenty people taking a different role in making this cookout happen. Each of those twenty people can invite a few people they see fit, but your select twenty is delegated, by you, with the task of making the basic cookout happen – food, plates, music, drink, dominos, whatever else you deem necessary for the conspiracy of a good cookout to happen. You don’t even have to have the goal of having the best cookout ever, which would be the equivalent of a successful enough false flag operation to actually make it to full media scrutiny without falling apart. Just have a cookout. And see how well it goes. I mean, chances are you’ll have a cookout, but somebody in your core execution team of the conspiracy is going to fuck up somehow. Somebody’s gonna be absentee, or will flail, or show up with the wrong piece performed on their part than what was delegated to them. Somebody will hand something off to somebody else who never actually catches what was handed off to them, and you’re likely going to end up with some very simple problems like no hot dog buns, or no non-alcoholic drinks for the kids, or not enough ice, or damn where’s your boy D did nobody tell D? But I challenge you to try this conspiracy to have a good cookout challenge.

Two things will come from it… The first is that lmao no fucking way are conspiracy theories possible for the most part. Humans are too human, and we might be able with our human potential to execute heavy handed power grabs towards fascism like we are seeing currently in the United States, but secretive conspiracies are in all likelihood impossible, and also probably give ourselves far too much credit as being more advanced than we actually are as a species.

But secondly, you’ll have a cookout. This allows you to kick it with real live humans, flaws and all, in a real life environment, free (to an extent) from the digital petri dishes that let our worst fears and misinformed concerns grow unchecked. Real life kicking it stomps out digital poisons, as you become more immune to senseless fears when you realize there’s no ultimate sense to everything and everybody is trying to make sense of this senselessness just like you, and it’s better to share serotonin and dopamine boosting good times together than to sit there festering in fear and loathing and spiral yourselves closer to embracing oblivion as a pseudo-intelligent supreme wokeness. So I hope you have a cookout, and conspire more to conspiracy less. The only real conspiracy is that each of our time on this Earth is limited, and we only got one of us each, so we best make the best of it. Not the most, but the best. Your most is not your best. My most is not my best. Most folks don’t believe that, but the best folks have learned it, often times in hard ways.

[If you made it this far, be aware I have a patreon where I am going to start publishing a lot more of my meandering philosophies in traditional raven mack forms moving forward. Support if you can, and want to. Art wants to be free, but unfortunately, humans are not.]

M3T4PHYS1C4L BVRN 0VT...

metaphysical burn out,

but can't afford an escape,

not even for the evening

T0YS 1N 4 P4RK1NG L0T F0R...

toys in a parking lot for

free, scattered across pavement -

a somewhat depressing scene

V1NT4G3 C0P P1CTVR3 FR0M L4ST...

vintage cop picture from last

summer's march; they were far more

militaristic this year

C4N'T W41T 'T1L R3T1R3M3NT WH3N...

can't wait 'til retirement when

all I'll have to do is walk

around all day, nothing else

1NDVSTRY D13S; V4GR4NCY...

industry dies; vagrancy

and crime fill the empty space;

then townhouses will blossom

T3RR3STR14L S1GN4LS B0VNC3...

terrestrial signals bounce

up and down from satellites

orbiting beyond æther

W4ND3R1NG P3R1PH3RY...

wandering periphery

of American side streets,

waiting for the kudzu vines

TR4V3L1NG BY PL4N3 M0V3S 0N3...

traveling by plane moves one

between points without passage,

thus body and spirit lag

R3V0LVT10N 0F C0GWH33LS...

revolution of cogwheels

manufacturing FREEDOM -

American opiate

VND3R C0V3R 0F D4RKN3SS...

under cover of darkness,

attempting to get idle

cars to spark again, quickly

SONG OF THE DAY: Come Walk With Me

Did a train/bus trip around the American nation a couple summers back, in the lead-up to our last MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER which we seem to always have for some reason, and one of the two strong takeaways for me from that trip was that borders in terms of nation-states are bullshit, false, and ultimately not a good thing. This does not mean they’re fake, because – like many false things in this age of falseness we inhabit – they’re very real, and have been shoved so forcibly into our physical existence that they’ve put their poisonous tendrils into metaphysical reality. You can feel the difference when you cross these arbitrary borders in many places, because of the variations in manmade authority being enforced. But ultimately, if you get back to the dirt, back to the foundation of being alive, that shit’s false and likely needs to go away.

The one place I have found peace throughout my life, and escaped the chaos, was wandering the woods. This was true as a kid, and as adult, the entirety of that time in a geographic region that’s best described by the term Piedmont Virginia, which was also all once land tended and lived upon by the Monacan. That land has always been home to me, and there’s a feeling to the land that I find comforting, unlike other places, which can also feel beautiful and safe, but do not feel like home in quite the same way.

Our hyper-“connected” lives today allow us to sort of know about so much more, but that knowledge is about an inch deep. I actually know more about people in other parts of the world than the folks that live across the street from me, which is kinda weird to be honest. I think about the difference between a one inch depth of knowledge spread across a large base, like most of us have now, versus a mile deep knowledge of a tiny area, explored greatly. In other words, truly knowing a subject or region or thing, to great depth, as opposed to this cursory wikipedic knowledge we tend to possess for things, accumulating trivia like pokemon. I actually contemplate this a lot as I walk around, a lot, though have not the past two weeks. I live in a city now, and miss the woods, and I guess I’ve sunk into a funk of being too extended in terms of errands and external responsibilities, and not been taking the literal steps each day to just walk, know the region I’m living at right now. Dedication to walks is important, a form of exercise but also a form of meditation, as well as connecting better to where I live. And the better connected I am to where I actually live, the more I actually feel alive. We’re not machines, meant to be productive and spend the entirety of our awake time performing tasks. I’m not “wired” in any way. I’m a fucking person, born and raised and nurtured and comforted in this little corner of the Earth best described as Piedmont Virginia because the name it used to have got lost as the history of western civilization manifested its destiny over top of what was already here. But when I walk, whether in the woods or the manmade places, I hear it vibing, it’s always been there and keeps that hum going, from deep in the ground, sedimented in for centuries, beyond the borders and fences, beyond the flags, beyond the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVERs which keep happening for some reason. It was here before all that shit, and it’ll be here after all that too.

B3C0M1NG HVM4N RVST 4S...

becoming human rust as

loneliness oxidizes

hope into wishing for death

SONG OF THE DAY: tr0gl0dYt3

caveman molecules activated

southern humidity acclimated

most days in goodwill button-up and goddamn I hate it

was born to barefoot in woods or walking 7 miles through alien neighborhoods

full of cousins I ain’t met yet so of course it’s all ways all good

all this progress all the technological advance

and yet hearts are more clogged than ever

too much manufactured saturated facts

fractured from what’s real

fuck it

I remedy with each step I take each day I’m still breathing

purify the enculturated poisons with a mushroom’s persistence

pushing my head through the muck

unfuck it

create

grow

be good

which is never as hard

as it is made out to be

caveman molecules wasn’t ignorant

same molecular structure

same energies negative and positive spinning around

in the same chaotic spirals

as the beginning of time

each day I’m just trying

to find

peace

1NDVSTR14L F4LL4CY...

industrial fallacy

that productivity gives

purpose; more dopamine please

MY M3G4M1LL10NS NVMB3RS...

my MegaMillions numbers

never hit, but still spend four

bucks for five-hour fantasies

TOP TEN SPIRIT WARRIOR HOWLS AT THE IMPENDING FIRE

attempting to build
reality within these
sensory decepts#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/DzHMuHrIuv

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

spirit warrior thoughts
of disappearing from this
false panopticon#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/yHkMExQEm8

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

alias Raven
Mack abandoned as worthless -
begin again blank#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/3UKlWQK7wi

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

this existence too
full of poison lethargy,
by design, by "god"#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/18C2g2Wetn

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

attempting to slay
these desires for money or
fame or whatever#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/QE7mfnu39t

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

poison culture sows
"lack of" thoughts everywhere -
missing fruits blossom#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/U5KvUhd7yo

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

rather 69
than 10-99 any
day still be living#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/yFXcAKVqYC

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

not sure how y'all feel
but I'm excited about
end times arriving#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/Tp7e3LuGWj

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

conquest of the doomed -
the wretched shall inherit
what's left of the earth#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/QG09WgYb4E

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

rebuilding with love
with no productive purpose
other than all good#shardhaiku #rojonekku pic.twitter.com/nX8DqWYXNO

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 21, 2018

#1: attempting to build/reality within these/sensory decepts

#2: spirit warrior thoughts/of disappearing from this/false panopticon

#3: alias Raven/Mack abandoned as worthless -/begin again blank

#4: this existence too/full of poison lethargy,/by design, by “god”

#5: attempting to slay/these desires for money or/fame or whatever

#6: poison culture sows/”lack of” thoughts everywhere -/missing fruits blossom

#7: rather 69/than 10-99 any/day still be living

#8: not sure how y’all feel/but I’m excited about/end times arriving

#9: conquest of the doomed -/the wretched shall inherit/what’s left of the earth

#10: rebuilding with love/with no productive purpose/other than all good

TOP TEN THOUGHTS SITTING IDLE AT ONESTY POOL

public pool's final
weekend - poorly tattooed moms
factor null and void#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/I4hMndClAc

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

love too be ragged
camo cargo mundo heart
love too be hopeless#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/TZDKWue6wR

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

wretched-born pureheart
scribbles nonsense gibberish
by kiddie pool's splash#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/rusrSIoZst

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

love too be idle
love too be unproductive
love too laze around#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/GJxzFNPjq2

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

let us normalize
not doing shit; normalize
freakish wild ass ways#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/nlcUjDyUhS

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

your best decision
sometimes is your poorest choice -
poor choices baby!#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/EX2KNZ0G3d

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

I'm a sum result
of seven generations
of poorest choices#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/NuKDhIYWIO

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

only son of an
only son - but I'm blessed with
nothing but daughters#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/jdQq2geBcz

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

breaking cycles which
perpetuate false goodness -
inshallah, ya bish#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/AbouCQW0kU

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

when I'm dirtgod dead,
it'll be all good, since three
dirtgoddesses stand#shardhaiku #sogofu pic.twitter.com/6lOxtUbrdB

— raven mack the dirtgod (@rojonekku) August 18, 2018

#1: public pool’s final/weekend  - poorly tattooed moms/factor null and void
#2: love too be ragged/camo cargo mundo heart/love too be hopeless
#3: wretched-born pureheart/scribbles nonsense gibberish/by kiddie pool’s splash
#4: love too be idle/love too be unproductive/love too laze around
#5: let us normalize/not doing shit; normalize/freakish wild ass ways
#6: your best decision/sometimes is you’re poorest choice -/ poor choices baby!
#7: I’m a sum result/of seven generations/of poorest choices
#8: only son of an/only son - but I’m blessed with/nothing but daughters
#9: breaking cycles which/perpetuate false goodness -/inshallah, ya bish
#10: when I’m dirtgod dead,/it’ll be all good, since three/dirtgoddesses stand