D0M1N10N 0V3R TH3 34RTH...

dominion over the Earth,

negotiated behind

closed doors with politicians

M4T3R14L C0NC3PTS 0F...

material concepts of

ownership no longer make

sense; return to Earth like rust

SONG OF THE DAY: Working Class Man

A lot of my interactions with punk music growing up were interactions with people further up the class scale than me, often times speaking to me condescendingly for not knowing something. That’s always been my problem with punk to be honest. On top of this, in the places I’ve lived, there started to be this pseudo-southern image cultivation on top of that class issue, perhaps best exemplified by the PBR craze among seemingly scummy types in mid-‘90s Richmond. I found that shit untrustable in a lot of cases, and for the most part the folks who tingled my “nah, don’t trust ‘em” intuition have panned out correctly. I will never get the rear view mirror looking back on what you did a long ass time ago thing, because – in my mind – you ought to still be doing things. I don’t believe in that notion that people are wilder when they’re young then get more conservative with age and live more normalized lives, and also thus reflect back on their younger adult years as something special. Why the fuck ain’t you still challenging shit? Ain’t nothing really changed for the larger world. You just settled down and into the channel you already were following. Anyways, I’m open to all people, but tbh I find allegedly “old punks” who are blatant capitalists or entirely stable middle class denizens tiresome af. Growth is a real thing, I know that, so I don’t expect you to be G.G. Allin until you die, but goddamn don’t be sitting there with $2000 worth of visible tattoos drinking an $8 pint of beer trying to talk to me about what’s real and authentic. Because you’re not speaking my language.

M3 4ND MVLL31N ST4ND1NG T4LL...

me and mullein standing tall,

beside the railroad tracks on

a simple Sunday morning

TH3 M1RR0R 0F CH1LDR3N'S 3Y3S...

the mirror of children's eyes

motivating you to break

generational patterns

C0MP0VND GR0WN L1K3 KVDZV V1N3...

compound grown like kudzu vine

over the decades along

the margins of the Blue Ridge

4 S0M3T1M3S S0L1T4RY...

a sometimes solitary

path, forced by compulsion

to follow artistic urges

TH3 BR1GHT S4F3 ST3R1L1Z3D...

the bright safe sterilized

lights of nicer better but

unaffordable D.C.

SONG OF THE DAY: Oatmeal

Always forget how much I love oatmeal because I don't eat breakfast for the most part, until I make it, and put in some golden raisins and pecans or walnuts or whatever almost expired fruit and nuts is sitting in my cabinet about to go bad and get tossed to the squirrels, which feels dumb to have spent $15 at Trader Joe's seven months ago just to feed squirrels now.

But sometimes I am standing there, wasting food, and money, and I think "oh yeah, oatmeal!" and I make some and it is always good, but never good enough to make me think I should eat breakfast all the time. Fuck that, I'm staying in bed that extra eleven minutes.

3V1CT10NS T0 M4K3 R3P41RS...

evictions to make repairs -

gentrifying neighborhood

laundering morality

SONG OF THE DAY: Childhood's End

I was going to write some things but then the song is about childhood’s end and I figured I’d rather go outside than write some things. I’ve been trying to do that more. Internet is a poisonous cocktail for all our hearts. It didn’t used to feel that way but they’ve put in some additives, wireless corn syrup or some shit. So I’m going outside, to sit on that one bench in the corner of the spiral garden. I’ll be there for like 45 minutes so come out there and talk to me.

M3M0R13S 0F TR4V3L1NG...

memories of traveling

to gnome enclave hidden deep

in California redwoods

BLVRS FR0M BVST3D C4M3R4S...

blurs from busted cameras -

just dropped another one while

getting out the car tonight

SONG OF THE DAY: Let's Do It In Slow Motion

OUT HERE LIVING LIFE TO THE FULLEST 

EVEN THOUGH CULTURE TRIES TO SHRINK IT TO THE SMALLEST 

TRYING TO CRUSH MY LIME GREEN BLAZE ORANGE AURA YIN YANG 

BENEATH MINIMUM PAYMENTS AND MAXIMUM TIME DEMANDS 

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT POISON CULTURE? 

I STAY MOVING SLOW, EVEN WHEN ON THE CLOCK 

KEEP IT SLOW AS FUCK, GOT MY HEARTBEAT AT SCREWED AND CHOPPED BPM 

Y’ALL GONNA KILL US ALL ANYWAYS 

THE ROAD GONNA END WHEN IT ENDS 

MIGHT AS WELL ENJOY THE SCENERY 

WITHOUT BLOWING A GASKET EARLY 

B4CK WH3N P30PL3 W4S BV1LD1NG...

back when people was building

to be enjoyed for a life,

not flipped at a profit

W3 VS3D T0 M4K3 SH1T, BV1LD SH1T...

"we used to make shit, build shit;

now we just put our hand in

the next guy's pocket," Frank said

SONG OF THE DAY: Whitey on the Moon

Relating more to Gil Scott-Heron’s lyrics here than the whiteys on the moon, I look forward to a day where our racial analysis in America starts to parse whiteness away from its monolithic cultural superior status, and we can start to see the shades of grey inside the whiteness. While capital letter Whitey has gone to the moon, there’s still a lot of lower case whiteys stuck here on the flat earth, pretending they gonna get a ride on the spaceship. In fact, that whole demographic of lower case whiteys has been capital W (for win) Whitey’s bread and butter since way back in the day. And I don’t say that to absolve poor whites from the dastardly acts and inherent benefit to being white in this society; I say it so that the capital W Whitey can lose their foot soldiers and literal cannon fodder. Even as a white male, at least as the type of white male I am, I can say without a hint of feeling bad, fuck Whitey.

There used to be this journal called Race Traitor, which talked about how the best way culturally-identified white people could dismantle the systemic power of whiteness is to betray that shit. We done got so woke these days, we might have gone back to sleep partially, and you might have an online rabble rouser jump in your shit for trying to do that. But honestly, in all my experiences in life, if you carry yourself in the real world with integrity and don’t be a self-important asshole, most folks gonna end up trusting you to be doing right. Internet moves too fast for real world processing though, and also clouds all truth with multiple fogs of misinformation, so rather than being like “yeah fuck whitey on the moon!” you’d have people arguing that ultimately Whitey getting to the moon was the most important cultural achievement in human history, or that there was no moon landing, or that actually the Annunaki landed on the moon four centuries ago, or I don’t know a million different things. But ultimately the point of this song is this dude’s sister got medical bills out the ass from living in sub-standard conditions, and they going broke just trying to live, while capital W Whitey done not flown all the way to the goddamned moon. That shouldn’t feel like a big W for win necessarily, if you’re leaving behind the majority of humanity to make historical etchmarks for the economic minority.

T3MPL3 0F TH3 69...

temple of the 69 -

praying for reciprocal

love through self and universe

SONG OF THE DAY: Salue 2 El Chapo

Life put the Monday cobra clutch on me, after having them momentary weekend delusions during idle times that maybe the relentless onslaught of this late capitalist pyramid scam might lighten up at some point. Nope, it ain't gonna go away, until this shit crumbles. El Chapo dreams about all most of us have left, more realistic than the Powerball, because we at least get to touch some of it before they shut us down, as planned all along. Anti-devil FYIFYFMF mentality at 130% volume today.

ST4R1NG 4T TH3 SKY W1TH 4...

staring at the sky with a

frustrated heart feeling like

"Brooklyn Zoo" instrumental

R0VGH 4SHL4R N4TVR3 CH1S3L3D...

rough ashlar nature chiseled

into good human resource,

but I remain resistant

SONG OF THE DAY: Dead Bent

Bought this 12-inch way back in the day when I tended to buy a lot of 12-inch singles without thinking. Didn't know who MF Doom was at that time, because I mean this was when the shit originally came out, first week in the store, Willie's on Southside, and I was like "lol okay MF Doom sounds like an ill name" and it didn't have a cover, just white slip sleeve cheap ass label on the vinyl, so you knew it had to be solid. Independent as fuck, maybe even local. I got back to where I was living (who knows where that was at that time… maybe the trailer park on the tobacco farm, maybe an assortment of squat-ish flops I was running through) and put it on and oh shit. That oh shit feeling has never gone away from that first round of MF Doom. Dude is one of a kind. (Still have this single, by the way.)

TRY1NG T0 F1ND 4 PL4C3 1N...

trying to find a place in
a world manipulated
by wealth, nowhere to settle

SONG OF THE DAY: Sirens

sirens you hide from and sirens you wander towards

out of control on both counts

the mythology of survival

always sneaking fresh tendrils

into the cracks of our human psychology

TH1RTY-THR33 MVSHR00M M0SQV3S SPR0VT...

thirty-three mushroom mosques sprout

in eastern woodlands circle,

no body to see but me

H0VRS SP3NT P3RF3CT1NG 4 T4G...

hours spent perfecting a tag,

in sharpie, paint marker, and

finally cans of krylon

SONG OF THE DAY: Take Your Time

Not sure why stereotypes always have to be negative, except for maybe people are just channeled into negativity too much. The negative stereotype of the pretentious white Becky for example – I bet we all know a chill Becky or too, and it feels awkward to be all “lolol” at Becky memes when you suddenly humanize this otherwise dehumanizing activity with a real life chill Becky. I mean, I also get it, it’s a reactionary dehumanization process against a larger dehumanization process that is cultural, so I ain’t mad at nobody… just saying.

A stereotype I apply in real life, sort of, is one I call the Otis. I ride the bus a lot, and also tend to be one of those types that interacts with people in passing, and also seems to draw in interactions with random people, specifically the wild ones. I guess it’s my natural dirtgod nature. I can throw up metaphysical boundaries if I need to, activate the hillbilly murder eyes and get a little space, in fact as a kid that’s how I survived a lot of times riding the bus. But now for the most part, when meandering to and from this or that, my boundaries are minimal and I’m talking shit with the world in passing, because that’s how I enjoy this limited ass life I got. Invariably when living this way, you’re gonna have conversations with older chill dudes – old school loungers – who got a solid power of lounge outlook on life despite not having all that much. The shocking thing we sometimes forget in this American death machine is that you actually don’t need a whole lot to be happy. Doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be treated equally, or that wealth inequality is not the defining issue of our current state of political affairs, but it does mean that we ain’t all gotta be millionaires living in a big house on a tall hill looking down on the rest of the world. You can carve out a pretty happy life in simple means, and in actuality it might be easier if you keep it simpler. I strive for this in my basement apartment phase of life I’m living now.

These old loungers will always have that conversation for you though, about chill places in town, or about some dude who wasn’t no good at work, generally a management type, and there’s like a small arsenal of them in my everyday life now. We get to talking so much, and be like “what’s up” every time we see each other though, that we never get around to knowing each other’s name. Ever. And I ain’t the type to be asking some dude his name. Why can’t we just talk and be chill and friendly and have each other’s public back without knowing who the fuck we exactly are? These dudes, to me, are Otises. All of them are Otis.

There’s one Otis in particular, I see this dude all the time, African-American dude, we talked in passing on his birthday one time, talked about UVA basketball, talked about every damn thing pretty much. He’s like me, interacts with the passing world. Now I’ll just randomly be walking through some part of town (always on foot, the way of the lounger, if able) and I’ll hear, “there he goes” or something like that, and it’s Otis. Of course I don’t know his name is actually Otis so I’m like, “hey, what’s up potna?” or “what’s going on chief” or some colloquial code switching nonsense like that from my youth. I guess it ain’t really code switching because that’s more my heart, and I’m actually code switching when I’m surrounded by these well-to-do devils and acting like I prefer perfect grammar and respecting the written law of the government more than the unwritten law of the lounger. But nonetheless, Otis always brightens the day, and has helped raised the bar of all Otises in passing, so that when I’m on a road trip in some strange place, and say I’m about to go into the Roses in Henderson, North Carolina, and some old dude is rolling up in a dented and skinned up but still relatively clean old ass Lincoln, windows down and the old jams playing, I think to myself, “hell yeah, fuckin’ Otis” and it’s a positive stereotype, and I feel better, and then I go into Roses and get a couple more throw pillows like I planned.

TH3 1LLVM1N4T3D GL4SS...

the illuminated glass

foretold dark prophecies of

I don't know some scary shit

T3NDR1LS 0F R34L1TY...

tendrils of reality

deeper than what's visible,

but all of it's connected

1NT3RN4L M1ND CH3M1STRY...

internal mind chemistry

momentarily gettin'

recalibrated while ghost

SONG OF THE DAY: Outside Woman

Cool spring time nights, storms rolling in, bedroom window wide open with the medieval weaponry beside the bed in off-chance miscreant tries to climb through window on a lark. Love too be cuddled up in the bed with the breeze blowing the thrift store kufiyah curtain because I don’t have real anything. Love too have an old soul in new-fangled world, moving slow step-by-step deep dedication to walking every minute of life with full steep as all the yakubian algorithms invisibly shoot around me like a google of laser beams which work both as distraction like cat chasing red light on wall, as well as a security system meant to chop my metaphysical sense of self into a thousand useless pieces. Love too live in an age of self-doubt and loathing and feeling guilty for the entirety of history as I sit on this pyramid scam called western culture, but get those brief blasts of lovely serotonin that says to worried mind, “shush now, feel that cool air blowing in, life is life and it always will be, ‘til one day you are dead.”

D3D1C4T10N T0 W4LK1NG...

dedication to walking

forty-mile weekends on this

Rivanna Subdivision

S0VTH3RN G0TH1C FVTVR1ST...

southern gothic futurist

markings while industrial

oblivion passes by

SONG OF THE DAY: Sibidoul

After they didn't have the purple rain remake LP at the Mdou Moctar shows I went to earlier this year, or last year, or whenever it was (life is a blur) I got the vinyl from their website, thus triggering a revisiting of that classic Mdou Moctar material. He's got a new album out now, and more US tour dates upcoming, at bigger venues now. Makes me happy, because his music makes me happy. Last year I tried to fast during Ramadan but only made it a couple days because I am still a haram infidel I guess, but first day of Ramadan was a Mdou Moctar show in Richmond, and it was very transcendent tbh. Life needs far more spiritual transcendence, even if drug related. Our culture's too damn materialistic, trying to fill our spiritual void with stuff. It doesn't appear to be working.

L3SS0N 0F S0L1T4RY...

lesson of solitary

tree - somehow don't get cut down

by these bastards with fences

SONG OF THE DAY: Goldencity

Dating somebody now so I got suggested music I wouldn’t have suggested to myself because I live in my own filter bubble, which means unless it’s screwed and chopped norteno highlife music, I probably missed it. Filter bubbles seems to be getting worse and worse, everybody climbing deeper into them rather than trying to pop them. Algorithms purposely exploiting them and manufacturing it further, in order to increase digital revenues, which is ultimately how the global electoral system got so fucked in recent years, because the ultimate goal is to get clicks, nothing altruistic. Sprague-Dawley humans will always click the link with the shocking drama or impossible to believe claim that has naked titties in it, over the critically thought one. Lolol and the worst offenders of this shit, the worst exploiters of this, especially on youtube, are dudes who claim to be rational. Oh well, all this shit will break down, we will lose access to the fake clouds, and mushrooms will sprout everywhere. It’ll be okay. And also it won’t.

Sudan Archives is one such suggestion that came from my potna. She’s became a staple of my musical soundtrack, which has been a recurring theme over the years with Stones Throw releases. She’s not actually from Sudan, as far as she is known, but was drawn to the musical styles in a somewhat digital mystical quality, so ran with it. Our ideas of native culture to us, and appropriation vs. influence, and what all that means, is so fucking complex, and I’m not even trying to step into that discussion. But most all of us have had are innate cultural identity decimated historically by the dominant material culture, especially minorities. But really most all of us, even the whites. It’s not like in old ass European times it was a bunch of different clans of “whites” running around. But the dominant culture today is what is seen as white, and we look the part, so the fact all our culture has been bleached away and whitewashed as well, so that we all search for identity in material consumption is pushed aside. And I ain’t really here to beat a drum about it. Basically I’m saying fuck poison culture.

In the actual Sudan, there’s been a public resistance going on for a few months now, against long-standing dictator leader. He was overthrown by a military coup last week, but coverage hasn’t been too prominent, probably because the west is waiting to see what happens. Former President Omar al-Bashir was fucking shit up all over the place in the Sudan, committing genocide in western Sudan and causing a civil war which ended up with South Sudan seceding and becoming its own state. The people want democracy – real democracy, not propped up by intelligence and foreign powers, but who knows what will happen with a military coup, even if the military did arrest most of the upper echelon of corruption last week.

People always have the power to massively resist, and force shitty governments to stop being so shitty. Usually government will end up being shitty again, because humans at individual level are infallible as fuck. I’m a pretty solid dude, but if somebody showed up with $100K cash in front of me right now, I’d do some pretty dehumanizing shit to help escape the feelings of economic personal doom we all live under. Anyways, all this is thoughts on Sudan, and music, and people. The most famous person I knew as a kid from Sudan was Abdullah the Butcher, who actually is a Canadian dude and not a bloodthirsty African madman. He was super entertaining. He ended up running a soul food/Chinese restaurant in Atlanta. All of this is the layers of poison culture, which is still amazing, despite being an unreal culture entirely. Enjoy your life. We all are doomed, and yet also, entirely blessed.

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: Cardiff City F.C.

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football dork methodology meant to establish a listing of players who have been most active for English Premier League teams in their past 100 non-friendly matches. Essentially, it is calculated by minutes played, but weighted towards most recent games. The end result is a listing of the 25 players in a team’s recent history who have had the largest hand on their metaphysical sporting trajectory. The English Premier League was chosen because it is the highest level of football played in an English speaking country, and I speak English. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA, where I fucking live. And yet still I should clarify I hate English, and also America. Thus maybe I hate myself. Should I not fail in maintaining my unpaid deadline, a new 25-Man Metaphysical Roster will appear on the 1st and 15th of every month.]

WORKING THROUGH A MISSED YEAR BECAUSE WE RE-LAUNCHING THIS BITCH ON JUNE 1ST, 2019!!! This would’ve been those bastards from Cardiff City getting metaphysically ranked on April 15, 2019. Haha, they got relegated.

#1: NEIL ETHERIDGE (up from #6 last time; thus his FIRST METAPHYSICAL STAR)

#2: BRUNO ECUELE MANGA (up from #7 last time)

#3: SEAN MORRISON (down from #1 last time)

#4: SOL BAMBA (down from #3 last time)

#5: JOE BENNETT (down from #4 last time)

#6: JUNIOR HOILETT (down from #2 last time)

#7: JOE RALLS (down from #5 last time)

#8: CALLUM PATERSON (up from #12 last time)

#9: ARON GUNNARSSON (up from #11 last time)

#10: LEE PELTIER (same as last time)

#11: VICTOR CAMARASA

#12: KENNETH ZOHORE (down from #8 last time)

#13: NATHANIEL MENDEZ-LAING (down from #9 last time)

#14: HARRY ARTER (previously ranked #22 for Bournemouth on 15-Feb-2019)

#15: JOSH MURPHY

#16: BOBBY REID

#17: LOIC DAMOUR (down from #13 last time)

#18: OUMAR NIASSE (previously ranked #22 for Everton on 01-Aug-2018)

#19: CRAIG BRYSON (down from #15 last time)

#20: MARKO GRUJIC (down from #16 last time)

#21: GREG CUNNINGHAM

#22: KADEEM HARRIS (down from #18 last time)

#23: DANNY WARD (up from #25 last time; also previously ranked #21 for Huddersfield Town on 01-Dec-2018)

#24: JAZZ RICHARDS (down from #14 last time)

#25: GARY MADINE