4TT3MPT1NG T0 3L3V4T3...

attempting to elevate 
my status, but can’t deny 
destiny’s limitations 

D1D MY B3ST T0 1GN0R3 TH3...

did my best to ignore the 
psychic no trespassing signs 
nailed throughout environment 

"C4N'T H4V3 N0TH1NG N1C3" T4TT003D...

“can’t have nothing nice” tattooed 
throughout my whole psyche, in 
old english bubble letters 

SONG OF THE DAY: Done With This

Just another cabin boy on a ship of fools, waiting for the water to fill my lungs. Everything is completely obvious, yet everyone wants to get lost in the semantics of how you get around to pointing at the obvious, until we’ve talked ourselves into oblivion, the acts of the oblivious, purposefully ignorant to the facts in front of us, and I don’t even know why. So mostly I think, “fuck it,” and cosplay like my job is important enough to justify riding along until I die. Maybe we won’t hit the iceberg in my lifetime, not until my kids are older, maybe not ‘til my grandkids exist. Just another cabin boy on a ship of fools.

TH3 1M4G3S 0F 0VR S3LF...

the images of our self 
others see is only part 
of the fool reality 

F0LL0W1NG H4LF-4B4ND0N3D...

following half-abandoned 
tracks in half-forgotten spots, 
with half a mind forever 

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

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

CR00K3D T33TH TH3 SVR3ST S1GN...

crooked teeth the surest sign 
of born class, since poor folks ain’t 
expected to ever smile 

SONG OF THE DAY: Coat Of Many Colors (chopped & screwed)

Still chopping and screwing country classics, because it's a way I can reconcile where I came from with where I am. That shit is hard for a lot of people. The past becomes too much, and you can't ever leave it behind, or you just run from it over and over. Now is hard as fuck too for people, especially when that past blew so many holes in you. I don't know... sometimes I think I'm doing better, but other times I think I ain't done nearly enough. But I did this much.

S0VTH3RN G0TH1CC FVTVR1ST...

southern gothicc futurist… 
born to turn lack of traction 
into grip by burning out 

SH0VLD3R1NG W31GHT 0F TH3 W0RLD...

shouldering weight of the world, 
we all strive to find pleasure 
in this physical prison 

M0ST 0F 0VR L1V3S SP3NT BV1LD1NG...

most of our lives spent building 
pyramid schemes for others; 
embezzle back the minutes 

SONG OF THE DAY: Whole Lotta Meat aka Hey Little Girl

There’s a local blues show that goes for approximately 74 hours every Saturday night on NPR, with some old ass dude who looks nothing like he sounds hosting. He shaves his face, and never had his electricity cut off for non-payment. Thus, he doesn’t get it. But this is a brave new world, where you don’t actually have to get it to act like you get it, and if you act long enough and hard enough, people politely go along with believing you got it.

Anyways, there’s such a wonderful large body – no pun intended – of old blues songs about big women, which is enjoyable on the very basic level, but also even greater when you think about some dude sitting around, thinking about writing a song, and decides to go all in on glorifying his big ol’ lady in a song. One time I wrote an entire 14 poem crown of sonnets about loving big asses too much, so I got banished to a mountain range which was giant asses, occupied entirely by stick women who exiled me from their community because of my over enthusiasm in the actual realm about big asses. That’s a little too much to explain in three verses and a chorus, so I appreciate the way bluesmen kept it simple.
There was no video for this song I could find, so I made one, but don't worry, the owners of the music maintained their copyright, so if you watch this video 13,000 times in a row, you'll make them seven pennies, not me.

S0VTHS1D3 V1RG1N14 SCRVB P1N3...

southside Virginia scrub pine, 
in human form, bound to be 
mulch around a plantation oak 

TH3 GR34T3ST 4RT1STS R3M41N...

the greatest artists remain 
unknown, entirely consumed 
by creation’s constant work 

1'V3 B33N PR4CT1C1NG L3TT1NG...

I’ve been practicing letting 
go of notions of being 
“productive”, and destiny 

SONG OF THE DAY: Summer Breeze (slurred & blurred)

Summer might be over if you’re bound by the shackles of the calendar boxes, but the summer breeze never stops if you got your fifth eye activated to the synchronized dance of Jupiter and Saturn, with the hunter’s moon making night as if day. The summer breeze is much colder this time of year, but that’s just to encourage hibernation of spirit to process the devils who have blossomed in your life over the past planting season, and cast those who need to be forgotten away as memories instead of accomplices. Place a white quartz stone at your back door for environmental benefit, and also stack a few in your front yard as a warning to any carriers of negativity that their intentions shall not pass. Usually a quartz pile of ten to three thousand stones, from seven inches to 469 feet high, should do the trick.

TH3 M3R1T0CR4CY MYTHS...

the meritocracy myths 
planted in my brain blossom as 
failure demons, fraud syndrome 

SONG OF THE DAY: Sad Girl

Been sad today, perhaps too much Monday, at societal level to be honest. We keep getting told the end is near, the end is coming, but it just turns out to be the weekend, and we’re right back at Monday morning again, with the same bullshit type of people standing on top of everybody else. I keep hoping the apocalypse for this western civilization is actually here, and a new epoch can begin, but I gotta keep on washing and hanging up these work clothes, before every Monday, and likely will until I die. What kinda deal is that?

C1RCVL4T1NG MYS3LF 1N...

circulating myself in 
downward and upward spirals 
of energy and escape 

SP1NN1NG THR0VGH SP4C3, CH41N3D T0 TH1S...

spinning through space, chained to this 
physical “reality” 
I’m being subjected to 

B3C0M1NG 4 SVCC3SS 1S...

“becoming a success” is 
a carnival trick I’m not 
balanced enough to figure 

MY 3NT1R3 L1F3 SP3NT ST33P3D WH3R3...

my entire life spent steeped where 
western culture first tendriled 
against river’s native flow 

SONG OF THE DAY: Superman Lover

The other week I was on a long ass vehicular wander, through the nether regions of upper Appalachia, where there apparently is some sort of coordinated secret effort to turn all school boards into write-in candidates, who oppose a bunch of made up things that aren’t actually happening, but Fox News beams strong in rural America. Anyways, as one does, I got a few pieces of fried chicken somewhere near the West Virginia/Maryland or Virginia/West Virginia or some fucking border, who knows… I am just a man driving long distances to vibe, I do not recognize the imaginary lines on a map while vibing that hard in a car in the actual world where those lines don’t exist (though y’all motherfuckers do put up a lot of fences, don’t you?). The chicken thighs had the taste of fish as well, a shared fryer, which I don’t mind, that’s a blessing, anyone who tells you otherwise is a prude who expects too much from fried meats country folks adore. You gotta look for those dope ass country stores for the fried chicken hook-ups, which I found, and it hit, hard. A little too hard probably, and as the DJ Screw mixtape I was bumping, I felt impending problems with continuing my drive too much further without a gastrointestinal pit stop. That sucks though, because country stores, and gas stations in general, are horrible places to take a shit, so I usually look for a Sheetz or Wawa, in that region at least, because they are consistent in making their wage slave employees clean up the bathroom. Found a Sheetz, and it was weird, because there was a freestyle rocking on the Screw tape over a song that had sampled “Superman Lover”, that old Redman beat I think it was, but it might’ve been something else using the same sample, but then when I went into the Sheetz, and found my temporary road dog throne, I realized “Superman Lover” was blasting in the Sheetz. Why the fuck were they playing Johnny “Guitar” Watson on the Sheetz radio? It made no sense, other than one of those perfectly synchronized moments of magic. I knew then that my choice in fried chicken, car music, and stopping to get myself right all were perfect. And when I was done on my throne, I got two Perrier peaches, got back in the car, and kept driving. I haven’t stopped since. I’m driving now, texting this straight from my mind to the internet, because they have that technology now in the nether regions of Durango state in northern Mexico. I figure I’ll just keep driving down to Chile, then off to the moon while it’s full again. I bet driving on top of a full moon is transcendent. Probably gonna listen to some vaporwave for that leg of the trip though.

D1SCR3T10N4RY 1NC0M3...

discretionary income 
in obscene amounts ain’t been 
my experience (thus far) 

SONG OF THE DAY: Shake That Thing

There is an abandoned soapstone factory in the woods around here, like a giant structure made of soapstone slabs with no roof where narrow gauge train used to roll in and get loaded up. I do a lot of wandering, so accidentally discovered that if you’re sitting around down there on a new moon that falls on an increment of 7 as a day (like the 7th, 14th, 21st, or 28th), it turns into a spirit dive, so you see (hallucinate? who knows, nothing is real, especially not reality) an old bar take the form of the building, and a bunch of weird characters (me included) are all hanging out. I never drank the first time I was there but the second time an old dude named Juney told me it was okay, the wine didn’t actually have alcohol in it, or anything, like if you drank it nothing came out the cups, but it got you drunker on the vibes by pretending, so I did. Great time. That night an old spirit they called Haze started banging this song out on a homemade cigar box guitar, loud as fuck he was yelling the song, and all the spirits – man, woman, other – just started shaking their (our) asses like wild, “MAMA, SHAKE THAT THANG! DADDY, SHAKE THAT THANG!” for what felt like hours and hours and hours but I couldn’t tell time at all because it was a dark new moon and the kerosene lanterns (hallucinated) in the joint were the only light. When I made my way back up the hill, I’d only been down there about 15 minutes, but I was sweaty as fuck, and somehow I lost a sock, but still had my walking boots on. Never quite figured that part out, hallucinations or real or whatever. How the fuck do you lose a single sock without taking your shoes off? It was one of my favorite socks too, blaze orange Polo crew sock. Shit kinda bums me out but I hope a spirit just took that shit as a memento. Still though, what the fuck?

TH0VGH 1 DR1V3 4 C0R0LL4...

though I drive a Corolla, 
I feel like a Cadillac… 
at least I tell myself this 

SONG OF THE DAY: Poor Loser

The rise of Artisanal Poverty in American culture over the past quarter century has been strange, where the children of affluence conceal themselves in the camouflage of struggle, only to end up buying houses cheaply in “bad” neighborhoods, after years of renting in same places, driving up the “value” of those locations collectively. The first sign of successful occupation is the small business bakery, in a corner store front that had either been abandoned for a while, or was a church, or some weird shit. But now it’s a bakery, with really delicious but expensive pastries and breads, and literally nothing else. Definitely pie. The boutique pie shop is a definite staple of the Artisanal Poverty movement. Many of the denizens still dress as if they’re street urchins from Birmingham (UK) in the decades after the Industrial Revolution, but most of them are college graduates, albeit struggling in the declining American Empire, thus often required to work service industry jobs while also “building” their own small businesses through the access to wealth they always had as foundational support. They make money, but also have a lot of bills, thus they’re always “broke”, usually because they have to access forms of wealth they’d rather not more often than they’d like to. And for many of them, used to seeing the previous generations accumulate wealth rather than barely hold even or actually dip into that wealth, it feels like they are broke somehow. They try to save money, only going to the pie shop or corner pastry spot a couple times a month, rather than every Tuesday afternoon like it used to be. They share the logins for streaming services with their close circle, so that they can still watch everything important without having to pay for it directly. Eventually, the original house in an old neighborhood loses its luster because everything got “too bougie” and gentrified for them, the earliest colonizers of a bad neighborhood. So they sell it, quietly, without calling a lot of attention to the move, because profiting off a neighborhood that they directly helped gentrify breaks the Artisanal Poverty aesthetics. Keep that on the down low, but they can roll the profits into paying their parents or grandparents back a little bit of money, to keep things kosher for the next time they have to lean on that wealth that will inevitably fall to them anyways. Plus, usually they got a little extra to roll into a new truck down payment for their construction business, which also helps validate the Artisanal Poverty vibes, because it’s like they are an old country music song, except they are wealthy, and hardly rural in cultural practice, despite what their location may have ever suggested. Artisanal Poverty’s clout levels have risen immensely in recent years, due to the expansion of memes, which have co-opted skillets (aka “frying pans” to most of them), pop country music of yesteryear, and pre-suburban imagery of rural America. Most of them don’t realize pop country has never been truly rural, in many many decades, and they are worshipping a past vision of American life that never actually existed in the first place, not unlike Trump supporters, just from a contrarian position. Dolly Parton is the patron saint of Artisanal Poverty, which is no diss to Dolly, because I play my “Jolene” 45 at 33 rpm at least a couple times a month still, though to be honest the shit I go to more often than not is the first Trio record. Artisanal Poverty loves Dolly Parton, and Reba McIntire too, but never has shit to say about Emmylou Harris, ever. Very telling. But Dolly’s visual aesthetics plus progressive attitudes towards sexuality makes her the patron saint of Artisanal Poverty. So if you find yourself walking through a strange city, and you’re going through a rough-looking neighborhood, so your media-ingrained anxieties start to rise, and you’re slipping into hyper-awareness fight-or-flight mode, but all of a sudden you see a small bakery shop, for some weird reason, with Dolly Parton blasting respectfully loud inside, fear not friend, you’re not in an actual poor neighborhood. It’s just an Artisanal Poverty zone, and you’re safe (as long as you or your parents’ credit rating is good enough). Try the organic apple fritters, and lose yourself in trying to decipher all the colorful expensive tattoos’ super-clever meaning!

TH4T 1NT3RN4L J1H4D 0F...

that internal jihad of 
either escaping your self, 
or doing the deeper work 

SONG OF THE DAY: El Pachuco

 

Been in a bit of funk lately, but combatting that by going into abandoned buildings and doodling as many variations of the #25 El Borracho card as I can, paying homage to all the great drunkards I’ve known, but in my personal life but culturally as well. Was looking up choices people used for making an El Pachuco card too, seems like the most common results has 26, which doesn’t make sense to me. There’s a t-shirt that comes up with nice El Pachuco art and using #1, and sure, there’s rooster-esque qualities to a fully zooted pachuco, but I’m not sure I’d give up the chance to have a rooster card in any deck of anything. Roosters are pretty fucking amazing, visually. Seems like maybe #4 would make sense, but I don’t know, it’s not my place.
Anyways, I’ll just keep drawing El Borracho cards (“los borrachos?”) in those old factories that will never open again, marking the years away.

1 ST1LL PR3F3R TH3 SH4D0WS...

I still prefer the shadows… 
I tend to find sustenance 
navigating through darkness 

M3R1T0CR4CY MYTHS M4K3...

meritocracy myths make 
us want to leave some sort of 
mark, even if no purpose 

C0VLDN'T 4FF0RD TH3 H1GH R04D...

couldn’t afford the high road, 
but found escape… always took 
the back roads (like my dad taught) 

S1MVLT4N30VSLY B0RN...

simultaneously born 
bound to shine as well as rust… 
life’s problematic nature 

SONG OF THE DAY: Spanish Hustle

I refuse to hustle. It does no good. Look at Pete Rose.
Some people will say disco, and synths, and color coordinating all your clothes even though it's raining and you're home alone (except the cats), are weird behaviors. Luckily I don't know them people.

S0VTH3RN G0TH1CC FVTVR1ST...

southern gothicc futurist 
born with sub-liminal thought 
from intermediate space 

JVST 4 S1MPL3 4SS3D D1RTG0D...

just a simple assed dirtgod - 
stained by sunshine and blessed with 
infinite internal yarns 

JVST 4 BVNCH 0F S1M14NS...

just a bunch of simians 
chasing serotonin 
across the surface of Earth 

P0T3NT14L F0R WH1MS1C4L...

potential for whimsical 
joy remains in abundance, 
no matter how the world seems 

N3V3R G1V3 VP 0N F1ND1NG...

never give up on finding 
shelter if exposed to storms; 
survive, then thrive, then give back 

SONG OF THE DAY: Down And Out

 

Been listening to a lot of Charlie Rich. Little known fact about Charlie Rich… he’s former NWA World Heavyweight champion Tommy Rich’s uncle. If you look at pictures, you can see the resemblance. Man, what a Cadillac car ride from Macon, Georgia, to Memphis, Tennessee, that would’ve been in 1979.

P01S0NS FR0M 3XP3R13NC3...

poisons from experience 
can be processed with patient 
effort, deliver future 

SONG OF THE DAY: EQ Why

I spent two hours either napping or watching the new stupid Sopranos movie, which sucked, but was probably exciting to people who enjoy seeing famous character look different. It did help my napping though, except I woke up, and the thing was still fucking on. How long was that shit? Who the fuck has time to sit in a movie theater for three hours?

Anyways, this made me think how much of our idea of what’s good and what’s not is enculturation, and the expectations we have from what we’ve already consumed. I absolutely would’ve been better off watching a Wakaliwood movie this afternoon, which is the Ugandan film studio where a house DJ does commentary over the top. The special effects are cheaper, but more special, and the stories are enjoyable. The commentary makes it though, and when I went to the big wheel donk races in North Carolina, it was interesting that they had a house MC talking up the races the whole time too, just like Wakaliwood movies. That’s a piece of African culture modified for post-modern world I wish was more common, because it adds a lot.

Nyege Nyege Tapes is from some festival of crazy people music, and the Wakaliwood folks did a takeover movie where they movie killed a bunch of Nyege Nyege music festival fans as part of the festival one year. I need an arts scene like that, to be honest. America is fucking boring at this point. This song is from an Nyege Nyege release, and whenever I listen to it, I fantasize about stealing spaceships while on biker crank. It’s a lovely fantasy. There was no video for this song so I made one. I should’ve used Wakaliwood footage in retrospect, but I’m not good at retrospect because I’m a southern gothicc futurist.

N0TH1NG BR1NGS M3 P34C3 QV1T3 L1K3...

nothing brings me peace quite like 
simple steps through strange places, 
absorbing environments 

SONG OF THE DAY: Goats Keep Rappening

This beat by Boogie Brown was the theme to Monday Night Rumble of The Discourse, as seen on MY PATREON (which you should totally support, if you are able). I really loved doing those Monday Night Rumbles of The Discourse, but it got tiring, not really the making of those videos but actually paying attention to The Discourse. It’s all so toxic, like drinking arsenic water, and it seems those who are invested in believing in politics actually believe you can drink up the poisonous constantly, and something good still will come from it, if you just believe. I can’t believe like that. I’m not willing to handle snakes all that much and pretend they’re not fucking snakes that ultimately will bit me. So the main reason I couldn’t keep up with doing those videos is fuck man, who wants to ingest all that much discourse voluntarily?
The track itself is amazing though, and I love it dearly. I loved it before I used it for the discourse rumbles, and I love it even more now, because every time I hear that one part, I expect my voice to come in talking about the abandoned concrete factory.

1'M N0T "W1R3D" S1NC3 1'M 0NLY...

I’m not “wired” since I’m only 
human; nervous tendrils fill 
my insides (and outsides too)