The clichés are our best advice, but you need to live a tragic example before they set in.

                                                    
                                                       36
Do what's been on your to-do lists for months, the thing that's been giving you the most the regret. It will be over too fast, and you'll need a new big thing to put off. You'll try to fill a hole with "productivity;" accomplishing more comfort in your mundane routines.

                                                      
                                                       55
The ubiquitous underbelly of 2024 prevailing ideologies: Nobody wants to feel duped, despite all of them have been flimflammed to high heaven the last ten years (or more).

I didn’t go out last night, like I was supposed to. Sunday during Labor day weekend, and it’s a return to the long grind on Tuesday for my field. So many unknowns will collapse into certainty in one day, which will impact the rest of my year and beyond. So it goes.

I was supposed to go drink at the bar, an old friend is back off the wagon it seems. Yet, my buddy didn’t let me know it was going down until they were already at the bar. I spent most the day at my parents’ in the countryside and just got home. I was already on my second drink alone, and I sensed they were already farther along than me. Do I really want to drive 15 minutes to nurse 3 beers for 3 hours so I can drive back home? My stomach felt upset, so that was the deciding factor for me.

I let down Chuck Palahniuk in that quote where he says writers need to get out into the world, because nothing happens at home. Yet, I felt like I let myself down all summer by not hunkering down and completing all the esoteric music projects I envisioned. I was too tired to mess with my cables, mics, and computers, so I just picked up my acoustic and played. Sweet ethereal major 7th inversion chords and long forgotten riffs. A couple hours went by.  I played the blues riff from “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones better than I remember. I hit those chords so rhythmically and started to sing. I always thought I did good with **** Jagger’s vocals. I even remembered the second verse. I was right in the middle of it, when I hear my screen door open and some quick slaps on the door. My little dog comes barreling down from upstairs, barking. I look at the clock on the stove. It’s 9:36. I guess some people still need to work on Labor Day. Nevertheless, the city noise ordinance protects me ‘till 10.

I go to my front door and it’s a black abyss, save for a street light showing no one across the street in its feeble glow. I go to my side door, and my driveway and neighbor’s house is equally forlorn. I check the door on the other side of my house, off the bathroom. ****, I left it open to just the screen door. Surely nobody came into my backyard to mess with this door, but maybe it did let too much noise out. Was it the agoraphobic old lady on this side that came to my door? I never even spoke to her before.

Whoever it was, why didn’t they stay to talk to me? I would give you my phone number to make it easier on you if it ever happens again. I checked in the morning again. No note, no nothing. My mind is spinning with unknowns. Was it someone thinking this was the coke dealer’s house next door? Was it kids, checking if my car was unlocked, but then decided on an impromptu prank when they heard my song? Paranoid, I carried my Shillelagh with me the rest of the night.

I caved in, and got quieter. Switched to a tiny guitar tuned in open D, and stopped singing. I still hope they heard me faintly in defiance. I came up with a cool riff and recorded it in my loop pedal. There was a bit of feedback getting it all set up, and I hope they heard that too.



I’m too dense to take hints. Talk to me like a human being, and maybe next time I’ll know it’s you and what you are looking for.

No party offers anything material, just a more complete reification of things into people, and people into things. These hats, bumper stickers, and lawn signs represent more complex personalities than me or anyone I know. And a few folks reading this may be clutching their pearls, “That’s their team, not ours! Don’t you know what’s at stake, what we’re fighting for?” Yes, they’re the same things as 4 years ago. I too understand they couldn’t put real material demands in place, because there’s elections to win. We can’t let these talking points just disappear in success, let alone prevent tens of thousands more deaths.


I used to drink with rednecks at the bar. When we were kids we’d eat dinner at their houses after playing video games for hours. They had custom Dale Earnhardt wooden “3s” on their garage doors, Bush/Cheney and FUBO (F.U. Barack Obama) bumper stickers on their trucks. They called me a ****** because my parents liked John Kerry. Yet, whenever politics came up it was somewhat of a jovial debate session rather than a hateful inquisition. We recognized we weren't so cookie cutter in our beliefs.  We all had a degree of respect for nice guitars, funny stories, and characters.

Now I see their red hat. They remember my deleted Facebook statuses and college degree, and we don’t talk. We’re just things, who are no longer representative of each other anymore.



Nietzsche used to say one should be like a great sea, which can take in polluted streams without becoming polluted itself. Now they’ll find plastic in every speck of water on earth. It’s in our brains, blood, and breast milk.

Perhaps that primordial black ooze became our fungal overlord, pulling the levers to compel us toward our self-destruction. Some failsafe measure by a watchmaking God.



We should have kept up the idea of humanity as mysterious, creative, and curious beings, instead transferring that consciousness solely to our machines.

Many conspiracy theories get the connections and convolutions right. What they get wrong is the distracting end game, when the truth's so clear. Just look at the results. The rich and powerful always escape culpability, escape punishment. If the evidence proves too blatant, creating nets of legal and PR complexities keep the farce of "justice for all," while maintaining their Old World nobility.

Victorian inbreds and mobster charlatans, cutting corners and destroying civic morals, just to grab up more Earth. Soon their cheapness will became ubiquitous. They'll all end up in imploding pleasure submarines, dining on deadly raw foie gras, or barreling off a crumbling bridge in a driverless car.

How does capitalism deeply impact my life?

I want to make music so bad, but I procrastinate with stupid ****.
I clean as if people could come over anytime and judge me superficially. I often go out and shop for things I futilely hope will organize me enough to make cleaning faster. I shop for obscure musical instruments and gear to feel like it'll make making music easier.

In capitalism, owning the machinery is more valuable than doing the work. We ingrain that in our soul, more and more. Negative liberty was always valuable, but when you had less you used to find others to help turn that liberty positive.  

I have a guitar, bass, and drums, but no band. Self-alienation at this point. All my friends play, but don't want to make it a thing.


Our leaders are just hype men and chaos actors to keep the mystery going. "Capitalism may be cruel, but it's the best system we got."

"Capitalism just means people have the right to go into business for themselves." No the owners are subservient to something greater too. They serve capital, they serve the absolution of all. Your automatic answer is "it wasn't my fault." It was incorporated, depersonalized.

So many dead and broken people. So much waste. Digging up so much petroleum, the plastic's in our veins. "It's no one's fault." If by some astronomical chance a concerned public win a Kafkaesque trial, all that's lost is money. No one goes to jail or suffers, if you own enough stuff.

But there's the pickle. "The things you own start to own you," of course, but what's much worse is the Nothing they serve needs to grow, until there's no humanity left. Becoming voids who only seek more efficient ways to delete.

I think I figured out my health woes
and mental ones to boot
It's salt rinses until I can leave it to the tooth extraction professionals
Why is it so difficult for me to make the phone call
Do I still fear I'll be yelled at like I was child?

I want parental validation to ward off these unknown strangers
but I've been getting to know - for 10 years now
I'm smarter than my folks at home
The horror

The trick is to have the childhood faith you once had in them
in yourself - and in everyone else when you're not there
"These idiots will get along just fine. Why can't I?"

I'll make the tough phone calls
Post vulnerable pictures and songs
Deep down, do I just want a partner again?
Dog sitting alone
If I was trapped in my childhood home for a weekend
with some gregarious girl opposite of me
I would be a wholly different person
as I was in the past - 3 or 4 times over

This is the soberest I've been in a year
"Had my tea today without any sugar, no difference"
Except I see the fear and laziness as infinitely surmountable

You're up against propaganda promulgating passive lethargy
on all fronts
Sometimes you need to admit you're better than the herd
and swat away the crab claws dragging you back down
into the bucket of schlop  
Stop feeling so bad for using a few paper napkins
when you couldn't find a washable cloth
You need to break some eggs when humiliating the charlatans
and their fans out of this cultureless slump

I sense loss and yearning all around
I used to chalk it up as a personal hurdle to jump
or just the feeling of aging while the youth still goes on
Yet I think I this malaise is widespread
Impacting all of us in our glitching global trade

I used to think the issue was there’s just too much now
Too much to watch, listen, and taste
You don’t need the hunt anymore
Don’t need to wait or pay some exorbitant price
I used to feel overstimulated by the streams
and just could not decide
I still feel, it’s not that we want to do the thing,
but we yearn to want to want to do the thing
again

Is that all that’s changed?
Those who are not ready to be creators
will certainly not be ready to be curators
Freed ourselves from DJs and TV programming
but what control have we flailed ourselves into?
Wasting hours a day watching 30 second videos
whose categories are heavily curated
impersonally, just for you
Remember when user preferences worked
and in searches they wouldn’t hide the whole list
of all that was relevant and new?