The definition of "debaser." One of the worst people I've ever seen. And I've seen way too much.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Smashing Pumpkins Doing an Acoustic performance of Cherub Rock.
I wouldn't have ever believed that this piece could be done successfully acoustically. Amazing.
Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
A karaoke by the progenitor of the music. Call it Reflective Karaoke, or Mirror Karaoke, or Redoptive (new work from yours truly) Karaoke.
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
Monday, December 21, 2020
Radiohead - In Rainbows From the Basement (April 2008) At Home #WithMe
This performance is way beyond my words. Thom York involves his entire body in the performance.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Friday, December 18, 2020
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
RMR - Rascal (OFFICIAL VIDEO) In Memoriam: Eric Garner
Unfulfilled justice creates a beautifully seething rage that's bound to erupt at some point, making the ghost of Malcom emerge from distant history.
This is Daniel Pantaleo. He choked the life out of Eric Garner despite Garner's plea for help, saying "I can't breathe" eleven times. Pantaleo was never charged. Garner's crime? Selling tobacco cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk.
Monday, December 14, 2020
Venetian Snares - Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (Full album)
Hiszekeny at 33:45. Sam Mendez should consider including this in his next film. Powerful.
Thursday, December 10, 2020
Northeast Tennesseans with COVID dying, hospitalized at rates far above state average
Northeast Tennesseans with COVID dying, hospitalized at rates far above state average: Region’s average age, poor general health likely factors JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) – Northeast Tennesseans were older and sicker than the state norms before the COVID-19 pandemic arriv…
Sunday, December 6, 2020
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
Monday, November 30, 2020
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Motel Intercourse
Motel Intercourse.
She looked like Billy Corgan with a wig on
I looked like an idiot with a hard on
When she came hard so did I.
Suddenly you're asking should I lie so I can leave
There are so many reasons to feel sad in here
I need to get back into whack.
Sideways she seemed to say I dare you to leave.
Sunday, November 15, 2020
Saturday, November 14, 2020
Friday, November 13, 2020
Sunday, November 8, 2020
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Rob Manfred Pulls Off the Impossible - Thank You, Mr. Manfred.
I think that Rob Manfred's ability to enable the ascent of the 2020 MLB baseball season to its conclusion during the Covid-19 pandemic will be viewed as one of the greatest accomplishments ever in MLB. This anomalous season will likely introduce the designated-hitter rule to the national league. Another plus for the good of the game. Thank you, Mr. Manfred. You did it.
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Monday, October 19, 2020
TV On The Radio - Happy Idiot _ Extended
"Stuck in the shade where there's no sun shine. I don't want to play with the other kids in the sun." The dilemma of my youth.
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Their Bass Player, Gerard Smith, center, died in 2011.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Saturday, October 17, 2020
Monday, October 12, 2020
The Dø - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) It's pronounced "the dough"
Her name is Olivia Bouyssou Merilahti.
Wednesday, October 7, 2020
President Donald J. Trump - Parable of the Mighty Maple
Donald Trump is the botanical equivalent of the ancient maple that grows in front of my home. Ostensibly, it is well, healthy, vibrant. But one only needs to look down from above to see it that it is hollow and completely rotten on the interior. In fact, it is dying from within.
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department arrests Middlesboro pastor on child rape, incest charges
Praise Jesus and pass the shackles.
Monday, September 7, 2020
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
Monday, August 24, 2020
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Friday, July 31, 2020
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Friday, June 26, 2020
Feist - Graveyard
I'm thinking of Dottie and her daughter, Becca. They used to go to meetings on Henry Street. Becca wove her program of recovery into her Christian religion. Or the other way around. I remember that she suffered terribly from mental health issues. During one meeting, she reminded herself of advice she had elicited from one of her church members: "when times get tough, visualize the cross."
Not long after that, she jumped from a bluff and smashed her face into the rocks. Her mother, Dottie, was choked to death by Becca's father soon after.
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Feist - How Come You Never Go There
Belated discovery of a new artist, who sings and even dances her way into the emotional sweet spot of this aesthete. Her name is Leslie Feist, pronounced "Fiyst." Outstanding artist.
Feist - I Feel It All
I heard this wonderful song being piped through the Big Lots muzak system yesterday. Leslie Feist would cringe. I did. But the garish venue did not attenuate the quality of her art not one little bit.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Aristotle's Modes of Persuasion in the Age of Donald Trump and "Fake News."
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
An Adventure of My Life - Brocker Way
Brocker Way and Richard David James (Aphex Twin) need to collaborate.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Tuesday, June 2, 2020
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Friday, May 22, 2020
The Brown Egg -- Versions of My Mother and Me.
My mother was deflated amid the myriad monuments and scattered mourners. Even her hair had lost its wave. She was taking Ativan, I think. She held two or three out in her hand to reveal them to me. I was stunned at the changes that had taken place during our separation. I told my father that I was alarmed at how she had deteriorated. We don't tend to notice the daily, incremental changes that visit those closest to us as do those who have not seen them in some time. I was alarmed. And it seems like it was just a matter of months until the diagnosis was in hand. Alzheimer's. Irreversible. Permanent. Terminal.
My mother had been targeted by the random movement of time and space and live matter to suffer from a particularly merciless form of the disease. A form replete with emotionally traumatic spells that create suffering unimaginable to anyone else. Suffering that is not assuaged by morphine sulfate. Suffering that is not assuaged by chemical compounds. Suffering that thrives and boasts that it can strike its ruinous blow at any time of the day or night and it laughs that there's not a goddamn thing that anyone can do about it. Suffering that begins with an itch on the scalp. Then, suddenly, a thousand more appear like stars. Invisible stars that fester, tease, menace, torture, and then step aside in order to allow room for the monster to enter the stage and devastate what's left of my mother's mental health.
The preacher, who will utter her eulogy, never met her when she was at her best, and it is his loss. When her sense of humor was ignited hot and entertaining enough for battalions of homesick troops. When she could dance without looking like a withered fool. When she could lay before her all visible matter and arrange and adjust it so that the epitome of the artform was indeed met, and met admirably. How she could present herself. How she could present her home. How she could present her sons.
So, let's see how I can make this my fault. It's no coincidence that she went down rapidly during that same swath of time that I elected to separate myself from her altogether. My children imploring me, "you should call her some time, Dad." But, I didn't. It was Nani who in death brought us together. And as soon as I saw her I knew that the separation had to end. Whatever she did to earn my distance was rendered moot when I saw her in dry weather looking as if she had been left out in the rain. It was Nani, my adoptive grandmother who, in her nineties, unintentionally mediated our reunion.
Did I have this effect on her? Am I powerful? Am I valued for some goddamned reason that escapes me altogether? Did I mean something after all? After all the hatred and argument and polar differences? Did I have the right to distance her from me on account of her dislike for my wife, or her distaste for me? Did I have the right to free myself from the tangle that she created so exactly at my feet and then deftly left for me to negotiate my way out of? Don't I have the right to protect myself from toxicity?
I think that everything affects everything else even if the effect cannot be measured by humans and their gadgets. But this one is different. I won't kid myself about it. I affected my mother by absenting myself from her for many, many months. It was no coincidence that our reunion revealed a broken fragment of the woman who was once that imperishable vixen who stayed one step ahead of everything her entire life. "It was no coincidence, Greg. It was your fault." And remember, you don't have to "make" this your fault at all. It is objectively your fault. You triggered all that was dormant and allowed the dam to burst and signal the slow and merciless death of your mother.
I can growl my way out of this. If I fused my molars together so tight that my upper body begins to shake and then contain the impending blast of emotional ice that rises within me, a growl would result. A growl like the growl of a mad dog. A growl that normally has with it the full display of gums and dogsteeth. A growl like the growl of a man who is drowning in a muddy river where echoes bounce off rock bluffs.
I can claw my way out of this. If I place my hands around my own neck and squeeze, can I choke myself back to homeostatic health. If I place my hands in the face of another man in order to offend him and start a fight can I claw him until he bleeds me back to a homeostatic plane where, from which I can get up, drink coffee, shower, dress, enter the cabin of my little car, and go to work where I'll be guaranteed to hear horror stories from abortions and their loved ones.
I can compare my way out of this. But what a chickenshit way to make one feel better about one's station in this carbon-based increment of life! It's always worse. It gets better. This too shall pass. Or my favorite symbols of idiocy: "It's All Good!". What a shit-filled chasm of garbage! Who wrote that?! I must plot his death. I stand outside of his house, fully prepared to hit him so hard with my Louisville Slugger that some of the brain matter will never be located because it actually fused into the wood fibers located in the sweet spot fat of the bat. How the sound of those thuds will never quite live up to their authentic, singular, clinical, acute template unto which the fast, bloody, blunt, gargling emanations of all subsequent batting deaths should strive to copy for the balance of human time. It's all good. It's all bad, too. It's both, too, you goddamn abortion of a human clot. Enough about him. He's already dead to me, whoever he is. Dead to me like I fooled myself into believing my mother was dead to me. But she wasn't. She was festering inside my heart like a viral anomaly. At Nani's funeral the fever broke. All was immediately forgiven on the spot.
She would say it was my fault. It would make the entire complex universe of factors coalesce into a single culprit. But she would say it behind my back imploring the recipients not to tell. That is her way. That has always been her enabling way.
I know, I can dredge up all of the negative memories that I've stored about her and chew this smorgasbord of data in order to quell the icy pain that I feel emerging from my control centers. I can remember the looks she gave me that communicated to me that she hated everything about me. That I was a living artifact that connected her to the past she so passionately wanted to forget. She was better than the rest. And she really was. But even that didn't keep her from getting knocked up by a stupid boy in the back of a car in the hollows of an ignorant Appalachia that seemed immune from the TVA social-industrial experiment. An Appalachia where it was expected for our girls to start expecting their first child just after their Senior year of High School. Even Aunt Jo couldn't fix that one, so she was saddled with an organic reminder of the stone cold fact that she did not make it entirely out of Appalachia.
Although she would never again crack a brown egg in her lifetime, she would be constantly reminded of the one she carried full term that neither looked like her nor her new family, and which was flawed so deeply that the malformation could not be fully detected by science in either 1961 or in 2020.
The Underground
Let my tight cables
Down in The Underground
Toast the night with ice-water and Tylox.
It's the early '90's.
I feel my springs unwinding;
So exceedingly so --
Like antique luggage
I'm stretching below time
Within the confines of my own skin-case,
My own bones, eager to escape the chicken-fat-
-like test-tubes that hold them back
Before day one is done.
I'm under the Underground.
I'm one of them.
I see my blue wiring beneath my skin,
Making way from the stretched skin beneath the handstamp
Up my wrist, past tubes
Where it disappears
In a fast dance of its own.
I danced
I danced at will
Earnestly, honestly, passionately,
And terribly,
All awash in skinny sweat.
To believe is to conclude
And I conclude I danced below the space below the night.
I conclude that I screamed like an alpha-Crow with my muscle-mass,
I bet I even terrified my skin
And wailed from beneath my bones
Within the whole
Of my hot body.
I smoke up the big window
Where the cover is charged
And handed over
In favor
Of another
Inkish handstamp.
I'm losing my hot mist.
I know the salt stays put.
I bet it's way past two.
I think I'll throw up.
.
.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Monday, May 18, 2020
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Friday, May 15, 2020
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Aphex Twin - Alberto Balsam
New genre: Shampusic.
His name is Richard David James. His wikipedia page is worth reading.
Monday, May 11, 2020
IDLES: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Pure fun. Pure entertainment. Pixish. Hairy. Edgy, like fucking in the middle of the street.
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy
These guys should be listed among the greatest songwriters of Americana music.
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Happy as a Mormon
I want to be as happy as a fucking Mormon without the doctrinal chickenshit bullshit. But I want to preserve my secular and honest intellect, too. George Bernard Shaw proclaimed that the faithful folk are happier than non-believers to the extent that drunks are happier than sober people. Words to that effect. I rewind to the Mormons I've known, and they all have one thing in common: they're ostensibly happy, funloving, but totally brainwashed people.
Now I'm not going to use Mitt Romney as an example because although he's a bona fide Mormon, he also happens to have at least $100 million dollars in his IRA's alone. That kind of cash might even make Eor (the depressed donkey in Winnie the Pooh) click his hoofs.
I believe that religion gives its devout followers a sense of well-being that is simply not available to the faithless. But that is not the point. The point is this: how do I achieve the level of contentment and happiness borne by these faithful Mormons without surrendering myself to their silly fantasy?
I could go to church now and then. I know a couple of skeptics who attend regularly. Their attendance is fueled by their spouses, who are indeed among the faithful so far as I know. But, then again, these church-going atheists don't glow with that cult-like ardor I am referring to. I want that Mormon glow.
I attended a funeral service in Morristown's First Baptist Church a year or two back. The sanctuary where we were seated was cavernous. It had that new sanctuary smell. And the air, it seemed pure; almost enriched. In fact the air reminded me of a novel I read many years ago, entitled Fools Die, authored by Mario Puzzo, the author of The Godfather. In it Puzzo claimed that the Las Vegas casinos piped pure oxygen into the air conditioning system so that the gamblers would be enlivened, and continue to gamble, which, mathematically means that the profits swell for the casinos. I'll always be curious about the air at First Baptist Church. I mean I really wanted to go back just to soak up the ambiance of the great chasm. I suppose Baptists are happy, too. But not like Mormons. Mormons smile. Baptists grin.
Mormons believe that a man, named Joseph Smith received a message from God himeself while Smith was residing in the United States, . . . well, you get the gist.
Since this post emerged, static impermanence has indeed delivered change, as it always has. Big change. You don't have to believe in silly nonsense to grab the smiling orb and swallow it whole. You just have press pause, get fit, stay fit, mentally, physically and aurally, then slide down the bank into the thing that apparently cannot be named, trusting its circuit absolutely.
Now I'm not going to use Mitt Romney as an example because although he's a bona fide Mormon, he also happens to have at least $100 million dollars in his IRA's alone. That kind of cash might even make Eor (the depressed donkey in Winnie the Pooh) click his hoofs.
I believe that religion gives its devout followers a sense of well-being that is simply not available to the faithless. But that is not the point. The point is this: how do I achieve the level of contentment and happiness borne by these faithful Mormons without surrendering myself to their silly fantasy?
I could go to church now and then. I know a couple of skeptics who attend regularly. Their attendance is fueled by their spouses, who are indeed among the faithful so far as I know. But, then again, these church-going atheists don't glow with that cult-like ardor I am referring to. I want that Mormon glow.
I attended a funeral service in Morristown's First Baptist Church a year or two back. The sanctuary where we were seated was cavernous. It had that new sanctuary smell. And the air, it seemed pure; almost enriched. In fact the air reminded me of a novel I read many years ago, entitled Fools Die, authored by Mario Puzzo, the author of The Godfather. In it Puzzo claimed that the Las Vegas casinos piped pure oxygen into the air conditioning system so that the gamblers would be enlivened, and continue to gamble, which, mathematically means that the profits swell for the casinos. I'll always be curious about the air at First Baptist Church. I mean I really wanted to go back just to soak up the ambiance of the great chasm. I suppose Baptists are happy, too. But not like Mormons. Mormons smile. Baptists grin.
Mormons believe that a man, named Joseph Smith received a message from God himeself while Smith was residing in the United States, . . . well, you get the gist.
Since this post emerged, static impermanence has indeed delivered change, as it always has. Big change. You don't have to believe in silly nonsense to grab the smiling orb and swallow it whole. You just have press pause, get fit, stay fit, mentally, physically and aurally, then slide down the bank into the thing that apparently cannot be named, trusting its circuit absolutely.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Superimpositions: The Yin and Yang of Complementary Existence
Nature fatally superimposes itself on the life and death of a child in a mudslide.
Mankind superimposes itself on the life and death of nature in a strip-mine in eastern Kentucky.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Hackensaw Boys-Jonah
Across the street, Ms. Hazel's dogwood flower petals are hangin' on for dear life on this very windy day in April, here in East Tennessee.
Monday, April 20, 2020
Aphex Twin - Stone In Focus
Snow monkeys are the world's most northern-living primates, beside humans, which means that they live in frigid conditions. These areas are full of natural hot springs, known as "osen," where the water is heated by the earth's core.
We're in Deep Trouble: Boards Of Canada -- Amo Bishop Roden
A creepy anthem to the juxtapositions of the demands of social distancing and architecture hell bent on obscene profits vis-a-vis tighter and tighter work quarters and residential living spaces.
Boards of Canada - Everything You Do is a Balloon
I know intimately well this creepy daylight that emanates, in my own experience, from a recurring night terror, fully illuminated by retrofitted planks of ominous images of a horror that is so bold that it does not need the cover of darkness to do its frightful work.
Versions of My Mother. Versions of Myself. She'll Die in Three Days and I'll Freeze Into a Block from which I'll Soon Emerge.
When I was a boy, pink and white, I was her advocate. As I got older, I was her protector, and sentinel of her honor. That honor was born from a genetic axiom that boys don't understand, because it's their mother were talking about. That's plenty.
I got a message from Emily yesterday. She wanted me to call her. I did. My mother, she said, hasn't eaten since Wednesday. Today is Sunday, so that's four days. In other words, she's dying.
I put on WORAKLS, Joachim Pastor. I sat back and kept the beat by rocking my head back and forth, side to side, perfect beat. Like my head was dancing in the Underground. Like I was on speedball, but sober.
I haven't seen her in almost eight years. Almost eight years since the venomous fangs sank their poison into my world. I should have been immunized. After all, this was not the first time. But, it was the worst.
'Hole things commin' to a head. That what's happening. Joachim Pastor is here for the event. Crowded kay slayer. Slayer K. Bleed. It's good to bleed so long a you don't bleed out. Bloody limitations. Blood. My blood is mixed with her blood. I'm bleeding from my face. Spatter. Patterns. My mother is dying. When will it say, "The End." In France, "Fin."
I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll continue sitting. Once upon a time hell came calling while I sat sitting. So maybe this isn't a very good idea. Glandular.
The human hands. Goddamn! What is the limbic system all about. Ladies and Gentelmen, give it up for the Limbic Glands, singing their hit, Stinky Cheese.
Jeff and his family are there.
Jeff. He has a different version of her. But, my version includes his, too. I'm older. I've known her longer than anyone. I get the questionably grand prize. I just realized why Jeff went down. For his father, Art, who must be a wreck.
I should be strong for Emily. Must not let her detect the immense pain that I feel gathering below my feet. Tectonic.
I should exercise. Now! 'Cause I want a speedball. I want a drink. I don't want a drink.
thinkinboutallthisfucksmeupppppp
I cannot avoid this day, no matter what.
I bet her heart's still beating. I am anxiety ridden on account of being told that her death is imminent.
I got a message from Emily yesterday. She wanted me to call her. I did. My mother, she said, hasn't eaten since Wednesday. Today is Sunday, so that's four days. In other words, she's dying.
I put on WORAKLS, Joachim Pastor. I sat back and kept the beat by rocking my head back and forth, side to side, perfect beat. Like my head was dancing in the Underground. Like I was on speedball, but sober.
I haven't seen her in almost eight years. Almost eight years since the venomous fangs sank their poison into my world. I should have been immunized. After all, this was not the first time. But, it was the worst.
'Hole things commin' to a head. That what's happening. Joachim Pastor is here for the event. Crowded kay slayer. Slayer K. Bleed. It's good to bleed so long a you don't bleed out. Bloody limitations. Blood. My blood is mixed with her blood. I'm bleeding from my face. Spatter. Patterns. My mother is dying. When will it say, "The End." In France, "Fin."
I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll continue sitting. Once upon a time hell came calling while I sat sitting. So maybe this isn't a very good idea. Glandular.
The human hands. Goddamn! What is the limbic system all about. Ladies and Gentelmen, give it up for the Limbic Glands, singing their hit, Stinky Cheese.
Jeff and his family are there.
Jeff. He has a different version of her. But, my version includes his, too. I'm older. I've known her longer than anyone. I get the questionably grand prize. I just realized why Jeff went down. For his father, Art, who must be a wreck.
I should be strong for Emily. Must not let her detect the immense pain that I feel gathering below my feet. Tectonic.
I should exercise. Now! 'Cause I want a speedball. I want a drink. I don't want a drink.
thinkinboutallthisfucksmeupppppp
I cannot avoid this day, no matter what.
I bet her heart's still beating. I am anxiety ridden on account of being told that her death is imminent.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Saturday, April 18, 2020
The Kindred Countenance of the Whitewing, Rich and Still Pissed Off
Their assholes are pinched so fucking tight that should they implode into themselves they would create black holes and swallow up their entire families, neighbors, mansions, BMW's, country clubs, golf clubs, summer homes, winter homes and, most sacred of all, their egomanical false assumptions about their own importance. It's funny. I have comletely forgotten the name of the lower's identity. Now that's sweet.
Monday, April 13, 2020
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Friday, April 3, 2020
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Monday, March 23, 2020
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Friday, March 20, 2020
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Governor Andrew Cuomo - A Strong, Reassuring Voice in Difficult Times
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Monday, March 16, 2020
The Corona Virus Pandemic -- The Bipartisanship Personalities We So Desperately Need Right Now
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| Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
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| Dwight David Eisenhower |
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Great cover of Walking on the Moon, by one of my favorite bands, the Police. This is a great song about falling in love.
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NPR did a piece called "This I Believe" a few years back. Listeners were invited to recite their core beliefs about anything...
