give and take

State-worship and searching for reasons to believe in heroes tarnished by the reality of business as usual. We eat the carrots tossed out to us and don't mind the presence of sticks as long as they're beating someone else. I'm fine with junk laws being struck down, but this feels like a pretty bald-faced bait and switch when there's shenanigans of carnage and snitch culture and guilty until proven guilty. I'm sorry, I just can't celebrate as the pot continues to boil and as the noose continues to tighten. Equality for marriage, fine, but what about equality for the rest of those marginalized, where is the justice there? Where is their equality? Is it not as convenient or resonant? Why does progress for one always come in tandem with the disenfranchisement of another?

of riffs and rants

In the slow boil of dystopian creep, there are no secrets, there have been none for most of my adult life, everything is out there, or easy to find, especially when one has all the power and the analytics at one's disposal. It's creepy and disconcerting and my heart breaks for the wrongfully ensnared and my mind rages against the willful obliviousness because as long as we have the right bones thrown to us, it doesn't matter that we're being robbed as long as someone else we don't like is getting hurt more than we are. I could write so much more, but I've said it so often already, and others say it better, and willful ignorance or justification of the unjustifiable will never be palatable to me. .

And as I continue to say, that is our fundamental problem, our universal common denominator of suck, a lack of compassion, a lack of love for God and fellow human and created beings and the ground we walk on and the air we breathe.

Yet I distract myself, because I can't believe in survivalism either, because I want to love my neighbors and because every era of life has had its dehumanizing factors that need to be overcome, and there is so much beauty here still even in the midst of so much wrong and the best thing to do is not live in fear but continue to live.

I'm having friends over for dinner tonight, I'm figuring out how to fix my side-view mirror and realize I'm bereft of useful tools. While I was taking apart the contraption, I saw there was a goldfinch trapped in the netting of the cherry tree who seemed to have given up on life so I got a pair of scissors and cut him free and felt so uplifted watching it fly away.

 A homie from the station gave me some super amazing hot pepper plants and I provided him with cabbage and kale in return. There are flowers on my front porch now and vegetables on the back and I'm trying to figure out how to make my landlady's yard look less ugly in the front without really spending too much money.

I end up at a show last night, because this is my escapism, and there's not too many people there, a couple radio people that I don't know as well, so I get lost in the big riffs alone, amazed that I used to do these kinds of things without earplugs, or maybe it's just gotten louder. Like Randal, I dig the big riffs and the stoner rockery of Columbus dudes Lo-Pan. For those of us who grew up on classic rock and grunge in inner ring suburbs, it's satisfying and solid riffage with big excellent vocals that'd probably be on some modern rock rotation if the band was more photogenic and The Kids weren't all listening to dubstep. That being said, I'm glad they're getting love in the underground, and I enjoyed it enough to pick up a CD with a t-shirt thrown in.

Hipsters might disapprove of the accessibility but I'd go see these guys again and I infinitely preferred them to the next band that reminded me of the hardcore shows I used to go to as a teenager where it was trying to be intense and just ended up being uninteresting. The guys were young, so I guess I could cut them some slack, since it's not my thing at all.  If it wasn't so cold and I had some homies with me, I would have loitered outside for most of their set because despite their technical abilities, it didn't do much for me.

Torche on the other hand, loud and sludgy and strangely poppy and exuberant, was a different story, as they were the last time I saw them, unpretentious and unrelenting and constantly having to retune, but damn there's something so satisfying about loud crunchy guitars and dudes who can sing in this world of twee milquetoast indie and metallers trying to out-brootal each other. One dude who decided this would be a great time to start a moshpit, shoved me out of the way and proceeded to pummel everyone within five feet of him before realizing that no one else wanted to mosh at all and just wants to watch the band rock out and I didn't see him for the rest of the night and was backed up by a pair of heshers who stood behind me to get a better view of the band and insulate me from any hooliganery. Thanks guys for being chivalrous, I guess.

They started off with the first four songs off the last full length and a smattering of cuts from the previous records and ended with 'Harmonslaught' which might be one of my favorites.

Drove home listening to a fellow DJ play Black Flag bootlegs, it rained this morning and watered my plants, I need more coffee, and life continues in its strange way.

to know when to stop

I still don't understand the lesser-of-two-evils logic in politics, I don't care who's got the kill lists, who's doing the bombing, what particulars of morality they purport to care about, because let's be honest, words and platitudes don't mean shit. You can tell me all the sweet nothings you want, but if you're stabbing me in the back at the same time who cares?

 I don't fear the wingnuts any more than I fear the ones who wring their hands a little more before they pull the trigger. My politics are not so ideologically skewed so much as virulently agnostic and so when I see myself going down this well-traveled lot of pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain-look-at-that-crazy-wackjob-over-there, I get to the point where I have to change the subject to something else.

Anyways, I played music this morning. I got some phone calls, and evidently some loyal listeners in Deutschland. Someone requested The Sundays, which might have seemed incongruous to some wedged in between the doom metal and whatnot. I figure good music is good music and it works to my ears.

keep your eyes open

I've felt like voting was a meaningless process, but the Kafkaesque absurdity of "no you're not in here" even though I voted here six months ago and updated my information then didn't mean anything, and I don't like the people at my polling station at all because they're not all that bright and kind of mean and I wouldn't have put it past them to pull some shenanigans since last time they wouldn't let me take a non-partisan ballot (faced with lesser of two evils, I opted for the gooper one back when people I still liked a little were in the running) so it wouldn't have shocked me if my provisional ended up in electoral purgatory.

It was kind of hectic in there, hard to find an extra booth, texting the Queen of the Bondo in frustration as I get sent from one line to another, and a lady behind me, seeing my plight, tells me it's better to get pissed off than pissed on and finds me some lawyer guy who I guess monitors or something and while he was really nice there wasn't much he could do either. Still don't understand why I needed both an ID and a piece of mail, and why they hire a lot of lousy people, though maybe I should cut slack because that has to be a long day of dealing with goofballs too.

So my provisional ballot didn't count, I voted for the guy who wasn't Mandel (because he didn't seem all that great) nor Brown (I don't care how progressive you claim to be, urging the prez to attack Iran and voting yes on NDAA is kind of jerkfaced), neither of the two main presidential candidates. My vote for the third party probably didn't count, and there were things that BDR links to that make me feel less bad about that. 

I guess I care way more about what someone does than what they say, and lipservice means little to me no matter who or what. I've been shooting emails back and forth with a friend coming to similar conclusions along the political/religion continua in Bachmannland, where we've been exasperated with the passes given to Certain People by progressives, and also to Republicans by their base just because they say they love Jesus.

But anyway, people today have been jerks, but that doesn't mean I need to spread the jerkitude around anymore than it already is. I hang out with the people in my world who still have hearts, souls, brains, and guts, and while I don't always agree with them, they've made my world brighter, vaster, and more beautiful, and I'm glad they put up with me too.

octobering

A baseball game the night before last with the homie on the next street over, the guy behind us looked and sounded like James Brown with his peanut gallery cheers. GO ON HIT IT NOW! UNH! THAT'S RIGHT BABY! YOU GOT IT NOW. GET HIM OUT NOW! OH YEAH! YOU KNOW HOW IT IS! ALL RIGHT!

I was reduced to giggles as my inner ear conjured up a tight rhythm section cold-sweating into oblivion. We were in the swank seats with the oodles of free food, but it felt like the cheap seats with the inebriated unabashed fanfolk, and there were no complaints from yours truly.And surprisingly, we won, so yay.

I didn't watch the debate last night, didn't get any writing of merit done, did spend a lot on car repairs, which was expected given the creaks in the body, had dinner with the sister and played with the little dude who can now ride piggyback if I hold his ankles as he crows and giggles, expressed snark with bro-in-law, hung out with the Queen of the Bondo, came home.

Nothing new under the sun, not looking forward to the circus that will be going on tomorrow, can't wait for the goon squads to get all this over with. Meanwhile, like the true Clevelandian, it's time to chortle at boomers complaining about That Rap Music and why their favorite classic rock bands from the 1970's are criminally overlooked. The Rock Hall's a waste of time and perfectly good space along the lakefront, so I've got no emotional feelings on any of it, especially since such specifications of rockingness don't include the Bad Brains or Iron Maiden.

Still haven't churned out any schlock for writing class, gritting my teeth through the Roman Empire because it could be interesting as hell but it's now a steppingstone of facts you should know as you climb the corporate ladder. Whatever to that. Whatever to whatever happened last night at the debates. No one's going to talk about drones or kids in Yemen or unlawful detainment or holding rich scumbags accountable. Still getting the lesser-of-two-evils lecture from well-meaning Dems who say that he just needs more time to fix the mess. Remember when people said that about Bush II? I do. Look how that worked out.


Anyways, I'll shut the hell up. here's some tunes.