March 4th: Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

It's like the hits that never quit here in the Sunflower State. 

Good ol' Sam Brownback keeps rolling out legislative act after legislative act aimed at dismantling all vestiges of government in Kansas.  Now, if you're a libertarian, you might be thinking that that's awesome.  I'm going to correct you and tell you that a) it's not awesome, and b) if you're a libertarian, you're a fucking idiot.  Don't take that the wrong way; I once believed that Anarchism was a viable political and economic system.  We've all got to grow up sometime.

Here's what's wrong with libertarianism; it is a political/economic model that rides on lofty claims of individual liberties that it never even comes close to meeting in practice.  Every major politician that claims to be a libertarian is a homophobic quasi-fascist who has no qualms with trampling the rights of gays and those with dissenting opinions.  Going even further, the libertarian economic model sets itself up for establishing corporate feudalism.  This is the kind of shit that leads to for-profit prisons (totally a thing, not making this up to scare you) in which inmates are subjected to horrible, unregulated conditions.  In fact, it leads to for-profit everything as an end goal.  Fuck.  That.

Keeping Kansas blissfully unaware of his evil schemes by making them illiterate seems to be at the top of Brownback's agenda.  That or he was shamed by a teacher at an early age for not accepting the objective evidence of the Theory of Evolution or the Big Bang, because he seems to have it out for educators.  One recent proposal has been to ban teachers, family members of teachers, or even roommates of teachers from ever sitting on a school board.  If you think that sounds like some real North Korean type bullshit, then you are correct.  Another proposed bill-that if it passes muster will doubtlessly be signed by ol' Sam- will basically disallow teachers from stating any sort of opinion deemed "harmful" to the "moral fiber" of Kansas school kids.  What that really means is that we're one misplaced step away from book burnings and sieg-heiling portraits of the governor every morning at schools and the workplace.  This is all just Nazi-type dog shit piled onto an already stinking heap of cuts to education funding and a wicked curtailing of basic labor rights for teachers and what they're able to do in their classrooms.  To summarize, Brownback is an asshole to teachers and a 21st Century society's worst nightmare.

Inevitably I'm lead to the point where I've got to shake my fist at all of the imbeciles who voted for this menace.  I'm reminded of them whenever I watch this video (see around 1:45):

They're the rabbits.  Too dumb and passive to help their fellow bunny.  They just sit there and chew their food and watch.  The bunny being pursued is too dumb itself to kick back with those powerful hind legs and break the stoat's furry little spin.  It just slows down until it can't run anymore and then reluctantly accepts its fate with a pathetic cry.  As an aside, please don't ever think that I'd compare Brownback to an adorable and fuzzy little stoat.  The guy's clearly a weasel.

I refuse to be one of those rabbits, thus you'll see me protesting out in front of the State House in Topeka next week.  If you're a Kansan who's sick and tired of being ashamed of the state of your state because of Brownback and the rest of the rogue's gallery that runs this shit-awful show, I invite you to please, please, PLEASE join in the struggle.  When democracy fails, as it clearly has, civil disobedience is always a handy second option.  You can find more information on this protest here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1422104641421067

On top of peacefully assembling for a unified show of severe dissatisfaction, I'm also going to be writing the head of the Kansas Democratic party to see if they wouldn't mind mobilizing some of the party's fundage to seriously review at least a few of these belligerent and clearly unconstitutional laws this state's republicans are trying to enact.  If those laws can be appealed in the supreme court, that would be amazing.  It would be too satisfying to see this fucker publicly shamed and impeached.

From the night desk,
     Beunos noches, amigos!
 

February 20th: A Book Review

Well, I've done it.  I have finished my good friend Robert's chapbook of poetry and now I'm going to review it as promised. 

Part of my job as a typesetter is to, well, typeset articles for scientific journals.  A lot of these journals contain book reviews, so I have a fairly good idea of how one should go.  Of course, I'm not going to follow the professional formula at all because formulas are fucking boring.

A typical book review in a scientific journal will include a brief description of a book's cover, the blurbs about the book and its author, and so forth.  Fuck that.  I took a picture of the book with my phone so you can look at it and judge for yourself;

No, I did not receive the book all bent and banged up like that.  It got that way from me toting it around in my back pocket and reading it at my writing desk at home while I drank MD 20/20.

Jesus, where are my manners?  The chapbook is titled Chasing Kerouac With My Credit Card, if you can't clearly read the title from the photo.  It is by one Edward Austin Robertson, which is the nom de plume of my good friend Robert.  But enough of these formalities.  Let's get on to the stuff that really matters; the poetry.

There are about sixty poems in Chasing Kerouac which are divided into two separate parts.  The first part chronicles feelings of restlessness and boredom and then the subsequent quest to put those feelings in their place.  The second part kind of tails off from that quest, but get's progressively melancholic toward the end.  I really enjoyed how the poems were strung together with a sort of chronological cohesion.  It made reading the chapbook (which is a pretty quick read at just over 100 pages of poetry) feel more like I was reading a novella of vignettes stitched together from the writer's memory.

 

This is how I suggest you read this collection.  Use your substance of choice.  Mine is shown.

The poems themselves have a Bukowski-like quality to them.  They contain unabashed descriptions of sex and debauch that never get repellant, but seem instead to draw the reader in to the moment.  And it's not like you'll be sitting there panting and wanting to beat off, either.  The moments are intimate and sweet and a little sad sometimes for all the sex they ooze. 

You know how I said it starts to get melancholic toward the end?  Well that's a bit of a Bukowski-ism too.  There are poems in here about starvation and frustration and loneliness and isolation (you know, the kind you can only see in the slow movement of the hand of a clock?) and you feel that too, especially if you've been there. 

For all of the influence drawn from old Buk's work though, there's a good slathering of the Beats in there as well.  The whole book is a journey from home to the world and back home again with all of the spiritual learning that entails.  We follow our hero as he travels from Texas to the East Coast, up to Canada, back down again, all the way down for some raucous shenanigans in Mexico, and then off to California and back.  Not once was I left feeling distant from the poet, but instead felt like I was right there beside him in all those places I've been and in all those places I want to see.  Even the food poems are good, for Christ's sake.

Anyone who's a fan of poetry or transgressive literature should give this little book a shot.  It won't eat up a whole hell of a lot of time (you could finish it in one sitting if you wanted to) and is plenty fun to drink along with as you read.

I found the book on lulu.com where it's sold, so here's the link if you want to check that out;
http://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=chasing+kerouac+with+my+credit+card&type

Check out Robert's blog here, while you're at it;
http://thaclick2pick.com/

The guy's hilarious and won't disappoint.

From the typesetting desk,
     Good night!

February 19th: The Sun Always Shines in Brownbackistan

Q: How is Sam Brownback similar to the Clap? 

A: You don't know who gave him to you, you damned sure didn't ask for him, he hurts to even think about, and you're ashamed to even discuss him in public. 

It's ironic how closely a sexually repressed, gay hating idiot like Brownback psycho-symptomatically resembles a venereal disease.

If our old boy Sam conjures the shame and grief of chlamydia or herpes, his policies are far more syphilitic in their effects when it comes to the moral and physical well being of the state of Kansas.  Sam's just made it perfectly acceptable for GLBT employees of the state and local governments to be fired for nothing more than their particular choice of who to love, or fuck, or whatever they want to do.  How that is even constitutionally acceptable, especially in the age of DOMA's demise, is beyond me.

If you find yourself doubting that Brownstain's recent slight of the moral hand will result in any gay employees getting terminated, allow me to get a little hypothetical.  As a Kansan who's spent the majority of his employable life working for either the state, city, or school district, I can assure you that most of Kansas is populated by people with-shall we say-"anachronistic" world views.  These are people, well meaning or not, who use the word "faggot" in it's original and completely not-pleasant meaning.  These are people who still base their senses of humor largely around racial epithets, for crying out loud.  Imagine the type of person that rises to a position of management over such folk.  They tend to be a particularly high grade of asshole, just look at the governor himself for an example.  If you don't believe any of these people are capable of begging their superiors to fire Jimmy because he's a "queer that keeps starin' at my butt", or giving Linda the pink slip just because they "don't want any dykes on the payroll" (read both preceding quotes in your best stereotypical Kansas accent for full effect), then I invite you to live in a small town in the middle of Kansas for a month.  That's all the time you'll need to witness some spectacular form of ignorant hate or another.

When Alabama allows gay marriage and your state doesn't, even though it's the state that basically made the whole "Civil War" thing a struggle for fundamental human rights, then you start to realize where the whole gonorrheal shame thing comes from.  I guess none of this should come as a shock in a place known nationally as the home of the sociopathic Phelps family sect and the equally sociopathic and piratical Koch brothers.  It just hurts as a born and bred Kansan to have to say, in all honesty, that you are ashamed of your state.

Look at that smug, evil fool.

 

And I am ashamed, oh yes.  I voted for Davis last November, even while he was being ripped to pieces in political ads for going to a strip club once.  When I stepped away from the polls and then watched them on election night, I felt my heart sink into a new, ever more profound place of darkness.  It was almost worse than when Bush was reelected in '04.  I didn't cry this time.  I had the opportunity to cast my vote against the vile scumbag Brownback and his retinue of some of the worst so-called human beings who've walked this planet (here's looking at you, Kobach).  My outrage was such a defined thing because I thought that Brownback's incredibly imbecilic botching of his first term would be evidence enough to oust him.  Clearly it wasn't.  I sat in an almost blind rage, trying to figure out how anyone could've overlooked such monumental ineptitude, and then I remembered; "oh yeah!  I live in Kansas!"

Everyday is a struggle now to not allow myself to slide into complete cynicism and laugh while I watch the great ship Kansas sink with every soul who'd elected the captain still on board.  I have to remember the children, the mentally ill, the poor, and the GLBT community who are basically being punched in the face daily by the biggest asshole I've ever seen or heard of.  Because of that, I am in a state of constant, simmering rage.  One day an aneurism will take me and I'll be free at last, or I'll move to Colorado or Oregon and just forget that I ever lived in such a stupid, fucking place like Kansas.

To end on something of a positive note, I put my electronic signature on the petition to oust this dick and his cohorts.  I urge you to do the same if you're reading this and you're just as incensed as I am while writing it.  The link is right here: http://www.petitions.moveon.org/sign/recall-sam-brownback/
While it doesn't seem like much, it's at least somewhat encouraging to know that 35,000 people and counting can't stand the guy. 

From the typesetting desk,
     Goodnight.

February 17th: Beating Around the Bush

First order of business; I am in the process of reading my good friend Robert's chapbook and will have a review posted soon.  I can assure anyone who even reads this that it is, indeed, good shit.  Now, on with the show.

There's a lot of news already about GOP presidential hopefuls for 2016.  In the running we have the union busting crypto-fascist Scott Walker (who doesn't believe in evolution, but looks oddly ape-like), Rick Perry (everyone's favorite racist cowboy), a friendly looking writer and neurosurgeon by the name of Ben Carson, Chris Christie (who looks like the guy who can't make it all the way through Ikea and has to stop and sit on display furniture every couple of minutes, breathing so loudly you can hear him over the rest of the crowd), and Jeb Bush.  Might I add as an aside that my state's own inept and sinister governor, Sam Brownback, is not in the running as of yet.  That guy shouldn't be allowed to govern a high school prom committee, let alone an entire state.

Now it's too early to even begin to tell who'll get the nomination to run for POTUS from the GOP, never mind what any pundit tells you.  The late, great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson turned such speculations into a betting game, and his wagers were fairly accurate.  I'm going to attribute that to Thompson's insane genius far outstripping that of even your most intelligent political pundit.  That said, all of the hoopla right now seems to indicate Jeb Bush as a potential darling for the Republicans.

As far as Republican scum of the earth goes, Jeb seems fairly innocuous.  He looks a smidge'n more intellectually sound than his older brother, the last Bush who held the job in contest.  That doesn't mean that I'll vote for the guy.  No way, no how.  I'm politically unaffiliated, but I steer clear of Republicans.  There's a creepy, rich-old-white-guy vibe that they exude that I can't quite come to terms with.  That and I came into my full-blown social consciousness during the reign of Jeb's older brother, George W. Bush.

 

 

Doesn't he look smart and almost friendly?  Appearances can be deceiving.  Personally, I have very little knowledge of the man's background save for his family tree and that he was governor of Florida once.  Those seem like horrible credentials to flout when vying for the presidency.  So your brother is mentally handicapped and you can just barely keep a penis-shaped peninsula that's been turned into one big Jimmy Buffett themed hospice center from sinking into the Gulf of Mexico?  Well, shit, my friend!  Here are the keys to the little black box that holds the launch codes for the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in human history!

 

I jest, of course.  George W. Bush was not mentally handicapped, just dangerously close.  The man just might go down in history as the president single handedly responsible for putting the final nail in America's superpower sized coffin.  I remember an administration rife with racists, anti-immigrant and anti-gay agendas and war-profiteering schemes.  I hated George W. Bush with a passion, I mean a fervent fucking passion for many years.  I cried when he was reelected, cursing that I was a few months too young to cast my vote against him.

 

When I think about it now, I kind of like the guy.  I mean, I'll never be able to overlook the awful things he did, like botching the whole Katrina thing and starting two of the most embarrassing and globally irresponsible wars in history, but I consider him to be a kind of comically tragic figure.  The guy paints portraits now, for gods' sake.  He's basically a dumb, rich kid with a coke habit and a love for partying who never grew up and ended up being used by a cabal of some of the worst people ever to pull off the greatest, shittiest heist of all time.

 

Look!  He even feels the same way about babies as I do.  Seriously though, I'd love to meet the guy and send him sprawling off the back of the wagon for one night of raucous debauch and discussions about how mesmerizingly evil Dick Cheney was.  That would be a damned good time.

So I guess what I'm saying is, no Jeb.  Please don't.  Your brother made a shitty president, but he seems like a fun guy.  You will also, most likely, make a shitty president, but you don't seem half as cool as old George is.  Look at that face!  The baby's too!

 

February 3rd: Happy Early Birthday, Bill

Two days from now will mark the 101st birthday of one of America's greatest writers from the 20th century, William S. Burroughs.  I'd like to commemorate that day (Feb. 5th) some more on the actual date, but I'm not sure if I'll get to it.  That said, I'm doing this now.

William S. Burroughs is one of my favorite writers.  I was introduced to him by reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  That book, by the way, may be solely responsible for my decision to take writing seriously, but that's a tale for another time.  After I'd read the parts about all of the weird shit that went on at Bill Burroughs's ranch, I had to look the guy up. 

My first exposure was intentionally going to be Naked Lunch, but of course the nearest bookstore to me at the time (a Hastings in Hutchison, KS) didn't have it.  All they had was Junky, but I wasn't complaining.  I picked the book up and read the first 40 or so pages of it that night.  I loved it.  I'd never read anything like it, replete with it's vignettes of collapsed veins, rolling drunks in the subways, and trading illegal firearms for morphine.  Not even On the Road, which at that time had pretty much been the sauciest, sexiest, drunkest thing I'd ever read, could touch it.  By the time I'd put that book down I was a staunch admirer of the insanity that was Burroughs.

The gun thing was a huge part of the mythological persona of Burroughs.  I tend to visualize the man in a dapper suit on a heroine nod with a shotgun cradled in his arms.  If I recall correctly, in a previous post I mentioned that he shot his wife in the head during a drunken, high-out-of-their-minds game of William Tell.  That actually happened.  That incident, by the way, is probably the most polarizing aspect of Burroughs, because you either love him, hate him, or have never really read or heard of him.  There are many out there who consider the man to be a murderer for what happened to his wife, Joan.  I just listened to a documentary on Burroughs on the This American Life podcast.  It was really good, actually.  Iggy Pop narrated and John Waters and David Bowie made some appearances.  One of the detractors said that the "artistic apologists" seem to overlook the fact that Burroughs killed another human being, if only accidentally, and that makes him a despicable killer.  I'm not sure what to believe really, but I do know that I love the man's work.  An exhibit of his art was held at the Arts Center here in Lawrence not so long ago, and the stuff was about the kind of crazy chaos you'd expect from the man.  I was not disappointed.

There's a sort of correlation with the insane and highly talented American writer and the love of guns.  When I think of such figures, I'm immediately struck with two who also happen to be a few of my favorite writers ever; Hunter S. Thompson and Ernest Hemingway. 

 

 

Anyone familiar with these two will know that Thompson was a drug abusing lunatic and Hemingway was a manly alcoholic.  They were both suicides in the end, as it turns out.

 

I guess it goes to show that inner turmoil, a propensity toward insanity, addiction, and the love of all things destructive are a perfect recipe for genius and an untimely end.

 

The last thing on the list for tonight, before I get back to typesetting, is the addition of tabs linking to the various pages on this blog.  Those tabs can be found just below the title, so even I will be able to navigate to those pages!  Alright!

 

February 2nd: Chapbooks and Shit

First things first, I apologize to anyone who may have read that last post.  That thing was written in total haste and didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense when I read back over it.  It's been revised now, so hopefully it's a bit more palatable. 

The second item on the list is another apology; I did indeed have the tour diary on here after all, and not just the one that I rewrote a few days ago.  It is actually located on it's own page which is titled "Tour Diary", so if you can navigate to it (I can't fucking figure that part out myself) you are welcome to read a more contemporary account of a few of those days on tour.  It's illustrated too.  There are plenty of pictures of scenery and TJ for your enjoyment, so by all means go forth and... enjoy.

Now that the first two items on the agenda have been taken care of, allow me to move on.  Recently I've been getting into podcasts.  I'm painfully aware of how much of a walking anachronism I am because most of you have already been listening to podcasts for years, no doubt.  At any rate, the whole craze started when Jake put on some Hardcore History a la Dan Carlin while we were driving back home from St. Louis last Sunday.  We listened to a multi part series on the Mongols, which I found to be engrossing.  We were only able to get about 2 1/2 of the episodes in before arriving at home, so I quenched my thirst by downloading the Podkicker app on my phone and finishing what we'd started.  Ever since I've been hunting for other podcasts to keep me from braining myself or any of my coworkers here at the old typesetting desk, so if you have any suggestions, please post a comment!

I'll be honest here.  I've got nothing particularly pertinent to discuss today, but seeing as it's the first Monday of February, I feel obliged to write something.  Here goes nothin'.

I received a text about an hour ago from my lovely girlfriend, Christina.  She was letting me know that I got a package in the mail from my old friend, Robert.  Robert and I have been corresponding via email lately.  I hunted him down through his blog after losing his phone number when I finally had about all that I could take of my old phone (I wanted an excuse to get a new one, so I punched the old one repeatedly until it stopped working).  There was an interesting blurb about him, the author.  Little did I know, because he never brought it up, but he self published a book of poetry.  I asked him about it, and for the price of a beer next time he's in Lawrence, KS, he told me he'd send me a copy.  Robert is a hilarious dude and one hell of a restless traveler, so I am raring to tear into that poetry book.  I'll probably rip into it tonight and base a little bit of my next post on it as a sort of review in progress.

Knowing a published poet has inspired me to start collecting all of the loose poems I've penned over the years.  I'm intending to take the time soon to self publish a chap book of my own.  I've rounded up about 20 or so poems for that purpose.  This is in the midst of working on the first draft of that novel I mentioned in earlier posts, trying to shop out some short stories to online publications, and the never ending song writing process, so I'll have to keep ya'll posted on this.  It might be a while.  To tide anyone over who may be interested, here's a link to my writerscafe profile where a few of my poems (more to come, I promise!) can presently be found; http://www.writerscafe.org/prairie_wings

Now before I leave to continue my adventures in typesetting, I'd like to leave you all with an inspirational image:

That's right.  This blog is illustrated now!  And yes, that's TJ whoopin' ass at Guitar Hero.  You only wish you were that fuckin' cool!

G'night, folks!

Clockwork pt. 17

I had a completely different idea for my 4th blog post on Sturnella Neglected than what I'm going to be writing this evening.  My original intention was to tell you fine folks a story about a bear-sized German who drank Goldschlager straight from a bottle and wandered around all day with golden lips.  That in and of itself isn't too entertaining, but things get interesting once you consider the fact that he flew airplanes after drinking the shit.  It was at my time in flight school when I knew this crazy bastard.  For all I know he was the guy flying our 757 from Atlanta to Ft. Myers, FL.  That story and many more are the subjects of a narrative (possibly a novel that will most likely go straight to ebook if anywhere at all) I've been writing about my single semester at an aviation college.  Don't worry, there'll likely be more about this to come.

As I was mapping out how this post was going to go, I was waylaid by a concept that affects my consciousness almost daily.  I have this desire to write something significant, to create some "homespun immortality" as Chuck Palahniuk puts it in Diary.  I'm not sure why that is, honestly.  I'm not really afraid of death, at least not conceptually.  As far as I can tell death is the final end of the self and the only guarantee any of us are ever given in this life.  I suppose that I simply loath the thought of not being remembered after I'm gone.  The whole feeling is really quite selfish and arrogant, but it forms this drive to create in me.  Yes, I want to express myself, but more than that I want my expression to count for something.

The whole idea of literary immortality makes me think of my grandparents who died a few years ago.  They were both great people and lived very long and fulfilling lives, but once my cousins, my brother, and I are gone no one will even really know that they existed.  Contrast this with William S. Burroughs (whose birthday is coming up soon, by the way), a man who pickled himself with morphine and heroine and shot his wife in a party game gone awry.  Old Bill is hardly the role model my grandparents were, but his memory will live on in some vestige until the sun swallows the earth.

It makes me want to write down everything I knew about my grandparents, my parents, my family and friends, to put it all down in print and then publish it by myself so that those people at least have a shot at eternity.  It's a crazy impulse, I know, but one that can hardly be foreign to any writer.  We're so painfully aware that we're made only of fragile flesh and that someday everyone who even knew us will be gone.  If you haven't imbedded your words into the cultural cannon, then who will remember you?

Like I said, the whole thing is arrogant and irrational as hell.  Of course we all want greatness and immortality like that.  We all want to be Hemmingway.  We all want to be Julius Caesar for that matter.  It simply ain't gonna' happen that way for the most part, especially not in this fractious society we live in today.  The best course of action would be to live a long and happy life, or a short and intense one if that's what you're into.  Basically get yours and treat everyone at least decently.  After all, what does the memory of you matter to actual you who's decayed into dust somewhere?  Exactly.  No matter at all.

Speaking of decency and all that, if you're reading this and you want to leave a comment then go ahead!  Make fun of me, I can take it. 

I've got to get home and work on this narrative I was talking about, so I'm going to leave now and clock out.  G'night!

Scene

I feel like I'm coming down with an illness.  That isn't very surprising considering that most of the typesetting department has been out with the flu.  It's even less of a shocker when you consider that my dinner consisted of shitty, vending machine breakfast sandwiches and a bag of Bugles.  Hell, I've had that infamous tickle in my throat all weekend and decided to treat it with half a pack of cigarettes and a $40 bar tab.  You can't feel the symptoms of a cold when they're buried in the miseries of a stalwart hangover.

That was a fun ride home, by the way.  On Saturday my band headed up to St. Louis to play the last night of the local punk rock fest there; Dude's Weekend.  It should be noted that Dude's Weekend was actually called Stay Retardeder the year prior, and the year before that it was the aptly named Stay Retarded.  I'm just as baffled as you probably are by the questionable misogyny and the poking of fun at those with special needs that these fest names exhibit, but that's territory I'm not going to go into right now.  There's a whole other generational/existential angle I'd like to explore instead.

I rode up to St. Louis in Jake's car with TJ.  The conversation revolved heavily around TJ's recent breaking of a 2 1/2 year long dry spell (prime entertainment fodder) until we officially found our way out of the greater Kansas City area.  It was at that time that we almost died when Jake veered off the road so that he could make a stop at one of Missouri's millions of fireworks stands.  Those places look like massive warehouses full of explosive ordinance, but when you enter you find that only the front room is stocked and it's selection is shittier than most tents that pop up in Kansas around the 4th of July.  Such is life, I suppose. 

Once we got back on the road, Jake craned his head toward the back seat where I was sitting.  He asked me if I'd ever heard of orgcore.  "Morgue Core?" I asked.  "No," he said.  "O-R-G, no space, CORE."  No.  I definitely hadn't.  He alluded to something like he and I belonging to that particular subgenre of some scene or another and urged me to look it up.

What I got was the picture from yourscenesucks.com of an "orgcore punker".  An orgcore punker- apparently- is someone pushing thirty or already there with an affinity for beards, flannel shirts and late 90's/early 2000's mopey, drunken punk bands.  The similarities between description and reality got even more eerie; orgcore punkers sport band themed and sailor tattoos and are all more or less alcoholics.  Shit, I thought.  And here I was beginning to believe that I'd left all notions of belonging to any scene behind a while ago.

Something pierced my pseudo-panicked confusion before it could really settle in.  These "core" and "scene" labels are often times applied from the outside.  I don't know anyone who'd walk around and seriously say that they're orgcore.  At the show that night I did take stock of all the orgcore punkers I saw, however.  That's a phenomenon called labeling.  Once you've ascribed a label to someone, it is damned near impossible to undo the damage.  This labeling phenomenon is a central part to the dehumanizing effects of racism and homophobia by the way, but that's not the point I'm even remotely trying to make here.

The crux of the matter is that these genre labels are absurd, teenaged bullshit.  We all remember how it was to listen to Taking Back Sunday when everyone else in our highschool class was listening to shitty hip-hop and Nickleback songs.  It made us feel separate, superior some how.  These indie and underground bands and the scenes that grew around them were havens for misfits like myself and most of you.  When we heard those songs and went to those shows we felt like we belonged and that we were a whole hell of a lot smarter and erudite than our jock and cheerleader peers.  The problem, though, is that we were pigeon-holing ourselves and only filling some vague sort of a uniform.  There wasn't anything wrong with the music or the shows, but allowing your style of dress to define your social grouping and status is just ridiculous.  It's tribal, really, which doesn't seem so bad until you realize the majority of your fellow "tribe" members are just as petty and awful as the people you were trying to deviate from when you got into this mess in the first place. 

It all boils down to this "Generation Me", or "Generation Y" thing.  Wouldn't it be more accurate if the monikers were "Generation Meh" and "Generation Why?"?  I think so.  Thanks to the internet, we're free to shut out the rest of the world and dive headlong into whatever social setting we want to.  Do you want to be a swinger?  There's a social networking sight for that.  Have you always believed that you were an immortal bloodsucking monster of the night?  There's a sight for that too (insert clever Facebook joke here).  The point is that we don't have to interact with anyone we don't want to and it's ripping American society apart.  Instead of being individuals loosely affiliated and able to level with just about anybody, we're becoming a reluctant confluence of thousands upon thousands of tiny, little tribal groups lacking the basic social skill set to relate to anyone outside our immediate clave.  Good bye, greatest society on Earth.  That's why we should be Generation Meh and Generation Why?.  Because we're addicted to techno-crack and we couldn't care any less.  Those names are also cute and clever (sort of) and mark the pinnacle of my creative output for the day.

So what's the solution?  Well, there isn't one.  As far as the whole genre argument goes, you're basically going to be committing the intellectual equivalent of smashing your face into a brick wall if you even attempt to fight it.  There's an unstoppable ocean of human ignorance there that forms the very premise of the discussion, so don't even try.  My approach has been to overtly ignore the whole thing while secretly remaining convinced of my own superiority to anyone engaged in the "scene" conversation.  Clearly that doesn't work because here I am fucking writing about it.  And as far as the social disintegration of America goes, I'd simply invite you to pull up a seat, grab a drink, kick of your shoes, and watch the ship sink.

Killing Time

Well, shit.  It looks like I did something right after all.  I may have hit the mark when I christened this blog as a sinking ship.  But if I'm being honest (and there's absolutely no way for any of you to know if I am or not) I have written several posts for this blog while I was on tour with my band.  The problem is that I simply don't know how to actually run a blog and those posts are now lost in the ether. 

I guess there are some consistencies to take comfort in still.  In spite of the long lapse between posts I'm remaining true to the formula.  I'm writing this while I'm at work.  You know the place where you're supposed to make money by following the rules and doing shit other people tell you to?  Yeah, work.  I'm there, not doing what I'm supposed to.  Instead of typesetting (which is boring as all hell) I'm working on my fucking blog to the soothing sounds of the guy in the desk next to me slurping tea, trying to fart as quietly as possible, and stifling laughter over something on his iPod he finds amusing.  It's been awhile since I've read Dante's Inferno, but I'm pretty sure that this was one of the featured tortures of the Third Malebolge or something.  Seriously.  The guy in the desk next to me never talks, just giggles and farts and drinks his hot beverages at an absurd volume.  It'd actually be kind of funny if it weren't so creepy, but I digress.

I said that I'd written several posts about my band's tour in June, which is (as far as you'll ever know) true.  I honestly don't know how the fuck they didn't make it up here.  I remember writing these vivid accounts of all the stupid shit we did and posting pictures we'd taken and now there's nothing.  Not a damned thing.  So, in the interest of posterity, I will try to recall what all went on for that week or so.  If nothing else, it'll give me something to do for awhile while I'm working at the most boring job ever.

We left in June.  I recall the process of getting out of town as being an incredibly tedious and infuriating ordeal.  First, Kolin's ATM ate his money.  He got paid the day we were supposed to leave or something and when he tried to withdraw money he got none.  His hands were empty.  No cash.  The machine, however, thought otherwise.  It printed him a nice receipt thanking him for his business and for agreeing to pay the bullshit fee and let him know that his account had been voided of a nice $300.  Cool.  Next we had to play musical credit cards in order to get an AVIS rental car.  My card, a debit card, didn't cut it.  Kolin's money was somewhere in the matrix.  Korey doesn't even have a card.  We tried my mom.  She drove all the way out to the other side of town and her card got declined.  Sorry mom.  Thanks anyway.  Finally we got Landon to agree to help us, which was fun.  The only stipulation he gave us was that if we fucked the car up in anyway, we should totally destroy it.  We agreed to those terms.  A carbeque was pretty enticing after the whole shit show, but we finally got underway.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect.  We had a lovely drive across Western Kansas under yellow, forbidding skies.  If you're at all familiar with Kansas you know that yellow skies are not a friendly sight.  They mean you're either in for a nasty thunderstorm, or you're going to die in a tornado.  We dodged that bullet somehow and made it to Denver in the nick of time.

When I say that we made it in the nick of time, I mean it.  It was about 8:30 or 9:00 pm when we arrived, and if you know anything about rock-star time, that's still cutting it close.  We had just about enough time to smoke a joint in the parking lot (which we totally did) before loading our gear in and playing.  I wish that I could list off all of the awesome bands we played with, but I really can't remember their names.  I spent about 50% of the tour in an alcohol induced state of disorientation.  The cool part about Denver was that a lot of my old friends from high school showed up.  Some of them I hadn't seen since then, so that made it even more special.  As you can imagine, with an impromptu class reunion of sorts, I was fed many a shot of tequila and whiskey and I got mightily tanked.  The next days drive was none to pleasant for me.

The drive wasn't just torture because of my hangover.  We were going to Salt Lake City by way of Wyoming.  If you've never been to Wyoming, I'd advise you to keep it that way.  People in Wyoming, at least on the interstate where we were traveling, are assholes.  After much driving through blasted scrubland and barren wastes, we made it to Utah.  Utah, by the way, is a gorgeous state.  After driving through some of the most beautiful red rock mountains I've ever seen, we made it to SLC.  That's about all you need to know about that stop.  It was Salt Lake City, capitol of the Mormon faith, after all.  The best part was drinking shitty beers and watching Animal Planet in a hotel room until 4:00 am.

Our next stop was in Reno.  That trip takes you through a lot of open grass hills and pseudo desert.  We kept ourselves entertained by trying to out fart each other and by reading articles about the many exploits of Creed frontman Scott Stapp out loud.  Reno itself resembled something akin to a heavily storm damaged gambling town, which I suppose it is (minus the storm damage).  The show was okay.  There were about five people in the crowd.  I have no idea what happened to the local band.  There may not have even been one.  Those five people dug it though, which is always an awesome thing.  Again I got drunk as hell and passed out on a kind stranger's floor.

The next day we headed toward California.  We crossed more desert and then came to a checkpoint marking the entrance into the Golden State.  I was driving and since we were rolling up a dooby, I started freaking the fuck out.  "What is this?" I thought!  I was under the impression that ol' maryjane was legal, or at least decriminalized, in the great state of California!  I told Korey to stuff the joint and all of it's makings under the seat and prepared myself for a trip to jail.  The panic was completely unwarranted.  It was a department of forestry or agriculture checkpoint.  All they wanted to know was if we were transporting any firewood or plants.  "No, sir," I said, and we rolled on through.  Once we were clear, I laughed my ass off.  You bet your khaki clad ass we were transporting plants, my friend!

Eastern California was prettier than Nevada, that's for sure, but once we got closer to Humboldt County things got positively heavenly.  We drove through winding mountain passes in the midst of ferny forests with crystal clear streams running on either side of the road.  It was slow going, but just about the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.

We pulled up to our old friend Kenny's house in Trinidad, CA sometime in the afternoon.  Immediately upon meeting the guy we smoked and he took us on a hike out by College Cove.  The ocean opened up to us and we drank cheap beer while we walked on the black sand beach.  After that lovely stroll, we hiked on out to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific.  If the winding drive through the forested mountains was impressive, the view from these black basaltic cliffs was simply awesome.  The ocean just raged and pounded against the rocks.  Note to self; retire in Trinidad, CA.

That night we played a show in Eureka, CA which wasn't too far from Trinidad.  The show itself was pretty uneventful.  The local act failed to show again, so we played with some guys from Washington State.  The Curse of the Black Tongue.  That was there name.  Good surfy rock n' roll.  The whole damn town smelled like day old, disemboweled fish though, and there were droves of the homeless milling about.  It was good to get back to Kenny's seaside bungalow and drink more beers and listen to the Macho Man Randy Savage's hip-hop album.  Great times.

The next day was our day off and we spent it running around in mother nature's playground some more with Kenny.  We drove out to this place called Fern Canyon which was splendid.  We hiked the stream as far back as we were willing to go, which was really far I might add.  Once we got back there a good ways, the tourists on their sure footing at least a quarter of a mile behind us, we blazed some more and drained some beers.  When we were done there we headed to the Lady Bird Johnson Red Wood Grove.  We were warned by sings to look out for bears, but I was too busy looking up at a canopy that stretched hundreds of feet into the sky to keep an eye open on the ground.  A bear could've eaten my dumb ass, but I don't think I would've minded a whole hell of a lot.  A mist had rolled in that afternoon and shrouded the upper parts of the trees.  It was, in short, phenomenal.  The nature hike days with Kenny made the whole tour worth it.

We said our goodbyes to Kenny and hit the road, heading south for Oakland.  The drive wasn't bad, but we had to abandon the Pacific Coast Highway to make up for lost time.  Oakland itself looks about like you'd expect it to, if your expectations are Aleppo, Syria or Falujah, Iraq.  The town even seems to have its own refugee camp full of the homeless.  The show was still a lot of fun, probably the best of tour to that point, but our good friends in the Atom Age advised us that it would probably be a good idea to stay the night outside of Oakland.  We did.  I think the town we ended up in was Aurora, CA.  We smoked that hotel room out, per standard operating procedure.

Now, I thought Oakland seemed pretty third world, but LA was even crazier.  The part of town we played in, the part closest to all of those famous landmarks, directly adjoined what I can only describe as a George Romero themed amusement park.  I have never seen such a confluence of the doomed and forsaken in my life.  Entire streets seemed to belong to roving bands of junkies and the homeless.  At one point I kicked what I thought was a pile of trash bags in the middle of a sidewalk.  Imagine my surprise when the trash bags moved around on their own and looked up at me and told me to fuck off.  Yeah, LA was insane that way.

The show was cool though.  We played at Redwood Tavern.  Now, I don't know if you're a big Zoe Deschanel fan, but that's the karaoke bar featured in the movie 500 Days of Summer.  Pretty cool, huh?  That's right.  I played on the same stage that Joseph Gordon-Levitt pretended to drunkenly sing on.  The other bands were legit too.  The Lysol Gang were good and they were awesome human beings to boot.  They took us to an excellent Mexican restaurant where I for-real-drunkenly pissed off the patio out back.  It was a good show and good times.

After LA we headed to Tempe, AZ.  Or was it Phoenix?  I was honestly too terrified by the thought of getting busted for having drugs in Maricopa County and ending up in one of Joe Arpaio's Nazi death camps.  Thankfully that didn't happen, but I still watched my back in Arizona.  Kris Kobach is from there, after all.  That's two strikes, Arizona. 

The show was our best though.  We played with lots of really good bands and the venue was next door to a shady-ass sex shop.  It was almost as entertaining to watch the patrons of that shop enter and exit in shame as it was to watch the bands playing on stage.  By the end of the night I was righteous-hand-of-God's-will drunk and woke up on a mattress spooning a dog.  I was so hopelessly hungover the following morning that I left my bag with all of my clothes, my toothbrush, a brand new $40 multi-tool, and my disposable camera inside.  When will I ever learn?

The last stop of tour was supposed to be in Albuquerque (God, what a stupid name for a town).  When we pulled up to the venue, a flustered lady told us that we were late and that all of the local acts had dropped off the show.  We stared at her with slacked jaws.  In spite of coming at us like a tiger, she ended up giving us $50 and we didn't even have to play.  That's called winning the game, folks.  We drove across the street to a little café on the corner and had ourselves some burgers and beers.  Apparently the place was famous because there were all these pictures of the owner with various celebrities.  I can't remember anyone in particular, but I want to say there was a picture of Nick Nolte, one of John Goodman, and one of the greatest martial arts champion ever; Steven Seagal.  When we finished our food, we lit out of New Mexico, determined to drive all the way home because fuck it.  Why not?

On our way home, around sun up, we happened into my hometown of Pratt, KS.  We stopped into the only place open, Don's Serviteria.  It was worth it for the coffee and the huevos rancheros.  That combination may have kept me glued to a toilet for a good half an hour, but at the time it was pure victory.  Four hours later we were home and unpacked.  I smelled like dog shit, but I didn't care.  I took a nap like I've never taken one before.

Now, that summation of tour wasn't as glorious and hilarious as I wanted it to be, but I'm working solely from memory.  I had the tour diary updated daily, replete with hilarious pictures of Scott Stapp and TJ and all of the scenery we passed through, but as I've said (and it's up to you to decide if you believe me) the damned thing is lost to the sands of time somewhere in internet land.  Maybe I deleted it when I was clearing out room in the writing folder on my laptop for easily rejectable short stories and a novel I'll probably never finish.  Who knows?  All I do know is that I'm very sorry for wasting your oh-so-precious time and that you couldn't be dazzled by all the gorgeous pictures I took.  Cheers!