The main problem in any democracy is that crowd–pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.
–Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, Hunter S. Thompson
Each network is a corporation unto itself, with nearly infinite money to spend and the unbelievable power to shape your opinion and mine.
-Henry Harvey
We’re not coming. You’re not paying attention.
–Sex Pistols Letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma.
–Bhagavad Gita
This post has nothing to do with National Politics. If you came here to prove a point I’m sorry. Maybe you can hang it up and listen to me bitch for a little while? I’m aware of the ineffectiveness of apathy. Not caring might’ve worked for the last twenty-six years but it didn’t help-and things have only gotten worse while I was banging down blue streets strung out on a poet’s dream and railing against unrequited love. So, I was foolish in my youth, with my time and my everything. I’m here to make amends. What else’s a kid suppose to do, in this country or anywhere else? It seems to me like they die for it over there, in the other hemisphere. They lay it on the line for the kind of freedom you and I only piss and moan away every day. This ain’t in defense of apathy but neither your crusade. The only change I can affect is within and I can barely handle that. If shaking my lower middle class karma was as simple as quitting cigarettes and alcohol, I’d be home free. I’m watching you get played by an Oligarchy on tv, a system where the house always wins, but I’m mad at myself for laying down this long and being too cool for school while the world only spun on, deeper into its oblivion.
It’s only getting worse.
-Lamb of God
The real dilemma is that I’m stuck in a glorious grind. I’m called to the real work but the money and the perks of this gig are alright. I don’t know what it looks like, to be on the road for long stretches of time; just that I can’t seem to do more than send a few letters out on shift, or post a blog and other incremental types of checklist tasks that forced me to fire my therapist and quit therapy. I’m sure I’m doing just fine. Plugging along. Seems like every week I get the good news that my work will appear in another mag, journal or anthology. I’ve been hitting the road, too, taking long weekends to the East and Gulf Coasts. I’m bound to Portland in December, for a workation that’ll yield the next collection and sharpen my printing press skills. I’m happy about that. If I step back, I can see that Art is needed on a heart and blood level. The colors we splash onto the canvas are alive and the characters we write are drawn to collide. The world we create is full of lovers running into and from each other’s arms.
But I’m short a grand from travel, and the War Room&MAMU aren’t completely set up. Besides all the ways I’m coming up short in my efforts toward being an Artist full-time, I’m wasting away. As glorious as this grind is, it’s still a grind. It stabilized me and picked me up, put me on a regimen with meals and a bedtime. It was exactly what I needed after I totaled my car and was out of unemployment compensation and the only thing on the horizon was donating plasma and a temp job with the University COOP. This job’s been a godsend. I’ll have 3 collections of poetry published by the time I quit here but I’m feeling tethered, tied down and dragged. It’s time for something else and I’m gonna have to get creative, good Reader, find a way to diversify my talents so that the cheddar can keep rolling in while I plot the next jaunt and get the next collection together, book the next show and find some print for my work. This post has only put me where I am. Which is fine. The pale hot afternoons on shift make me jiggy and it’s not unlike me to feel like I’m spinning my wheels. So I reach out to you. Write this screed, edit it and post. You either hang yourself or you hang it on the wall. I’m about to get back to it now. Working full-time and then over time to ensure the market for an independent singer-songwriter, published poet and hack journalist. Please send love and if you’re at the show offer to put me up. As far as the election is concerned take C.O.C.’s suggestion and vote with a bullet.
See you next Thursday motherfucker.
Trainer
Going For The Throat
Austin TX-Nationwide
Going for the Throat 
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[…] Warmest Greetings from the War Room. It’s quieter than a tomb at the Writer’s Desk. The trees out the wide, green window are almost stripped and anyway have become gold. I’m happy for the change of seasons and any kind of ecological normalcy left us for these dwindling years of the Anthropocene. Think whatever you want to. I commented earlier, on an enemy’s feed, about the end and the shrinking window of time we’ve left here. From me, a comment like that can only mean growth. In fact it was only weeks ago when I was calling him Asshole Dan on his feed and then tagging him as such on mine. Full retaliation for the ignorant. Kill the head and the body will die. You know, anger and Fuck You and all that, but…this was different. What he got from me this morning was more about acceptance than peace though there’s probably not much difference and anyway, when the human race is gone I imagine it’ll be nothing but gravy for the planet and whatever species remain. My fight’s not with him and these days I lean from any kind of fight at all. I could get mad enough to try and shake the thinking of the hippie bastard or I could blame the rich and oligarchs that did this to us but the truth is that we did this to us–and even if we could somehow and worldwide get on the same page we’re not going to do anything about it and that’s because we don’t want to think about the fact that we are going to die. It’s that simple but extremely difficult to digest and anyway integrate–not that the end is coming but that the end is already here. It’s not that capitalism did this to us, not the cluelessness of thin-headed hippies on Facebook or the selfishness of the filthy fucking rich behind wide walls that matter to me now. We’re all going to die and anyway on the way there get extremely compromised. The die is cast, the fat is in the fire and the time to change was thirty years ago. […]