Fuck

It’s beautiful down here.  Great weather. No stress. People come here, they live to be 100.
–Joey Merlino

We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death.
–GY!BE

As long as we live in this world we are bound to encounter problems. If, at such times, we lose hope and become discouraged, we diminish our ability to face up to what challenges us. If, on the other hand, we remember that it is not just ourselves but everyone who has to undergo hardship, this more realistic perspective will increase our determination and capacity to overcome what troubles us.
-The Dalai Lama

We are living in a news cycle that can be measured in nanoseconds.
-Dan Rather

If this doesn’t take you down,
it doesn’t mean you’re high
-Soundgarden

Yo.  Trainer here, at the bougie coffee shop, where the jazz is smooth and the skin is white.  I can’t complain but I will.  It’s been a long time that I should be far from here, and I’m way past being sick&tired of my own bullshit.  Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend some time with others, hang out and fraternize, but-most of them are worse.  What an existential stalemate I’ve reached and for shame, too.  I’m in the prime of my life with money in the bank but all I can do is bellyache about how easy living is down here in the Pearl of the South, crank out another 400 words and go home and jerk off.  Oh well, it could be worse, I could be satisfied with life, like any of these feel goodies here at the coffee shop seem to be, listening to Curtis Mayfield, eating bananas and grinning like imbeciles.

This could be a great opportunity to take to the streets, or hit social media and throw my complaint onto the pile.  I can’t even pretend to care anymore and it could be because the whole thing has been at hysterical pitch too long.  No wisdom can be discerned.  I see outrage and I understand.  I see smug complacency and I didn’t think I could ever understand but-look at me, with my fat stomache and apathy, black clothes and apolitical angst.  Whichever side you’re on, one thing is certain and that is the genie can’t be put back into the bottle.  Racism is the biggest problem in this country, barring imminent ecological disaster, and the American experiment has failed.  We ain’t gonna make the nut.  It’s all over baby blue, big business has trumped all and the thing that really spurred it on was as dumb as the color of our skin.  I can’t pretend I’m not entitled, no matter how much I ignore the national scene.  Does my apathy anger you, Good Reader?  If so, then use it-impeach the fucker, eat the rich people, start a riot in the street and burn it all down.  Let these be the chronicles of a sorry bastard who didn’t care, or whose own emotional load was too close to capacity to affect anything except putting out fires.  It’s that bad.

We came up with a soft date for my departure, and it’s after the summer and the over 3,000 miles we’ll be doing up to the Adirondacks and back.  I looked at a car today.  Lady wanted to sell it to me at almost a grand over the Kelly Blue Book value, and that was after my mechanic found about $500 worth of repairs she claimed unaware of.  It goes on.  Psychologically I suppose I’m at a crossroads.  The worst is done.  I’m sober now.  I’ve survived and I don’t even entertain the bad drama needed to get laid anymore.  Mr. Excitement has retired, the dreamer is fully woke.  I suffer bad anger and terrible boredom though, the former flaring in my abdomen and stiffening my neck and upper back, literally getting my haunches up and cursing to myself in the dark.  I can’t carry that burden anymore, either, Brother.  I feel like there’s an opportunity here, that I could do a lot better than cranking out 600 word complaints to you and generally just getting by.  My first time on the therapist couch I’d been up for over 72 hours on whisky&cocaine.  Safe to say I’m over that.  I’ve survived.  Maybe it’s time I give my man a call and see if we can thrive.

See you next week motherfucker.

Laid Up Blues, Trainer Blows Out Back As The World Burns

What a drag it is getting old, eh Brother? I blew out my back getting the old man out of bed on Sunday and these days I spend most of my time flat, laid up, immobilized and otherwise worried to death. I ask myself, will I be able to play my monthly gig at House Wine on Thursday? Will I make it to the Cabaret on Friday? What about Letter Day and the Headlines? Who will judge the righteous? And what about the blog?!
Aho and even darker fears grip me as I lay on my Yoga mat. What if I don’t make it? What if I can’t make this dream real? What if I never live my dreams?

Questions of a different magnitude were asked in D.C. last week, and the answers, if they came at all, were grim&strange&sad.
And in Nairobi and Peshawar and any number of places unlucky enough to land on the other side of the great Wall of American Hegemony.
Aho. I’ll make it through. And with a little help from my friends I’ll be up&swinging again, punching down the savage road, talking shit and stalking this dream. If there’s anything shining in the mire of all this misery it’s that we’ve pulled ourselves back from the brink of war. Common sense would’ve made it a foregone conclusion that we can’t, as a country, continue to bomb dictators from out of their bunkers in small countries in the middle east anymore, without our New World Order coming home to roost. There’s people getting angry in these darkest hours, we’re no longer safe in our own country and we’ve been disabused of even the illusion of safety.
What could this be but the age of Nutter’s Rule? 12 dead at the hands of a mentally unstable Navy Reservist and at least 85 dead in the other hemisphere has become “the new normal”. Hunter Thompson was right.

It’s Sunday-we are not bombing Syria today! No children beneath our rubble-no grandmothers aflame-no death in our message-no shot across the bow. Let’s think how we each will contribute through our active love of those close-through our ease and acceptance of strangers to us as we are to them. Let’s contribute through our work-and our art. Let’s not take this moment-this new week for granted.
-Don Bajema, makin’ ’em know on Facebook last week
Aho. There he is. I dropped the ball last week and failed to bring you Chapter 2 of Too Skinny, Too Small. But as I mentioned, I blew out my back and this much madness was too much sorrow. I’ve been corresponding with Brother Don however, and I’m sitting on 2 Chapters of his latest lament on the bloodsport of American masculinity. Not only that, starting next week Bajema will be providing readers with a new chapter of Too Skinny, Too Small every Sunday until the Super Bowl. Aho. Some fresh wisdom and something other than
these angry alcoholic rants chronicling heartbreak in America and lamenting the death of rock&roll.

I watched 5 guys probably in their 50’s hand most current bands their ass last night and then still Keep going. Energetic, Tight and powerful.
-Jarrett Pritchard on seeing the mighty FLAG in Baltimore on Tuesday
Ah, but not so fast. Those guys are pushing 50 and they’re still raging against the machine. In life, there are those that do and those that criticize. In some strange&incredible twist of fate, it has become my job to criticize. As such, Greg Ginn may try to shut this rig down but rock and roll can never die. That’s from Brother Neil Young, a finer patriot than many Americans born here. But shit, considering the war on the poor in this country, maybe Canada ain’t so bad after all.

we love you so much / our country is fucked.
-GY!BE’s statement regarding their recently awarded Polaris Prize

Aho. I’ve still got 4 letters to send out to folks who responded to my Letter Day post on the GFtT Faccebook page last Friday. The headlines made it out on Monday and we’re booking December in Philly, people. Brother Don Bajema will be F-ing the NFL straight through February and Friday I’ll be revisiting One From The Heart, my music-critic series, and presenting you with a very special album to me.
The 24hour news cycle can be relentless but, ultimately, my petty complaints pale in comparison to the horror folks are subjected to elsewhere in the world and on the daily. As I down another Ibuprofen 800 and stare at the ceiling, I grapple with my own mortality-aho, and even consider the futility of my own existence. But then I punch down another 800 words and send this post off to you, good reader. Transmission, it’s keeping me alive. Your readership is my everything.

And once there was a time to join the army
And once there was a time to hear the news
And once there was a time for easy silence
But now the jury waits for you
–Witness Blues, A.A. Bondy

#fuuuuuuuu