“This could be tragic or sad but that’s the way life is…” (-Tyla)
“Since 1970, the share of aggregate income going to the middle class has fallen from 62% to 42%. (Middle class defined as income from 2/3 to double the median). Meanwhile, high-income share has increased from 29% to 50%. No wonder so many supposedly middle-class families feel like they’re always on the brink. #Kennedy24” (-Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
“The problem with opposition to dissent-crushing measures is that it mostly only comes from those at whom such measures are directed. Mainstream journalists know they won’t be imprisoned like Assange, because they won’t do work like Assange did. Mainstream liberals know they won’t be censored online, so they’re happy to cheer for online censorship.
Measures designed to control the narrative and suppress dissent are directed at the fringes, not the mainstream, because that’s where dissent of real consequence always first emerges. It won’t be those with mainstream political leanings seeing their speech increasingly marginalized and hidden away by algorithms and AI, it will be those who oppose the political status quo. In the future it won’t be those with a mainstream worldview being oppressed by things like tech surveillance, police robots and CBDCs, it will be those well outside the Overton window of permissible debate. The average person will be unaffected by such measures, because in our current mind-controlled dystopia the average person is compliant and innocuous. This is why attempts to get a large movement of opposition to these totalitarian measures typically fail to gather significant public traction: because only people on the fringes have reason to fear them. By controlling the mainstream consensus, our rulers eliminate any meaningful opposition to their tyranny toward the real dissidents whose politics generally lie well outside that consensus. And since it’s only widespread mainstream opposition that would ever give them reason to fear public backlash, they can keep ratcheting up these dissent-crushing measures. I don’t really have any solution to this problem; I’ve been staring at it for years and don’t see any easy answers. I’m just putting it out there in the hive mind so that awareness of the problem can grow and we can start collectively looking for solutions.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“It’s nuts how people are forced into debt just to survive in America.
Our entire economy is basically a system of indentured servitude. It’s remarkable how many American liberals have the same snarky, snobbish air of condescension — like they are supremely more intelligent & learned — yet any basic questioning of their beliefs exposes how they have zero knowledge of history or even capability to reason logically. Democrats did not accept the outcome of the 2016 election. Dems worked with US intelligence to put out a conspiracy theory about “Russian collusion.”
Dems then interfered in the 2020 election, using intel agencies, media & tech companies to suppress the Hunter Biden story. They then branded any suspicion about the legitimacy of the 2020 election as insane and seditious — censoring nearly any hint of these claims from social media. How is that not overtly criminal behavior?
How is that not the behavior of insecure despots in a banana republic?” (-Primo Radical)
Democrats might as well allow a primary because their odds of beating Trump with Biden are slim. #CNNTownhall” (-Briharana Joy Gray)
TOPSHOT – A protester holding an umbrella attempts to kick back a fuming tear gas pellet during a demonstration in support to victims of police brutality, after events in Sainte-Soline and in pension protests, in Nantes, western France, on March 30, 2023. – French police have been strongly criticized by rights groups for heavy-handed reaction to anti-government protests over the past month. (Photo by Sebastien SALOM-GOMIS / AFP) (Photo by SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS/AFP via Getty Images)
DIVIDED SLAVES OF AMNESIA NEVER REMEMBER YESTERDAY
So there’s this local cowboy musician writer who is dying from stage 4 Cancer and he does not want to die and I feel for him. He lives on a real bohemian gypsy kinda ranch in a series of trailers and a cabin and I have to go check in on the property from time to time and it breaks my heart to see all his instruments with actual cobwebs on them and cd’s and screenplays and all his life’s work is just gonna get shitcanned cause he kinda wore out his sister during chemo and his employer and I wish I could go salvage the shit, but it’s just not my stuff to fuck with. God bless him-he had dreamt of going back to his place and having a big 12 step going away partay with all his NA friends, but it’s sadly just not going to happen. I’m missing all my kids-they are all far away doing their own shit but I miss ’em. “Time is precious I know” was a Culture Club lyric still tattooed to my old battered brain. I got all these songs I wanted you to hear, but one of my old guitarists is retired from health problems and the others just kinda joined hipster bands with money people and what can you do? I spent a lovely evening with some elderly folks at a convalescenet home this evening cause my old lady works for a resident there and am stunned by how some people are still fully cognitive at 93 while me, myself, I’m already sortof in decline. I disagree with that rich dude Tucker Carlson about shit tones of stuff but recgonize how he was shitcanned from Fox for telling the truth about how pig-pharma owns the media and politicians, that the propaganda about the Ukraine is mostly lies, and we keep finding out more stuff about how all these solemn toned authority figures have knowingly deceievd us about multiple subjects. I believe in free speech so I have an instinctive solidarity with Carlson, Taibbi, Kennedy, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Naomi Wolf, Mark Crispin Miller, Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan, Julian Assange-everybody who is being shutdown and silenced by the billionaire owned platforms and fake press. It’s a travesty that Macron has declared himself some kinda dictator over in France and whoever’s pulling the Biden admin’s strings is doing the same shit here-ignoring the will of the people to please some crazed despots at the top. Hoping to see a long absent family member this weekend but I worry about him traveling here at night cause it is so remote and hard to find. Always thinking about the same old broken record shit, putting the band back together, my old lady says I’m stuck in the eighties, stuck in the past and she might be right. When I think about rocknroll, I aint talkin’ bout the fucking Foo Fighters or Pink 182. I’m thinking ’bout Peter Wolf and the fabulous J. Geils Band. When we foolishly moved to Boston in the early nineties, we thought that’s where you went to make it big in show business-you know-the home of Aerosmith and Willie Loco, the Real Kids, and Neighborhoods and Lyres and two Saints and Unattached, but we could never keep a drummer or pay rent on a rehearsal space or finance recording ventures with our low wage record store and conveneince store and telemarketing careers, so we kept breaking up every band we ever begun and it remains an abiding source of frustration for this old rocker. I wanna go back to Bunratty’s, back to the Rat. I resented my job at Tower records where they let me drink on the clock all day and gab at length with people like Led Zeppelin, but now I miss all that shit. Even the loss prevention fellas from Cambrighe Tower-Sam, Tim, Big Mike, Dave Monty-I loved all those guys. Plus all my associates, like greenhaired punk Danielle who ran my reg shift so I could go flirt with argyle waitresses at Charlie’s Cheeseburger around the corner, Noah the Psychic TV goth from New Orleans, Michael Hood, Thom Jones, James, Barrie, Mark, and Dermot! Good times, baby, all the time. Girls, girls, girls, playing rocknroll all night, going to the dirty divebars. There mighta been some drinkin’…I wantted to be like Peter Wold ya know, the rapid fire radio patter, the white pimp threads, his whole way of dancin’…
It might surprise you that I like this band cause they are so middle of the road sonic wallpaper but I guess summa their hits were just a ubiquitous part of my bloody youth and I am a sentimental motherfucker, so i’m somehow comforted by ’em, somehow.
I’m still very new wave at heart. Might try to get some music project underway with people from afar. Berlin was another one of those bands that were just perpetually on the radio when we were growing up, I probably thought they were too mainstream as a teenager in all my low fi basement band drunknroll Deadboys glory whoring, but ended up liking all their shit, really.
“The Neocons used 9/11 to ram this bill through congress laying the groundwork for the emerging surveillance state. In a break with all precedent individual Congressmembers we’re not provided copies of the 350 page bill. Only one copy was available at the clerks office and the only member of Congress to actually read the bill was my now campaign manager Dennis Kucinich. Two US Senators, Patrick Leahy, and Tom Daschle, lead the crusade to block the bill. At the height of the debate, both of their offices received letters containing weaponized anthrax. The neocons falsely blamed the Anthrax attacks on Saddam Hussein and rushed the Patriot act to passage during the week that Congress was closed due to the anthrax attacks. After a two-year investigation, the FBI concluded that the highly sophisticated powder in those envelopes was weaponized Aimes Anthrax which could only have come from the joint, CIA/Pentagon Lab at Fort Detrick.” (-Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
“The writers guild is a useless cause. Supporting a strike by misfit creatives who push bourgious sensibilities, FBI propaganda and celebrity worship on the masses for a living will do nothing to defeat the Hollywood bosses. The only thing these writers produce is social control” (-Alex Rubenstein)
“As worthy as figures like Clinton & Obama are of contempt, unelected ideologues like Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, & Victoria Nuland are DC’s true power players. They are the neoliberal inheritors of a discredited & overtly belligerent neocon world view once associated w/ GOP. The same people currently rallying behind a bunch of English majors writing corporate TV spent years attacking truckers, teachers, and nurses as fascists for refusing to take an experimental Big Pharma injection that failed on every single one of its stated promises. In all sincerity, I do hope these writers get more money out of their corporate bosses so that they can get back to producing the cultural poison that keeps their corporate bosses in charge of our entire country. Media “folx” & Twitter intelligentsia feel kinship w TV writers bc they come from the same class & may even aspire to be a part of Hollywood or 30 Rock themselves. What we’re left w in a country that killed its manufacturing sector & left workers who produce tangible value behind. At least TV writers used to portray relatable working families. Today, they produce content glorifying the ruling political class & decadent lifestyles of the uberwealthy while promoting mainstream narratives on war & culture. Put your TV in the trash & get a real job. Hollywood writers are the “working class” that liberals get passionate about bc they need their nightly propaganda fix
And bc, unlike workers who actually produced things of value, they weren’t offshored via trade deals & still share the cultural sensibility of the elite. ” (-Anya Parampil)
“This opportunist is an example of the kind of liberal totalitarianism that is being normalized in U.S. society. There used to be a time when liberals championed the free exchange of ideas, even when those ideas were odious. No more. You toll the line or you end up like Assange.” (-Ajamau Baraka on Mehdi Hasan-who is basically like Karl Rove in shitlib clothing)
“Heartbreaking news. Of everyone who had a hand in the 2013 revelations of global mass surveillance, my dear friend David Miranda was perhaps the most righteous—and pure.
I will never forget that when the UK broke its own laws to detain David as a “terrorist” for daring to aid an act of journalism—and threatened to throw him in a dungeon for the rest of his life—he never faltered. Instead, he dared them to do it. It was that courage that set him free. That courage that moved the story forward. That will forever serve as the example of a man at his best. I will miss you, David. Stay free.” (-Edward Snowden)
When people tell me the WEF has no influence & it’s just a mad old man I laugh. Their influence is so great they’ve penetrated corporates, lobbyists, NGO’s & elites globally in the guise of ‘do goodery’ networking. When really it’s simply personal ambition for great wealth.” (-Bernie Spofforth)
WHILE THE TV WHORES OF CONTROLLED MEDIA WANT YOU TO ARGUE OBER CULTURE WAR BULLSHIT, REMEMBER FLINT & PALESTINE & KALAMAZOO! THEY ARE NO JOKE POISONING THE PEOPLE!
“Just as they did during the Iraq War, America’s jingoistic press outlets bear a major responsibility for this unnecessary war that has ravaged Ukraine and killed some 315,000 Ukrainians. Rather than seeking to contextualize events properly for their readers, the U.S. media systematically deceived Americans about the causes and course of the war while faithfully parroting the Neocon propaganda narrative. NATO conducted countless belligerent military exercises (around 40 per year) near Russia’s border, including live-fire rocket exercises simulating attacks on air-defense systems inside Russia. The Russian ambassador warned the United States government: “The situation is extremely dangerous.” Between 2014 and 2022, the U.S. armed (with $4 billion) and trained the Ukrainian military to achieve NATO “interoperability,” amidst a steady barrage of hostile actions toward Russia. In 2016, President Obama placed nuclear-capable antiballistic launch systems in newly joined NATO countries along Russia’s border. In 2017, President Donald J. Trump began selling lethal weapons to Ukraine. The U.S. supported (with $5 billion) public protests that culminated in the 2014 armed, far-right coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian government, replacing it with an unelected pro-Western government handpicked by Neocon leader Victoria Nuland, the United States Under Secretary of State. After Volodymyr Zelensky’s 2019 landslide victory on a peace platform, White House Neocons like Kurt Volker and Victoria Nuland tag-teamed with Ukrainian ultranationalists to pressure President Zelensky to adopt an uncompromising stance toward Russia and to rebuff Russia’s many attempts at peaceful settlement. Zelensky had campaigned for ratification of the Minsk Accords — a Russian-backed settlement that would have left Donbas as part of Ukraine, but with sufficient autonomy to protect the language, culture, and safety of its ethnic Russian population. In 2002, Bush White House Neocons unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia. In 2002, Bush White House Neocons unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia.” (-Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
“As usual, a “win” by Ukraine is left undefined, not only because retaking Crimea or regime change in Moscow are hallucinatory neocon fantasies, but because either would lead to catastrophic destabilization and possible nuclear war. Trump gave the right answer.” (-Max Blumenthal)
SHITLIB CROOKED DNC FRAUDS LIKE AOC WANT MORE WEAPONS, WARS, MILITARY FUNDING, KKKOPS & KKKOP CITY, KENNEDY WANTS THE TRUTH TO COME OUT ABOUT HOW MUCH WE’VE BEEN LIED TO BY THE GOVERNMENT/MEDIA STARTING WITH THE INTEL COUP OF ’63!
“As a Senator, Joe Biden voted for the Assassination Records Act of 1992, requiring that all documents related to the killing of JFK be released by 2017. But President Biden is still keeping thousands of pages heavily redacted, including 44 pages related to a shadowy CIA agent and a covert program that had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald just months before my uncle was killed.” (-Robert F. Kennedy Jr.)
Losing proposition Quitting school and going to work And never going fishing Water all around Never learn how to swim now
If being alone’s a crime I’m serving forever Being strong’s your kind Then I need help here with this feather
If being afraid is a crime we hang side by side At the swingin’ party down the line At the swingin’ party down the line” (-Replacements)
“Before the election 51 intelligence agents signed a letter saying Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation, Biden on the debate stage said nobody believes it was real except Trump. Big Tech blocked it, MSM said it was fake. If you worry about election interference, it’s here.” (-Black In The Empire)
““Dismantling the war machine, and the war economies that fuel it, is one of the most important things we can do to meaningfully address climate change before it’s too late.” (-Teddy Ogborn; CODE PINK FOR PEACE)
“If your “non-aggression principle” doesn’t address the coercive systems which force workers to sell their labor at minimal prices to pay rent to land hoarders who artificially inflate housing costs, then it’s not a non-aggression principle, it’s a selective aggression principle. In our fucked up civilization “individualism” increasingly means having the freedom to express your uniqueness by choosing between hundreds of makes and models of automobile while thinking the exact same thoughts as everyone else about America, capitalism, and foreign policy….Anyone who spends a lot of energy trying to control your narratives about yourself is trying to control you. They’re trying to imprison you in a psychological cage of their making. It’s important to extract their tentacles from your mind by any means necessary.
If you start paying attention to this you’ll find that it’s not just individuals who try to manipulate your understanding of yourself, but institutions as well. Advertisers, propagandists, religious leaders — they’re all telling you who you are in various ways all the time:
“You don’t matter.”
“You’re defective.”
“You don’t look right.”
“You’re here to work.”
“You’re here to consume.”
“You must obey.”
“You’re worthless unless you’re successful, and success means X, Y and Z.”
“You’re not intelligent enough to make up your mind about this subject for yourself.”
We’re smashed with toxic messages like this all our lives. Maturity is extracting all the narratives about you that were put into your mind by others so that you can become your own author. It takes work, because a lot of those narratives got in there a long time ago and now sit unnoticed in our subconscious, pulling our strings from behind the scenes.
The worst thing you can do is let someone else be the author of your story. Especially when the kinds of people most keen to do that are those who don’t have your best interests at heart. Generally speaking, the people most eager to author your story for you will be the ones least qualified to do so.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
was permanently suspended for joking about the brutal violence U.S. empire metes out around the world. His comment on the suspension: “Change Blinken to Putin and change Palestinians to Ukrainians and it gets boosted by Twitter instead of censored.”” (-Dan Cohen)
“Biden is freeing a turkey while continuing to torture a journalist. #FreeAssange” (-CODE PINK FOR PEACE)
“or those people so concerned about Ukraine, do you ever wonder why that is your priority and not what is being done to the people in Yemen and the Palestinians who have suffered for much longer, have much higher death counts and whose suffering is funded by our country? Their News isn’t there to inform, their job is to tell you what to think. Americans worked harder to deny the Nazis in Ukraine, than the Nazis in Ukraine did. Who is making money off of this war?
If you aren’t asking yourself that question, you’ll be a sucker forever. I have no interest in giving up my freedoms and willingly handing them over to the same people that have done nothing but lie and steal from us to transfer trillions of dollars to themselves.” (-Black In The Empire) “
How to not get Iraqed in Ukraine: Turn off the lapdogs who scam us into war after war. Turn on the watchdogs who got #Russiagate right:
& more. As one of Russiagate’s targets, I was hauled in for a 3-year Senate Intel Cmte investigation based on the “Russian asset” smear. The Senate report found zero evidence for that BS. And of course there’s been zero correction from corporate media. Just another political hit job. Russiagate conspiracy theory is dying & none too soon. Russiagate was the 1st step to manufacture consent for war w Russia, peddled by the same MIC tools now drumming up #UkraineCrisis. Screw warmongers pushing us to the brink. Pass the mic to the folks who got #Russiagate right!” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“They said Nelson Mandela was a member of a Hate Group
Malcolm X and Muhammed Ali were members of a Hate Group Fred Hampton and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) were members of a Hate Group Kyrie now in a Hate Group I guess challenging white power is the definition of Hate. Hell MLK was a Christian and they still killed him
All you Trumpers can get offended, but white power considers you a Hate Group too. The United States invades countries totally unprovoked all the time, they just have an obedient enough media to convince us that there is a good reason. There is no NATO, G20, or UN
It’s just the United States giving orders.” (-Black In The Empire)
“Naming your war machinery after the Indigenous tribes your government genocided is the modern-day equivalent of wearing the skulls of your enemies on your war horse.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
A local dude who’s always been a dick to my wife, I guess because like all the old men here in this deadend town, he has a crush on her and no social skills, so the best he can do is like pull the girl’s pigtails, but he suddenly became all civil and humble, of so lovey dovey and uncharacteristically polite yesterday, shyly mumbling something about how, “nobody likes me”, you know, fishing for sympathy of some kind from her, and it turned out, he’d been hospitalized and they put a stint in his heart. I keep noticing how in this grotesque last stages of capitalism, ratrace horrorshow, most Murkkkans can only ever find it in themselves to try ‘n’ be even halfway decent to their fellow man, when they are either on death’s door, or a loved one of theirs died unexpectedly, they usually have like a moment of humanity, humility and self awareness, before resuming the usual non stop bragging and backstabbing and mercenary, only ever out for themselves gluttony, greediness, and territorial pissings. I myself, am in conflict-I’m lonely like an old Roy Orbison song, but I can’t stand fucking people cause everytime I go around any of them, they just wanna rob and steal and hit on my old lady and suck us dry. They just all became flesh eating zombies. Sometime around 1995. Some dastardly shit went down and I saw all my former associates change.You know, maybe part of my nagging, grueling, seasonal depression and infinite despair isn’t just being caused by my estrangement from my kids and former friends and forever flames but also because I am going through a period of semi forced sobriety which is always hard for someone with my particular cocktail of afflictions, but I remembered this morning also, that I am probably not getting enough JESUS & MARY CHAIN lately, and that’s important to my sense of overall serenity and wellbeing and stability. Ever since I was a bighaired, gloomy, runaway sleazy street urchin at about fifteen, moping and smoking and always trying to hustle up some beers in the gutter of St Mark’s and Second Avenue, shoplifting postcards to send home to my unrequited love way back in the green honky suburbs, I been in love with the songs of the Jesus & Mary Chain, not just the formula, not just the black leather, or crazy moptop hair, but the fucking songs man, such timeless melodies and the lyrics are beyond compare really, maybe I just have a similar type of personality to those guys or whatever but all their lyrics sing straight into the deepest heart of me. I’m an even sadder soul if I aint remembering all the strength and courage and comfort and consolation, affirmation and hallelujuh motherfuckery I still get from those grumpy geezers! Mostly they probably just remind me of you. Sometimes I think I really need some more champagne, a firepit, and a big ole ghetto blaster like way back in the old daze when it was me and you and her and him, and Dave Andra and them.
“If Joe Biden was my dad, I’d smoke crack too.” (-Just A. Thought on twitter-censorverse)
“Why Americans aren’t out in the streets rallying against their government for funding mansions for Zelensky, enriching the defense industry, giving weapons to Nazis, and engaging in the largest money laundering scheme, while there’s a homeless epidemic is beyond me.” (-Fiorella Isabel)
“Liberal corporate journalists sit online all day, roaming in packs, spewing the most vicious insults against those they dislike.
But the minute someone criticizes them, they scream “harassment.” Why would think think people won’t see, or would accept, this double standard?” (-Glenn Greenwald)
Some nights I have vivid dreams that I’m back at the dive bar where my doomed old gang and I were the artists in residence for a number of years. Or at my first hometown purple apartment. Or yellow bandhouse in the country. They’re mostly all gone now. The places and the faces. Just names now, memories. Like Jim Carroll sang, “I miss ’em! They Died!”
“People who spent many years spreading imperialist propaganda on Syria & viciously attacking those who refused to do the same are now silent on – or justify – the US’ ongoing occupation & devastating sanctions. They feigned concern for the Syrian people & have callously moved on.” (-Louis Allday)
“Class, please now turn to section 1.4 of Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model in ‘Manufacturing Consent’: ‘Flak and the Enforcers: The Fourth Filter’. All academic and media dissidents are targeted. The idea is to discourage others from citing, reading them.” (-Media Lens)
“PSA to the people of the United States:
Forget about Russia and China. These countries will pursue their own path whether you like it or not. Your country is governed by sociopathic warmongers and profiteers who don’t give a damn about you.” (-Danny Haiphong)
‘This system is designed to keep us divided by using 2 political parties preaching different social ideologies while they are all working for the rulers who are robbing us
As long as you think being loyal to your team and giving them power will change something, we’re trapped. I don’t care how pissed my people get The reality is that I thought Reagan was the worse thing that could happen to Black people in my lifetime, but then Bill Clinton got elected and we worshiped him while he and people like his buddy Biden went to work destroying our families. I don’t vote Dem or GOP Time for Black people to stop guaranteeing votes to Dems, who only talk about voting rights because we vote for them, and haven’t done right by us for a half century, even worse some things they make us fear about the GOP, they turned around and did to us. I watched the Democrats convince Black people that Trump was the biggest anti-Black President in History, keeping in mind that over 20% of our Presidents owned slaves Then convince us that the architect of Black mass incarceration was the answer to racism I’ve seen it all now. They haven’t told us the truth about a war yet, but maybe this time, right?” (-Black In The Empire)
I had to go retreive a ladder to climb up on the roof and investigate a stench coming from the pipes, and my old lady ended up being the one to get up there in the end, I just held the ladder, but first we had to go get a second ladder, that was taller than the initial one we got from a nearrby cowboy’s place, while he is in another city receiving chemo treatments, it always gives me the memento mori blues when I have to go over there cause he’s got his tools, his drills and hammers, all his books, musical instruments, compuers and keyboards where he makes his music, his hats, all his cars and stuff just sitting there waiting for him. I really hope he makes it back-he’s got a real cool pad, kindof like a gypsy encampment, I love it over there in spite of the vague gloom. Everybody’s getting older, ya know I’m about to turn 53 in less than a month, ya know I might as well be fifteen though cause aside from all the fear and responsibility, the crazy white beard growing outta my face, I’m still him. Same kid who just stepped on the Grayhound with his Walkman and Charlie Sexton and fucking Dream Academy and Cult and Thompson Twins cassettes. Ever hear ole Charlie cover the Replacements? That’s my whole adolescenece right there. Makes me wanna walk the long and perilous two miles to the gas station and get some beer and cigarettes, ya know? Light a fire in the yard. Listen to “Beats So Lonely” all night and Chris Isaak’s “Two Hearts” and probably some Beasts Of Bourbon, Gun Club. Rowland S. Howard. “Those stars in the sky…”
My second hand Mr. Coffee coffeemaker left behind by some former tenant looks nice n fancy, but it’s been leaking all over the kitchen curtain and clusterfuck of electronics, so I made the risky decision to use my wife’s K-Pods again this morning rather than risk another wet coffee spill catastrophe, our judgy landlord is coming to inspect the faulty water heater today before agreeing to pay the licensed outta town contractor to show up, as we already got another highpriced handyman toolbox guy guy coming to fix the sewage stench in the bathroom pipes next week, and we still got the problem of the blown down fence. We are grateful she has agreed to let us live here, truly deeply grateful, but I never feel like rich people really know what it’s like to never, ever have any real sense of housing security, the poors are always waiting for ya know some kinda heavy safe or piano to fall on top of us, cause we aint got no say, no money to throw at the problems, we’re just supposed to grovel and hope for the best, and I never been that good at appeasing the fancy cosmos-especially cause everything is always always all about their whims and desires, they have their moodswings, we got zero stability. I wake up with a certain measure of terror each day because of all the poverty related stress and parenting anxieties. The holidays are a hardship if you’re parenting, there aint many worry free hours in this life anymore. Somenights I’ll dream that I’m hanging out with a blackeyed old bassist, or the Fleshtones, or the Stones or the Time-I think it’s the cheap gummy melatonin I’ve been taking to help me sleep through all the loud adolescent hollerings we got from the ripoff “clearance” aisle at Wal Mart, but the dreams are good. I thought I was gonna be writing with Jam & Lewis in last night’s dream, I brought my lyric notebook, but they wanted me to sing some shit they already wrote with like too heavy for me clanging rap beats. But then they brought in Dez Dickerson to play guitar and I was like, I’ll find a way to make this new wave! I was askin’ em to make it sound more like Andre Cymone’s “Surviving In The Eighties.” Somebody told me they got a book by Dez, I dunno if I ever seen one, I never even got to hear anything by the Modernaires except for their ten second song in the film.
Ex Sisters Of Mercy and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry members, originally known as the Sisterhood, Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams and company were somehow real big in the late eighties 120 Minutes era, probably played by MTV more often than even Peter Murphy. I suspect they had an even bigger following in the UK as I seem to remember them having like colored pinups in the imported heavy metal magazines we sold at Mind Dust Music a used leftovers record store, kinda like a glorifid garage sale with a shrink wrap machine in the basment, way deep in the sticks. I seem to remember some English tabloid controversy with ex Nightmares In Wax/Dead Or Alive dude, Hussey arguing with the DARK EMPEROR OF ALL GOTH, Andrew Eltrich over their name. They toured with the Cult and even like, Whitesnake and Led Zeppelin lovin’ stoner trash heavy metal kids in hicktowns in the Murkkkan flyover country seemed to like ’em well enough. They kept going through an ever changing revolving door of various players-members of Ghost Dance and All About Eve and the Waterboys and Fairport Convention, filtered steadily through their ranks, leaving some scuzzy, chainsmoking, used record store clerks wondering how one goes about paying for a band to record and tour and attract a non stop calvacade of shithot sidemen, as I kept running into the wall, always crashing in the same car, rocknroll wise. As soon as I’d lead another fighting unit to the brink of victory, they’d always mutiny and take some of the songs, all the connections and hard won buzz, and all the credit. I remember listening to “Severina” alot when I was dating my former goth girlfriend Steffani. Her mom preferred Kenny Rogers. Me, too, probably, at least that “I Just dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In” song. Whenever I hear “The Gambler” at the grocery store I think her mom Etta is saying hi to me. The Mission were nowhere near as cool as Sisters Of Mercy, or even Dead Or Alive, if you ask me, they were just so-so, ho-hum, kinda generic really-the Alarm without the singalong anthems. Even with primitive drum machines, Sisters Of Mercy just rocked a lot harder. I thought summa their stuff sounded a bit like a more brooding, plodding, gloomy U2. They got the guitarist from Spear Of Destiny and covered the Osmonds Crazy Horses at some point which was kinda cool.
Listening to them on a cold morning in autumn 2022, in the shadows of a post pandemic, still clamped-down, controlled information, kidnapped and murdered journalists, enhanced interrogation Gitmo celebrity torturer, fascist authoritarian, tech surveillance billionaire, New World Order type of dystopian world, I think to myself, “we probably liked their big hats, mostly.” Same with Fields Of Nephillim. A couple of my pentegram drawing, Motley Crue loving, River’s Edge druggy buds who were into the slightly more evil side of goth all seemed to prefer the Fields Of Nephillim. I had gone to some real fanatical, strict, abusively fear based, religious indoctrination camps, so while I never really subscribed to their uptight theology, I also was never as ginned up as many of my peers about the hellfire clubs, serial killer fixating, Ricky Kasso imitating, and debbil worshipping.Even decades before the rich people in the Pacific Northwest ALL started forming their travelling wildwest show fisteen piece cosplay ever slightly so goth jugbands and spaghetti western yeehaw orchestras with all the ruffly saloon skirts and mustache wax, I was always into the Straight To Hell spaghetti Westen vibes.I grew up in Kentucky on the floor in front of the black n white tv watching old Roy Rogers King of the cowboys movies with my grandmother. My favorite film is probably “Tombstone”. Again, I mostly just liked the hats, but I was trying so hard to find a willing and able, committed lineup for my own graveyard loitering punk band. Kids came and went, ya know? One day, a dude has a foot high mohawk, a nosering, is copying Ogre from Skinny Puppy and talking about how to program the Sears catalog toy Synsonic drum machine that sadly sounds NOTHING like our beloved Jesus & Mary Chain, and the very next day, he decides if he’s not the Only Star on the Scene, he’s quitting punk rock and going into real estate. We had so much of that in the early years. Kids would quit cause they found a girlfriend willing to have sex with them and later reemerge as mod scooter owning Paul Weller skas or Minor Threat straight edgers or whatever. A guy would say he was interested in maybe managing my band, but then I’d findout he just wanted to show me all the sixties Aquarian oversized velvet paisley suits he had tailor made back when his father died and he inherited the tool and dye business and blew all the money on bluegrass vinyl and velvet clothes. If I showed you Polaroids of any of my bands from that era, ya know if you squint, we looked a whole lot like the Mission UK or Nephillims, but I soon found out the hardest way, that without adequate funding, some kinda sugar daddy income stream, it is impossible to keep a band together for very long. Dudes always wanna feel like they are “Getting Somewhere”. Sometimes, cats would come along who looked perfecta and could already play and you’d think, “ah yeah, alright, at last”, but they’d knock up some trailer chick and get guilt tripped into the army or something. This one’s a junkie, that one’s a crackhead in love with your girlfriend. One kid I knew was like BORN for it, born to be a star, he had it. Maybe not anymore, but back then he still did. But alas, he took another path entirely, joined the straight world, that just flatout broke my heart. Happened AGAIN whjen the hometown heavy metal heart throb guitar punk gave up the GBH t shirt and leather jacket and joined the marines! I kept losing all these guys to med school, the townie police force, the military, or real estate!!! I’d meet another guy who’d say he was a producer, have me over to his place, he’d record my songs and then start COVERING them, without me. Him singing my songs. WTF?!
Other former bandmates would tell me we have to change with the times, they wanted to imitate the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, or play math metal, or industrial/techno, or buzzkill gloomy grunge, or basball cap spaz punk, or suck up to the cocaine pocketed, suave acting, douchey fratboy rich people who owned the local studio, I did not like those creeps at all. I hated their cornball garbage bands and was not impressed their rich parents bought them businesses and music industry careers. I was accused of being a punk purist cause none of that shit seemed authentic to me, at all. Even if the joiners of the adult world kept scoffing about my notions of realness and integrity and truth and soul, ’cause bands I like from Bowie to Sputnik were all about artificiality and exploitation, and fast buck wig wearing, and non stop trend hopping, but what the bandwagon chasers did not seem to understand about me, was that I had more in common with Dirty Degville, Pete Burns, Steve Strange and Boy George than I ever, ever, ever would with Eddie Vedder or Chris Cornell or Thurston Moore or the Beastie Boys. Batcave glam ala Flesh For Lulu and Lords Of The New Church was authenticty to me, my vibe, the frequency I communicated in. I did not care to follow trends, most usally being top down dictated, by an ever merging media monopoly mafia. I hated all that stuff other people said they liked, from Warped Fest fake punk to Nighttime sit-com lifestyle programming unreality tv, to all that miserable post grunge radio shlock, like Creed and Nickelback and the fucking Foo Fighters. No thanks, man. Some other guy said he was gonna sign my band but only wanted to get near my ex girlfriend, that became a frequent pattern for awhile. One cat offered to give me five percent of my own personal original compositions if I’d cut my real songwriting partners out of the deal and let him claim part authorship of songs he just covered or recorded new arrangements of, and he’d keep like 95% of the publishing. I setup an ASCAP account for fifty dollars which is a lotta money for me, when a dude was promising me he’d get my songs placed in movies and commercials, but it was all just a copyright robbery scam and I am grateful I had the spidey senses to not sign anything. I’m not a business lawyer and ya know you can not negotiate with plaigirists, they’re gonna file paperwork to steal your shit with or without your permission. It gets depressing, everytime I venture out of my hole, those music business predators will find away to burn me some more. They’re like City Hall with leather jackets. The school board with mimosas and Tuesday night DJ jobs. Growing up, I’d just get crushed by the juvenile authorities and admin in the pockets of rich sports moms, everytime-they were just there to elevate the rich kids and punish the poor. They were always behind the scenes deciding who would get the sports car, big gold trophies and corner office and pretty blonde homecoming queen, and who would get the corporal punishment paddlings, curfews, after school detentions, and cold on a cement slab solitary confinement. The shifty paperwork pencil pushing office people and pilledout bed ridden telephone tree sports moms decided all our fates-who would be the winners and who would be the losers. I memorized that Marc Anthony speech for my theater class, but like always, the monosyllabic quarterback was allowed to mumble his way through it instead. His dad owns a factory. That was the way of the world and I was seeing it more and more with all too vivid clarity, in a crash course, upclose and personal way, everyday when I turned 25 and some Richie Riches were suddenly coming for both of my ex girlfriends. They deployed every dirty trick-the blacklistings, the smears, the in crowd clique shunning and cancelling, the bouncer bruiser sidewalk beatdowns. Any length, to protect their turf and power trip, paid for celebrity, mom sez I’m the winner status. In winner takes all capitalism, if somebody fucks you over, and they know you know they fucked you over, they just rationalize you are flawed or defective and somehow deserved it. No apology is forthcoming if they have more power than you do. They double down on fucking you over rather than ever admitting wrong. All that most conventional, school indoctrinated, sports oriented Murkkkans give a fuck about is, Winning and that means iron fist controlling their enviornement even if it involves lying, stealing, or cheating to have and to hold that status. They wanna be the girl with the Most Cake and tell themselves they are beyond fake. Mom’s Favorite. They’ll have entire empires they lord over and tell some dude on the street with nothing to “check his privilege”, that’s how batshit think tank controlled this modern day faux woke narrative has become. Preppie privileged trendy rich people fucking just suck so bad and always will, even and especially if they try to hijack some pop culture shit like Hunter S. Thompson or Garage Rock or the Clash. Those are just brand logos to them-they never listened to the words or got the message. So I can’t argue with the fraud squad scenester squares. I aint no debate team scholarship winner. I never learned how to stand up for myself at least not against the office pricks. I don’t know how to keep a cool head and poker face and leverage lies and power against weaker people, like the shameless tie guys behind the desks. What was sad is how my wife had gotten her hopes up that I was finally being discovered, but nope, it was the same old annual false hope users and capitalist ripoff schemers bullshit song n dance, takers taking, bloodsuckers sucking. It’s what they do. Eventually, it was just me and the AC/DC guy and he was no good at programming drum machines or paying rent, and neither was I. Later, it was just me and the girlfriend, kinda like Lux & Ivy, or Nik & Mrs. Fiend. We had some potential sidemen with big hats coming around kinda auditioning, but they kept integrating everything we talked about into their Primary Gentrified Hipster Empire Brand. Now it’s just me, trying to get the grumpy teenager to help me download the Audacity software program.
“Trump & Biden are major war criminals because they conspired with their neocon advisers to commit international aggression. That’s the worst war crime it’s possible to commit, and both parties are leading us straight toward WW3 today.” (-Geoffrey M. Young)
“Weed the manipulators out of your life by noticing who spends a lot of energy trying to influence the way you think about them, about others, and about yourself. The latter are the most dangerous. People who try to manipulate your ideas about yourself are your enemy. Cut ’em out.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“…Cuba continues to follow its difficult and heroic path based on Fidel’s ideas…keeps developing, defending its interests with dignity & implementing reforms despite unprecedented external pressure…” (-Russian upper house chairperson Valentina Matviyenko)
Man I had another crazy music dream last night. I was at a show-Ozzy, Chris Holmes from WASP, Buck Cherry and Lita Ford. Now in real life, I aint been to a show in years and years. I asked Lita how much for her latest cd and she said, “Two year’s of my life’s work will cost you $25”. I was having fun with Lita in the dream-we were sortof partying. I had no money to buy her merch. with-even in the dream world I’m still empty pocketed. Cold morning, my second hand coffee maker’s been leaking all over our kitchen curtains and stuff so I’m mooching Kerig posh coffee offa my sleeping old lady.
Exile in Traumaville. In my little life, it was really weeks and weeks and weeks ago, I had somebody from my own inner circle kinda doing a lotta yelling of unkind things at me, it was like over a month ago, and I still have not really processed it, or gotten over it, man, I guess it just makes me feel real lousy, cause it reminds me of all the bad shit from the long gone past, just another fuckedup echo of how I never fit in with this society and never really wanted to, but that kinda adversely affected all my relationships with everybody who was dying to join the in crowd and be popular in the capitalist ratrace world. Ultimately, it just makes me wanna go somewhere alone and chain smoke, or maybe have a nice big bottle of something relaxing and passout. Escape this fuckedup, mean spirited, competitive control freakery power trip kinda backstab culture for awhile. I used to call people and talk on the phone whenever I started to feel, ya know, disconnected, misunderstood, unappreciated or undervalued or alone. Things are different, now, I can’t seem to really honestly relate to that many people. It’s all like that old movie, “THEY LIVE!” I-phone zombies walkin’ around reciting shit they were programmed to say, either from TikTok (millenials, etc) or MSNBC (boomers, middle class landlords). They all belligerently interrupt you with their dutifully memorized and predictable tv slogans.
It’s really kinda too cold out to wanna go for a dangerous walk through all the desert town snarly unleashed pitbulls and four packs of druggy teens and rightwing gun nuts of meth land, where I live now. My sister in law was visiting a sick relative in the midwest and her and her friend were heldup at gunpoint by some rightwing fucking crackpot with a big truck, just last week. She was begging him for their lives. That’s how crazy this country is. Besides fucking around on the internet and caregiving, babysitting really, I got nothin’ goin’ on here. I foolishly tried to call a faraway relative yesterday, got just got stuck talking to her retiree, tcable drunken know it all blowhard, poor listener, interrupting spouse, he mostly brags about his fame and fortune, and then he complains about Russia. This has been going on for years now. “Russia, Russia, Russia”, I was glad to get off the phone but now I’m back to fucking around on the internet, or sitting silently, smokefree and sober in a chair. You can imagine my excitement!
“Our Gov’t has been arming Nazis for 8 years, and the ADL is after Kyrie and Kanye. Considering the fact that the Russians lost the most fighting Nazis, I guess it’s not surprising that they are the only ones still fighting Nazism, but it is kinda crazy to watch the rest of Europe arming them.” (-Black In The Empire)
“The richest 1% have already blown their fair share of the 1.5°C carbon budget six times over. They are literally devouring our planet.” (-Jason Hickel)
“If capitalism was really about “voluntary transactions” capitalists wouldn’t work constantly to crush unions and destroy the labor movement.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“Every single one of these black mayors sold black people out to real estate developers and the prison industrial complex
The black misleadership class is the biggest threat to black lives.” (-Revolutionary Blackout Network)
“If it weren’t for Obama we never would have heard the Corn Pop story or have to live with the nincompoop who felt the need to tell it.” (-Margaret Kimbereley)
“Happy birthday, Joe Biden! There’s a lot to celebrate these days, and I couldn’t be more grateful that America has you sitting behind the desk.” (-Barack Obama)
“From baby-eating Germans in 1914 to Viagra-fuelled Russians, the lies of war are as old as war itself. Trust nothing you read, see or hear that is not independently sourced and attempts to cover both sides.” (-John Pilger)
HEY SHITLIB! BLACK IN THE EMPIRE HAS SOMETHING TO SAY!
Our system has created a society of people worshiping and defending politicians with all their souls like they are members of their families or close friends, instead of like employees who work for us I hate to break the news, you don’t know them and they don’t care about you. Repping the color Blue and the letter “D” doesn’t make a politician less corrupt, it just means you have to lie harder to convince people that you care. What makes anybody think that after decades of working to create their multi-trillion dollar scam of a system that they are just gonna let a bunch of average citizens go into a booth and vote their power away? If the people in power don’t fear you, they probably control you. Once you realize that both Parties are ultimately working together things clear up pretty quick. Everybody knew the Hunter laptop was real except for BlueAnon. If you want the main people who interfered in the 2020 election, it was the Intelligence Agencies, Media, Big Tech and the FBI.” (-Black In The Empire)
“Today’s mistrust in Governments, Politicians and the media stems from corruption and blatant lies. They attack free speech because they fear an uprising. Defending free speech is essential for us because if they don’t fear the masses they will be emboldened and even more extreme.” (-Kim Dotcom)
Some dudes my guitar player was friends with in the eighties had these seemingly unlimited allowances for cigarettes and beer and records and smut magazines and poppers from the adult book store. Even though they were much older than I was, eight to ten years older, their overindulgent and protective elderly parents blamed all their mental illnesses and dabblings with the occult and drug use and girl problems on me cause I had black eye makeup and Aqua Net piled high haystack hair. One of the records that really captured us for a minute that they had in their gigantic collection that I got to play real loud on their awesomely big major seventies/eighties thundering speakers old fashioned stereo was that striking pink Avengers album. Something about penelope houston’s version of “Paint It Black” would really catch all us black t shirted outcast teenagers who had no other place to go, so we’d all end up congregating in the unfinished back wreckroom of this seemingly normal ranch style house, kinda like a Brady Bunch sortof place in baketball hoop and fire station suburbia. I dunno why I kept going over there when the parents were blaming me for being a bad influence on their precious Funtleroys who were actually the ones paying to buy me beer and ciagarettes and then becoming fixated by all my little girlfriends from back in those days-those dudes still fixate on all my former death rock female companions thirty sevn years later, but like I said, I really had nowhere else to go. Something ’bout Penelope screamin’ “we’re the ones” felt real empowering to us singled out, smalltown scapegoat punks. We were the blamehounds but we were also the ones leading the charge, breakin’ outta the box, taking all the punches for the lames who only followed, who made believe they were punk by association, or by what they purchased with the mama money. One of the brothers at least tried to be creative, the other one just kinda sat on the couch and told his mom how he was cooler than I was. She always agreed.
Well, my brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution, my Dear Comrade Laur tells me I already got twenty columns piled up in the pipeline now so you won’t read these words for about five and a half months from the morning I type this on 11/23/2022, that is if the HONKY DEATH MACHINE aint blown up the planet by then. You know what I always, say, get down with it, get funky. “If we put our shoes on and leave right now, we can be there before last call!” STAY WILD STAY FREE! FIGHT ALL FASCISTS FOREVER! STAY RIGHTEOUS! ON THE SIDE WITH THE PEACENIKS AND THE PAUPERS AND THE ANGELS AND THE CLASH! WE LOVE YOU! Your pal, The Last Of The Last Of The Last Of The Last, I’m Only Here To Help!
Veglam 