Some Weeks are Weirder than Others - V. pt 2

 I barely slept... i lay on my makeshift bed with Phat Paco purring on my chest and stared at the ceiling, i realized i was smiling, i realized i might actually get to do something that i never thought i'd get to do... See Veronica... fucking hell, it was a lot to process... and so after sleeping in fits and starts the sun came up and i got on with things, got Disaster off to school, got ready to do some gig economy serfing but the truth was my mind was racing, i was physically having to catch my breath on a regular basis, she affected me that much... out driving for my serf gig at one point i almost ran a stop sign and wrecked the car, i was so lost in thought about Veronica that it seemed there was a haze in front of me, all i could do was think about her, think about actually seeing her, i was trying to be cool about things but i was a fucking mess, all i wanted to do was get in my car and drive up to see her... but i didn't, i couldn't unless she said yes... and even after the beauty of our conversation i was still scared... why? why did she frighten me? all these years later and i still thought there was some element of her playing me when i knew she was not... how one might ask? basically because she was a far more decent human being than i was, raised by loving and kind parents who she adored, during our conversation she stated that at one point she had moved home for a year to take care of her father after he suffered a heart attack, she spoke of the love between her parents, about how her mother was a hopeless romantic... and then added that she had shown her mother my message and that she was absolutely floored, she loved it so much and as Veronica stated her mom thought i was a wonderful guy... a statement that could be easily debated by simply looking at the situation... 

When i had sent that first message i was hoping there would be a chance to talk and the fact, maybe subconsciously, was that there was safety in distance, Hawaii is a long way away, knowing she was this close that safety had now almost become a tyranny of distance, just far enough yet close enough, the pull was so strong it was damn near unbearable... once again i was transported back fucking 25 years, a lovesick boy in a man's body not knowing what to do with himself or how to contain himself... head swimming and spinning and thoughts bouncing around at high rates of speed... Monday passed and i somehow managed not to call her, of course i sent a few texts but i didn't want to appear needy? desperate? and so i walked through my day in a daze, there was no sense to it other than the feelings she had conjured in this fucking daydreaming muppet but alas Veronica was and is wiser than i... 

Our next conversations were shorter but just as lovely and i would subtlety ask about seeing her and she would state she was still thinking about it... it was then revealed that she would be only forty minutes away on her last night and into the next day before heading to the airport that night... of course now the wheels were really spinning... as i said over the early part of the week the conversations were great, maybe too great, as they seemed to stir, in both of us, what was once there and maybe the possibility of what could be... but we all know how it ends, we always knew how it ends, maybe had i the courage and fearlessness of Henry Miller i'd have packed my bags and got in the car, bought a ticket to Honolulu... but we all know i couldn't do that, i wouldn't do that, not while the boyos were still reliant on a somewhat functional household (not to mention certain cats i'd never abandon)... but the mind, the emotions can get the better of us and the chronic daydreamer in me would think about it... 

And so we danced... we danced around the things, we flirted and talked and told each other things... then it happened... i left a message for her... she was out in the country where she grew up and told me certain places like her sister's house barely had cell service, it stated i had devised a way to get up north that last night or next day, that it wouldn't be a problem at all and it would be an altruistic visit, nothing more, no shedding of the clothes (something that would be debatable if we ended up in the same room and given an opportunity) but just a chance to see each other in person, who knew if we'd ever get that chance again... in my head i had half convinced myself that the universe was smiling on me, as if i had somehow done something that merited a reward such as this.... but the truth is i merited no such reward, had not earned or deserved anything of the sort and soon enough i would understand that and of course it would be Veronica who would lay it out... 

When next we spoke i could tell things had shifted, much like that day in her apartment when she had finally broke it off... she stated simply she did not want to see me... that statement more than stung, if she had buckled the knees previously with joy this time it buckled the knees like a clean shot right on the chin... why? i asked... and she very plainly said, because it gets us nowhere, nothing will change and it was best for her to not see me, she then stated that when we were together she was always torn, conflicted about the situation, that she would never want to be the one in the BW's shoes and that being on the other side of it made her feel horrible... she is a far more decent human than i and i understood exactly what she was saying... she had a moral and ethical grounding and the fact i was "attached", that she was "the other woman" was not something she ever wished to be, on either side of the situation... and i understood it perfectly... there are things that will someday get written about but i had been on the other side of that situation and yes it involved the BW and yes i understand the hypocrisy coming from a feral alley cat like myself who never seemed all that good at saying no when it came to certain things, women or drugs or booze... but particularly women... 

Of course that by no means meant our cad here was going to throw in the towel and so while i said i understood i sat back and thought and proposed a counter argument stating the fact that it was nothing more than two old friends, yes old lovers, sitting down and catching up... she replied that just listening to my message made her uncomfortable, that it was basically dripping in subterfuge, my making up stories in order to see her, the same shit i would do back in the day, though back then it was easy as i was always out of the house and slinging but her point was it was deception and it was not something she could be a part of again... and once again what could i fucking say? she was right...but now we get to the hard truths... and hard truths tend to hurt, they sting, looking into the mirror and realizing and admitting your fuck-ups is not something anyone likes or wants to do but sometimes we have to, sometimes it's the people we love who make us do it and if we're aware enough and intelligent enough we do it... not to say i'm the latter but i try... 

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Back to the Gorian Knot... if one is to solve the dilemma, to figure out the problem one has to sit back and think and even though one might feel that they have thought the issue through the fact is humans are masters at lying to themselves, at devising a way to make themselves feel better about the situation, to place the blame somewhere or on someone else... look around and one can see it every day, on the news, in discussions with friends and family, taking a long hard look at oneself and acknowledging the fuck ups is both difficult and rare and if one is lucky enough or more correctly willing to admit that they are fuck ups, that mistakes have been made, maybe one can come out the other side a better human, having a better understanding of existence... they call them hard truths because they are hard to come by and while most of us will admit we have flaws we like to glance over those flaws as superficial and not admit we are all damaged in some way it's just how we accept and correct it or move past it in order to maintain some semblance of sanity... (of course the modern western remedy for this is therapy, psychoanalysis... and while it may have it's place for some mostly what i've gleaned from those who've tried it is the fact most of it solves fuck all but gives the patient a place to piss and moan... honestly that's what i thought the blogosphere was for... cheeky fuckin' bastard that i am...

Hard Truths. It was during our conversation, shortly after one of the most astounding things ever said to me, that compliment of the highest order, that i had been the first person to not only see her but hear her, that Veronica stated that all those years ago i made the convenient choice and not the difficult one... and on the surface one could say she was correct... but there was more to it than that, yes it looked as if i took the easy way out, kept the status quo and stayed with the BW... and it was here that i realized that i had never actually explained to Veronica the rationale behind my decision, at the time maybe i didn't fully recognize it myself though subconsciously i believe i did... but as i sat around pondering all the things we had discussed those hard truths began to materialize in front of me, for the first time i had a better understanding of my actions and whether i liked the outcome or not i also understood that there was nothing more i could do than accept the results while realizing what i had gained and what i had lost... 

So what was that rationale? What led me to the place i was at and the decision i had made? While not rehashing the full history it was quite obvious the dissolution of my nuclear family had a massive affect on me while thus also sort of pushing me into the world without a safety net... granted many people are born without a net so for some middle class/working class white boy to be whining about this is not something i'm here to do, it's just that was the situation i was in... no home to move to, no place to go, i had to make it on my own and i was determined to do so... problem was i was a weird one, wasn't all that fond of the system i lived in and so i thought, how can i subvert the system? and the easiest way to do so was sling weed... it paid well enough, even the nickel and dime shit and it gave me a lifeline... that first foray into the game in my last year as an undergrad, when in the middle of a divorce i couldn't really ask or expect help from home, i saw that i could feed, clothe, house and have a good time... i just had to keep shit wired tight, understand the game and how to play it... 

Fast forward to moving to the city, slinging again while working at the bagel store, living hand to mouth, the ill fated stint in grad school where after dropping out the second semester while selling shit gear and washing dishes off the books at a coffeehouse kept me eating and drunk and then after a summer working 70-80 hour weeks and saving some money i went back to the Burgh with the express purpose of setting up shop, selling weed and paying off my student loans... i had a plan and i intended to execute that plan... all the while i began to realize i had, for lack of a better term, excellent business acumen... i was fucking good at selling weed, maybe more than good, i was great at it... 

By the time i had met Veronica i had been in the game for five years running (not counting the previous forays) and things had just started to really take off, after toiling away for the first five years i had a small savings and was steadily paying off my student loans but now i had a real connection and i was good enough at my job to cultivate it while accruing a salesforce capable of moving a lot of fucking gear... by the time i arrived back in London my little saving account had doubled and that didn't include the little safe in my room with over 20K sitting in it all neatly sorted by denominations in $1000 bundles... to a kid who started with nothing i was fucking loaded in hoodrat terms... and the serious shit was just getting started... 

Which brings me back to that day in early December in Veronica's apartment, i had just given her the gifts i had bought her and was standing there waiting to be led to the bedroom for our usual afternoon activity... i knew something was off but i pretended it was all good which is when she explained that she couldn't do this anymore, that she felt horrible about it and that it was over... and i understood... but when the world, so to speak, is at your fingertips... when everything seems to be going so fucking well the universe will always bring balance... or so i like to think... and here was the balance, we don't get everything we want, we can't always get what we want, even when it seems we can get whatever we want... i remember standing there that day, the burgeoning King of North Oakland and feeling like shit, for a myriad of reasons... as i stood there numb looking at her beautiful face i heard her say, she must be one helluva woman... i mumbled, yeah... she is, but anyone could tell it was half-hearted, in truth they were both better human beings than me, i was a fucking shitbag, an egomaniac who thought he could do anything... the truth? i could not but the only one at the time who had the guts to tell me was Veronica... 

Years of dwelling on these events in the wee hours, when even the birds and the bugs have stopped their noise, those darkest part of night just before the dawn, the realization of my actions, the ramifications of my actions, the hard truths crystalized in front of me... in the simplest of terms... i sacrificed love in pursuit of money, status and power... that's it... nothing more nothing less... i had made a plan and i was carrying that plan to fruition, the fact was nothing meant more to me than the job, the lifestyle it afforded, the clout (as the kids say), the fact that when i walked in someplace i got respect, motherfuckers got out of my way, they bought me drinks and wanted to be my pal, female attention was not hard to come by, be it dancers or women i knew or those i didn't, bartenders comped me everything, i passed out money like candy on Halloween cuz i could... way back when even the Waitress (now BW) had asked me if the choice was between her and the my chosen occupation of slinging weed which would i choose and i bluntly stated she didn't want me to answer that question, at least not honestly, which is all one needed to know... 

Years before, sitting around the hallowed halls of academia i had set out to write but had taken to heart what my favorite writers had said, one needs to live a little before they can really write, they need to experience fucking life, not in some classroom but in the barroom and back alleys and shit apartments, in the warehouses and kitchens of the world, and so here i was getting my PHD in fucking living, fuck the squares and so off i ran... 

It's probably no surprise that one of my favorite shows is Breaking Bad but maybe not for the reasons one would think... there was an episode as the show was winding down, when Walter White was talking to his now estranged wife where he said something that very few people could relate to about his former occupation... explaining his actions he told Skylar, "i liked it... i was good at it.." and the that's the truth... i loved slinging weed, i was good at it... and i also understand what i sacrificed and why... the fact is like Walter White, as one moves up the ladder, as one accrues more money and power, there is a corruption of the soul... and if one is lucky enough to be able to walk away from that life scot-free it is then that the real challenge begins... not only to decompress from the life but also to understand the true ramifications of one's actions... and speaking to Veronica all these years later brought those actions into even sharper focus, crystallized things even more... 

And so here we were... twenty-five years later and me sending texts to the ether... i realize now it became more complicated due to her proximity, even more complicated when she stated that we wouldn't just be having a cup of coffee... and more convoluted after she had time to think about things and all those old feelings came rushing back... on her last day here, a scant 35-40 minute drive away, we spoke briefly, mainly i just wanted to say goodbye, i didn't try to convince her to let me come up, i just stated quietly that maybe the situation got the better of me but she had to understand how badly i wanted to see her and that i really didn't think she'd be this close... there was a coolness in her voice that hurt, this wasn't a 20yr old girl anymore but a 45yro old woman who had been around the block a few times now as well... i reiterated the fact that she frightened me, that she was the only woman i'd ever met who seriously fucking scared me and that there was a part of me that was afraid to trust myself... but that wasn't necessarily true... 

If there was one thing i'd never told her is that there was part of my brain that felt she knew how to play me... had she ever given me any reason to believe such a thing? absolutely fucking not, everything she had done and said had been the exact opposite, even now, telling me i'd set the bar so high, i understood she had never lied to me or played me for a fool... all she really did was tell me the truth, what she wanted from me was honesty to her and all those involved but i was too much of a bastard, to in love with being a hood to give that to anybody, the world back then was about me and fuck you if you weren't El Kono... one could say i may have learned a few things since then... i also knew had i told her these things she'd have told me i was a fucking idiot, that she loved me and from what she had said quite possibly more than she's loved anyone since... there wasn't much left to say...  

In our last few texts before she went to the airport for a long trip back i told her i'd hope we'd keep in touch, i had told her about the story i'd written about us, the Veronica Chronicles for lack of a title, she said she really wanted to read it and so i told her to give me some time and i'd send it to her... she then sent me something that once again buckled the knees... i had thanked her for all she'd given me, then and now, how i loved her then and still do and how brilliant it was to see and hear all the things she's been up to over the years... her response, "always have and always will but i can't let you muddy my waters again..." then she added, "In one week, you have reminded me of romance, you have made me feel worthy and made me feel despicable. Only you, so far, are capable of the full roller coaster. It will always be special but it needs to be buried, again"...  and once again she's right... 

Some Weeks are Weirder than Others - V.

 What happens when your thoughts become a Gordian Knot? so many things running through the head that's it's almost impossible to untangle them, to make sense of them, how does one sit down and even gather some vague semblance of organization, to somehow communicate all the thoughts and emotions racing around, how does one even begin? the simplest answer... the beginning...

I had spent a good deal of time wandering the vast and endless interwebs looking for a hint of Veronica and yet she was nowhere to be found except for one picture, a picture from a weekly paper for a Cinco de Mayo party dated 2016, seeing her face, knowing in that picture the 20yr old girl was now a 36yr old woman, still as beautiful as the day i first saw her, i would pull it up from time to time and study it, what i was trying to find i don't know, but i'd gaze upon it and wonder where she was an what she was doing... and so one day i started to dig, i knew her name and her birthday and roughly two years ago i had finally tracked down her address and phone number... she was living in Hawaii, same as she was in the photo i dug up... i wrote the number down... and there it sat, tucked safely away, scribbled on that back of a business card, no name attached to it and after a week or so i didn't even need the scrap of paper, the number was etched into my memory... 

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Chasing ghosts... we may dream about it but what happens if we actually have a chance to catch one? even more what happens if there is an opportunity to not only catch one but to wrap your arms around the ghost you've been chasing, the dream you've been having... maybe what happens is reality... and so i did nothing with the number... many a late night in the quiet of the house with the mushrooms kicking through the mind i'd think now was the time, to send a text, to say hello, but i always stopped and thought better of it, don't appear out of nowhere out of your mind on psychedelics... as i much as i love and trust my mushrooms this was something i needed to do with a clear head... and yet i didn't do it... a few times i even typed out the message, always starting with a quote i had stumbled upon and each time i would delete it... i was scared... she has always frightened me in a way that no other woman really has... there was part of me that wondered if she even remembered me which might sound silly but no one had ever really unnerved me like she did... something that i'm sure will come up again...

And so time marches on... the mind marches on... and then sometimes the stars align and some sort of courage (or stupidity) stirs itself up enough to finally send a message... it was the end of September, the same time that 25 years ago we'd have been in London, on what would have been our last night before flying back... and so i sat and typed out a text message, starting with that same quote i had been holding onto and then going into a brief bit about her getting off the plane at Gatwick, about the guts and faith it took to rely on a drunken, drug loving idiot to do something like that, with no money, no place to stay, not knowing a soul in the hope he'd be there... the text mentioned her fearlessness and how i hoped her life has been the adventure she had set out for it to be when she left for Los Angeles... then i hit send... and waited... 

I put the phone down and began to read... or more correctly attempt to read while i waited to see if there would be a response, doing my best to calm the mind, i sat there pretending not to be waiting and waited... it was roughly 7pm my time which meant it would be around 1pm in Hawaii... after twenty minutes or so i heard my phone buzz... i looked and there it was, Hi Kono and a big red heart... i was numb... we began texting and it was soon discovered that she was not currently in Hawaii, she still lived there but at the moment she was right up I-79, about an hour and twenty minutes away, she had flown in for her parents 50th anniversary... i stated i would love to talk to her and she asked if i would be awake later to which i replied, are you fucking kidding me? of course i will and then she stated that once her mother went to bed she would call me... thus began another wait... i was like a kid on X-mas eve, i tried to occupy myself and wandered around the house, the stars had aligned as the BW was still away so i would be able to talk freely and without worry and so i talked with Disaster and told him to make sure he didn't stay up too late... and then i waited... 

At a few minutes before 11pm my phone rang... and there she was, that voice that i remembered so well, i could see her smile and then i heard he say... it's you, it's your voice, you know i've looked for you over the years and could never find you... she could have hung up the phone right then and i'd have been happy, i don't think she knew what those words meant to me and with that we were off on a three hour conversation... i laughed at that point and said i was legit hoping you didn't forget me... and she replied, are you serious! how could i forget you? as i'm apt to say you couldn't have punched the smile off my face... so where to begin? 

After she left our little city she had moved to Los Angeles for a few years before then picking up and moving to San Francisco, she then explained that one drunken evening she jumped in the water in SF and it was freezing, she then turned to her friends and asked where was the ocean warm? someone said Hawaii and later that night in a drunken haze she had booked a one way ticket to Hawaii... what some might call fucking insane i call fearless and so roughly 16 years ago she packed her things and ended up on the islands... why was i not surprised? it was somewhat the same way she went from LA to SF, a whim, an idea, and why the fuck not? there was nothing tying her down and i wanted to tell her how much i loved this, how she set out to have an adventure and it never stopped, she then admitted it might be time to move back to the mainland and mentioned a couple of places and i'd be lying if i didn't think about how i might get to those cities if she ever landed there... then she asked about me... 

And what was i supposed to say? she asked if i was happy? i stated yes and no, that the Buddhist in me understands that happiness is relative and balanced by it's opposite, she asked me about my boyos and then stunned me when she asked if i was still with the BW? was she the mother? and not only that but said her name... i admitted she was and that what i experienced at home was hardly what you could call a healthy relationship in fact it was nothing more than a business relationship at this point, that i'm not sure when or how it ends but that at this point my focus was the boyos and my cats, the latter of which she got a good laugh out of... there was a lot of catching up about our friends, the people we had both known when she was in the city and of course there were some haymakers thrown in... 

I asked her if she had ever been close to getting married or something like it and what she said floored me... she stated that i had set the bar really high and that though there were one or two who came close, one in particular whose family seemed to be the reason for it not working out, but that no, not really... she said that when she was with me, for the first time in her life she felt seen and not only seen but heard and that after experiencing that she wouldn't settle for anything less... she went on to say no one ever really managed both other than me, that seen yes but rarely if ever heard... i was stunned... did i really do that? i told her all i did was show her what she already knew, what she already possessed... and i'll admit it's fucking astounding to think i could have had that impact on her though i understood it because she captivated me is such a way that i was always listening to what she had to say, yes she was young but that didn't make her any less intelligent than anyone else, she had an old soul and i somehow knew that when i met her, when we'd be alone and talking she had an innate wisdom and sometimes i think it was that wisdom that frightened me so much... that sooner or later she would tire of me and that thought fucking scared me to death... i've been involved with my fair share of women (how is anyone's guess) but she, to this day, is the only one who has ever unnerved me that much... scrambled my thinking, and the reality of it was that i probably got it all fucking wrong... but that's life ain't it?  

At this point i asked if she would be anywhere near the city? or if i could possibly come up to see her? fact was i didn't expect her to be here i thought she'd be in Hawaii, maybe what one might call a safe distance but the fact she was close enough to see was now paramount in my mind, just to wrap my arms around her one time, that's it, no ulterior motives other than to lay my eyes on her in person and hug her... and once again she floored me... when i asked she laughed and said and hour and a half is a long drive for a cup of coffee, to which i replied cheekily that when you love coffee like i do it's not a question of how far but the reward at the end... and then she said it... and once again i was stunned... we wouldn't be having a cup of coffee together.. we wouldn't? i asked... no, she said, we'd end up in bed... the truth is i hadn't even thought about that, that my whole point was just to see how she was but hearing her say it buckled my knees... i laughed and said why do you think that? and stated that was never my intention... she responded, it may not be your intention but it would definitely be mine, i don't think i could see you and not... then she paused and said, i have to think about seeing you cuz you cloud my judgement and the things i want to do are the things i know i shouldn't do... 

It turned into a beautiful and brilliant three hours and as 2am rolled around, last call so to speak, she stated that she was exhausted and needed to get to bed, i understood and told her i don't think she knew how happy this whole conversation had made me, how happy i was for her to be living the life she had been and that i'd really like to speak more before she left and for her to think about arranging a time to meet up... i even promised i'd keep my clothes on and once again she sexily said that she couldn't promise the same... and so we reluctantly said our goodbyes, she had a ton of things to do for her parents anniversary party and needed to get to bed... i stated quite simply that i loved her, as insane as that sounds, said goodnight and we hung up... my head was swimming... (to be cont.)

That quote:  One day , whether you are 14, 28 or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However the saddest most awful truth you will ever come to find, is that they are not always with whom we spend our lives.   - Beau Taplin

Some Weeks are Weirder than Others Pt. 1

 Living is an art and i'll freely admit most people are complete shit at it... granted i can't say i haven't lead a bit of a charmed life, i mean i went to college and got a degree i've never used then became a criminal and worked my way up to the point where i didn't need a "legit" job and had more money than i knew what to do with... walked away from that and into a supposed "real job" which had me working at most maybe four hours a day? while the rest of the time i spent reading books, sleeping and handicapping horses (as well as intermittent bouts of drinking and drugging while on the clock) and once i was laid off from that job i became a stay at home dad now part time gig economy serf... as Pops used to say to me, boy you somehow fall out of bed and land on your feet... Pops always had a way... which brings me back to that living thing... 

It's been well documented and i freely admit my favorite band ever is The Smiths, yes there are a few close seconds (see Joy Division fronted by the I-mac's namesake) but if pressed for a favorite it's no question at all, The Smiths... so when when i saw good old Morrissey was coming to town, though i vowed not to give him any more money, the fanboy in me could not resist and so i bought a ticket (with insurance in case he cancelled) and said to myself why the fuck not? enjoy this fucking mortal coil as it will all be over sooner than you think... 

The day of the show i was single parenting so to speak as the BW was out of town for the weekend with her brother and ailing father... call me a fucking cad but the fact was it was a well earned break for our hero here, but there were things to get sorted, making sure Disaster had what he needed and what not but at his age it's not like i worry about leaving him home alone, the boy is a wise one... needless to say i was working out how to get down to the swanky theater that Moz was playing, the very same place Bob Marley played his last show, which is ironic considering Morrissey's old utterance of "reggae is vile", something the rest of The Smiths wholeheartedly disagreed with and as we know Mozza loves to utter controversial shit just for the hell of it... so while i debated transport, checking train schedules and the like it dawned on me it might be best to actually drive down but since i didn't want to pay the exorbitant amounts of cash on parking, preferring to save it for a few fine Mexican beers, i sat scratching my head and  thinking and then remembered the bus station was a few blocks walk and since it was another gorgeous stretch of weather i checked it out... it would cost me exactly .50 cents more to park at the bus garage than take the train, problem solved...

Why do i mention the bus garage? well like any city bus station there are always interesting characters about and this night was no different... having eaten a bit of edibles and carrying my trusty weed pen, i made my way to the show, singing songs and drinking my water (hydration is key you know), parked and was being the typical stoner and making sure i had everything i needed i noticed a person two cars over, a car that looked quite possibly that said person might have lived out of the vehicle... i looked over smiled to see a large trans person getting out of their car as well... being a tall white male in Dumbfuckistan i understand the trepidation any who doesn't look like me has when they see someone like me and i've learned that the best way to let them know i'm cool is to smile, a genuine friendly smile.. and so i did  smile and said hello, then made my way towards the stairs... 

It was at this point the person behind me asked, do you know where the stairs are? and i said yes i do, follow me... we then struck up a conversation, we discussed our plans with my new friend telling me they were going to a certain club, a prominent gay club in the city and i could tell it was their first time, there was a nervous excitement and they discussed how it should be an interesting evening and i laughed and said isn't that why we leave the house? it was nice to put my new friend at ease and as we hit the bottom of the stairs and the street corner i explained which direction they needed to go and they invited me to stop by the club later, i smiled politely and said that was a lovely offer but that afterwards i needed to get home and check on my son... i then said that i hope they have an great night and enjoy the club, my new friend was beaming as we said goodbye... kindness... we need more of it... 

If the show wasn't sold out it was damn near, i didn't see a spare seat and of course i bought one on the aisle for my fucking long legs... Mozza playing the swanky places means i get a seat... once inside i made my way to the booze queue where i struck up a conversation with a swell guy from Northern Ireland who had actually caught The Smiths way back at the Hacienda before it was the Hacienda... i think i experienced something called gig envy or some such emotion but he was a swell chap and we had a good craic as we waited for our booze... 

There was no opening band per se but a film of what could only be described as Morrissey's influences, of course being a dolt i missed the first 15 or so minutes of it much to my regret as once i took my seat it was fucking brilliant... old clips of the New York Dolls, Bowie, the kitchen sink films of Steven's youth, some old punk bands, snippets of various writers speaking, it was roughly 40 minutes and at the end there was a picture of James Baldwin flashing on the screen and it's a well documented fact how much i love Jimmy... and then out strolled the band and the man... 

I had jokingly posted on a social media site that the over/under on the number of times El Kono would cry during this show was 3.5 and damn if i don't have a potential career as an oddsmaker in my future... the official count was four but it might have been more like six or maybe it was just one as i was misty-eyed through the whole fucking thing... having cheated and checked the setlist i was hoping it wouldn't change and it didn't, in fact if one would have asked me to write a setlist 16 of the 19 songs played would have been on it... for a fanboy like me it was practically overwhelming... 

To lead off with There's a Light that Never Goes Out... seriously? the song most would think would be the encore... it took almost ten seconds before my eyes were welling with tears and i just sat transfixed at the song that a 16yr old El Kono would listen to on cassette while lying in bed and staring at the ceiling dreaming of meeting some young lady who loved this band as much as he did... through the course of the night he played some of my most favorite tracks, I Know it's Over, the second time i've seen this live also had me wiping at my eyes... Half a Person, are you fucking serious? to steal a line, i just might die with a smile on my face after all... Shoplifters of the World Unite, I Won't Share You... i was floored... not to mention the solo stuff, There's a Light was followed by Suedehead... an excellent Life is a Pigsty (also the second time i caught that live) Jack the Ripper, First of the Gang to Die, The Loop, Let Me Kiss You... fucking hell... i was on the end of a row filled with 40-50 something women who i have a suspicion got a good giggle out of the tall man in the end seat basically overcome with emotion for most of the set, the woman next to me smiling, hugging me and asking if i was alright to which we both had a laugh... what a top fucking night... how good? i actually wanted a fucking cigarette when i walked out... when live music is better than sex... that's a fucking good night out... 

-----

Fast Forward... Saturday morning i checked the telly schedule and as usual the shitbags at NBC were showing one of the less attractive fixtures that morning meaning Palace v. Liverpool would be shown on the Peacock pay service... when NBC first acquired the rights they made a big hullabaloo (not often one gets to use that word) of stating they'd never charge to see matches, which we all knew was bullshit and after a couple of years they began charging for matches... it was around this time that matches the neutrals would be most interested in, the ones between big clubs, were suddenly never shown on the "free cable" networks which at the time worked out great for me cuz it meant Palace was on more... so seeing how the game wouldn't be on i went out in the morning to do some gig economy serfing only to discover the game was on satellite radio! so i did my couple of batches to pay for weed and vinyl and listened as the Palace held a one-nil lead late into the second half... including a shot off the post that would have made it 2-nil and me knowing the game like i do thinking that would come back to bite us on the arse... and it did when the Scousers equalized... by this time i was back at home listening and hoping that the coverage would switch to this game when the one being shown ended and low and behold it did... 

The coverage began with 8 or so minutes plus stoppage time to go... i've supported Palace since 1997 when i made a pledge to my brother Gulfboot Johnson to support his football club... little did i know the serendipity the universe was tossing into my lap as being a kid from Cleveland, the veritable home of hapless sports franchises, i would come to support one that fit nicely into that very category... a little over a decade later i'd be staring down the at the reality my club, which i had come to love like it was my own child, would be dissolved due to financial problems, so bad that we couldn't play our star player less he get hurt and the Rent Boys not shell out six million quid for him... which they did shortly thereafter... 

Granted being a Palace fan is never easy, to steal now from a new film, it's one battle after another with now the goal being to stay in the Premier League... and after clawing our way up in 2013 we've managed to have the best run in club history staying in the top flight instead of being one of the yo-yo clubs bouncing up and down.. of course back in 2010 and after a ten point deduction we squeaked by relegation into League One... and of course we did it in dramatic fashion on the last day of the season... for the past decade and change i've celebrated every time we become mathematically safe.. what other sport can one celebrate finishing twelfth? as Cantona once said, i love football... 

But things are different now though always tenuously balanced... we've lost super players (Olise, Eze, Zaha and very soon most likely Guehi) and the fact we're doing so well, a European best 19 unbeaten until the blue Scousers got a bit of luck, that now every player seems to have interest in them from one of those vulture capitalist "big" clubs, not to mention the shitbags of Man United eyeing up our gaffer when they eventually sack theirs... 

There was a time when giving up a late goal we would sit back and hold on for dear life, cling to the point as they say and that would be a good result... not under Super Ollie Glasner, no fucking way! we kept playing and working and with stoppage time winding down a long throw into the box by Lerma, a couple of headers and before you knew it the ball had found Eddie Nketiah, a man so in need of a goal it was criminal... and Eddie took a lovely first touch and then volleyed it past Allison... game over, three points, my whole neighborhood probably thought i'd won the lottery as i let loose with howls of celebratory shouting... in just 36 hours it had been a fucking helluva a weekend...

And then came Sunday night... in a week of weirdness the weirdest was yet to come... and though that's not exactly the right word maybe it was most apt for the head space that ensued... it could be summed up in one word, one name actually... Veronica. (to be cont.) 

Hauntological Musings of a Gig Economy Serf

 Now and then, when the pay is enough to entice me to drive, this gig economy serf sometimes ends up back in his old hood, the place where the North Oakland Player toiled away at his craft until as luck would have it he became the King of North Oakland... for the uninitiated his name is El Kono, the anti-hero of many of the stories laid out here in the lounge.. and recently much to my own surprise due to my not paying close enough attention to the map in the app i found myself on those very streets that i spent years roaming and running and hustling... 

Damn near twenty years ago, by cosmic accident, i was sitting in a bar a Lawrenceville when i lucked into a chance meeting with a brooding young man who would become one of the best friends i've ever had, even luckier for me is his curious mind which often introduces me to new things, be it music or art or philosophy or sandwiches.... oddly enough on this occasion he re-introduced me to an old acquaintance of mine via a new discovery (for me not him)... the new discovery was Mark Fisher while the old acquaintance was Jacques Derrida, the concept they shared was Hauntology... thus began my education in the hauntological world, which is still quite new to me and how it has altered the way i look at things sometimes... more coincidence was the fact that in my ill-fated stint in graduate studies in English at Podunk University all the rage in the department, particularly among Dr. Rockstar and his tribe, were the hot French philosophers of the day, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, and even now somewhere Robert Anton Wilson is giggling at the coincidence? but then again it was Mr. Fisher who sorta tied it all together with his take on Hauntology and how it related to a certain genres of music... which of in turn leads to my take on it as a delivery boy in my old neighborhood.... 

The short definition of Hauntology... it explores the lingering presence of the past and how it shapes our future... which is interesting for those Zen like minds who understand there is only the present but at the same time realize the past informs the present informs the future in and endless cycle that seemingly morphs and changes which each passing moment... which leads us back to the my late morning drive into my old neighborhood, the original hood, the days of the White Trach Pleasuredome and the 759... what one could call the halcyon days of El Kono before he moved out to the vast wasteland known as suburban Dumbfuckistan... to steal more from the definition, the personal history and culture of those days still exert a bit of influence on myself today while reminding me, dare i say haunting, of what was and what could have been... and of course there is one thing, well person, who looms largest of all in this context... 

I'd spend the next couple hours in my old hood working and in that time i'd drive streets where i could practically see the ghosts of what was, the streets and buildings all still there but so much had changed... and the absence of what was loomed large over the thoughts that raced through my mind... but first and foremost was what happened on my way to drop off one of my deliveries... it was one of those moments where i literally caught my breath... sitting at the light and looking up i realized where i was, for a moment i felt lost, not in the physical sense but in a psychological sense, as if lost in a time warp... and where exactly did i find myself? in what at one time may have been the title of this post... The Street of Big Dreams and Broken Love... 

The intersection of S. Aiken Ave. and  Baum Blvd.... at one time one could say i owned these streets but this street in particular, fuckin hell, it was like an indescribable wave of something, melancholia? a warped longing? a distorted happiness? honestly i don't really know what it was, maybe it was a haunting in the most real sense of the word... down S. Aiken about eight or ten apartment buildings on the right was a red brick building, the swing still on the front porch, and in that building on the third floor was Veronica's old apartment... and it was sitting at that light that i said out loud to myself, the street of big dreams and broken love... one might ask why not big love and broken dreams? but it just made more sense the other way around... but there i was, on a street that i'd driven thousands of times before, a street where i used to get butterflies in my stomach knowing i was about to see her... the nights spent there, the secret afternoon visits, the early chill and morning darkness of the time i stopped on my way to work as she sat on the porch swing smoking a cigarette, party raging in her place, the sadness in her eyes as we stood and talked and how she wished i would come upstairs, tell everyone to leave and climb into bed with her, mainly because as she said she just wanted to wake up next to me... sitting at that light the faded film of a past life, a haunting, was taking place in real time... and then the light turned green and i had to continue on my way... 

And that was just the beginning of this haunting, these distorted memories in black and white... driving around these streets was like remembering a forgotten history lesson, remembering the dates and times and places, the people gone both physically and psychologically... at times it was bordering on not sensory overload but memory overload, the physical structures still there but the ones from my history gone, ghosts to progress and gentrification, ghosts moved on to bigger cities and so-called better places, some of the people ghosts in the sense that they are not only psychologically gone but physically non-existent as well.... and maybe one of those ghosts is me, the man named El Kono is no more, the king of these streets, the guy who sold more weed than Jesus tossed out fish and bread, who was the patron saint of strippers and bartenders everywhere, hood rich and hood famous, was gone, nothing more than a ghost in his own mind, a fiction typed out so that the history isn't lost... and those ghosts... 

American Pager, where i got my first beeper before the advent of cheap cell phones, was now a Wing Stop... the Olympic Flame, my weekend breakfast joint, now a BMW dealership, the old party store warehouse where i worked "redeveloped" as retail space... Joe's Bar, the place i used to get blind drunk and the place of Pizza Man legend (where i scored pounds of weed from Pizza Joe and would walk home with them in pizza boxes) a Chipotle... damn near everything i loved was gone... 

On my first stint in this hood, in the apartment known as the White Trash Pleasurdome, another third floor walk up with a shitty balcony and a hole in the ceiling that during the winter when it snowed it would actually snow into the apartment (,the good Doctor and i pulled the drawer from the fridge to catch the snow), the place where i first started selling weed in the Burgh, the place i so lovingly referred to as the North Oakland Hub, the buildings still standing, the streets that made me so foreign and yet so familiar... of the the four bars that made up the Hub all of them are gone, every fucking one turned into a cell phone store or a vape shop or empty... this corner was an alcoholics and hoods dream, the bars opened early and closed late, it was a hive of activity and along with it was a laundromat, a grocery store, a pharmacy, a liquor store... all vanished into the ether, the grocery store has been empty for years, same with the pharmacy, the liquor store is gone, the little breakfast joint a memory... 

None of the bars seemingly survived the pandemic, a virus that killed more than just people it killed neighborhoods, it killed history... Chief's, a legend among Pittsburgh boozers, a punk-tinged jukebox, a haven for the cool kid junkies in leather jackets... i once met a local rock star from a band that was a straight up Jane's Addiction rip-off, right down to the name and stage show, who thought it was shocking to greet everyone with "hail Satan", i remember actually laughing at him when he was introduced to me spewing his nonsense... Thirtsy's, the long running hippie bar with weekly bands and Dead night, now an Asian fusion restaurant... The Luna, named after the little amusement park (Luna Park) that used to occupy this neighborhood way back when, the place where a shithead bouncer and i almost got into a fight cuz my friend had left a funny note one night when he made us stop playing darts so a couple of his "ladies" could dance, only to have the bartenders come out from behind the bar and tell him he was about to get canned if he gave me any more shit cuz i was already a well known hood to which i replied, i like you guys but fuck this place while Mr. T works the door (said bouncer had a Mr. T thing going and would be found a year or so later dead of a heroin overdose)... and of course last but not least, my beloved Mitchell's Tavern... 

Mitchell's should really have it's own post as it's lingering past has forever shaped my future, my present, my life in general... there were days i lived in this bar, from the original forays in 1993/94 where the 25 cent beer night kept me pleasantly drunk to the day in October 1995 and the cosmic accident of being introduced to Hippie Jack, this bar was an integral part of my personal history... drinking Dewar's and water with a beer chaser, throwing darts in the back, making deals in the red vinyl booths (i was incensed the day i walked in to see they had been removed) there easily could have been no Kono if not for this place... the characters i encountered in this place could fill a book, legends of the North Oakland hub now apparitions in my mind... now it's a coffee house, gazing on it in it's current iteration is Mr. Fisher's very definition of "ghosts of future pasts", the ghosts of my life indeed, there is part of me that wants, actually needs to walk in the place, to buy a cup of coffee and look around, not to see but to feel those ghosts again... in some way a beautiful haunting of the present by walking through a past that no longer exists... 

And maybe, more accurately, the whole neighborhood, neighborhoods to be more correct, should be called the place of Big Dreams and Broken Love... or maybe it should be reversed and be it should be the neighborhood of Big Love and Broken Dreams... for it was not only Veronica that i loved but the streets themselves, the aura, the dirt and the grit and the life that i was living, the pure beauty of the vision that a young man once had, i mean the folly of it was almost too comical to comprehend to the sane and the square... grad school dropout living without a net hatches plan to pay off student loans and feed, clothe and house himself by the selling of an illegal substance (at the time) or substances, in a time where they were putting more people in prison for the possession of that plant with our anti-hero graduating to a place where had he been busted he would probably only recently would just been getting paroled... yeah sometimes, as i sit here in the lily white burbs i get a cold shiver, the ghost of that kid i knew, flannel clad in cargo pants, pockets bursting with gear, smiling and cocky, popular with the ladies and bartenders, his ghost still haunts the old neighborhood himself... now and then i'll catch glimpses of that ghost in the reflection of storefront windows, it's not him but it's him... and yeah, i'm not a believer in ghosts... but i see them from time to time... and yes there is that one... and she still haunts me to this day... 

The Mushroom Diaries - vol. 32

 Vol. 32 already? not bad for a fifty-something psychonaut who has always prescribed to take Hunter Thompson's advice and have life "... not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely and pretty in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, Wow! what a ride..."  the funny or maybe frightening part of this whole Mushroom Diary experiment is that i don't even write them all down, meaning yes kids since it's inception there have been more than 32 voyages into inner/outer space with vol. 32 being a double bill... cuz as the saying so famously goes, all work and no play make Kono a dull boy... and so El Kono has to get up off the couch and venture out into the world to explore... granted i spent most of my youth and beyond running the streets, i have a fucking PHD in the world of dealing,drugging and drinking, spent more hours in dark and smoky bars than i'd care to admit and have spent many a night wandering the back alleys of various cities or listening to the ocean, staring out windows of apartments at small town streets or partying like a rock star in some city tenement, yes i can't say it hasn't been interesting and i understand i probably am in the tippy top percentile when it comes to geezers my age taking psychedelics but hey, we all gotta have hobbies right? 

Which brings me to what amounted to a banner week here in my fair city, back to back Saturdays where i could hop on the train and ride down to the North Side and checkout bands under the stars... not a bad way to spend a Saturday night and better yet the train allows me to gobble down some glorious bits of fungus (actually as stated these days i grind them up and make my own capsules for easy transport and ingesting, stoner ingenuity at it's finest)... some of this was previously mentioned in previous posts but now it's time to delve in wholeheartedly... even better was my two shows just happened to coincide with the longest dry spell we've had all summer, which while not great for trees and suburban lawns are excellent for tripping fools looking to have a swell night out... 

We'll begin with the Rock Reggae Relief festival which was headlined by two of Bob's boys, Damian "Jr. Gong" and Stephen Marley... the rest of the bill was rounded out by a band called the Eloveators, J Boog, Roots of Creation (who do a set called Grateful Dub where they play the Dead dub style and who i've actually seen before) and a local dipshit who once had one alternative radio hit, a song now found in a few commercials... my good friend Jorge, an old hippy like me (though about a year or so younger than me) joined me for this show and being the nice guy i am provided him with the same party favors i was imbibing.. Jorge's brother was at one time the manager for the local dipshit, a man who could be pictured under the definition of Self-Absorption... in fact Jorge had stated he'd met the guy over a dozen times and the guy never remembered his name (and his brother was the guy's fucking manager for fuck sake)... back in the day this clown used to see me around my old hood, back when i had fat dreads and then became one of those longhairs and every time i'd see the guy he'd gaze at me as if he was in love... or at least that's how i like to put it, he'd stare at me as if i should know who he was, as if i should walk up and say "hey are you the baba da bey baba da bung" guy... one fine morning as i was eating an omelet in a greasy 24hr diner he sat staring at me and i almost walked up to him and asked, did you used to buy weed off me? i'm the fucking King of North Oakland and you keep staring at me as if you want to fellate me so i was wondering if you were one of my many customers i've forgotten.. but instead i ignored him as usual... though more power to the guy if he has parlayed one half ass neo-hippie anthem into an actual career making a living playing music.. who am i to judge? 

Now i'll flat out state that one of the main reasons i wished to attend this day long festival was women... shocking i know but i knew there would be many dancing and laughing and it makes for a fun day out... case and point the gray-haired, nose ringed beauty who started dancing the minute she got there, she was just one of many... in fact the funniest moment of the day happened on my way to take a piss (i was drinking shit tons of water since there was no reason to booze due to the boomers), there was a woman in the VIP section near the stage who was having it, dancing and drinking like it was her job, she was probably mid-40s? and her as i walked towards the pissoirs she was walking out, she stopped and looked at the three or four of us walking in and proclaimed, "so many sexy men for me to choose from!",  of course i started laughing and the guy behind me was like WTF? i mentioned i think one of us my have found a date for the night, to which we had a good laugh...

As for the music? it was pretty damn good... the second act, J Boog was what i call commercial reggae/island music, a hefty Hawaiian guy with a slick and tight band, Jorge had actually seen him a couple years before and i mentioned this is the type of stuff you'd hear on commercial Jamaican radio, decent enough but at this point i was lounging against the wall in the sun enjoying the onset of the shrooms... next came the Eloveators, a Boston "jam" band with what appeared to be a big following as during many songs the crowd was singing along and yelling out the lyrics, one of those good time bands mixing reggae and funk and rock, the shit you'd hear or see at a beach bar and quite good for a warm summer evening... which set the stage for the final act of the night Stephen and Damian Marley... 

Seeing as i was too young to ever see Bob this was about the closest i'd get... the Marley brothers played a mix of tunes, both their own solo work and their father's and honestly it was fucking brilliant... Stephen sounds so much like his dad that if you close your eyes you'd think it was Bob up there... Trenchtown Rock, Sun is Shining So Much Trouble in the World were killer while the solo stuff, Welcome to Jamrock, Medication, Pimper's Paradise were brilliant as well... the crowd was well into it, the ganja smoke drifted aromatically through the air and a fine time was had by all around... 

At one point i had told Jorge i was going to get some more water and look for a smoke, having given up cigarettes ages ago i indulge myself the occasional one when having a night out on the shrooms... i offered to buy one off this guy and his lady but he let me bum one, i offered him my weed pen which he hit and we stood there talking, i explained i loved a smoke while tripping and we began discussing the beauty of psychedelics and mushrooms in particular... the woman said she had never tried them to which i gave an enthusiastic sermon on why she must.. her partner laughed and said  keep convincing her as he had tried them a bunch... we stood there having a lovely conversation and since i still had some boomers on me i asked again, you've never taken them, really? and she said no... i then pulled out my little bottle of mushroom pills and told them that it would be an honor if i could provide the shrooms for her first trip... they looked at me like i was insane and said really? i said, absolutely, i then gave them the rest of my shrooms, roughly four grams, said that could split them which would be a good dose to start with for her and a good night for him, told them the strain, dropped the the web site where they could order these very ones and laughed at how i'm like a PSA for psychedelics... the guy was fairly beaming and kept saying, are you sure? to which i laughed, look at me? i don't need any more tonight and then explained that i probably had roughly two ounces back home and five different strains... i smiled and said i better check on my boy who i told them was tripping as well but didn't with the regularity of Capt. Trips here... 

The next Saturday brought another stellar show to my outside venue, this time i was on the Jack Jones but that's actually par for the course with me when it comes to attending shows... Modest Mouse and the Flaming Lips on the same bill... once again i made my way down to the train station and pockets fully loaded with sweeties and smoke... my trusty weed pen, a small joint infused with keef which also held another half dozen or so capsules of boomers... i stood on the platform waiting for the train in the heat, my plan was to take the boomers once on the train cuz one never knows what sorta hijinks the transit authority can get up to but then i saw my train coming down the track and i smiled, tapped my transit card, took a seat by the window, opened my little box of mushroom pills and swallowed them down... i watched the familiar neighborhoods roll by, i dig these city neighborhoods... and then it was up and down the hill, across the Mon River and into downtown proper, then across the Allegheny River and my familiar stop on the North Side, one of the few stops that is underground on this route... 

I made my way in as the boomers began to do their thing and found a spot on the right side of the venue looking towards the stage, this week the place was packed and the guy next to me mentioned that it was actually sold out... i figured i had a decent enough spot but then came the problem of what to do when i had to get more water and such but then again why worry? and so i posted up and got high (again), drinking my water and watching the last few songs of the opening band Friko... and while i had checked out some of their stuff online i was sorta nonplussed but then live i was sorta kicking myself as the songs i caught were excellent and the band was well into it... by this time i had a couple to the left of me and another to the right... i checked behind me cuz i'm a tall bastard but nothing if not polite but for the most part people were smart enough not to get behind me, granted there wasn't  much room cuz the security guys kept making sure the walkway was clear, which ended up being pretty great for those of us who had grabbed a spot along the railing... at this point i was wondering if the boomers were going to hit the way i wanted so i clandestinely took one more capsule to just make sure... 

The double headliner meant that MM and the Lips would do slightly shorter sets and roughly about the time a normal opener would come on Modest Mouse took the stage... kicking it  off with Dark Center of the Universe... oddly enough i had never seen MM before which is strange considering i'd dug them for a long time, yeah i wasn't maybe the biggest fan of the more recent stuff but i as a huge fan of the early shit and kicking things off with an early gem was ace... in fact on perusing the setlist site a few days later i was grinning as i lucked into a show that played some of my absolute favorites,, Trucker's Atlas and Dramamine among them, while also noticing they changed the setlist every night and those songs had only popped up at the odd show... needless to say Modest Mouse were fucking on point and i was well impressed with how good they were... 

And then came the Flaming Lips... they are always a good time and this time was no different though this being the seventh? time seeing them i knew what to expect... being an abbreviated set so to speak it was a bit of playing the hits with a few deep gems thrown in, Pompeii Am Gotterdammerung being a definite one which i've caught a once or twice before but which is always a highlight particularly in my enhanced state of mind... toss in Turn It On, Race for the Prize and a cover of Black Sabbath's War Pigs and it was a damn good set... 

There was one song though that i was waiting to hear... i had seen they were playing it and when Wayne stopped before the song and explained that it was sort of a sad song but that it was okay cuz we need these songs to help us i smiled, it was the very song i had talked to them about years before when my good friend bought me a ticket to meet them before the show in 2018 shortly after Pops had passed, and then they started playing, and the crowd was a bit transfixed because it is a somber song but somehow there is an underlying happiness to it, if that makes any sense, or maybe it's just cuz it deals with something universal, something we all have to deal with sooner or later, namely losing someone we love dearly... Waiting for Superman, written by Wayne about his dying father, yeah... talk about fucking hitting home, it didn't take long before my eyes were welling with tears and by the end of it they were more than welling as i wiped the tears off my face, luckily it was dark and i'm not sure anyone was aware that the tall wastoid  with his bucket hat pulled low was desperately trying to hold it together, at one point looking back at the gorgeous Sturgeon Moon hanging above the city skyline and whispering to the stars "i love you dad"... and when it finished i wandered towards the wall that was the de facto smoking section cuz maybe this time i needed that smoke for more than just enjoying one while tripping... 

These days it seems all the kids want to vape their nicotine instead of getting it the good old fashioned way with a real smoke but i managed to find two young ladies standing by the wall smoking and so i asked if i could buy one... Mary, the taller of the two who was the one smoking smiled and said she'd just give me one to which i replied can i offer you my weed pen? they both lit up, the other being Lex the shorter one, who i think she was about 5 feet tall, proclaiming yes! and so i pulled out my pen and handed it to them and proceeded to have an excellent conversation about the state of the universe, something i'm known to do when i'm tripping, i relayed the story about the song and my dad and why i needed that smoke... we stood chatting away and listening to the end of the show and then i checked my watch and told them it was a pleasure meeting them and made my way into the busy North Shore streets to wander towards the T station.... another fine night of music and adventure winding down... 

The T station was the most crowded i'd ever seen it but i managed to find a bench and wait, people kept coming down the steps and i was beginning to think i might be elbowing my way into a car in order to get home... i didn't have to but what i didn't realize, what a lot of us didn't, was that for some reason the driver tended not to open the back car doors at stops, one couple missing theirs by three stops before being able to get off... there was a guy who started explaining it though he didn't understand why the driver didn't announce to move up to the front two cars and how they could only open the back cars at certain stops... i asked about mine and he stated he thought i was okay but when we came to my stop  the doors didn't open... a couple of us began furiously pushing the call button i'm sure to the annoyance of the driver and finally the doors opened... Information Guy told all the people still on the train if they wanted to get off before the last stop they should move to the front cars and suddenly there was a mad dash before the doors shut again... the never ending joys of public transit...  

There is something about the end of the night, coming down of the boomers, strolling under the fluorescent glow of the station lights and wandering into the halogen of the almost deserted parking lot... four lonely cars, soon to be two... the hum of the traffic coming off W. Liberty Ave as the heart of Saturday night had turned to Sunday morning, less than two hours to last call, the last real rush at the bar before the crowd thins out... sitting in the Shitmobile i reminded myself, drive carefully... and i did... glasses perched on my nose so i could see, i drove slowly through the sleepy streets of suburbia, window down, music playing softly, listening to the wind, listening to the click and beeps of traffic lights and crosswalks, audible in the quiet night... a couple of quality Saturday nights had come and gone... flopping into my bed, Paco and Archie raising their heads to give me a sleepy glance before curling back up, i took a drink of water and gazed up at the ceiling, smiling, thinking ain't life a trip.. 

State of the Nation - Autocrat music edition

Not so very long ago i stumbled on this lovely fucking band, yes they've been around for a bit and sadly main Butcher Pat Fish passed away in 2021 but they are one of those lost gems of the music world... this song just happened to strike a chord and dovetailed nicely with the previous post especially when one considers how here in Dumbfuckistan the current regime, under the guise of progress, is trying to privatize absolutely everything... and though this tune was most certainly directed as a certain Maggie it is more than fitting for the state of affairs across the pond... as King Shitzhispantz is directed by handlers directly profiting on the building and stocking of prisons we go skipping into autocracy with a healthy dose of kakistocracy as soon anyone who doesn't fall in line with "Dear Leader" will be facing the possibility of one of these lovely institutions... let us not forget at well the fact our federal legislature seems to turn a blind eye to this seeing as they can all trade stock and somehow many just have this sixth sense about what and when to buy and sell... when one truly wants to see the criminal element of this country none need look no farther than the hallowed halls... so ladies and gentleman, here's the Jazz Butcher... 

State of the Nation - Autocrat Edition

 It's what is commonly referred to as a deluge... wave after shitty wave and a rising tide of shit that seems almost impossible to rise above and catch a breath... there is no fucking mistaking what is taking place, the autocracy isn't coming like the talking heads would have you believe while the clutch their pearls and read the teleprompter, that shit is fucking here... and yes one could easily say it arrived holding a bible and waving the flag... fucking suckers duped by a carnival barker and his handlers but for as much as the carnival barker is a walking, talking diaper wearing disaster it's the evil little boys lurking in the shadows and behind the curtains that are the real menace... to put it bluntly these people are sick fucks who don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves and their little cabal of uber-wealthy benefactors meanwhile pushing their warped worldview while their co-conspirators in the halls of the legislature and the judiciary line up at the cash trough right behind them to feed... get rich and fuck the lumpen-proles! we were chosen by divine right to rule so shut the fuck up you unwashed masses and know your role... 

In case one doesn't realize how fucked it is let us remember that just two short months ago a fucking "pastor" who loved the Jeebus felt compelled to gun down some elected officials... normally this would have still been in the headlines, though i don't even know what the fuck normal is these days, but this was good old fashioned political violence against the "opposition" party, though i'm using that term loosely when it comes to the federal level... at the state and local level they are opposing as much as they can... the fact is the two party/one party system gives the tantalizing choice between fascist and feckless... while the former is cut and dry, by the rich for the rich, the latter could be considered surprising... or maybe not... as they both rely on the mutual money spigot from the donor class as the donor class likes to spread the money around, problem is the feckless party might be in for it as the donor class now sees what the fascists are doing and are gleefully rubbing their hands together as they get ready to build gated fortresses and shiny new vaults to keep all the loot... problem is the donor class (see business types) seem to be forgetting a bit of history, they thought the same thing back in 1933 though really even that didn't work out all that bad for certain companies (insert high end auto company and/or chemical company here)... 

Each day brings another wave of hot and steaming shit to toss at the populace, it's exhausting for those of us paying attention and for those not? well it drives them even deeper into not giving a shit... right up until it effects them... funny how that's the same with the red hats who feel suddenly betrayed when  certain policies begin bending them over and fucking them in the ass only to be told by King Shitgibbon to shut the fuck up, smile and enjoy it (what seems to be his standard lines to his victims)... of course it helps when having spent decades gutting education that the critical thinking skills of the general population are scraping the bottom of the rankings... the red hats hero, aka St. Ronnie knew that, California taught him that the last thing the power brokers needed was people who could think critically and thus began the dismantling of free higher education in California, thus began the giveaway to banks so people could "finance" their education... it was the first investment the 1% began making in the fucking people over department and it's been rolling downhill ever since, now it's a runaway train plowing through everything in it's path, great if you happen to be on that train, fucked if you ain't... 

Trying to list the fucking bullshit taking place is a Herculean task... i mean just this week we have a blatant power grab through gerrymandering (let us not forget there was a bill that would have made it illegal and handed off the responsibility of drawing up districts to an independent commission where every fat-shit voted no and the feckless all voted yes), there was the little blurb about the government  actually removing parts of the Constitution and Bill of Rights from it's web site... you know the parts about the rights of citizens because in the eyes of the P25 boys we ain't citizens we're subjects, products and data to be bought and sold and traded among the uber-rich, this isn't some democratic republic of citizens free to make their own decisions, no no no this is a feudal state run by the oligarchs and plutocrats, take your fucking pick...

The cabal of christian nationalists and white supremacists have been adept in their study of autocrats and dictators, in fact i'd say they've taken it to a new level... in the Orange Shitgibbon they found a cult of personality that has enabled them to usurp power, the real players aka evil fucks, do their best to hide behind the scenes while trotting out a diapered narcissist in cognitive decline to take the brunt of it and once they have solidified and consolidated their grip on power even he will be thrown to the wayside and the figurehead of their choosing will be installed... and they are getting there faster than anyone here would like to admit... of course they didn't forget all the rules of the rising authoritarian states, they have come up with a list of scapegoats to help them divide and conquer and lucky for them all that gutting of education has made it easy, there are lots of apathetic muppets too worried about "grinding" to care but their most effective method has been appealing to the racists/bigots in the worst parts of our society, meaning white people, who seem to keep a vice like grip on being raging assholes... 

Little historic fact... what was the largest genocide ever? if you guessed the Holocaust you'd be wrong... no kids it was the conquering of the North American continent, Dumbfuckistan in particular, where those pious white christians under the guise of their benevolent (see brutal and vindictive) god decided all the indigenous people must be eliminated from the land in order to fulfill their "manifest destiny" by stealing everything in front of them... 50 million people give or take... tell me again about American exceptionalism? and we haven't even gotten to the slavery part yet... which is why of course the current regime and it's evil minions are doing their damned best to rewrite history to show what a loving and benevolent country we have been from our inception... history has always been written by the winner and is always filled with fucking lies... of course this gaggle of fascists really want to turn back the clock to where only white male landowners can vote thus helping them secure victory... though they may want to think about that because if you took non college educated white males out of the equation the feckless party candidate won all but two states last election... problem is there are a whole lot of that species running amok and while i will not lump all of them together a vast majority of them are shining examples of the lowest common denominator...

So the gameplan, which is nothing new, is once again scapegoat (insert minority here)... this time it's the Hispanic community to go along with all those Trans people out there doing so much damage to the country... oh wait, that's bullshit? who'd a thunk... funny how as the fruit and vegetables rot on the vine and the construction industry lags due to no employees, how the service industry suddenly can't staff the restaurants the regime will revise it's policy... yeah... what they actually did was send out a press release "revising" their policy while sticking to business as usual... the BW has a great guy working for her who has his hearing coming up and we all know how that fucking ends... he has talked about how his family in California live in fear, afraid to leave the house other than to go to work and the grocery store and then hustle home to pull the shades and lock the doors... welcome to America under the red hats... it's frightening how well the propaganda has worked on the stupid (or maybe i'm just naive), now Karen and her hubby are pissed it will take six months or longer to get their roof replaced and they have to wait longer at their favorite restaurant cuz the back of the house is devoid of employees... all because Karen and spouse refuse to acknowledge they're fucking racists who lack basic decency and humanity... but will be singing hymns come Sunday cuz they're "good christians"... seriously? get fucked... 

And of course we can't forget about the ever present danger of the drag queens and trans community, you know the ones who read books to kids and basically are decent human beings... funny i don't see any drag queens gunning elected officials down like a certain pious pastor and even more amazing every time some kiddie fiddler pops up on my television screen or newsfeed it's not any member of the LGBTQ+ community, no no no it's always the same usual suspect... a white male who identifies as a conservative and devout christian who somehow is shocked those pics got on his computer which was obviously some liberal plot to topple him... then in turns out it goes deeper than that and said conservative white christian male is outed as loving the cock and often loving it when it's not of legal age... fucking scum of the Earth but don't fret for their souls as they'll accept Jeebus as their personal savior so they're not much worried about getting into Fantasyland cuz you know, Jeebus died for their sins... 

Of course if there's one thing we won't talk about it's those files... the one with a certain diapered dipshit in cognitive decline who has his name all over them, who has numerous court filings against him for being a fucking sexual predator not to mention a massive civil settlement against him for being a rapist... nothing to see here move along... who is now trying to pretend like he never knew his former bestie who also happened to mysteriously check out under his watch all while the cameras somehow stopped working in the facility his bestie happened to be in... but only for a couple hours which coincidentally coincided with bestie checking out.. i mean it sounds completely above board right? especially if one is partial to orange Kool-Aid... now bestie's lady who was is and has always been just as guilty as bestie, maybe even more so for her role as recruiter, has been moved to a cushy minimum security country club in a state run by a gigantic orange bootlicker... i mean the red hats are all about law and order for everyone other than themselves as the diapered dementia dipshit dangles a pardon which will be forthcoming i'm guessing sometime around Xmas eve... let us not forget he pardoned all those fake-triots who stormed, i'm sorry, peacefully protested, outside the Capitol one fine January day a few years back... law and order indeed... 

Which brings me back to the party of feckless idiots... after Old Joe got elected the one thing i feared was a Weimar type situation, there was a certain section of the population who thought it was over other than a brief respite before the red hats and the cabal of fat-shits came strolling back in, they had been lurking and plotting the whole time while recruiting some other wealthy narcissists to help them out... so while not one for conspiracy theories let us take a gander at the voting anomalies that have appeared under the scrutiny of some organizations who decided to look into things... there was a stat posted about the odds of the orange shitgibbon winning every swing state... it raised some eyebrows and under closer examination of the data some interesting things popped up... like many of these states and certain counties had seemed to be "off", where down ballot democrats received a huge number of votes while the feckless party candidate did not, the number crunching and analysis showed what was to be considered an unusual pattern compared against other elections, in fact it was described by these organizations as highly unusual and something that had never been seen in any election and the consensus was it was highly abnormal human behavior, shit just doesn't happen like this naturally... without going into minute detail the short version is, shit looked rigged... especially where a certain candidate got next to zero votes while candidates of the same party won that district in their elections by a wide margin... not suspicious at all... yet as this has progressed courts have seen fit to let these organizations get access to data and proceed with their investigations... all the while it's been crickets on the topic from the national leaders of the feckless idiot party... 

The fact of the matter is every accusation is a confession among the red hats though if one is paying attention the diapered dipshit and his on again off again tech bro Special K have slipped up and basically admitted that there was some shit going on to help "elect" King Shitzhispants... of course one would be hard pressed to find this in our venerated Fourth Estate due to the fact they are all owned by the same donor class that showered a supposed billionaire with money... it ain't a free press when it's bought and sold by the same people with a vested interest in polluting the air and water and stripping every regulation in sight in pursuit of the almighty dollar... these people are fucking scum.. 

And now over the weekend King Shitzhispants is getting ready to basically declare martial law in the nation's capital, the Capitol which he doesn't seem to know how to spell, all because one of his minions got "supposedly" carjacked, crazy that would happen in an major American city seeing how we are such peaceful place... wasn't a big deal when whitey stormed the Capitol Building but now we need to crack down! and what the populace doesn't understand is that this is the test, if he can do it in DC next up will be every blue city out there, meaning pretty much all of them, they're offering 50k to sign up for the red hat gestapo with the requirements being blind loyalty and a GED and all the while a good bit of the population is perusing Wal-Mart and Target and either not giving a shit or not paying attention... the plan is once the DC experiment is executed there won't be any more elections, the cabal of evil behind the diapered dipshit will play the civil unrest card just in time to call off the 2026 elections in order to leave themselves in a position of unmitigated power... it's one of those things i'd never thought i'd see but now it's fucking here... (a bit more data, crime in DC is down close to 30% in the last few years but there are many cities in red states where crime is up, places like Arkansas and Alabama yet no militarization of the streets there)...

As for the general population we better buckle up, you know pull ourselves up by our bootstraps like good old fashoined merkins... since the Doge-shite bros gutted damn near everything for no apparent logical reason and King Shitzhispants and his minions decided something like FEMA and the National Weather Services are luxuries best jettisoned in favor of ending the luxury tax on private jets we now go strolling into fire and hurricane season with our literal pants down... fires out west, the Atlantic basin getting ready to crank out storms and a Botox loving plastic surgery disaster in charge of it all with a rule that no emergency relief will be distributed unless she signs off on it... worked out well for those poor souls in the Texas floods... and yes that was sarcasm... 

The shit show in Dumbfuckistan is so massive one forgets the fact there are other places in the world facing huge problems... Ukraine anyone? and yet the diapered one will meet with the diabolical one so he can bend a knee and do Big Daddy Vlad's bidding.. i'm sure BDV just laughs and says "piss tapes bitch" and Shitzhispants shits his pants... and let us not forget the man charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes will be doing it all on merkin soil, bitch slapping the Kkk-ankled one... 

And then there is the nightmare in Gaza... there is no rationale for it, there is no excuse, the word is murder, the evidence coming out the hellscape is plain and simple, a slaughter that is being funded by Dumbfuckistan dollars, i'm of the opinion that it's time for a large number of us to flat out stop paying these taxes that fund the war machine, fuck their war machine... i sat there gazing at the images and felt awful trying to comprehend the pain a parent must feel as their child starved to death, knowing that even if they managed to survive all they'd have to do then is dodge bullets and bombs and soldiers who seem to be playing games with live ammo, as one doctor put it, it cannot be coincidence that on Tuesday it's all groin shots, Thursday in the chest, Friday head shots, it's fucking disgusting... the problem with humanity is that we lack humanity... 

So i get through the day as best i can, i keep studying (things like resistance history), i swim, i listen to music, i clear my head with organic chemistry, i pay attention and sift through the noise to find the devious shit and i do what i can, sometimes it feels like it's meaningless but sooner or later shit will break... one way or the other... i might get a visit from face-masked buffoons living out their fantasy as stormtroopers and find myself in exotic locales in white boxers and white undershirt, we know the place... this country needs a new party, rooted in labor and not afraid to fight and when i say fight i mean just like the red hats, we ain't gotta do it fair cuz they ain't worried about the fuckin' rules... chin up kids and fuck those goddamn fat-shits...