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... 

Letters (revisited)

 Existence... is part brilliance and part bullshit... one could conjecture that i take too many psychedelics and spend too much time thinking about things and that statement would be both true and false, could be i think about different things than the average bear or maybe i am the average bear or maybe i try to divest myself from post capitalism, post modernism, Post Malone way of living, who fucking knows... as it is i tend to wander through days in a haphazard way, taking it all in and without any real plan to what? get things accomplished? succeed? i'm not even sure what that is, i don't really know... i have a lot of ideas but lack the time to bring them to fruition... but that's not exactly accurate, it may be more that i'm fucking lazy and undisciplined or decide my time could be better spent staring at the ceiling while hanging with Phat Paco or Archie or another of my cats... 

Recently i renegotiated my contract so to speak... as the BW is often sitting around complaining about things not getting done, pondering hiring people for this or that, a neat little thought popped into my head... see the BW was moaning about my gig, the one where i play serf to the bourgeois, shopping for them and delivering the groceries, her main argument was that it wasn't worth the gas or wear and tear on the Shitmobile, the loving name i've given to the car i use to work in, a third car (oh yes first world problems) that the boyos also use... one driving aimlessly and one learning how to drive... one may remember i was nudged (see pushed) into the gig economy world during the pandemic when the BW's business was quasi-shuttered, needless to say her and her partners did well when it came to the guvment loans and walked away much the better... her businesses do rather well and fact is i don't really need to do this gig economy shit but it allows me to bank a little dosh as well as some autonomy, the last thing i need is to be asking the BW for money as it would be both belittling and frustrating as it's been well documented how it's her money to which all expenditures must pass muster under the bosses watchful eye... 

But the new contract... what i proposed was cutting back on my gig, basically working a day or two (see two) to provide me with some money (as well as allowing me to squirrel some away) while freeing up more of the day for me to get things done around the house... of course i threw in the caveat, as my back allows, but with my local pool reopened i know i can get in the water to keep it loose and in shape... the BW, to my surprise, jumped at the idea and said that would be great... and being an objective sort i understood her issue, it wasn't worth it for what i put in the joint account once the expenditures on gas and such were taken out but the fact is i need/like having my own cash, it provides a modicum of freedom that i otherwise wouldn't have as the BW would keep a vicelike grip on the money when it came to my weed, shrooms, books, records, concert tickets... basically the only thing i actually spend money on... yes one could ask what the fuck i'm on about and hell at this point, three paragraphs in i'm not sure i fucking know... 

The other day as i was cleaning up a room, reorganizing things, sorting through stuff, some to be donated and some that's destined for the landfill (sadly), i found the box of my father's things again... and of course i opened it and read through them a bit, mainly because i miss my father and in reading his letters i can hear his voice... his handwriting was excellent, dare i say beautiful, his thoughts meticulously laid out... i realized now a couple were drafts of letters that i will never know if he actually sent to his ex-wife and ex-mother in law... and it once again provided me with an interesting perspective on my parents and their relationship, or possibly it just reminded me, reminded me of all the things that children may never know about their parents relationship, made me think of what my sons will think when their parents are gone or if/when that relationship dissolves... 

Reading my father's letters i was struck once again at how one sided my parents marriage was... my father, til the end of that marriage and for a few years after, was deeply in love with my mother... i can't say the same for her and in reading those letters again it reminded me of how vindictive, cruel and manipulative my mother was... i, for most of my life, had escaped this wrath due to the fact i was the golden boy, the son her father always wanted and to which she was delighted to give him... as previously laid out i was my mother's choice where my sister was always viewed as my father's choice, mainly because my mother got pregnant as an unmarried 18yr old, something rectified one July day when they were married but a fact my father didn't find out until a few weeks later... he didn't know she was pregnant when they got married, he married her because he loved her... i know why my mother married him and these letters drove that point home... 

There is a line in one of the letters where my mother apparently told my dad that maybe she was the world's greatest actress... this line stuck... she was basically saying she had been playing the part her whole life due to the fact that he provided a pretty nice life for her (and their children), that she never really loved him but that while he was providing for her she could deal being married to him and that once he had lost his job (and she had started working as a school bus driver, the place where she met her first boyfriend) she wasn't about to let him spend her money... a statement that is eerily echoed above... granted my father made all the money but my mother had received an inheritance from her uncle who was fond of stuffing cash in his mattress, she and her sisters where given the money by their mother, my mom getting roughly 33k which she deposited in the bank presumably only under her name.. this is the money my father wasn't going "to spend"... so basically after a lifetime of providing for her, of putting himself through college while working a full time job in order to give his family a better life, that when he needed his wife and partner the most, she walked out on him... 

My old man was a bit of a stoic... rational and organized in his thoughts he was not one to get what one might call emotional... to his young son he was a rock, i've written before about how i barely knew my dad until i was 7 or so, he'd come home from work, eat some dinner and then head off to night school earning a degree in accounting... he went to work each day in his suit and tie and yet somehow it was never enough for his wife who wanted him to be a CPA, something he easily could have done but he was cool with what he was doing... and then of course came the Great Middle Management Purge, ten years after Reagan and suddenly the corporations began to want to "maximize shareholder value", and so many of these employees, predominantly men, men who came of age when what you did for a living was closely tied to who you were, were then handed a severance check, a pat on the back and shown the door... it was also when suicide rates began to skyrocket... and of course it was at this point my lovely mother decided it was no longer expedient for her to support the man who supported her... reading my father's letters there is a vulnerability that i'd never seen until the split and even then he did his best to keep it under wraps if his children were around... these letters laid bare his heart and soul and it physically hurt to read them, a sadness crept in and i wish i would have known more, i wish i could have done more... 

Unfortunately the relationship that my mother an i have is for all intents over... we'll exchange the odd text just to for a modicum of civility and i will briefly keep her informed on what her grandsons are up to but in the history of the lounge i've watched this relationship go from being on shaky ground to being dare i say good and then disintegrating, flaring up and flaming out in a matter of minutes... yes some might say we shouldn't let politics come between us but these day politics in this country isn't the norm... if one is part of a fascist movement then the only thing i can say is get fucked... if you cloak these beliefs in your religion, get fucked twice, if one votes for bigotry and hatred while quoting the Jesus while failing to recognize the hypocrisy one is either willfully ignorant or just plain fucking evil and the truth is there ain't much separating the two... if one claims to be a "good christian", whatever the fuck that is but then puts all their needs, wants, biases and bigotries ahead of voting for the future of the planet, the less fortunate, their grandchildren they claim to love so much then for the third time, get fucked... 

Not long ago my mother asked if she could come down and see Disaster around his 16th birthday... my mother and the fucking nonce who lives in the house my father paid for drove down under the guise of giving Disaster a jar of coins, they had this thing were every time they found coins or money on the ground they matched whatever the found in a jar for all their grandchildren and on their 16th birthday they got the jar... of course Disaster has always been the grandchild least doted on, he wasn't all that found of going to their house and would never go without his big brother, the I-mac on the other hand was their "boy", to the point where it was insulting when they talked to us about him, they gave the impression that they would do a better job raising him than his parents and often talked about how sad he was when he'd have to go home after his visits when he was a wee lad making it seem as if he didn't want to go... of course the BW took less than kindly to these insinuations (what mother wouldn't?) which left me to talk her down and explain that my mother and man who lived in the house my dad paid for were the self righteous, self important type of muppet and that it was best to dismiss their bullshit... (i'm sure i've put this up here before but there is a famous picture of Jesus on the cross, side split open, drawn by a 3yr old? I-mac that is framed on hung on the wall in a very prominent place, a picture they claim he drew all by himself with no help or instruction at all... oh if they could see their little boy now, he's his father's son when it comes to religion or lack thereof and he often wants to tell them exactly what he thinks of their religion...)

It was no secret that there was tension between my mother and i but when they arrived i was polite and kind and wasn't going to bring up any topics that would turn this thing pear shaped as it was ostensibly about my boy Disaster getting his loot... granted in their self-important view they fail to realize teenage boyos aren't exactly all about hanging with their grandparents... or their parents for that matter but the boyos were cool and hung for a an hour or so, a very strange hour and at one point JF aka jesus freak aka my mother's husband, made some stupid comment vaguely hinting at politics to which the I-mac then calmly fucking destroyed using this shit called facts... i just sat there grinning as i watched a certain grandmother and her hubby eat a warm and steaming shit sandwich... as for my mother i knew she didn't know how to handle me but she affected an air of iciness that i actually found surprising... of course what she didn't realize was that her son was an excellent study of his mother's ways, had been schooled by his father in her tricks and so knows how to play this game better...  i remained kind and polite and i could see it unnerved my mother... why? because i didn't bat an eye, i just went about my business of being a decent human being, gave her a hug, talked freely and pleasantly, it's hard to play the game when one side refuses to play... 

Ultimately i know how this plays out and the main reason i know this is my father's letters... he wrote way back in that letter to my grandmother about how a mother treated her children, how she didn't understand why they were upset and pissed at her and how after she had sacrificed so much they were nothing more than ungrateful shits... and as my father laid it out in brutal honesty, she loves to play the victim, is a master at twisting the facts to make it look like she was nothing but sweetness and light instead of vindictive and cruel and now those ungrateful spawn of hers had turned their back on her... in what i can only laugh at as the greatest of ironies, mother and daughter are all that is left of that old nuclear family, the two who battled the most, mainly because in the end they were more alike than either would want to admit, have each other... i have always been my father's son but i also possess the self awareness that i was raised by two people and most of my worst traits i have gotten from my mother... funny how those traits mostly come out when i'm dealing with her though maybe that's because over the years i've watched her shitting on different people, some of whom i loved fucking dearly, i'm a good student, i understand i get a certain satisfaction out giving her that same treatment, wondering is she recognizes what her bastard son is doing? Though i know that when she speaks of me to her cronies it's probably how horrible it is for her to have raised a son who is a heathen and i'm sure places the blame for it on her ex-husband... though the heathen displays a lot more empathy, kindness, tolerance to the world at large than his "christian" mother... 

Still those letters get me thinking about my dad... about how i miss talking to the guy, about what a good dude he was, how most of what i know about being an empathetic and decent human being i learned from him, what unconditional love actually looks like, how i wish i could have done more for him... that even though the woman he loved more than anything broke his heart he put himself back together and lived out his days with dignity and decency... and he even managed to have a little fun with a few girlfriends along the way, something i like to think he picked up from his wild-eyed son... he always used to tell me if he could do it again he would do it just like me (he also told me getting married was a great way to fuck up a perfectly good relationship, probably should have listened).. i could tell him anything now it would be thanks for being a great guide, teacher, friend and that i was lucky to have a father like him, that i try my best to emulate him when it comes to the boyos with varying degrees of success and failure... of course Pops would give his familiar laugh and tell me, that's life kid, just keep trying... or as it said up top, half brilliance half bullshit... 

 

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly... or a family vacation pt. 2

 If the previous post was the bad and the ugly there had to be some good right? yes there was some good, in fact there was some very good... starting with Key West itself... i've always loved the beach towns, they are haven for freaks and weirdos, drawn to a life a bit different than what could be classified as the norm and Key West is like the capital of such places... it took me back to the Ocean City years but in a different way as i noticed a lot of people near my own age were living down here... they were bartending, waiting tables, being tour guides, yeah they were working and maybe working two jobs but after spending an afternoon in a local pub with an old friend of mine now living down there i realized why this place was unique, i could sense it was a place to get lost, to dropout of the mainland rat race and move to where the weather never changes (sans the occasional hurricane) and one could live in relative anonymity doing what they want while getting by just fine, a different way of living or more apt maybe a different philosophy... my friend talked of riding his bicycle around the island every morning, riding to the bar, the famous Key West time which basically meant you get there when you get there, no rush... one could say it appealed to my Dudeist sensibilities...

Obviously one of the big highlights was seeing my old friend, a guy i met way back in the Wilderness Years when he worked at a bar and i worked out of that same bar... in fact one fine evening i was in that bar working, at the time i had a few different types of weed on me and i had unknowingly dropped a quarter ounce on the floor, after i left i got a call from him asking if i had lost something, a quick check of my inventory and i stated in fact i had lost something, this was during the raining money period mind you, he stated he had it and would hold it and i told him there was no need, it was his, he protested for a moment and i stopped him and stated i was fucking sloppy, i dropped the fucking thing but the real point was he called to give it back, how many people would have done that? most would have said nothing and kept it and so i told him it's his now cuz honesty and friendship should be rewarded... he laughed and said something like "thanks wastoid feel free to drop shit on the floor anytime..." we both had a good laugh at that...

So the highlights man the highlights... easily my favorite parts involved animals because as we all know i'm a cupcake when it comes to that... Key West is known for it's wild rooster/chicken population and i took great delight in watching them run all over town... there were many at the place we stayed and one particular rooster lived in the shrubs right near the steps i went up to get to the condo, i began making clucking noises, i do a killer chicken impersonation, and my rooster buddy would come rolling out of his abode every time i went by clucking, though i think if he could speak he'd have told me to knock that shit off as i may have sounded like an attractive hen to the randy rooster... at one point as i walked towards the car clucking away he sorta charged at me as if to say cut it you giant muppet... the sounds of roosters crowing could be heard wherever one went and i also got to see chickens fly into trees which is something i didn't know they could do, in fact i stood there dumbstruck and laughing the first time i saw it, learn something new every day... 

As previously stated the place we stayed in Key West was fucking ace! even more so because the music that was played near the pool and in the main lobby was fucking fantastic... it was all roots reggae and dub for the most part, in fact i can attest i heard better reggae here than i usually do in Jamaica... in Jamaica it's nothing but a steady diet of Bob, mainly because i'm sure that's all the average Yank really knows... whatever streaming service this place had going was superb... i heard Lee Perry, Augustus Pablo, Max Romeo, Peter Tosh, i was fairly floored by the quality of tunes i heard over the five days we were there...absolutely stellar!

Which brings me back to the wonderful screened in balcony/porch the place had... yes it was warm and humid even at night, though at night the breeze did kick up a bit but not much, enough to make me appreciate it when it did blow through and while the boyos ran around and hung out near the fishing docks and the BW went to bed, i'd sit out on the deck in the dark doing nothing, drinking water and hitting the weed pen and listening to the sounds of the night, the wind through the palm trees, the symphony of insects, and of course when the wind and distant traffic dissipated i could hear the sound of the waves gently lapping on the shore, i couldn't see them but then again i didn't need to, knowing they were there was enough... i'd watch the coming and going of the other people staying at the place, i'd see them wobbling back in from Duval St., i'd notice who else was sitting on their screened in balcony, but mainly i just sat and listened, let the mind wander, sometimes dozing off, all i really needed were my cats to be completely content (because i always miss my cats when i'm away)... during the day when the boyos were at the pool or sleeping and the BW was taking her afternoon nap (just like at home), i'd sit out on the balcony reading Hemingway, seeing as he spent a good deal of time down here, a book given to me when i graduated from college by another old friend, Forty-Nine Short Stories... it was perfect as i flipped from place to place picking which stories to read... which of course brings me to what might have been the biggest highlight... 

In my youth i loved the classics, so to speak... Hemingway, Steinbeck, F. Scott even a little Dos Passos for good measure... so this little trip would finally afford me the chance to see old Ernest's place in Key West along with those world famous polydactyl cats who roam the grounds and what could be more in line with my sensibilities than wandering the house of one of an early literary hero and hanging with cats? at present there are somewhere in the range of 57 cats living at the house and i got to scratch a few behind their lovely ears, wandering the grounds and the house where Ernest once roamed, drink in hand, probably meant more to me than any of the family understood, there were many photos and in back of the main house was a little cottage house where Hem wrote, the old typewriters, the first editions of old books, for a literary book nerd like me it was like heaven, add in the swimming pool, which for a long time was the only one on the island and one that was made to swim laps in (guess Ernest and i have something in common) and i could do nothing more than wander and grin at all the things, reading captions and studying bookshelves... with any luck pics will go up shortly but for me it was like wandering history... (it just so happened that day i wore a shirt that simply said Bokononist, a reference to Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle and it was funny watching the one woman who worked there gazing at it and then finally smiling when she figured out what it was, she then leaned over to me and whispered, i like your shirt, i smiled and said thanks...)

I'd also be remiss if i failed my drink at the World's Smallest Bar... to be fair there are many places vying for this title but apparently there are governing bodies that rule on this type of thing and the I-mac decided to research this claim and found that this particular place was recognized by various authoritative types as the world's smallest boozer... granted there were claims by other places but this seemed to have more than a few sites giving it said title... and of course there was my selfie with the Spongeman, i've always had a penchant for the strange and the stupid, aka touristy type shit, and this was no different, a mannequin outfitted in sponges outside some store selling trinkets, yeah gotta get a picture with that... it's the small things that please me the most... 

As is usual with the BW she was fretting over if the boyos were having a good time and though they did their fair share of low key complaining they actually did (i kept reminding her that they were planning on a Jamaican party week so anything but would be a letdown) so since we had to drive back to Miami the day before we left she decided we'd leave two days early and hit Hollywood Beach, the typical tourist town complete with boardwalk and the like... it gave the boyos more time to run the streets and the BW shocked me by not minding my love of walking the boardwalk, sometimes sitting on a bench and watching the world stroll by... once again the place we stayed was excellent and we had a room overlooking the bay and i could lay in bed and watch the sunset over that bay... (i should add the Key West sunsets were some of the most gorgeous i've seen) and at night i'd leave the curtains open so i could stare at the moon over the water while drifting off to sleep... i also got to spend one glorious day swimming in the Atlantic which is one thing i truly love...  all in all it turned out to be a pretty swell little getaway... but by the end i'll admit i wanted to get home and see my cats... 

And so i close the page on another family vacation... it's not lost on me that these are probably coming to an end in the current form as the boyos are getting older and soon i'm sure they won't be all that jazzed to go on vacations with their parents beside the fact that they are growing up and will sooner than i realize be venturing off into the world to do their own thing... which is just as it should be... yeah someday there might be that other type of "family vacation" with the boyos and their significant others and possible children... or maybe not... anyone following along knows there's a lot of "ifs" involved in that scenario... but for now i'll take it all in and appreciate the things i've gotten to see, the time spent with the boyos... in short, enjoy the ride... 

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly... or a family vacation pt. 1

 And so once again we come to the part of the year where Clark Griswold loads up the wood-paneled station wagon and sets off for parts unknown... or in my case, barely sleeps, gets up at 3am to get to the airport and then flies off to somewhere to (with any luck) listen to the sound of the waves meeting the land... this year was no different except that the plans were changed due to circumstances beyond our hero's control... the BW's father has been in and out of the VA hospital, i won't go into what and why other than to say it's part lack of taking care of himself and another part having chemicals dumped on him way back in the jungles of Southeast Asia... i won't go into the shit show the VA has turned into in the last six months as that's a post in and of itself but it harkens directly back to a draft dodging, supposedly bone spur having fat man named the Orange Shitgibbon... a sentence that now may get me detained and shipped to scenic and lovely locales in Central America... 

The original plan this year was to head back to Negril in West Jamaica, a place i love... and it looked to be sailing right along towards that until the BW started having second thoughts... first it was the fact the boyos were way to up for it... the I-mac would be legal to booze in Jamaica which meant when he and Disaster went roaming around the resort in the evening his big brother could get him drinks... not to mention their love of a certain plant (i guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), a plant readily available on this island... needless to say their mother had some reservations and began voicing them as she felt the trip was shaping up to be a non-stop party for her two boys... the funny thing is she always enjoys the trips to Jamaica (this would have been the fourth) due to my amenable and easy going demeanor i have when there, i can sit and listen to her pontificate on various thoughts in her head mainly due to my being pleasantly stoned from morning until night... every day i wake up and smoke a small joint and eat some ganja cake, head to breakfast where i drink  some delicious Blue Mountain coffee, and then set off upon the day where i smoke every few hours along with more bits of ganja cake until the evening when the BW tends to wind down goes to bed and i sit and listen to the ocean while getting righteously stoned... 

It was becoming abundantly clear that she was not feeling great about this trip and then when one tossed in her father's health issues it got even worse... granted i understood where she was coming from, sort of, her father having been an asshole for most of his children's lives  was lucky his two middle kids, the ones who got the least and shit on the most, took an active interest in his well-being... the oldest and youngest? the ones handed money, the typical way the old man showed his love, well they couldn't be troubled with daddy's health and tend to visit only when they need another handout... also a post for another time... and  so with shit piling up i agreed and said she should cancel Negril and look for a place in Dumbfuckistan so that if something did happen while she was away it would be easier to get back...she also had been calling him daily and while it's not a huge issue being out of the country makes that a bit more difficult though i noticed she called him maybe once while we were away so why that became an issue i don't know... 

And so i watched Negril fade into the ether... i would not be imbibing in my favorite weed and homemade Jamaican ganja cake, no jerk chicken or peas and rice (peas being beans), no stellar fucking coffee... and that's okay... add in the fact that last year's foray into the Caribbean ended with us being in Grenada and caught in a hurricane which severely altered the trip and the BW wanted what she wanted, and let me add that she and her family take great pride in their vacation planning, maybe it's foreign to me cuz my childhood vacations were spent in Ocean City, Md. where it was pretty cut and dry what one did... her clan is much more into far off places now and love the planning of "excursions" and the like... the amount of research into places to stay, flights, things to do, borders on obsessive... 

So what was the back up plan? Enter Key West... and truth be told as an alternate i was excited to head down to the southernmost point in Dumbfuckistan to check out a place i had never been... unfortunately the boyos were not so excited and one does not need any foreshadowing to understand what that meant... i spent a few weeks leading up to the trip talking to Disaster about it as he was the most gutted about the situation and i knew why... see the above about big bro sneaking him booze and getting high... in fact i told him as such and explained that between last year when his brother, being able to drink in Grenada, going completely off the fucking rails and the prospect of both of them doing that this time i was a bit apprehensive about the trip, mainly because it would quickly devolve into a fucking mess where the BW would be raging about "all the money she spent" and how it wasn't for some week long party with arguments most likely breaking out on an almost hourly basis... and guess who the referee would be? i would also be the one subjected to long diatribes by the BW as she complained about the boyos when they were off partying and how she'd never do this again...  it wasn't exactly what i was looking forward to and i explained to Disaster that if the BW was having a miserable time the rest of us would be having a miserable time... he said he understood but i wasn't exactly convinced... 

If there was one pleasant part of the trip down it was the fact it would only be one flight... no stressing connections or late luggage and we still left ridiculously early, something that Disaster loves, he loves getting up and going to the airport super early, he's been doing it since he was a toddler and i understand that it's one of those memories he'll carry with him... granted when one (meaning me) barely sleeps due to the eldest boyo fucking about and staying out too late and then sleeping less than two hours the day can get mighty fucking long... add in the fact it's tough to sleep on planes when one is 6'4 and by 10am i was fucking well spent... of course the BW decided not to put anyone else as a driver on the car so after landing and collecting luggage i got to drive the 3 hours and change to Key West, an interesting drive to say the least but not when one is so tired one wants to pass out and even tougher given the straight line drive on a single lane roads... it was a real struggle to stay awake... 

The place we stayed was lovely, i may be a snarky bastard when it comes to the BW and her fretting and worrying over places and plans but she always seems to find excellent places... this one being a two bedroom condo with a full kitchen and two bathrooms... why two bathrooms? the I-mac is a fucking nightmare when it comes to the bathroom, veritably locking himself in for hours it seems while doing nothing other than scrolling his phone and sitting on the toilet or taking showers the length of baseball games... it's fucking irritating to say the least and i often remind him of the water he is wasting (he pulls the same shit at home where i have been known to flat out shut the water off), even better the place had a screened in porch which was brilliant! no mosquitos and like which meant i could sit out there in peace without having to bathe in bug spray... (more on this later) 

As for the rest of it? well we'll refer back to the title... but in reverse... the boyos had a decent time but the fact is Key West wasn't exactly their bag especially when they were banking on Negril, granted they got along for the most part but the fact is they were bored a lot of the time and it was a bit different than what they were used to... yeah white suburban kid problems... that said they did seem to make some of their own fun and since the I-mac has a pen i'm sure he shared it with his little brother, we also bought some beers which they could partake in while in the condo but they didn't get to run around and get wasted like they had planned... granted the last two nights we spent in Hollywood Beach near Ft. Lauderdale where they could roam freely, (Key West was a little more difficult as we stayed on the far end from Duval St. which wasn't far but too far to walk... they could have hopped a bus or a cab but i don't think either of them felt the need especially since there were a few girls hanging around the place at night who they had been trying to talk to...) 

The biggest issues, other than the boredom, were mainly with the I-mac... granted they both got to snorkel near a reef, parasail, jet ski and wander Duval St. but the eldest boyo kept up a steady stream of complaints about not being allowed to get fucked up... seeing as he spent most of the previous vacation in Grenada drunk of his ass due to his ability to get his own booze it was more a relief to his parents but to him it was a crime against humanity... to call the boy self-centered and for lack of a better word, spoiled, is an understatement... he has a bad habit of bitching about all the things he doesn't get while not seeming to grasp all the things he does fucking get... something which pisses his father off royally as it hasn't exactly been a life of hardship for the boyo... 

On the last night, in Hollywood Beach, he finally found some guy to get him booze and came home fucking hammered... i was not amused... he proceeded to pretend to not be blitzed and then immediately went to the bathroom to throw up... something that lasted until roughly 3:30am and which kept me awake due to the noise and the need to make sure he was okay... the BW slept through most of it and i believe silently delegated me to deal with it... don't get my wrong, Disaster wasn't exactly sober when he got home but even at his age does a better job of hiding it... toss in the following day where the I-mac decided to have one of his patented meltdowns in the Miami airport, basically pissing and moaning at his mother, who was now almost in tears, and it was more than a bit embarrassing... so in stepped the bastard aka me... i explained that it was not the time or the place to be having this discussion and that i'd gladly discuss it with him when we got home... he understood the sly smile on my face would not bode well for him once back to the Burgh and so he gradually got over his dumbfuckery and realized once home he might be a bit fucked... at one point he whined about his parents wanting him to move out to which i explained that's not what was said but that while said parents were providing much financial support and the like if he didn't like the current situation and the rules that went along with it he was free to pursue his own living accommodations which also meant supporting himself... it wasn't long after that his tone changed drastically... 

To be fair i understood it wasn't what they had planned on and in all honesty they did manage to entertain themselves and have a decent time to the point Disaster actually has spoken about how much he liked Key West and the I-mac pondered the idea of working down there for a summer in the future... then again the I-mac is a master at grandiose plans that never come to fruition... to be cont... 

The Mushroom Diaries - vol. 31

Greetings and welcome to another edition of the life and times of a psychedelic geezer...  yes it's been almost three months since our last update and i should add i don't exactly write about every time i take a dose which considering this is post  31 says something about the dedication i have to tripping like a fool while staring at the ceiling and traveling inner space while lounging on the couch... of course one could posit the theory that i'm also traveling outer space but we'll leave that debate for another time as this post is about the ingenuity of the wasted... it's a popular myth among the squares of the world, started by Nancy and Ronnie (nee Raygun), that anyone dabbling in these substances is obviously a detriment to society, that the kids should just say no... of course looking around we see how well that's gone, the most successful countries when it comes to combating the "drug war" as it's called in Dumbfuckistan, the sane places don't really view it as that, have found that decriminalizing and legalizing these substances lead to a much better outcome when it comes to public health and welfare... meaning the prisons aren't overflowing with non-violent "drug" offenders and those who do develop addictions to certain things are treated as humans with an actual medical condition and not criminals... of course when one lives in a country where for profit gulags, i mean prisons, are big business and publicly traded one understands why the shit goes down like this... to make a profit those corporate types need consumers or what's commonly known as inmates and the easiest way to go about that is to prey on disenfranchised communities so they can easily stock their cells... but i digress... 

There is this myth of the lazy stoner/drug user and as someone who knew a whole lot of junkies back in the day i can assure you that they are far from lazy as they work quite hard to feed that dragon... granted it may be scamming and stealing at times but don't discount the effort, it's there... as for the stoners of the world i mainly know nothing but highly productive weed-heads who tend to get more things done stoned than most people do not stoned... which brings me around to the mushroom and my love of the effects but hating the taste... not that the taste stops me, i've always found a way to chew them up and swallow them down it's just i've always pined for an easier, less nasty way (for my tastebuds) to ingest my favorite fungi... 

It's been documented here about a wonderful little site that grows and ships these lovely bits of fungus all over the place, it's a great site that seems to be using loopholes to get their product out, something i've seen before, most famously in the nations' capital where once they legalized possession of weed some bright stoners decided that they'd create a delivery service for t-shirts, which cost the exact same price as an eighth of weed, or say you wanted two t-shirts, that miraculously cost the same as a quarter ounce, see if one bought a shirt one got a free bag of weed with it... brilliant really as it circumnavigated the law... hence this site does roughly the same and seeing as fungi doesn't have the same aroma as cannabis it's a bit easier to ship, especially using a certain shipping company who is notoriously lax when it comes to finding certain types (see drugs) of contraband... add in the new technology in opaque packaging and voila! they can ship stuff all over... 

There are a couple of interesting products on this site, the mushroom made into pill forms in various guises... the one is straight up Matrix shit as it's a small soft gel, think one of those little green or orange Nyquil soft gels except slightly smaller and red, they are the equivalent to 1 gram (1000 mg) of boomers, sourced from a Cambodian strain and have a large warning on the site that they are NOT for microdosing... it's an interesting concept and one i was interested to test out and so i bought some and can attest to their effectiveness... the other product were capsules filled with ground up shrooms (the vaunted Penis Envy strain) in various doses, the largest being 400mg, which meant i could vary the size of the dose a bit more depending on what i wanted to achieve... these were also good for going to shows and riding trains as they were super easy to transport and take as if i was taking supplements or vitamins, which in theory one could say i am... 

It was after trying the capsules out that my stoner brain got to thinking? i could probably do this myself... the site charged about $26 more for the same amount of the ground up version and so it dawned on me to look up empty pill capsules, for some reason i knew they were out there and of course they were and so i began researching sizes seeing as i never realized there were different capsule sizes... why i don't know as pills come in different dosages and so i settled on one that stated it held roughly 400-800mg of "supplements"... i then got to work with a lovely little coffee grinder that was rarely used and would grind up the mushrooms into a fine powder... it should be noted i would do this before i discovered the capsule and i'd spread the powder on peanut butter cracker or just toss pinch after pinch in my mouth and quickly swallow it down with water... needless to say both methods didn't completely eliminate the taste but it was a bit better than munching them down though i have to admit the organically grown boomers from this place tasted somewhat better than the ones i used to get on the street... 

Now being the industrious sort when it comes to this shit i spent a few mornings grinding various strains, currently (i just realized) i have six different strains to choose from and it's interesting to see how they hit and what they do... though they all do somewhat  the same thing but there are slight differences in effects... the process would be to get them as fine as possible and then transfer them to the capsules which came with neat little tools, basically tiny spoons, to fill the capsules, the opposite end being flat so that one could tamp down and pack the powder and bits of boomer down in order to get a tightly packed capsule... granted the dosage in each isn't going to be exactly the same but i'd have a rough idea of what i was taking and let's be honest, i used to weigh out the mushrooms on a tiny and not very accurate scale so the truth is i always had a rudimentary idea, though not exact, of how much i was taking... 

Of course i had to work out some issues as far as filling the capsules, there was some trial and error and i've refined the process each and ever time i do it, the biggest dilemma was what to do with the filled larger half of the capsule while filling the smaller end before putting them together, a problem solved with a small piece of styrofoam into which i pressed an empty capsule to create a nice little divot which would snuggly hold the filled part of the capsule while i worked on the other part... i laughed out loud when i came up with this, my eureka moment, not as if i'm some fucking genius more like that of a mad scientist, pleased with his methods... now i have a bunch of old pill bottles all labeled with the various strains... Golden Teachers, Puerto Ricans, Bluey Vutton aka Smurfs, the JCs which is short for Jesus Christ shrooms, a name i gave them cuz they're fucking large and strong, the last of my "street" shrooms, and of course the Penis Envy capsules and Cambodian soft gels... yes kids i like psychedelics... 

Which brings me to my other favorite thing, my post psychedelic smoothie... i became of a fan of the smoothie some time ago after trying to find something that wasn't horrible for me when i was out being the gig economy serf... enter Smoothie King and the Daily Warrior smoothie to which i soon figured i could make myself, at least something close to it and so i found some organic super food smoothie mix at Costco... yeah man i'm fucking DEI and am almost relieved Costco is as well cuz i get most of my clothes there at this point, comical yes but i'm too old to worry about fashion, unless of course it's my ridiculous assortment of t-shirts, but back to the smoothie... the mix i found has bananas, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, spinach and kale... shit i wouldn't eat unless tossed in a blender, though that's not entirely true... i toss it in with some OJ, a little peanut or almond butter, some plain Greek yogurt and voila! fucking super delicious, even though it may sound like it wouldn't work it does... i fucking love them... and it's cheaper than always hitting up Smoothie King which has now become a bit of a treat for me... so after a fine night of psychedelics the next day i get up and knock back a smoothie, mainly to help replace what was lost tripping as one can get a bit dehydrated and one is not exactly looking to eat while on the trip... so there it is, the rituals and habits of a psychedelic loving stoner...one could call us lazy... but you'd be wrong...