God Damn It. It’s Just Too Hot These Days. Everything Will Melt Into Nothing Some Day. Some Of Us Will

I can’t concentrate. 

I just want to sit for a spell. 

I want to be high and not dread tomorrow. 

I want to be sexy and brave. 

I want to show someone the way. 

Tell me every way that you’d like me to fuck you 

and I’ll do it. 

Fucked o’clock 

and time to get up. 

Nude 

Tired 

Still slightly stoned 

but not stoned enough 

for America 

when she on that cocaine 

and she talkin’ all crazy 

and her nails are demonic claws 

tearin’ us all to ribbons 

but you don’t talk about that 

cuz if you do talk about it 

you don’t really love her 

but she loves you 

She really fucking loves you 

You know that, right? 

You do. 

Sick Dogs and Our Bad Conscience

I spent a bunch of time with a sick dog this weekend. I’ve known this dog since she was 8 months old and rowdy as hell. I really thought that she might die. I cried buckets. It looks like it isn’t this dog’s time though. As a result, my emotions are still pretty raw. I ain’t got tears to cry but I’ve still got plenty of feeling. 

Compassion that moves me to anger. Furious anger. Righteous anger. I don’t know what it is about the drive home from work that makes me think about all the big picture stuff. Big picture stuff? Shit. That’s so inadequate but I don’t know what else to call it. It’s burning anger about all the injustice that’s bigger than me. The injustice that happens while I watch a clock. It’s monstrous shit. It’s shit for The Hague. It’s shit that gets Meryl Streep Academy Awards for starring in fucking movies about it. It’s shit that grieves my fuckin’ spirit but at the end of the day doesn’t even really inconvenience me because of the accident of my birth. 

My country puts little brown children in concentration camps. They cry for their mommies and daddies. These facilities are often run for a profit and the guards go home, drink beer, watch the game on occasion and probably beat their wives and then promise to never ever do it again. They can do what they do and then they can go to Home Depot or Cabela’s and never give a second thought to what they are doing to earn a pay check. Banality of evil. They’re just doin’ their jobs. Maybe they’re all grim about it. Maybe they’re tormented. Maybe they lose sleep over it. I know some of ‘em enjoy it. They are having the time of their lives.

Yeah, immigration cops are bastards. It’s a popular thing in certain circles to say that all cops are bastards. I didn’t use to believe that but I’m starting to. I got a relative who is a deputy sheriff. I’ve watched him joke about running over protesters. I’ve seen his buddies mock African American Vernacular English. I’ve seen them drink a beer while rockin’ a Punisher skull on their chests. They’re bloodthirsty, suburban warrior fascists. They are the soldiers of this sad apocalypse. 

The enforcers of this shameful order are one thing but then there are the people on the sidelines. There are people who see the pictures of weeping children behind chain link fences and are thankful. They smile. They could not be happier. They are seein’ America become great again. They are seein’ people who are not like them suffer. They are watching a man who says the vile shit they say in their taverns and their country clubs in front of the whole nation proudly and without any shame at all. They got a man leading the country who has given permission for the demons that lurk inside them to run wild. 

I sit here at my desk and pound my keyboard and I got no idea what to do. I wish that I could tell you what to do. Tomorrow I’ll go back into work, the machine will grind on and I kinda hate myself because anything I might do or say is ineffectual in the face of this grave evil. 

Here’s what I’m going to do. It’s not much. All I can think to do right now at this moment is to tell you the truth as I see it. It is that bad. My country is engaged in a great evil. If there be a God and that God is just, he must punish us. I do not know if there is a god. I do know evil though. We’re seeing it. I don’t give a flying fuck about flags or anthems. I care about what’s true. 

God. Damn. It. 

I will never forgive the people who perpetrated these atrocities. As far as I am concerned, names like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Kelly and the whole Satanic cabal of them deserve to live in infamy. They should be hauled before a court and sentenced for crimes against humanity. 

You gotta know why you're doing something, don't you?

I'm gonna have to juggle a bit. My desire to write and be a real human being and do what I need to do to survive in this brutal, boring game.

I’ve been inexcusably lazy this week. I’ve written nothing this week save for what you’re now reading.

Laziness and boredom have been the order of the day. It’s a bit excruciating to even sit down and attempt to write this. I know that I’ve got to try though.

I come from a fairly conservative background. I grew up in the suburbs. The suburbs are tough for me to endure now. There ain’t much in the way of soul there. It’s all Neighborhood Watch and I’d like to talk to your manager. It’s wine moms and religion that consists of nothing but not making Jesus cry over what you may or may not be doing with your genitalia. I’ve changed. Maybe you can say that I’ve evolved into whatever it is that I am now. Whatever it is? C’mon. I guess I can label. Wishy washy agnostic socialist writer who can be pretty god damn angry sometimes.

Anger.

I woke up from a nap Saturday evening. I see I have a notification on Twitter. It’s someone that went to my high school who I used to be friendly with. They tell me that I’m being a typical irrational lefty and labeling people fascists who disagree with me. The last sentence of his insightful commentary tells me that ANTIFA are the modern day fascists. Call me pathetic, call me crazy, but if you ask me it’s crazy, this pretty much ruined my Saturday night. I fired off a multi-tweet reply. I never heard a word back in response. It took a lot of effort not to just attack him personally (Although there was a bit of that. Sue me. I’m no debate team nerd here. I’m not above ad hominem attacks.) but I have to say that I’m a bit in awe of a person who thinks exactly the same way that they did when they were a “porn addicted” pimply-faced teenager. There really has not been too much in the way of appreciable evolution. This is a guy with a well-paying job in tech, a wife and an investment portfolio. I guess you can’t blame him in a way, this is a guy who has a lot invested in keeping things exactly the way that they are now.

ANTIFA engage in violence. Thing is though, I can’t fault them for that. They are putting their bodies on the line to defend people who are not white, not Christian, not straight against fascists who are very openly calling for their forcible removal from society. I told the guy on Twitter who I used to be friendly with that it was very clear that he didn’t care. He doesn’t care. Even if this country gets even more horrifyingly authoritarian, they are never coming for him.

I’m reasonably certain there is an alternate timeline where America descends into fascism to the strains of “Holding out For a Hero” by Bonnie Tyler. 

Even as I sing along about pining for a street-wise Hercules, the spirit of eternal fascism tickles me. 

This song pines for Charles Bronson in Death Wish. 

It’s calling out for a version of Walt from Gran Torino who doesn’t have a redemption arc. 

It’s calling for a cop who becomes like The Punisher in real life. 

Umberto Eco wrote of the cult of heroism. 

This song could be the hymn for the cult of the avenging hero. 

Midweek in lieu of more imaginative title

I haven’t been reading over my words too much lately. I often do while in the course of writing them but it’s pretty rare that I revisit them after the fact. I think that probably needs to change. I read over the words I wrote yesterday about faith and lack thereof. Things were more lucid and interesting than I initially thought but there was more awkwardness and lack of clarity than I’m comfortable with. Things that read clumsy get on my nerves. Unfortunately, it seems to me that I’ve got a knack for that sort of thing. It’s frustrating. It pisses me off but it’s not like I’m trying to make a living here. Language that is just functional bothers me. I like it to have flair, swagger, style, musicality even. I guess it can’t always. I guess it depends on what the hell it is you’re trying to do. Maybe I’ll get on firmer footing with this. It has been awhile since I’ve actually tried at this. Of course, I’d contend that I’ve never really tried.

There are things I don’t want to do. There are places I do not want to go with this.

I don’t want this to degrade into pounding out “hot takes” on current events. I’m absolutely nobody. Nobody cares what I have to say about the horrors of the age. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll never comment. I’m not above breaking my own rules. If somebody shoots up a school or some other place like probably happened today somewhere in America (Fucked up, right?), do you really need me to tell you how awful it was? Do you really need me to ruminate about how surreal and terrifying life in Trump’s America is. You don’t. You’ve got people with more expertise and talent than me to do that. The other thing is I’m invariably going to read an issue of Current Affairs (look that one up. Good magazine.) or listen to an episode of Chapo Trap House or Citations Needed (Great podcasts. Listen to them.) and my take is going to be influenced. When I had short-lived podcasts of my own, it essentially became this frustrating exercise in “hot takes” on current events. I definitely delivered them in my own style but it felt very derivative and pounding out “hot takes” is exhausting.

It seems pretty inevitable that I’m going to re-tread ground I’ve already been over. How many times can you read that I just don’t want to go to work? That I’d rather chill in a dimly lit room? That pretty much describes every single day since I’ve been conscious.

Of course, I think maybe I’m catching myself engaging in “market thinking.” I’m under no obligation to make this interesting in the least. I’ve said that this is not my diary or my journal but it essentially functions that way and I’m some weirdo that has inexplicably given the public access to my inner thoughts. It does not get more non-commercial than that. Still, if this gets boring or tired, just remember that you’re getting what you paid for.

I suspect that I’m getting better at this. What is this? That would be writing. Pause. Scratch chin. Take sip of water. Get up and close the door. I sit with my feet up on the desk. My keyboard sits in my lap and I type away. 

It was one of those angry drives home. It was one of those drives home where I just got murder in my heart. I just got weaponized hate up in me. Anything I might possibly say is gonna be barely coherent. I’m gonna shout. I’m gonna keep shouting til I can’t anymore. I’ll be out of breath and none of it will be cathartic. I won’t feel better. I hate that kinda anger. I’m glad I didn’t do that today. It’s anger at the world and the people who run it. People talk about evil. They talk about people who do monstrous things. They talk about ‘em like they got glowing red eyes and how you can smell sulfur when they walk by. I believe it was Hannah Arendt who talked about the banality of evil. It’s these utterly unremarkable dudes like Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions who fuck up the world. They don’t look like monsters but what they do is monstrous. They get to manufacture a hellish reality for millions of people and then they probably go home and watch Blue Bloods or Chicago PD or something and then maybe their wife gives them a half-hearted hand job and then they are back at it the next day. That’s how they do. 

It’s good that I’m diligent at putting words to the page almost every single day but maybe I need to strive for more than that. I don’t know what exactly. I think the paragraph above had its moments. I fantasize about poetry and literary journalism. 

Making a living distracts me. Takes too much time, ya dig? Shit. That fucking game has us all by the nuts. 

I think to myself, “Where the fuck you going with this? Do you just want to stop? Chill the rest of the night?” 

I really do. 

I will actually.