AAAAHH

I poured a fireball in a dunkin iced coffee this morning and this is what came out:

Fatty in the oval office says I have to go home
Crossed 3000 miles, greatest trek ever known
No AC, you’d be bitching
Blot flies have you itching
Shut The Fuck Up Fatty, blow right through your dome
I’m a pilgrim in a foreign land, but I wasn’t born to roam
Rich bitches having their moment
I just want a fucking home

Get your boots on buddy
Just a hike cross the Darien
Watch your step cuz mudslides get hairy, and
Bring extra socks cuz its gonna rain again.
Call me Abraham!
Watch the rays, bring a hat or your baked, man
Left the jungle behind, now we in the sun
Nothing stopping this voyage,
Fatty better fucking run.

When im done with him, Donny gonna be sippin tea with Snowden
Better call up ICE, fatty need the protection
gonna snatch these bodies like they stole the election
three blind mice, reduced to dust
they scared! donald, vance, and musk!

Yeah I said, When I’m done, Donny gonna be sipping tea with Snowden
Landlord type ass aint ever been through nothin
Wiki say he a felon, but he didn’t do no time
Daddy paid for a lawyer, easy white collar crime
And Donny pays for pussy too cuz he’s bland as hell
No wonder we have active shooters, Mr. President an incel

And that’s just the start–
Blackrock, Vanguard, the evil black heart
Consolidating power like the dark lord
Sauron type [i cant say that word] crushing dissent with a hoard
of lawyers, and Peter Theil too,
didn’t you hear?
Built an AI to spy on you,
literally called it Palantir

They say:
Stacking the 401K?
Thank you very much Whitey!
Blast some muslims how we gon’ use that money
If we lucky kill some Chinese too
We’ll take those iphones and micro chips boo
Keep working, you’ll retire for sure!
Tho we might start a war, leave yo ass on some shore.

Lucky ones’ll come home with a medal
Honest veterans coming back to a life of art
Crafting cardboard signs in front the 114 Walmart

Is that the world we want to live in?
Hell no.

~~~
Just need a beat and we’ll have a Donald Trump Diss Track. Written in response to the bombardment of headlines over the past few weeks.

It’s Monday, and we are going backwards once again to explore music tastes of the past.

In 2022, I had it all– an apartment in NYC, a long term GF, the love and adoration of my parents… and I threw it all away to work menial jobs in the cold rain! The period from 2021 to 2024 marks the greatest transformation of my life since the growth spurts of my puberty years. What I lost in material things, I gained in spirit and courage! I would never go back.

I started keeping regular records of my finances and mental state around this time. This took the form of a series of notebooks with a new entry added every week. At the end of the very first notebook (Nov 2022 – Feb 2023) I scribbled a list of my favorite albums that I listened to the year prior, but I never did make a formal post about them. Now, in the year of our lord 2025, I present this list.

Disclaimer: time has become a bit more stratified since the pandemic days, but for a long time after 2020, the flow of events became blurry. I mean, as I was living from 2020 to 2022, the flow of time seemed to blend together. As such, I don’t know if these songs were ones I was listening to in 2020, 2021, 2022, or all three. Probably all three! This epoch of three years felt like one gigantic year, honestly.

BEST ECO-APOCALYPSE CONCEPT ALBUM:

The White Goblin by Masayoshi Takanaka (1997)

The White Goblin is the sequel to Masayoshi’s original storybook album concept, The Rainbow Goblins (1981). The original album, which features a real storyteller narration between tracks, tells the story of a group of goblins that attack the rainbow for its colors. They ultimately lose and are transformed into butterflies and colorful birds or something. It is a simple concept with some good music.

“Everybody knows the story of the Seven Rainbow Goblins, the terrible end they came to, and the way the flowers saved the Rainbow at the last minute from being destroyed
But very few know what happened afterwards
The Rainbow shone in the sky more beautiful than ever
Birds and beetles, butterflies and insects excelled one another in colored splendor
The land and water animals observed their new flying friends with wonder and pleasure
The Rainbow established a unity between Heaven and Earth..”

The sequel takes things to another level, with Takanaka creating a new, more viceral story from the childish original. Word of the vanquishing of the rainbow goblins reaches the cold north where, hidden alone in crevasses of eternal ice, the banished 8th goblin emerges from exile to conquer the world.

“Oh, Horrors! It’s the White Rainbow Goblin!”

The music gets crazy in this album. The white goblin descends into an underground city of blind cave-goblins, and the music goes hip hop mode for a bit. As the White Goblin and his army begin to devour all the colors of the world, the guitar gets heavy and starts to make industrial engine sounds. Like jets flying overhead. Obviously an analog for industrial society (the WHITE goblin ;p), the goblins start to consume all the natural resources of the world and build vast cities. The goblins eventually have to begin creating synthetic colors because all the natural colors of the world around them are devoured. As the world is dominated, the music itself becomes more synthetic too. Heavy beats and synthesizer to go with the guitar riffs.

It is a powerful album that reflects our own foolish destruction of nature. I highlight the lyrics here, but the album doesn’t really have any words besides the storyteller transitions between songs. Lots of guitar, honestly. The sounds capture the descent of the world very well. Much of Takanaka’s works are Jazz Fusion Rock and Roll type sounds, very upbeat and tropical. But there is something serious and cool about The White Goblin that has stuck with me for years.

BEST THROWBACK ALBUM:

Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest (2016)

Nothing brings me back to my high school days like Car Seat Headrest. The era from 2014 to 2017 saw the release of a ton of music that is now considered absolutely classic, but I was busy listening to Pink Floyd and classic rock. If my friends weren’t total music heads, I would have missed the release of To Pimp a Butterfly or Teens of Denial! Well, Teens of Denial is the one that comes back the most. Since 2022, I have always had a Car Seat Headrest phase every year! I relate more to the lyrics as an adult now than I ever did as a teenager. I was an upright, sober teen though. KILLER WHALE! KILLER WHALE!

While Teens of Denial is probably Car Seat Headrest’s best work, I did listen to the entire discography in 2023 while working on the farm and it was great. I don’t get the furry thing with Twin Fantasy, seemed fine to me.

CATCHIEST ALBUM:

City Slicker by Ginger Root (2021)

The YouTube algorithm is to thank for this one. Ginger Root’s hit single “Loretta” showed up in my sidebar, so I gave it a shot. I was already listening to a bunch of Japanese city pop playlists at the time, so City Slicker was exactly what I wanted at the moment. It is like a modern take on an era of music long past. Ginger Root is often described as “aggressive elevator soul”, and I think that about sums it up. Despite his feminine appearance, however, Ginger Root has some power in his singing. Loretta is really great, but “Juban Disctrict” might be my favorite song on the album.

“It’s so good to get down at the Juban District! Ah!
I’m choked up but you’d maybe pass me up!”

But yes, Loretta is an amazing song that got stuck in my head instantly. Over the years since discovering him, Ginger Root has gone on to release two new albums and go on tour. I passed up on tickets to his Boston show and regret it every day. I’m just kind of nervous about seeing what other people that listen to Ginger Root look like. Are we all a bunch of weirdos? I should get over that and just listen to some good live music…

BEST YOUTUBE PLAYLIST:

Macroblank • 痛みの永遠 (???)

The way we listen to music has changed a lot. Can you believe we used to buy singles on iTunes or go to stores to buy CDs? Now, the computer serves up a stream of fresh music for free! YouTube’s algorithm is constantly serving up new suggestions, and I’ve come to find that they can be pretty awesome. Macroblank is one of the best discoveries ever. I know nothing about the artist besides that he might he Japanese? Or maybe the Japanese title is a stylistic choice? I’m hesitant to call it an album because the songs likely aren’t even by Macroblank. In the lineage of vaporwave music, many of the songs are remixed tracks of existing music from the past. The songs are mostly without lyrics, just beats and jazz smooth as butter. Drums, some bongos, guitar. There is a track in there that sounds like a cool version of a Bloon Tower Defense menu theme…

If you don’t know what vaporwave is, don’t worry about it. But Macroblank is the perfected/listenable form of it. It takes you to a liminal place. Sort of nostalgic but new at the same time.

Of course, Macroblank is just one player in a huge online library of mysterious albums and playlists. Usually, the videos without english names are the best. Problem with that is if you like something and don’t save it… chances of finding it again are low as hell! Seriously, I’ve lost track of some awesome music over the years, simply because I have no idea how to track it down again. Googling the album cover art (and the album covers are always divine for some reason) doesn’t help lol

BEST ALBUM 2022:

Laurel Hell by Mitski (2022)

I actually did not like this album when it first came out. I thought Be The Cowboy was fantastic, so Laurel Hell required me to reset expectations. I couldn’t really get into it, thought the lyrics were kind of dull and self-centered. Over time, I found myself thinking about some of the songs. I left the album for a while after its initial release, and when I came back to it it was like listening to Mitski for the first time again!

This album is, in my opinion, less abstract than Be The Cowboy. It less lyrically poetic. It IS more self-centered, with Mitski being sort of depressed and self-flagellating throughout. She talks about being controlling or how unsatisfying it was to go through film school route just to be drudging instead of making movies. The music is electrifying, like dry dust in the desert. The album opens slow and cold before a synthetic beat drops and suddenly everything is alive. I picture somebody being shot in slow motion when I listen to “Valentine, Texas.”

The song “Should Have Been Me” is an amazing climax to a fraught album.

“When I went through my list of friends and found I had no one to tell,
of this overwhelming clean feeling, sweet serenity!”

It is like finding some sort of closure to a hard breakdown. Despite the loneliness of the artist, the strikes out triumphantly.

“When I saw the girl looked just like me, I thought
must be lonely loving someone
trying to find their way out of a maze!
Oh, I know”

It isn’t Be The Cowboy. I don’t know if I can say that it is as good as Be The Cowboy. But it is a deeper, more personal album. The music is more memorable in a lot of ways. I wasn’t ready for it when it dropped, but I changed a lot in the months that came after and the album found me again as the year wrapped up. I’m glad it did!

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2023:

The last line in the notebook reads “SOS by SZA.” What an absolutely perfect album to drop during a breakup! “Kill Bill” has all the psycho energy I needed, and the other songs all kind of blend together into a wistful panorama of R&B tracks. It is a very chill album. With the recent Kendrick/SZA collab, I’ve been re-listening to this one quite a bit. It isn’t my favorite by any means, but Kill Bill itself might be one of my favorite songs of the 2020s.

And that’s all I wrote. Been meaning to get this down for years now. Next time, I’ll be exploring more of my present tastes. Music is a revolving door, though. Tracks emerge and disappear and return with the seasons.

My best album of 2024:

Listened to this while seething and packing fish food.

I also listened to a lot of Doja Cat, the Kendrick Lamar dis tracks, Daft Punk/plenty of DJ sets, and good old Johnny Cash. Had my Carseat Headrest phase, which is just an annual thing now. Re-listened to Ziggy Stardust while running and it was like heaven.

I am in a musical renaissance right now, though. 2024 is already the past. 2025 is here and there are new discoveries every week.

It has been an infuriating week in politics.

Donald Trump has declared an executive order revoking birthright citizenship to babies born from non-citizen parents. This is in direct violation of the Constitution, which states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

That is the opening clause of the 14th amendment. The 14th amendment was added to the constitution specifically to prevent the evil of slavery from ever cropping up in the United States again. Before the civil war, a judge ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford (the now infamous 1857 Dred Scott Decision) that the descendants of slaves were not citizens of the USA. This was a deep injustice, because it was the slaves that built this country and made it rich by laboring for free beneath masters.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and died to defeat slavery. By ordering the repeal of the 14th Amendment, Trump is setting the stage for the return of atrocities beyond our imagination. Can you imagine a mother traveling 5000 miles through the mountain jungles of Central America and across the desert to be told that her child will not receive the same rights and freedoms afforded to all other equal citizens in the USA?

What would slavery look like in the 21st century? Immigrants, or their non-citizen children born into the system, under the threat of immediate deportation by armed federal agents, will be forced to work hard days under the sun picking crops for wages well below the legal standard. Their work will not contribute to a pension, 401k, or retirement plan. They will form a “permanent underclass” that contributes to the country with their labor but otherwise is never afforded the security as true citizens. And since this population of non citizens will be mostly latinos from South America, obvious racial divisions will form.

The scholars will say that this isn’t slavery. They will point to the smart phones and cars and dollar bills in their hands and say that the Black slaves didn’t have stuff like that and were whipped and shackled in broad daylight. But these people will be living in the United States and working their asses off just like you and me, much harder actually, and they won’t be equal to you and me. That’s a heinous level of injustice, a hypocrisy, that makes you want to scream. It is un-American, and I’m not afraid to say that. Unpatriotic. Figures that Trump praises Robert E. Lee.

In other news, our president has immediately moved to limit healthcare access for poor people:

“The previous administration has embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government.” – Donald Trump

According to the president, trying to ensure everybody in America has some capacity to visit a doctor and seek medical attention is an “inflationary” action. As if spending any money at all to help people were an act of terrorism against the economy itself.

Much excitement in the Discord as of late. The AI that reads all of our conversations makes us sound like we are debating high brow concepts, and I suppose we are! All discourse is good discourse, even in the brainrot era. There is a lot to consider in the current moment.

Have you seen my old friend martin, can you tell me where he’s gone?

I just looked around, and he’s gone.

If you follow my political ramblings, you may remember a post last year about the death of Chevron:
https://www.aaaahh.net/conservatives-blow-up-another-decades-old-legal-precedent-chevron/

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024) saw the Supreme Court trash one of the longest and most cited precedents in legal history. This court is conservative in name only– they have completely upended the legal landscape of the entire country. Chevron was essentially the legal framework by which the Federal Government regulated the increasingly consolidated corporate landscape of our country.

Well, the consequences are finally coming home to roost. Net Neutrality, a simple FCC rule that states that all internet traffic is equal and must be treated equally by internet service providers, is officially dead. Trump repealed Net Neutrality with his FCC (run by a Comcast lawyer) back in his first term, and Biden tried to reinstate it. Of course, conservatives backed by Verizon and AT&T (USTelecom Lobby) fought the reinstatement in the courts and won. The judge presiding over the case cited Loper, of course, in arguing that the US Government could not regulate the internet service that our consolidated and heavily publicly funded ISPs so graciously provide us.

The repercussions of this go far beyond fast or slow internet. In deciding that internet service is a product rather than a utility, the courts have taken away the foundational idea that internet access is a fundamental right. Despite requiring the internet in our modern lives to pay bills, apply for insurance, read the news, and learn in general, the law has decided that the internet is an optional service. Buyer Beware.

The internet, of course, was a publicly funded government project to begin with, and all the infrastructure that makes it run (both hardware and software) was funded publicly or created for free by autistic lunatics. Comcast has no right beyond longevity to control the market share that it does. Unfortunately, the conservatives have also killed the Federal Trade Commission, so any plans to break up the massive communications monopoly that has taken over America are also kaput.

Remember, Republicans suck. They take away your rights every year in new and terrible ways. Every year.

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

~~

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

~~

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

~~

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

~~

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Today I did 10 hours of mail delivery, 6am to 4pm, after spending the night of the 23rd wrapping presents and wasting time. After work, I tried to nap a bit before heading north to drop off presents at various family members houses. Then I did 2 1/2 hours at my second job cleaning goldfish tanks. Many miles crossed, I am now going to shower and prepare to do absolutely nothing on Christmas Day (maybe I’ll clean the kitchen).

Dang who would have thought the immortal substance we make out of petroleum and surround all of our food in would turn out to be toxic.

Increasingly, I am disgusted with the act of throwing away trash. Every time you put a wrapper in the bin, you are kicking your problem off to someone else. The plastic isn’t going away. It can’t be recycled, melted down and reformed like a metal ingot. It won’t break down into useful atoms. It will merely pollute the Earth, poisoning yourself and all generations of life that come after you.

We need unified action on this one.

I’ve lost nearly 40 pounds in 5 months! Anything is possible! The world is yours!

Plastic Beach by Gorillaz (2010)

Out on the mail route, phone battery is a limited resource. My dogshit Sony phone can handle an 8 hour shift with %15 left to get me home, but overtime kills it. Hell, sometimes the phone just crashes partway though and I can’t navigate or call my supervisor or anything. These battery issues have lead me to abandon streaming altogether. No spotify, no YouTube Red. MP3 files loaded directly onto the phone! My cellphone is an ipod touch with GPS.

My collection of albums has grown over time, but at first I had only a few mp3 files saved locally on my phone. These initial files were multi-hour video game music playlists. I know what that sounds like, but trust me– Alf’s Video Game Bangers series is awesome! It’s funky EDM, mostly, good for keeping me on my feet during a long day on the mail beat. I listened to Alf’s compilations on repeat, but after a month of vocal-less gamer beats, however, I craved something with more substance. For some reason, I downloaded Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach. Given the choice between more VG music and Plastic Beach, I decided to listen to Plastic Beach. A lot. I listened to it over and over again and quickly fell in love.

“GORILLAZ AND THE BOSS DOG, PLANET OF THE APES!”

– Track 2: Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach (Ft. Snoop Dogg)

Plastic Beach is a black sheep from a band that has always produced strange albums. For first time listeners, the album sounds really discordant. The first track opens with an orchestra alongside Snoop Dogg ushering the listeners into what he calls “the World of the Plastic Beach.” The next son, White Flag, strikes a completely different tone, with bongos, flutes, a violin and then.. British rap? I absolutely hated that transition on my first listen, but there is something catchy about White Flag. When the two singers get going, alternating “White Flag, White Flag!”

“No Castaway, No Survivor! I ain’t lost and this ain’t shipwrecked!”

– Track 3: White Flag (Ft. Bashy, Kano & The National Orchestra For Arabic Music)

On my first few listens to the album, I didn’t really understand its meaning, besides a lot of mentions of plastic. After getting over its overall strangeness, however, I started listening to the lyrics more and realized that the entire concept is hitting the oceanic climate disaster/imperialism nail very hard. Snoop Dogg is asking kids to gather around, telling them that while the world feels so hopeless, “it’s like wonderland.”

“Drinkin’ lemonade in the shade, getting blazed with a gang of pilgrims”

– Track 2: Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach

The next song opens with admittedly oriental sounding music and a depiction of a castaway on a tropical shore. The singers describe coming upon a beautiful paradise, and agree not to bring guns or war. No feds, no rent, no stress, either. It represents an inversion of the typical Robinson Crusoe narrative, where the lost sailor inevitably chooses to colonize this beautiful little place he has come upon. Rather than making enemies with the natives, the Gorillaz castaway comes in peace waving a white flag.

“Hi, little lady // Sex on the beach, wanna try for a baby?”

– Track 3: White Flag (my favorite line from the song)

Of course, paradise doesn’t last in the real world. The next song, Rhinestone Eyes, introduces this concept of “factories far away” making things with “plastic power.” It is also more of a “traditional” Gorillaz song, very listenable. It has cool talking lyrics like their previous hit Clint Eastwood. The next song, Stylo, keeps it moving with awesome beat with some rap and chorus that gives way to some pure poetry vocal solos from 2D and Bobby Womack. Electric is the looove~! If it’s love, it’s electric!

“Your love’s like rhinestones, falling from the sky.”

– Track 4: Rhinestone Eyes

Superfast Jellyfish gives us a criticism of fast food complete with commercial samples. Reminds me of MF Doom. The song is loaded with energy and has some extremely memorable lines. The repeated assertion that “The sea of Radioactive, the sea is Radioactive!” is snuck in there too, hauntingly.

“All hail King Neptune and his water-breathers
No snail thing too quick for his water-feeders
“Don’t waste time” with your net
Our net worth is set
Ready, go many know others but
We be the colors of the mad and the wicked
We be bad, we re-brick it
With the twenty-four hour sign
Shower mine habits
While you dine like rabbits
With the crunchy, crunchy carrots
(Oh that’s chicken)
Gotta have it super fast!”

– Track 6: Superfast Jellyfish (Ft. Gruff Rhys & De La Soul)

Empire Ants is next with an addictive opening beat underneath some elegiac singing. I really only get interested in this song when Yuimi Nagano starts singing after the bridge. The female voice is more welcome than 2D’s sad verses, though the actual lyrical content is kind of disturbing. Nagano sings:

“Little memories, marching on
Your little feet, working the machine
Say will it spin, will it soar?
My little dream, working the machine
Soon, like a wave, empires will fall
And closing in on you, they’re going on.”

– Track 7: Empire Ants (Ft. Little Dragon)

We are likened to a colony of ants building a vast empire, but my personal headcanon is a little more disturbing. I always heard the lines about “little feet” as a reference to the actual children that keep our production going. There are a lot of little feet, child labor, making the little plastic things that we buy and then throw into the ocean.

Empire Ants gives way to the song Glitter Freeze, which is just a ton of noise that I happen to like. I like electronic sounds and heavy synthetic sounds, and I also know this taste was acquired. This song might annoy the shit out of the uninitiated.

The next few songs represent the peak of the album. Some Kind of Nature, track 8, has our singer musing about a material, some kind of plastic, that he can wrap around his lover. Next up, Melancholy Hill, which everyone has heard. That song reached far beyond the confines of this weird album. A few songs later, we get the titular song Plastic Beach, which is on-par with Melancholy Hill IMO.

“It’s by the light
Of the plasma screens
We keep switched on
All through the night while we sleep”

– Another not so subtle social critique in Track 11: Broken

Plastic Beach (track 13), brings it all together. The song opens with an image of the “only whale” watching ships pass by before exploding into an awesome repeated verse:

“It’s a Casio on a plastic beach, it’s a Casio on a plastic beach
It’s a styrofoam deep sea landfill, it’s a styrofoam deep sea landfill
It’s automated computer speech, it’s automated computer speech
It’s a Casio on a plastic beach, it’s a Casio”

– Track 13: Plastic Beach (Ft. Paul Simonon & Paul Jones)

I like to think that the whale is the last survivor in a polluted, plastic strewn ocean. The beaches themselves are plastic. In fact, the island paradise described at the start of the ocean is at this point a floating island of trash composed of multicolor styrofoams and wrappings.

The next song, and one of the last, hits me the hardest:

“I’ll wait to be forgiven, maybe I never will
My star has left me to take the bitter pill
That shattered feeling, well, the cause of it’s a lesson learned
‘Just don’t know if I could roll into the sea again
Just don’t know if I could do it all again,’ she said—it’s true”

– Track 14: To Binge (Ft. Little Dragon)

I had a long as relationship that I poured my entire self into, and then it was over. I don’t know if I can roll into the sea again. The thought of doing it all again makes me feel very tired. I don’t know what it is about music, but a song has the power to capture a feeling that one has felt for a long time but never put into words.

“I’m caught again in the mystery
You’re by my side, but are you still with me?
The answer’s somewhere deep in it, I’m sorry that you’re feeling it
But I just have to tell you that I love you so much these days
Have to tell you that I love you so much these days, it’s true”

– Track 14: To Binge (Ft. Little Dragon)

The album is functionally over at this point, but there are still two songs left to usher the listener out of the door. Bobby Womack comes back for a grandiose song about love and the movement of time and the tide. Lost at sea. The final song, Pirate Jet, I always forget about. It comes on as the last song and then leaves. We’ve left the taps running for a hundred years, you know. Water’s gonna rise.

The project is kind of sad in a catchy way. It talks a lot about love that doesn’t work out, oceans filling up with plastic, and makes fun of us for watching TV and eating fast food. All that is wrapped up in an experimental Gorillaz foil. Genre? A quick look at a Reddit thread gives me “Zombie Hip Hop, Psychedelic Surf Rock, electronic/experimental rock, Pirate Pop. I don’t think the Gorillaz have a genre, but Plastic Beach is definitely a Gorillaz album of all time!

I won’t do ratings, as I don’t think I have listened to nearly enough music in my life to accurately rank anything. I will say, however, that Plastic Beach is probably my favorite Gorillaz album (but not by far). It was released in 2010, and the songs have only grown more timely. When I was listening to this album repetitively, Massachusetts was going through a drought and my own home suburb of Middleton Massachusetts was literally burning. The smoke from the wildfire carried all the way down to East Boston where I worked and settled upon the city in a cold haze. The reefs are dying, too. Great islands of plastic continue to form in the Pacific Ocean. Bits of plastic have been found to be embedded in our very bones. And worse, it is coming to light that plastic itself might be a toxic material, slowly poisoning us.

Will we find another pristine coast to escape to, another planet perhaps? Or have we shipwrecked ourselves on toxic shores?

kissed a latina last night

came into work 6am, before light

gulls soaring high above the IMC

😀

Americans, despite making up only a fraction of the global population, have the highest consumption of resources on the planet. If that pisses you off to think about, well… 😉
Enjoy the salary. All of this is for you.

Big revelations tonight– I see the whole picture now.

America is a country of immigrants. From the very first pilgrims, our country has always followed the story of `people from far away trying to make it in a foreign land. My own family came to this country a hundred years ago, fleeing poverty and crime in Europe. My father’s grandfather was part of the Italian wave, Catholics among Catholics trying to make a home in Boston’s West Side (demolished to make certain iconic highways). My mother’s great grandfather came around the same time, Ukrainian Jews fleeing certain death from Russian Pogroms. My father’s family sold fruit on the streets of the North End. My mother’s collected greasy rags in East Boston and tried to recycle them. It wasn’t glamorous. They were called criminals, they were harassed, and they were forced to live in the shittiest tenements in Boston. Then they got educated, their kids got educated, and they began to plan bigger lives. They fought for their country in wars across the sea and came home to open businesses of their own. The rest is history.

But history isn’t dead. In fact, the country hasn’t changed much at all. A new generation of immigrants, southern instead of eastern, still Catholic, is coming to roost in Boston. They are living in the same area too– East Boston is the stage again, as it always has been for time immemorial. They are working rough jobs and getting by. Their kids are going to school and hopefully learning something. Some of them will go to college and become our doctors. It’s always been this way. The cycle of immigration in this country is an endless stream. It is deeply, intrinsically, cosmically American. Trump is the son of immigrants. Obama was the son of immigrants. Biden was Irish. Even the Anglos came here on a boat and roughed it for a while, though they try to pretend this land was made for them!

Republicans can try to cause as much terror as possible, but the tide will not be halted. People across the globe will always swim that current in search of the shining beacon on a hill that is the United States of America. They are Americans.

It’s such an unbelievably bad idea.

“Adding fluoride to water is considered one of the great public health achievements of the 20th century.”

Ever see a communist drink a glass of water?

Freaks and weirdos are under attack this election. If you believe in trust busting, universal healthcare, or taxing the rich, you are a Marxist! A Communist!

If you oppose war in the Middle East, you are antisemitic! A Nazi!!

Well, both candidates have abandoned people like me. This election has highlights just how transient the national discourse is. Politicians will swerve from controversial ideas and mold their policies around the low hanging fruit. Four years ago Obama was fighting for healthcare. Now what? I went into this election cycle prepared to fight like hell for Joe Biden and his progressive ideas. Well, Joe Biden is gone and the progressive policy standpoint has gone up in smoke. Kamala is on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney, and Trump is making war on all the so-called mutant freaks invading America. The “Enemy Within.” Am I really so evil?

We’ll see if this insanity plays in their favor 🙂 They won’t be getting any help from me.