063: The Electric Version is Slimier
First, Tha NEWS.
Making plans to head back to Chicago. I can't say I'm thrilled about returning to my neighborhood as it's crawling with jack-booted thugs (it's the 4th as I'm writing this and I hear they assaulted and kidnapped another 10 people in Rogers Park yesterday), but goddammit, my city is my city. And honestly, it's not a given that I'm that much safer up here: it is a constant reminder while I'm here how vile the state government is, how focused they are on specifically fucking over me and people like me. I honestly leave the property alone enough that something genuinely bad could happen to me. I trust that it won't--the people here are generally good, but you never know. You never know.
Anyway. Next week I'll be back in the city, doing back in the city things. Keeping my eyes peeled for Jeep Wagoneers. You know, the uszh.
Work-wise I'm still plugging away at 22 CARDS. I still have not gotten a playlist built for it. Not even started. Silly. Writing-wise, I have about sixteen-ish of 22 cards done, leads on another 3 or so, and beginnings to another five pages or so. I'm also starting to get comfortable with the fact that this may be even more repellent than THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT simply because it's not any one thing. If I could some how get 56 pages of the Not Cards bits together that would be an entire tarot deck's worth of Stuff, but the majority of it would be more of a collage, I think, than a cohesive book. Because from the outset I don't think this was going to be a linear narrative, because the trans experience never is. Spooky? 100%. Logical? Not at all.
Second, INTERLUDE.
You made it real! You can make it unreal!
~ Emily Jessup, Altered States
Third, CONSUMPTION.
NEW FLORENCE, BITCHES. Everybody Scream is upon us. I remember having a similar feeling to this as to when How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful was released, and I felt like there wasn't really a definite single on it, even if some were released that way. There's a large bit of the album that just moves through dynamics more than structured songs. It's... it's so good. But it's so hard to explain in a way that doesn't sound bonkers. But there's something there, inside all the darkness and feminine rage and witchcraft and sorrow and sarcasm that feels weirdly joyful. There's a line I often quote from my acquaintance Katie West: "The difference between a witch and a layperson is that the witch knows they are powerful." There's a certain level of confidence on this one that feels "good." Also there's a lot genuine and overt sexuality in this one (as if one couldn't tell from the visuals of the album) that feels like some kind of journey as well. Anyway. I'll be listening to this one a zillion times like I did all the others.
Halloween was movie day. I saw two classics, In the Mouth of Madness as is Tradition, and Young Frankenstein, which might be a new one. The Tradition has always been two Sam Neill movies, though, the other being Event Horizon. Unfortunately it wasn't streaming anywhere this year, but another Sam Neill joint was! Possession! I thought I was prepared. Reader, I was not. It's the horror movie version of a Stefon SNL bit. It's got everything: divorce and domestic violence, long swells of spooky and atonal synth music, (pretend I'm counting off things on my fingers here), buckets of gore, pregnancy anxiety, doppelgangers, Lovecraftian terror, a sadistic ballerina scene... and who's that that just walked in? A strange little German man with two too many opened shirt buttons?! When you feel like freaking out in a subway station for five minutes or more, it's the perfect date movie! I also started the day with Altered States, which I'd never seen, and I gotta say, what seemed pretty out there at 11am was relegated to a distant second after Possession. AS started pretty strong visually, but progressively got more silly as it went on. At least Blair Brown and a young William Hurt are gorgeous in it. (I did enjoy it, but I think Cronenberg's The Fly does the same sort of thing better.)
The World Series came and went and it was an instant classic. We ended up with the dreaded All-Blue-and-White-Uniforms series, but dang it those Blue Jays just made themselves endearing until they made some of the stupidest running decisions I've ever seen in a game, let alone the World Series. Also apparently Los Angeles pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto is The Terminator. He'll never have to pay for dinner in two separate countries ever again. (Neither are Canada.) Anyway. It's over. Now to figure out who to support next year, because the Twins are very, very close to Dead to Me.
Final Fantasy has been beaten, and I accidentally ended up killing WarMech without even meaning to encounter him at the time. So that answered that question. I've moved on to Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster, the newest release of one of the games in the series I've never played. Enjoying it so far, to be honest. I hear it's a very polarizing game, but so far I'm on the Love It side of Love It or Hate It. I should maybe write a review of the Final Fantasy series as I've played them so far over at the Patreon. Hm.
Fourth, HUSTLE.
The new hotness is THE FAILURE EXPERIMENT, which you can get here. It’s a serial poem based in Philip K. Dick, JG Ballard, 20th Century cyberpunk, Jack Spicer, and, well, me.
confessions from a drainage ditch was released in late 2023 through Amazon, and is available in ebook and paperback formats. If you haven't picked it up, it's a great introduction to my more concrete and mainstream work.
There’s my chapbook, A Void and Cloudless Sky. By being a subscriber to this newsletter, you're also entitled to a free PDF version, which you can get here. If you want a hard copy, it’s available here.
If you're liking this whole project and want to support it directly, here is my Patreon. There are lots of little benefits you can get there, from poems written to your specifications to subscriber-only limited-edition chapbooks.
Finally, THE OUTRO.
It's now two days later. Whatever steam I had running into the outro is gone, mostly because I don't know what I was going to put here anyway. In the meantime I've probably come up with the most pretentious and offensive thing I can for an already pretentious project, I've made my transport plans, and I've managed to not yell at too many people on Bluesky. I'm currently on the sixth? seventh? listen through of Everybody Scream. I don't even have the gumption to link everything in this one. No one clicks 'em anyway.
It’s now several hours after I wrote THAT. I listened to 20 seconds of “Femininomenon” and felt hella better—not that you can tell from there how I was feeling. Anyway, I also finally started that dang 22 Cards playlist and fell down that rabbit hole. So that’s technically productive.
…does anyone know how you can claim a Tidal subscription as a business expense?
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