There’s No Trains To Heaven

December 13th, 2023

Things I made this semester: A just barely 19 page long historiography paper. An accompanying 7 and a half page long research proposal with 22 page long annotated bibliography because I found too many interesting sources and had too much to say about them. An 8 page long paper about seditious speech that could have been a little shorter but I had too much to say about that, too. One data research analysis report (with accompanying fun bar graph). A basically functional, entirely responsive website with 7 individual pages (which I’m still putting the final touches on). In between all of this I recorded an eleven song album of nuclear reactor core folk ditties, all by my lonesome.

T’was a good semester.

I also changed my major. Again. This summer I’d declared a second major in history to go with my studies in emerging media and technology with a minor in web design. But I wasn’t too sure about the latter degree. Part of why I was clinging to EMAT was plain ol’ fear, to be completely honest. Not a crippling or conscious fear, but the oft-restated assumption lingering in the back of my head: it’ll make you marketable. If you get a bachelor of arts, you’ll either be out of a decent job or trapped in the stressful, low-paying world of education. Get that ~science~ certificate in your life and you’ll be rolling in that dough and not destute, unlike those silly B.A. kids.

Well, I don’t necessarily agree with that train of thought. Having had the concept of “STEM” shoved down my throat in even middle school, I’ve grown critical of the importance we place on those fields specifically. As vital as technology and science are, you also have to realize that the social sciences are just as useful to, well, society. Yet such fields are looked down upon. No wonder people nowadays are barely capable of critical thought, take everything (especially media) at face value, and barely know the basic facts about their own country’s past. It’s because we condition kids to doze off in their classes and not take education on any level seriously, especially not the subjects associated with boring, stuffy things like reading and interpreting and thinking. Too much hard work, let’s rah-rah the football team instead.

Learning history and connecting it to the present is one of the most important things you can do to become a more aware citizen, and it’s time we stop pushing this culture of self-consciousness over what people think of us because of our degrees or careers and actually work on ourselves to actually get some informed participation in society. As for the career part, my workplace on campus is proof enough to me that studying history can get you a fulfilling job that lets you utilize the skills you honed and information about the wider world you picked up in your studies. It helps you connect with people and their past experiences. It helps you contextualize the world you currently live in. And by studying things objectively, it helps you become a more logical person less swayed by disgusting propagandic appeals to emotion. It just helps you become a better person. Realizing that that is the path I want to take, as opposed to sticking with a major I just wasn’t fully jiving with in the name of some enigmatic ideal of making my chosen institution proud or something, is very freeing.

The web design minor is staying because I just genuinely love twiggling around with my little HTML and CSS files and applying my graphic design Skillz in that manner. On the other hand, I’ve picked up another minor: creative writing. I’ve always taken my writing abilities for granted; I’m a great writer, I’d say. But only now have I really felt empowered (to use a cheesy term for lack of a better one) to express it in a creative way – and not just in the songwriting department. I think I felt for a while that I had to suppress my “creative” side in order to appear serious to…I don’t even know who I was trying to appeal to. But my brain has been firing off in too many directions lately, and has been too inspired by the world around me and my various influences to let my individual perspective linger in the background. I gotta do me.

So I went from English while enrolling –> Journalism because I was under the assumption that all the English majors were going to be Swifties –> Public Relations for a few weeks because I had no idea what I was doing –> Emerging Media and Technology with web design concentration –> History + EMAT + web design –> History major + web design minor + creative writing minor. That’s a really weird and still incomplete circle, but it’s fun to think about.

They Might Call In The National Guard On Your Ass

November 14th, 2023

I watched Punishment Park a few days ago. A cinema vérité pseudodocumentary from 1971(!), it takes place in an alternate United States where hippies, Commie sympathizers, and anti-war protestors who don’t want fifteen to twenty years in prison are shipped off to Punishment Park, where they have three days to run fifty three miles through the desert to an American flag. If they reach it in time, they get to walk free, or so they are told.

It’s a gritty, chilling, masterfully put together work of alternative history and it’s also kind of a misery fest. The absurdity of the concept leaves room for some degree of reaction to the extremity of it, and maybe in a different context I would be able to crack a smile at lanky seventies youths running towards nothing with awful posture through a desert in record-breaking heat. But you have to understand that I have been put through the ringer of having regurgitated radical politik parroted at me over and over and over. It gives certain people a thrill to wallow in that misery. But it just doesn’t thrill me to have people try to insert a microchip in my head repeating slogans of Everything is Awful and Will Never Get Better.

You would think I would relate to one of the girls who gets interrogated at the Punishment Park, who is blonde, 19, and writes (kind of awful) songs about the Pigs and Tricky Dick and all that. She talks about how she dropped out of college because after the Kent State massacre, she realized that it wouldn’t matter if she wore a stars-and-stripes cheerleader uniform and rah-rahed America all day; even if she was just a spectator, the National Guard would just shoot her anyway. She didn’t feel safe being out in the open.

This allure of the “underground” was in full swing during that era of the Weathermen and is even more common today where we long for a time when the revolution wasn’t televised. It seems people love this movie because of these tendencies. When your face is in the light, it’s scary. You retreat to the womb, or in this case the commune, and you feel safer but you also isolate yourself. You surround yourself with hardcore ideals that present plain fact but with no room for changing those facts substantially. You preach upheaval but get so caught up in the concept of it that you mentally can’t go about ever making it happen, because doing so would make you like the world better, and you can’t have that when you live off of the world being against you. It’s addicting. We need the truth, especially now, but we’re all individuals with our own individual lived experiences. The real world isn’t a colorless, lifeless desert plateau. There’s color and water and food and little creatures crawling in the ground.

Different strokes for different folks, but why did Ken Russell have to die before he could direct a hilarious and extremely Ken Russell remake or take of this? These are the thoughts that go through my bored, weird, college girl head.

November 5th, 2023
Know yer history. The Akron Sound is one of dissonance, of Rust Belt desolation, of mutant R’n’B, of the wind whipping through your hair on a cold January night’s walk back to the boarding house from the bar where all you have is frosty breath in your scarf and a sense of humor to keep you warm. It’s cope music. It’s warped-hope music. It’s wracked. It’s jazzed. It’s intelligent. It comes from a bullet wound part of the soul, and it’s fucking badass.

I am less into the Rubber City Rebels and Bizzaros side of things so here are some slices from the more artsy side that particularly tickle my brain.

(I have yet to watch the other documentary about the later Akron Sound music (including Chi-Pig), If You’re Not Dead, Play, but that will surely happen soon.)

November 1st, 2023

Been pondering the meaning of womanhood lately. What makes a woman? The shape? The height? The freckles on her cheeks? How much she chats with boys, her willingness for potential suitors? The dreams of rock star orgy churning in the back of her brain as she goes about her daily toil? The world may never know.

Consumer Decency

October 22nd, 2023

People fall so easily into the trap of feeling like they know things. Not necessarily everything. But they know things, and they want you to know that. Knowing those things is not important. Recognizing the other’s superiority is.

Now, I’d say I know things. I’d say there are certain highly influential consumerist traps and patterns in society that the majority of people are blind to. I just happened to be raised outside the Big Disney machine, so I guess I have the privilege of having less of my train of thought controlled by it. But the tendencies I have towards certain things come from the same place as the tendencies of people who gladly slurp convenience store sushi off of old Uncle Walt’s rotting corpse every day. We’re all human, and humans do weird things to make the right bells go off. We don’t know the picture by name.

Consider every ping as another step towards our individual version of ‘enlightenment’, to use a universally understood term—a step towards consciousness. A step towards awareness, towards greater understanding. Greater understanding of how the world works requires knowledge. But we hoard the knowledge we obtain. We convert it to a status symbol, because we see it as the only thing we have. We live in a Western world of abundance and general stability. When we take these stabilities for granted, we think we own nothing when we really have what many in other parts of the world—or even within our own country’s borders—would consider heaven.

Attaining consciousness requires suffering. But one cannot truly attain consciousness when the good is taken for granted. The generations that experienced World War II and Vietnam are slowly dying off. ‘Nam was the last time Americans utilized the draft, the last time Americans feared friends, family, and themselves being randomly plucked from the claw machine sprawl and stranded abroad to die…now wartime is something only baby killers partake in, despite the many pressures that lead many to enlist for a life plan. If we don’t need it or are told we don’t need it, anyone who engages is a subhuman and a toasty crisp. When my foot is blown off by a landmine I let out a cry and I see a man in crisp jeans who loves that I have gotten what I have asked for. I let out a wail, but he does not hear. He sees the headline about the silly human, the sad human, who got what she asked for. And because of that I am an ant. A cool ant, because I’m dead, and the only thing cooler than death is committing your life to dragged out suicide.

In a chaotic world humans seek stability, but only one kind of stability is uncool. The mind is a whirling vortex of neon lights flashing colors and sedation to black and white—that’s the good stability—keeps the color from bleeding and mingling. The black and white, names constantly changing and mutating, maul each other, unable to coexist but destined to in the name of endless warfare. They create holes in each other, which regenerate or are filled by the other side instantly, constantly exchanging punches. The world (or a thousand, or a hundred, or one) watches with binoculars on the outer edges of the coliseum. The show is a spectacle. The crowd roars.

No war but sex war.

Farmers’ Market

September 22nd, 2023

A big part of why I started blogging in the first place was that I realized that the internet in recent times has become, for lack of a better term, dumbed down with academic cred. I see graphics of quotes from well known intellectuals of the past and sometimes present reposted ad nauseam all the time. The implication of intellectual engagement with the least amount of effort.

The fact that this is so common—and that I often see the same platitudes posted by multiple people across the span of a few days—feels very endemic of the current state of online discourse. Radically minded thinkers putting up their hands and putting their fingers to the keyboard in an emphatic burst of passion…only to share a doom-confirming quotation from a source seen as reliable, with any additional commentary boiling down to an annoyingly exasperated sigh and “yep”. That’s not even two words.

Where do we go as a country when the best commentary we can muster on our society is someone else’s theory regurgitated verbatim with little thought regarding the content as long as it sets off nicey bells in our heads? In today’s America, we choose a side and ride it ’til we die, only activating those wonderful Critical Thinking Skills when it’s to demonize someone who even slightly leans towards the opposition. That’s not freedom of thought. That’s mental slavery. Your freedom is the price you pay to come off to your friends as “right”.

It is almost as if this glory of proving yourself “right” to the nebulous entity that is whoever may be observing you at any given time, outweighs the formation of actual solution and action that can lead to the solutions you want. It’s a damn shame that the legacy of these smart-whipped creatives who wrote the originals, if we keep sitting on our asses, is going to be “all we did in reaction was sigh”.

In our interactions with the wider world we always see ourselves as the little guy. This transcends any sort of societal status or access to privileges; everyone loves to be a victim. Because of this we embrace negativity and wallow in it. If ignorance is bliss, then abject suffering must mean we are intelligent, and intelligence equals righteousness. We conduct ourselves to these standards of being the most “right” to such a degree that we simply don’t take action. Action is normally messy. Individually crafted politics are inherently so. Getting mustard on your sweatshop-new, hackney-slogan t-shirt isn’t a good look.

This is because we have taught ourselves that humans have an apex and we ourselves, to ourselves, are that apex. It’s the mythos of the little girl getting depressed by her peaches and cream Barbie, except we are are the little girl and the doll simultaneously. We plasticize ourselves because we are faced against not just established systems of power and economics but the will of human nature itself, and not much can be done to radically alter the not so skillfully applied makeup of humankind. We are still humans underneath all the buildup, vested with the history proven capacity to make radical good and to make radical evil, though we often forget the latter attribute since we don’t like thinking about scary things and prefer reducing anyone who doesn’t agree with us to a subhuman, a fascist ball of primordial ooze. (As if we’re not collectively swimming in it.)

It’s much easier to blame everything on a redneck who lives five states away. Obviously the blame is on the big guy only as it applies to the little guy, but the other kind of little guy than you. This is unity, right? This is getting things done?

When we prune ourselves over like this for others we deny ourselves the do, because doing requires room for error and failure, and belly flopping isn’t the “right” thing to do. So we become complacent to what ails us instead. We may know the truth that the people running the asylum are the real crazies, but we’re so obsessed with proving our own manufactured sanity that we can’t let ourselves be seen as even 1/24 delirious. But you have to be a little unhinged to have the ambition to actually try. You have to let that side of yourself be seen.

But ambition isn’t a good look. It gets you looked at funny at best and gets you locked up at worst. So we call for our armchair revolutions all the while.

If we keep up this lethargy then maybe the only solution is to keep our eyes peeled to the heap of melted plastic as it slowly disintegrates into the landfill earth. To keep doing the same thing we’ve been doing. Half life after half life.

But it does not have to be this way.

One of the best pieces of advice you can give someone

September 13th, 2023

Don’t listen to a musical artist just because someone (or some scene) you seek approval from listens to them.

Hard Living

September 9th, 2023

Pussy Gillette are hands down one of the best recent groups in existence. And to think frontwoman Masani didn’t first pick up a bass until her thirties and all of their music videos—favorably—look like a straight rip from a thrice-copied VHS tape you would get your grubby hands on from a cool skater buddy in either 1988 or 1998. They are as real and raw as it gets, yet the video of theirs linked above, which just came out a few days ago, has just 312 views at the time of me writing this.

A message of defiant empowerment that pairs big-smile badassery with a great and much needed sense of humor, buried against the tides of internet business as usual. I don’t think people are quite ready for Pussy Gillette. They may be “recent”, but they bring with them a heady aspiration for longevity that might alienate the general public. The general public is not concerned with artists with guts, just artists with all-caps GUTS. Of course, I speak of America’s prodigal girlchild, Olivia Rodrigo, who I cannot believe I am mentioning in the same breath as Pussy Gillette. But I have to.

I voluntarily keep up with Olivia’s music as a checking tool since she’s just one year older than me yet completely the opposite of me in numerous ways. Here’s the thing: when I write songs and make music, I hope to make a—for lack of a better term—ack—safe space for young female artists who prefer not to listen to Taylor Swift. Olivia’s music intends to make a hostile space for young female artists who prefer not to listen to Taylor Swift. You see the problem here? We are not very compatible. I will give her most recent video credit for not being a genreless slice of slap-in-the-face curd pie like some of her others—c’mon, it’s kyuuuuute.

Olivia is twenty, a baby in the grand scheme of things. Not too long ago she was nineteen, my age. I can attest to the pain and suffering that comes with being a teenage girl, as well as the satisfaction that can come from squishing and pouring those swirling emotions into song (or prose). The truth is is that I am just not as social as Olivia—no wonder she uses the butterfly throughout her branding. I don’t really have songs to write about regarding Tyler from history class. I have songs to write about mass media brainwashing’s effect on the populace and that scene from The Wall where Bob Geldof is yelling at everyone (which is probably the most accurate depiction of the modern day large scale concert production, by the way). Maybe if that Tyler kid said something that really fascinated/infuriated/both of those things-me I would wring it like a towel and turn the warped, pulsating droplets into a song. But my brain is too skewered and too focused on my studies to do the whole “normal teenage girl” thing that much.

Or maybe that’s just the “commercially palatable” thing. Olivia’s GUTS are that she is smooth, like intestines in a well-oiled Cuckoo’s Nest Combine machine. Our friends Pussy Gillette, however, are rough, jagged, and edgy in a way that is all their own. And boy, do they own it. Yet they are not willy nilly—they share the same focus, awareness, and intelligence that societally powerful artists have, though PG choose cute shock value over cute exploitation of the vulnerable masses. In this I actually see a chance of engagement with a wider, captive audience—they embody defiance and self-assured-ness in a world that needs it. “Permanent Trash” is an ode to self empowerment and self pride. These traits are of great yet controversial interest and analysis to our society. Because of the internet, the self esteem of humanity sits in a perilous state in an age of simultaneous constant comparison to and instant disappointment in other people. We are forced to ask ourselves what traits we can find pride in without alienating others, springing gray hairs like poison darts as we ruminate on how we could be “better”.

Never mind that the people pitting us against each other in this manner are so comfortable in their positions of corrupt power that they never even consider these concerns. They know they are bad, and they know they have their fingers on society’s pulse. The “influencers” we worship and revile in unison, the milquetoast kings and queens of the schoolyard, guide us towards superficial quests for brownie points that only serve to obscure that they are the real enemy. In a desperate bid for commercial acceptance, humanity cries out, “what part of me is palatable?” Pussy Gillette offer the answer: the whole she-bang, baby. Live with yourself. Live.

But, of course, by the time you’re on the “G” in their name when typing it into the YouTube search bar, the suggested results snap away out of fear of Pussy Gallavanting, Pussy Galloping, Pussy Grumbling, or any sort of adorable videos of tiny felines doing cute things, therefore obstructing the culture of cat videos that has been the foundation of the internet since its earliest days.

But all of the best recent bands—PG, cumgirl8, Round Eye, as I was writing this Spotify recommended me a band called DICKFARTBUTTSEX—have eyebrow raising names. I say we usher in a new culture of degeneracy and dignity with the music we listen to. You can’t truly spill guts without a little seppuku.

P.S.: A side note from the Tumblr side of things: this new wave of porn bots is too good. “ReformedBlasphemy” should be MY username.

A New Age Of Prosperity (Not Really)

September 5th, 2023

Tumblr tells me it’s been a glorious two years since I started my blog over there. I’ve been blogging over here for longer than that, but it feels fitting that I jumped over a hurdle on this dot-com side of things just yesterday: the comments section ACTUALLY WORKS! I’d heard it hadn’t been working by some Tumblr troll a while back and assumed that it would eventually fix itself. It didn’t. But now it works.

I’ve been sluggish with my long form posting lately because school and newfound hobbies keep me busy. But having been in a very opinionated mood lately, I seek to get back into it more. Also, with comments being back, I hope that I can facilitate some degree of intellectual discussion here. Facebook can be fun, but people deserve more than overgeneralized infographics and filter bubbles all the time. Our brains deserve a jog.

I am a firm believer that one day there will be a wider rejection of reductive internet bickering and a shift towards more nuanced discussions in such a format as this, so I hope this page can be a space for the beginning of that, as it has always been intended to be. Fire up that RSS feed, people.

I’m sorry that the post immediately before this one is disturbing.

September 4th, 2023

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/this-is-weird-former-kent-state-instructor-accused-of-painting-student-faces-like-clowns

What the fuck? Like, seriously, what the fuck. Now I know why the halls of my dorm smell like raw sewage. His specter still haunts our stomping grounds.

Additionally, if you’re going to be inflicting your weird fetish on vulnerable young people, at least be good at it. Nightmare fuel…on numerous levels.