Humble Drips

High productivity and sleep problems persist.  It's Practice Day (guitar and bass), so I may not do any reviews, but probably will by midnight CST.  You know me. Wrote the chorus for a new song today, and the poems keep coming.  High anxiety, but I'm managing it.  Punk rock (Al Quint's Sonic Overload) and writing. Donate …

I Don’t Wanna [Insert Undesirable Activity]

Hello, neighbors!  I look like like shit right now.  I'll own it. Well, technically that was on Halloween, when we got a snowstorm here in Chicago.  HO HO HO.  In any case, I'm gonna launch into Whiny Adolescent Mode, because I need to vent, and that's the easy way to do it.  This is why …

CHOKED UP-Dichoso Corazon

CHOKED UP-Dichoso Corazon (Independent; cassette release through the wonderful Get Better Records) I’m gonna make this easy: this fucking rocks.  That won’t surprise anyone familiar with Cristy C. Road, Choked Up, or the Homewreckers.  Road is a veteran of the DIY scene, seasoned in zines, comics and great fucking punk rock. She also did the amazing …

Notes of A Mad Blogger

Welcome! If I may repeat myself, I recently (as of 10/25/2019) repurposed my old, basically dormant blog (fka WAR DURING LIFETIME) to be a (mostly) music blog.  I have a large archive of stories, poems and essays here, for now at least.  But due to my obsession with music and my proclivity for writing, it …

An Unpublished Draft I Thought I Published Six Years Ago

WHAT'S YOUR NAME AGAIN? Saturday night she found herself outside this gallery in Asheville, NC, an establishment where her friend Tina Daniels debuted her latest installment, which involved helices of something like cat's cradled yarn; thirty empty beer crates comprising men-figures looking like old, pre-Hollywood illustrations of The Tin Man of Oz; plus copper wiring …

Van Gogh’s Dickens

"Any person who loves another person, Wherever in the world, is with us in this room--- Even though there are battlefields." -Kenneth Patchen, from "Creation" 1. "LOVING VAN GOGH'S STROKES" I went in through the window (Second Story) And bent in the winds' blows (Here gets gory) I spent dead folks' bloodflows As the clock …

Passive-Aggressive Activism

FIRSTLY   "Crazy In Other Words" I like to know The chaos is out there It vindicates my neuroses I am less Crazy in other words. In tune. Godsons gurgle Under a Fawning moon In night bird purple. That’s something To live by Something to light The home with. Hearth & heart & earth Nurture …

Moon Chanty 1

One More To Sing At Sea They skip across the pond (meanwhile, downtown, potholes need to be filled; they reveal no earth anyway) They intersect: Portland, Chicago's Loop, German artists looking down upon the autobahn from a train engineered for flight (which follows patterns more understandable on land) They can silence an ambulance, stomping out sirens …

Rummage Fail

There are certain categories of personal possessions I'll never be able to willfully dispose of.  Writings (of mine or friends'), photographs, any zine or flier or any rare artifact from Chicago punk history, personalized family possessions (photos again; diplomas, yearbooks, office supplies.)  There's a pile of items that don't fall under any category, but which I …