Distributors of Blame

Oh, what the hell.  Let's be naughty.  I may even include music in today's post, too.  We'll just go mad with it all.  I know, of course, that other people's music is irritating.  Why is that so true?  I had a buddy send me a song last night he said was his "favorite cover of all time."  I think he was probably stoned to the gills when he sent it.  It is a woman at a piano covering Jawbreaker's "Accident Prone."  I tried listening to it.  I got about one horrible verse in.  But he thought I'd like the song.  He knows me.  What can you do?  Unless you are a fan of idiotic commercial FM rock stations, there isn't really so much music with that wide popular appeal.  Some.  I watched the rest of that Fred Becky documentary last night.  The soundtrack was by Steve Gunn.  I like Steve Gunn most of the time.  But who in the world has heard of him?  If you have, you are probably a member of a small, outdoor cult whose other members are Jack Johnson fans.  You know. . . music to make you happy.  

There are universals, surely.  Who, for instance, isn't thrilled by the best Satie compositions?  You'd have to have been raised half feral in a jungle or forest where the only music came from bongo drums.  Yea, I'm certainly wrong.  There are probably billions of people who can't stand the sound of Gymnopedies or Gnosseienes.  

I've been wrong about a lot of things.  I used to think the whole world was in love with the sight of a naked woman.  I thought it was the highest form of art and beauty.  I'm pretty certain the Supreme Court and The Woke are in agreement about this.  It won't be long before pornographers like me will be hiding in caves when we are not on the run.  

I guess we only know what we like. You know, of course, that even museum collections are under attack.  Figurative images should be polemic, I guess, sort of like the old Soviet poster art.  

But music?  Jesus. . . I mean people love Adele and Shakira and a whole lotta music I can't call to mind.  

Other people's music just sucks.  Mostly. 

 I met C.C. for lunch yesterday.  We sat outside on the veranda by a large lake and ordered lake sushi and beer.  It was about one hundred degrees, at least with the heat index.  Still, we sat long and talked about his travels and the troubles of our world.  When we were done, I planned to go make some pictures with my big old camera, but stepping into the parking lot, the sun buckled my knees.  I tried to get directions from my phone to the place I wanted to go, a rowing club, but my phone was so hot it wouldn't work.  It would be suicidal, I thought, to try to take pictures with that big assed camera in that heat.  

After unsuccessful stops at two photo stores, I went home and drank twenty four ounces of water.  When I got to my mother's house, I drank another twenty.  I've never been so thirsty.  They say that once you've had heat stroke, you are more susceptible.  I only know that after all that water, I still didn't pee.  It's hot here.  Really hot.  I have never really drunk water in life.  I guess it may be time to start here at the fin de terre.  

Fin de terre?  Surely I have not invented the term. . . but I did come to it on my own just now.  We are all doomsday thinkers in one way or another.  My mother talks about all the people who are stockpiling food for the coming End Times.  People are stocking up on guns and ammunition, too.  I guess the idea is to be the last person standing.  Remember the Peace Movement?  I guess that wasn't a very good idea.  

But I lived through it and, in my youthful naïveté, believed in it.  Sort of.  I was the one hippie in our group who thought we would need to fight for peace, so I was always trying to stay in fighting shape.  My hippie basketball team was really good.  I shouldn't say "my" team.  I was lucky to get to play.  But I was the one who would always get between the jocks and one of my teammates when the shit hit the fan.  My teammates were terrific basketball players, but they were real. . . what word am I allowed to use now?  Not sissies.  Certainly not pussies.  See?  I thought I was a real peacenik, but look at the violence of the language we used at the time.  Oh, I guess there is never enough enlightenment.  Jesus. . . we even thought that naked people running around and making love was a good thing.  Of course we had birth control and abortion rights.  I don't think I've ever been freer in my life than I was back in those terrible times.  

Speaking of Q, he took exception at yesterday's riff on his fall from sobriety.  Is he making the mistake of believing I am writing a research paper or trying for some investigative journalism here?  This is a colorful place full of impressions and bullshit.  Anyone believing these are reliable accounts has eaten one too many mushrooms.  Why do you think I don't use people's names?  I feel free to make them up per my desire.  They are only here to serve my imaginative purpose.  As am I.  There isn't a real person anywhere on this blog. . . except maybe Trump, and we all know that even the real Trump isn't real.  I mean. . . you don't truly believe the shit I say about my mother, do you?  

I'll give you a straight fact here.  As I am writing this blog, an armadillo crossed my deck in front of my glass kitchen door.  I have a net with which I catch the little fuckers and put them in my garbage can, but I haven't done that for many years.  I sat and thought too long, and by the time I got up and out the door, it was gone.  And now, as I write, I can hear the little fucker going under my house.  I now have to begin my wild animal wars all over again.  I can't tell you what I am going to do, but I think I am going to kill the little fucker.  I'm not usually like this having grown up a hippie peacenik and all, but I'm getting old and don't feel like fucking around with it.  Maybe it's the heat. . . I don't know.  I'm not a killer, but goddamnit, the world isn't going to miss one armadillo, right?  

I'll leave you to figure out how much of this is real and how much hyperbole.  I'm going to have to figure that out, too.  

One last note.  This headline confused the hell out of me for a long time this morning as I tried to figure out who the Distributors of Blame were.  And where in the heck is Hard-Hit County?