Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

A Note To Readers

There’s usually more variety here– silly make-em-ups of all sorts, and characters both beloved and tolerated popping up to chime in, and digressions about frippery–and posts don’t usually run over two thousand words. I apologize if you were looking for something else.

But I don’t know what to do right now, and I am a coward who wants to run away to someplace where the world makes sense.

From here we go somewhere, and that is as specific as anyone can be.

23 Comments

  1. Luther Von Baconson

    “keep skatin’, keep checkin’, just get a shot on goal. good things’ll happen. You can’t get the puck outta your own end? you EAT IT!”

    words of wisdom from A Hockey Coach Named Gord

  2. 21st Century Dead

    The only logical thing would be for Precarious, Wally, and Bob to steal the Earthroamer and road trip to stop the inauguration.

  3. Nobodaddy

    Some place where the world makes sense? Human behavior and instinct are with us everywhere, and how badly things are f*cked up is only a difference of degree.

    To be this disturbed by recent events would seem to tell me there’s either a lack of knowledge, or denial about how bad things have been, and for how long. The Deep State and shadow government have been at it for a long time. The 60’s saw elements of the government assassinate Patrice Lumamba, Diem, Pinochet and others. Never mind the domestic assassinations. Both parties gave us the Vietnam war, and that war wasn’t simply about checking the spread of Communism. If it was about that at all. The history of this government is dark and ugly, and has been for a long time, up to current day. It’s just that in recent, years it’s not as out in the open.

    Read some Chomsky, Peter Dale Scott, listen to George Carlin, Bill Hicks
    It didn’t just simply take a turn for the worse suddenly these last few months.
    If anything, now we get to see how really screwed up this country has always been, and this is just another manifestation of it.

  4. badumbadum

    When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

  5. John

    It was ever this. The odd occurance is the brief intermittant burst of hope with a short shelf life.

    This one deals an extra layer of bitterness due to being unexpected. It just couldn’t happen right? Wrong.

    As someone says the past was awful. The current melanoma is just a reminder.

    Keep marching. And singing.

  6. hugh.c.mcbride

    Lisa Bonchek Adams was one of the most honest & gutsiest people I’ve ever encountered out here on the ol’ Innertubes. She blogged & Tweeted about her life with metastatic breast cancer, posting updates until just days before her death in March of 2015. Most mornings, she began her Twitter day with the following:

    “Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can’t find it, create it.
    Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.”

    I’ve found myself thinking a lot about her, and especially about these words, since Tuesday evening. Now I’m in no way naive enough to think that happy thoughts & looking at flowers will make the world a better place. But I am damn sure that finding those bits of beauty in every day are essential to our efforts to make the world (or at the very least our respective/proverbial corners of it) better.

    For the past year or so, this site, and your words, and the random contributions of the commentariat here, have been a “bit of beauty” in many of my days. I like knowing that there are smart, funny, talented, compassionate folks like you & your commenters out there in the world, and that I’m able to connect with y’all on even the most tangential basis here. My appreciation for all of this has only deepened since Tuesday evening.

    I realize that none of these emotions change one iota of what is occurring in the world. But they have helped me to cope, and they give me the strength to get the fuck outta bed in the morning and try like hell to make my world and myself a little bit better before I hit the pillow again in the evening.

    I guess what I’m saying is I hear ya, brother, I’m with ya, and I truly appreciate what you do & how you do it.

    • Dawn

      perfect. beautiful. kind.

      thank you.

    • Thoughts On The Dead

      Thank you. I needed that, truly.

    • Dead_drift

      Yep, for now TOTD is really the only icon left on my phone that I don’t dread. I used to like reading the news or spinning through FB a couple times a day. I can’t even bring myself to listen to NPR.

      Thanks as always. Love the poem to you dad…I must’ve read that a dozen times.

      • Ox

        That’s funny. I had that exact realization on the train this morning. My thumb just hovered over the New York Times for a minute next to the little stealie for TOTD.

  7. Amerikkka

    Don’t sweat it as terrifying as it is to us folks in the rest of the world the crazy evil egomaniac that trump us, it is worth remembering that as Chomsky notes the usa has a permanent government, although scarily the guardian notes trump appoints 4000 people upon his inauguration, and the figurehead president.
    95% of the folks in the two houses will be the same that have been there forever. Stalinist Russia didn’t have the same reelection rates as the states does.
    https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/reelect.php
    No other country in the world has such a permanent unchanging government.
    Jah help us all though, trump is the logical extension of an America where 50% of Americans can’t find their country on a map of the world and anyone over ten believes what they here on cnn.

    • Thoughts On The Dead

      Please don’t compare Stalinist fucking Russia to the US until we’ve got at least a couple million more Kulak and Tartar bodies to dispose of, okay?

      And everyone needs to stop mentioning Chomsky to me. I’ve read him, and his political bullshit is even worse than his linguistic bullshit, which is not even wrong.

  8. ChadB

    Chin Up! Bucko.

  9. Rushit

    In Soviet Russia, Trump’s wig wears him

  10. Robin Russell

    All that they [the Nova Mob] offer is a screen to cover retreat from the colony they have so disgracefully mismanaged. To cover travel arrangements so they will never have to pay the constituents they have betrayed and sold out. Once these arrangements are complete they will blow the place up behind them.

    And what does my program of total austerity and total resistance offer you? I offer you nothing. I am not a politician. These are conditions of total emergency. And these are my instructions for total emergency if carried out now could avert the total disaster now on tracks:

    Peoples of the earth, you have all been poisoned. [all italics in original] Convert all available stocks of morphine to apomorphine. Chemists, work round the clock on variation and synthesis of the apomorphine formulae. Apomorphine is the only agent that can disintoxicate you and cut the enemy beam off your line. Apomorphine and silence. I order total resistance directed against this conspiracy to pay off peoples of the earth in ersatz bullshit. I order total resistance directed against The Nova Conspiracy and all those engaged in it.

    The purpose of my writing is to expose and arrest Nova Criminals. In Naked Lunch, Soft Machine and Nova Express I show who they are and what they are doing and what they will do if they are not arrested. Minutes to go. Souls rotten from their orgasm drugs, flesh shuddering from their nova ovens, prisoners of the earth to come out. With your help we can occupy The Reality Studio and retake their universe of Fear Death and Monopoly –
                 
    (Signed) INSPECTOR J. LEE, NOVA POLICE

  11. mikemj

    TotD,
    I, too, have found some sense of sanity (believe it or not) by coming here the past couple days.
    Thank you for what you do.

  12. Mean, Green, Devil Eating Machine

    What would Jerry do?

  13. cgrand

    i want to say something, and i hope it is meaningful to someone.

    there is a very high likelihood that my personal political beliefs differ from most of my fellow enthusiasts, and that’s OK. if this band of brothers and sisters has shown us anything, its that is OK to be different. for the entirety of my adult life i have found community, acceptance, and confidence of place among my fellow deadheads and one of my very favorite things about my life is my membership in this amazing family. without it, i would quite literally become un-moored.

    we will be fine.
    i share your anger and angst that this charlatan has been given the keys to the car, but understand that he is only riding shotgun to the great american experiment, which may on occasion suffer fools but has never and will never become one. stand up for what you believe is right and just, and talk to and try to understand those who offer alternatives to get there. many people voted out of anger, spite and bile, but just as many of your fellow americans also voted out of hurt, distrust, and a growing sense of disassociation from the world around them.

    help them to see that there is nothing to fear.
    hear them when they tell you they are not as privileged as they are being told they are.
    show them there is a better way that we can all participate in.
    and please…do not insult them by using the same language of stereotyping that continues to separate us from each other.

    we are all going to the same place, some faster than others.
    goodness will prevail, i believe that.

    use your powers for good, and show others the same kindness and acceptance you have always shown me.

    and ToTD…your writing here is always delightful and on many occasions has been startlingly brilliant. i am in awe of your mastery of language and satire. the world needs more of you, not less.

    shine a light

  14. Clucker

    At least you have 2-4 years of material writing semi-fictional Trump speeches?
    I say 2-4 years because I fail to see how Trump can make it 4 without committing some offense that even the Republicans will find impeachable. The NY AG is investigating his foundation. Do you think there is any way Trump will not threaten federal retribution against NY unless it drops the investigation? Could he possibly resist some inappropriate threat to Judge Curiel in the Trump University case? I mean, he has power, and if there’s one thing he knows about power, it’s that you use it to take what you want. Piss on your enemies, grab a tiny handful of pussy. Chris Christie and Roger Ailes will confirm this truth if there were any doubts (and there are not).
    Then we’ll have President Pence. God help us. There’s no upside to that.

Leave a Reply to Luther Von Baconson Cancel reply