02/16/2025 - signals over the air

It's been a little while hasn't it? I've been meaning to write, but I don't know, I just felt like I hadn't had the time...anyways now I'm finally just doing it. I don't think this blog is gonna be the kind of thing where I have to plan to make a post. It just feels so impersonal to do it that way. I guess if I want to make a blog post, I'll just make one when I feel like it.

I've been doing sets on the college radio station and tonight I finally recorded one on USB. It's also called Into My Skull. Here's the recording of tonight's set.

me, cellia and nikita

It took a second to get the recorder to work so there's a bit missing, but here was the complete setlist:

(Hayley Heyndrickx and Spoon played automatically as I was setting up)

No Surprise - Fugazi

Illusions of Success - Lagrimas

Oh Well - Snake River Conspiracy

The Revolutionary Politics of Dance - An Albatross

Film Noir - Scott Hallgren

Space Monkeys - Fight Club

Doomtech - vein.fm

Limp - Fiona Apple

Billy Knows Jamie - 100gecs (cut this one short because i forgot they literally say FUCK!!!!)

Get Off the Internet - Le Tigre

Pore - OhGr

U.F.O.F. - Big Thief

And then, as the clock struck 10...

Kill the President - The Arrogant Sons of Bitches

Nikita is  OBSESSED with The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and anything Jeff Rosenstock. Like genuinely obsessed, he knows this guy's entire discography and all his side projects. It's kind of like me with Nine Inch Nails but I'd say he's more obsessed. I made him a CD of the Arrogant Sons of Bitches album and he was so hyped to play it so we snuck it in last minute.

It's a great band. Really 2000s but also somehow timeless, pop-punky ska? Apparently that album took 4 years to make and tore the band apart in the process. Nikita said another reason was that Rosenstock was super opposed to selling merch while the rest of the band wanted to. Morals and stuff. I found that really cool.

And you can tell, even though Rosenstock's music is hardly ever political, it is so deeply, purely punk. Firmly rooted in the fact your art is your own; it reflects your own life and being, and you will create it not to be thoughtlessly absorbed, but to be engaged with. To be seen.

I'm watching Fugazi's documentary Instrument on-and-off right now. The band performed without a setlist every night, just locking in and playing, focused on the feeling and the fact that they could jump into any one of their dozens of songs any second. I love Guy Picciotto's sort of lilting, moany voice and how it contrasts with McKaye's harsh bark. They also never sold shirts. 

But there was a bootleg shirt that was popular at the time. It said, "This is not a FUGAZI TShirt." And on the back, "You are not what you own." 

Pretty cool. I like T-Shirts. I used to think that song was saying, "you are not what you are."

My next blog post is gonna be about Old Hollywood. Don't let me forget it.

m 

P.S. Rest in peace Lynch.

11/29/2024 - im a human just like you but ive got better things to do

Hello everybody. I made this blog because I love sharing photos, art and music online - A LOT - but I'm really sick of the modern internet. Every time I go on social media I'm made frighteningly aware of how much it wants to harness my attention, pull me in its clutches, and never let me leave. I might sound melodramatic but that's exactly how I feel. I walk around and see all these people with 9hr a day screentimes staring at their phones and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I think about all we could be doing, how much we'd benefit socially and emotionally and intellectually, if this would all just go away.

I can't tell if this is stupid or not, but I keep thinking about Ian Mackaye and Minor Threat and Straight Edge. About how Mackaye renounced drugs and alcohol because by destroying your body and your mind in this way, you are willingly giving yourself up to being controlled. I'm not straight edge, like, I'm a college student. What am I supposed to do, not drink beer? But social media destroys our bodies in our minds in the same way. We're engaging in this constant feed of slop and I'm pretty sure the only way to free ourselves to quit it all, cold turkey. But I don't know anybody who's about to do that, including myself (though I do try).

Dykes to Watch Out For was a lesbian-political-satirical-soap opera comic strip by Alison Bechdel that ran from the 80s to the early 2000s. As a dyke to watch out for, I've obviously read all of it. The (debatably) main protagonist, Mo, who I'm pretty sure is a sort of self-insert character for Bechdel to project all her anxieties and insecurities, is constantly freaking out about the insanities of modern politics. She's also really, really, really, really, really annoying. At one point, and I don't know if this is a reference to something else or not, so I'm sorry if this outs me as the troglodyte I am; Mo says something like:

"Mindless entertainment is the handmaiden of fascism!"

 I read this, and I thought, "Mo is literally me."

DTWOF characters age realistically throughout the comic strip, while reacting to the constantly shifting political climate. That's one thing I love about it. Throughout the 20-year strip, characters endure divorce, cancer, death, quitting vegetarianism, the lesbian radical feminist bookstore shutting down at the hands of Bunns & Noodle, bisexual awakenings, transitioning, and affairs - lots and lots of affairs. Everyone's cheating on each other all the time. It's crazy.

If DTWOF existed today, Mo would probably be in her 60s. More likely, I imagine her dying of an anxiety-induced heart attack. In the best case scenario, Mo and Sydney move out to the suburbs, with not too many cats, maybe a small, eye-boogered dog to walk around their progressive neighborhood, and Mo gets really into Tai-Chi to save herself, and the only thing they watch are British murder mysteries on PBS. And they're rich because of Sydney's super successful graphic autobiography-turned-Broadway musical, so they don't have to work or anything.

Either that, or Mo is a hermit, cowered in her bed in the dark, awaiting the inevitable doomsday when the mindless youth fed a countless stream of fascistic brainrot overtake the universe as "I'm just a girl" plays on 2x speed on repeat in the background.