Hello! My first full-length album release since 2021 is now OUT for purchase and (limited) streaming! Click the image below, or this link here, which will take you my Bandcamp page, where you can purchase the album for a measly $9!
I am also going to have it up on ALL streaming sites ASAP. Like, next week. So there will be unlimited steaming eventually. It was a last minute impulse to sign up for TuneCore, okay? Just stay tuned.
Want to see a tracklist? I gotchu babe!
Somehow the Mongoose Got Outside Again
The Breakup Groove
Xmas Needed a Heretic Genius
Jenny (How You Stayed Within My Sight)
Mr. Two Shoes
The Horizon
Depressed by Figure
The Cool Waitress of the Sabbath
Mod Girl
I Will Be Waiting Here
Smoking Weed at the Bus Stop
I Miss Dancing
The Actress of Freestyle Cows
It Ends All Lonesome
I also have two music videos!
If you enjoy the album, please send it to your friends, family, your favorite dog, etc etc. Word of mouth is the best way to spread awareness! Because it means it has been vetted by you and people trust that more than they trust self-promotion. That said: this is a good album full of fun tracks. I truly hope you enjoy it. Thank you for listening!
Hi. About a week or so ago I decided to release a new album of music I had recorded in over the summer of 2023. They’re lo-fi songs, written during FAWM’s 50/90 challenge, and after I recorded them I set them aside and was unsure if I would touch them again. But then I listened to them recently and you know what? They’re pretty good.
Then I took a walk a couple days later and recorded it, and made a simple lil music video for one of the tracks, which is called “It Ends All Lonesome.” Here it is. I hope you enjoy it.
The album is called Somehow the Mongoose Got Outside Again, fourteen songs about love, loneliness, gangsters, edgelord kids, the annoyance of cows, a singer’s life on the road, and, of course, a mongoose who got outside again, somehow. It is set to be released on my Bandcamp site on Valentine’s Day, 2025.
(I’m also in the process of remastering and fixing up my album discography, which is why there aren’t a lot of my older albums currently on my Bandcamp. They’ll be there soon!)
If you like the song, please do all the things that every influencer tells you to do with videos so that it can get seen by more people. I’d love to get enough views that I start to get hate comments. Nothing drives engagement more than hate.
TL;DR: Nazis.Also I wrote this originally on Substack.
The older I get, the more I realize that “principleism,” i.e. doing something “on principle,”1 is a tricky road. More often than not, either the principle is flawed, or the principle is trivial, like a non-lethal version of the Trolley Problem that we all know and love:
For example, I play a lot of video games. Too many, one might say. I have a Steam account and an Epic Games account. Sometimes, games are released “exclusively” on Epic Games, meaning you can’t purchase it on your Steam account. But Epic Games also has a free game that you can download every Thursday.
I have a friend who refuses to use Epic Games “on principle” because of the exclusivity. I, on the other hand, don’t give a shit, because I currently have 133 games on that app and I think 98% of them were given to me for free.
In this instance, is refusing to use a gaming service “on principle” worth it? I don’t think so. This is the Trolley Problem, but one track is Steam and the other is Epic Games. I guess. It feels trivial and arbitrary, and likely a symptom of a larger issue (coughcoughcapitalismcough). But if you gave me a slice of Pizza Hut pizza and a slice of Dominoes pizza, I’d eat both.
My point is this: some principles are not worth the effort, and some are.
One of my principles that I feel strongly about and feel is worth the effort it: I don’t think Nazis are good people. There, I’ve said it, real weight off my chest. Substack, on the other hand, seems to disagree: Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content on their site.
Their argument is basically as follows: If we censor Nazi voices (including demonetizing them), then they’ll find another way to spread their vile ideology. I think that’s the gist of it.2 And yeah that sounds bad, I guess, except that Substack and all other websites on the internet are hosted on professional, high-end servers, which require exorbitant funds to operate, and UX/UI designers to create, etc etc. What Substack, then, is offering to Nazi and other far-right voices is a clean, easy-to-use place to disseminate their dangerous opinions.
In other words—imagine if it was, say, 1942, and the New York Times printed opinion articles by Nazis,3 and those articles were then sent through their fancy, enormous printing press to millions of subscribers across the United States.
Now, imagine if the NYT and all other publications were like, “Fuck that,” and banned printing Nazi articles, and the Nazis were forced to find their own way of printing their opinions. Instead of the big, fancy NYT printing presses, they instead printed on mimeographed pamphlets that they had to hand out on street corners.
Which of these two options would disseminate Nazi voices faster?
In short: banning Nazi opinions from Substack would, yes, force them “underground,” where they would struggle to find server space and designers, thus crippling their ability to disseminate information.
Instead, Substack not only allows Nazi/far-right voices, they allow them to profit from their newsletters.
That’s why I’m leaving Substack, and why I’m highly encouraging you to leave as well.
But I understand if you don’t. Truly! It’s hard to find an audience, and it’s hard to get and keep a subscriber base, if you’re trying to make money. I don’t begrudge artists from staying on X/Twitter either. Like I said, some principles aren’t worth the effort, and there is an argument to be made for smaller creators/writers/artists in maintaining their space in order to succeed.
For me, it’s the principle of the thing. This is just a life update blog, it’s ephemeral, it’s nothing. And it’s free. So, I’m outta here. Don’t worry, you’ll hear from me via WordPress soon enough. I’m just posting this here until … Christmas? Sure, Christmas. Merry Christmas.
I just made this term up and I refuse to google to see if it’s already a thing. ↩︎
There is also some nonsense about giving “space” for online discourse, aka “we need as much money as we can possibly stuff into our pockets.” ↩︎
I think they actually did this in the 30s, but … just go with me here. ↩︎
My dad’s been in and out of the hospital since last week (around 11/22). The issue (according to my mother): a gallstone had lodged in his bile duct and began backing up bile. My dad already takes a lot of painkillers for his feet; the nerves of his feet and legs were damaged over 20 years ago due to a lack of blood flow (and a wrong diagnosis from a doctor, but that’s a whole other story). So the pain, he thought at first, was indigestion, as he was dealing with nausea and vomiting. But it got worse and eventually he had to go to the hospital, where the discovered and subsequently removed said gallstone. Just one, it seems, plus a “lot of gunk,” which refers to inflammation from infection. See, the bile had backed up so much that it was seeping back into his liver. That’s not good. There was so much that they had to install a drain to get it out. Doing so caused his gallbladder to spasm as it returned to its normal shape, which my dad was not a fan of.
Since then, he’s had some issues with his blood pressure and some fluid collecting in his lungs and around his heart. It sounds mostly like his body just working to get itself right after the gallbladder draining. The fluid’s been drained and his BP has returned to normal. He also had a water leak in his hospital room, an errant fire alarm, and a woman in a nearby room whose fall protection alarm kept going off. Plus having to wait to even get into the hospital due to the rampant RSV infections around the country. The American healthcare system in action.
He’s doing better since and my mom believes he’ll be able to go home today (haven’t heard from her yet). My understanding is that he’ll have to keep wearing the gallbladder drain (which, I think, it’s kind of like a smaller ostomy bag for his gallbladder–a gallostomy bag, we’ll say) until his gallbladder is healed enough for them to remove it. Dad is vehemently against surgery, and I don’t blame him, he’s been through some big ones. But it’s either that or a constant concern that his gallbladder will back up and become infected again.
My dad is 80 years old, my mom 75. They’ve been married for 56 years. Back then, you got married in your late teens/early 20s. During that half a century they’ve experienced all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations. And that’s not even mentioning me and my two brothers compounding those trials x10. Eventually everyone and everything dies. It’s the only constant in the universe. It’s inevitable, and yet completely unique each time. My dad’s told me numerous times that he’s at peace with dying. He knows it’s coming. But in moments like this I realize that there’s a difference between being at peace with the concept of dying, and actually dying, which I think, no matter what, is going to be scary. But it’s not a contrast; it’s a complement. The peace and the fear. There’s something kind of depressing about not being afraid to die, you know? Life is so weird and miraculous, and then you’re just going to leave it at some point. Why wouldn’t you have some trepidation about that?
In all honesty it’s a miracle that my dad’s been alive as long as he has. Or rather, it’s a miracle of medicine and doctors and surgery. It’s no miracle of God. If anything, God had his grubby paws out, waiting to snatch him up over 20 years ago. Or when he had throat cancer about a decade later. Science is the thing that keeps him around. I’m more thankful for science than I am for some deity in the sky.
Anyway, that’s an update on that. Dad’s doing alright, mom’s hanging in there. Still waiting to hear on if he’ll be released from the hospital today. It sounds likely.
I just don’t like to see you thinking about stuff, is all.
What is that supposed to mean?
Well, you start to think about something, and then that thing turns into two things, and then those two things turn into four things, and —
I’m just thinking about —
It’s exponential, you know.
Right, right. I get it.
This is all about Twitter, isn’t it?
… Sort of.
Alright, explain.
I signed up for Twitter back in 2008 and have more or less enjoyed the hell out of it until about 2015. Or whenever Trump started being more of an issue on it. Really, I could say that it was when news and politics became a thing in general on that site, but it really stopped being a fun site during the Trump presidency. My interest in it has waxed and waned since then.
I’ve written some type of blog since forever. 1998? But when Twitter took over, instead of blogging, I tweeted. If I didn’t start auto-deleting my tweets a few years ago, I’m sure I’d have around 30,000 tweets by now. That’s a lot. Most of it dumb jokes that were topical and wouldn’t make sense now.
Anyway, Elon Musk bought Twitter and that guy is a real dumb piece of shit, so I’ve been thinking about leaving Twitter for good. It’s hard because I like writing and I like the microblogging that Twitter offers. But I’ve also noticed over the years that I’ve become less introspective and honest in my writing, which I miss. So I thought I would start up a blog again, to keep that going.
How’s that sound?
Eh, it’s fine I guess. You’re talking to yourself, though, so you’re already worried that you won’t ever update and nobody will ever read it and everybody hates you forever.
Damn, you really know me, me.
So what about the newsletter?
It’s still going to happen. I might copy blogs from here into it though, spruce them up for the newsletter crowd. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or a bad idea, but who cares.
Gotcha.
Blogs for the blog crowd, newsletters for the newsletter crowd.
2017 has been a shit year for the world. Thankfully we have Facebooks and Twitters and Tumblrs and all sorts of social media that you can reference regarding that particular breakdown of our country’s fundamental governing. This is my blog, so of course I will talk about myself.
For me 2017 has been more mediocre and lacking in ambition than anything else. There have been some high points: I was in a play, the first legitimate paying gig in like three years. It was a lean cut of Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida, done at Lone Fir Cemetery here in Portland, by Portland Actors Ensemble. We had a great cast and an equally great run, and I am thoroughly proud of the production and the people within it. It, for a brief moment, sparked a renewed passion to act again, though to be honest that spark has since dwindled, for reasons I’ll talk about later.
I have a new job, working as a Legal Secretary for the Oregon Department of Justice. My first state job. I started in September and still have a couple of months left on my trial period. To be honest I took a positional hit for this job–I was a Legal Assistant at my old job, though jobwise it was much more on par with being a paralegal[1. If you’re confused about the hierarchy of these titles, you know how a rectangle is sometimes a square but a square is never a rectangle? Yeah, it’s that kind of confusing.]. Either way, definitely a higher position than secretary. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of an upward climb through the state system, either through the DOJ or somewhere else in the state. I appreciate the job security, the benefits, and the ability to get my student loans forgiven.
Also, the Dept of Justice’s online intranet site is called DOJO, which is fun.
In February I wrote some really great songs as part of FAWM, which I hope to throw onto a website this year.
In November I finished NaNoWriMo for the second time in the 15 years I’ve attempted. The book is called Leap Year One and I hope to get it ready for a first draft by March or April or something like that.
So I have a lot to be happy about. And yet so many other things are nagging at me.
I gave up my blog for nearly a year so I could write a bunch of monologues. As with most of my ventures these days, it ended with a sense of ambivalence. I wrote some good stuff, I wrote some bad stuff. I pretended song lyrics were monologues during FAWM. I wrote part of a NaNoWriMo novel in first person, pretending those were monologues. I delved a bit into my own battles with depression, a thing I keep meaning to write about but end up not doing because, of course, I don’t think it’s worthy of your time. (Then again, this is my blog, and if you’re reading it then you obviously have devoted time to it.) It’s funny; in my teens and part way into my 20s I spent a lot of time being open and introspective about my own life. I’d write tons of material on Diaryland and LiveJournal–completely open for people to read (which got me in trouble a couple of times). I did it so much that I realized I was being repetitious and I guess I decided I didn’t like that. Not for me, per se, but for you, the reader, whomever you may be. My repetitions were usually negative in nature and being repetitious about how I’m bad at dating or how I suck because I don’t want to go out ever ground me down like a weathered rock on a riverbed. Polished, but dull, lacking edges. Same as all the other rocks.
So later on I just gave up writing things. I decided to be introspective in my own head. Folks, that’s not the best idea. Ideas in your head roll around forever, they get stuck there, trapped in your consciousness until you let them out. And I’ve always been a man who needed an outlet, especially for my creativity, which tends to diffuse sadness or depression vis a vis working distraction. Taking my problems and internalizing them to the extent that I have been has only pulled me down, in ways I didn’t know I could be pulled. I’m still climbing out of that pit. Writing monologues was an excuse to be creative every day, to try and inhabit another person’s mind for at least an hour or two a day. Truth is, some days I forgot and had to make up for them later. Other days I didn’t want to get out of bed. And then around June my job got so busy that I didn’t really have the energy to devote to writing monologues, so I stopped prematurely. Not bothered by that one bit. I wrote 267 monologues! That’s nothing to sneeze at. (Sneeze at? Did I just make that up?)
Point is: I think my goal for this blog now is to continue being introspective, to be honest with myself, and to write about my life in a way that, I hope, is accessible to everyone who cares to read it. Because I always want an audience, but I think the audience wants to see me be honest with them, and not hide. On the other hand: I hate when I talk about what this blog is about. Who fucking cares. It’s a goddamn blog. It could be about my favorite hot dogs, who gives a shit? Just write you big dummy.
