It was little Emma’s fifth birthday a couple of weeks ago. It was held at an indoor playground right by their house, and one thing that held me spellbound was seeing how many friends she had.

I don’t remember having a lot of friends as a child. The neighborhood in Louisiana I grew up in didn’t have a lot of kids. My dad always preferred staying home drinking his beer and watching the television on his days off, and my mom was usually busy with work. So most of my play time involved me in our yard just making shit up and trying to keep myself entertained.

I had a golf club, so I would hit the golf ball around the yard and pretend I was Chi Chi Rodriguez. We had a bunch of azalea bushes, so I would pick the flowers and have a field day so to speak. I also loved kicking ant hills and running away before they would get to me. There were the books I would read, the tv shows I would watch since I did have a tv in my room.

That made my birthdays family affairs: my mom, my dad, my Mama and Dallas Aunt (who went to LSU during this time.) But I was fine with that. I wasn’t that much of a friend person. Sure I had friends at school, but these weren’t deep friendships or anything. They were just people I could talk to and socialize with at school.

I guess this is just further confirmation of what I learned during my Christmas road trip to Louisiana — that deep down inside I like being by myself.

I made a mixtape for you of shit I’ve been listening to lately.

1. Gods in Heat by Tobacco
2. We’re In This Together by Nine Inch Nails
3. Animal by Kanga
4. Uppercut by Ohm
5. Resist by Front Line Assembly
6. I Don’t Love You Anymore by Anohni
7. The Negative (Perspective 3) by Solve
8. Bound By Light by Ritual Howls
9. Fleece by Crystal Castles
10. Toleration or Truth by Pig
11. Is Your Soul For Sale? by Babylon Zoo

Right click on the player to save.

Okay. I had a slightly less disturbing dream last night.

A straight male friend of mine was raped by a guy, and we decide to go and get revenge. We get to the fucker’s apartment, stake it out and overtake him as he’s getting ready to run out. We get him onto the floor and keep yelling at him. “Why the fuck you gotta rape people, you fucking asshole?” “You like it when it’s forced?”

I grab the fucker’s hand and force him to stroke me off. He has this look of horror on his face. All the while I keep taunting him as I force him to pleasure me against his will. I cum all over his face which is paralyzed in that look of horror. My friend and I leave.

I wake up.

I had an awful dream last night that I was part of a group segregated from the rest of population in an internment camp-like existence. We were placed in squads and could only be out and about when our white leaders led us from one place to another. Other “normal” citizens were able to move about freely. But us queers and blacks were forced to wear a drab uniform while marching about town.

When it was time to feed us, they would make us go through these ridiculous obstacle courses in order to get to the food. Once they made us march to a building where we all knew someone was going to get gassed and killed. We then had to drag the corpse to the incinerator then march back to our “barracks.”

A couple of times I got separated from my squad, and there was a dread that I would be found out and killed. I kept trying to return to my squad. Once I ran into Tyson and Catherine and managed to talk to them for a couple of minutes before finding my squad and returning.

The whole time I was in this awful world, I was filled with a lot of fear. I didn’t know how long I would have to endure this, but I had hope that people would overthrow Trump’s policy and give me my freedom back. But as each second ticked by, my cynicism took over and the fear of being detained indefinitely kicked in. Not knowing if you’re next to die, if you’ve done something to piss off the powers-that-be, if your fellow detainees are finks.

There is no secret why this popped up in my subconscious last night. All weekend long I’ve been on the verge of breaking down because of everything I read and saw in the news. The immigration and refugee and Muslim ban. Seeing the ACLU lawyers work pro bono and literally on the floor to try and free those who were detained. Seeing the federal court issuing a temporary stay of the Cuntwad’s executive order. Of seeing the protests at the airports across the country. Of realizing that this is now our new normal, of having to fight like hell just to keep the Consitution from being the political equivalent of Charmin toilet paper.

All this to say I’m fucking scared like I’ve never been scared before. I went back through the archives here and looked at what I wrote during W’s administration, and while I was angry at a lot of his policies I never thought that we were headed straight to the end of the world.

Sometimes fan videos can be pretty good. This is SØLVE’s “For Worse.”

I wasn’t particularly close to my dad, so I don’t know why his birthday always feels so big to me. My mom left him when I was eight and took me here to LA with her family, and really that was it save for several visits I can count on one hand. Throughout high school I was so angry with him for basically abandoning me, and then he died a couple of weeks before my high school graduation which suddenly turned that anger into a sort of malaise-esque pall of regret.

It’s not like I’m sitting in the corner wallowing in a pool of my tears or anything dramatic like that. There’s just an extra bit of sadness today.

He would have been 75 today, so most likely he wouldn’t have made it this long. So I guess there’s that, right?

Brendan and I are starting a new podcasting venture, “Werewolf Pod Mitzvah,” a 30-Rock podcast where we watch and discuss every episode of what Brendan says is the best television comedy of all time. I had never watched the show, so you’ll get to hear a person discover the show as it unfolds. Think of something along the lines of “Gilmore Guys” but not as cloying.

In starting this up, I’m forgetting just how much busy work is involved in setting this up. First there is getting the domain and website settled. Then there is making the podcast art. Then there is submitting the applications to get it on iTunes and Stitcher. It’s a slow process, and I just wish there was a way to snap my fingers and have all the administrative things be done.

But it’s getting done, slowly yet surely. Of course work gets in the way, but aside from whoring my fat ass it’s the quickest way to get income right now.

It was dark and raining when I woke up this morning. Meaning the morning commute will take longer than usual. That I have a commute at all meaning I have to go to work. All of this points to pain and misery.

But when I get to work, I’m still buoyant from the weekend. It was odd really, this fire of joy and optimism that was burning inside me. That almost never happens anymore. Even as the sun set and the work day was coming to an end, the indignity and trauma of work didn’t dampen that optimism. I was a little more tired, sure, but not beaten down.

It’s quite amazing just how refreshing that show at the Complex was. Here I am two days later still harping about it.

Last night a world opened itself to me. Re-opened is probably a better term. It was the first time since I moved back to San Pedro back in 2010 that I went out and saw live music performances. I went over to the Complex in Glendale to see a bunch of projects perform in the Renegade Hardware 2 benefit.

I actually feel ashamed it had been that long. For the first several years I was busy with the Dodgers and the Kings and whatever sports came my way. Then, of course, there was The Grandmother. But now that I’m unshackled by these restraints real and imagined, I realize I can do these sorts of things again.

It really was a night of revelations, that with each passing second I was in there little bits of information embedded in the air in the sounds would transmutate into the energy waves and implant themselves in my brain. For the first time in a long time, I’m truly excited by music, excited by the sounds being made, excited by the journeys these artists are taking.

When I walked in Artifact Corruption was onstage performing. It is really breathtaking to see a shirtless lithe figure on stage banging away on an oil barrel and other assorted metal bits augmenting his beats. Immediately I remembered watching a band play a tiny upstairs bar in Santa Barbara back in 1998 or so called Fifth Column Fetish where one of their instruments was a big 5-gallon water jug filled halfway with broken glass and smashed with a microphone. While that was simply noise, Artifact Corruption incorporated that into the beats creating an aggro-noise wonderland.

Next came on Dimensional Dryft aka Falling Skies which really reminded me of the stuff cEvin Key was doing in the late 90s with Download and his solo project. It made me sad that I couldn’t appreciate it back then. But here I was bobbing around to the beats and completely engrossed.

Databomb made me wish I had taken some acid and was able to sit down right in the middle of the floor and just let everything blanket me. Actually I envisioned everyone just sitting around communally all on acid/shrooms/whatever just tripping to the sounds in unison.

But of course I came to see SOLVE. It’s very rare that I get to watch something live that I just discovered in the very recent past. Even when I was going to shows all the time at the Smell in the mid-00’s, that never happened. There it was on stage, the chants, the beats, the music, the sublime. One thing I missed about going to live shows is how the entire building shakes in the onslaught of sound. What was more evident in person was seeing how the music was a journey of transformation.

It was just past midnight by the end of his set, and my ass had already turned into a pumpkin. I left and unfortunately missed Fractured Transmission and WASTE vs. Vuxnut.

It took me a couple of hours to calm myself and finally fall asleep. I really feel like I’m in my early adulthood again with the same doe-eyed naivete. I’m almost sickened by myself.

It’s so tragic that without the energy and will to get my face to look normal, this is what I really look like. And Wifey couldn’t really care.

This was taken the Saturday after Thanksgiving. When I had lunch with this group of motley fools.