That’s It! Yeah, That’s the Melody to Funky Town!

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. . . And silent chaotic displays of distorted visuals and animated travesties existing in the moment where one has recently awakened from their heavy dream state stirred greatly within the Monsieur’s head. . . 

his mind and body now resumed their codependent odyssey through a clouded hypnopompic state. A myoclonic twitch, occurring in the man’s chest, interrupted Monsieur Morgenrede’s silent dreaming of dead soldiers’ bodies being burned in their graves, birds of all colors dancing around them screaming different hymns. The Monsieur came into his conscious state with a peculiar calmness.

             Morgenrede’s quaint apartment stood still for a moment; his hazel eyes were still adjusting to new light, taking in small flashes of blurred silhouettes and floating hairs. The Monsieur thought little of the day ahead, so he opened his window and waited for an early morning message to reach his ears. Suddenly, a war pigeon flew down to the window ledge and greeted Morgenrede with some early morning news. The pigeon, adjusting his uniform and eye-patch, nose-referenced that there was a note attached to his right foot. Morgenrede grabbed the note from the bird and opened it. The note was a short telegraph from a soldier in action, and it read, “In the beginning, God created man … and Jesus wept. That’s all.” The war pigeon informed the Monsieur that the soldier who wrote that letter died in action a few hours before his arrival, around midnight. The Monsieur took the note into his hand and silently put it on the window sill next to the messenger. After saluting the bird, and watching him fly away past the trees in the distance, Morgenrede went back to bed and pulled the covers over his head, driving his fist into his temple. 

Morgenrede frequently only desired to dive thoughtfully into the vastness of that blue-tinged cavern full of cerise pink, cerulean blue and medallion yellow stars; the man longed for those phosphenes and starfish of all sizes and wave-lengths shooting about in aimless vectors around the darkness of his closed eyes; all of these playful thought experiments brought great joy, if not sublime catharsis, to our protagonist. Morgenrede lusted after this desire to retard the coming to associated with the morning routine. This transition was quite unruly. The conscious state is belongingness and certainty flowing with a more secure sensibility – but this barbaric realization of things in the world interrupted the flow of a unique sport of guessing and doubting, which can only be found during the experience of a comfortable, deepened state of sleep, the purgatorial state of intoxication, and of course, the hypnopompic state. The Monsieur was, for all the right reasons, more content within his own mental microcosm, rejecting the world and turning inward, being seduced by unreason. . . “Abendrede und Morgenrede Kommen selten überein.”

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when I used to do coke back in college I’d get a head rush and spray thermoplastic road marking paint on my legs – I’d draw roads on my legs using white slashes and yellow lines going from the top of my thighs down to my ankles, and then I’d take pictures of my road legs and send them to my friends wondering if they got the reference and then I’d throw my phone and start doing more lines until I fell asleep; once I fall asleep I start thinking about big green lawns, beige-colored walls, simple black roofs, highway exits leading up to the crosses where Jesus was crucified, small homogenous shopping centers, the Walgreens trash can with a crude three-cheeked ass drawn on the side, man-made lakes where drug dealers get shot, the transmission towers that remind me of the Iron Giant, all of those horrible Baptist school teachers, video game loading screens, off the beaten trail Korean churches, light-brown backyard fences, front yard dogs with invisible fence collars.

             all of this shit is all the same, just like my secret online username. Who am I talking to again? If god is dead, who defines sin? The Devil is on my license plate, stay outside the lines. Post-mortem cyber mind, decaying artificial spine; slice me open, tar my skin, inject my world with open doubt, infect the wound from the inside out, mind-mapped line-graphed fields of protective wheat husks and mystical corn stalks, fenced-up branding centers, screaming cattle and slaughtered swine; Those far-off open plains whistle and whisper, yes, the other there is found in the nothingness – there is someone there in nowhere; you are always seen, even amongst the coral reef cotton fields, or the soybean ocean fields full of micro-plastics; these lands are scalded by blacktopped roads, dead open ranges are stitched together by barbed wire, towers of energy frequencies create isolating satellite towns; our bodies melt into the sunset, ancestral feelings of paranoia flutter on our shoulders, we have reengineered death. this is old school horror. Michael Jackson is Modernity. think about it.

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             a year or so ago this adopted Russian woman and I matched online and went on a date at this local burger joint. the second I meet her she’s already buzzed off two glasses of red wine. She’s so nervous that after I sit down she spills her merlot on my shirt. She apologizes and we end up having a great time with our date. Pretty soon we’re fucking in this suburban house where im babysitting the cats and I suddenly hear a knock at the front door. I get up and get dressed thinking one of the cats called the police or something and who else but the fucking Mormons are at the front door. The Mormons were really nice and polite, they were just very confused by my presence. I ignored their questions and asked them about what it was like being a Mormon. I remember I referenced the Missouri executive order 44 and the Missouri Mormon wars of 1838 – I mean this country really did not like the followers of Joseph Smith. I kind of just felt bad for them, sort of, like I needed to hear these guys out and just be a good listener. Sooner or later I got their cards and I went back inside. The Russian girl heard the entire conversation, and she was really impressed. She took me into the bathroom to take a shower, and I just could not stop thinking about those Mormons guys. I’m glad that Russian was there to comfort me, i hope she’s doing well with her probation.

—almost everything nowadays brings me to an impossible nostalgia, a memory from the future, commercial landscapes irrupt hidden unconscious wants for places, things, and experiences that never were truly realized – the fantasies of ancestors are so powerful over us, they come back and haunt us. We will never live in their future, they will never live in our past, and vice versa – we will never live among one another the same way we used to, if we ever did; I mean we’ll have fun bits of culture to share, but we’ll never be bothered to see the world, to use our eyes the same way we used to—

Memphis was the number one consumer and buyer of potatoes from Idahoan Foods, eating around 8.5 million servings last year. Idahoan Foods is a company that produces dehydrated potatoes in Idaho, and they just… gave us free mashed potatoes during the pandemic. They even donated some Idahoan Butter Homestyle Mashed Potatoes to our food bank. I’m not gunna lie, I was really fucking excited to get these stimulus potatoes. I started to think, I mean, why don’t other states do this? People could learn something from this. But when I was eating my free mashed potatoes, I started to really think. I’m eating a participation trophy. I’m Idaho’s customer. I eat potatoes and Idaho makes money. This is a reward for my disordered eating. Fuck you, Idaho. Y’all can take your potatoes and shove ‘em up your ass.

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. . . those unique series of weird wooming keyboard sounds in the breakdown from the studio version of burning down the house by Talking Heads. . . 

According to the internet, these sounds were made by Wally Badarou, who used a Prophet-5 synthesizer and a T Wah pedal. These funky wooming sounds around the two minute and fifty-one second mark in particular just completely envelop the drumming and the other instruments with an impressive confidence, but the breakdown also feels protected – like the air in the song feels thick with smoke, but also very freeing and fleeting. the wooming vibrations are like rain drops, they penetrate my head and process themselves into my skin, cold burns appear on my back and shoulders, liquid waves seep into the grooves of my muscles, the notes literally change my heart beat. 

I remember riding in the car with my dad when I was little and, I don’t remember exactly where we were going, I think maybe it was actually some drive to get some BBQ and we saw a 16-wheeler tip over near that highway exit by the agricenter, but burning down the house came on the radio, and we talked about the song briefly. I asked my dad, “what is this part of the song? I don’t get it.” my dad laughed and just replied something to the effect of, “well, the drums and the wooming sounds here are the flames burning down the beams of the house.”

the talking heads created this cathartic feeling of drowning underwater – you feel the noises and sharpness oscillate, movements start to slow down, and circles give birth to more circles – I felt I was a plastic bag full of oil drifting in the ocean, or a tesla autopilot system on a night drive cruising around the haze of street lights and wet asphalt, like a small octopus dancing away into seaweed only to be engulfed in the lava of an underwater volcano. This song so affected me as a child that to this day, that part of the song will always consume me, it will always slow me down and set me ablaze in a timeless funk.

I ask the other kids in the waiting room if I can play Mario Kart 64 with them. they say yes, and this older kid picks the map, and we race for a few minutes. Im not very good. but then again, what deranged kid decides we should all race on rainbow road when we’re in a fucking hospital? Yeah – some random asshole ran into my mom skiing and he broke her leg pretty bad. I don’t really remember how I felt when I went through all of that. I do remember that my mom was so high on pain meds that she could not stop laughing. she was watching that South Park episode where Cartman gets abducted by aliens and they put a giant satellite inside of his ass, then he starts farting fire and my mom wakes up the guy next door who has leukemia or cancer or something. If Cartman survived having a giant satellite forced into his ass, then my mom can walk around with a giant, metal rod stuck in her leg. No matter what, I always know that my mom is going to be okay.

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after the American civil war, the unattended cattle herds of Texas cowmen fighting for the confederate army were all driven away from their respective ranches by the winter storms of 1863 and 1864. When those defeated Texans returned home, they realized that their uncastrated bulls, without supervision, were multiplying their herds and decreasing the value of beef in the Texas market. luckily for the Texans, the north, having lost much of their cattle due to the civil war, supplied the demand for Texas beef, with prices promising a heavy profit to be made. unfortunately, there were very few options to make a profit driving herds north at first. the Morgan Steamboating Company charged high fees for Texan ranchers wanting to ship their herds east to the Lousiana markets, discriminatory statutes on cattle droving were put into place in northern states such as Kentucky, Illinois, Nebraska, and Kansas due to fear of Texas-fever ridden herds, and Jayhawking groups were constantly stealing herds of cattle from drovers taking shortcuts north through Missouri and Indian territory. Texan men were becoming hopeless and desperate for ideas.

 A new hope soon came when railroad lines made their way into Kansas and other areas around the Midwest. The construction of the Union Pacific Railroad in particular had stalled due to weather, but it managed to reach the small town of Abilene, Kansas in 1867. Around the same time, a businessman named Joseph G. McCoy noticed the potential of Abilene being a small, quiet, unsettled town outside of the quarantine line and near trails where they would not interfere with or infect Kansas cattle with Texas-fever. having received the blessing from governor Crawford, McCoy purchased 200+ acres of land and established many different businesses and storefronts in Abilene, one of them being Drover’s Cottage, which soon became a very comfortable hotel for travelers and settlers. Abilene, once a small, quiet town, became a formidable, organized cattle shipping machine, and by 1869, thousands of cattle herds were being driven from Texas to Abilene.

 In 1871, two Texan fellas named Ben Thompson and Phil Coe followed the rush to settle in the cattle town of Abilene, Kansas and built a saloon called Bull’s Head. Soon after Bull’s Head began operation, the owners had a bull with his visible “breeding member” painted on the front of the saloon. the whole town could see the bull with his big ole wiener and balls. Even though the town was full of cowboys, cowhands, vaqueros, gamblers, prostitutes, killers, and cowmen with varying intentions, the town’s settlers, being surrounded by and financially dependent on the bull and what he does with his breeding tool, nonetheless became very offended and angry with these rambunctious Texan saloon owners and their crude display. After days of holding their ground, the bar owners eventually decided to paint over the bull’s private parts in order to make amends with the town. Even though you could still kind of see the bull’s cock, the front of the Bulls Head saloon now featured just a regular, castrated steer.

(David Dary, Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries, 1981)

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>It was night, I was cold, I was paranoid. I looked out into the Arkansas canyon. I thought to myself, “bigfoot is out there….I can hear bigfoot, it’s not the log trucks. oh no, it’s bigfoot, that sneaky fuck…” But then I realized that it was almost below freezing outside, there’s no way bigfoot would want to be out here. so, I went back to my bed to rest. I sank under the covers and shut my eyes tight. I then woke up in a sweat, with my heart pumping. “bigfoot definitely knows how to wear a jacket” “bigfoot could just wear a jacket and come kill me in my sleep” …but then again… bigfoot probably has a gun. bigfoot is going to come inside my house and shoot me. 

             In the small town of Killeen, Texas in 1991, George Hennard crashed his rusted Ford Ranger pickup truck directly into the storefront of a Luby’s cafeteria and opened fire on the unsuspecting crowd with a Glock 17 and a Ruger P89, killing over 20 innocent people. He then shot himself. At the time, this was one of the deadliest shootings in America.

             George Hennard’s father was a surgeon in the military, so he moved around a lot as a kid. After graduating high school and dealing with divorced parents, Hennard joined the Navy for a few years, got discharged, and then joined the Merchant Marines. After losing his seaman’s license due to having drugs onboard, Hennard desperately tried to get his seaman’s license back. Prior to this deadly shooting, Hennard learned that he would not be receiving his Able-Bodied Seaman’s card.

             Hennard was a fish out of water who really liked to blame women for his problems. He even went all the way to Las Vegas to file a civil rights case against white women who he thought were conspiring against him. He kept fucking up and became hostile towards others, becoming more and more isolated, more prone to harassment and apathy. During the investigation, experts noted that Hennard had in his possession a ticket stub for the movie “The Fisher King,” which was a 90s movie about a narcissistic radio jockey who inadvertently convinces some quiet loner guy to walk into a club and shoot a bunch of yuppies. Oh, the loner also kills himself. 

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this homeless guy digging through the 5 guys dumpster behind my house once told me:

“you have to go up to people, you have to do it, or you’ll die. my parents divorced when I was only a year old.”

             “We have to be seen,” Morgenrede thought, with a panicked look slowly creeping upon his face. “I’m already seen, but something keeps pushing me further.”

my parents worked late back when I was a kid, so most days I had to go to after school care. There was this one counselor in particular who kept telling me to stop thinking about cows and I just couldn’t stop thinking about cows, every time I tried to do something it all came back to cows

>the darkness of angels is coming, and I aim to enjoy myself

             Morgenrede’s leg pokes out from his protective bed sheets, he slips off his sock and then turns towards the window, looking out towards the trees. He grabs his phone, googles his name, finds nothing, and throws the phone away. The sun is setting around the trees; they’re wearing orange and purple skirts. The Monsieur is quiet, eyelids frozen shut, and his comatose luxury continues unabated. . .