George Jones: If Drinking Don't Kill Me

I've been reading a lot of Kerouac bios recently, and just finished "On the Road" (re-reading after 40 years) and am halfway through "Dharma Bums." The difference between Kerouac and Jones (both working-class, both great) is that Kerouac took himself too seriously; and he, as a young man, hooked up with a decadent, drug-addled, literary NYC crowd that also took themselves very seriously, while living completely crummy lives but simultaneously claiming they were god-like. George and company, on the other hand, were equally great and wasted but made no such personal claims to either profundity or godliness.

Kerouac died of alcoholism at age 47 at his Mommy's house. Jones died at age 81 in a home he'd shared with his wife of 30 years, after off-and-on sobriety for 30 years.

The Beatles: From Me To You

Just ordered my T-shirt.

 

Neal Cassady: The First Third Excerpt

For anyone idolizing Cassady: His wife-of-20-years Carolyn said later that he was very bad in bed (as was Kerouac). And then there's this excerpt of Cassady's very-bad writing:

These events in themselves are no more interesting nor important than are, even to me, any of those child-dull ones yet told and which, like them, are put down mainly to get on, simply by recounting chronologically episodes that now plague memory more readily than others concerning a particular period. Like, here it was I entered that stage when a child overcomes naivete enough to realize an adult's emotional reaction as sometimes freakish for its inconsistencies, and can, on his own own reasoning canvas, paint those early pale colors of judgment resulting from initial moments of ability to critically examine life's perplexities, in tentative little brain-engine stirrings before they fade to quickly join that train of remembered experience carrying signals indicating existence which itself far outweighs traction effort by thinking's soon-slipping drivers to effectively resist any slack-action advantage for starting, and thus necessitates continual cuts on the hauler...

It goes on like this for a whole page. Reminded me of watching the doc of Cassady travelling around with Ken Kesey, in which Cassady both wouldn't shut up and had absolutely nothing to say. Can't write, can't fuck, can't talk interestingly---according to you and your shitty philosophy, Neal, you're thus meaningless. Cute in your 20s, but ugly/dull/bald (both physically and mentally) post-35.

Oliver Anthony Live in North Carolina

The song's only been out for a few days, and already crowds know the words. He's speaking for many.

Looking forward to 2024: Working-class people saying ENOUGH to the previous multiple years of lawless, non-merit-based, Diversity/Equity/Inclusion bullshit imposed upon us by academics and "community organizers" and the desperate Biden.

p.s. If "white people getting pissed off" is so scary in your liberal white media hearts, think back to Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (1989) --- at that time, you all empathized whole-heartedly with why the black character should have destroyed his Italian employers' pizza shop, despite the fact that the owners had always been good to him. OK then...Be similarly prepared for when long-patient working-class white people get pissed off. The East Coast globalist media tries to dismiss and erase our opinions---but we ourselves are 100% aware that we founded this country, and that the sleazy globalist creeps (RINOs included) have got to be cast out of power, along with the illegal hordes that they've allowed to cross our border. Or else America ends up on the dust-heap of history, like the once-grand Rome that dumbly let in the Huns.

“Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” --Edmund Burke

Oliver Anthony: Rich Men North Of Richmond

Livin' in the New World

With an Old Soul...

Technically, it's not even that great of an American anti-left-wing protest song. ("Okie from Muskogee" is much more clever.) But his raw voice and his feeling...This isn't about "clever." I got goosebumps from the first line and then, weirdly, started crying... WHY on earth would this make me cry? (Answer: Despite full-time employment, I was basically living hand-to-mouth up until my 40s. I wasn't able to afford to buy even a USED car on my own until I was 51. Despite constantly working since I was 16, I will never be able to afford to buy my own home.)

 

When I first went to this YouTube page, I came across multiple actual working men and women from America, Ireland, Britain, Australia, et al, who posted and told their stories about their hard lives and how much this song meant to them. This song just showed up a week ago or so... And hundreds of thousands of people of all ages are saying "thank you" to him for speaking for them...

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

 

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

 

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all

Just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

 

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

 

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

 

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

 

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all

Just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

 

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

https://lyricstranslate.com

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

 

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

 

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all

Just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

 

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

 

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

 

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

 

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond, Lord knows they all

Just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

 

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

https://lyricstranslate.com

George Jones: You're Looking at a Happy Man (1973)

"There ain't a naggin' woman in sight..."



Well, I jumped outta bed and I hollered Hallelujah
For there ain't another soul in sight
I sing a little song as I fix my coffee
'Cause she's really gone, alright.

Put on my old blue jeans and my Levi jacket
I'm gonna have all the fun I can
Tonight I'm really gonna be myself
And you're looking at a happy man.

Well, my baby left, took all of my money
And nearly everything that I had
She thinks I'm a-sittin' at home a-crying
But I'm far from being sad.

She had me a-bein' somebody I wasn't
But it's good to be me again
Now I'm free as a breeze I do as I please
And you're looking at a happy man.

Everything's gone and I ain't got nothin'
But I don't need nothin' but time
There ain't a thing I miss I like it like this
Lord, I got an easy mind.

Well, I'm not the same, I made a big change
I want everyone to understand
This old country boy is jumpin' for joy
And you're lookin' at a happy man.

Well, I jumped outta bed and I said Hot-a-mighty
There's ain't a naggin' woman in sight
She thinks I'm a-sittin' at home a-cryin'
But everything'll be alright.

Put on my old blue jeans and my Levi jacket
Gonna have all the fun I can
Tonight I'm really gonna be myself
And you're looking at a happy man.

Everything's gone and I ain't got nothin'
But I don't need nothin' but time
There ain't a thing I miss, I like it like this
Lord, I got an easy mind.

Well, I'm not the same, I made a big change
I want everyone to understand
This old country boy is jumpin' for joy
And you're lookin' at a happy man...

"Do what thou wilt"

The Devil's pronouncement. I've been recently reading multiple texts about the Beats: Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al. They're all ego and The Devil incarnate---I don't say that dramatically or religiously, but just exactly: This is what happens to you if you go through your life fucking and doing drugs and  adopting random religious tenets indiscriminately according to the fashion of the day. There's no "Nirvana" in store for you. What they were feeding you, and themselves, was an ugly joke and falsehood. Do your own research on Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady, all of them, and how they turned out.

In general, I used to be sympathetic to the Beats: I consider myself a libertarian, and don't like people telling me what to do. But after numerous accounts of these creeps having sex with 12-year-old girls or boys in Mexico (because they wanted to and could for $2) and after accounts of Burroughs' former NYC friend in Mexico (whom Kerouac lived with for months) who got off on introducing Mexican kids to heroin for the first time... sans any "judgment" from his visiting US pals... According to the Beat philosophy, all of this was fine.

Just today, I accidentally came upon this online text:  https://fallen-leaves.org/2022/01/16/jack-kerouac-on-the-road-1957/   A lengthy intellectually- and spiritually-based exploration of why the vision of "On the Road" was so seemingly freeing yet so ultimately utterly false and degrading. The voice of Sanity. Finally.

George Jones: Still Doin' Time (1981)

I think when every human realizes...

 ...that we're just the same as the cockroaches we kill or the cats we torture or the horse's leg we saw off, and that our entire lives are equally as meaningless---we might be a lot happier, or more humane. ("Humane" is the wrong word, indicating "humans." What's the word for all of life?)

As Mars dried up, we might've come from there. Or we might be a penal planet, with the worst sent here as punishment. Why else have we constantly, for the past few thousand years, been crying out for our gods/superiors? We're obviously innately missing something, have been separated from something. And multiple cultures don't just independently invent a universal source for no reason.

Elvis Presley Ed Sullivan Show Complete Performances

Sinéad O'Connor: Don't Cry For Me Argentina (1992)

Sinead O'Connor: This is a Rebel Song (1997)

Sinead O'Connor: Success (1992)

Loretta Lynn: Success (1961)

You Cause as Much Sorrow (1990)

Sinead wrote this for her mother.




[Verse 1]
I'm full of good intentions
Like I never was before
It's too late for prevention
But I don't think it's too late for the cure
So you call in your minions
And see what you can find
Night time or morning
These hands are sticky, but I don't mind

[Chorus]
Why must you always be around?
Why can't you just leave it be?
You've done nothing so far but destroy my life
You cause as much sorrow dead
As you did when you were alive

[Verse 2]
I never said I was tough
That was everyone else
So you're a fool to attack me
For the image that you built yourself
Just sounds more vicious
Than I actually mean
I really am soft
Yes, tender and sweet...

[Chorus]
Why must you always be around?
Why can't you just leave it be?
You've done nothing so far but destroy my life
You cause as much sorrow dead
As you did when you were alive

Reading "Remembrances" by Sinead O'Connor (2021)

About 2/3 of the way through. She remembers the awful early childhood stuff and the Pope-picture-tearing, but so far there's nothing about her four marriages and four kids taken away from her. (Kids being given into custody of their fathers is an oddity in either the US or EU legal system.)

Though she isn't very forthcoming about her actual life, she does give insight into her mental/psychic life: As a child, the piano at her grandmother's house speaks to her in colors, tells her there are unhappy souls trapped within it, which she can hear whispering. When she visits Prince's LA house after she records his song "Nothing Compares 2 U," he turns into a demon---she sees the irises of his eyes turn white before she literally runs out of his house to escape his bad vibes. 

Aside from the irises: When she first comes into Prince's home, he asks if she wants something to drink. When she makes her choice, he pretends he's getting it for her, then says, "Get it yourself." Which is when her radar goes off; she says this flashes her back to her childhood and her mother---this person is someone bad and something bad is about to happen.

(This scene ends with Sinead running out of the house and Prince following her in his car through the Hollywood Hills. She eventually makes it to a stranger's house, who doesn't answer her knocks on his door, though her going there makes Prince drive away.)

What Sinead says rings true with me about psychic jolts that tell you that something is utterly wrong and that you need to escape. When you feel a literal jolt like this in your mind/body, trust it.

My personal examples:  With my parents, when I was 12 or so, I got a clear, simple message from a voice outside of myself: "They're not on your side." That's all the voice said. Later, I got weird vibes from my first girlfriend, from the Internet tranny "Julie Lindberg," and from Sandra. When you're in the middle of your attraction, you think, "Oh, maybe it's just me being paranoid or something." Nah. Listen to yourself and your gut. RUN. Run to the Intelligent and to the Normal.

Joan Crawford: (Dec 1955) NYC Actors' Studio Benefit