If you’re taking a tour of Youtube and you see a technicolor image of an 8-bit Impaler and don’t click on it, then there isn’t much to say, except that you have no curiosity about the world around you. Filmmaker was already on my radar so that was an added incentive, but come on now! Over an hour of grinding EMB and synthpunk… and yes we’re getting back to labels here, but let’s put the emphasis on punk because in many ways Vlad Tapes is more punk rock than any albums or singles labelled punk rock that you’re going to find. This takes me back to when music was dangerous.

In real news, my older son turns 29 today. It does seem hard to wrap my head around, despite the basics that if you fuck, have a kid, and then don’t kill them, they’re going to reach the age of 29 or more. Don’t get it twisted. It’s just remembering the moment they were born so vividly that makes having an adult child strange. You think of all the moments of their infancies and childhood and those images become superimposed over them no matter how old they get. You’re always seeing a split image, and perhaps thats what keeps us from strangling them during the difficult moments. That’s how mine survived anyway. We did have difficult times but we are like BFFs now and there were times when it didn’t seem like that would ever be possible again. Yet, he’s a grown ass man now and we talk about all kinds of things and share laughs at the state of the world around us. It wasn’t really my strategy to raise him with no grand expectations of the world but you give what you have, and in this case it’s paid off for him. He’s not freaking out and depressed like so many in his generation right now, that the world isn’t exactly living up to how their parents told them it would be. We have our struggles, he and I, but we’re okay. We get by, no matter what.

I taught him acceptance, or maybe it was just him learning to live with my shortcomings as a human being. I don’t know which has had the greater impact, but he’s doing okay. There have certainly been worse parents than me.

I’m definitely going to have to find some better way to convey all the music I’ve been listening to. Most of it is only available through downloads and it’s difficult to patch my laptop and phone into the regular stereo. We’ll have to see how it goes with the next stimulus check (insert grimace emoji here).