Can’t have a world war without the Japanese, right? So let’s bring in Mizutama Shobodan, or Polka Dot Fire Brigade, in English. The album title translates to Red Petals Full in the Sky. What does it sound like? Well, not so far removed actually from a lot of New York post-punk of the mid-80s and if the bios are correct then there is a connection there, but who cares really. It sounds like what it sounds like. It’s angular, dissonant and sounds kind of fractured. It’s No-Wave. It just plain belongs here.

Still beating about my city waiting for the next shoe to drop. It’s not that things are bad. Not by any stretch. There are good things happening in my own life. There remains though that sense that something is about to happen. The next boot is about to drop. That something is just about to go very, very wrong.

And that’s okay. That’s how life in wartime works sometimes. You can’t have all this stuff flying around you and not expect some shrapnel now and again. Nobody is coming out of this entirely untouched. War doesn’t work that way. There’s war. There’s inflation. The stock market took a monumental hit yesterday ahead of reports coming out that are said to indicate that we are definitely not recovering. We’re not recovering yet. The pundits from pre-summer are just wrong, and now as we prepare to enter the last quarter of 2022 it’s looking ugly. Heads up. It could be a long, cold winter.

I’m ready. I have warm socks. I’m ready. I’m not going to get ahead of myself and act like none of this is going to touch me.

Expect shrapnel, or worse. And chances are I’ll come out in the spring, bloody and bruised, saying well, I’ve been hurt worse.

Chances are, but maybe not. We shall see. I’m still waiting for that boot to drop. It’s coming.