Doing a big Death match show with Memphis Street Fight next week. So basically I've played a show or two in one band or another every week for around the past month.

I'm in my mid forties.

How am I still doing this shit?

I talked to Bill Conflict from Maribethfest last night and he's 62. Sixty fucking TWO.

If someone my age told me they were doing the kind of shit I'm doing on a weekly basis I would simply not believe them.

I barely believe myself.

I've told therapists and THEY didn't believe me.

But I've got all this video, all these show flyers, i know all these PEOPLE. It's me, I did it, it's always been me.

It never feels like it though. My old prison guard therapist was like "Your in a gigging band, how is it that you can think you're dysfunctional. That's one of the highest level of functioning"

I think people who say shit like that have never been in a band.

I can't make real friends without doing music with them. I can't function socially unless people see me as talented and contributing. I deeply need to be unreplaceable and play a key part in other people's dreams.

Even if those dreams are, no hyperbole, getting beaten by a barbed wire bat into a bloody mess. I'll help you live them.

But sure, yeah, I'm fine, I'm not a bad person who peddles in other people's pain.

I spend half a decade trying to get help, and this is what happened to me.

I gotta remember to post shows on Newgrounds and video of shows.

I've been extra crazy this year and I really don't know what to do about it. I haven't seen a therapist in two years and I'm coming to the conclusion that therapists think I'm beyond help and aren't willing to work with me.

After the 4th time of getting dumped like trash you start to catch a hint.

Finally got booked for Maribeth fest this year, despite being in a band with Maribeth for two years. She still hasn't put us on the flyer.

Still somehow doing shows with Delta Ondine, got one of those booked for Sunday. Got another show that tuesday at the lamplighter. Gonna be playing so much I won't have time to practice, which is really the best way to do things.

Dr Herman Green, Jame's Brown's old sax player, told me he didn't even like practice, and as the years go by I start to see his point. If you're playing out every week you kind of don't have to anymore. At some point practice drains mental resources you need for shows.

This is terrible advice for anyone who's not already playing shows once a week, though.

Doing a show with legendary queer icons The GloryHoles and the Black Metal band with 2/3s of the original members of Negro Terror.

Been crazy as shit for days. I'm like this every year.

Still somehow doing awesome shit all the time.

Nothing in life ever makes any fucking sense.

Still, doing an awesome show with some of the most awesome people in my city.

Got a new song coming that's barely ready, but Dai wants to push it. I take a disco trap beat and transmission it up to a grindcore blast beat in the break.

I just used a tree saw on a pike to cut a tree limb to keep it from falling on my house. I'm baking marinated chicken thighs with carrots, celery, onion, potato, and whole garlic cloves for dinner.

I got a show tomorrow at the Hitone small room with my queer folk punk band The Wailing Banshees.

There's also two shows next weekend in Atlanta with Stay Fashionable

I realize I should probably keep up better posting on NG all the shows I do. I doubt I've even mentioned Delta Ondine I've been drumming with for over a year now, even though that act has gotten me paid more than any other.

My cousin Dougie got out of rehab and wants to get a band together called Serotonin Syndrome. He says he's got a bassist and a drum kit.

Last time me and Dougie got a band together it was Indeed We Digress which was really successful. We also played in los Psychosis together.

Dougie is a bit of a character. He drastically changes his personality every few months to be almost a caricature of a person. It's endlessly entertaining but really unhinged. He's a weird guy and he's done a lot of weird shit.

I'm kind of down if can get booked, but I'm probably not gonna put too much effort.

It's wild to think back on all the bands I've been in and people I've played with. So much insane and improbable shit has happened at a certain point it's stops being believable, even to me as I lived it. I see the evidence everywhere but somehow I still feel like it's all made up.

There's whole recordings of songs I wrote with bands I barely remember being in.

It's incredibly surreal. I'm a deeply unserious looking person but I've done all kinds of serious stuff. Like if you me in a bar and I told one of my stories you'd swear I was lying.

It makes it hard to relate to people. I do stuff all the time other people only experience in tv shows and movies.

I say this because it's incredibly unglamorous to crash on floors and live in rest stops and gas stations.

I don't think I'll be the first person to point out financially you're lucky to break even.

I'm old as shit and i'm still playing tons of shows, even after a fucking plague.

It makes me difficult to relate to.

I've been really spaced out and batshit crazy this year. I think it's because it's an election year and there's been so much big shit going on in the news. I went crazy in 2017 and nothing was ever normal again.

But I can play drums pretty good and mandolin okay. Which ironically makes everything somehow ever crazier.

Why can't I have a normal ass skill like welding?

I played the Basement in Nashville sunday, I played Hi Tone big room friday, and I played hernando's hideaway like 3 hours ago.

I never feel like I'm busy, but goddamn I'm playing shows like I'm busy.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/ne4nb6NPmBmqC3cX/

Long, dark story about Dai's aunt. Can't really go into details but it's a closed casket. Suicide.

Dai's destroyed, there's a lot of drama around it, we don't practice for nearly two months.

Somehow, though, we pulled through.

I really need things to calm down.

Next show is in nashville. Hopefully we can get our shit together between now and then.

Just an update for anyone who gives a rat's ass:

I am incredibly unwell. Like, really really bad mentally. It's a few days from the anniversary date and I'm batshit crazy, not sleeping, eyes big as fuck all the time, literally forgetting who I am or how I got places. Ears ringing, eyes don't want to focus, body numb, just bad bad stuff.

Like, imagine if you zoned out and your body just like, kept going. On it's own. Without you.

That's what's going on right now.

It's weird because I'm still capable of doing all kinds of complex shit, I'm just like, not there right now.

Currently drinking valerian root and tamerind tea to knock it down a bit.

I'm uh...

I'm back.

Announcing for deathmatch again.

It's been what, like 12 years?

So this guy, Mike Roach, made a deathmatch wrestling themed band called Mudshow.

So I contact the guy, and I'm like "So, you're into deathmatch... you ever met Tony Myers? He used to be the big deathmatch guy in around here."

So Mike looks up Tony, goes on a roadtrip to see him wrestle deathmatch.

But what I didn't know is Tony's portfolio is "being the guy who can get wrestling gigs in Memphis and knows Lawler"

So Tony sees this as an opportunity to do more mixed Deathmatch/Metal shows, like the old SnV league.

And Mike is ALL FOR THAT SHIT.

So now I'm the guy who got Mike on the inside of deathmatch, for which Mike is extremely grateful.

So he books me to ring announce, a thing I haven't done in forever.

I just got a dental crown put in, and I'm in the process of my yearly descent into madness. Already started having bad nightmares and stomach problems, and the anniversary date is still like 6 weeks away.

Mentally, I am ILL.

And now I'm gonna announce for dudes who carve their foreheads open with light tubes.

My life is surreal as shit and doesn't make any sense. I am not currently being treated for my severe dissociative PTSD. I have a really, really large pile of both [criminal content redacted].

Its never going to make any sense, is it? None of these things should exist, and yet somehow not only do they exist, but they are major parts of my life that even decades cannot erase.

Album's good though. Check it out.

https://youtu.be/dicDUGSJCh4?si=4hZn5Wgl-5Fg6Z3D

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