New Single!: Having Fun In The Former USA

wredfright · Having Fun In The Former USA

And I had fun making this song and track.  I stuck a microphone in bubblewrap and rubbed the wrap for the chorus percussion.  That's probably the weirdest instrument, though beatboxing like The Fat Boys for the hi-hat sounds and beating on a suitcase for the bass drum aren't too common either.  Other than that, it's the usual voice, guitar, keyboard as bass, and drum.  Lyrically, the singer seems to be either coming from the future when the USA actually has fallen apart like the old USSR or he feels like an alien in his own country, a metaphorical former USA.  Either way, I'm not sure I believe him when he says he's having fun.  It sounds more like he's trying to convince himself.  On the other hand, if he is having fun, then that should be a source of comfort to anyone worried about a second civil war.  Like The Beach Boys playing a gig in an apocalyptic wasteland, there are still some good times to be had!  Lyrics are below:

My father likes to sing when he thinks that nobody is listening.
Meanwhile, almost everybody else is talking about their new social media strategy.
I have one as well.  It's called deleting all my accounts.
Because I'd rather have no friends, then a thousand fake ones.

Oh, I'm having fun living in the former USA

It's where they tell you you're crazy if you start to think for yourself
instead of following the advice of so-called experts and buying your opinions off the shelf.
It's where they like to smear everything so no one can see,
and the more they talk about freedom, the less we're free.

The rot of empire has a tremendous opportunity cost
Sections of Cleveland look like The Russians bombed them already, but it was just us.
I have one uncle left, and he told me to start calling him Samantha.
I feel like we're dreaming together a book called Finnegan's Wank.

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7" or give his latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Spotify or Bandcamp!

This Piece Of Clothing Contains Better Cotton Even If It Actually Doesn't

If you are concerned about the environment and want to support sustainability, then you might buy a piece of clothing with "Better Cotton".  If you still want to feel good about yourself, then don't read the fine print, which states "may not contain Better Cotton".  

I am sure this "greenwashing", as it is known, has plenty of reasons to explain how even though the Better Cotton product you just bought doesn't actually contain Better Cotton, it's still all good and green and sustainable, but it's still basically like buying organic orange juice and then reading the label and finding out it may not contain organic oranges.

Or even oranges.

Ah, corporate America . . . 

Maybe buy something from an actual person instead such as my new novel, which contains 100% individual writing!

Comic: Peeing In A Cup

Fortunately, I've only had to do drug tests for employment a few times.  Since I don't use drugs, I don't care too much, but the privacy invasion is annoying, and the waste of money (which we pay for ultimately as consumers in the prices we pay for products and services) is more galling.  Employment drug testing is a dumb tradition that should be abandoned.  On the other hand, it did inspire this comic strip, and the notion that every day in America, planes, trucks, and maybe even boats are all carrying little bottles of pee across the country is pretty funny.  To read the comic, I suggest clicking on the image and making it full screen.  You could also download it after you click on it for the primo view, I suppose.  I've also loaded the panels individually below if you like scrolling down (it works either way).

To see why I don't need drugs to have a good time, please read Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead.

Not So Nobel

 

When I was in the Underground Literary Alliance, I paid a bit more attention to the Nobel Prizes in Literature, usually lamenting the fact that mainstream American literature (and mainstream stuff is all the Nobel judges will usually know about, though if you're a professor of literature or otherwise eligible to nominate someone for the prize, you can try to direct their attention a bit deeper--I did that for a few years when I was teaching; my apologies if I was supposed to keep that secret for a half-century or something), had gotten pretty bad, and, as a result, was unlikely to have anyone win a Nobel anytime soon.  

I was right.  It took until 2016 for an American to win the prize, and it was Bob Dylan.  Now, I love Dylan.  I have quite a few albums from him and saw him in concert before, but he's not exactly on the level of Thomas Pynchon or someone else who might have been considered Nobel quality in literature (Chronicles is amusing as an odd memoir, but Tarantula is just bad, so the Nobel committee must have just given up on American literature and started out handing prizes for folk/rock music instead).  As best I can tell, the Nobel judges were either responding to pressure that they hadn't picked an American in decades (the last real American was Toni Morrison in 1993, though there may have been a couple laureates who settled in the USA later in life for a creative writing teaching gig or something) or they just were big Dylan fans and wanted to meet him.

In any case, that combined with reading a few laureates whose work underwhelmed me caused me to not care much who won.  The judges did have a nice run though for a few years, hipping me to writers such as Kenzaburo We, Dario Fo, and Mo Yan who might otherwise have escaped my notice.

The Nobel prizes in general, not just the literary one, used to be more prestigious, and they probably still are for some folks, but stuff like giving Obama a peace prize (a guy that ordered drone assassinations on a daily basis) just because he wasn't the horrible George W. Bush was pretty bad, so the Nobel brand has gradually waned in prestige for me and many others.  The latest Nobel blunder is giving the mRNA folks an award so that vaccine hesitancy could be combated, but, you know, maybe it would be nice if the vaccine actually worked instead of just causing autoimmune issues and other nasty side effects, up to and including death.  I wrote about the prizewinners a couple of years ago here.  If I could figure out their success was dubious years ago, why couldn't the Nobel committee this year?

At this point, it may be getting wiser to just avoid the people and work the Nobel committees award prizes to . . . 

Like Sartre, I would refuse the Nobel.  Unlike Sartre, I will likely never be offered it, but you can still read my work here.

Comic: Maybe Americans Should Study History Better?

I was reading a bit about the end of the Roman Empire, and it eerily struck me as being similar to contemporary America:  government bloat, higher taxes, military adventurism, inflation, and so on.  One could just change the names to Trump, Biden, and other recent American political leaders as well as a few other details, and the history lesson would be complete as a description of our current situation, which was a bit depressing.  One would hope we would have learned better and avoid the mistakes of the past, but, no, we keep on doing the same dumb stuff.  Different dumb stuff would be refreshing if still dumb.  One doesn't need to even go back that far.  The current waste of money and, more important, lives, that is the Russia-Ukraine war struck me as very similar to the Vietnam experience as far as America's involvement is concerned.  One could make an argument that one only need go back to the Iraq misadventure or the Afghanistan debacle, but the creeping nature of our involvement in Ukraine reminds me more of how we got more deeply involved in Vietnam when we would have been wise to steer clear.  The result is this cartoon.  To read the comic, I suggest clicking on the image and making it full screen.  You could also download it after you click on it for the primo view, I suppose. 

Well, that was depressing, so if you need some fun now, then read my latest novel:  Fast Guy Slows Down!

New Single!: Put Me On Your Shopping List

wredfright · Put Me On Your Shopping List

I once read a linguistics article that noted how love was often conflated with food, exemplified by the nicknames that lovers give to one another such as "honey", "sugar", and whatnot.  In this song, I make that connection explicit with the singer of the song desiring to be put on her or his crush's grocery list.  I guess this singer is disagreeing with The Beatles about not being able to buy love, and, indeed, a strong connection does exist between economics and romance, let's be honest.  Musicwise, we're drawing from The Ramones, The Undertones, Danko Jones, or something else pretty primal here, though the third input reminds me of something The B-52s would have done with Fred.  It's the usual voice, guitar, keyboard as bass, and drums.  The weird instrument is a metal coffee cup with coins in it (I guess the crush paid in cash and got some change back).  If you end up serenading someone with this song, please let me know if it works, but you don't get your money back if it doesn't.  Lyrics are below:

You've got to get some milk.
You've got to get some bread.
You've got to get some medicine
for the pain that's in your head.
But there's just one thing you forgot.
For the pain that's in your heart!

Put me on your shopping list.

You've got to get some juice.
You've got to get some fruit.
But you don't need to buy any makeup
because you're already too darn cute.
In fact, there's just one more thing you need.
To spice up your life!

On sale this week only:
2 for 1 special.
Don't forget your coupons.
It's love!

Now some people say shopping's a drag,
but you might as well put those folks in a bag
because they'll never have any fun,
and you can't spend money when you're done.
If you want to be happy, then there's one more thing you need.
And that's me!

For more Wred Fright music, listen to the Yeast? 7"!