In T-minus six hours, I will be boarding my first plane since 2019 to experience the sights and sounds of Chicago. “Sounds” is quite literal since Riot Fest is my main squeeze for the weekend, but I’ll be taking time to soak in what else the city has to offer in the meantime. It’s exciting to finally be seeing the world outside of my semilocal bubble again.
Windy City, here I come!
Since I could first cognitively think, September 11 has been a day of lecture. Every year on that day, my teachers would take a special few minutes at the beginning of every class period to reflect on and explain their personal 9/11 experiences to us. It was an attempt at contextualization for our young, burgeoning minds who never got to live in a world without taking your shoes off at the airport or the Department of Homeland Security.
It sometimes feels unreal that, as much as I may relate to the adult role models who surround me, they knew waters that I will never swim in and no one ever can again. The pool is remodeled, and all those changes can’t be undone, and all I can do is read the recounts, look at the old photos, and try to understand the facts.
I never intend to speak for my entire generation’s perspective, though. As much as my generation gets classified as a homogenous cluster of activists and freethinkers, I know first hand how blatantly ignorant and close minded some people my age can be. Sadly, looking at the world through the clearest lenses I have, it’s quite safe to say that most of them will retain their false pride for the rest of their lives. While some love to argue otherwise, cruelty and selfishness know no generational restriction. Just look at the response that was unleashed twenty years ago, when not blindly saluting the flag in the name of Middle Eastern slaughter was “un-American.” I wonder why Muslim hate crimes in America have yet to reach pre-9/11 levels after they skyrocketed in 2001. Humans here aren’t as nice as the propaganda makes them out to be.
With American flags waving in the wind right beside Trump 2020 signs, it seems like barely anyone has learned from the jingoism, the violence, the hatred. But was learning ever the point? The wildfire continues to rage, and people continue to suffer in cruel ways supported by deep roots. The fostering of close-mindedness and suppression of critical thought that billowed up like clouds of debris smoke resulted in a terror that was homegrown, not some tricky bogeyman from abroad. It is a terror that has culminated in the destruction of lives and the obliteration of common sense, and there’s just no going back.
You can decline the supersize Freedom Fries offer with your Happy Meal, sure. But when Big Daddy has force fed you blind submission to the powers that be your entire life, isn’t succumbing just so much easier?
Fall is truly falling, isn’t it?
While my previous logs were written from my room, I wrote the entirety of this piece over the course of a few study hall periods, as school is back in session. I must admit, I forgot how much teenager germs still make me gag, all the more a reason to wear a mask walking to and from my classes. Almost all of my peers are abstaining from wearing theirs since there is no enforced mandate. My COVID concerns still linger, so it’s still slightly unsettling, but I’ve managed to make myself comfortable. It helps that all my teachers are nice.
Yes, fall is kicking in, though the runoff of the hottest summer the Northern Hemisphere has ever experienced (thanks, climate change!) doesn’t make it feel that way. Neither does darling little Delta lingering around the corner, waiting to crash your party and leave you realizing the next morning that the previous night wasn’t as good as you thought it was. It’s a real pity. I thought this was supposed to be an ascending fall, but I guess the only positive curve is the hospitalization graph!
On my calendar, September holds large scale events that I have been anticipating since March of last year, yet the threat of Delta’s dance keeps them hanging in the balance. The first on my list, the Riot Fest gathering in Chicago, has already had two of its biggest acts—Troubled Trent! Frank! Nooo!—withdraw out of COVID concern only to be replaced by…Slipknot. Didn’t one of their members just catch COVID, and didn’t another one just straight up die a few weeks ago? My condolences, of course, but I didn’t expect overly angsty (and, it seems, painfully mortal) nu metal to be the soundtrack to the world’s reopening.
Me being me, the prophetic songs of DEVO, who are still on Riot Fest’s bill and have a show I’ll be catching at Radio City Music Hall two days later, sound like a much better choice. They also seem brazenly enthusiastic about finally getting back out on the road after years of Mark Mothersbaugh being too busy making movie score money. I assume they trust their fans with actually taking precaution and getting their shots, considering that both of the group’s frontmen have caught the virus in its early days; Marky Mark even needed a ventilator. His recovery was also apparently interrupted by the indulgent partying of the youthful TikTok stars living next door, a modern day exercise of the “live fast, die young” mentality that has latched onto so many. There’s no good future in sight, so why not submerge ourselves in fun, partying, tossing cash around, assorted acts of degeneracy that our parents’ bank accounts let us get away with while we still can? It’s saddening to see, yet it’s not an unnatural response considering the circumstances.
It seems like everyone is thinking, “what can I do that makes me happy before the world burns?” That includes myself. But typing on an energy-consuming computer with the lights on isn’t actually as damaging to the environment as carbon dioxide-pumping, uselessly polluting companies want me to think. Neither is letting yourself loose in a crowd of like minded people while your favorite (and not favorite) bands bring their songs to life.
So, DEVO and Slipknot, eh? Not all jumpsuit wearing, clown mask bearing bands are made equal. But can we expect anything to not happen at this point?
Why do you think babies cry when they exit the womb? Because they don’t want to leave the security of floating weightlessly in the warm ooze that granted them life, but they are forced to take in the new world’s air. Tethered to our moms, we are free in our primordial atmosphere—at least, until we are ejected against our will into the cold, harsh world we unconditionally grow to accept. And aren’t we all now grown and looking for something warm and cozy to counter our troubling environment?
I look in the sky on this hot summer night and see a faint speck of light becoming more and more faint by the second. It is a high tech device, Sputnik-like, more advanced than any regular plane. There is a little man in there. He sits in his cockpit consoled by a padded suit and the fact that there is no one dirty there to peeve him. All of the ship’s controls are within reach of his grubby hands. He knows what he is doing. His destination is the moon.
He is too large and scrubbed clean for Earthling soil. He is exiting Earth and its societies to prospect his own world in an cushioned anti-gravitational frontier, a world all his own. One mother is returned to while another is left to rot.
Once there, he will be able to survey his home planet from a distance farther than most could imagine being in their lifetimes. He will see what space junk scraps see when they drift by, not swayed enough by gravity to make a crash landing. He will see a planet that lies in his perpetual grip, but only then will he be able to create the physical illusion that he is holding it, like how he squished peoples’ heads from afar as a grade schooler. He will see a planet in dismay. Maybe he will see the fires raging across the land from space when they were not included in his earthly penthouse view. He will think of all the little people who would do anything to spacewalk in his boots and how they will never be able to touch him.
In his mind he remains afloat forever, cultivating his own society free from Earth’s clutches, one where only the purest and most accumulous are permitted. Scientific understanding and discovery play no part when he has already discovered the truest depths of human selfishness. But these visions exist only within his dampest dreams, and he must return to reality sooner or later. He would never want to risk looking different than you or me.
Shame that those who need to get pulled down to Earth most, are the only ones who hold the means to escape it’s gravitational pull.
Well, I’m one day deep into my seventeenth rotation around the sun! Adulthood has never felt so close.
The day before my birthday (two days ago), I was taken on a (successful) record shopping excursion to celebrate. Afterwards, on a whim, we stopped at a farmers market not too far away just to see what was happening. What we saw was a hellish site: endless vendors of new bootleg merchandise (colorful phone cases; flimsy accessories wrapped in thin plastic bags and piled into “$3 each” bins; mechanical squeaking toy dogs with Terminator eyes); a disturbing variety of Confederate flags and Trump 2024 trucker hats; county fair style foodstuffs contrasted by unvaccinated Amish girls peddling homegrown produce. The outdoor venue—I didn’t dare venture inside any of its buildings, including the “small animal auction”—was populated by an unmasked crowd facing the heat for the chance to consume, consume, consume before the barbecue weekend kicked in. I cautiously bought one item: a stand hawking five dollar bootleg music posters happened to have a reprint of an old DEVO concert poster (from Hawaii, of all places) in surprisingly good quality. Considering the essence of their theory of de-evolution wafting around me at that moment, it seemed fitting to rescue it from its dusty prison.
The whole experience reminded me a lot of today’s holiday. From birth, I have been told that America is the world’s melting pot, a place where people of all cultures can gather and become one in perfect harmony. I would later learn of this hypothesis’s futility on a fractured planet with such a stark divide between those who get fair treatment and those who are not allowed. Yet what I saw on Friday reminded me somewhat of such a utopian ideal. All present at that market, whether merchant or consumer, dark skinned or pasty, young or old, obese or twig thin, wheelchair bound or able bodied, vaccinated or not, were equal. Everyone was allowed to indulge. And I cannot recall seeing a single mask at that gathering, giving everyone a chance of contracting something. It was as if the COVID-19 pandemic was done away with in a flash, allowing these ugly Americans to shamelessly expose their collective selfishness with even more pride than before. “Who cares if COVID remains a mean mistress to some; if I can’t consume and obtain, I am nothing.” Simultaneously, while the toll of death and destruction from this summer’s heat wave continues to rise, these same goons don their No More Bullshit baseball hats and declare that humanity’s collective decimation of Earth is nothing but a hoax. The sales slashes, on the other hand, are real. The land of freedom for some, not all; the home of a primarily brainwashed and complacent populous. Lovely.
I got the chance to breathe the day of my gestation completion anniversary, whupping my 5K time in the morning and partaking in an exquisite birthday dinner that afternoon. It was nice to have a break from being constantly reminded of your mortality and actually feel kind of special. I’m a human being with consciousness and an ego. I worry about the state of the world a good amount. But I also like good food.
I do feel a bit older, though I’ve felt internally older than my actual age for a while now. Having to persevere through the world’s worst for seventeen years callouses you like that. Yet just like Frankenstein’s monster, learning about our world and how it functions from the perspective of an outsider often wears me down to primal emotions of sadness, anxiety, anger. It’s a dwarfing gangliness that is near impossible to permanently eradicate. But it’s refreshing to take a walk on a lighter, more fulfilling side every once and a while.
With my birthday rapidly approaching, I’ve been thinking a lot about the tight situation my age places me in. I currently stand on the edge of girlhood dipping my toes in the pool of womanhood through college visits and driving practice. Bound to an environment I’ve spent a good amount of my life preparing to be ejected from, I study and learn from the adults I hope to be like when I “grow up,” sophistication and immaturity mingling within my cells. It can be infuriating at times. I think to myself often, Why can’t I just start living my own life already? But I am already living my own life; I just need to gain enough experience to unlock the independence I crave, like a video game.
One year of being eligible to drive. One year until being eligible to vote. Seventeen.
As excited as I am for my seventeenth rotation around the sun to begin, I am also aware that the actual date of my turnover will not be the most splendiferous. This is because my calendar is already lined up with numerous exciting adventures, primarily concerts, extending even into next February. This more than makes up for the lost year of 2020, when all my plans had to be cancelled or moved online thanks to systems that place profits over people and people who have been brainwashed into agreeing with that.
I hope to, in a manner, undergo a more positive form of brainwashing in the coming months. It will be refreshing to have conversations with like-minded people in person and to be enlightened by live performances that no livestream can truly match. Experiences such as these are like hearty salads for the brain; faux news and fanaticism are McDonald’s. My teenaged brain is still being molded by the world around it, so I might as well ensure that my influences are positive ones. With each of these experiential gifts comes more of the know-how that I strive to harness, which is worth so much more than any physical object.
And now, we wait.
The five hour drive was worth it. Kent was a success!
From exploring the town Wednesday night to touring the campus the next morning, my time in Kent was a fascinating and eye opening experience. I was not sure what to expect, as judging a location’s current condition when most of your knowledge comes from its history can be difficult. Yet I was overall extremely satisfied while I was there.
My primary gripe: leaving so early. We stayed just one night, and a large part of me wanted to do nothing but continue wandering the campus in the burning heat, taking in the brutalish buildings and towering trees, fantasizing about undergraduate life. Chances to escape from my usual surroundings are often scarce and always short lived, making every drive home something to dread. Too often these excursions seem to zip by in a flash in retrospect, which is what I guess results from savoring something so much that you let go of some of the uptightness you’ve grown accustomed to and start living in the moment…not that’s a necessarily bad thing.
This temporary change of scenery extremely refreshing for my psyche, but it was also enlightening to spend time in a place that holds both historical significance and increasing relevancy, especially since learning of the massacre that occurred on campus in 1970 left a large impact on me. It was a genuinely sobering experience to walk where four young innocents had their futures obliterated decades ago, the same grounds where modern youths currently prepare for their own postcollegiate lives to unfold. Seeing markers for where protesting students were shot and the sectioned off areas in the nearby parking lot showing where the four were killed seemed unreal in the moment, and my emotions only began to really hit home after leaving. I was able to leave that campus with feelings of actual hope of an actual future. Allison, Jeffrey, Sandra, and William suffered a very different experience than what I would envision for myself or anyone else.
The abuse of illegitimate authority that resulted in the May 4 massacre remains the same today, albeit in more refined form. At Kent State, the memorials and informational placards are the most blatant reminder of why the good fight is still worth fighting, though the somewhat seedy wooded areas on the outskirts of the town that we got lost in upon our initial arrival also seem to serve that purpose. I remember reading that, during that period of turmoil and pain, Kent State’s liberal students considered the campus an “oasis” from the surrounding deep red territory. Living in an area where I am constantly bombarded by Trump 2020 signs alongside various less explicit methods of bigotry, I can’t help but feel for them. If only life was just and everything was easy.
Despite this, the chances of me joining their ranks as a “Golden Flash” have only become more likely since my visit. Kent State genuinely felt like a place I could worm my way into and find plenty nourishment. Brand new things and brand new places often have an atmosphere of impenetrability and intimidation, as they are associated with breaking out of one’s comfort zone and embracing a new world. But I didn’t feel as much like a fish out of water in Kent. Actually, my visit felt more like I was entering a comfort zone of sorts. It was a comfort zone formed by both the assertion of myself as an independent person and constant reminders of history and the experiences of others. But isn’t that a fundamental—albeit complicated and looming—aspect of the human experience?
In examining the world around me, I constantly find myself longing for something more.
Over time I’ve become extremely tired with my current, mostly static environment, one that I still have around a year to revel in before the onset of college. Example: I went on a spur-of-the-moment excursion today for a nearby town’s annual neighborhood yard sale. The majority of that time was spent marching through a small town sidewalk hell hole in overwhelming heat spying nothing but baby clothes and grimy rom-com DVDs. Such a scene serves as a textbook example of what I hate about my current location, the fuel for my daydreams of mid-century minimalist abodes and illuminated action cities. (Don’t get me started on how today’s sights support my attitude towards society as a whole, or we’ll be here all day.) I insist that my reveries are not entirely selfish, though it is impossible for any human being to truly escape their innate ego. All human beings have the right to live life in the way most fulfilling to them; cruel societal barriers say otherwise.
The only items I acquired on my misadventure were found far away from those goons in a completely different part of my area, in the much shadier suburban driveway of an older yet lively woman who was inviting and didn’t have a vengeful Trump sign hanging outside her residence. My finds screamed of hope chest material: A classy button jacket for when the weather gets chilly, a simple red and silver necklace to spruce up dinner dates that I’ve never been on, and two matching cummerbund sets for when me and my future hubby want to have some fun at fancy dinner parties. All this investment for six dollars. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve thought out what I’d like my future to hold quite a bit.
I am fully aware that, in order to make my hypothetical future happen in some capacity, I’m going to have to work. No matter my determination level, I’m still going to have to negotiate with everything else happening around me. Both roadblocks to progress and unexpected opportunities are guaranteed to emerge and run me off track. My plans could very well become fragmented or shattered entirely.
It’s also hard aspiring to resemble one’s heroes in life, even though the circumstances they gained their success under have gone extinct. Comparing the past to the present is a natural reflex—for me, at least. Too many assume that our present is automatically better than our past solely because, according to some, the forward movement of time always signals a positive societal progression. This is not the case in a world as chaotic as ours, and if anything that trajectory is burrowing deeper and deeper into the pits daily. While I do witness many notable changes occurring on a societal scale, these changes are rarely positive. Bigotry and idiocy continue to be normalized, causing most attempts at progress to function as largely meaningless, superficial pandering. Knowing that the world you live in is a much tougher sell in a multitude of ways than it was even ten years ago isn’t comforting, especially when it feels like the end of the world is always just around the corner. Time machines don’t exist, and the flying cars that were promised to us decades ago are nowhere to be found.
I’ll be in Kent, Ohio in four days to observe the grounds of its college campus. It will not be the Kent, Ohio it was years, months, days, seconds ago, despite being probably best known for its undeniable history. Maybe Kent State will fulfill the hopes I’ve set aside for it. Maybe it won’t.
All I can do right now is wait.
I finally did it. I found a Chick tract in the wild.
Chick tracts, for the uninitiated, are small illustrated religious pamphlets originally created by one Jack T. Chick, who hoped that his comics would convert America’s populous to fundamentalist Christianity. Despite the downright hateful views expressed in some of these booklets and the controversy they still attract, they continue to be distributed by various means across the globe, carrying Chick’s messages beyond the grave (he passed in 2016). They have become a frequent target of lampooning by those infatuated and infuriated by their existence; they have been immortalized in films, CD booklets, and songs.
I have always found these tracts fascinating for their sheer lack of subtlety in their messaging as well as their iconic and immediately recognizable graphic style, which has inspired many a budding punk graphic artiste hoping to subvert the Mainstream. To me they serve as fascinating, living artifacts from America’s fundamentalist side, just one example of the persisting influence of the religious right in the west and beyond.
“The Word Became Flesh” is not as interesting as some of the other, more well known tracts—instead of an absurd cartoon story of a lost soul/dirty rotten sinner being miraculously converted to the Lord after a short conversation with another cardboard cutout of a person, it’s an illustrated retelling of portions of the Bible regarding Jesus’s word. But that doesn’t make it any less intriguing.
Actually, my first encounter with a Chick tract was in the wild, though it wasn’t as a found object. I was casually browsing the pants aisle of a local thrift shop hoping to find something tolerable in my size when a mysterious woman armed with a shopping cart manifested beside me. With long pale wavy hair and dark, flowing garments, she resembled one’s kooky, Wicca enthused aunt who always bakes a mean batch of cookies when you visit her every summer. However, her religious affiliation vastly differed from what her outer appearance implied, which I would soon learn.
She was feuding with an overwhelming armful of clothing hangers which she eventually lost control of, dropping the collection on the ground in the process. I naturally glanced over, expecting her to be bending down cleaning up her spill. Instead, she just stood there, looking somewhat bewildered. She may have been old, but she didn’t look so frail that she wouldn’t be able to pick up the mess. It was almost as if she had committed the act on purpose as a test of my will to help a poor old disheveled woman experiencing obviously monumental peril. Concerned but willing, I bent down and began to help pick the hangers up for her, placing them in her cart.
She thanked me for my help and asked me a few questions, with the most potent question being, “Do you attend church?” The moment my brain processed the inquiry, I knew something was different. I replied that I do not, as I would be lying if I said otherwise.
She made her exit by gifting me a “comic book” from her bag, immediately recognizable to me from it’s horizontal format and monochrome cover. Next to a crudely drawn image of a wailing nuclear family with “666” imprinted on each member’s forehead, bold white text spelled out “The Beast;” “J.T.C.” lingered in smaller print in the lower right corner. Baby’s first Chick tract.
Upon realizing what gold I was currently holding, I slipped it into my back pocket as discreetly as possible as feelings of unreality and ecstasy began to boil within my brain. There was no way I would ever have such a seemingly once-in-a-lifetime encounter—right?
But it was real.
Since then, I’ve found numerous religious pamphlets while shopping at Christian-run thrift stores in my area, usually lying on a table of goods or a bookshelf, including this amusing vandalized item. However, none of these had been a Chick Publications product, and all of them were much more generic. There’s something about the cartoony malice of a Chick tract that still holds, a blatant propaganda tool turned cultural icon.
Are YOU jabbed?!
Because I am.
The immune cells in my body are currently training to whoop some coronavirus behind. Though the movement of my left arm became limited for a day due to annoying stings of pain, the knowledge that there are cells fighting a war within my fleshy shell definitely made up for it. Through my temporary inconvenience I felt power; it’s almost like wearing heels.
I’m also probably the only person in America to rep Jihad Jerry, the politically charged electro-blues side project of DEVO bassist Jerry Casale, while receiving my shot. The album is receiving a vinyl issue this summer, so I’ve been recently revisiting it in all its mid-2000s glory. Ever since I first listened to it, I’ve been a supporter of the project, and I always perceived it as oddly relevant to our current timeline despite its blatant roots in anti-Bushism and War on Terror satire. Some may question its longevity in light of current events. Fifteen years after the album’s initial release, the U.S. is scheduled to pull all of its troops from Afghanistan by the eleventh of September—a supposed end to the “forever war.” But “counterterrorism” forces are still going to be active indefinitely in the country; is that a true “end?” And besides, the damage has already been done.
When COVID-19 hit, I heard a lot of 9/11 comparisons. Generation-defining events, moments that would permanently change our preconceived standards of “normal,” though COVID impacted the wider world on a more visible scale. Looking at the cultural repercussions of both, I can see it. Post-9/11, we still have to take our shoes off at the airport—or, we will once events important enough to fly to begin occurring again—and I assume that face masks and remote communication will still play some role in America’s future twenty years down the line. From the fall of the Twin Towers sprang absurd acts of discrimination against anyone who looked vaguely Middle Eastern in the name of “patriotism;” the “China virus” only encouraged attacks against Asians. Same plot line; different bogeymen.
With all of this on our plates, I’d argue that Jihad Jerry, the self-proclaimed “lightning rod for hostility,” still deserves a seat at the table. Give a curmudgeon a microphone and he’ll use it. Maybe that curmudgeon will sing some songs made for a world where actual change seems so close, yet so far.
And maybe those songs will be pretty good.
