When I sat to write a little about the weekend, I wasn't sure what this post would be about— One of three or four things or a combo of some or just all of them because they all have strings that connect to each other but apparently those aren't ready to come out of my head yet. 

• Balancing the current and contemplating the future course of life
• Reflections on past life choices decisions
• Bands I'm very into recently - the Kilograms with a concert I just saw & Joker's Republic with a new album

But hey, I also realize HOW LONG it's been since I posted here, so briefly, after reading my last post from …many months ago: Neuropsych testing revealed ASD and ADHD, as well as reinforcing the cPTSD, depression/anxiety etc that were already on the books…  and a perceptual reasoning index around O_O. 

For a range of reasons, the rest of 2024 was fucking horrible on average, and that was even before November happened. But what came out of tonight's writing/ processing was not about that. It was about the Kilograms, one of my favorite new bands (made out of people from not-so-new bands), whom I just saw perform live for the 5th time yesterday (10/18/2025) in Cambridge, MA at the Middle East Downstairs.

First, let me get this out of the way, with a little bit of embarrassment that I didn't figure it out myself: The band name comes from the two elements that kicked off the chain-reaction in forming this band, Sammy K and Joe G - KGs. It gave me a metric ounce of ridiculous joy in learning this.

I've been listening to their first full album Beliefs and Thieves frequently since it was released this past Spring (in addition to their previous releases since they first did a thing in 2023).  It's a brilliant listen, and some days perfect for repeating. Each and every song is good & solid, several are fucking excellent, and a few are super fucking stellar. There's not an ounce of filler here. What's it sound like? Well, let's start with a base of good ol' rock & roll, flavor it with ska and/or punk, and/or reggae, and/or blues - mix & match, not quite ALL in EACH song. But with varying levels & degrees of specific flavors. And it all works as an album and it's JUST SO FUCKING GOOD. (Sorry. My MFA crit skillz are on the shelf right now, in favor of the actual painting I'm doing lately.  ;) )

I highly recommend you give it a listen or three. Go to your streaming service of choice and take it on a test drive, and if you like it, buy it. If you're the vinyl type, enjoy the temptation of limited edition splatters & test presses & all. And check out their debut EP & in-between release, which are absolute must-listens, too. 

But more than that, I highly recommend you GO SEE THEM, if they come within a reasonable drive for you. That's where that synergy really makes itself known. 
​

Lorelei from last night. Not the first song I've ever heard by that name, but these days it's my favorite one. 

So, Saturday 10/18 was my 5th time seeing the Kilograms perform live. The first was when I WON a ticket to Supernova Ska Festival 2024. The next chance I got was October 2024, in Boston with Big D and the Kids Table— the same day that one of my other special interests had an event, but I managed to pull it off and pulled a few other friends along with me. The next was at Space Ballroom in New Haven, December 2024 with Spring-Heeled Jack, Mephiskapheles, and also 9th Wave with my friend Phred on drums, omg how cool was that? Then there was a lull for opportunities (during which the album was released), until this past Wednesday at Scottish Dave's, where CT-SKA hosts so many shows and I just wish the venue were closer to my area of CT (near Hartford)…and had AC for the heat waves. I don't mind getting sweaty at a show, but good grief, that one very hot & humid summer's day show I saw there made my hot flashes feel like a breezy beach. And I lived in Savannah for 2+ years.  ;)  If you read this, Scottish Dave, it's meant with great love and gratitude for all the hospitality.  

Anyway… The most recent show was at the Middle East with the Pietasters, the Doped-Up Dollies, Raging Nathans, Cuidado. All in all a very memorable night, but the Kilograms absolutely stole it. 

There is a shared sincerity, integrity, and passion with this group that is a joy to see and an inspiration to feel, particularly in these weird-ass modern dark ages. 

They're outstanding accomplished musicians bringing their unique experiences to create a new, unusual, and excellent experience, overflowing with soul and heart and hella creative chemistry. And they're also all-around good people who will post a public invite to a pre-show meet & greet and start conversations with folks. Between songs they'll also tell all the radical right hater-types (fascists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, sexists, etc…) to GTFO, and remind you to Support Trans Kids. REALLY good people. <3 

So, if you get a chance, GO SEE THEM. Maybe you'll see Sammy K's FCK NZS guitar (it didn't make it past the first song in the most recent show due to technical difficulties). You'll definitely see Jay Duckworth bouncing all over the stage. And if you look close enough you'll see Joe still wears the beaded friendship bracelet our friend Caiti gave him at Supernova Ska Festival 2024 (she made one for me, too. It's says "SKA*CAT" and some of beads GLOW IN THE DARK which is a ridiculous love of mine, so it gives me SO MUCH JOY and I wear it to every show!). I wouldn't expect to see Joe TIE HIS SHOE during a song & hardly miss an important beat, but every show has it's delightful surprises.  O_O

So anyway, I love these guys and their music. Someone please fix the still-scrambled white matter connections that used to make it less hard for me to socialize with people I don't yet know!  I would like to converse more, and be more clued in to cues in a timely manner. 

I need more practice, or something. 

Of course, I might fare better if sizable events from my different special interests would spread themselves out more across the calendar. This happened last year, too, with the Big D & the Kids Table / The Kilograms show the same day as the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. 

So this Saturday despite my best efforts and doing pretty well for a few weeks, there wasn't enough brain space to pre-load all the New England Horror Writer content while leaving enough free for my ska-punk Bosstones buddies conversations (but I did get, like, MANY names right, if slightly delayed. That's a win!).  So brain did a little bit of each, which I fear wasn't quite enough to come off as less than a little weird in both environments.  ;)   But moderately weird is better than really really weird, right? I think most folks who know me a bit "get it" and hopefully don't mind so much.

ANYWAY: Favorite songs (out of all, not just Beliefs & Thieves) include but are NOT limited to:

Can't be Beat 
Drop that Guff
Beliefs & Thieves
The Hoodie Song
Faith & Love
No Reaction *
Lean on Sheena **
I'm gonna stop now because I'm on the verge of just listing ALL their songs

* If you're enjoying the rabbit hole so far, check out Joe Gittleman's solo title that helped get me through that terrible 2024, Hold Up, ** as well as his other non-Bosstones band, Avoid One Thing. 

So much musicianship, skill, heart, and soul here. Check it out. 

If you see the relatively short snippets of "ok," "not ok," "REALLY not ok" and "ok but not really ok" facebook posts from me and wonder about the details, where here's a bit more info about the how I'm really doing picture. 

I'm working part-time. It works out ok. I can do it from home and it doesn't usually suck up too much brain or really any creativity. I like it pretty well and even love some aspects of it, and it does good things for the brain. It doesn't pay all the bills, but it does most of the most important stuff. I am not able to do that job full time. I tried last Spring, and while it kinda went ok as far as the work goes, everything else in life was all but completely off the table. I don't think I did any dishes for like 4 weeks. And then it took at least 2 weeks after going back to part-time before I kinda sorta resumed what had been passing for normal functionality (*for me, which is a low bar). And that wasn't even FULL full time. It did 30-35 hours/ week for 4 weeks. It was not a good time. So, day job has to stay part-time.

But since day-job takes up very little creativity, I can work on art or writing in some of the remaining time. It uses different brain and contributes greatly to the "positive feedback loops" that my brain most needs, so the cumulative effort cost of that + day job part time is lower than the effort cost of day-job at full time. And when art pays, it pays a lot more. I've been very fortunate to bring in commissions (combined with graphics & video gigs) with increasing consistently for a bit now, even though the pace at which I can get them done wobbles a bunch & varies widely. 

Great, right?  Well.  So here's the thing. 

Not a lot of people know, but I suspect many could guess, that I've been on medicaid for some years now, during the worst of the brain injury and the very slow and very wobbly ramp to current functionality. And yeah, I was on SNAP ("food stamps") for much of that, too. 

With that consistent extra artstuff income, I have edged above the medicaid qualification line (I haven't qualified for SNAP for quite a while now). I still qualify for tax credit / subsidy towards an individual healthcare plan, but even low premium / low co-pay is beyond a budget that is still struggling to handle the rates increase on electricity. Going from no-copay to "just $20" for my once-a-week therapist (yeah, that's $80/month if you math, on top of the premium and any other health stuff that might come up) gave me a helluva few meltdowns. Oh, and all my prescriptions have co-pays now, too, to the tune of $85+/month total. And that's after my awesome pharmacist has searched high & low & far & wide for discounts & coupons. I am looking into direct fill options to see if that can save a little $.

Multiple people suggested going to the therapist every other week to reduce the costs, but I don't think the world could handle more unsupported meltdowns (I KNOW that I can't). 

I am doing VERY well COMPARATIVELY speaking, but it does't take much to trigger a meltdown, whether it be water in the basement again, not getting invited to a thing, or dealing with the health insurance options that changed from 2023 to 2024, it's been weeks since I've had a week without a meltdown. Unless some of y'all want to volunteer to handle the off-weeks' meltdowns, it's not viable. And then there's TRYing to return to the big stuff & EMDR I was working on BEFORE the accident happened. I'm a mess. 

I have wonderful amazing supportive friends and I am deeply grateful for & indebted to, but they have their own things going on and boundaries and some things are really truly therapist-only, and much of what I need is not just someone to listen. And no, some cheaper or free online therapist is not viable, I switched last year and it took like 6 sessions just to get her up to speed on most of the lay of the land. And I'm picky about therapists. I need way more than another set of eyes / an objective perspective on life. I have old traumas I'm trying to (re-)process. In the years before the accident, I tried a few therapists to work on that stuff, and it took a bit to find someone that was right. I'd rather switch cars while speeding down the highway than add a personnel change to my current mess

Have I mentioned all that stress & meltdowns seriously impacts my ability to get those artstuff commissions done, AND also impacts my day-job capabilities, not to mention getting to *my* personal art & writing projects… ?

Somewhere in there, and medicaid woulda covered it or at least appeared like it was going to, I got referred to ADHD / neuropsych testing, the theory being that with a better sense of what was up on my brain, I could develop better strategies to ease the load and level up and be capable of moar. I even had appointments all lined up for the end of last year, but had to cancel them when the insurance changed. Sure, a quickie gofundme might've covered it, but at the very least, it seemed prudent to wait so it would all apply towards 2024's deductible. 

And so that's where it's at. The Amazing Heather wondered very quickly if a gofundme should be the answer to the ADHD testing. And then more recently, tallied up the expected costs of my healthcare throughout the year. And the Amazing Cousin Amy also offered to help with some costs. So there will very probably be a gofundme thing about that stuff relatively soon, and so the immediate short term and mid-term extra red-alerts will probably be yellow alerts soon enough. Then maybe long-term possibilities can find their way to the table. In the meantime…

With the alleviation of some of the worry over the things that are the scotch tape & rubberbands & paperclips holding me together, I can maybe figure out how to sort out the Oranges' health care needs - They're a month overdue for routine shots, and as they're turning 16 and the end of February, they need full senior cat test panels. And there's enough elder kitty "up" with them that they might need additional tests or imaging. 

Can I just say I hate this? That I can be doing SO much better and still be SO far behind? To have had SO MUCH HELP already and still NEED SO MUCH MORE? I have climbed SO FAR out of a VERY DEEP HOLE, and there's still SO MUCH MORE HOLE ahead of me. Someone keeps kicking sand & rocks & twigs from above, too. 

This is not where I thought I would be as I muddle through my mid-50s. Particularly with the suspicion that there may be no combination of therapy & prescriptions & diagnoses that will ever really get me over the functionality line to actually manage the minimum requirements of getting by.

Here's another picture of my cats. XOXO & peace. 

Edit/Addition a few weeks later:  After some further healthcare plan adjustments and financial shifts, things are less overwhelming and bleak, tho' still needing some assistance. It's more finite, and I'm still gathering data before doing anything further or more specific. So the cats' needs are more pressing now while "my" kerfuffle is sort of leveling out.

First: A moment to honor all the Cee-yoU-Next-Tuesday bombs I cut from this, even though I did not come up with an adequate replacement. 

I have listened to a few songs from the New Band formed by the Former Lead Singer of my Favorite Band. No links. No oxygen for this, beyond this post, which I do not intend to even share on my social media. Not sure who I'll tell at all.

I wanted to give it a chance. I felt like I owed it to… I don’t know all the years and good times and other songs, all the things the previous music got me through, particularly the worst of the past 7 years, to see where it goes from here. I mentally committed myself to giving it at least one listen, and forming an opinion, that I might or might not share. 

Before I get into it, I have a few things to say. 

JesusFuckingKentuckyFriedOriginalRecipeChristDeliveringGlutenFreePizzaOnAUnicycle, am I really grateful that I ended up just smart enough to have much smarter friends to learn from and glean wisdom from. 

An atmosphere of knowledge and thought and perspective and context makes a huge difference. Doctor friends. Health department friends. NIH friends. MFA friends. Writer and creator friends who do deep research for the sake of a story. Statisticians, social psychologists, analysts, researchers, nerds and geeks of all shades, some rising and shining to heights within their specialties, and some of them graduates of some dang impressive schools. 

Yes my friends circles expand well beyond there to so very many different walks of life, but the point here is having smart and trustworthy folks in the circle, around for the heavier duty things that my BFA in Illustration and MFA in Sequential Art don’t provide much insight into. Hey, some of those friends might look to me for some technical details about the materials of painting, or a chunk of trivia about an artist or movement or, y’know, painted comics. 

Some folks like to cry elitism or something at that, some soundbite word pushed to sow doubt and undermine trust in knowledge and experts, but if someone’s performing surgery, or diagnosing a weird disease, or figuring out the really weird shit about how brains work, it helps if they’re smart AF and/or educated AF. 

I – WE – don’t have to know exactly how every damned little thing in life works because others have done the work. Some can even explain it, if we want to listen well and long enough. But that takes time that not all of us are able to willing to invest.

Anyway, I’m grateful because otherwise, well, I don’t think it’d be that otherwise, but I can, from where I stand, if I squint real hard, almost see the appeal of going down some of those anti-stuff rabbitholes. 

We’re hardwired to look for patterns, to try to piece things together, to try to make connections in the ongoing quest to make sense of the world. And sometimes, we see things that aren’t actually there. Jesus toast. Mars rock face. Bunny clouds. Drunk octopus fisticuffs hooks. 


So if you’re looking for a pattern, you’ll find one if you want it enough. Even if it’s not actually there, and especially if someone who you believe knows more than you whispers in your ear that it’s there. And very especially if it makes you feel like you’re now in-the-know on something SO MANY PEOPLEZ don’t know about. Especially effective if there’s some brewing disagreement between you and your other friends.

Like snake oil salesfolk of times past, they spout just enough… sciency-ness? science-ish-icity? science-sounding-not-actual-science and/or much-abridged-science and/or egregiously microscopically cherry-picked data to make it sound plausible to any random armchair wannabe-expert. They throw in a few scary words like “experimental” and distill it into sound bites and one-line “arguments” like “worse than the disease” for trolls to spread as they LOL at those who “expect cloth to protect you from a deadly virus” (yeah, I saw someone actually using that to mock) and waving their hands over “big pharma.” 

I won’t argue that big industries of any kind aren’t problematic or shouldn’t be watched, but much of what’s gone around the past few years is 2nd-grade-bully-level logic playing on subconscious fears, at best. At best. At worst, well, we’re still going down that deep deep rabbithole. 

I acknowledge that there are a range of legit reasons & concerns for some to not get one vaccine or other. I know a few. I further won’t argue that the vaccine didn’t give some people a particularly rougher time than it did the vast majority. I know a couple. That stuff should be studied and something done for those affected. Statistics still speak to its effectiveness, and the more vulnerable in our communities make it important during a pandemic for those who CAN get vaccinated to do so. To take care of each other. Or get thee to a mountain or deep forest or desert while said pandemic gets more under control. 

Y’know, while deniers and anti-maskers held rallies, spreading the virus far and wide and counteracting much of the good that masks do, then used that as proof against the effectiveness of masks. 

JesusFuckingKentuckyFriedExtraCrispyChristJugglingFlamingPoopOnAVespa.

Like, dudes, you’ve seen what medical staff do and wear going into the ER, right? Washing your fucking hands is a protection against deadly viruses, and so is a scrap of material in the right place. It doesn’t guarantee you won’t get or spread anything, just like seat belts & airbags don’t guarantee you won’t get hurt in a car accident, or a helmet doesn’t guarantee you won’t get a concussion, or fuck, a condom doesn’t guarantee the spermy little swimmers won’t get where they’re not wanted. But you use these tools to reduce risk. To add a layer of protection. I mean, most of us “get” that, right?  Right?

But somewhere along the line Americans grew to expect everything to work exactly right to full efficacy and complete guaranteed protection and no side risks either and “RIGHT NOW WHAT’S TAKING SO LONG” and it better be on the dollar menu, too. An order of large fries with that, please. “Oh, it’s ready? Well, that didn’t take long, how did that happen so fast? That can’t be good…”

Psssst - that’s not how shit works. Shit is complex. The world is complex. Civilization is complex. Sometimes simplifying a few factors in an explanation can help with understanding, and sometimes, well, it just makes a fucking mess.

Anyway, on to the music…

As an artist, I can’t stand folks who say bands or writers or actors or whoever shouldn’t be political. That’s horseshit. They should write and sing whatever inspires them. So we all know who they are, and we should believe them when they tell us.

The first song they posted, I listened to it once that day, had some brief thoughts, and intended to listen again and review it by the end of that weekend.

Instead, my computer died, and procuring a replacement consumed any extra time I might have had to do anything even remotely like blog. Then things got way busier, and doing the listening & posting started to feel like homework I didn’t want to do, then I didn’t get back to it until today, with more songs from them lurking and an event at the Punk Rock Museum in Vegas on their calendar. 

Well. So, that first single: Dead Language. I found the tune catchy and well put together. Something I might happily sing along with in my car. 

Unfortunately, the message smacks of, bluntly, and I fucking hate to say it, “old man yells at cloud.” 

For decades previous generations have tried to blame various societal ills on “whatever the kids are into these days.” Cars, radio, comic books, rock & roll, TV, D&D, video games, Internet, smartphones, social media - they’ve all spent some time targeted & demonized by those who tend to only see the bits that support their critique. These criticisms like to ignore the positive contributions and inflate and misinterpret the negatives.

I hope I’m not the only one who sees irony in here: That what they’re criticizing - Internet/ social media - has contributed to the spreading disease of alternative-f@c†s, big lies, anti-vaxx misinformation, and conspiracy inklings - including some of the very things they’re aligning with. 

Anyway, I don’t know what else to say about it, except as someone turning 54 in the near future, I am fighting like heck against ever being that kind of Aging Person. I might not fully “get” it or participate myself, but I will try to understand the uses & impact both positive and negative for any future tech or culture things that strike me as weird as the world gets weirder and often more wonderful.

Song 2:

The song Where Were You? breaks my heart, as it’s a song of lost friendship and burning bridges. My heart goes out to anyone who would feel that way. 

I find the lyrics “The rearview mirror caught my eye /  So goodbye to everyone in it”  depressing as fuck, particularly on the other side of all the love and joy I experienced in the crowd at Bosstones shows. 

A rift like that leaves an ideal spot for some other something or someone to shove in a crowbar and pry apart permanently. And part of me wonders if maybe that first friend did try to be there, but someone wasn’t listening… The world may never know. But as a writer, I can’t help but try to imagine the unseen dots to connect. Because sometimes people don’t want the help they need.

I can’t listen to it. The music, again, is catchy & competent, but not irresistable. The sort of song that if the lyrics hit right, I’d stick it out and let it grow on me. But they don’t and I can’t.

My heart does break for anyone really feeling that way. I can empathize, but not actually relate. My friends were there through the mTBI / post-concussion syndrome hole of helplessness & spiraling depression that occupied a good chunk of the past 7 years. Some friends weren’t there, for all kinds of reasons or just boundaries. I don’t hold it against any of them. There were plenty who were there, well above and beyond, and I’ll always be grateful. So I have no desire to try to sing along with this. I listened, and I'm sorry for you. I hope this song helped you. I hope you find a way to fix what got broken. That's as far as I can go.

Song 3: 

And now we get to the third song they posted, the one that I could hardly get through. The one I draw the line at. I’m not giving their stuff another second of my listening. 

This song belongs in the dictionary as a top-notch example of what the kids these days call “cringe.” I kept pausing, it was so fucking cringe. 

“Where did Liberty Go? is the cringiest “later career” thing out of a musician I’ve been a fan of & respected. And I was a Styx fan in the 80s (owing to my older brother’s record collection) when Mr. Roboto came out and the whole Kilroy Was Here production. Yeah, to 13-year-old me, it was SO cool. Fast forward 40 years later, a few weeks ago, it came over the audio system while I was at a local store, and my brain screamed with the cringe the entire time.

Somehow, this song manages to be worse. I’m sorry, someone’s got to say it. 

After the car accident (Sept 2016), I joked a lot that I’d knocked myself into an alternate timeline. The years that followed brought a lot to fuel that feeling. With the brain doing better, I’ve let go of the joke. But this song brought that feeling crashing back. WTF is up with this timeline? Am I being punked? (LOL)

There’s a point where cries of “what about freedom & liberty” have more in common with a 14-year-old grounded for taking a dump on stage during the high school talent show. It’s just plain infantile. Anti-vaxxers / anti-mandaters are NOT some victims, they are aggressors. They put everyone around them at higher risk, just like a drunk driver.

(This is where it got very hard to remove all the Cee-yoU-Next-Tuesday bombs).

Stroll around the comments on these songs on YT, you’ll see what the Defiant are fueling: Little keyboard crusader trolls appropriating “bodily autonomy” and “pro-choice” (as if the flames of this insanity aren’t fanned by some legacy politician who supports banning abortions after some absurdly short length of time). 

I’ve asked it before: CONTEXT - Has it become optional? A vaccine is not nearly even remotely the equivalent to using a person’s body by force as a life support for a fetus. 

About choices: You can sit at home and drink all you want, but if you get behind the wheel of a car, you’re a danger to everyone around you. It’s not just your risk. Same thing with vaccines during a pandemic. Your community isn’t required to tolerate your willful ignorance so you can walk around the mall. Your unvaccinated ass increases the risk for everyone you come in contact with, which increases the risk for everyone they come in contact with, and so on AND SO ON. You’ve heard “going viral,” right?  VIRUSES is where that phrase comes from. Your “choice” can affect the health of everyone around you, not just you. 

Then worse, other trolls creep through the comments with declarations about how un-punk it is to do what you’re told — a 2nd-grade-bully dig at those who got vaccinated at best, it might be laughable if it were coming from someone under 10 years old, instead of some grown-ass ‘adult.’ 

Newsflash: Everyone who got the vaccine isn’t some fucking sheep, or blindly trusting, or a mindless zombie, or just not “bothering to ask” about it all. 

I have a suggestion. Try questioning some other answers, like the ones that feed into that ego-indulgent self-important notion that you’ve uncovered some secrets about the world. It doesn’t take a lot for the armchair “scientishts” who fed you those to sound a lot more credible than they even very remotely are. There might be a few actual scientists among them, but there’s fringe to be found in any arena. As with, say, global climate change experts, the 97% who agree on most of it should probably count more than the fringe. That history has some at-the-time fringers who were quite right (hey, Galileo) does not support your theories the way you think it does. FFS, take a closer look at the contexts. You're not the Galileo side of this. 

And finally, hey, Cee-yoU-Next-TuesdayS: Uneducated is NOT Punk rock. Willful ignorance is NOT Punk rock. Punk rock is NOT mere rebellion & contrarianism for the shallow sake of it. There are grown-up ways of questioning things and solving issues. 

I'll go with this actual punk rock, thank you: https://eugeneweekly.com/2022/05/12/punk-and-the-pandemic/

The Defiant want to pass their rhetoric off as punk, but it’s just getting the homework wrong dressed up as punk for Halloween. And it’ll be trick-or-tricking itself all over the Punk Rock Museum tonight.

For the record, I have no hate here for the individuals, just… deeeeeeep disappointment. And fear for the spreading ignorance. I still wish everyone involved well as much as I desperately wish they’d come to their senses. And see what they're standing next to. See what's using them.

I’d managed to cling to optimism for a while after January 2022, and maybe still have a sliver of hope that these rebels without a clue will eventually learn enough to unlearn the wiggedy-wack that’s taken them in and convinced them to spread it further like a virus against knowledge… Some sliver of hope that some stellar, soul-healing Mighty reunion, complete with a new friendship song above and beyond Don’t Worry Desmond Dekker (because if anyone could write such a thing, I wanted to believe Mr. Barrett still could), might materialize some day.

But that sliver has grown quite thin, and, depending on a lot of factors, I’m not sure I’d be there for it. Legends stumble. Many a thing I’ve fanned over has twisted its ankle and/or set itself on fire or otherwise dissolved in one way or another. 

(( Side note, I need (and intend) to spend some attention on what other Bosstones have been doing, particularly Joe Gittleman. And lots of other things. Working on it as best I can. ))

The line between clever & stupid is not that fine. The Defiant try to be clever, but it only looks that way to those more easily fooled than they. Some of the music (the 3 songs' worth I sampled) is pretty catchy, but not enough to warrant wading that deep into wiggedy-wack.

As always, your mileage may vary.

So, some weeks (months?) ago, my MacBook Air took a nosedive. It had been acting a little quirky throughout one particular week, and Friday night it went down and never came back up. Luckily, I had run 2 or 3 different backups Wednesday & Thursday, and keep all the super most important writing stuff on one cloud drive and also backed up to another cloud drive at the end of each session. I might have lost a couple of cat memes and the most recent screenshots I take of every word game I play for no discernible reason. But other than that, no worries. Well, except for needing a relatively current computer to do everyday things with. I have a few older machines around that remain un-upgraded for legacy software access, but I don't think gmail will even consider letting me use the mail clients on those anymore. 

I posted my plight on FB, asking if anyone had something they might sell cheap, and a few friends offered some older machines for free or cheap. I'm currently still using a loaner MacBook Pro 2015 from my friend Robin over at Kitten Associates, and wondering if I might still offer to buy it even though I technically don't *need* need it …because I have a 2019 MacBook Pro gifted from my friend Gordon.

Not long ago, before the Air took its plunge, I had been contemplating my current state of tech. My "big work" machine - a Mac Pro Tower - is 12 years old now. It still does the things I need, albeit somewhat grumpily and slow, but someday it won't at all. And not being in a particularly great position financially, if that were to happen, I would have to discontinue the graphic design offerings that I take on here and there. I haven't tried to push the tower for video, once a primary purpose along with all the graphics stuff, for quite a while. 

I did not expect the Air, a 2017 model bought gently used, to give up its ghost first. And I definitely did not expect MB Pros to show up as possible replacements.

As I was loading the 2019 with my various Apple softwares from over the years fresh from the App Store, for the first time in a long while, my brain drifted to Final Cut. Yeah, I had a license from back when I worked at the Apple Store, and hells yeah, I installed it. I was like, "holy crap, I could do video again."

A very short time later I had a quickie video project land in my lap to do as a favor for NEHW (New England Horror Writers) to warm up the skills, then an actual paid video project for one of my Apple colleagues from back in the day who needed some behind-the-scenes footage edited to go along with an independent movie he'd just finished. 

Fall 1989, Junior year. The class was ILS 330, Intermediate Illustration: Color. The previous one had been all black & white.

It might have been the first project, or the first significant project. But it was watercolor. We were working on it in class. Winsor & Newton Series 7 #3 sable watercolor brush. Bainbridge 80, or possibly Crescent 300 Illustration board.

While I had displayed some talent and worked a lot at developing drawing and painting skills since adolescence, I had completely and totally and utterly failed to establish any real lasting friendship with Watercolor.

So, on that day in September (probably) 1989, I was making a bit of an uncontrolled mess.

The professor, Dennis Nolan, came around to check on my progress. He said, something to the effect of, “Ok. We’re gonna let this dry for a bit, take a break, I’ll be back in about 20 minutes and I’ll show you some things,” in possibly the most helpful, most friendly, welcoming, unobtrusive, completely nonjudgemental kind of way.

He might as well have said, “Hey, looks like you and watercolor haven’t quite met yet. Let me introduce you…”

Some 20 minutes later, on a scrap piece of illustration board, he demonstrated a different approach to handling watercolor. And I got it. Y’know? One of those moments when a lightning bolt of EUREKA! carves a path through the brain.

I’ve shared little slices of this story through the years, and have always credited Dennis as “the teacher who helped me make friends with watercolor.”

The painting I was working on was the Strawberries. A few months later, it would be accepted into the 1990 Society of Illustrators Student show, a very competitive show, and would hang in their gallery in New York.


Without that Eureka! session on watercolor with Dennis, there would be no Strawberries. Nor Indiana Jones. Nor the Endangered Species series, which got into the 1991 Society of Illustrators Student show and won a scholarship prize as well.

Nor “Rough Landing," from 2016, finished a few weeks before the accident.
Nor Princess, painted last year, Summer 2021 for my friend Drew McMillen.

Maybe I’d’ve figured it out eventually, or another teacher would’ve helped me bridge the gap. I've been fortunate to have many top-notch teachers. But it didn’t have to be anyone else - the others could teach me other stuff. Because for watercolor, it was Dennis, on that day, Fall 1989.

He was truly among the best of all teachers, and witty and kind to boot. Not only was he an outstanding instructor on technique, he was a wise mentor who absolutely knew when something was up and what to say.

Not every medium can be my bitch, and not every piece of art I create comes out stunning. It’s something artists have to make peace (at least an uneasy peace) with, but at that point, not even 20, I hadn’t yet. With the move into color pencils and other mediums, my next few project or so came out … fine. Ok. But not outstanding, and that brought out anxieties, insecurities and frustration that, after leveling up with watercolor, not every single thing I made could be better than the thing before.

Well, Dennis had a clue-by-4 for that, and more. Because there was more to it. Yeah, I’ve always been overwound and the reasons are many and varied and some of them only recently identified and still not all sorted.

I kept in loose touch over the years. My sister worked at a photo developing place where Dennis would get film developed, then later as a server at a restaurant he and his family would frequent. The first time she recognized him (she’d visited me at Hartford, and spent a year there herself as well), she said something and he absolutely remembered me.

He wrote one of the letters-of-recommendation when I applied to grad school. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but I had coffee with him sometime well after I got my MFA, and had self-published the first issue of BloodDreams. Searching through my computer’s Calendar, possibly May 2011. Sunday the 19th. Too too too long ago.

When I came back to New England, I’d hoped to check in with him again. But everything got busy, and extra complicated around family & the house & all that came beyond it. And then the accident happened (six years ago just last week!).

Nobody knows the full depth and width of how things changed inside my head after the accident, in varying ways over the course of years –– For all that I’ve tried to reveal some of it to people, I’ve never really fully communicated exactly how bad it got in my head - the words fail me, and few people are that patient and as good at listening as would be required if I could organize all the thoughts.

But for a while, I wasn’t sure I would return to art. The right-front area of the head is a particularly shitty place to get hit for an artist & creative person. A lot of important things live around there:  visual spacial skills specifically used in drawing, painting, composition, creativity and creative drive, as well as executive function & emotional regulation. Wrap that up with an extreme sensitivity to light—something kinda necessary for painting—and audio processing issues that made every sound exponentially harder to process, and well. There's something that few people 'get' unless they've had something happen to their brain, and that's how you can really truly not feel like yourself on the inside in the midst of all of it. But there's habits and motions you go through, so most people are inclined to write it off when/if you try to tell them about it. It's hard imagining being in someone else's head, and inconvenient and scary to try when they appear well enough on the surface (see also: depression and a wide range of 'invisible illnesses').

Anyway.

I’ve wondered many times if Dennis might’ve said something that might’ve helped through the Brain Injury years. He probably would have known just the right thing to say, or something extremely helpful. But every little thing took so much effort, so much brain, and, with the additional drama of the lawsuit and my mother passing and Smudge as well, just looking into the path to reconnect with him was unfathomable. Too many steps, too many unknowns, so much overwhelm—and often a too-unreliable vehicle anyway. By the time brain & life were ok enough to maybe look into it, COVID hit, closing everything and bringing with it new anxieties for a wobbly brain to chew on.

So, when I learned back in August that Dennis had passed away, it hit hard. It’s hit me a few times, in waves, since then. Today I attended a celebration of his life, and committed to finally finishing and posting this post. I still don't know how to wrap it up, so …

Farewell, Dennis. I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you more recently how much you affected my art and my life. But I do think you knew it. So that has to be good enough.

And, to be honest, there aren’t words that can really do justice to the impact he had on my life and my art. I wish I were a better communicator. But I suspect the lack exists mostly in language itself. There are some things that defy description.

Maybe I’ll try to paint it out.

NOT OFFICIALLY POSTED YET! If you're seeing this, you've found this before I've finished adding the bits & pieces that occurred to me since I pushed "post." Come back later. Or not. Or read now, and compare later. Do what you want. I'm not the boss of you. But be aware that this is more unfinished than it will be when I finally stop revising it.

Pre-script (zero-rst off?): I have many other subjects in mind for this blog that are NOT Bosstones-related. It's just turning out that way lately. I swear, there will be SOMEthing else subject-wise, sooner or later. And this one, while Bosstones-adjacent and catalyzed, for sure, is going to be all over the map.

• The plaid means more than the color of our clothes
  It means everyone is welcome to the Mighty Mighty shows
  Feel free to represent on the Bosstones' stage
  We don't care about your race, color or about your age
  You just gotta want to want it and ya gotta want to move it
  It's a plaid plaid world and we're trying to prove it everywhere we go
  As long as you're united with the plaid boys from Boston then you're all invited
  Everywhere you go let's all get united with the plaid boys from Boston
  And you're all invited!
                                               — The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Bad in Plaid" 1991

First off, I want to state for the record, carved in stone, that I have always loved plaid.

The earliest favorite article of clothing that I can recall was a plaid dress in mostly green when I was in kindergarten. Yeah, it had some white frilly trim because "girl" clothes in the mid '70s, but I loved that dress. Through the following 20+ years before I got into the Bad in Plaid band, I had many many favorite plaid and "Buffalo" plaid (we called that checkered or checked back in the day) shirts and such.

It only recently occurred to me that plaid is a great way to get a bunch of colors into an outfit without having to go floral or feminine. Nothing wrong with feminine, it's just never been a big factor in my "style."

I also loved Converse All-Star Chuck Taylor hi-top sneakers long before I got into punk, and long before I knew the Mighty Mighty Bosstones had done a commercial for them. At some point in my college years, I wore a Chucks-style licensed Tasmanian Devil pair until they started to fall apart. I still have them. I have a notion to fill them with something weighty and turn them into bookends one of these days. And I've always loved Doc Martens but have had fewer pairs of those over the years because money and versatility - I feel like I can wear Chucks more months out of the year, and have scored most of mine through serious bargains. Docs, not so much for summertime, and always at a price that makes me think. It was a great joy to buy a special pair of multiple plaid / gradient Docs not too long ago and to notice several Bosstones wearing them at the following Throwdown.

Even if I never fell in love with the ground-breaking ska-core band of Boston, my wardrobe would undoubtedly feature plaid and Chucks and Docs. But in loving the Bosstones – and committing to seeing as many of their shows as possible – well, that was my the green light to Lean In to the plaid aesthetic.

Here's a sampling…I coulda kept going, and took pics of pairs of pants, capris, lots of scarves, sheets, blankets, etc….

(I have decided, in assembling these photos, that my plaids really need a whole post of their own.)

Converse hi-tops and low-cuts, Doc Martens in classic shapes and less common, Payless Converse knock-offs, and of course a pair of Vans. Jackets, long-sleeve shirts, sleeveless, camisoles, tank tops. Autumn jacket and Winter coat… And now I don't know what to do with ALL of them..

Because the Mighty Mighty Bosstones as a band are no more, as of around 3pm EST on January 27, 2022.

It sucks, a lot. Their music helped get me through a lot of the very very shitty 3+ years leading up to the pandemic (car accident / mTBI / PCS). Knowing they started making new music in 2020 mitigated some depression and anxiety through the pandemic, as did tickets to see the show that would end up being their last.

It was such an excellent show, too. They played their cover of "I Can See Clearly Now" and it felt like it was just for me. I wish I'd stuck around at the rail to say "hey" to Dicky. But I wasn't sure he'd come out, and I'd drifted from a bunch of friends in all the up-front smooshing around & wanted to re-join them… y'know, before going off to re-join my other friends, the ones I'd brought to the last Throwdown and who'd decided hell yes, they wanted to see more Bosstones shows. About 10 seconds after I peeled away from my rail-spot, he was at the rail, right where I'd been. Alas.

I am super grateful to each member of the band for everything they gave the world. All the albums, so many jaw-droppingly amazing songs, 31 live shows I got to see, and a sense of brotherhood, community and camaraderie that they encouraged their audience to spread far and wide.

I have no intention of ceasing to wear plaid, but… I also don't think I need quite so much of it, without more MMB shows to look forward to. Want some plaid? Not all of it is available, but if you see something you like in those pics, let me know. I was already looking to re-home the lowest step of shoes before the news dropped.

But… why?
So there's a lot of extra feels in the community about the breakup. It was sudden. Unexpected, particularly with a new (so fucking good) album to promote and actual shows scheduled (now canceled). It *appeared* like it might be … not exactly amicable. Rumors about why started to fly.

On twitter (Note: I'd only recently returned to twiter after taking a loooong break from the addictiveness and toxicity that sucks time and drains the will to live), I watched someone single-handedly self-inflate their own confirmation bias as they made sure everyone posting about the Bosstones heard the speculations… Over the hours growing to push those speculations off as fact even tho' there had not been any further evidence than when they first started spreading it.

In partly-related news, I'm taking another break from twitter.

Eventually and sadly, the speculative reason was confirmed, at least to some degree, a few weeks later.

I'm not going to state the reasons here. If you want to know, it's not hard to find out. But until that confirmation point, and to some much smaller, tiny degree still now, I suspect it's at least a little more complicated than it appeared & even than what's been confirmed.

In retrospect, some of the new songs should have been a tip-off. But Barrett often writes and sings from not-his or not-exactly-his POV, or with multiple meanings, and encourages listeners to bring their own interpretation into it. "I Don't Believe in Anything" is back & forth between two perspectives. Before all this, some might have assumed which voice aligned more with his own. Now… well. Y'know what they say about assuming…

In the Ska and Bosstones online communities I participate in, The Reasons made for some complicated grief and created some friction among friends and fellow fans. And even some noisy-muck-flinging at band members – from both 'sides' of The Reasons (Yikes, I got no time for that kind of noise, from either 'side.' Let the band alone, people. Splatter your thoughts out on your own post or blog. Y'know like I'm doing here!). I've even seen a few use The Reasons to make some pretty wiggedy-wack assumptions about the politics & voting of some band members, which struck me as profoundly oblivious at best. Like, did you even listen to While We're at It? I won't assume we'd all agree on every damn thing or all the finer points, but among the things that made me love the Bosstones even more was some fairly obvious 'political' content.

Sure, people change, particularly if hanging around a new crowd, but there was some seriously onerous reaching crawling around. Because internet.  :p

Anyway, From here, I'm just going to barf up some paragraphs and statements and those inclined can connect any dots not connected as they see fit.

None of this rambling rant is directed at any one person: it's primarily a collection of reactions to the various things I've seen in comment threads the past few weeks. I don't have an editor and I just want to clear this out of my head and get it done so I can move on to working on a short story for an anthology submission with an impending deadline.

I absolutely love the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and absolutely wish the very best for each and every one of them, and for their families and friends.

It is possible to disagree with, be disappointed in, or even be angry with someone, or over some action they took, without hating them. Certain kinds of participants on the internet like to call any and every possible criticism 'hate,' and wield that label as a bludgeon to shut down any kind of discussion. They do it to manipulate and elicit a more dramatic emotional response that, to them, is further evidence of 'hate.' I don't have time for that kind of bullshit noise.

These are often the same folks who fling a sarcastic "still wearing a mask?" or "when you getting your next booster shot?" – out of nowhere or as a clever retort, the perfect image of a third-grade bully making fun of someone for doing the homework. If this is you, y'all need some remedial science classes, grown-up social & communication skills, and to put on your big-boy pants at the very very very least.

They might as well be sneering at designated drivers, or blowing through red lights because they erroneously think they drive better than everyone else. Knowing these people exist makes me wear a mask even beyond recommendations, to help compensate for those too absurdly contrary & bloody-minded to know better.

--------

In a way, The Reasons for the breakup speak to the pervasiveness of the conspiracy-prone alternative-facts anti-science crowd. It's evidence that nobody is completely inoculated from having their ears bend and inclinations pushed towards the wiggedy-wack. A little part of me kinda gets it. Like, hey, years ago, I myself was skeptical of the flu vaccine.

Luckily, I since learned how this stuff actually works, about asymptomatic transmission, etc… –  from actual experts and widely accepted medical recommendation - not just 'opinion.'  And NOT from, say, a small percentage minority with suggestions based on discredited and unethical studies – a fringe faction who knows how to inflate and manipulate online search results to make themselves appear legit & more popular than they actually are.

Unless someone's in a medical program working on an immunology study and it's been peer-reviewed and published, personal "own research" doesn't cut it.

It is not just a matter of opinion when one opinion is based on bad information and fiction. It is not freedom of choice when one choice increases the danger for everyone around the chooser. Choosing to ignore facts doesn't make them less true. As with flat-earthers, it's simply wrong. But at least flat-earthers are not endangering the health of those around them. Or, at least not their physical health.

"Opinions" are for things like pizza toppings. Anchovies vs pineapple. Vaccines & their efficacy are not even remotely pizza toppings, and are even less so during a pandemic.

The fact is that the willfully unvaccinated increase the risks for everyone they come in contact with, just as a drunk driver increases the risks for everyone sharing the same roads. They're not choosing risk levels only for themselves.

The right to swing your arms wildly ends at someone else's nose. The right to walk around unvaccinated in a fucking pandemic ends in public, sharing air with others, connecting to fellow humans. Circulating in crowds, getting on buses or planes, traveling to other countries.

We live in a complex society. The benefits of that complex society come at some cost, and that cost includes paying dues and deference to the common welfare of those around us.

In short: We're supposed to take care of each other.

Ignoring facts and falling for bad information doesn't take precedence over that. And it isn't cool, or 'punk rock.' It's not 'punk rebellion' to reject science and a vaccine during a pandemic. Too many appear to define freedom in much the same way a 14-year-old grounded for taking a dump center stage in the middle of the school play would.

Too many doubt science and reject facts in the same way that the grade school bully who just doesn't understand it would. It's a frightening and dangerous trend cultivated over the past few decades, come to a head.

The truly strong consider their whole community. A true punk attitude rejects treating those around us as lesser, as undeserving of our protection, or disposable because they're older or have asthma or are undergoing cancer treatment or some other "pre-existing condition."

For the record: I absolutely acknowledge that there are allergies and legit medical reasons for some people not to get this vaccine or others. That this is a thing makes it all the more reason why everyone who can get it should get it.

Also for the record: I do have issues with 'Big Pharma' (another phrase thrown around as if it should have the power to shut down any discussion). But battling the COVID-19 virus has been a bigger, more immediate problem for, like, two fucking years now. I don't know where we lost the concepts of context and perspective and nuance, but … wow. I really hope we can get those back.

Choosing to not get vaccinated isn't 'sticking it to big pharma' – fixing that is going to take a whole lot more work, so roll up your sleeves – instead, it's sticking it to everyone – by increasing the danger to everyone. By giving the virus more and better opportunities to transmit and mutate. More people getting it means more people in the hospital with it, which then means fewer hospital beds and fewer medical services for people who need them for other reasons.

The 'system' these folks think they're rebelling against is actually trying to save lives here, and reduce harm. It's not a perfect system, and government and pharma and medical industries (and, well, all industries) need oversight. Always. But FFS, it's a pandemic, people. Get some fcuking perspective.

And, among so many other things, I see folks using the vaccines' lack of 100% bullet-proof efficacy to add fuel to the anti-vax fire. Nobody ever promised the vaccine would make everything perfect, and the best of expectations relied on more people getting it, and sooner, and more wide-spread, before more mutations and variants rose. Not this well-vaccinated in some states and wildly-super-spreading in others clusterfuck we ended up with.

If someone thinks the vaccines are not worth it because vaccinated folks can still get the virus and transmit it, then the flaw is in their expectations and understanding, not in the vaccines. It reduces risk, it reduces severity, it reduces transmission, it reduces hospitalizations. It reduces harm.

Saying "people can still get it / people can still transmit it" even if they're vaccinated is like saying "sober people can cause accidents, too, not just drunk drivers."

Lack of understanding is not a valid basis for opinions. Not when there's facts from experts and the knowledgeable.

They make fun of those vaccinated for 'trusting blindly' when all they've done is put their own blind trust into a different reasoning – a very very shoddy and shady excuse for reasoning at that.

------

Personal perspectives:

For the record, I don't need to have a personal connection to someone affected to have empathy and compassion for them. But as it turns out, I do in fact have a few personal reasons for taking this shit very very very fucking seriously. 

I am the granddaughter of someone who, 100+ years ago, lost her entire family - parents and 2 siblings - to the 1918 flu pandemic. There's no way to know for sure, but I'd bet good money they'd welcome a vaccine that was even 50% as effective as the ones we're currently using to battle COVID-19.

• I very much hope that such pain never finds its way to the doorstep of the willfully unvaccinated, and I very much hope that the willfully unvaccinated never inadvertently bring such pain to someone else's doorstep.

The un-vaccinated might believe they're not a risk to others, but that blind belief doesn't make it so.

This isn't a matter of opinion, or a justification to whine that it's 'a free country'… because that increased risk is real. Putting trust and belief in some anti-vax snake-oil pseudo-science cult philosophy doesn't make the factual risk any less real. Believing the earth is flat doesn't make it factually flat.

That grandmother of mine lived well into her 90s, her mind still strong as time eventually took enough of a toll on her body. Along the way, she raised a family, kept a spotless house, crocheted countless afghans and doilies, tended a gorgeous garden, worked effectively every minute of every day… and took on even more work when my grandfather — a coal miner – could no longer work.

A few weeks ago, her oldest daughter, my aunt, passed away. She went into the hospital with something treatable, which was responding well to treatment. She, too, was a strong woman— a retired nurse who spent her life taking care of others. But she caught COVID at the hospital, and had a stroke (COVID increases the risk of stroke), and, well. The hospital wouldn't allow anyone any visitors. The rehab place (for the stroke) had to keep COVID-positive patients in isolation, but at least did allow visitors - in full protection gear. And then they shuffled her back to the hospital anyway. Once there's enough things pushing everything downhill…

I was finding out all of this over the course of a few weeks, filtered through layers of family members via text, trying to figure out where I could call or when I could visit (a 2.5 hour drive).

I didn't get to see her until she'd gone into hospice. I learned that's what it had come to, by the way, the day of the Bosstones break up. I'd been texting my sister, and had exhausted myself crying about my aunt on a tele-health appointment to my therapist, then sat for a bit, just processing. I got to the point where I could move on with things… I literally thought, "Ok, well, let's put on some Bosstones to cheer up and make something of the day," then went to check facebook 'real quick' before getting off the couch. The announcement of the breakup had gone up about 30 minutes prior. My feed was full of shock from many a friend.

Here I wanna take a moment to be admittedly very unjustifiably yet cathartic-ly catty & petty– 
Thanks for the timing, guys.  O_o

Anyway… less than two weeks later, I sat with my aunt through the night, and held her hand as she passed away.

My grandmother's family, and my aunt— these are the people being discounted, dehumanized, and written off by the anti-vaxxers, the so-called 'strong,' the deniers, the anti-maskers. By those who think themselves smarter than a large majority of doctors and scientists.

By those who succumbed to the engines of misinformation.

Does anyone ever find their way out of that rabbit hole? We can only hope, but it's a downward spiral that's easy to keep sliding further and further down. Their appropriation of the concept of the "red pill" is disturbingly cult-like, particularly as the "pill" they're swallowing is more like a handful of qualudes chased with a pound of meth all taken during a very very bad acid trip. But hey, let's de-fund education some more. How much worse can it get?

The 'weak' whom they can't be bothered to protect includes seniors who worked their asses off their whole lives in the hopes of enjoying some kind of retirement. Healthy folks who happen to have asthma. Brilliant people undergoing chemo for a cancer they can and will survive - unless some asymptomatic un-vaccinated anti-masker sheds gobs of high-strength virus in their vicinity. People who will die of something very treatable because the hospital workers are too overwhelmed to give everyone proper care — or because there's no space at the hospital at all, because the place is full of COVID patients.

Anyone who would write off the well-being of any of those folks does not deserve to call themselves or be lauded as a 'rebel,' some kind of punk hero bucking the system. They're not sticking it to 'the man,' they're sticking it to everyone they come in contact with. They're sticking it to their fellow humans. Their own community.

I will wear a mask and will get boosters whenever recommended because it's not just about me. I will do what I can to diminish the power and spread of this thing. I will do what I can to make sure I don't contribute to the pain of whole-family-gone or couldn't-get-treatment for others.

True punk rock cares about the weakest among us, and doesn't let 'the machine' dehumanize them and treat them as dispensable. True punk doesn't fall for bad information. True punk takes care of each other.

With that, I'm gonna sign off. I love all y'all – whether in agreement or not – and am determined to do what I can to compensate for the folly of others.