I Don't Want To Have To Be Th' Second Shooter, Jeebis. Not Now, Jeebis.

I mean, think about it. I'm 41 and hale of body but I've sort of done my thing, you know? I mean, I don't know if it's a lack of character or imagination on my part but I'm at a real sort of dead end. I struggle to hear some sort of voice telling me what to do. It is the hardest thing I've ever come up against; it's a theme that reappears in every song I write and expresses itself in dreams with impressive ingenuity.

When it comes to music I'm damned with a commercial spirit. I think pop songs should be put on records and played. So the idea of toiling away in my studio with this or that complement of players with the end of making great recordings that 15 people dig leaves me a little cold. It's a lot of work. To make something that's affecting and effective, something that doesn't require the listener to suspend disbelief just takes a lot of fuckin' sweat, man. To make music with integrity (I mean sonically and compositionally, not some U2 Behind The fucking Music shit) requires integrity and sometimes you have to dig deep for that shit. And there's the whole having to spend 50 hours a week doing some wholly unacceptable, bullshit, pointless, for-the-fucking-birds-shitass job that you have to do when you can't sell records or draw a crowd.

I come back to the dreams that used to jerk me awake in '00- the dreams where I would remember some Christ-awful sacrifice I made for my would-be careeeer and I'd be like that was for nothing. Remember that one fucked-up sacrifice that robbed you of age 74? That was for nothing. That bothered me more than anything. That's what fucking got under my skin. I was like Sheen in that room at the beginning of Apocalypse Now.

Look, man- I can live with all this, you know? I know I'm fucking lucky to be alive. It's just that I wish I could just do my fading-into-the-wallpaper-of-humanity-not-appearing-on-Wikipedia- Willy-Lomax trip at a time when the fabric of the universe wasn't shredding. That would make it a little more poignant than having to go through this with the whole fucking house of cards tumbling shit.

Things have gotten really, really, really bad. It's too much to wrap your fucking head around. Things are getting so fucked up in this country so fast that it's going to take decades to get back to Merely Stupid. I mean, I might not even fucking see it. It's like when you lose a piece of gear or get something stolen on a gig and in practical financial terms you won't recoup the loss for three gigs. And fucking christ did we lose a '59 Custom Tele under the stage at Spaceland in fucking 2000.

The thing with Bush et. al. that is doing me the most damage, aside from the calories wasted on sheer disgust, is that my whole social outlook has changed. I see the Right's continued support of this shit as an indication of poor character at this point, as just the most craven fucking dupery. I didn't used to see things that violently. I used to think that people were as diverse as their backgrounds and that would naturally be reflected in their views. And I used to interact just fine with all manner of rednecks and Marines and old rich fucks.

Now I really do see them as greedy lunatics and dangerous and not worth my time. And I'll cut a social exchange with a fellow citizen short if I hear this shit start to come out. I will suddenly have to attend to a prior fucking engagement right pronto. I don't want to debate these shit heads! Come on! Come on!!! Christ! These fucking people are wierd, man. Man, I see fucking Yellow Ribbon one on their fucking car and I'm not Dropping The Kid Off there, man. These people are actually stupid enough to vote (?) an administration into office on one set of issues and sit on their hands when a wildly incongruent agenda appears magically from the mysts of avafuckinglon. TWICE. Man, people like that? People like that you can't trust to pick the lint off your nuts, man! Didn't your parents teach you anything about character? Come on!!

And these people at their worst, see, the thing with 'em is that they celebrate their greed and their stupidity. It's a big fucking yee-haw to these wiping-their-ass-with-other-people's-faces hayseeds.

I used to have my own hard-earned doubts about th' Welfare State, man. I always worked hard. I had my doubts. I took the line The fucking Man dropped, you know? Hey, we've all got our doubts at th' end of the day, right? Where is the line on shit? Where is the line on abortion? Where's the line on supporting indigent folk, y'know?

Tell you one fuckin' thing right now, my fellow citizens- I'd rather see our tax dollars used to support the coke habits of every fucking Crip and Blood and gang member and crack dealer than to see how they're being used now. I would rather live in the most ostentatiously misguided, entitlement-crippled, huge-government-money-wasting lefty nightmare than to continue on like this.

I can't keep track of the deceit, the chicanery, the stealing, the killing, the betraying, the lying. You would have to have a six-member clipping staff working around the clock to keep you abreast of the sheer, vengeful, unmitigated fucking about of this administration. And the breathtaking stupidity and arrogance and short-sightedness of our leaders. And the smug nihilism. And the chickenhawk-bring-it-on-I-have-a-miniscule-dick faux macho swagger. And how Bush tries to be funny. How he treats his public appearances like a joke. And the central conceit has to be there, like with any professional stand-up guy. And with Bush it's That He's Stupid. He's th' Stupid Guy! Like Steven Wright is th' Scary Guy! And Emo Phillips is the Dorky Guy! And Bill Cosby is th fuckin' Asshole Dude. Bush is Th' Stupid Guy! And he plays it and plays it like an 8-year old when you make the mistake of laughing at their cute fart joke. He's like the...the...the meta president, you know what I mean? I mean, he's up there, you know, and you're down here, and ain't it kooky! He's going to tell ya about Bein' President! How crazy it is, Playing The President. How a typical day goes! Woah! He gets out of bed, shoves a huge vibrator up his ass and orders a thousand innocents slaughtered for oil! Yup! All in a day for The Man Playing The President, dearies.

Somebody ought to steal through a window and garrotte this guy, my friends. We'd all be th' better for it. I'm just sayin'.

What's it like? What's it like? What's that central metaphor, that image that sums it up?

I don't know, man. I don't know on this one. I couldn't tell you. I'll leave it to better minds. I'll leave it to history. Boy, that's a scary thought huh? History? Oh, people are going to think we were assholes!!!!

So yeah, I just wish I could finish realizing my midlife insignificantizing in a slightly different world. It's just mean this way. When I see how mediocrity is rewarded it twists something inside my god damn stomach and believe you me, that fucking stomach's got more knots in it than a guitar cable at a fucking open mic. And I just can't believe that some fucko stole the mixing board at that fucking 14 Below show and now we're going to be gigging until 2020 to get that shit back.

Not when I'm coming awake at night with the sheer existential terror of my plight. Not now, Jeebis. Not now. I don't want to have to be th' second shooter, Jeekers.