Chapter 147

I woke up at 7:20, took a nasty shit, washed my ass crack, brushed my teeth, got dressed and rode to work. I put on an album by hip-hop group Onyx, it was really hardcore and full of shouted choruses, reminding me of Gravediggaz. The lyrics were 100% about murdering people, and again one could point out the slight irony of having me, a honest mid-thirties schoolteacher wearing business casual clothing and riding a bicycle through a quaint neighborhood on my way to my day job, bobbing my head to music made by violent thugs talking about committing violent acts. It made me think about what I said two days ago regarding how I hate drill rap culture, and why I don’t feel that way about Onyx and other old-school rappers, whose lyrics are also mostly about crimes they commit. Is it because it’s from the 90s and not current? Because they’re from New York rather than Chicago? Hmmm after a bit of reflexion I think it’s just because I enjoy east coast boom-bap musically, while drill rap just sounds like garbage to me. The beats are lame, there are no punchlines or intricate wordplay, it doesn’t have the smooth yet gritty vibe of 90s rap, and all they talk about is beefing with other cliques to the point of being stale and repetitive.  

I had first period with a grade-eleven class, covering a few multiple choice questions. Then I had a free morning, and caught the live Metal Minded podcast, the boys reviewed four new releases. A Japanese band named Anatomia got a very negative review, well, negative in the sense that they both admitted they feel nothing for the death-doom subgenre in question. I happen to be a big fan of death-doom so I was intrigued, and checked it out, it was pretty cool, some disturbingly low-pitched, cavernous and slow death metal. I’ll relisten for sure.

I also checked out an album by Lectern, an Italian death metal band I read about in an underground metal zine. It was awesome, with a sick groove that got me dancing on my office chair. Another one that will enter the rotation! Throughout the rest of the day I also listened to another brutal thrash metal compilation, this one focusing on the years 1985-1990, so it was even more raw.

I got home and ate reheated pasta, watching a documentary about Chicago’s crime epidemic that I had been queuing ever since I started reading about drill rap earlier this week. Black teenagers form small cliques and fight one another, a fixture of a lot of poor neighborhoods around the world, except that the stakes have been risen so high that they now just shoot their “opps” instead of fistfighting. One would be killed, then immediately his friends will look for retaliation, more often than not quickly get it after a day or two of stalking, and the cycle continues, constantly getting fed as increasingly younger kids join in. One older guy (well, he looks around 30, which in that crime-ridden shithole is the equivalent of being 115 years old in normal society) talked about how he can’t leave the area and feels trapped there, yet it’s so unsafe with all the stray bullets that when he goes on a date with a girl from the ‘hood, he goes “wheah’ why’ folks at” but he doesn’t feel comfortable there either because he gets judged by how he looks. Oh really? People don’t trust gang members who spent most of their life in jail for murder? Must be racism. I’m sure suburban middle-class white people feel totally comfortable around big drunk long-haired men wearing jackets with HELL’S ANGELS on them, as long as they’re white.

The British journalist overdubbed the conversation and said that “Kool-Aid” can’t go live elsewhere because of racism, even though Kool-Aid never implied so. So what is it now, black people are confined there like Palestinians in Gaza, and if they try to leave the perimeter they will be thrown back in?! And while I’m sure it’s more complicated and just getting the hell out of that area with a murder rate higher than pretty much everywhere that is not an actual war zone is not an easy option for many, well, why can’t that Kool-Aid guy take whatever meagre savings he’s got, move to a small city in Illinois with cheap rent, and get a job in a hardware store or a supermarket or whatever? Not as glorious as sligning crack on the corner, but it’s a living, and at least the risk of getting shot would be minimal. Maybe I just don’t understand. If he doesn’t want to leave, at least perhaps he should do something positive or downright noble, like that other older ex-gang member who works as a “violence interrupter”.

I then watched a short video by political commentator Styxhexenhammer666. I think he’s quite astute on many topics, but I disagree with many of his hard-line libertarian opinions, and also he really, really hates China. I like China, so that’s another thing that puts me at odds with some of his positions, especially since I’ve been living here forever and he’s a Tim Budong who thinks Hubei rhymes with Dubai and calls the Chinese president “Zheen-Pahng” as if it was his surname. Now he was saying that “Taiwan is a real country, but China isn’t” based on the fact that the Chinese Republican government still claims the mainland that they lost as fair and square as you can, over 70 years ago. What an idiotic take. You can criticize China and the CCP if you want, but that is just sore loser bullshit.

I went back to work early, to invigilate an exam. It was a physics lab exam, so the students were playing around with springs and weights and meter-long wooden rulers. One of the Chinese teachers looked at a ruler one student was using, laughed, and switched it to another one. Curious, I looked at the ruler to see why it had been ruled defective, and saw that the back was covered with vulgar graffiti. I couldn’t understand all the small handwritten Chinese characters and bizarre teenager slang, but one said “to watch videos of [one boy from Attitude Class] showering, go to the WeChat account [number]” and there were even more obscene things too. I shook my head in disapproval to hide the fact that I was in fact mildly amused.

I had a whole afternoon of fuckall, so I listened to a lot of music, read the news and browsed the internet reading about various topics of interest of mine like camping and minimalist/frugal lifestyle. I also wrote recommendation letters for students, probably the part of my job I dislike the most, but someone gotta do it and might as well do it now while I have a very light schedule.

I rode home, relaxed with a bowl of fried rice and a beer and bare-knuckle boxing fights on the TV. There is a new organization called BYB which for some reason holds its fights in a triangular ring, and of course it’s based in Florida. I like bare-knuckle and feel like it’s a legit, purist form of combat, but it’s still got a long way to go and many of the promotions feel gimmicky and money-grabbing, which is understandable to some extent, it’s a business after all, and not one where it’s easy to break even let alone make a profit.

The girlfriend was going to be off work at 20:30 and I looked for something to do in the meantime. The weather was nice, so I got my inflatable kayak and lugged it on my bicycle. My city is all criss-crossed by canals, the water is all brown and foul-smelling but I go paddle in there anyway, it’s relaxing and the views are seriously beautiful, with the parks, willow trees and downtown buildings. There are also a lot of large fishing birds nesting under the bridges, and when I’d slowly paddle by they’d be sneering at me or flying away angrily.

I got to a place with stairs that descend to a pier of some sort, where I inflated my raft and put it in the water. I paddled about a kilometer through a narrow canal that then widened near the big central shopping mall, and reached another pier, that is near a bar I sometimes go to. I disembarked, walked to the bar with the kayak on my shoulders, had a nice IPA, and then made my way back. There were loads of people enjoying the nice early evening weather, mostly old people in small groups, and I must have been quite a sight to them, some  waved at me or said hello. I couldn’t hear them, engrossed in the country music compilation I had just uploaded on my mp3 player, something I felt would fit the vibe of this little aquatic trip. On the way back, it was dark, the bridges and the walls of the canals were all lit in different colors. I didn’t take pictures, as I left my phone at home.

I got home, took a shower, making sure to thoroughly soap my whole body after getting splashed with all that sewage water. Then I rode the longboard with the dog to the girlfriend’s workplace. There was brief talk about going to get dinner somewhere but we just went home after a small detour to the convenience store. I made dark n’ stormy cocktails (ginger beer, lemon juice and dark rum) and we curled up on the couch, watching some episodes of Love Death And Robots and YouTube cooking shows. Binging With Babish showed how to make corndogs and it made me crave that most delicious of snacks, I’ll give it a try soon.