Good afternoon all wild and wonderful, all maybe-I’ve-said-that-before, all finely tuned instruments. Welcome to another edition of Words From The Midwest.

Currently, I am sitting on my back porch enjoying the music of Rilo Kiley and trying to tune out the chain saw that’s rumbling some yards away. I can’t see who’s operating it and I don’t care. I just wish they would stop already. It’s been going on all morning. Those Bastards!

I don’t have much to say today and even less of what You’d want to read, but I feel like writing and I don’t especially feel like writing in either one of the books I’m working on. Have I told you about those? I’m not sure that I have but maybe I have.

I think I have.

“With Arms Outstretched” has just come on and I’m reminded of the days at Camp Christopher when it was still CYO and we could still play reflection songs after the Eucharist. This one time I’m remembering, this particular song was used as all of camp stood in the water of Lake Marion. I, as one of the guitar players, stood silently on the dock just to the left of the second section, enjoying one of my favorite songs of all time and witnessing just how much it affected those children who were listening to the words. “This day by the lake went too fast.” That’s just about how I feel about my time working as a Camp Counselor. I miss it these days, sometimes, though these days it is September and Camp would be over anyway.

I digress. Although that’s kind of the point of these posts, isn’t it; to digress completely over and over again until I’m finally done writing. I’ll read it over, change a word here and there and be done with it. That’s the way I write: strange utterances and run on sentences fold into each other and leave the reader with a feeling. Just a feeling. And it doesn’t really matter what that feeling is as long as it’s organic.

Is it for you?

It is for me.

Indifferent to the plagues of this world, I state sadly that it can be so fucking beautiful to live in ignorance. I do not. I spend too much time on the internet reading about this and that and I am appalled at much of what I see. Like anyone who says a goddamn thing about Rape who doesn’t know first hand how completely fucked up it is. No one needs to say how fucked up it is. And, certainly, no one needs to say it’s only rape if the person is conscious. Thanks Cee Lo. You’re a douchebag. And I’m like, “fuck you.”

The Middle East is still imploding, ISIS is a thing, and marijuana isn’t legal yet. What a strange thing to have mentioned all of those things in the same sentence? Well I care about it equally. Tell me to shut the fuck up.

I’ve turned on The Small Faces’ First Step, even though it’s the Faces, not the Small Faces, they just hadn’t changed their name yet with the joining of Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood.

See what I did there?

I think that’s it. Keep treating each other with respect. Keep yelling, via the internet, at celebrities who can’t not be morons. Don’t go searching for nude photographs of people just because they exist? Yeah, respect the privacy of those without any who just happened to take and store naked pictures of themselves on an easily hackable “harddrive” or whatever it is. I dunno. Who gives a shit.

Peace.

Michael