Holy crap!!! It’s right around the corner! Dave (currently, the other-half of my live show) is about to become a father. I’m stoked in Proxy. It looks like it’ll be next week. This means 2 things. 1) Jaquin Arturo Rios-Jackson IV will be the first ‘band baby’ of the Meshach Jackson crew, and 2) Dave won’t be making the trek to NYC next week for our shows. That means I’m going to be flying solo. I hope the clubs are cool with that. We’ll see.

In other news, I’m back in the city, and loving every minute of it. We’re going to start working on new material very soon, and should be hitting the west coast toward the end of the summer with a new ep to spread to youns. (yeah, that’s what I said… ‘youns’).

Stay tuned.

Congratu-freaking-lations, Annette and Dave!

- (me)shach

I’m shaking. Physically. Visibly. I can’t sleep. I’m having small, subtle anxiety attacks. One after the other. About 3 minutes each. About every 6 minutes. These are contractions of the psyche. Only, they’re getting further apart. Thankfully.

I asked Jade tonight, “have you ever had an experience where you felt someone had done something to you for which there seemed to be no motivation but pure evil?” I don’t mean in the way that some kid on the playground pushes you just to see how it feels to try on the bully hat for a minute. I mean, as an adult. Just some person in your life who, given the opportunity, chose the path of greatest destruction for you, even without it necessarily being the path of greatest reward for them.

In the last year, this has happened to me. By four different people at the same time. It would be difficult for me to discuss here in any detail for many reasons, not the least of which being that there is a good chance that at least one (if not more) of those four people are reading this right now, and undoubtedly already know I’m speaking of them.

The reason this is on my mind; the reason I’m having anxiety attacks like an epileptic passenger on a laser/strobe light roller-coaster; the reason I can’t breathe normally for more than a few minutes at a time while I should be sleeping; is that I saw one of these four people tonight for the first time since all of this happened. He was standing right there. Like 10 feet from me. We caught eyes for about a half second. I lost my breath with a bland mixture of horror, anger, fear, pain, and profound sadness. I wanted to punch a hole in my own chest, rip out my heart and stop to death the maggots eating away at it, but I feared it was too far down in my stomach to reach. I wanted to vomit. To scream. To teleport. To disappear. To light myself on fire.

More than any of this, I wanted to have something to say. I wanted to walk up calmly to this person and take the flame thrower out of his hands and stick out my tongue like a child. I wanted to tell him that the bully hat is too big for him. That it doesn’t suit him. That he’s better than this.

All of that. Any of that. It’d all be a lie. The reality is, the reason I was so paralytically assaulted by the presence of this person was that I didn’t believe any of that. The hat fits him perfectly. It was tailor made for him. He seemed completely comfortable in the skin of the villain. He darted out of the room with more of aloof disdain than shame or embarrassment. He was obviously uncomfortable by the sight of me. Neither of us being in our home city. But not by any visible remorse. Just the lack of interest in confrontation.

If he only new. The shell of myself with which he and his three culprits left me to work is so thin and fragile, so new, so trepidatious (that’s not a word, but you know …), so weak - that if he were to see what I actually have left with which to fight, and if the flame thrower really is as comfortable in his hands at it seems to be, he’d just finish me off. He’d crumble me with a half dozen carefully constructed sentences like underhand-tossing a medicine ball onto egg-shell. The force doesn’t matter, the object will do all the work.

I’m embarrassed and ashamed of myself for letting any human being have such ridiculous control over my emotional well-being. Even more so that there is more than one person with such insane influence over my peace of mind. However, maybe admitting it here, on a global forum, on your screen (maybe even on his screen), maybe that’s the most disarming thing I could do. Maybe I can fight evil with innocence. I sure as hell hope so. Maybe I can look Goliath in the eye and say, dude… you could totally squash me. I have no armor. I have no stones. I have no sling. Be gentle. Or not. Maybe the helplessness is my ticket to reckless abandon. My acknowledgment that I have nothing to lose could well be my only advantage. My lack of any chance could be my greatest asset.

Maybe.

Maybe I just need something else to think about so I can get this depressing shit off my mind.

If I’ve totally bummed you out, I’m sorry. I’ll be happier tomorrow. Maybe the next day. As soon as I am, I’ll let you know. In the mean time, I hope you’re well. I hope you see something beautiful this week. I hope you hear something inspiring. I hope you feel something that makes you cry for joy. I hope you fuel up your emotional gas tank so that even if, God forbid, you cross paths with evil, you have a few of those extra lives saved up to battle the dragon and save the princess. I hope you make it to the last level. I hope you beat the game. And if you don’t, I hope you just press “Reset” and try again.

Okay. I feel better. Thanks for listening. My turn…

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start.

Begin.

“Naked Ladies”, “Piss-A-Bed”, “Maiden Hair”, “Clitoria”, “Fornicata”, “Vulva”, “Mayer’s Fart”, “Twitch Bullox”, “Hound’s Piss”, “Open Ass”, and “Bum Towel”…

The above is, believe it or not, a list of plants. Not pornos. “Piss-A-Bed” are dandelions. Named after their tendencies to induce diarrhea when eaten. British 19th Century Taxonomists were some nasty dudes.

Taxonomy, in all it’s boredom, is surprisingly controversial and taboo. The reason for this, essentially, is that in the 19th century, there were a small (and shrinking) number of ways for a natural scientist to leave their mark on their field of study, much less the world. In order to do so, they named things. Many, many things. Taxonomy is “the science of classification according to a pre-determined system, with the resulting catalog used to provide a conceptual framework for discussion, analysis, or information retrieval.” In other words, it’s “namin’ shit”.

“Humans”, for example, are in the Kingdom Animals and the Phylum Chordates, and the Class Mammals, and the Order Primates, and the Family Hominids, and the Genus Homo, and the Species Sapiens.

Here’s the thing. I started reading (listening, I should say, since it’s an audiobook) “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson recently. The astounding thing here is, despite my utter disinterest in natural sciences (see: everything NOT art, theology, or technology), I’ve been absolutely enthralled by this book (CD. Whatever.). It makes me want to buy a telescope. It makes me want to spend lots of time underwater. It makes me want to name shit.

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