Earwig and His Fearsome Critters

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 23:38:11 +0000

This woman should have so many more fucking views than she does. It pisses me off. And dipshits like Taylor Swift and Beyonce whatever the fuck her name is just shit out garbage and are rolling in money and overinflated recognition (from what I understand Swift comes from old money fascists, so I guess it's not really all that surprising). It's fucking gross.

I love Ruby. These two have been on repeat off and on all day.

Ruby Waters - Numbers (Official Audio)

Quantum Physics - Ruby Waters

At least AI can't fuck up my Youtube playlists, ammiright?

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 21:19:59 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 21:15:34 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 20:52:15 +0000

You can right-click the image for the URL if the link isn't working on the image.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 08:26:00 +0000

I fell asleep almost immediately after The Elephant Graveyard Radio Show because it was amazing and brilliant, and calming, and funny, and beautiful. I literally said aloud, "Welp, I'm going to sleep well," about 5 mins before I was ignoring the tingling from my wrist bending backwards and on my way to open mouth snoring. However, I woke up about an hour later completely awake, as apparently my brain was still processing what I had just experienced. This was about 2:30 and I didn't want to stay up long enough that I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. I went to bed, but needed something to sleep to. I opened my 400 tabs and this video was already pulled up after I'd stumbled across it by chance earlier today. It is great because he knows what he's talking about and he loves Rudimentary Peni an appropriate amount. The best part, for me, was when he got to Cacophony he said he's going to have to restrain himself a little bit, and I was like, ohhhh nooo, but he immediately became one of my new favorite people instead. His notes describing Nick's vocals made me laugh out loud, 'cause it's true. I don't agree with him about the later stuff, but I think everyone is going to have a different take on those albums/EPs based on your relationship with the band overall. I just have a hard time describing any Peni as definitively good or bad, I just think that misses the point of what the band is. For his part, I don't think he feels all that comfortable doing so either. Nick will just forever be one of my favorite people in the Universe and can do no wrong.

My kid tolerates them, thankfully, because they're always on the rotation and she knows how much I love them. I assume she probably lets the "trivial" stuff I tell her about them dissolve into the ether in the same way I know she does when I won't shut the fuck up about The Kinks or Leonard Cohen, understandably so. I know I am annoying. I just want her to be educated about her soundtrack, ya know? This means I haven't been around anyone who appreciates this band in probably 25 years or more (other than my ex, but I don't think we spent much time talking about them beyond the late nineties). This is one of the most important bands in my adult life, remains so even now. Anyway, watch or don't, I give a shit.

But do I hope you watch it.

AND NOW I CAN'T FUCKING SLEEP.

Also this dude has a whole lot of other videos on other bands I love like Zounds, Subhumans (UK, I assume, I don't think it's on the Canadian Subhumans, no offense to them, they have decent stuff), Crass, etc, so maybe I'll post more of his stuff once I have time to watch them.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 14:28:51 +0000

I finally got to finish all of the Radio Hours that Elephant Graveyard has put up, and man, I was blown away by the last two. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed all of them, but this is some next level shit. A lot of them borrow from that kind of fantastical, old-timey radio storytelling that all at once feels like a warm blanket, menacing and cathartic. They have great music taste and the mixing coupled with the visuals are insane. It hits all of the right spots for me. It seems to be a perspective from a very specific place and time that I can easily understand, recognize, and feel. The Berger influence seems obvious, but I'd be truly shocked to find out that these guys aren't FOTs. Their perspective very much feels of that world. If not from Newbridge, from some remote Canadian sister city. I am so sad I don't have anything new to watch from them now.

This one got me. I will probably watch it again.

Edit: I am a liar. I didn't know these guys had a channel and were broadcasting these things live on our precious Twitch until about month or so ago, so I missed all of the past live streams. TONIGHT at 10PM ET they are streaming an episode that they did live like a year ago, but never put up the video. SO! I do have something new to watch from them! Tonight! Then everyone will be very bewildered and sad, but understanding.

Removed the Boomer meme, it was dumb.

Sorry.

Edit:

I was going to post a link to the EG Radio Hour that was streamed the other night because it was so, so good, but I just realized it's unlisted. I don't want to fuck that up. So you should go to Patreon and become a member (or Substack, too, I think) so you can watch. I will probably watch it again (and cry and cry).

11/10/26 9:28 AM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 19:05:47 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 18:24:50 +0000

We Sued the Government to Find Where Your Drugs Are Made - From Propublica

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 17:24:28 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 18:28:33 +0000

This is such a great answer? No, that's not the right word. Sendup? I don't think that's it either because it's so much better and smarter than "Land of Confusion." I love Julian's voice so much, but by the end the cranked up autotune almost feels overwhelming. So good.

I did re-watch "Land of Confusion" after this, and it's still fine, but it's a pretty predictable 80s perspective when viewing it in 2026. I think it was kind of a big deal for a very short while when it aired. I just remember some of those puppets creeped me the fuck out when I was a kid. I worshiped at the alter of Jim Henson, I was used to all puppets being created with love. They were beautiful in their own way, even if they were meant to be viewed as "ugly" like some of the characters in The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I thought the puppets in the video were just fucking warped and ugly and I did not like them. I didn't know anything about Spitting Image and didn't realize that repulsion was on purpose. It is weird though, I loved and collected Garbage Pail kids, the grosser the better, while owning a few Cabbage Patch Kids. I guess I just didn't like anyone fucking with my idea of what puppets should look like? I don't know, I was weird. Genesis was a band both of my parents loved, so they were on all of the time at either of their houses or on the car radio throughout my childhood. Dad was early/Gabriel Genesis, Mom more later/Collins Genesis, both often had music on in general. I am a little biased towards both good and shitty versions of the band because they're part of the my childhood soundtrack. Like Pink Floyd or Rickie Lee Jones, I didn't really have a choice, they were always just there. That said, I don't think "Land of Confusion" is a great song, but I'll probably listen to and enjoy it another 1000 times in my lifetime because it's part of the soundtrack. If I'm lucky. Now my adult kid can say The Strokes are part of the soundtrack of her whole life. I am old.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 11:21:31 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 21:51:05 +0000

That tracks.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 21:44:02 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 19:07:25 +0000

This whole interview is one big trigger warning, so make sure you're in an ok headspace if you decide to watch. I really appreciate her speaking out, her personal accounts are important.

I hope his conviction helps more victims come forward. Something tells me there are still a whole lot of people in that world that deserve a reckoning.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 22:39:24 +0000

Nazis wearing blue arm bands are still nazis.

11/6/26 5:39 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 18:00:07 +0000

This is amazing. Just don't fool yourself, this means many of the nazis will go back into the shadows, to a certain degree, but they're not going anywhere. If you think they're going to let the rise of socialism continue unabated, you've not been paying attention. A sitting US congressperson from the left just had her house raided 3 weeks ago with very little pushback. There's a reason socialism as an ideology has been labeled as a top tier "enemy" throughout my entire lifetime, don't think they're not prepared. The wide acceptance of Socialism and Islam means they are shitting their pants at how badly they've lost the narrative. Just hope they're as short-sighted, stupid and incompetent in coming for us as they are at doing everything else. I have a feeling Carlson is going to be front and center of everything trying to publicly rehab his/their nazi tendencies in the coming months.

11/6/26 1:00 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 17:17:32 +0000

More good news that made me cry. The turn toward the left is already showing results. Amazing.

A guy I knew when I was a teenager was still on death row in CA and from what I saw of the court transcripts, he wanted the state to kill him. He took part in a heinous crime, he admits it, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to imagine because that was not the person I knew. I was both shocked and also not shocked at all, but definitely horrified when I found out what he had done. He was always a bit detached and one of the few actual hard guys that was associated with Oakland gangs in our large group in the East Bay suburbs. They did some crazy shit, but I don't think when I knew them they ever killed or seriously hurt anybody. A part of me still thinks there is no way he pulled the trigger, and was set up by the others involved, but he took all the blame. I don't want to take away anything from the victims and their families, so I shouldn't speak on the crime. I don't know shit other than what I've read on SFGate and in the transcripts.

I've thought about contacting him many times throughout the years just to see if he'd want to talk. This crime happened only a few months before I left CA for the 1st time in Dec of '95, but I didn't find out about it until years later. When I first moved to CA a lot of people said/did some really shitty things to the fresh-meat country-bumpkin from KY, but he was always cool with me. We used to talk on the phone late at night, for some reason, even though there was no mutual attraction or anything. He's also the person that came to me in front of the courthouse with a message before a person we mutually knew went to court. He asked me to walk with him alone and then warned me that if my ex testified against the guy on trial he couldn't control what his boys would do. Before the guy on trial had gotten ahold of them, some of those "boys" had also been my good friends. In hindsight, that guy on trial was also a fucking pedophile, along with one of his friends I briefly "dated", in part due to his relentlessness, my first few months in CA. I was 14, he was 23, he'd lied and said he was 21. That's like my adult kid bringing home an 8th grader as her boyfriend. Absolutely fucking disgusting. Then, when he kissed me after cornering me at a party when I was already with my long term high school boyfriend, I had to immediately tell him I had "cheated" on him because I felt so terrible about it. So gross.

I knew because of one of my best girl friends had a long-term relationship with the guy on trial, but had been fucking with the guy who was warning me, there was underlying shit going on between those two guys. He wasn't warning us because he hated me or had any particular feelings toward my ex. He and I were cool, I'd always been nice to him no matter what was going on with him and whoever he was fucking in our group. He was warning me as a friend, he told me as much. I knew he felt some kind of loyalty to the dude on trial, but did not particularly like him in part because of some of the shit he'd done to my friend as her partner. I fucking hated the dude because of the shit he did to her. He also always gave me the willies. He'd say, "don't worry, I like you, even though you're trouble." I think he was 26 or 27 and she was fucking 15. When he tried to fuck with one of my other friends, she was 14. There was a lot of that going on during that time, like a very, very unacceptable amount. It's creepy as fuck to think about as an adult. The guy that was warning me, the one on death row, was only a year or two older than us, so I was all for her being with him, even though he had his own issues.

In the end, I convinced my ex not to testify, not just because of the warnings we'd gotten, he was already thinking about withdrawing, but because he was lying. He wasn't there. He was trying to be that guy by perjuring himself because no one else who was there would go on the record, or snitch. Noble because this dude was a piece of shit on so many levels (still don't understand how he was the godfather of my ex's niece), but really stupid and not thought through at all. Especially since this guy was a grown ass man with real ass ties to the Bloods in Oakland and supposedly knew "dangerous men" (hitmen) he worked on the same boats with in Alaska when he'd go up there to make a bunch of money for a few months. This wasn't a game and he was potentially putting not only us in danger, but the people around us. There were a lot of people there when the assault happened (I was not) who could have very easily gotten up on the stand and said my ex definitely was not there, so not only would this dude get off for something he definitely did -- he put a guy in the hospital (again) -- my ex's dumb ass would go to jail for perjury for nothing. Considering the guy on trial was already calling witnesses at their homes, including my ex's sister, this was a very likely outcome. So in some ways the guy that is currently on death row, or was, may have saved the father of my kid in more ways than one. My ex used to get really pissed at me when I told this story, he really wanted me to think of and describe the guy on death row as a piece of shit who threatened me, maybe I'm naive, but that was not how the conversation went.

Anyway, I'd kind of like to know if he'd be willing to talk. I had a prison pen pal in the form of a guy who was like my ex's and my brother for many, many years. I don't think they were ever in the same facility at the same time, but they would have been on opposite sides of the yard, if you know what I mean. Although, the guy who was like my brother told the nazis to fuck off, that he wanted to be on his own, and got the shit kicked out of him, his jaw broken in several places and wired shut for a long time for his efforts. One thing I worry about is the commitment. He literally needed us, there were times when there was no one else helping. I am not in a position to be that for someone again, financially or otherwise. We'll see. I am genuinely interested in how these guys, many of whom were likely content or happy with the state killing them, are handling the news of having to live.

[sorry for not doing better to identify the people in this story, I am not trying to call out or name anyone, for many different reasons]

11/6/26 12:17 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 00:12:31 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 14:39:37 +0000

If you don't like "Science Daily" you can just search DuckDuckGo or probably even useless Google for "climate change accelerating" and find tons of recent articles. Here's one from America's precious Time Magazine from a few weeks ago, if you need some neoliberalism sprinkled into your science news.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:57:06 +0000

I genuinely think we need to start a campaign/trend of GenX and Millennials going to their parents and showing them how easy it is to get rid of cable or satellite tv, and how much money they will save by doing so. Explain to them how the money they pay for their cable inevitably funds/supports propaganda that is directed back at them to fuck with their brains. Show them how it is created to trick them and it is not a secret, nor hidden. It's a nasty thing everyone knows, but does little to stop. I'm old enough to remember when junk mailers used to have scams directed at people like my Keepaw and Meemaw, where they'd mail in a check or money order for some dumb shit after not reading the fine print. Then, they'd get some sort of "certificate" or a cheap figurine that was worthless in return. I don't think they were all that religious, but there was a time when she worshiped Jerry Falwell and gave him a lot of money and bought his stupid shit. From the mid-90s to the early 2000s it was the Nigerian Prince scams and the "are you really safe?" alarm industry scams. All of that shit was directed at old folks in the same way phishing, virus and SPAM email is today. Now everything is a fucking scam because we elevated all the scammers to the richest people on earth. We're all in this together, there's nothing to be ashamed of.

Show your parent(s) they can get news that is fact-based rather than opinion from independent media and IT'S FREE (pay for their subscriptions, if you can). Show them videos about how and why they are deliberately manipulated and lied to. It'll make 'em so mad they'll email their second cousin and their 4th grade baseball buddies to let them know about this crazy conspiracy they just learned of. Explain how it's nothing new, they've been absorbing misinformation their entire life, and tell them about the history of using fear and coercion to narrow and control a population's perspective in order to keep them in line. Then, setup a mini-pc or raspberrypi on their big screen tv, so they can use a mouse in the same way they would a remote. Block the Nazi/nazi websites. Do NOT buy "SMART" tvs or anything else that has unavoidable ads. In spite of the market being fucked, mini PCs are still pretty cheap and since they won't be playing GTA6 on it, you shouldn't have to worry about them frying it.

Am I being serious? I think so?

ALSO - get the FUCKING NEW YORK STUPID FUCKING TIMES OUT OF THEIR HANDS!! I have very smart, reasonable people in my life who are tricked into thinking they're apathetic liberals because of that garbage rag. You are for universal human rights, no? You're against apartheid/genocide, yes? For Medicare for All, right? Free school for all for life, yeah? You're anti the military/prison/human trafficking industrial complex? YEAH??!! YOU ARE NOT A FUCKING LIBERAL, SO STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR THEM!!! Goddamn fucking NYT.

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:48:37 +0000

Absolutely feel good about it (whoa-whoa-whoa, not you Schumer, go on and take a few steps back Jeffries), but what was won was a chance to change course. The real fight starts right now and it's not going to stop probably for the rest of our lifetimes. I know you're tired, we're all tired, it's been a long 3+ years, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that millions of people, not just here in the US, but all over the world, are waaaay more exhausted than we are. They've been fighting their whole lives and they know they have to keep fighting, every fucking day, whether they want to or not. Draw from their courage, wisdom, and experience, live your life and find contentment (happiness? I guess?) when you can, but lying to yourself doesn't help anything.

My name is Jennifer Welch. My pronouns are she/her. Woke is back. The bigots lost. And all around the country, we’re seeing exactly what it looks like to be liberated from the Christian Nationalist MAGA hellscape. https://ivehaditpodcast.substack.com/p/goodbye-maga-hellscape

- Jennifer Welch

Read on Substack

I have no idea if this video is going to load properly, so here's the link just in case.

Longer version:

I love her.

11/4/26 11:48 AM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 00:52:00 +0000

Trying to figure out how long I should wait before taking my xanax. Initially, I thought it was in case things were looking bad, but I'm realizing I might need it even if we do well. I just can't let go that there are going to be some fucking shenanigans. It only lasts about an hour, so I gotta wait it out as long as I can. I don't think Booker will pull it out, but that it's a question at all is great. If only the establishment democrats gave a shit about the South as much as they care about Israel.

11/3/26 7:52 PM

11/3/26 9:40 PM

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 01:13:23 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:17 +0000

noreply@blogger.com (Earwig) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 23:34:04 +0000