*Insert Propaganda Here*

39 and counting. He/Him. I write poems on occasion.

[songagainstitself]

I'm back for the third (fourth?) time.

Hi. My name is r. But you can call me r.

I write poems. They'll show up here every now and again.

Some other fun facts about me? I'm glad you asked!

I'm a fan of any kind of weird/avant-garde poetry. The more incomprehensible the better.

I also like music, like... A lot. I would describe my taste as "eclectic hipster shit." Which is to say I listen to anything, but not everything (especially not country 🤢)

I'm a proud cat dad to two cute li'l furry goofballs.

I'm ADHD positive and it shows.

Recreational psychedelics and me are a thing.

I'm actively bisexual. Don't look for me in any queer spaces, though. They're a bit overstimulating for me.

Leftist af, but my debilitating social anxiety keeps me out of activist spaces. I trust that better folks than me are doing the work.

Speaking of debilitating social anxiety, a decade of working third shift has all but obliterated my ability to interact with others in ways that aren't awkward and off-putting. I'm working on it, kinda.

If you're favorite Nirvana song is "Milk It," you understand me.

Anything else you wanna know, just ask. I'm really not as unpleasant as I seem.

[songagainstitself]

Format Breakers

They called us the “format breakers”

on account of what we did to formats

whenever we’d come across them;

suffice it to say, we sure as shit didn’t bend’em.

And once we’d wrapped things up for the day,

we stashed them in our diaries, diaries

grown to monstrous proportions ever since

we began including all the rich new terminology

for “bovine growth hormones.”

Sometimes, the sky, ever the jester,

would don a kind of off-white color,

like that of tallow, to keep the mood from sagging.

Nights were spent ragging on the overseers,

though our complaints never lodged where we wanted –

square in their pulsing temples.

“Those were intricate days,”

as Frank O’Hara would say.

His fluorescent ghost held court with us

on weekdays. Was he ever a hoot.

Kept a quip for every conceivable occasion

in his silver utility belt, and he deployed them

with such efficiency, such efficacy, that eventually

we began calling him “Sniper” O’Hara.

Ol’ Sniper never asked too terribly much of us,

only that we buy him lunch from time to time

and never forget what it was

that we came here to do.

Er… Um… And… What was I doing again?

-r. miller

[songagainstitself]

I will never understand my generation's obsession with "Mr. Brightside."

Like it's not a bad song, I suppose. But... There are quite a lot of better songs

[songagainstitself]

Someone needs to say it:

Marmite > Vegemite

[songagainstitself]

"Lonely People With Power" was almost *too* perfect an album. Like, Deafheaven had no business going as hard as they did. Easily my fave record of last year.

[songagainstitself]

Time dilation is so fucking wild to me.

Like, while I was in it, my Nu Metal phase felt like it lasted literally forever, but I think back to it, and I realize that the entire thing lasted for about as long as eighth grade.

[songagainstitself]

I'm not a believer in spiritual stuff, but this is the shit that makes my soul happy.

[songagainstitself]

This band broke up way too soon.

Or did they?

I dunno, but at least they left us with two weird, abrasive, beautiful albums.

[songagainstitself]

It's kind of a bummer, being almost 40 and seeing so many of your peers finding roles they thrive in, finally finding where they fit in society; meanwhile, I'm over here, having failed at basically everything I've ever tried, completely unsure of what exactly I was born for, and struggling to keep my head above the proverbial water without a life preserver and without knowing how to swim really.

I'm starting to think that some people just don't get a chance to thrive or don't really have that much potential, and that I'm one of those people.

[songagainstitself]

I dunno, just judging from what I see around the internet, there are waaaaaaay too many people who are totally fine with recording complete strangers, who aren't really doing anything but going about their lives, and posting the videos because criiiiiiinge.

[songagainstitself]

I'm in the process of coming up with a fictional pro wrestling organization. Here's what I have so far:

Men's Division

"Honey Butter" Malone

Bruce "The Goose" McNamara

Bruce "The Juice" McCool (The two Bruces are a tag team called Goose and Juice. Guess what their catchphrase is)

Giuseppe "The Salami" Giovanni

Stuart Monahan (His finishing move is called the Stuplex)

Johnny Mayonnaise

The UnderQuaker (the Undertaker, but he dresses like the oatmeal guy)

"Janky" Hank Jefferson

Women's Division

Natasha Nosebleed

Stephanie "Hog Master" Hicks

Velma Veronica (Her finisher is the Flying V)

Collette "The Couch" Winger

Penelope Pit Stain

Meryl Streep (And it's actually Meryl Streep)

[songagainstitself]

This will never *not* be my number one summer jam.

[alphacrone]

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

[songagainstitself]

Frankly, I'd like to know what exactly is "ableist" about using so-called "big words." This sounds like some condescending, infantilizing bullshit right here, or am I wrong?

[songagainstitself]

I know that there are probably better uses of my time than preemptively blocking TERFs on here, but I feel accomplished anyway.

[songagainstitself]

I'm super bummed that my generation is romanticizing the 90's the same way that Boomers romanticize the 50's and Gen-X romanticizes the 80's.

Like, sure, some of it was kinda great honestly, but let's not pretend that the whole decade was this golden age where everyone got along and nobody worried about things like racism or queerphobia or genocide or all the other awful things in the world.

The only reason things back then seemed so uncomplicated is because you were a child. You're seeing the decade through the eyes of your childhood self. That's all.

[songagainstitself]

People can tolerate being the villain a lot better than they can tolerate being the buffoon.

Remember that and do what you will with this information.

[animentality]

[songagainstitself]

"Finally AI can show us what painters wanted us to see" is such a goddamned smooth-brained take that I may have lost brain cells just by reading it.

Also, love the implication that Van Gogh would have painted it like the version on the right, if only he had been a more skilled painter. Like, tell me you know nothing about Van Gogh and his ouvre without telling me you know nothing about Van Gogh and his ouvre.