SHOCKING? NAH. JUST SINKING TO A NEW LOW.

In my lifetime, starting from birth, the following historic events, among many others, happened in the good ol’ USA:

The JFK assassination, Vietnam War, Watergate, Waco, Oklahoma City, and 9/11, along with a whole bunch of mass killings and disasters. Also, every POTUS term from JFK on through Obama. Even the Cuban Missile Crisis was just wrapping up soon after I was born.

That’s a lot of fucked up national history. Oh sure, some cool and entertaining things happened too, like Beatlemania and the first moon landing and the Internet and the Red Sox finally winning a World Series and being able to see the Ramones live before the whole fuckin’ front line died.

And now the man seemingly destined to take the title of “Worst U.S. President Ever” is going to get the keys to the White House for four years beginning around noon on January 20, 2017.

Donald Trump won the Electoral College count because a shitload of self-centered insecure white people with closeted xenophobic issues and a lack of understanding of how democracy, let alone government, works, happen to live in parts of the country where nobody of color seems to want to live, and decided to vote. If they were not Luddites who weren’t paying attention to Trump’s rancid personality, public behavior and debating tactics, then they were totally A-OK or even empathetic to his self-centeredness, misogyny and lack of intelligence and compassion. I’m prone to buy into believing the latter as the truth.

His opponent edged him out on the popular vote, and she won all the states on the entire west coast of the continental USA as well as its northeast corner (including Trump’s home state). Hillary Clinton won the more demographically diverse urban areas and Trump won where, well, all the scared white people fled to years ago. She fucked up on campaigning, with a good deal of it spent on weak status quo stunts like trying to over-flash her opponent by showing up at rallies in already-won urban areas with a shitload of celebrities who didn’t normally strike a note with people who got off their asses and actually voted. Okay, maybe Springsteen was an exception.

To be honest, I wasn’t even that enthusiastic about voting this time. My original idea was to vote for Bernie Sanders, and then never vote again. At the time my attitude was this: I have no problem voting for the USA’s first woman President, but Elizabeth Warren wasn’t running. If Clinton was running against, say, Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush, I may have stayed home.

But, that fucker Trump got the GOP nomination. I have despised that asshole for the entire time I have learned of his existence. All the stupid name branding. The dumb ass TV show. The braindead tweets. The conspicuous consumption. Everything about him. I have absolutely no identification with the man or what he stands for. My rich daddy didn’t give me a million dollars to start a business. I worked for and earned every penny I’ve got, and I’m no billionaire, but I have a debt free life with no bankruptcies or failed businesses to show for it. Trump likes to use the term “loser” a lot but I only see a true loser of a human being in Trump. It has nothing to do with wealth, fame or celebrity. The guy is simply scum. I sure as hell could not sit idly and just let him win the White House. So, I fell into the “lesser of two evils” bullshit and filled in the little ballot oval for Clinton.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election’s results caused a lot of shock for people, including those involved in the Establishment Media. I must be more jaded than the average American news consumer, because if I can describe my reactions to the result, shock would not be one of those feelings.

Am I disappointed in the people of the United States for electing this ego drunk intellectually challenged turdbucket to the nation’s highest office? Oh, sure, but I’ve been disappointed in people and the stupid shit they’ve done on many occasions. Am I scared? Nope. Not at all. I feel like I have a spiritual battle to prepare for, as well as nothing to lose and everything to gain. That never leaves me feeling frightened. Quite the opposite.

Am I angry? Oh, yeah. Over and over again, I have to see citizens in the nation where I was born and raised get suckered in by the dumbest shit. And it’s not necessarily in politics. For years, the Establishment Media has conspired to help earn a living for selfish, ignorant, power hungry assholes, whose only key to success is being able to call attention to themselves and attract others like them who aren’t nearly as successful but want to live vicariously through the anointed Celebrity Alpha Asshole du jour. So the masses watch TV, interact on social media, buy the books, proclaim the love, and yes, this time, show up at the ballot box and vote.

This wasn’t an election. It was a mobilization of racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobia drunk opportunists rallying up the stooges mixed with wealth worshiping groupies. It was not a movement for change. It was an opportunity for opportunistic individuals, most notably the winning candidate himself, to use the rube suckers impressed by his fame, his money, and his rubbish brand name to wreak vengeful havoc on a nation that had the audacity to elect a black man to the nation’s highest office for not one, but two terms. They saw an opportunity to strike in the fact that a woman was the ruling party’s opponent, because the same demographic that hated anyone different also hated women and felt threatened by the potential emasculation that, God forbid, a woman who didn’t know “her place” would cause in leading this country. It didn’t have anything to do with denial of a glass ceiling. They liked the glass ceiling and wanted to keep it there.

It was the week before my 18^th birthday when Ronald Reagan was elected. It was the night before my 54^th when Trump was elected, and to me, some things feel the same. A lot of people (many in similar Clinton-winning urban areas) back in 1980 reacted with shock and fear. They wondered how the electorate at large could be stupid enough to elect The Gipper.  And, the electoral vote for that contest was 489-49! The Establishment Media did the same “gee shucks, guess people want change” shoulder shrugging 36 years ago as well. It seems a lot more intense in the reaction for 2016, but I can’t help but think that I’ve seen this all before. The difference is, I’ve lived through a lot now, and feel much older, wiser and conditioned.

Shocked? No, but I am amazed at how the USA electoral process has sunk to a new low. And an absurd low at that. It’s like a lost Christopher Guest mockumentary. It’s the most fucked up episode of Black Mirror ever. Except this time it’s not onscreen. This is real life and no one can simply choose not to watch.

Nothing has changed. In a fundamental way for me, it’s 1980 all over again. It’s 2000 all over again. It’s time to put the authoritarian fuckers in their place each and every time they even attempt to step out of line. Every time the Trump Administration and the Republican U.S. government try to impede on stuff like civil rights, a woman’s right to choose, environmental safety, net neutrality, or freedom of expression and right to assemble and express dissent, I will raise hell until the cows come home, just as I have done for practically my entire life on this earth. And mark my words, they will try to do fucked up things with all of that power and authority because that is the nature of the beast. 

Fear, on so many levels, motivated the election of Donald Trump. I will not fear. I will fight.

If it’s a fight they want, it’s a fight they are going to get. I know that I don’t have to fight alone, nor do I have to. So if you are as outraged with what individuals have done in the USA this time as I have, let’s fight together. Let’s live by the words of a wise man who once telegraphed: “Don't waste any time mourning. Organize!”

DISPATCH FROM THE REAL CITY: AN OPEN LETTER TO PEOPLE OUTSIDE OF SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA.

I feel very fortunate to have grown up in the Boston area. Even through the worst of times growing up (and there were plenty), I was convinced that there was no more perfect city for me to be living in. It was my ancestors’ hometown. From the first day of their arrivals from Ireland, they called no other city home.

My mom was a Jamaica Plain native, my dad from Winthrop. Their parents and grandparents fought in the Civil War, ran tugboat crews, chased Pancho Villa over the border, and worked wards for a guy named James Michael Curley. My mom worked at Filene’s and Jordan Marsh; my dad delivered heating oil to the homes of Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli. Thanks to my life in that area, I have fond memories of Fenway Park, the Boston Garden, the Rat, the Channel, Harvard Square, and a chaotic road trip down to NYC to see the Clash at Bond’s. Even field trips as an elementary school student involved places that other kids only read about during their American History classes.

If I could do it all over again, I would grow up in no other city.

What I’m writing about here isn’t about Boston, however.

It’s about my current home city.

I have lived as a grown man in Sacramento, California for 32 years. I have spent a couple of years in Oak Park, a few in Colonial Heights, and a short stretch in Del Paso Heights. Most of my years here have been right smack dab in the middle of Midtown, in five different residences within a six block radius. I currently live in a neighborhood named Marshall School, three blocks and a freeway overpass away from a city park where I saw my first punk band show, sang my own music in its hall, got drunk in numerous times at night, and eventually got married in its Rose Garden.  

I got to Sacramento in 1984 with my first wife and serious delusions of a fresh start. She had screwed around on me with a mutual friend, we split up and, in pure 1980’s Brat Pack film action, I went over to her new paramour’s place and walked into her bedroom (drunk) while she was nekkid in bed with him to ask her to get back with me. She did. Funded for tickets by her family, we caught a plane to SFO about three days later.

I made a lot of friends and got involved in a lot of art and music. Unfortunately, the marriage slogged on for almost seven years and in hindsight, I never should have stepped up to try and reconcile back in Boston, and should have simply let her go to Sacramento alone. Déjà vu. She screwed around with a mutual friend once again and this time drained the bank account. Eventually, I ended up living on the streets. After some time, I found a place to live, began to pull some work here and there, and started making a decent living, at least for my own personal standards. I did all of that "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" bullshit and then some. I got married again, and divorced again, though the second divorce wasn’t even remotely as ugly as the first. I kept working and making money and life goes on.

The reason I’m sharing this information is not to pour out details of my personal life to you or even embarrass any of the aforementioned parties. I’m telling you about all of this because I feel that it is important to assure you that I am, and have been, a longtime resident of Sacramento simply because that is what the circumstances of my life led me to do.

I did not come to this city to buy and sell land, or try to make a career out of vacuous homer cheerleading (and, I must clarify, by that I mean literally move to Sacramento and try to make money promoting the city, aka carpetbagging) and, most certainly, I did not move to Sacramento to make money in any various form to promote, or give blind groupie-like allegiance in any form to, the Sacramento Kings.

As a matter of fact, when I moved here to Sacramento in 1984, there were no Sacramento Kings. There was no light rail transit, no high speed internet or wifi, and cable television lines were barely getting up and running. There were, however, some breathless blowhards whose job it was to tell you about how Sacramento was destined to become a world class city and a bunch of new building developments were going to usher in a new era of pride and blah blah blah, rhetoric, rhetoric, rhetoric. Nothing but flowery words. There just happens to be much more of those people crawling around today by the hundredfold.      

And to be perfectly honest, there are three big reasons why I would never be a Sacramento Kings fan:

1    1.  As I said, when I moved here, there were no Kings. This team is just a childhood memory of easy Celtics wins viewed on a black and white TV in my bedroom as I tried to fall asleep on a school night (Kemper Arena games started late in my time zone).

      2. What? Give up on the Celtics? Are you fuckin’ nuts?

I     3. I grew up in the first American city that stood up to the reigning King. There is no way in hell I am going to root for any kings, period.

As my title implies, this is intended to be an open letter to those of you outside of Sacramento. An open letter was already written to the local residents by the same kind of opportunist carpetbagger I had described to you earlier.

In it, he was trying to play Mother Superior to the people of Sacramento by admonishing them not to say anything bad about our city because there’s a big ass giant covered fruit bowl arena opening downtown with a hideous sculpture in its plaza by a world famous artist whose early claim to fame was photos with his then-porno star wife bought by an Indian tech tycoon who thinks that he can help his team win because he coached his daughter’s middle-school squad and the city run by its teen lusting mayor pitched in some cash for the ugly public art and we don’t want any outsiders to get a bad impression so go spend money and smile all the time and shut up and buy.  

To which I say, fuck that guy.

Nobody has the right in this country to even so much as attempt to coerce the general public to suppress dissent in the public arena, whether by legal or illegal means. If anyone tried to stop me from speaking my mind, especially if said parties resorted to physical violence, I would use every possible means at my disposal to smack right back at them and teach them an important lesson about civilized public discourse.

In that sense, I’m going to tell you the truth about this city, right now.

There are many good things about Sacramento now that I have witnessed, and there has been in the past. Hey, the trees, that alone! Not just that, of course. This is a city where creative working class people have somehow created unique and interesting stuff for the participation and enjoyment of other unique and interesting people. Music and art festivals and related activities abound, such as the Norcal Noisefest, the Porchfest in Midtown (a similar event is held every year in my mom’s old Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain) and other events that are somehow organized and operated by folks whose only interest is making something worthwhile happen. In short, over the years, Sacramento has been a city where people who are unusual and unique can be free to be unusual and unique. I can't say I love living in the city, but there's a lot I've seen in Sacramento that I have really liked.

If the current crop of self-made movers and shakers tying to take over this city have their way, that will change, and not for the better.

They want you to think that there is some sort of vibrant “world class city” core and if you move to Sacramento or even visit, a winged talking unicorn will greet you at the Tower Bridge or Terminal B at Sac International and carry you into a magic journey through a Jeff Koons illustrated wonderland of phantasmagorical whimsy and boundless slurping of magic purple nectar, the likes of which you will not see even in your wildest idea of the afterlife.

In reality, Sacramento is more or less just another American city of its population size. In terms of the major economic players, it’s pretty much only two things:

   1. A government town, and 
   2. A real estate racket.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, in the mainstream conformist circles of this city is going to break it down that simply to you. Especially not the local daily newspaper, since their parent company has been trying to dump more real estate properties recently than the total dead bodies found on Dorothea Puente’s property. Their blowhard paid mouthpiece for the land barons and homer merchants would absolutely roll over and pee himself writing yet one more business-friendly manifesto extolling the noble mission of the Sac Metro Chamber of Commerce and throw down praise at the usual list of elitist conspirators just to refute my take.

This is a city where, currently, real estate speculators have scooped up properties, tried to turn them for a profit, and generally, don’t give a fuck about what gets built on them. They convince businesses to pay the increasingly ridiculous sale prices and rents, and then the businesses panic to pay the bills and goosestep right along with the “New Era of Proud” hymn.  Then there are the residential properties. Working class renters in existing places are being increasingly priced out of the market by landlords who have been gobbling down way too much of the arena Kool-Aid and think that their rentals will be populated by starry eyed yuppie scum moving in from the Bay Area to revel in New World City success and glory. Some new properties are overpriced Family Affair styled monstrosities that no one in their right mind would find to be an attractive home destination. They put up targeted billboards around town with generic pictures of “residents” for their new developments. On one development ad, what seems like a vaguely hipster slightly pre-millennial straight couple, and in another, what seems to imply a pair of… either dudebro roomates or a gay couple; I’m honestly not sure which.

Somehow, the vision of this new civic junta seems to think that the appearance of a “World Class City” depends upon meeting as many unnecessarily expensive and generic benchmarks as possible. Practically everything that makes this city unique and defines the best qualities of its historic cultural legacy is being slowly destroyed. These people are not going to stop until the soul of this city is being completely raped, pillaged, and plundered into their bank accounts.

Personally, the only hope I seem to have anymore is my ability over time to outlive things. If there’s one thing that I have proved to myself over the course of my life, it’s that I have an ability to survive. I can only hope that, in regards to the current state of affairs in Sacramento that this is just one more unpleasant era of occurrences to outlive. Still, I don’t see any reason to leave. My life has been invested here for over half of my years here on Earth.

Still, I’m starting to look at other cities and some of them do look a lot better at this point. Unlike what Sacramento is rapidly turning into, at least other cities still seem to be part of the United States, where it won’t be an attitude of “embrace the local leadership’s world class vision, or get out”. The new insurgents attempting to pull a ruling junta in Sacramento better hope that they are not encouraging a lot of people like me to consider an exit. But then again, when your life is defined by profit, propaganda, and vacant homeland huckstering in lieu of actual skills and talents, any old rube (with money to spend) to replace me will do. Hopefully, in the event that I ever do have to leave this city, I can join the world in watching their cheesy carnival scam all falling to bits, gloriously.

And for those of you who have been living in Sacramento all your lives, especially who weren't even born when I arrived here, who want to turn this into a pissing contest, go on. I'm done here. Respond if you need to. I'll wait.

HI, I'M MICHAEL PSYCHO, FOUNDER OF BLACK HOLE MEDIA! AND I'M NOT THE PHONY, YOU'RE THE PHONY.

Hi there. Nice of you to drop by. Please allow me to introduce myself.

I'm Michael Psycho. I have been using the name Michael Psycho since 1981. I founded an organization called Black Hole Media Co. in 1984. My various exploits, in music, video, performance art, etc. have been fairly public and noticed to some small degree for over three decades now, both as Michael Psycho and from Black Hole Media Co.  For years, before there was any of this here newfangled interweb doohickey, what limited (read: underground) print and video media exposure I had seemed to be enough evidence to place my name(s) out there as unique and respected as any other original names. Only a sleazebag would be lame enough to try to take the names on as their own.

Unfortunately, the Internet blew up and provided a breeding ground for a lot of inconsiderate and desperate-for-attention assholes. Most of these mooks couldn't come up with an original thought, even if someone had a .44 Mag on their privates ready to blow them off if the fools didn't think of anything.

Over recent times, I have seemingly become a magnet for these types of creeps. "Black Hole Media" is all over the map for copycats, which is a semantic impossibility since "black hole" and "media" tend not to ever have normal semantic relations... except in the case of my organization because I had a definition of the term when I started to use the term. Not a single one of these poseurs could give any meaning to the term "black hole media" because they never had one to begin with.

"Michael Psycho" is another term co-opted all to shit in various forms. I can almost see the tendency to copy that one by accident as it does have a phonetic beauty all its own, no doubt about it.

But here lies similar premise: not only am I the original person of this name, but I have published and released recorded works for years using this name (and by the way, under the name of Black Hole Media Co.).

I have, however, been intrigued by some of the activity which these pathetic losers are engaging in. Seriously, at least it's a learning experience. For instance, I have learned that there are stupid assholes out there who are under the impression that, if something isn't famous, it's okay to steal from it. Somehow, each of these brokedicks think that they will be the ones that will achieve fame and fortune as "Michael Psycho" or "Black Hole Media". Sometimes it's just fools who are temporarily using a social media handle or posting a comment or something of that nature.

Apparently, none of these drones ever learned how to use Google, let alone the Internet Archive, and if they did then that makes them even bigger assholes and their motives even more selfish and evil.

Let me go over a couple of things.

The name Black Hole Media Co. derives from my longtime philosophical principle of Black Hole Media. I will eventually be publishing detailed writings online and elsewhere, but minor writings are available at the BHMC Blog. It's a philosophy with the goal of usurping the Establishment Media's grip on the psyche of the civilized world. It's not a bunch of fatass Cheeto sucking couch surfing no-lifes with nothing better to do than release lame ass podcasts about what they streamed on Netflix yesterday.

I have my own meaning for the last name "Psycho" as well. Although the term has been corrupted since the 1930s, I hold the unwavering opinion that Alfred Hitchcock completely fucked up the public image of an otherwise beautiful root term. For example, "psychopomp" is an ancient term used to describe the spiritual guide of a living person's soul. Even a "psychopath" is not specifically a dangerous person, but actually someone who is not remorseful or ashamed of antisocial behavior.

Unfortunately, most if not all other people who use the term "Psycho" seem to like it because it implies that they are crazy and dangerous and murderous, which, if they truly were, chances are they would not be competent enough to maintain a website or social media presence anyway. (On a side note, I believe that those geeks over at Electronic Arts may owe me some back royalties.)

Anyway, the point of this whole rant is to put my points across. I am Michael Psycho, always was and always will be. My organization is Black Hole Media Co., always was and always will be. Wicked, selfish, unoriginal people can put up web pages and hijack as many social media names as their hearts' desire.

There's only one important thing to remember here if you are among those people. It's not me who should worry about you, it's you who should worry about me. You inconsiderate suckers out there may have an occasional Pyrrhic victory on the online battlefield, but I am going to win the historic war. I will be remembered as Michael Psycho of Black Hole Media Co. and my art and philosophy will be there for the ages. You will be that dork who couldn't come up with an original idea if it fell on your fuckin' head in the shape of a 16 ton weight. People will laugh at you and your stupidity if they even notice you at all.

I have lived on the streets, and I have also worked my way to a 6 digit bank account and owned a Mercedes. I have been jobless, and I have walked off of a secure job without notice just because my values and purpose in life outweighed working for assholes in an organization I didn't support just to get a paycheck. I have suffered and fought for my art and the very essence of my existence for over half a century on this rock in space.

Thus, I have names and ideas that I have and will put my life on the line for, to defend and exonerate. My names and ideas are what I work for, stand for and live for; I could be flat broke on the street and they will still be my prized possessions. You are just some dweeb who can't think for yourself and needed a cool name. I don't care how big, bad or organized you think that you are, or even if you actually are. I will outlast you and probably outlive you. 

There's still hope. There's still time. If you need help, let me know. We'll figure out an original name for you together. My hourly consultation fees are quite reasonable for someone as talented as myself.