The Voice I Thought I Lost

 

Me, 17 years old

All my childhood and teens I sang, sang all the time. Played guitar. Music was the thing that brought me to life, and I wanted nothing more than to buy a PA system and join a band. The singers I listened to shaped my style. Grace Slick, Tina Turner, Ann Wilson, Janis Joplin, Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell.

My dad always encouraged me in my music, always asked me to play and sing for him, always got happy when I learned a new song or wrote one. He especially loved that. He gifted me my Harmony Sovereign for Christmas when I was twelve and paid for guitar lessons twice a week for several years. He was my biggest fan.

When I was fourteen I won a school wide talent show singing the 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon and Garfunkel and accompanying myself on my Harmony Sovereign guitar. That was the kind of kid I was. Music was where I lived.

I would watch the street musicians in Harvard Square, hungering to be playing, but too damn self conscious to even consider it. Then one day I was really high on weed and very relaxed, and I started singing along with a musician who was playing John Prine's Angel From Montgomery. The reaction of the other people listening, and the musician asking me to join him in more songs, opened the floodgates and made me feel like performing publicly would be a fun thing to do.

I set my future ambition to be a professional musician, to sing, to play music, to share the joy of melody with the world.

In my mid teens, I would play music in Harvard Square. I never put my guitar case out for donations because I was too self-conscious about it, I just played for me and my friends. Sometimes, though, somebody would walk up and hand me fifty cents or a dollar. That was coffee money!

Patti and I usually just hung out with our friends, smoking joints behind Out of Town News, getting coffee at the Mug and Muffin, playing music in the Pit, and generally having a good time. Those were the years when I thought music was going to carry me forward forever.

Then came the car wreck when I was seventeen. I went through the windshield and took three hundred stitches to my forehead. My throat slammed into the edge of the dash. Paralyzed one of my vocal cords. I couldn't sing for more than one or two songs after that before my throat would hurt bad, and I would start hitting bad notes. Me, who has perfect pitch. It was devastating. My hoped for future career was up in smoke, I had an immense scar on my forehead, and I had no hopes any more.

Over the years, I gave up singing for the most part. It was too emotionally painful.

As my voice got rougher and weaker, I fell into depression about singing and wouldn't even try, which probably resulted in helping my voice get progressively worse, along with the pack a day habit. Heavy smoking, injury, never using my voice, it went really bad. I was croaking when I sang Happy Birthday or whatever. It was bad. It felt like something that used to be mine had slipped away and I could not get it back.

Well… lately I have been singing along with the radio. I am also singing while I practice ukulele. And my voice is improving. I have my projection back. I am on key. I can sing a little longer every day.

And I am blown away.

I am not going to be a big rock star, not at 61 years old and in poor health, but I have my music back. 

Yesterday, Sam told me I was sounding pretty good. 

My heart soared.

A fantasy... Donnie Is Gonna Learn Today!

The following is a purely fictional account that is not about any real person, living or dead, I promise. 

It resulted from a ChatGPT prompt that David Gerrold had used just to pass the time. I took the idea, ran it through Copilot, refining it as we went through several iterations and laughing my ass off and shaking my head all the way through.

Since it was David's idea, I got his permission before bastardizing it.

Really, this is fiction, and bears NO resemblance to real people, seriously!

When Bipolar Disorder Takes Another Life, The Stigma Should Be What Dies Next

 

Image courtesy Unsplash.Com - work of Paolo Nicolello

Robert Carradine died by suicide today after a long fight with bipolar disorder. The news hit me harder than I expected. Not because I knew him personally, but because I know the illness that took him. I know what it feels like when your own brain turns into a battlefield. I know what it feels like to lose the fight for a moment and still be here to talk about it. I have been there. I have survived it. And I am tired of pretending that bipolar disorder is anything other than a medical condition that deserves compassion and treatment.

Every time someone with bipolar disorder or another mental illness dies, the world reacts with shock. People ask how it could happen. People whisper. People speculate. But very few people talk about the truth. Bipolar disorder is not a character flaw. It is not a weakness. It is not a failure of willpower. It is a brain chemistry disorder that can be brutal, unpredictable, and exhausting. It deserves the same seriousness and empathy we give to heart disease or cancer or any other life threatening condition.

But that is not how society treats it.

Instead, people with bipolar disorder get labeled as unstable or dramatic or dangerous. We get jokes made at our expense. We get told to calm down or get over it. We get treated like our illness is a personality problem instead of a medical one. And when someone dies, the stigma gets louder instead of quieter.

The truth is simple. People do not die from bipolar disorder because they are weak. They die because the illness is strong. They die because the stigma keeps people silent. They die because too many people are afraid to ask for help or afraid they will be judged if they do. They die because society still treats mental illness like a moral issue instead of a medical one.

I am bipolar. I have attempted suicide in the past. I am not ashamed of that. I am not hiding it. I am not pretending it did not happen. I survived because I got support, treatment, and time. I survived because people showed me empathy instead of fear. I survived because I was lucky. Not everyone gets that chance.

If we want fewer deaths, the stigma has to go. The shame has to go. The silence has to go. We need to talk about bipolar disorder the same way we talk about any other chronic illness. We need to stop treating people like they are broken or dangerous. We need to stop acting like mental illness is a moral failing.

Robert Carradine deserved better. Everyone fighting this illness deserves better. And the only way we get there is by telling the truth. Bipolar disorder is real. It is medical. It is treatable. And the people who live with it deserve compassion, not judgment.

The stigma should be what dies next.

SCOTUS Overturns Trump’s Tariffs and Trump Loses His Mind About It

SCOTUS finally did what everyone with a functioning frontal lobe knew was coming. They looked at Trump’s tariff stunt, checked it against the Constitution, and said no. Not maybe. Not sort of. Not later. Just fucking NO!

According to the reporting, the ruling was simple. A president does not get to rewrite trade law because he feels like playing Tough Motherfucker. Congress did not authorize the kind of free for all Trump tried to pull. The Court reminded everyone that presidential power has fucking limits. That is their goddam job. That is the whole point of the fucking judiciary.

And Trump reacted exactly how he always reacts when someone refuses to kiss the friggin' ring...

Spammers should have to shampoo my crotch

Fee fie foe fammer, boy I hate a spammer!

The other day I put a contact form on the blog. Thought it might be a good idea, ya know?

Tonight, I got about a dozen emails that were clearly from spambots.

Fucking hell. Assholes wreck everything.

The Cravings Never Really End

Nicotine Is Insidious.

I just spent five stupid minutes going full tornado, ripping through my desk like I was searching for state secrets. Lifting papers, opening drawers, rifling like a woman possessed.

Looking for my fucking cigarettes.

My cigarettes.

I quit smoking two years and five weeks ago.  

There is no nicotine in this house.  

There has not been for a long damn time.

And yet my brain still tried to run the old script:  

"Quick! Check under that pile of junk mail! Maybe Past You stashed a pack for Future You, like some deranged nicotine Easter Bunny!"

D'OH.

Nicotine is a sneaky little bastard. It shows up at the weirdest moments, taps you on the shoulder, and whispers, "Hey... remember how good we were together?" 

And I swear, for about ten seconds, or ten minutes depending on how stressed I am, I would absolutely throw hands for a smoke.

But here is the thing:  

I am not losing this fight.  

Not today, not ever.
Never fucking EVER!

Cigarettes are banned from this house like cursed artifacts. My brother, who still smokes, has to keep his pack in the car and trek a hundred feet to the designated exile chair. That is the rule. That is the boundary. That is how I keep myself safe.

I am stealing a line from my friend and webqueen, Maggie:  

I am not an ex smoker.  

I am a smoker in recovery.

And recovery is a permanent condition, but so is my stubbornness.

Nicotine can try me, but it is not getting back in. Fuck that.

Chicago: Where the Music Took Hold - TWICE

I am willing to bet good money that the first music I ever heard was my mother singing to me in Chicago, the city where I was born and where I lived for the first three months of my life before we moved to Boston. 

The year I was eleven, life went pretty cattywumpus. I'd been living with my mother for the previous year, and that pretty much imploded due to my special needs as an undiagnosed bipolar person. I returned to my father's home, and since he was in the middle of relocating across town and setting up housekeeping, he asked his mom, my Gramma Mary, if I could come to Chicago and stay with her for a month or two. Gramma said yes...

Impeach and CONVICT Trump NOW!

 

There is a point where a country either wakes up or sleepwalks straight off a cliff. People keep acting like this is just another news cycle, another round of political noise,or another thing to scroll past on the way to cat videos and dinner plans. But this isn't background static. This is the fire alarm blaring at full volume while half the country pretends it's a ringtone. We're living inside an emergency, and the refusal to name it is part of the emergency.

Because this is not about one moment, one headline, or one outrageous quote. It's an accumulation, a pattern, the relentless grinding erosion of guardrails and basic expectations of leadership. Every time something crosses a line, the line gets redrawn a little further out, and people shrug a little harder, and the whole thing becomes a little more normal and accepted...

The Board of "Peace" and The Threat of War

I read an article in The Guardian about how Trump sits at the head of something he is calling the “Board of Peace” and somehow manages to threaten Iran with “bad things” if they do not fall in line within ten days. Ten days. Like he is handing out a goddam eviction notice instead of talking about potential military action. He says the talks have been “good,” as if that word magically cancels out the threat hanging off the end of his sentence like a loaded weapon.

So there he is, perched on his shiny new “Board of Peace,” casually dangling the possibility of war like it's a fucking party favor. Peace, apparently, now means “do what I fucking say or I will blow your shit up.” Peace means smiling for the cameras while you rattle sabers under the table. Peace means pretending diplomacy is happening while you count down to violence like it is a goddam game show.

The fucking absurdity is so thick you could spread it on toast...

How the FUCK Are MAGA Followers Still Worshipping This Guy?

 

At this point, trying to understand MAGA loyalty feels like trying to explain why a goddam raccoon keeps coming back to the same dumpster fire. You’d think eventually the smell of burning garbage and shit would register. But no, they’re still there, still digging, still convinced they’ve found treasure while the rest of us are fucking gagging.

Because honestly, how in fuck do you keep supporting someone after everything that’s come out? We’re talking about a man with multiple criminal convictions, a man who’s been at the center of more lawsuits than a defective chainsaw company, a man who is all over the Epstein files (and probably guilty of pedophilia), a man whose public behavior would get any normal person fired, shunned, or at least politely escorted out of the building. But not him. No, he’s their golden calf with a spray tan and a microphone...

Time for a living wage, dammit!

On July 24, 2009 the federal minimum wage was elevated by congress, raising the rate to $7.25 per hour. This remains the current federal minimum as of early 2026. This is the longest period in U.S. history without a congressional update. This is egregious neglect and abuse of the workers and needs to be addressed.

Key details regarding the federal minimum wage:

* Duration: The $7.25 rate has been in place for over 16 years.

* Purchasing Power: The value of the minimum wage has declined significantly due to inflation, losing roughly 30% or more of its purchasing power since 2009.

* State vs. Federal: While the federal rate is stagnant, many states have implemented higher minimum wages. 

(The previous bullet list was pasted from Google.)

Texas, however does not give a hot fuck. Minimum wage here and in 19 other states is $7.25. And in Texas, if you're a tipped worker, such as a waitress or waiter, you get a whopping $2.13 an hour.

To put that into perspective, in 1982, FORTY-FOUR years ago, I was hired for my first job, waitressing in Massachusetts, where the tipped wage was $2.10 per hour. And it was not enough to live well or comfortably on. Things have NOT improved since then.

Three cents an hour. That's how much more per hour this fucked up state is paying its tipped workers in 2026 than I earned in 1982.

LIVING WAGE NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS!

FUCK Cancer! Fuck It In The EAR! I’m DONE Watching This Monster Hurt People I Love

Cancer is the one motherfucker that never clocks out. It doesn’t care how good you are, how careful you’ve been, how much you’ve already survived. It just shows up like a goddam wrecking ball and dares you to pretend this is normal. I’m fucking sick of it. I’m sick of watching people I love get blindsided by a piece of shit disease that feels like it’s everywhere, all the time, creeping into every family like some kind of outrageous cosmic joke.

We talk about cancer like it’s a statistic, like it’s a chart, like it’s a ribbon color. But when it hits your circle, it’s not a number, it’s a gut punch. It’s fear. It’s rage. It’s the helplessness of knowing that even with all our medical advances of the last motherfucking century, all our research, all our awareness campaigns, this thing still keeps taking swings at the people who deserve it the least.

And I’m tired. Tired of pretending to be calm. Tired of acting like this is just part of life. Tired of watching strong, brilliant, irreplaceable people get dragged into a fight they never fucking asked for...

Missing and/or Kidnapped - THEY MATTER TOO!

Look, I feel awful about Nancy Guthrie, I really do. No 84 year old woman (or anybody else for that matter) should be abducted.

But let's get real. Hundreds of women and men and children get abducted or go missing every single year in this country, and for the most part, we don't hear dick about them.

Here's a few missing just this year alone, and it's only mid-February:

• Virginia Parker (Reno, Nevada): 17-year-old missing since January 23, 2026.
• Cherell Brooks (New Castle, Delaware): 32-year-old missing since February 5, 2026.
• Ianna Geniyah Mondesir (Virginia): Missing since February 9, 2026, also 17 years old.
• Kara Hynd (Ohio):  Missing as of February 8, 2026.
• Sophia Barajas (California): 15 years old, missing as of January 11, 2026.
• Mara Minott: (Michigan): Missing since November 2025.

The thing MOST of these missing women and girls have in common? All but one of them is Black or Latina. And none of them are the mother or daughter of a celebrity.

Don't they matter?

Don't they?

We’re Not Imagining This - It’s the Same Motherfucking Playbook

Let’s stop pretending this shit is subtle. The current administration is running the same early‑stage authoritarian bullshit the Nazis pulled, and everyone acting shocked can go ahead and sit down. This isn’t hysteria. This isn’t exaggeration. This is the part of the history book where the margins should be screaming “PAY ATTENTION, YOU DUMBASS MOTHERFUCKERS!”

People love to imagine fascism arrives with jackboots and bonfires on day one. No. It shows up with a smirk, a flag, and a bunch of assholes insisting that cruelty is “policy.” It shows up with leaders who talk like bullies, act like bullies, and then pretend they’re victims when anyone calls them out. It shows up with crowds chanting garbage that sounds like it was ripped straight out of a 1930s hate rally, except now it’s amplified by social media and weaponized stupidity...

This Body Is Scaring Me, But I’m Not Done Fighting

There’s a particular kind of fear that comes when your own body starts slipping out from under you. Not the dramatic kind, just the slow, creeping kind that shows up in hospital monitors, new diagnoses, and the way your breath catches wrong or your heart decides to improvise without permission. It’s the kind that makes you realize you’re not invincible, not even close.

I’ve been living in that fear lately...

Poem: Flood The Streets

They thought we’d stay quiet.  

They thought we’d scroll past.  

But we showed up with boots, signs, and middle fingers raised.  

We flooded the streets like a goddamn tidal wave.  

Every chant a curse. Every step a threat.  

We’re not asking. We’re demanding.  

And we’re not leaving till the bastards sweat.

You built your empire on silence and spin.  

On cages, on lies, on blood-soaked grin.  

But we cracked the concrete with our rage.  

We tore your speeches into confetti.  

We pissed on your podium.  

We screamed truth so loud it shattered your glass.

This is not a protest.  

This is a reckoning.  

This is every ignored voice turned into a fucking war drum.  

This is the sound of your power dying.  

This is the sound of us 

Unapologetic, unfiltered, unrelenting.

We don’t want your reforms.  

We want your resignation.  

We want your trials.  

We want your legacy burned down to ash.  

We want the history books to say:  

“They rose. They raged. They won.”

So keep your barricades.  

We’ll climb them.  

Keep your riot cops.  

We’ll outlast them.  

Keep your lies.  

We’ll drown them.  

Because we flood the streets.  

And we don’t fucking stop

Until you're dead and gone.

Punk Lyrics: Nuremberg For Today

[Verse 1]

You signed the orders, you built the hell,

You watched the bodies drop and said “Oh well.”

You called it legal, we call it war

And we’ve got receipts, you corrupt little whore.

[Chorus]

The trials are coming, better learn to plead,

For every stolen breath and every dirty deed.

You wore the badge, you played the part

Now the reckoning’s here, and it’s tearing you apart.

[Verse 2]

You caged the kids, you fed the lies,

You let the sick die while you monetized.

You laughed in court, you rigged the game

But history’s a bitch and she remembers your name.

[Bridge]

No more silence, no more spin,

We’re carving your legacy into rusted tin.

Every file, every tape, every bloodstained page

Will scream your crimes from a burning stage.

[Chorus]

The trials are coming, better learn to plead,

For every stolen breath and every dirty deed.

You wore the badge, you played the part

Now the reckoning’s here, and it’s tearing you apart.

[Outro]

This ain’t revenge, it’s righteous fire

A courtroom choir and a funeral pyre.

We’ll drag your name through every verse

And bury your legacy in the motherfucking dirt.

Punk Lyrics: You’ll Answer One Day

[Verse 1]

Kick in the door, ICE in the van,

Five-year-old sobs, they don’t give a damn.

Mom on the ground, zip ties tight,

“Just doing our job” you’re a fucking parasite.

[Chorus]

You’ll answer one day, you bootlicking freaks,

For blood on the pavement and trauma that reeks.

For cages and silence and bureaucrat spin

Justice is coming, and it’s gonna dig in.

[Verse 2]

You call it law, we call it fucking rot,

You signed the orders, now you’re caught.

You watched them die, you filed your form,

You’re the motherfucking stormtrooper in uniform.

[Bridge]

Hide behind flags, behind your fake pride,

But the ghosts of the stolen will never let you hide.

Every scream, every name, every soul you erased

Will crash through your gates like a riot - with mace.

[Chorus]

You’ll answer one day, you bootlicking freaks,

For blood on the pavement and trauma that reeks.

For cages and silence and bureaucrat spin

Justice is coming, and it’s gonna dig in.

[Outro]

So sleep with your memos and chain-link dreams,

But we’re coming with fury and gasoline.

We’ve got voices, and rage, and a score to settle

And we’ll carve your crimes into twisted metal.

The United States Has Become A Crime Scene and the Government Is Holding the Blood Dripping Blade

The United States feels like it is being peeled apart layer by layer, and the last few weeks have been a nonstop avalanche of cruelty, incompetence, and raw authoritarian hunger. It is like watching a house burn down while the people holding the hoses argue about whether fire is even real. Every day brings another headline that makes you want to scream until your throat tears. Every day brings another reminder that the people in charge are not just failing at their jobs. They are actively choosing violence, chaos, and suffering because it benefits them.

The last three weeks have been a grotesque parade of power flexing and moral decay. It feels like the country is being held hostage by people who get off on watching others suffer. Every press conference is a performance of arrogance. Every policy announcement feels like a threat. Every smug grin from the people responsible for this mess feels like a slap in the face to anyone who still believes in basic human decency. It is infuriating. It is nauseating. It is enough to make you want to tear the whole system down to the studs and start over...

Ukraine Is Still Standing and Russia Is Still Throwing a Tantrum

Russia’s full scale invasion keeps dragging on like the world’s most deranged midlife crisis, and somehow the Kremlin still has not figured out that Ukraine is not going to fucking die just because Moscow thinks it should. Ukraine is fighting for its existence while Russia stomps around like a pissed off toddler who found out the universe does not revolve around its crusty Soviet nostalgia fantasies. Every missile Russia fires is another pathetic attempt to bully a country that has already proven it would rather crawl through hell than surrender a single inch of its land.

Ukraine keeps doing the impossible. Cities get blown to shit and people sweep up the debris and rebuild like it is just another Tuesday. Soldiers rotate out of trenches that look like the inside of a nightmare and go right back because they refuse to let their country be turned into Putin’s personal fucking theme park. Families scatter across continents and still manage to support each other with a level of resilience that makes Russia’s entire propaganda machine look like a clown show. The whole nation is held together by grit, grief, and a collective fuck you aimed directly at Moscow...