hijinx message board

Wow- Friday night here in LA I went to the Echoplex to see HWM play NO DIVISION in full and it was fucking powerful and so stupidly nostalgic. I think at 37 I'm having a midlife crisis and I just don't know how to lead a life anymore. The other day I ate an edible and wandered LA on foot listening to some Boards of Canada and saw young people spilling onto the streets from what was clearly a party going on in someone's apartment and I had crazy flashbacks back to the loft scene in Brooklyn and seeing house/loft shows and strangers spilling everywhere in dimly lit hallways, cigarette and weed smoke wafting all over the air, tubs and pitchers full of cheap beer and just the feeling anything is possible and randomly meeting people and having under the influence conversations and feeling young and amazing. And it just stung that it feels like all that is in the past. That life is buried but still exists for others in a different setting and wow. It's hard aging. And then going to the HWM show and screaming along and wondering what the latest punk bands that are doing it for the youth today. Going back to a time where it seemed like we all wanted to pick the most emotional choiciest lyrics our AIM info msg for people to read and grasp onto for just a lifeline to make it through a cold night. I forgot what it was like to feel that way. It was nice. And it was also unsettling at the same time.
It seems like life is a revolving circle and disconnected alienation and how could I forget that this feeling was once the norm and now only shoots into me sometimes while attending a HWM show or walking around the city high on weed. It's crazy. Otherwise I'm just an aging weirdo trying to find a reason to smile every single day. Not much different than when a punk lyric was what I needed. Sorry this is rambling but just felt like posting.

Not sure how many other people here knew them, but I heard recently that Matt died last week. Here's them playing on my couch in Bloomington:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxKkZqC27N8

She and I were pen pals. Sorry I never answered that last letter :(

hey! I used to post here under a different name, I moved to California years ago, transitioned, came out, stopped talking to my family, started having good friends and relationships, etc etc. It can be rough but my life is a lot better now. I'm glad you're doing it.

I have a lot of nostalgia for this board despite feeling pretty down on punk in general. Thanks for putting up with my weird teenage bullshit ya'll.

Congrats! I'm... Six? years in. It sucks but in a good way whatever thats meant to mean. If you wanna/need to chat dm me? I know the internet and shit makes that offer seem irrelevant but just throwing it out there

do you guys wanna try making like a discord server or something? i don't want to cannibalize whatever posts people would be making here but it might lower the barrier to entry for people interacting with each other; if you're not familiar with it, it's kind of like an IRC server type thing but much more usable. there's a mobile app, a website version, or a program that you can download. let me know what you think!

unrelatedly: i just got my prescription for estrogen HRT this morning, like 50 minutes ago. I have to go back a bunch of times over the next few weeks and do more blood testing and shit later, which is standard but pesky, but I get my first E injection directly into my ass on tuesday. I haven't really told anyone besides my partner. I'm pretty excited! It's been something i've been thinking about for a long time, i never thought i'd be able to do it. i don't have too much else going on right now, i'm going through a big hong kong acton movie phase right now and it's really fun. i freaking love anthony wong, yo. hit me up for digital files / recommendations lol. i'm pretty much just waiting for the spring / summer, i want to go back to the drive-in that i volunteer at sometimes and hang out with my buds out there. feel free to hit me up if you're anywhere remotely near PA, it's a fun weekend pretty much guaranteed. i hope you're all doing well

because i am hopelessly lonely and feel more feelings to this dead board than anything else online i will post here

this has been a bangup year for me reading. it's been hard for me to concentrate but i've been determined to finish some books and learn to not fixate on the internet, as much at least. i finished The Three-Body Problem, a Chinese sci fi novel set through the Cultural Revolution up to now. The summary I got when I asked what it was about was "science stops working," which I think tells you very little in reality but is also accurate.

As Black As Resistance was a great primer read. I had already thought/read a lot about what it wrote about but I would absolutely recommend it to more liberal types (not meaning to knock) who may want some outside perspectives.

Finally finished The Dispossessed after fits and starts of reading it for many years. I wish it was a little more sci/spec fic than it actually was but still, I can see how it was such a revolutionary book.

James C. Scott's Against The Grain is really hard to get through. He's an anarchist anthropologist who basically makes me feel like everything is hopeless and it's all been bad for so long. This isn't his point, it's often to point out the opposite, sites of resistance and how 'modern civilization' can manifest differently. But it can be hard to stomach all the bad over such a long period of time, it gets overwhelming. Very, very informative though.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang was really interesting and resonated a lot with me. A decade and a half of veganism and engagement with ecology made me feel a lot of what the primary protagonist/subject of the book goes through and have felt the same impulses and desires. It's not a political or polemnical book to be clear, just a novel that doesn't really touch much on the ins and outs of vegetarianism.

Great article!

good read!  Inspired me to get up and cook some food, lol.

http://www.southerncultures.org/article/seasoned-punks/

Pcola was my first real punk stomping grounds around this time. I was never superfriends with most people but I dated a 309er, went to the shows, rode around the city, went to the scant protests and learned about vegan food and diy and anarchism. The Pcola punk scene probably ruined my life and I thank the void every day for that. I also would eventually do all this other places with other people in this scene, making the breakdown of things later very very upsetting and difficult. But this isn't about that-, this is just a bittersweet article that does not get into scene drama, just living and changing and taking the good with the bad.