“Less Gods and More Goddard “

It’s January 12, 2025, and Michiana braces for a deep freeze. We’d been due for a cold winter,  and we’re surely getting it, with highs in the next few days in the teens, and some forecasted single-digits within a week or so. A stately, tranquil, white blanket of snow cloaks the landscape. 

We all, as usual, attempt to sidestep, to avoid the maddest of humanity, who seem always out at large and looking to make their identities known within the larger populace. It stands as an ongoing battle how to wield a healthy, balanced and placid disposition before the masses, in the land of this many soon-to-be-criminals.

Even in the case of me, I think of the strip club, sometimes. It sits over, closer to Chicago. I went one time and spent $13, my hand shaking uncontrollably as my face lay close to this lady’s breasts, the lady probably older than I am (I’m 41). 

I think of the strip club now, all the gross people who will hang out in the bar where I work, taking pictures of the bartenders when they bend over, etc. (my bar largely resembles a strip club except the girls don’t get naked and they’re way hotter than strippers). And, like a monsoon, the Deerhunter song “Neither of Us, Uncertainly” bleeds into my head, like a hemorrhage I have not yet cured. I think of all the placid songs on my “Dolby’s Top 500 Indie Rock Songs of All Time” list. I think of “Swing for Life” by Yo La Tengo, “Walk in the Park” by Beach House. Why do I have to listen to these songs? I think of the strip club and I think of the Galena Marsh and how I could be just as happy, on a hopeless winter night like this, sitting around the Galena Marsh and listening to music, if only my da** CD player would start working again. Hey, at least I’m not stupid enough to ask for that. 

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