things keno wrote

So I just left the Shaws grocery store and I had quite an awkward encounter while I was at the self checkout machine. I accidentally pressed the digital button to indicate a six dollar donation instead of no thanks when prompted if I wanted to donate to some tax write off charity scam and I had to embarrassingly go up to a lady and ask her to help me remove the six dollar donation.

When she replied, “no you gotta give” jokingly, we both laughed about it. She continued to have trouble removing the donation from my transaction and ended up just voiding my entire transaction, making me go back and rescan.

I found the whole circumstance really hilarious and imagined all the characters in my life, how would they react to such a mistake? I have a feeling some of the people closest to me would just make the donation out of embarrassment. I think in the past I would’ve been liable to do the same.

Why do I like the writers I do? What do I know about lit? I find it sorta funny how a surprising amount of them have dabbled in or even where at one point fully invested in sports writing.

I wrote that bit on my phone while working. Now I’ve just recently gotten home.

Sitting here at my computer desk, in my work hat, work pants, no shirt. Try to use my canine teeth to open this dab cartridge packaging. I got it but its all stuck up in there with some sort of card or something. I’m listening to a livestream of KEWU 89.5FM, “The Sound Of Eastern Washington University”, a college radio station from back home in the miserable Spokane metro area. It’s a jazz station primarily, playing all sorts of the aforementioned genre and more; Dixieland, blues, big band, fusion, a large amount of bop and bop derivatives (some of my personal favorites), swing, the occasional free jazz joint (radio friendly free jazz albeit so I don’t know how many of y’all would even consider it free jazz), various styles of “world music”, and even during a very special program known as “Nightfall”, triphop, IDM, plunderphonics, chillout, dub of all sorts, ambient techno, and all sorts of music you could imagine obsessing over as a stoned teenager.

I was that teenager as you’d likely expect. Speaking of getting stoned, I think I’m gonna hit the pen right quick for the first time since I’ve gotten home. The song playing now is “The Touch of Your Lips” by Chet Baker. Holy shit man that toke fucking rocked me lol. Go look up the song I’m listening to right now and just imagine what I’m going through right now. I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to adequately explain the physical sensations of exhaustion from a long day at work, combined with the strange humid feeling on my face around my eyes, and this strange feeling on the skin of my back I can only imagine is my newly blinkered out mind trying to make sense of the temperature changing in my office due to letting some of the A/C in by leaving the door wide open.

Wow that was pretty stupid wasn’t it haha. Okay let’s try to move on: I was the stoned teenager, listening to KEWU’s Nightfall block biweekly, usually while smoking weed in one of my parent’s garages, using an extremely old radio my dad gave me that weirdly enough could pick up all sorts of transmission types, from short-wave to long. This old ass radio, complete with the big ol dial, and sliding tuner that looks sorta like a ruler or something. I still got one of those glowing old school tuners on the receiver tube amp thing I use to listen to music and make beats (I know I should get monitors). I would sit out in the garage at night, Tuesdays and/or Thursdays, to smoke a ton of schwag reggie booty buttcheek weed I would obtain for free through various methods, none of which were impressive or anything like that.

I remember one night I heard what I would learn from the DJ after the song, plus one more, were finished was “Alberto Balsalm” by Aphex Twin. While it was playing I got hit with a sense of urgency, that I needed to know the name of this song. I guess this was before I had thought to get shazam or something, I’m not sure why I couldn’t just do that, this was 2016 after all. I was scared the DJ had read off the name before the current block of tracks as they do on KEWU sometimes, but other times they’ll do it after 3 or so songs to recap what you just heard. When another song directly followed the one I had to know the name of, I was really fucked up about it. I was really stoned, mind you, I was 17 at this point and I was on what was basically juvenile probation for the previous 8 months or so, so my tolerance was low as all hell. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking but I do remember being really pissed off and disappointed.

A couple minutes go by, god only knows what that second song even sounded like now, let alone what it was called, because all I cared about and can remember now was when I heard bro finally speak up in the characteristic NPR style soft radio voice, “Those last few tracks were ‘who the hell knows by who gives a fuck’, ‘Alberto Balsam by Aphex Twin’, and that last one was ‘yeah I cannot be bothered to remember even for a second lol’,”. So I go and write down “Alberta Balsa” on the back of an old paper plate I think I was using for resin or something pathetic and weed related like that. Obviously I’d come to learn shortly after that I misheard the name but I’ll never forget that moment of panic and joyous relief.

I could go on about KEWU but I won’t for now. Right now my mind is on this problem I am having with the DoorDash grocery delivery service. Problem is as follows: I ordered my normal groceries from ALDI on the DoorDash app, just because I’m so tired from such a long day at work. Everything went well short of the fact that one item from my order wasn’t in stock at that ALDI, and the service decided to automatically enlist some additional driver to grab my one item, an 8 pack of rootbeer float icecreams… I urgently tried to cancel this additional “backup order” as it was called, but to no avail.

Okay I’m back now I had to grab the DoorDash, twice, then Felix got back from work and I made some bangers and mash for dinner. A PROPA BRI-ISH MEARL, LET’S AV AT IT! BOSH! While sitting at the coffee table in the living room eating said proper british meal (forgive me, I hate to be guilty of Irish-cultural erasure), I was informed by Felix that the celebrity chef and TV personality Anne Burrell had recently committed suicide. He sort of just mentioned that she was dead offhand as her face came up big on our television as a part of a full page banner promo for the newest season of her show “Worst Cooks in America”. I sorta scrambled in confusion asking for clarification thinking I misheard. Sadly, it is true, she did die.

Her cause of death was an overdose on a cocktail of various drugs, and ruled to be a suicide. She left behind a husband whom she got married to only a few years prior. Funny, I always thought she was lesbian. I guess she was bisexual or something because I know she did have a relationship with a woman at one point, but who even cares anyhow. It’s a shame she’s gone and even worse in my opinion, is the shame it is that she was feeling so horrible in whatever way and for whatever reason that she felt like she had to do something like that. I really did enjoy her television shows. How silly that sounds, and honestly it is kinda stupid in a way. In some way I don’t even really care to think too deeply about it to be honest.

I can go on to that point however, and I suppose I ought to. I think it sounds awful silly to talk about or even feel like you miss somebody who died’s TV show. I’d reckon the same thing would go for music, or books, whatever. I do feel that way about multiple creatives who have passed away and I think we all do. However, when it’s framed like this: a woman is dead by her own hand, she was tortured, she was a public figure admired by thousands, she likely felt trapped somehow and her only escape, beyond talking to her husband or her friends, was to take her own life…and darn I sure did like her TV shows.