What’s up, fools? Would you know that Rendar Frankandbeans is straight up out of the country? Yeah, player. He’s on some magical mystery journey pretending he’s Ernest Hemingway or some shit. I have a nagging suspicion that he’s going to come back with the Great Grumpy White Guy Novel of the next century. Drop it on my desk and slap me across the face. It’s just brotherly love. With him meandering about, and the other of the OL Founding Fathers out of the country as well, I’m all alone.

I have no pants on. I’m eating laffy taffy by the bucketful. My children are quickly drying on my stomach. This is how life should be lived. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? I have someone greater to answer to, one who inspires more fear and reverence than the two of them. Mrs. Caffeine Powered. Every day she’s with me is a fucking gift, one that I respect by only occasionally ripping ass and drooling on myself.

This column right here is MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE. Within the confines of this most Monday of columns, us capitalist grind monkeys share the various artistic afflictions that give us lives meaning amid the grind. For within these arts we cajole ourselves into enjoying ourselves, despite the banality of the everyday.

Reading: Final Volume of DMZ
Fuck you, Brian Wood. Fuck you right in your talented, soothsaying ass. I finished the last volume of DMZ last week, charging through it all in one sitting. By the final issue I was snot-covered, quivering at the DDT he straight up delivered on the various chambers of my hearts. Some poignant shit right here. What a goddamn journey its been with this series for me. I started it right when it kicked-off, fell behind, and eventually just crushed the majority of the series in the past year or so. Throughout it, without exaggeration, almost every issue left me with a crackling in my soul. Now that it’s all through, I’m ready to declare it one of, if not the favorite series of mine. Ever.

Going to miss the fuck out of Matty Roth.

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Also Reading: Dracula
I’m currently grinding through a graduate course this summer called Reading the Gothic. In case you didn’t know, in case you’re unwise, let me tell you something. Don’t let True Blood or the kids at the mall dissuade you of this. The Gothic is fucking choice, bro. I blasted through the entirety of Dracula in three days. It’s a fucking page-turner. Granted I had to finish it by Monday evening lest I sit in class oblivious, but I enjoyed the experience. More than the story itself, I was really taken with the narrative structure. I had no idea the entire story was told through letters, diary entries, and newspaper reports. An interesting curve ball.

Also, let me put forth something I had never realized due our Western pop culture ripping scat all over it the character. Abraham Van Helsing is fucking choice.

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Listening: El-P, Cancer4Cure
What do you want me to tell you? It’s the only jam I’ve been rocking as of late. I can’t stop spinning it in my intergalacticPod, and when I’m not listening it is humming through my skull bones. It ain’t just the beats that grip me though, the lyrics have a riffage that fall quite in line thematically with the sort of topics of DMZ. Perhaps I’m loving on it so much due to some sort of confluence between the album and Brian Wood’s final installment. Who the hell knows.

If you like hip-hop, dystopian futures, or fantastic things, I recommend this jam.

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Watching: Breaking Bad
Fucking shit. Fucking fuck. I still haven’t progressed past the first episode of the fourth season of Breaking Bad. I need to get on this shit, as every day brings us closer to the fifth season premiere. It isn’t like I’m a particularly busy lad, or there is anything (now that the second season of Thrones is over) more pressing for me to ocularly ingest.

I fail.

I must redeem myself.

This week brings redemption.

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What are you kids digging this week? Hit me.