The dolls of the past become the puppets of the future as we get lost in the fog of wa... I mean etiquette surrounding the medium by which we consume our punk dose. Maybe we should ask the prescient goblins of Newcastle's EBOLA since they had it all figured out 30 years ago.

The holidays are exhausting, snow is exhausting, poor exhaust ratio is exhausting... even when you have access to full sound, this time of year can beat you down. Imagine if you DIDN'T? Imagine if you had to shovel all this snow and Cleveland's own HOMOSTUPIDS only left you about a voicemail's worth of stuff to listen to?

FIXED UPLOAD (HOPEFULLY): Travel as far as you want. Germany, Iceland, Sweden, Siberia... No matter how much reindeer meat and surstromming you eat with the locals, Mom and OVERCAST will always tell you "we have melodic death metal at home".

Today we take advice from the past and present masters... how to prevent onstage bowel troubles, offstage transmissible illness, and in-situ brainrot. But once the lights go out, the boys of DEF CHOICE pass out some magazines they found in the woods and the real party begins.

One more week in the gamer seat - now you're playing with power. Even in the library we're only about games. But you know who doesn't play? Swedish technical submission grapplers SMACKDOWN. JO-HAN... GET THE TABLES!

Doctors and unemployment counsellors hate us for this one weird trick where we leverage the very lowest form of nepotism to simply sidestep the entire rat race. It's so simple, why don't you do it? We already lost interest in your problems because because we're steady gaming. Exit 8, Platform 8, Crazy 8s... mere stepping stones on our mission to catch all of San Diego's most collectible boys, CRIME DESIRE.

We are ready to answer for our decisions. We are ready to admit that not all our choices are the good ones and that not all fitness influencers are created equal. We are ready to face the fact that non-linearity and the hollow shell of past convenience can yield mixed results. Maybe it's time for you to do the same. Maybe we could all take some cues from the youth driven passions and grievances of DRAGNET. Or no wait, hold on...

Today we speak of old men insisting on the pursuits of young men - gaming like young men, marching in the streets like young men, lip syncing like young men. But I'll tell you what's really old is pennies. First of all they are brown which is the oldest color of money and nobody knows why we have them. Did you know West Virginia named their finest band after the guy on the penny? LINCOLN, I guess?

It's time once again to start thinking of ways to be more spooky - whether it's communing with suburban witches, collecting low grade serial killers, or waiting to be summoned from your lair in the sewers. And now I see by my shibboleth timepiece that we're just about ready to wrap up our absolutely thorough audit of these 50 states with Louisiana's WE NEED TO TALK.

This week we are wearing only black. Not in mourning, but because we must walk in the footsteps of the goatfathers who came before us in respecting small businesses, cultural foodstuffs, and the chain of provenance of the swords of America. As luck would have it, you can also wear black when slamming to the music of Arkansas such as BURNED UP BLED DRY.