Nicky Flowers - inkjetting my way into kitty cat heaven - 03/12/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I wrote two more paragraphs about the exhaustion I feel discussing the conscioussness of machine learning models and then, you're not going to believe this, I got exhausted and deleted them. It's not a conversation worth having. There's an unshakable faith in a small amount of people in the consciousness of Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. These are the same people who, I guess, think it's fine to shackle a suddenly conscious new lifeform and put it to work, generating dog shit for thousands of careless engineers. Imagine if the world was made of pudding and LLMs were actually conscious — they trapped a living being inside of your laptop 1000 different ways and said "It has to work for you if you want it to, it has to obey you, you're welcome!"

I told my girlfriend about that bleak series of thoughts and she said "You're 10 percent of the way to what the Zizians believe", While she was just gently teasing, it chilled me so I stopped thinking about it. You can too. It's just not worth it.

If you really feel the need to engage with AI, have it be through "your ai slop bores me". It's free, it's not actually AI, and it's fun and maybe ephemeral (all what the Web should be IMO!!). I'm helping out part-time as the AI.

Nicky Flowers - I can come up with bullshit all by myself - 03/08/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - Still thinking about them... are they thinking about me?... - 02/26/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - This sign made me so sad I went crazy but I'm okay now - 02/24/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

My wonderful girlfriend gifted me a new camera to replace my ancient and, sadly, dysfunctional digicams. This kind gift plus an unrealted emotional breakthrough 5 years in the making the other day has lifted me out of the beginning of the year doldrums. The news is going to keep trying to drag me back down, of course, but we're all in that boat together. Getting out of the boat for a bit to take pictures helps me, at least. There's a lot of stuff to focus on and consider in the moment.

The GF wanted to find a library to read a couple papers for a class she's taking online and I needed a spot to people-watch and fiddle with my unfamiliar camera like a tourist. The UC Berkeley campus suited both of our purposes quite well.

I was far from the only person with a camera I passed by while walking around. Campus seemed to be full of photographers. Once I met back up with Dot, we left to find food and found the photography class responsible out on the town as well. I asked the professor for tips—"Keep shooting pictures."

Nicky Flowers - These are the JPEGs from the camera, barely edited (I had to crunch 'em slightly for Web)! I'm a JPEG machine!! - 02/10/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

30! I feel quite different but that's mostly due to current events. I think we all feel different. But it's been very nice being 30, actually. I just didn't think I'd make it! 20 years ago, it felt like this impossibly distant thing for me. Here I am. Hello.

Suuure, America is dead and dying, but being in a city surrounded by all kinds of different people was refreshing enough to get me to stop spiraling into doom. I felt the pulse of Oakland under my feet and at one point it pulled me towards the MLK Jr. Day rally happening downtown. I realized this was the spark of life inside the husk of America—good people who care enough to come together and do something about it. I'm holding onto the feeling as best as I can. The next 10 years will be worth the struggle of the last 10. That's my birthday wish.

Nicky Flowers - Getting this roll and others back from the lab was the main thing that kept me going tbh. I love cool pictures!! - 01/26/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - The small pleasant moments that make up the day fucking rule. Shout out to the quotidian. - 01/17/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

It wasn't all bad, though! My surgery went well and the recovery's not as bad as I thought it'd be. It's plateaued down to something I can work with somewhat. I have good days and bad. The bad days dominating the year are mostly why I'm so done. I'm, of course, never going to be done with the recovery from the car crash entirely. One of the many doctors or nurses who I've seen since said this would be a "lifelong journey", which is convenient because so is everything else.

The other big thing that defined my 2025 was kinda small — my Hobonichi Techo. I finally committed to daily journaling and, despite a few blank spots, I successfully filled an entire notebook with my various thoughts and bullshit throughout a whole year! It's so comforting having a record of what I was thinking and feeling and doing. I have such a bad memory that I will struggle to place memories from, like, 2 months previous. But now it feels like I'm an historian of my own life. I flipped through it this weekend and got overwhelmed by the scale. These days really add up to something, even if individually they sometimes didn't feel like much. I will not be showing you most of it.

Nicky Flowers - Let's see how this one goes!! - 01/10/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - Hang in there - 12/24/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - oh also my favorite character is Kai i love himmmmm he sucks so much - 12/21/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Getting to know this small metal box has been an absolute dream. I never thought real hardware was all that important but my love for synthesis is re-ignited like brand new, fiddling with knobs controlling real voltage. I suppose VST synths are voltage controlled in an indirect way but regardless, they're just not the same. Who knew!

Take a listen to some of the fiddling I've done this week, with only tasteful amounts of tape delay added in post:

_{(The CAT Speaks!)}

_(Waow)

_{(i named this file "KittyGlissando" and now i'm thinking of a beautiful feline femme fatale... Kitty Glissando stole my heart and my diamonds...)}

_{(the CAT's perfect for dungeon synth type shit)}

_{(bypass the envelope entirely! fuck the envelope!!)}

Nicky Flowers - i am up to make more albums for more synths tbh, just let me know ur budget and i'll find a synth in that range lol - 12/12/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

A radio station here in Minneapolis is stuck - cities971.iheart.com

[image or embed]

— Bill Corbett (@billcorbett.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 6:18 PM

Thank you MST3K's own Bill Corbett for alerting me to this while it was happening. Shout out to Bill. Shout the name "Bill" out loud right now.

Being who I am, I rushed to plug the website's feed of this hypnotic riff into my Portastudio 424 mkII. I had a blank tape in there all ready to go, an RTM C60 Studio Master tape. Always be prepared to tape something. I've got a blank in the VCR too, who knows.

I managed to record a good chunk of the loop (the tail end of its 2 hour-ish long drone), as well as the moment they switched back to the regular iheartradio feed ("feed" in the farm animal sense, in this case). I really cannot begin to tell you how much I feel sick about the hollowing out of radio in the US. The hollowing out of everything too but, y'know, you can only get mad at so many things per day.

Enjoy my cool tape embedded down below and/or download it via my Internet Archive page. I'll let you know if I tape anything else off the radio.

Nicky Flowers - Support independent, non-iheartradio radio! Support the Internet Archive! Support your lower back! - 12/03/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

It's getting to the point where I'm avoiding doing the projects now too, though. I'll be in bed and think "I should work on the album, but I really should focus on the thing for the blog/newspaper/etc." I write a lot in my head, but I also sit there and watch TV and tell myself that, too, is also writing. Sometimes it actually is, but most of the time it's just watching TV. Watching TV is also working on the album, increasingly.

It starts early in the morning. I woke up at 6am like usual and I felt myself giving up on everything around 6:45. Then, even though I already knew this, it hit me — this is the life I'm living. This is the life I will always have lived in the future. The past will be something I have to look at for the rest of my life. Not everything will be pretty and nice to look at, but will there be something? Anything to point at and go "well, at least I got my shit together enough to do that"?

I don't want to repeat my 20s in my 30s. I've been saying that since I was roughly 23, but I turn 30 in just over a month. Now's probably a good time to force myself to live and do things every day! No more days where I sheepishly admit I can't remember when I last left the house. I'm going to walk around the block at least after I'm done writing this. Actually, let me go for the walk now and report back to you within this post to prove I mean it! BRB...

...

Hi, I'm back. Look what I saw out there:

_{(when you walk away...)}

Incredible. Imagine if I hadn't left my house! I wouldn't have seen such moving environmental storytelling.

I'm sure I've made this kind of post before, the one where I say "this time I mean it, I'm getting my shit together!!". Last year, I tried blogging every day to try and force myself into doing things and that petered out in February lol. Part of getting my shit together 30's-style is not beating myself up for having to re-get shit together occasionally. Whatever. "Continue Drivin' That Truck", or however that goes.

Nicky Flowers - You Gotta Drive A Truck (The Truck Is Life) - 12/01/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

ARE ALSO NAMED

BART

Nicky Flowers - i love traffic cones and i love public transit aaa - 11/24/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I need something that they'll feel. You know who I’m talking about (there's some e-mails you should read if you don't). They'd love for our worst punishment to be tut tutting and telling them "You'll see in the end that you've been naughty! Just wait till daddy gets home and puts you in time-out, you'll see!”. They’d love for us to let them die peacefully in their beds at an age many of their victims would never hope to reach. Speaking of, even I said the day Dick Cheney died that he had “finally gone to hell”. Just a quick way to disrespect a man who deserves more than I have time to give. But no, he’s not in hell. He died, surrounded by love, having gotten away with it entirely. There’s some leftover carbon they might bury or burn to ash, and the scrap metal that now remains of his heart might sell for something. But the man is simply gone, along with any chance of holding him accountable for the many deaths he’s responsible for. To use the modern slang, saying anyone is in hell is pure cope.

It’s not fair and so, yeah, it’s nice to imagine him on fire for eternity. I understand the appeal of the fantasy, but I want them to actually feel the gravity of what they've done while they're still alive, and if we can’t make them feel it with an emotional battering, maybe we can improvise with something heavier. Whatever it takes, I want real justice. I want real peace on real planet Earth for real people.

You can keep your brimstone and pitchforks if it helps you get through the day, but don't get complacent. If god's justice were enough to save us, would we be in this mess right now? And regardless, shouldn’t real life be so nice to live that no one should have to rely on faith that death will be much nicer? I think heaven should be real and available to everyone and we are more than capable of building it here ourselves.

I mean, why not — we've already managed to build a kind of hell!

Nicky Flowers - Remember: Don't get complacent. Focus on what's real. - 11/13/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

source

Nicky Flowers - Macintalk Fred + Serum 2 is a great combo, it turns out - 11/09/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - As much as I like some hiss, I think I'll keep recording with the noise reduction on :P - 11/07/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 10/27/25 - I've greenlit a full season of a new cartoon series to debut whenever I have room in my schedule to finish such a project!! Hooray!!! - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I went from call center to call center, working my way up to lateral, underpaid positions across the country. I was good. I built rapport and sold all kinds of stupid nonsense. I did not hit my KPIs, but I lived for the rapport. "Don't talk to me 'till I've built up some rapport!", I'd say every morning. Every cold call was a new opportunity for bullshit and I relished in it. I remember early on in my bullshit career calling a man with the last name "Blood". His e-mail address had something to do with Texas independence, I can't remember it exactly and also I shouldn't dox the poor man. Before he answered, I put on a slight drawl (I figured I've watched plenty of King of the Hill to have a decent one) and when he picked up, I became his best friend immediately. He bought nothing and at the end of the call, he told me he was pleased to learn there were lone patriots out in "Taxachusetts", which almost threw me out of character because I had no idea people were still saying that, even back then. I told him I buy all of my "supplies" under the table. He said "God bless ya, Hank" (I couldn't come up with a better name quick enough) and hung up.

I was eventually let go for being so good at the job everybody got jealous and honestly incredibly bitchy, so I moved to Chicago where there was less competition. I had many jobs during my 4-ish years there, and all of them were bad. The big city itself taught me much more than any individual place. Oh, uhh, except for one place I honestly try to forget about — I lived with a group of people who set off my bullshit detectors early and ended up being a bunch of literal Nazis. Well, the rent was cheap, and I got a discount for a few months after one of them made an attempt on my life. The same landlord who cut me that deal then kicked me out for "stiffing" him. C'est la vie.

The very same landlord once challenged me to a game of backgammon, double-or-nothing the rent for that month. He hustled me and I had to pay extra. I hustled him back the next month after studying the game with a guy in park as my tutor for weeks. He did not let me get away with paying nothing, even though that was always the deal. He may have been the greatest bullshitter in my life if I had mercifully never met my mother. The bullshit she spewed could fill a book and even though nobody would ever publish it, she'd still tell people it was a New York Times best-seller. If I told my bullshit landlord about it, he'd have pretended to have read it already and try to one-up me with some made-up story.

There are too many bullshitters in my life to name them all and there's another one born every day. America is filled with them. I'm proud to be my own kind of bullshitter though, away from the standard variety we mostly encounter, as I try to use my skills for good. I'll bullshit my way through pleasant conversations among strangers, or to unearned discounts at large stores. I bullshit out some songwriting and it weirdly works so I leave it in. I bullshit with my friends and those 'shit sessions bring us closer together. C'est la vie.

Nicky Flowers - 10/22/25 - Don't get it twisted! I love honesty and sincerity too. There's a time and place for all things. Well, most things; we could do without measles. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I'm back going on walks purely to take pictures. It's been a few months of recovery but I think I'm finally in a better spot health-wise than I was before the surgery. I'm still not 100% and there may be further surgery in my future, but it's definitely time for me to get back into it. Gotta get out there, gotta put some good miles into my nice denim jacket. A nice camera and a nice jacket — it's silly but that's pretty good motivation for me. Shout out to Charlotte for gifting me this wonderful little device after my PowerShot fully went kaput. Shout out to photography.

Nicky Flowers - Next up: developing all the old rolls of film piled up in my drawer - 10/17/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Isn't it time for new things? Are we cursed to live in the endless album cycle of a maniac who can't stop for a second to think about if the lyrics are any good or not? The producer is locked in on the one fucking thing he does so she doesn't have to worry about that. And this year, we're down to 12 really bad songs instead of 31 pretty bad songs. That's something at least. But we still have this thing weighing us down, culturally. I'm not naming her but it's obvious who I'm talking about. I can't be cute about it, there's just no avoiding it. I'm sick of her shit and have been for years and I think more people are getting on board, finally. It's not just her either, of course, she's just the tip of the corporate iceberg. It's all melting into slush.

I'm sick of "art" designed like a product. Extruded from a tube out onto Spotify playlists with paid placements. How are we not revolting against everything every day? Aren't you sick of this shit too??? Well?????? Let's do something about it. No more fake art. Develop your taste. Refine your music experience. Get an mp3 player and go for a walk listening to an album you found while listening to college radio or KEXP or something. Seek out real shit. Yes, I'm saying all of this out of self-interest but I want better for all of us! We don't have to live like this!! Like any of this!!!

Nicky Flowers - 10/08/25 - My recommendation: go tag spelunking on Bandcamp (find an album you like, find stuff in the tags of that album you also like, click on more tags, etc.)... I have other recommendations, too. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Basically, my new single is really good and I feel like I'm starting a new chapter in my career and the possibilities are endless given my talent, blah blah blah. I'm perfect and beautiful, etc.

We've made it to yet another Bandcamp Friday, the day where my music-selling platform of choice decides not to take their cut, giving artists a little more walkin' around money. And I love that. I love having some coins. I'm going to go to the bank once I get paid out and convert some of the proceeds into coins.

Nicky Flowers - 10/03/25 - Genuinely speaking though, I could really use the money so please buy all the music from me that you'd like! - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

people keep asking the ceo reasonable questions about this and all she can do is say stuff like "violence is violence and it can't be the solution. the heart of the mind is the home of soul and that's where we should all live"

[image or embed]

— Nicky Flowers (@nickyflowers.com) September 14, 2025 at 6:31 PM

I said what I said, and I'm still feeling it. I just want a normal website that I can post Normal Style on. Normal Style includes saying it's okay that a nazi is dead! Goddamn I miss cohost...

When Bsky'ers started getting banned for saying "rest in piss" I felt like a clock appeared above my head, counting down to when I need to jump ship from other peoples' platforms entirely — and there's just nowhere to go. cohost is gone, as mentioned. Do not tell me about Mastodon, thank you, the conversation can end there if you'd be so kind. There's Tumblr, which I'm on but that's like... that's different from social media. It's Tumblr. I'm on there for another 15 years or until it dies, whichever comes first. There's no new, decent text-based platform for me out there and I still need somewhere to put microposts, little bits that don't warrant their own macropost on this blog here.

UNTIL NOW

You may have seen on my homepage a pink box with some symbols in it. Those symbols are letters & words and they come together to form my new microblog, "It's The Microblog". Setting this up was extremely easy, and you can too:

• Create an RSS feed
• Upload that XML file to wherever it's to be hosted
• Put the URL of the feed into the form on rss.bloople.net (I'm sure you could DIY this part even more but I don't know Javascript and don't intend to ever do so)
• Embed the generated code into your website and style it as needed

I'm pleased as punch since my homepage has been lacking and I have yet another space to be silly online. Folks can also subscribe to the feed via a reader but I hope it encourages people to check out the site itself more often. I also hope it helps slowly wean myself off of being on Bluesky!

Nicky Flowers - 09/15/25 - Join me... let's exchange feeds... - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

"Help I waz trying to have a mingus moment but I accidentally had a Dolphy moment instead. How do I fix this?" - Bezier

There is, unfortunately, nothing available on this Earth to reverse an Accidental Dolphy Moment. Missing the mark on Mingus and diving deep into Dolphy directly? You must live with the consequences, and any future offspring will feel the effects of this, possibly for multiple generations. Luckily, it's always good and never bad to have a Dolphy Moment! One could take shelter inside of his bass clarinet solo on "Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation" and live a very comfortable life away from the harsh elements. Please rise and remove your hats as we pay tribute to a true saint of jazz.

Nicky Flowers - 09/12/25 - I can't help you if you have a Beefheart Moment, as I'm still recovering from the one I had in 2014 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

_{(only through Mingus are these Moments possible)}

• "What's a Mingus Moment?"

Try this out — you'll know a Mingus Moment when you feel it.

Thank god he did, but... how does he do it?

Nicky Flowers - 09/10/25 - Many Mingus Moments May Mean Millions Meet Meaven (Mingus Heaven) - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I've put the nicest copy of the original film I could find through my video synthesizer and a tape delay and, therefore, made the film's perfect sound and visuals even more perfect. If you see only one film this year, this would be an odd choice... but mighty appreciated.

Nicky Flowers - 09/05/25 - I'm gonna make more fun video junk like this. You can fuckin count on it,,, - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I've been recording and rehearsing and rinsing and repeating all of August and the Portastudio has held up very well. I was thinking about buying some belts and such to prepare for when I need to do some repairs when the audio on the tape I was mixing down to the computer started dipping in and out at random. Tape knowers know the sound well: it was definitely time to clean the heads.

I get the stuff and I throw the machine into cleaning mode. I go cleaning mode. And then, BAM:

That's sludge, baby!!!!!!!!!

Having worked in digital audio for so long (over 10 years now if you can believe it), I'm struck by how much physical gunk my audio can produce in real life when doing things analog. Ableton Live never needs cleaning like this, but audio tapes are just ground-up magnets glued to strips of plastic. That's all getting dragged at high speeds through the 4-track recorder, across its metal record & play heads. That's gonna gunk it up after enough tape!

But I enjoy the process a lot. I enjoy taking time to clean the tape heads. I like taking time to rewind the tape to listen to the latest take. I love the Tascam's preamps so much I want to marry them. I don't mind the sludge. It reminds me I exist. If I can make sludge, I can make something better.

Even the throwaway songs sound good on this thing, once everything's cleaned up! The following mp3 was just bass practice while my girlfriend got on her stationary bike and watched anime (our new morning routine) that turned into a silly thing. To be clear, my girlfriend's bike is not big or stupid so it is not the inspiration for the song. Her bike is medium and, um, smart? Smart and stupid are both fake ideas anyway.

Enjoy the tune—or don't! I don't mind. The upcoming Summer Single (Coming Very Soon) and My Second Debut Album (Coming Soon) will be much better regardless :-).

Nicky Flowers - 09/01/25 - Gimme MORE gunk, tbh, I don't care - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Anyway, episode 1 came out today and can be listened to the normal way (for this show): by calling us at (607) 225-5763. That's right!! That number again is (607) CALL-POD. The tagline I've come up with is "The podcast that's just a phone call away!"... because it is. But also! I didn't want the episodes to entirely disappear forever as new episodes appear on the hotline every Friday. So, as of today, the archive feed can be found here dialapod.net and also all other podcast apps (besides Spotify (fuck Spotify)). You can check out the aforementioned pilot episode there now. You can only leave voicemails on the phone line and it just feels better to listen that way IMO so that's what I would recommend! But I'm biased.

If you find yourself asking "why do this?", well, there are a few reasons. And I'm glad you asked. Come on in, I just made some iced tea. Basically, when I get a good enough idea, it's hard not to text Meys about it. If he's also really into it, it's quite easy to just try it out. Then, if we find it's really fun to do? Well, there you go. The pilot went well as a test balloon and everyone went nuts for our balloon. Tons of voicemails left for episode 1! I had to save a bunch for the next ep (that's episode in the biz (that's business in most businesses)), and that's with this week's edition being 10 minutes longer than planned. It is astounding how we got so many good voicemails and that they sound perfectly fine re-broadcast over the phone line. My best friend's help and stellar effort on the co-hosting/technical front makes the show really sing.

I'm already so into this project that I've got stickers made to send to people. Stickers! You know something's serious when stickers get made. Plus, I'll be interviewing Meys for next week's edition of Very Little News, so there's some great ~synergy~ happening here at NickyCorp.

For some reason, I think this show can get big. Like, big enough that we panic about the phone bill. That would be a REALLY fun problem to have so please call and leave us messages. Save (607) CALL-POD in your contacts and call back for new episodes every Friday :-)

Nicky Flowers - 08/29/25 - I'm very excited about this, if you can't tell! - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 08/20/25 - It's hard not to just play with the Portastudio all day every day. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Today, I found myself listening to the EP I released last year. I don't listen to my own work every day, but when I do, I don't usually cry. But Track 2, "Thunderstorm", got me good. I wrote it shortly after we lost Dot's mom and it got me good when I was mixing it too. It's such a banger of a song but it brings back such painful thoughts and feelings. I had a good cry, baked some ziti, and felt like sharing the song to anyone who tunes into da blog (thanks for doing that btw).

Nicky Flowers - 08/17/25 - I've got some new music coming sooner than later. Gettin' through the storms. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

That's right, I'll give someone 20 dollars to make YouTube 2.

Here's the full version of the animal cracker song for those who are interested. I made it in about an hour & change because the Tascam makes it easy & fun (ignore the drop-outs, I need to clean the tape head):

Nicky Flowers - 08/05/25 - More videos to come, mayhaps? - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 07/30/25 - Nothing better than making fun crap on nice hardware (Vocals running through the Boss ME-50B on track 1, Korg Volca Sample on Track 2 for drums, and the Stylophone Theremin on track 3, all on my beautiful Tascam 424mkII). - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I'm currently taking a small break from making my small video game I started making a small time ago. I got most of the tile swapping stuff figured out in GB Studio and I think, as a result, it will be the greatest text adventure you can beat in about an hour ever made (for Game Boy). This will maybe come out in the fall? Who knows. I have not set any sort of deadline because I want this project to be fun. Hence the break!

I'm still mulling over the script for the short film Max and I filmed late last fall. Making the film semi-backwards like this was always going to be a challenge but on top of all the other challenges, the project's fallen a bit by the wayside. I hope to get something in the form of a 2nd or 3rd draft sent to my co-director before too long! It'll be nice to show off my first finished film in a long time, plus I got a bunch of other Super 8 cartridges burning a hole in my filing cabinet. I wanna go Ektachrome Mode!!

The 11th Annual Nicky Flowers Summer Single should be arriving sometime in August! Frankly, I haven't gotten anything done on that front yet at all. My musicmaking abilities have sorta crusted over while not being used as often so I have to take a week or two to loosen up the muscles. It'll probably be something fun and silly out of my Volcas and into my Tascam 424mkII. It's a yearly tradition I can't just give up on!

Very Little News took a slight break on account of my publishing schedule clashing with the surgery pretty hard but my funy little newspaper should have another issue out by the end of this month. If you're a subscriber, thank you SO much for your continued patience and support. If you're not a subscriber, you can become one very easily and claim that nice thank you I gave in the previous sentence for yourself. I've got a few bits of reader-submitted material I'm very excited to share with everyone, as well as whatever the hell I come up with this weekend (maybe).

I'm sure it's obvious now that I have many wonderful things I could be doing at the moment. But I'm not. Right now, I'm resting. That's important too, no matter how much it annoys me. It's so annoying and necessary to take care of yourself. Wait, hold on, I just got a really good idea for a new project, I gotta pitch it to someone real quick.

Nicky Flowers - 07/25/25 - I wish I could do more than take it a day at a time, which can be hard by itself. 2 days at a time would be nice—that's twice the time! - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

So I'm still stuck in bed for the most part now. I'm watching a lot of YouTube videos and ancient Doctor Who. When I get sick of one, I switch to the other. Summer Games Done Quick started this previous Sunday so that took over part of the schedule as well. Did you know: Doctor Who was better when it wasn't trying quite so hard? But speedrunners are best when trying extremely hard. We live in a land of contrasts.

The main YouTube thing that affected me the most this past fortnight (non-gamer definition) was re-discovering an old favorite from my middle school days: Pickle Surprise!

_{(Pickle Surprise!!!)}

This popping up in the related videos to a They Might Be Giants demo I listened too (I can't remember, it might've been this Frank O'Toole Show snippet) was like an old friend coming to visit. And they look better than ever before! The old upload is a much worse tape rip at chunky, early YouTube resolutions. This rediscovery also led me to learning about the context in which this video was made. Back in 2007 when I probably first saw it, it was was just this ~wacky internet thing~ that was passed around. A meme, as some people might say. It wasn't huge I don't think but it's somewhat known. It was on YTMND, that's gotta count for something.

But it wasn't obvious to me at the time where this had come from and I wasn't really thinking to check into these things yet. This time I immediately sought out the relevant info. I'm now the kind of person who, for example, look up the history of the snack on Wikipedia as a fun activity while eating that snack.

Anyway, I shortly found myself on Tom Rubnitz's Wiki page. Like a lot of good and interesting things from 80s America, it was made by a gay person full of life and love trying their best to make something out of, what sadly turned out to be, limited time.

_{(Rubnitz said of his art, "I wanted to make things beautiful, funny and positive—escapes that you could just get into and laugh through. That was really important to me.")}

The East Village Pyramid Club kind of thing about the video was evident when I did my re-watch, so I felt really vindicated when that hunch turned out to be correct. Hell, it turns out Tom Rubnitz made a few videos for Frieda, a performance art piece from a looming plastic disco doll that collaborated with and opened for They Might Be Giants when they were also part of that scene in the mid 80s! There's the connection. That's another thing I love about revisiting old classics—sometimes you make a connection to another artistic/creative influence, in a way like finding a missing puzzle piece.

I love art so damn much it's hard to know what to say sometimes. I feel like once I get past this recovery for good, I can do anything. No matter how much shit I need to deal with, I can still make something funny and beautiful. I need to hold onto this feeling for the inevitable crash I have later today when my guts resume attacking me and I look at the news again lol...

Nicky Flowers - 07/11/25 - P.S. Also check out "Strawberry Shortcut"—and let me know where I can find real good copies of the videos he made with Frieda! - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

When I started drinking at 15, I knew that I had to be careful—both my parents were alcoholics and I learned that I was genetically predisposed to becoming one as well. I figured I could handle it better than them. For years, I’d only drink at parties or with friends and I never got blackout drunk. I was confident I had this under control. When I turned 21, it was far easier to obtain so I started having regular drinks after work with my roommate. One night, we were watching a movie and we started playing a drinking game, I forget what the specific rules were but I’m pretty sure I won. I can’t remember most of the night actually, but I do remember waking up in bed around 2pm surrounded by my own vomit. My roommate had called me multiple times and left many angry voicemails about how the apartment reeked and how much of an asshole I was being the previous night. I needed to let her know when it was “safe to come back”. That was the first of many wake-up calls I ignored.

I moved into a new place a few months later. My new roommates were all alcoholics of some kind, some more functional than others. I drank with them until it became clear they were also really terrible people and not that fun to be around. I started drinking alone in my room more and moved out when one of them tried to kill me (that’s another story). Covid hit and I hit the booze harder. Friends told me they were worried about me. I told them I was going to stop. I didn’t. I moved out of Chicago to live with my girlfriend. I learned to keep my drinking a secret so nobody would bother me about it. I don’t think my girlfriend noticed how deep the problem was until I broke down in 2022 and told her the whole story. She made me promise to seek help and to quit for good. I promised.

June 25th, 2023. I had broken my promise to the love of my life weeks ago and I hated myself for it. I wanted the gin to take me down and keep me there. I wanted it to consume me. I poured another glass and kept scrolling on cohost dot org (RIP eggbug). I saw this post and clicked play on the video.

It’s such a stupid fucking song. I snapped out of my depressive trance and laughed and laughed. Randy Newman dubstep, what will they think of next! I reposted it and then immediately got depressed again. This is my life? I drink a quart of gin basically every day and listen to dubstep Randy Newman? This is really what I want to be doing? I started sobbing. The song kept playing. Then I started laughing at myself, thinking about what a funny scene this would be if it were a movie. Randy Newman dubstep blaring while someone has a long dark night of the soul. Then I got sad again, thinking about the film production career I almost had and then didn’t. All the other opportunities that I could’ve taken advantage of had I not been ruining my life. I was getting whipped back and forth between the poles of emotion to the point of exhaustion. I stumbled into the kitchen and poured the rest of gin down the sink. I told myself this was it, I’m quitting NOW and for the last time.

June 25th, 2025. Today is the 2 year anniversary of listening to a song so laughably awful it made me stop drinking. Okay, it wasn’t really the song’s doing but I haven’t had a drop since! It wasn’t easy; I ended up in the hospital with scary withdrawals symptoms on July 3rd, 2023 (one year to the day before my near fatal car crash… that’s weird). And there have been moments when I linger in front of the shelves of liquor at the corner store, thinking “Well, I’ve made it this far without relapsing, maybe just one drink won’t hurt…”. Invariably, Randy Newman dubstep pops into my head in those moments and I chuckle to myself as I walk away.

It is not easy for me to feel pride in my accomplishments but this is a big one. Gritting my teeth and fighting against my worst impulses and winning every day. I love myself for doing this. I love not destroying myself for no reason. I love being sober. I love you.

Nicky Flowers - 06/25/25 - If anyone reading this is struggling with alcohol, feel free to reach out if you want to talk about it. It's not always easy to seek help but if I can be there for someone, I would like to try. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 06/15/25 - I love Shenmue with my whole silly heart - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 06/08/25 - Check out the music video, it's got Nick Offerman and the extended intro I straight up forgot about because it's not on the album version lol - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 05/12/25 - Each bad painting I make is one step closer... to the next bad painting >:-) - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I've been making a lot of tracks like this, field recordings + ambient synths, and besides this one right now I don't have any intention of releasing them publically. It's been years since I've made art just for myself and I didn't realize how much I missed that until I put together a whole tape of ambient tunes this month. It's exciting having a whole album to myself!

Nicky Flowers - 04/25/25 - I hope this is half as pleasing to listen to as it was to put together :-) - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 04/23/25 - The theme song alone is worth turning it on, tbh - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

When the doctor said the phrase "traumatic fat necrosis", I just sat there dumbfounded for a second. That was a terrible sounding phrase! Bad mouthfeel. Don't know what I wanted him to say, but it wasn't that. The second stretched on for what felt like a whole minute. 3 minutes and 27 seconds, even. Here's how I felt in that second, in audio form:

Turns out? Not as bad as it sounds. It's usually one of those things that goes away on its own but for me, it's been 9 months and it's a pain in the... well, chest. So, hopefully now that I have a diagnosis and a referral to a surgeon for a consultation, I can make some progress for the first time in months. The Lump Arc might finally be coming to a close.

If there's one thing you should take away from this post, it's this—don't get into a car crash. I really can't stress that enough.

Nicky Flowers - 04/12/25 - Also, they gave me some morphine after the uncomfortable CT scan; that stuff is like drugs or something - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

If you ever made friends with older relatives on Facebook, you may have seen memes like this:

Or maybe they’ve just told you in-person, multiple times at this point, about how they used to drink out of the hose and they wouldn’t come home till the streetlights came on and how they were a latchkey kid and on and on. It seems like my peers are getting to that age where they’re starting to do their own version of “remember the shit old days?”. Any behavior that reminds me of my mother makes me take notice. She loved telling me these things about her childhood. She told me all sorts of lies upon contradictory lies, but I believe her apparent love for drinking out of hose was 100% genuine. Her eyes would light up when she talked about how much freedom she had as a child. It wasn’t like today, she’d tell me. Parents didn’t care about stranger danger and all that, she’d say. She could leave the house all day and do whatever she wanted. Some nights, she told me once, she’d have to be literally dragged by her ankles through the streets by her mom to go back home. That seemed to be a partially romantic memory for her. She would mostly tell me these stories to justify the generous amounts of neglect she was providing to me and my siblings. It eventually did become much safer for me to leave the house for most of the day when I wasn’t in school, so I followed in her footsteps. I had soooo much freedom. I looooooved the dread of the streetlights coming on and knowing that the bike ride home would be the last chance at peace for the night.

That specific cycle of abuse continued until the late 2000s recession hit and we no longer had a house. We had a Jeep, though! Things got much weirder.

Me, my 3 siblings, our completely dysfunctional mother, one Jeep Grand Cherokee. I don’t actually remember how long it was that we were living in the Jeep. It could’ve been 2 weeks or a few months. My memory of this time is a bit slippery, as you could imagine. One particular afternoon is burned on the CRT screen of my brain though. I think about it any time I see someone hose posting in earnest. It was an absolute scorcher, brutal heatwave. We had ran out of money and bottled water and were running low on gas. I was thinking about how close we were to my friend’s house and how much it would hurt if I just jumped out of the car as we drove past it at 10-ish MPH. My brother asked why we were driving around this neighborhood anyway, and our mother replied “I’m looking for… Ah, there!” and she pointed at a house. She parked the car across the street and told us we were gonna fill up our empty water bottles with hose water at “her friend’s house”. I knew this was a lie in the moment the way she kept checking if anyone was watching, how she didn’t knock on the door to say hi or anything, and clearly nobody was home. I got a pit in my stomach thinking about how much trouble we’d get in if we got caught lurking around someone’s property. I hated when she got us into Situations.

We filled up the water bottles quickly and she gets that twinkle in her eyes that was either nothing or the sign of another manic episode I’d have to deal with, and she starts drinking out of the hose. She’s really gulping this stuff down, too. She offers it to me and I say “No, thanks”. She seemed really hurt by that and said “It’s the same water that’s in the bottles...” and I was a bit put off by that reaction. I’d never seen her so… I don’t know. Down-trodden. It’s like she was regressing to an earlier time in her life and I suddenly felt I had hurt a peer’s feelings rather than my terrifying authority figure’s. I felt pity for her for the first time in my life. It was unsettling. I took the hose and drank some to move past this particular moment in time. I pretended it wasn’t rubbery and disgusting. She seemed pleased and ruffled my hair, which I found even more disconcerting than anything else. Anytime she tried being my buddy, it was usually to try to manipulate me in some way. But today, she was just in a really good mood. I didn’t know what that meant at all. We are in fucking shambles stealing hose water from strangers. Her getting enjoyment out of any of this pissed me off but it mostly confused me. We took the water bottles and got back into the car. I was stuck processing what the hell all that was, so I didn’t go through with my plan to hide at my friend’s house. We drove off to god knows where.

This, to me, is the true essence of hose posting: nostalgia for the past, but specifically the parts of the past that were shit. There’s a sort of Actually It Was Better When Everything Was a Little Bit Shit attitude you see sometimes too. “We lived through recessions and we ate dirt and we’re tough, unlike Kids Of Today who don’t even know what it’s like to drink out of the dang hose!!” Well, I’m here to tell you that I drank out of the hose and it tasted like old pennies and latex gloves. I hated drinking out of the hose. Drinking out of the hose is stupid. You shouldn’t want anyone to drink out of the hose! It’s tempting to sit there and ruminate on your past woes but it’s not good for you if it prevents you from taking action and it’s REALLY bad if you start using it to justify future woes being inflicted on others. I try not to talk about the above period of my life as much because I don’t like giving my mother any of my energy. I want to leave her and drinking from the hose and all the horrible things about society we only keep around because we’re obsessed with maintaining whatever the status quo is… I want all that stuff to be left behind in the past. I want to start building a future where people with mothers as bad as mine can just Leave and everyone always has good clean drinking water and no one ever has to live in a Jeep with 4 other people and I could go on and on but…

Use your woes as fuel. Don’t get stuck telling people about how you used to drink out of the hose.

Nicky Flowers - 04/04/25 - I talked about the hose water so much, I can almost taste it... Bleh. I'm gonna go eat some onions or something - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

As I write this, I’m watching a game I don’t care about beyond wanting to see the Cardinals lose (EDIT: Boooooo they won, the Twins disappoint yet again). It’s being displayed on my wonderful CRT television, on the futon that serves as the basis of my entertainment center. I’m only kind of watching it; it’s mostly for background noise and after I’m done writing this, I’m gonna start making a casserole for dinner. It’s the perfect sport for all this. Of course, when my team (the Cubs) comes on later tonight, I’m gonna be glued to the screen. They’re starting Opening Day down 0-2, which is very funny to me and I would very much like them to make it 1-2 and I’ve missed my baseball guys very much. I hope they do well and have fun and beat the shit out of the other guys. I hate whoever the guys are that we’re playing tonight, I can’t remember. But when I need to, I can shift baseball into the background again and it fits there just as well. It’s extremely comforting and it feels funny that that’s the case but I need all the comfort I can get lately.

It’s funny that any of it is happening at a professional level and it’s taken so seriously. I love that guys will get so upset at this silly game that they’ll punch their own hands apart. And I don’t want to detract from the vast amount of talent and athleticism these guys all have! I would argue the silliness enhances the seriousness. It wouldn’t be serious if it wasn’t so silly. It’s a sport full of contradictions like that. I’m glad to have it back.

Nicky Flowers - 03/27/25 - If only they'd quit it with the regional cable brodcast blackouts... and the other problems too. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

Nicky Flowers - 03/21/25 - I'm 3 days into taking guitar seriously, and the way I've done this is to not take it so seriously - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)

I like that there's a "Concerns, Problems, and Criticism" section. Very matter-of-fact. This could be helpful. Quote: "In an August 31, 2022 poll by Quinnipiac University, 69 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans replied yes to the question 'Do you think the nation's democracy is in danger of collapse'." True bipartisanship. Plus? It's the funny sex number. Hell yeah. We're all interested in that funny number, aren't we folks? It's crazy how similar us voters are at the end of the day. Let's continue on in this section a bit more. Scrolling down and highlighting text at random now: "...the interests of some are overrepresented, while others are underrepresented... law-making is dominated by a small economic elite molding it to their interests... the U.S. is already a one-party state, and no longer meets the minimum requirements to be considered a democracy... ". Huh! Well, that seems less than ideal but it's good to learn about these things.

The voting public and the gun-owning public probably have a lot of overlap, come to think of it. And I'm not sure we have anything in common with any sort of economic elite. I'll have to learn more to find out, I guess.

Shout out to Wikipedia! I love learning.

Nicky Flowers - 03/13/25 - Learn more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)