Third Day of the World Course, 36th Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Castor): The scabrous and incredibly loud post-rock band Swans have a song entitled, You Fucking People Make Me Sick. In this toxic time of the end of the amerikan republic, it's as fitting an anthem as any.

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski cast the deciding vote to block the release of the Epstein files. Who's she's protecting? The victims? Their names would be redacted and they're begging for the release of the files anyway. Pedophiles? Trump? Is there any difference? In the end, despite her talk about independence and justice, she does what all good little Republican women do and voted the way the men-folk told her to vote and she makes me sick.

The FBI released images of a person suspected of killing Charlie Kirk. The picture show a man wearing a baseball cap, dark sunglasses, and a black long-sleeve shirt with an image that includes an American flag. A shooter who can fire an older-model Mauser .30-06 bolt-action rifle and hit a target's neck on the first shot from 400 feet way and wears a ball cap and an American flag long-sleeve tee? I'm not saying that's a right-winger, but it sure doesn't fit the stereotype of your liberal leftist. Anyway, both Kirk and his shooter, whoever he is and whatever his motives, make me sick.

A classical music festival in Belgium has withdrawn its invitation for the Munich Philharmonic to play there because the orchestra is led by the musical director of the Israeli Philharmonic. I recently read that I'm supposed to be boycotting the band Radiohead because they "still haven't apologized" for playing a show in Jerusalem way back in 2017, and because guitarist Jonny Greenwood made a collaborative album with an Israeli musician. I have no problem with Radiohead or the Munich Philharmonic, but the thought police and moral purity guardians who decide who I should and shouldn't listen to make me sick. 

Since the 1990s, iconoclastic performer and composer John Zorn has been exploring his Jewish roots through the "radical Jewish music" of his ever-changing Masada bands, named for the fortress where the Zealots met their fate (and from where we get the term "zealot"). The music in instrumental with no vocals and tends toward a mix of free jazz and klezmer, and has been criticized by some for including satanic and occult titles and cover imagery. Masada will be headlining Big Ears next year, and if I hear anyone say their presence there is "problematic," they will get added to the list of people who make me fucking sick.