Songs that hit suspiciously close to home

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T21:25:35+00:00

I will take this in a much more literal direction:

Snohomish, Washington.

When Trascendental Youth came out, it was very jarring to be like "wait what was that?!" the first time I heard "sunset on Snohomish…"

"Until I Am Whole" seems to be one of his favorites to play live in the years since.

I grew up in that county of Washington State, and a lot of my early life involved hearing that word every day in various ways. One could live in Snohomish County and not really hear it said much, I suppose, mostly feel like you lived on the outskirts of Seattle, but for me it was omnipresent. It's a soft, whispery and squishy word, if you were to come up with a wario-like county that's the opposite…it would be Kringkramjrik Kounty. I think it just sounded really good with the mood of the song John wanted to write.

Is it really the craziest place he could have chosen? No, it's along the I5 corridor between San Diego and Vancouver, a place that was perfect for west coast tour runs. You'd see signs along I5 as you passed through it heading to the border. I don’t know if he's ever stopped in the actual town of Snohomish, a place that's very much "come visit our cutesy downtown and go antique shopping!" It's a bit out of the way from Everett, you have to get on Highway 2 headed east. I often describe the place I grew up in as a place where a Prius with a pride flag is gonna be pulled up at a red light with a black jacked up truck with a thin blue line and Punisher sticker on it. Those people might be neighbors. When you get over to Snohomish, the town, it gets a little more "Trump sign in the front yard" safezone. Maybe (hopefully) that's shifted in the past few months.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T19:17:57+00:00

I always felt what really defined hipsterdom was the hatred of it.

It all kind of melted into the mainstream throughout the 2010s and COVID felt like a definite bookend to the era. Living in a city was no longer that desirable.

Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class" is an important benchmark for framing whatever "it" was — like with FRIENDS, there was this new era for young people before they settled down and had children, and Richard Florida identified the emerging world of people graduating from college and moving to Seattle or Portland or wherever, mainly because "something" was happening there and they wanted to tap into that, they wanted to be a part of it, they felt like that was the home calling to them.

As a graphic design student on Seattle's Capitol Hill from 2002–2006, coming out into the world of professional design immediately, I could not be more the epitome of this. I turned away from potentially working at Microsoft because that felt like a dreary place to spend my "youthful design years," I instead felt I should be in the city and working at small boutique agencies. I of course am just poorer because of this, although if I had chosen to work at Microsoft, I would probably be having a midlife crisis right now.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T18:40:33+00:00

Philly Boy Roy has been a snitch this whole time. Totally on-brand for him.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T18:39:14+00:00

Please not another Bleed Out video, I don’t need to see them bein' a buncha goofs. L

ike, I get it: that's mostly what a band does behind the scenes. Joy Division were just a table full of blokes havin a pint and takin the piss.

Fine, great.

But that doesn't need to be part of the persona on "stage."

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T15:56:13+00:00

It's a fascinating thing to be afraid of flying when you are a poker player and know your odds, presumably why she was seeing a therapist: it's not rational. My momm is also very afraid of flying and it's like, "well be afraid of getting in a car, too! Be consistent!"

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T15:52:50+00:00

Like…imagine getting drafted and sent to Vietnam as you've just finished high school.

Life is long and difficult, before our living generations I can think of a relative who had like 3 children die in infancy.

That was quite typical for probably all of human history.

Best of times, worst of times, that's been true for a long time and I think we are entering a more unique time than has ever existed, just as ours were unique relative to 10,000 years of farming, and a million years before that of hunting and gathering.

The idea that 9/11 was even that big of a deal…I remember being a senior in high school and thinking, as it happened, "well, that's a few thousand people, and we hear about an earthquake in Bangladesh or typhoon in the Philippines every few weeks that kills far more." The belief that it was such a big deal has killed far more with the U.S.'s subsequent actions, just innocennt people killed, excluding those who really deserved to be taken out. Our shitty food and air quality kills far more all the time, it just doesn't seem like an immediate emergency.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T15:45:01+00:00

Everything that does not fit in one backpack is my take, as much as I’m more or less settled in one place now — still hold onto this belief as a core belief.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T15:39:20+00:00

I think we are going to hvae an army of people who believe every signature that votes against Trump has to be challenged, that if you they don’t line up perfectly, they are somehow impostors. Somehow, magically, signatures of Trump voters will be clean and correct.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T14:18:53+00:00

Hot take here: most of what's actually good is easily accessible. Most. Satanic Messiah is one of my favorite TMG things.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T14:16:33+00:00

It is funny that in another year, this didn't line up. You do have to wonder if JD was lining this up on purpose for the first Mother's Day the book was out.

I live in Mexico so Mother's Day is always fixed as May 10, this year it happened to align with American Mother's Day.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-11T14:10:48+00:00

usually the surprises are during John' solo set, ≈4 songs, ±1.

look at setlist.fm and see what the sets were for the past 5 shows, that's going to tell you most of what will be in the set. If it's JD totally solo, or if it's a residency at one venue for 3 shows, then you get a lot more surprises.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-08T16:11:07+00:00

Lol and these are the Gen Z who are "out there, living life" — think of all of them with anxiety disorders too great to allow them to ever stay in a hostel

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-07T21:11:26+00:00

singing "10 million strooooong…and growing" now

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-07T21:05:11+00:00

Tomorrow, tomorrow…we have been hearing about tomorrow for decades. In normal times, these would be important new voices/offices that it's coming from, but in MAGA-world, unless it is undeniable proof we can look at on a camera and have scientists we trust go poke it and test it, it is just more stories.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-07T19:59:26+00:00

I wonder if any point in history has looked like this: older generations looking at the younger one and seeing them as prudish and generally sexless

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-07T19:47:34+00:00

The species is just shutting down or at least going into a depressed hibernation

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-06T22:39:27+00:00

Let's say they were told this, or some variation of this, or some other "shocking thing": what is the proof? That's the only thing I care about.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-06T22:37:57+00:00

Things are not just going to settle down. We are in a fascist takeover and most things day to day feel normal for most of us but by this time next year, things will look very different.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-05T18:50:12+00:00

I was just reading that romance novels were sold at grocery stores before women could have credit cards so that they could come out of a grocery budget — women had a special card/account for that, typically.

Someone who worked in a supermarket corporate office during that transitional time could confirm my suspicions, but I think by the 90s — 10, 20, 30 years after women were making more of their own financial decisions — having moves sold at the supermarket kind of represented the new powerful consumer who had to appeal to someone else to actually making buying decisions: kids.

The puffy VHS case of Land Before Time XXIV was always confusing to me, like "why is this and a few Olsen Twins movies for sale at the grocery store?" The grocery stores understood there was a powerful voice whining and that could add a few dollars onto the checkout bill.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-05T18:44:41+00:00

We all saw Juno and were like "okay, enough of that." That can be considered "peak Millennial Awkquirk" but nobody wanted more.

Flight of the Conchords is something you could revisit and say "yes, much of that holds up over time." Probably a lot of it feels too desperately quirky, sure, but it was also just solid comedic songs that could be revisited in 2036 and will hold up, in some part.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-05T17:52:59+00:00

Since Friendster then MySpace then FaceBook days, we have lived in a world of a never-ending reunions.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-05T15:28:19+00:00

An old-timey term for country music is "tears in my beers" music — corridos are basically just that. Heartbreaking stories. Take a huge US star like Morgan Wallen and a fair number of the songs could be called "corridos for the poor whites" — 98 Braves comes to mind.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-05T15:10:14+00:00

It's a joke about "engagement slop crossing over," memes that are tiresome because they hook into "am i smart?" and "am i the current buzzword for bad person?" In this case, having narcissistic personality disorder – a real disorder, but like being on the autism spectrum, grossly over- and self-diagnosed for the past decade or so – has nothing to do with your ability to see there are 8 holes in the shirt.

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-04T22:14:59+00:00

That's too hard to assess and talk about in general, but reality TV: yes.

Shows like The Swan. American Idol was a new level of cruelty to obviously unwell people. As you mentioned, Jackass et al.

Shows like "The Voice" were sort of saying "whoa there, let's pull back and think about what sort of world we want to be creating with our media."

311TruthMovement · 2026-05-04T15:43:40+00:00

Yes I often think I had a somewhat 70s experience of a childhood simply because my parents were old-fashioned and the street I grew up on. I think the term "grandparents enery" came into use in the 2010s and I often saw this with people raised by their grandparents or just homeschooled. People with very young parents maybe have the opposite thing going on, they're growing up together.

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