“Of all the things I’ve been called in my time, the one that surprises me the most is ‘California Writer.’ When I hear that, I look over my shoulder, certain that the phrase must apply to the writer behind me or to my left. It’s the way I feel when I am addressed by my husband’s last name. It takes me a moment to realize his mother is not in the room. Categories trouble me.”

Michelle Shocked had a following in the 1990s for her leftist lo-fi folk music, but now she’s an old bigoted religious fanatic. This is fairly well known — she’s basically Victoria Jackson — but booking agencies were still putting her in clubs until Sunday night in San Francisco, when she went into an anti-gay rant at Yoshi’s Supper Club.

“When they stop Prop. 8 and force priests at gunpoint to marry gays, it will be the downfall of civilization, and Jesus will come back,” Shocked told the crowd at Yoshi’s in San Francisco, before many of them reportedly walked out. “You are going to leave here and tell people, ‘Michelle Shocked said God hates faggots.’”

And then the singer’s one-time fans destroyed the only record anybody had ever bought by her, just like when John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular in the 1960s than Jesus Christ — which was at least a true statement about the new phenomenon of global celebrity.

It is much harder to destroy a CD with your hands, but this guy is determined. (And it’s much less dramatic to delete a file from iTunes, but at least you can recover it, if you want to hear that one song again someday, after Jesus returns.)

Apart from your deeply-rooted pessimism, your inability to navigate the patent absurdities of life with any degree of competence or equanimity and your burdensome, at times crippling, tendency to depression, what terrible things are you passing along to future generations through your terrible genes? Probably asthma. But only if you smoke. Otherwise it’s just the stuff where you want to die all the time.

“Different languages have different ways of talking about the future. Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their speakers to refer to the future explicitly. Every time English-speakers talk about the future, they have to use future markers such as ‘will’ or ‘going to.’ In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German, future markers are not obligatory…. Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers.”

N.O.R.E. and Large Professor, “Build Pyramids”

Good ol’ N.O.R.E. is very happy to be rhyming over a beat made by the revered Main Source producer Large Professor. “You’re a genius,” he says to his fellow Queens rap vet. “And with them grays in your beard, you look even more like a genius!” This song sounds like it was recorded twenty years ago. But in a nice way.

“I get so bummed out when I see a lot of these archconservatives saying, ‘They give these kids trophies just for playing. Those are loser trophies! You gotta teach ‘em!’ If it makes you feel any better, they will end up an asshole, hard and cynical like you, trust me. Just give ’em a few years.”

You may have heard that Jason Molina of Songs: Ohia died this past weekend. A few years ago, Awl pal Tim Sutton filmed a video of Molina singing his song “Back On Top” in a backyard in Brooklyn. It’s very sad, and very beautiful.

Philip Milton Roth is 80 today. Something something Newark, something something Jews, something something sex, something something misogyny, something something postmodernism and questions of identity, something something Nobel Prize?, something something alleged retirement. That should about do it.

Dave Bry’s Public Apology becomes a real live book today. And elsewhere in New York: Jill Lepore on secrecy, Alexander Garvin on public space and Camera Obscura on being awesome.

I hope you had a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, if you believe in that sort of thing, and I hope you are not ill from too much alcohol, the official drug of choice of Saint Patrick’s Day. I don’t judge, I mean, I like to drink and drunk, and if you want to get loaded because it’s Saint Patrick’s Day, or Tuesday, go for it. I just know what it feels like Later, after too much alcohol, so I’m just saying, I hope you feel OK today and that your liver is not trying to leave your body because you were trying to kill it with fun.

Soon, in The Future, you won’t have to worry about your liver, because we will have Cloning, and we’ll be able to grow you — but no offense, more importantly, me — a shiny new liver, based on a liver from when you were a young baby, before you were able to do things to make your liver sad. That will be something, eh? We’ll be able to do way more of the things that kill us (i.e., way more Fun things like drinking alcohol), and then when our liver is like, “OK, I’m out, you tried to kill me? Well, now I will totally kill you,” with a little minor surgery, we can switch it, probably not even at a Hospital like we know them now, more like a Jiffy Lube, where you get the oil and oil filter in your car engine changed into clean ones.

Personally, I understand this is not 100% Natural, this future of plug-and-play organs, and there will be lots of Unforeseen Complications, but eventually we’ll get it right so everybody can get a new liver, or at least probably in the beginning so Rich People can get a new liver, but sooner or later, regular-money people will be able to trade in their liver for a new one at Sears or the Price Club or whatever and it won’t be any big deal.

I think the goal of Human Beings is to figure out how to Live Forever, even if it’s by ways that seem to be unnatural, like buying a new liver. Pretty much everything we Humans have done as a group has been so we can all live longer individually. There are facts and everything about how much longer people live now compared to Days of Old. We did that, Humans! I haven’t done jack squat to advance Humans, but I’m in the group so I’m gonna enjoy the ride, and if I need one, I will totally take advantage of a Cloned liver if I can, if Science is fast enough to get this Cloning stuff going before I croak.

In other Organ News, did you hear about the unfortunate person in Maryland who died because because they had rabies? Yeah, and they didn’t get it from a bat or a dog or whatever; they got it from a kidney. An organ-donated kidney-organ that got transplanted into them, and it turns out the previous owner of the kidney had rabies but nobody knew. How much does that suck ? The warehouse or whatever where they got the kidney didn’t test it for rabies because it’s pretty rare, but still, are you kidding me? If that was me, dying from a rabid kidney, I would be mad at the Pope (and it doesn’t matter which one, they’re all the same), because guys like him are slowing down the work of the Scientists who will provide me and you with our brand-new liver, or lung, or heart, so we can live forever, like God, and that’s the whole problem with these Popes, they don’t want people to think they are better than God, and who can blame ‘em? Look how excited errbody got with this new smoking out the Pope thing? And now this guy is gonna re-affirm all the regular Pope stuff about how controlling the population is bad and how Cloning is bad, and Stem Cell, and all that stuff, and that’s just The Man keeping you down, so don’t fall for it. Anyway. Popes just slow things down. Nobody’s gonna stop this cloning stuff, so you might as well get behind it for some of the benefits before the Army starts making Clone/Drone flying insects or whatever.

The thing I’m really looking forward to getting Cloned are some eyeballs. I have to wear glasses and I can’t stand it, if there’s the slightest bit of dirt or a smudge on my glasses, I need to wipe them, because if I have to look through dirty glass it makes me crazy, like there’s a dirty film over my eyeballs. And if I don’t have the proper non-scratchy cloth to wipewipewipe my glasses with I feel guilty wiping them with my shirt because the lady at the glasses place told me not to do that because it scratches the lenses. Meanwhile, it’s like, sometimes for no reason all of a sudden I realize my eyeballs are trapped behind glass and I get claustrophobia of the eye. And when I go to the movies I have to put the stupid 3-D glasses on top of my regular glasses and then all I can think about is how many levels or glass and plastic are between my eyes and Freedom. I can’t take it. I want new eyeballs, man, I used to have great vision, but looking at computers has turned my eyes into things that are only good for looking at computers. It’s forced Evolution, almost. And you know once they get this figured out, some Pope will totally get in on it for a new liver or whatever and thank God. I would also take a new brain if they can figure that out, because mine is full. I haven’t completely thought out the brain thing, cloning-wise, but I think maybe it would be an add-on and they could put it where my appendix was.

Previously: Don’t Trust Anyone To Tell You What Time It Is

Mr. Wrong can converse with you via many medias. Photo of liver by Sebastian Kaulitzki, via Shutterstock.