KENNY'S DESKTOP
STIMULANT WEEKLY NEWSLETTER 021 // NOV 16, 2024
These don’t seem private but I don’t think Kenny ever meant for anyone to see them. All from a solo trip he took to Vietnam last year. Roaring torrential rain. Water slipping off corrugated steel. Beating puddles inches into gravel. Guys on motorcycles parting puddles like Moses until the rain is quiet because he’s indoors.
Soup in front of him. He zooms in on splotches of oil on the soup’s surface.
He clears his throat and that’s the first noise he’s made so far.
Somebody’s clothes—not Kenny’s—are drying on a clothesline; a butcher runs through a cow carcass with a wire saw; chickens amble about. I save the video of him eating soup and the one at the butcher’s, then close his Vietnam file.
Kenny set his screensaver to a photo of that chimpanzee in the (North) Korea Central Zoo that smokes a pack a day. His tabs are miraculously still open. I open Spotify. His last playlist is called some cryptic bullshit and has one like. He’s saved a playlist called rosy fingertips by somebody named Maya<3. I guess he was seeing somebody but it was too early to tell anyone.
They both like Arthur Russel.
They both like Townes Van Zandt.
Aaron Powell. Phil Elverum. Jeffrey Lewis. Joanne Robertson. Dean Blunt. Ween.
Kenny and I are alike in that we owe too much to music. I scroll all the way to his first playlist——On The Train——which he made when he was living in Toronto and, I imagine, frequently on the train. Lots of Death Cab and Phoenix and the like. The photo over that playlist is a picture his first girlfriend, Winnie, took of him in the snow. The photo could have been taken anywhere and by anyone. The backdrop is somewhere in the prairies. Somewhere flat. Kenny himself is remarkable only in that he isn’t at all. A timeless kind of boy, one whose image strikes a pang of nostalgia into anyone who sees it—a boy whose way of speaking was so smooth and inoffensive it was like spreading plaster.
When did it all happen?
Drugs you can buy over a counter. Drugs you cannot. Usually opiates. He didn’t overdose but people on Instagram think he did. The week he died, my feed was flooded with memorials followed by instructions on how to use Naloxone. He was high when he was driving, yes, but the crash—directly through a guardrail overlooking the sea—was something he had heavily considered and resolved to go through with sober. Probably.
I don't know, I was in Halifax at the time.
Next to his Vietnam file is a one labelled “Collected Internet Stuff.” I open it praying to God it is not pornography. I am met with a list of unlabelled png files. I click on a random one and I am met with Yukio Mishima saying, “Death in the modern era is devoid of drama.” Michael Haneke, “Don’t ask me another stupid question.” Hunter S. Thompson wields a P.38 Luger, taking potshots at his neighbour. Jane Birkin smiling. Mussolini upside down on a petrol station girder. A raccoon named Annabelle in a birthday hat and bib. Uncensored No Love Deep Web album cover (full frontal). Hayao Miyazaki, “I don’t think I ever feel happy in my daily life.” Sam Hyde, “If your doctor prescribes you SSRIs, prescribe him a bullet to the brain.” A picture of Peter Griffin edited into Bosch’s Triumph of Death.
I open Steam and his CPU roars like a propane-fed A/C unit. His latest Elden Ring save takes me to a snowy wasteland. I rotate around his character, and I see that it’s meant to resemble him. Same haircut and moustache. Same eyes. I look my brother in the eye and left click. He swings forward. Right click. He blocks. M5, sidestep. M4, roll. I ride his horse around a little while until a massive health bar appears and now I am fighting The Fire Giant, whose red beard drops to his knees, whose knees tower over the rocks and trees—whose knees tower above Kenny. I fight The Fire Giant until it flattens Kenny under his foot and I am met with the message:
YOU DIED.
I go to reload a different save and see that he made this one about two weeks ago. He had spent more time with The Fire Giant than me—his kid brother—the last week he was alive. I tab out of steam and close it because his keyboard is hot to the touch. When our father died, my brother and I took his PS3 out of storage and we booted up Skate 3. We sat on the couch of our mother’s old house, wordlessly puppetting the digital body of our father through Smith grinds and heelflips. Neither of us acknowledged what we were doing but we both knew.
I open Instagram and people aren’t posting about him anymore. His friends are doing an obligatory week off from posting photos of themselves that look too good. His best friend since high school, Joseph Sackler, has posted a picture of a beach in Washington to a Mount Eerie song.
The sun is going down. The light from the window is beginning to melt away like ice in a glass of cola. I go to my own profile which he shares thirty three mutuals with. We both follow Durangista and Al Jazeera.
Dexter Morgan is the Bay Harbour Butcher.
The Rizzler is on Jimmy Fallon.
RXK Nephew’s bitch is badder than Charli XCX.
A fascist dog whistle about pitbulls.
Kevin Gates says he can start a car battery with his hands. If he can’t, may God murder his children.
Kenny has two unanswered DMs. His most recent ex-girlfriend, Nico, has written a paragraph about how much she loved him and how highly he always spoke of us—how, if we ever read this message, she would love to see us (if that would be okay). I always liked Nico. She was a smart girl with common sense and good ideas. She wore barbour jackets and glasses that she did not need. She loved him a lot but I guess it was hard loving Kenny. His buddy Domingo has sent him a video of Dr. Umar saying something objectively insane then, “Shit my bad king,” with a fire emoji. “Muscle memory.”
I tab out of Instagram and fall onto a Google Doc. Open and untitled. Sometimes he wrote poetry.
This one is six lines and is about a man with holes in his shoes, who does not buy new shoes when it’s sunny out because he doesn’t need them, nor does he buy new shoes when it’s raining, because it’s too miserable to go outside. Exit tab.
Now it’s just me and the chainsmoking North Korean Monkey. We never had a chance.
GIF from Benny’s Video.
KENNY’S DESKTOP was edited by Aaron Bauman and Adrian D’Agnillo.
maxwell norman’s album of the week
Destroyer - LABYRINTHITIS (2022)
Dan Bejar has been making wordy yacht rock since Kaputt in 2011; the music sounds like it could waft out of a beachside bar in 1985, while the lyrics better fit a poet’s psychotic breakdown. LABYRINTHITIS, his most recent album, keeps the vibes mostly the same while adding in spoken word elements and some surprising moments of folk minimalism. If you want to feel like a sophisticated metrosexual enjoying a night out on the town OR a bohemian layabout obsessing over art (or both at once), this is the record for you. My personal favorites include the clamor of “Tintoretto, It’s for You” and the relaxed melancholia of “The States.”
get hip
THIS WILL SAVE YOU LAUNCH PARTY NOVEMBER 29. MESSAGE @STIMULANT0 ON INSTRAGRAM FOR ADDRESS. TICKETS FOR SALE SOON.
This Will Save You, Stimulant’s first multimedia supplement, will be available for pre-order soon.
“Your Favorite Band” by Charlie Zacks published on Charm School.
“Portrait of an Artist as a Young Gastronome” by Iona Astoria.
The Veg will be hosting a party for their fall publication on Nov 27.
Ethics 003 submissions close tomorrow.
Headlight Anthology submissions close November 29.
Big Bruiser Dope Boy’s BBDB Reader #1, featuring poetry and prose written over the last 16 years, is available for purchase now. The cover and interior were designed and formatted by Charlie Zacks.