Books of War: Death on a grand scale
A masked man talks about something that's worse than drugs
Got out of the pool the other day, checked Twitter via our company account, saw Ray Paulick post something about trainer Juan-Carlos Vazquez’s lengthy rap sheet on drugs and bad behavior, and sent a text of it to my masked friend, who was featured in this post:
One thing led to another and we had another convo via text, with him bringing up the subject of slaughter, which is rarely spoken of large-scale on social media. At least, not with the fervor and outrage we’re witnessing now with the super villains of the game that are embroiled in drug positives, indictments, sentences, or suspected usage.
This guy, by the way, is not a journalist and he’s not going to make your Top 10 lists of the best reporters in the game. Nor is he like a commercially popular artist whose songs get airplay. He’s more like MF DOOM, an artist known for his intricate and intellectual wordplay and thought process, sick flow, and killer beats. DOOM never got that big-time mainstream recognition, but he has the respect of people who know the genre.
In fact, our masked man may actually be more like a rando dude who threw some verses of DOOM and RZA together on a beat by Omegah Red that had Cambodian antecedents and released it free to the public via YouTube, called “Books of War.” Believe it or not, “Books of War” has registered 33.7 million views — yes, you read correctly — since it was released just over six years ago. That’s probably more views than all of DOOM’s vids combined.
This DOOM verse in “Books of War” is applicable to what he’s about to explain to you:
Gimme the Timbs Rumpelstiltskin brown
A metal-face mask with a built in frown
A mic to tilt down, a hundred thousand pounds
And see how kilt sound like spilt milk, clown
Cocoa butter on very ashy day, fam
With Ray-Bans out on the islands of Cayman
Or I’ll break it down for the layman
Here’s part of our convo (text language not edited):
Me: Years ago a rich guy told me he always expects people to nickel and dime him and he accepts that; he just doesn’t want to get one guy that rips him off big time. Same with racing: guys are gonna use, but you gotta try and keep the hard users in control.
Him: I think, and this is my opinion, when someone eventually pulls the curtain open on slaughter, it’s gonna be game over. It’s not defendable and it’s happening on such a large scale that there’s nothing anyone in the racing community can do to fix it. The drug talk is just the warm up for the main event — 10,000 thoroughbreds slaughtered a year. You can’t have a game in this environment with that out there.
Him: That rich guy is 100% right but now you’ve got people who think no one should be ripped off one cent. Life ain’t like that.
Me: I just mentioned the slaughter thing last week on Byk. In relation to the outrage now. [You can listen to that segment here.]
Him: The drug thing seems quaint in comparison to slaughter and it will get the attention of people outside of racing who already thinking drugging of horses is just par for the course.
Me: Twitter outrage on drugs conveniently keeps slaughter out of pic, because that would indict everyone in game.
Him: Ive honestly thought that the powers that be — TJC, bluebloods, etc — would rather have the drug conversation or the breakdown conversation than the slaughter one. So that’s the framing we have in the public arena. But slaughter is just sitting there in the weeds and it’s not gonna go away and there’s very little anyone can do about aftercare at the scale needed to tackle the issue.
Me: Bro, this is something I’ve been thinking about for decades. I’m gonna put this convo in another post.
Him: [laughing emoji].
Me: [two laughing emojis]
Him: Decades ago it was acceptable though because people generally understood that it benefits humans to have this industry. We keep saying that the mood of that has changed — that people won’t accept mistreatment of animals. I don’t know if that’s next year or another 50 years from now but it’s not going to go back to “acceptable.” Either the industry reorganizes at a much smaller scale to deal with the slaughter reality or it eventually dies, IMO.
Me: Yup. Ok, I gotta take a shower — outdoors, lol. [Sent a photo of the outdoor shower I have at the new crib]
Him: Beats [city deleted] in December.
Now, go listen to the fan-produced “Books of War,” below. It’s killer.