Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1152
Sick Jane blind Jane who can tell, Kuperman Op Ed, Mannequin Pussy, that drop-off line article, do I have to re-evaluate Counting Crows, SOC audits 1v2, Daddy School, stuffies terminology
Good morning. Hello. How are you? Surviving this pandemic? Holding out okay? Oh wait. Sorry. Force of habit. I guess we’re not in a pandemic anymore huh. So say we all. Although! A friend of mine just had to cancel his visit down here because he has COVID. So there.
Anyway, Jane is sick today. Or playing sick. Or something. She has a cough but has had it for days and I told her it was up to her if she went to school or not today but she has to cover her mouth and then she excitedly went through a whole spiel about different mouth covering strategies for different circumstances, which was really some pretty quality GMHHAY material, I gotta say. Super interesting stuff about super mundane stuff. It occurs to me we all have complex mouth covering strategies. We just don’t talk about it. Ah, the wisdom of children, etc. etc.
Anyway she clearly wanted to go anyway, so we got ready and then after breakfast she explained that she did not, in fact, want to go. She did not want to go because today is art class. She has expressed anxiety about art class before and, being a sensitive artist, this obviously bums me the fuck out. But also she loves art!
Her cough had gotten better, as morning coughs do, and it really seemed like she was okay to go to school. But! I had given her the choice earlier! But! She made her choice and it was to go! What to do! I told her if she wanted to stay home she had to talk to me. She said that there is a screen in art class where the teacher demonstrates things and the screen is hard for her to see. Man. Was this a real explanation or a ruse, I do not know. But if it was (were?) a ruse, it was precisely designed to push my buttons. Because I, as a blind man, have been waiting for the day someone tells me that my daughter cannot see the chalk board or whatever it is they have in this infernal century. I knew this day would come. I’m like Dexter’s dad, ready to help my daughter through confusing change. Except the confusing change is myopia not serial killing.
Anyway, now that she’s staying home she is at her art station constructing a sculpture out of a cardboard box and kitty stamps so I guess I don’t have to worry about this killing her art urge.
I am listening to the new album by Mannequin Pussy, it is so good, I am on track six and I have starred four of them. I don’t know anything about this band it occurs to me I have been mixing them up with Pussy Galore and/or Bitch Magnet, and they are not like either, though they rock just as hard and they’re just so great.
My god this band has four albums. I need to listen to them all.
It is unfortunate that today is the day Jane didn’t go to school, because that article in the Wall Street Journal about the perils and antics of school car pick up and drop off lines came out yesterday. I am somewhat peevish they did not come to me, the sole American writer who writes about the school car drop-off line practically every single day. Such are the perils of not having a publicist, or a consistent theme, or an ounce of self promotional mojo. But the article was pretty great and actually did tap into something that I have been wondering about:
Every week or two, in her weekly address to all the parents, the principal of Jane’s school reminds all the parents of all the rules to the car drop-off line: Do not cheat. Do not park in the sole fire lane spot and drop your kid off there. Do not drop your kid off out on the main street. Do not block the turnouts. Do not try and cut off the loop of the line that winds through the parking lot before continuing on. Do not get out of your car.
And yet, every single freakin’ day, someone breaks at least one of these rules. The rules being most often broken are dropping off kids in the fire truck spot or dropping them off on the street.
And yet, every single freakin’ day, the school does nothing about these scofflaws. And of course as a decent law-abiding citizen, that drives me up the freakin wall, because I demand retribution. Never mind I wrote a whole thing yesterday about how you should forgo your urge for retribution. This is the school drop off lane, this is serious. I kid. I kid. But it does seem weird to me that there is never any enforcement.
But I think this WSJ article really explains things: that one principal in New Jersey did a little public shaming of a scofflaw parent (and you know she was a scofflaw, because she sued over it, which is all you need to know my god imagine caring that much what other parents think of you but also breaking rules), and got sued.
So I suppose this one asshole parent in NJ has put a chilling effect over all principals and schools now and they’re just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ oh well, we will tell parents not to break the rules but if they do we’ll just let ‘em.
Amurca.
(Also you will be happy to know that at the work thing I obliquely mentioned yesterday, I did, in fact, de-escalate and not choose violence. I am such an adult.)
Man this album is so good. I have starring exhaustion.
Speaking of articles, this one is a doozy, and I’m just gonna post some of it here, because even though I’m doing my best trying to just live my life here, I am not blind to the world beyond my window:
What drove Schumer to such an unprecedented interference in Israel’s domestic politics is the appalling humanitarian devastation inflicted on Gaza. Whether or not one believes genocide has occurred, the death rate in Gaza has equaled or exceeded that in three other recent cases that US presidents did call “genocide”. Americans may reject such comparison on grounds that Israel is responding in self-defense to terrorism. But they probably are unaware that historically the vast majority of genocides, unlike the Holocaust, similarly have been responses to rebel or terrorist attacks – including in the three most recent cases.
…
It brings me no pleasure to make these observations. I’m Jewish. My parents made Aliyah to Israel, where my brother was born and where I still have dozens of relatives. I am not antisemitic, nor do I oppose the existence of Israel. But facts are facts.
Ironically, many now defending Israel’s retaliation in Gaza were previously vocal opponents of similar responses to terrorism by Sudan, Myanmar and China – which they called genocide. I hope they will think about that.
This issue is bonkers. Putting aside the actual carnage, there has been no issue more divisive on the left in America in at least a generation, probably since the horros of the Stalinist purges dawned on the communist-dabbling as they came to be comprehended in the late 1940’s. Every time I write about this I feel like I’m losing a friend, never mind readers.
Thank you for your open mindedness.
Moving on (oh god, oh god, why did I ever choose this newsletter format what a horrible transition this might be the worst one ever), I have begun to wonder: what did I have against Counting Crows? Was it just the white man dreads? Are they actually… good? How many bands from the 90’s do I have to re-evaluate now that I have shed my Gen X detached cool and leaned into enthusiasm? My god. What if Counting Crows are good? I have to confess: back when I decided I didn’t like them, I didn’t even know what they sounded like. Something like five years laster that song of theirs came on — not the Mr. Jones one the other one. And I said to the person I was with: “Who’s this?” And they looked at me like I was an alien and said something like “this is Counting Crows. you know, the band that has sold over 20 million albums, has six top-ten albums and five-top ten singles and multiple Grammy nominations.” Okay maybe it was not that detailed, Wikipedia had not been invented yet. But man. I had no idea what they sounded like. I was just mad about them.
But that Mr Jones song came on yesterday and you know what? Pretty good song.
Sean Drinkwater is rolling over in his bed right now.
My god that was a good joke.
Also I just Googled and that guy does not have dreads anymore.
Hey good news we finished our SOC report for our current cycle at work aren’t you proud of me? Audit, man. Maybe I should switch to Vanta these things are expensive. I think my old coworker Ari works at Vanta. Anyone use Vanta?
Oh hrm they only do SOC 2 not 1 I guess I could use my current auditors for SOC 1 and then do SOC 2 with them? That seems kind of fun. Ari are you still reading this? Hook a brother up. I really messed up choosing SOC 1 when I chose it, but i figured it had a strong IT security component but also a strong financial handling component, and being an ad auction service that, you know, makes apps money, I thought the money handling part would be really important, but it turns out most people want SOC 2. But, then, a lot of people don’t really care. But more want 2 than 1 that is for sure. I wonder what is up with that.
Is there another newsletter in America that talks about SOC reporting startups and the drop-off line and Counting Crows? C’mon man, this thing delivers.
I leave you with this photo of Daddy School, a sub-activity of Bed Party, wherein Mr. Daddy and Ms. Jane teach the stuffies things. Honestly, I could probably do the entirety of a home school curriculum this way. Last night we did math and Jane explained to the stuffies addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. She learned the 11 multiple trick, 11, 22, 33 and was very excited, because she was doing that shit in her head.
Stuffies is not a word, Apple spell check tells me. Clearly the thing is run by a Gen Xer who called them “stuffed animals.”
We were wrong. Stuffies is a better word.
Oh wait shit was this regional?
Important poll: what did you call your stuffed toys as a kid, what generation are you, and where did you grow up.
Shit I’m gonna have to drop some coin on a surveymonkey on this aren’t I?
Dammit.
Dropping in to say Counting Crows are pretty good. And my only window into car-based school dropoffs is this newsletter!
I was a big fan of the Counting Crows, haha. I loved “Anna Begins.” I mean, it was my name (almost)! It has a very specific vibe, reminds me of Jane Says —a specific genre that might be called “Songs with named woman in the title describing doomed dysfunction with equal parts love and mournfulness” Very Gen X.