Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1205
Bit more about music, good things about Disney Star Wars, Apple's Open AI seat, some political calculating and dreaming and processing, I'm on steroids! Why can't this last forever.
Hello! Good morning! Happy Fake Friday! Maybe, probably, assuming you work somewhere kind, wait do such places exist, sure, I guess.
Listening to the new(ish) album by Health — RAT WARS — great name. Watched a Health KEXP performance last night. Wish they had one more band member, but still, the combination of those guitar sounds, the singer’s crazy voice, hot lady synthesist and the sheer joy on the drummer’s face is a pretty compelling combination. Also they have that song with Trent Reznor, er, sorry, Nine Inch Nails (??) has a pretty great, universal chorus:
Are you alone?
Well isn’t everyone?
I basically did the same thing last night, watched more of my Youtube queue, focusing on the music videos, while Emma was over taking care of Janet and Jane was asleep. More Glastonbury: Breeders, Gossip, NewDad, Alvvays, Soccer Mommy, more James and Cyndi Lauper (correction she is not wearing a dress, she is wearing a coat that looks like a dress). Other performances by Geneva Jacuzzi, Muna, Health, Wet Leg (I follow a dude who films brooklyn concerts because he filmed the first Wet Leg show in America, at Mercury Lounge, that I went to. Been following him ever since, thought it would be good to check in on both his video-ing and how Wet Leg are looking and feeling after two solid years of tooling around the world singing Chaise Lounge. They seem to be holding up well). Chaka Khan tiny desk. Live videos in Boston filmed by Bradley of Thalia Zedek, Ted Leo, Karate, Savak, Samuel SC, an old Sharon Van Etton video made by, I believe, Naomi from Galaxie 500. All great stuff.
(oh shit giant bird just hit my office window hope he’s okay, terrifying).
Okay okay, no more music talk. Man. Writing about music. What lunacy. Who is it for? I mean, I think very simple music writing is okay – like “hey you might like this, it reminds me of this other thing.” Music writing as a recommendation engine. And it’s fun for personal essays, but, then, as much as I (obviously) love a good personal essay, I am a bit at a loss as to why other people enjoy to read personal essays (oh god have I revealed the dirty corrupted secret truth at the bottom of GMHHAY). I try and read Pitchfork reviews from time to time still. The writing is good, generally, but I find myself skimming for a) some biographical details, b) maybe a little bit of a story of the creation of the record (I like narrative) and c) one or two things it sounds like. Generally I feel like they could be shorter.
Says the guy who writes 2-3k words a day.
OH. Also. I feel I should clarify: I AM ON SO MANY STERIODS. IT FUCKIN RULES. My god. My god. Why can’t we feel like this all the time. OF COURSE I didn’t get a headache today. Can’t we, as a society, just pack a little dose of steroids into every other medicine. It is the fucking best, I feel awesome.
SO, anything I said about stevia and all that? Out the window. I have another week where I can’t really make any determinations about migraine triggers. It is occurring to me that this could be the work of years. I thought I could map out the most likely triggers and plow through some tests in three, four weeks, but nah. Doesn’t work that way. Stuff comes up. Need more detox time to isolate different possible causes. Life gets in the way — like travel. It is going to take some time. But I will persevere. I am enjoying being in the part of the medical misery cycle where you’re going to all these doctors and sure, a lot of stuff doesn’t work, but some stuff does, so you maybe get a bit better in a place or two? My finger is improving. My foot doesn’t hurt at all. Though, again, steroids. Who knows what will happen when I finish the regemin tomorrow.
Emma and I were sitting at the playground last night, catching up and talking while Jane played a bunch (same playground equipment as Albion Park in Somerville, we noticed. Also that high-speed spinny cup from that Bluey episode where the parents had to run over and help and, guess what, we had to run over and help). And I said something like: these steroids are awesome. Headaches gone, I am happy. and it’s so fucked up that you can feel that everything that causes you so much lifelong misery is just one or two minor tweeks to blood and brain chemistry. And we don’t have the science to just… make that happen. Everything that can do it wears off, stops working eventually (Cymbalta), or has horrible side effects, or you can’t take it forever (Afrin, steroids). I feel like science is so close, but it’s not going to get there in my lifetime, and it feels like a complete stupid crime of god that we can be made 95% great and then 5% pointless pain and misery that cannot be fixed. It is cruel.
But I am on steroids today so I feel great so this insight is not particularly bumming me out today and hopefully I’ll forget it by tomorrow.
This is some crazy shit right here:
A few things:
Lol Microsoft paid so much for their seat
This is, broadly speaking, good news, since as hypocritical and evil I find Apple to be at times, they are probably still the best company to keep an eye on OpenAI.
Then again, Phil Schiller is a terrible choice, what with him generally being responsible for most of Apple’s sins
Then again, Phil’s sinning is basically sainthood in Silicon Valley there sure a lot worse people.
What a world, what a world.
Okay, we have to talk politics a bit, I am sorry. A few items;
I am back round on Biden not dropping out, with one impossible caveat. I would be in support of it if we could swap him out with Bernie. I know, I know, gawd, I was never a Bernie Bro but I think it’s obvious he is the only person who could win, post swap out. The only person with his own national profile, that would shake up the calculus against Trump, that would peel away a chunk of his constituency.
This will not happen, so it is moot to really even fantasize about. Every minute we spend thinking about this, we are wasting time.
We are locked into this unless Biden himself drops out. Biden is not going to drop out. And if we spend an ounce of time trying to get Biden to drop out, we are helping the Republicans. We need to act like they did with Reagan, insist that everything is fine, flip the tables, make the conversation about Trump again.
It is absolute bullshit that the judge in the hush money suit postponed sentencing this week. Trump was supposed to be sentenced next week. It is now postponed till september, because, of course, Trump used the new Supreme Court judgement to appeal. This appeal will almost certainly fail — he was not a president when he did these crimes.
And it is probably best that a liberal, New York judge writes the first opinion after the Supreme Court’s bullshit decision, because John Roberts wrote a shoddy, excuse of a decision with a bajillion holes just waiting to be blown open. So we should get the first salvo on that. Start hemming the decision in and limiting its efficacy, using its own words. Of course this entire tactic assumes that the Supreme Court has any pretense to intellectual honesty anymore, which it doesn’t. You could say, in a decision now “well, your last Supreme Court decision said that if X is true, then Y is true, and in this case, X is true, so Y is true too” and they would, with 90% certainty, issue a new opinion down the road that says “yeah, if X is true, Y is not true when it’s a republican.”
Now, I haven’t actually read the decision yet. I am gearing up for it, but, gawd, it’s too depressing. But I’ve read passages, and it’s clear to me that this thing can be basically ignored. The judgement seems engineered to ensure that the court, and the court only, decides what a president can be prosecuted over. It seems to pretend to introcuce a new test, an official-acts test, but my strong sense is the test is bullshit. And in any case, it is unexplored, uncodified so far.
And in the short term, I believe, with bravery, this could be used to our advantage. The Justice Department and Biden are too timid to do so, but an Executive Branch memo codifying its interpretation of the ruling and making clear how you could still prosecute ex presidents would be easy to do. And, of course, Biden could use this decision to push through just glorious policies and actions and force the court to stop him, thus limiting their own ruling. But he won’t do any of that because he still thinks we live in a country where you can play by rules. I suspect. I don’t know. But I have zero hope of him playing hardball.
(Jane has made me a toy cell phone out of a toilet paper roll and is using it to call me and summon me to the other room for assorted reasons boy she just loves it.)
BUT ANYWAY, my point was that by Sept 11 now — not July 11, which is such BS — Trump will be sentenced, quite possibly to jail. The debate is going to be one thing in a long election cycle. Other presidents have whiffed debates. Biden has bounced back. Trump probably thinks Biden is not the problem now. If Biden develops a smarter approach to Trump’s wall of lies, and Trump does not game theory this out and choose a different debate approach, we could be okay.
Of course, whomever did not prep Biden for Trump’s wall-of-lies debate style should be fired. It was obvious it was coming. This failure to be ready for that is insane. And it ties into my profound belief that Biden is still not taking this threat seriously, and is still timid in his approach. In the words of Spock: his pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.
God this is such a mess.
Here. I’ll just post this list here. Cheer us up a bit. I was gonna think-piece it but I do not have the stomach for that kind of discourse.
Things Disney has done right with Star Wars
Complexify the Jedi
Expand the world of force users and force sensitive
Make stories in a world that don’t have the whole world hinge upon the outcome
Andor
So many good villians: Orson Crennic. Moff Gideon. Even this Sith Good Place guy is a pretty good villain!
Stand firm against fascism
Stand firm for inclusivity
BB8
Lor San Tekka
Reboot the canon
Bring back thrawn though it is kind of not perfect the way they did it
Give Jar Jar an honorable ending as a food cart vendor or clown or whatever
Rogue One
Saw Guerrera
Expand Mon Mothma’s role
The first season of The Mandalorian
Show us a live action Cad Bane man that was weird
There is more. They have done a lot of good! It could have been so much worse!
Here have a goth playlist. America. Mostly new, couple re-issues (the Cure, the Cranes, Alan Vega). Love the new Aaron and the Lord goth tune, er, Sheila Divine, I guess Aaron said he’s using the SD name for all work now which is smart. Caput Medusae is just such a great, pure distillation of synthwave goth. A+ no notes.
I think we will be taking the holiday off from GMHHAY. I mean, I guess it’s conceivable I write, but I find it unlikely. Gotta lot of gardening and yard chores. A crew is coming to put some cement poles in. Dig safe is coming. Plumbers. Mulch. It’s a lot.
So, until Monday. Have a lovely holiday weekend.