Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1230
Two days of chores and then the great record collection reorg of 2024.
Hey hey hey happy Monday. Oh shit, I mean Tuesday. Oh man. Four day week. Just thought of that. Woo. That is exciting.
Listening to new Primal Scream tracks. I am not.. I am not super thrilled yet. “Deep Dark Waters” could be okay, if it were played really, really loud. “Love Insurrection” is absurd, even though, of course, love is great and the world would be a better place if everyone felt more love, etc., etc., man true things are boring, maaaan.
Actually I was sort of thinking about this this morning as I was listening to a one-man band Wiccan Phase Springs Eternal, which is a great name but it is annoying it is a one-man band. Anyway, he makes pretty good modern alterna-kid music, I like it. He has a song “answer the call,” and I like that phrase. Evokes… times of yesteryear. Middle Earth, Chivalry, that sort of thing.
But of course we are being asked to “answer the call” all the time these days and we just sort of ignore it and laugh about it. Pay taxes, yeah, right, join the Peace Corps, har har. We hear the call all the time, we just don’t do it. I wonder if this dichotomy ever crosses the mind of those who, you know, think a lot about the “olden days” and wish we were still in them, when people had nobility and…. what? You want me to round up to the nearest dollar for the food bank? Lol nope.
“To Investigate” playlist is back up to 72 hours, 30 minutes. I added the new Laurie Anderson (love it), Primal Scream EP (see above) and Seefeel EP (amazing). But I am going to make great progress today you just wait and see.
Lovely weekend, lots of chores. Two days of chores at chore house. Not much to show for it, but a lot of, well, chores are done. I cleared out the giant raised bed that was filled with those redwood-sized “native meadow” flowers that basically turned into trees. Took hours. I got the water switched over to the well water so I don’t have a stupid eight hundred dollar water bill again, god, I am really kicking myself for that one. Also fixed the leak that caused the eight hundred dollar water bill, so I don’t waste well water. That took forever.
I took the blower and blew the driveway and parking spaces for the Neurodivergent-Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapists — I like to make the drive up to their offices nice for the clientele. But then there were multiple thunderstorms this weekend and, well, the driveway is covered in leaves again. Maybe I can get to it tomorrow.
Did the laundry and cleaned the house a bit because we have some more guests coming this weekend. Though it is just occurring to me now that I did not actually re-make the bed. Whoops. Maybe I’ll go over there today and… haha yeah no. Maybe tomorrow.
Man I did so many chores I feel like I should have more to brag about from sixteen solid hours of chore-doing. Let’s look at “completed tasks” in Apple Reminders because I am in one of those phases where I pretend I’m someone who can use a ToDo list and is organized, before the whole thing falls apart an atrophies again.
Oh right! There was this whole crib situation, Emma had built a crib in the master closet and once it was built, it couldn’t come out. It was not a collapsible crib. We knew this was a problem because who wants their baby to sleep in a closet, but it wasn’t pressing. But my sister is coming in a couple months so we needed to deal with it. Which meant I had to take the old crib apart, in the closet, which is crammed full of all my guitar amps and electronics boxes n shit. And it is built shittily, requiring the use of a very small allen key, no electric drills, no ability to spin the key full round my god I hate that so much, it took forever, but it is done. Hours.
AND THEN: I built a whole new trellis pole, painted it, mounted it, ran wire to the path arch that has the grapes on it, untangled the six feet of grape vines running along the ground and trellissed them to the new wire. That was a ton of work! It looks pretty good! I need to do one on the other side, but in order to do that I had to do this whole complicated thing with my Hoselinks, where I mounted them on these new mounted-in-concrete 4x4s that have been sitting there, painted, awaiting their HoseLinks for like two months. Got that done. So now I have a spare 4x4, which was previously holding up a HoseLink, but that one was mo unted using one of those ground-screw mounts, which are really awesome but can’t handle the weight of a Hoselink. So now that 4x4 is free, so I can use it for another grape trellis.
God that was so boring to write, but it was also kinda boring to do, but now it is done. CHORES.
I forgot to take a picture of the finished grape trellis but here have this picture of the trellis while I was painting it. It looks kind of like a crucifix. I felt like I was on Golgotha mound while I was mounting it, yes I did.
Anyway all these boring chores are just the leadup to the main event: I re-organized my record collection, oh yes, yes I did. I had Monday free so I thought to myself “It is time I build those ten extra record crates I need in order to store my whole record collection.” Because I have been adamantly attached to “record store style” vinyl storage. Which means every record is counter height, in a browsable bin. This is lovely for browsing and I have been very committed to it. Because I hate kneeling, and bending over gives me a headache. I am old, etc. etc. But they stopped making my record crates, so now I had like 150 records just piled up, disorganized. It was getting out of control.
So I was all excited to build the new crates Monday — I have had the wood for, like, six months. And now I had the time to do it. So exciting.
But then I decided “fuck it,” and I want my countertop space. I started doing the math and realized I would have absolutely zero countertop space. It was depressing.
Plus, for years my wife has been gently encouraging me to abandon the countertop record-store-style approach and just store them in shelves like everyone else.
So, in the end, a mix of laziness and pleasing my wife won out. Fuck it. Let’s try it.
Unfortunately, the shelves on which I wanted to put records were full of other shit.
So then began eight hours or so of moving records, moving books, moving other stuff, re-alphabetizing, re-organizing the records. It took something like an hour just to get through the As. But I got into a groove and I finished at about 8PM.
Some observations and decisions:
I have so many duplicates. But, then, what is a duplicate record? Is it a duplicate if you own, say, the original 1983 UK pressing of the Cocteau Twins’ Head over Heels but also own the 2018 180 gram UK repressing — which is, then, remastered and on higher quality vinyl than the original — and also a copy of the album in the (beautiful, perfect) Cocteau Twins Box Set One?1 No no no, those are not duplicates. I am not even talking about that! I am talking about “wow whoops I bought that record twice.” Or sometimes three times! Inexplicably three copies of the Gloria Record’s A Lull in Traffic: Two of the white vinyl version one of the red. Inexplicably three copies of Matthew Dear’s country record. Just insane! Here id a picture of all the duplicates:
Insanity.
Box sets. I own so many box sets. They take up so much room. If I go to Discogs, and look at my most valuable record posessions, the vast majority are box sets. But I never listen to them! I was in the Ls, going through the Love and Rockets section and I noticed I did not have a copy of Earth Sun Moon on vinyl. All the singles from it? Yes. But not the album (this is not surprising I was a CD-first guy when I first got into them). And I thought “oh shit I need to get a copy of this on vinyl asap.” And then I remembered I owned it in the box set. Does this count? I don’t know! I don’t think so! It is scary to touch your Love and Rockets box set when it is worth $350. I should just buy a $5 old 80’s beat up copy of Earth Sun Moon. (Also I am going to see Love and Rockets tonight I am very excited)
I had Iggy and the Stooges and Iggy Pop records under S, I and P and I literally don’t know what to do. I don’t know why but I feel that The Idiot should be near Raw Power but… maybe not?
I realized, when I was all the way to the Ws, that I had the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen — of whom I own, like, five records — filed under W and not A, and this is manifestly incorrect. And I had just had a talk with my wife about the “Bands starting with A” situation a few hours earlier and I was adamant that they go under A. I already have A Certain Ratio and A Place to Bury Strangers under A, and it is obviously a crime to not have A Winged Victory for the Sullen in the As as well. So, near the end of this whole insane process, I had to shift everything. Everything. To be clear, I am leaving room in every shelf for a bunch of new additional records, but putting five more (very thick) records into the A crate took up most of the new space. I can’t start this whole journey with no space in the As.
I have so much shit, the shit that was in the shelves I had to move. I had a Apple ][ E sitting there, which is kinda cool, but behind it I found four Apple laptops that I was saving for “sentimental reasons.” I don’t know why I said “was saving” cuz it’s not like I am going to get rid of them.
I decided this way too late in the process, soI have not actually done it yet, but I am hereby declaring that soundtracks are different than film scores. If a single artist does the whole score to a film, I am, going forward, going to file them with the artist. This is most relevant for the Tindersticks, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who are going to get their own section not in soundtracks and with not Nine Inch Nails. What I’m going to do when the new Tron soundtrack comes out, by NIN and not Trent/Atticus? We will cross that bridge when we come to it. This is a big change for me and please be patient with me in this difficult and trying time.
Anyway the whole thing is done, but the big problem now is I have too many keepsake boxes. Like fifty of the fucking things, for all phases of my life, jobs, exes, big trips, etc. I love them but… they take up so much fucking room. But it is nice to have this stuff handy and I do often refer to it. Just a few months ago I busted open the box for my high school girlfriend because we were chatting about something. And of course the Jane boxes are… well they are very full. I save too much. I got it all fitting right now, but things would be a lot better if the keepsake boxes weren’t taking up 22 cubes of a total of 50 cubes. My brain is turning trying to think about what to do about this, but… JESUS being a neat freak packrat is hard.
Anyway, it’s all done, here it is:
I could have turned a light on for that photo, I don’t know why I didn’t. I apologize. I am very bad at remembering to take photos of my accomplishments for you guys I can’t imagine being a YouTuber where you gotta film everything. Sometimes I’m watching a pro YouTuber and they’re like “Sorry I forgot to shoot this step of the process’ and I am verklempt. I want my money back.
Anyway, good weekend. Jane discovered glow sticks, loves them. Pack of 30 for $5 at Walmart, they lasted over 12 hours. Oh! And a while back a nice lady at the Lowe’s Hardware gave us this kid’s crafting set and she spent like two hours at her new pink workbench in the shop hammering and building this butterfly house and it was so cute, it reminded me of when a cute kid does crafting at their crafting table in Animal Crossing with all the hammering and sawing sounds. Just the best. I need to buy like fifty more of those things, it was so great to see her not pining for the iPad.
Also hats off for her getting up, dressed, teeth brushed and downstairs on time and by herself this morning. Amazing.
Moody and Quiet playlist for you today, volume 153! Man we have been doing this a long time. Mostly new stuff, but some old hits like Springsteen and Blancmange. Like I said, love the new Laurie Anderson. Obsessed witht his new band Brookelen don’t know anything about them. Love the new Gillian Welch I am sad those shows sold out.
All right! Talk tomorrow where maybe I will bore you with a lot of stuff about Fëanor’s family tree and Rings of Power or something.
We need to talk about Cocteau Twins Box Set One. First off, there was already a Cocteau Twins Box Set. This would be box set two. But I think it is really supposed to be considered Vinyl box set one. Okay, then. But.. where is Box Set Two? It’s been fourteen years! You only got up to Treasure! Even on the same label, you still have Victorialand, Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven or Las Vegas to go, along with Tiny Dynamite, Aikea-Guinea, Echos in a Shallow Bay and Love’s Easy Tears. What the hell!