Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1335
Airport, oblivon, teenage love, driving, new American KitKat flavors, eBay misery, American incompetence, bailing on medical waiting rooms, Aetna's evil prescription denials, Apple event.
Good morning, hello there. Greetings from RDU. Man I hate this airport, the best of all airports, that I hate. It is a great airport, but it is still an airport. I checked a bag today, like a peasant. The woman thanked me for being a gold member. A gold member! May as well be a sailor. Boy, how the mighty have fallen. There was time I was diamond. But they will never take my 2x million miler status away from me. Some day, years after I have completely rid myself of the indignities of flying and fallen into legend, something will come up, and I will be forced to take a flight. My return to the airport will be like Flynn’s return to that nightclub in the vastly underrated Tron: Legacy.
Drive sucked, well, actually, only part of it did. Dropped of Jane at 7:30 at school (still think someone should be prosecuted for school start times in America need a whole truth and reconciliation council on that one) and drove straight to the airport. In the thick of the rush hour traffic. First part was a little rough but eventually Apple routed me through a bunch of farm roads to that turnpike that goes straight from Cary to RTP. The pike was lovely, not too crowded. I have to confess, the journey was not too bad. But Thompson Twins’ “Doctor Doctor” played and it reminded me of being so in love it hurt, so panicked when the person you love is leaving, or even just going away for a while. That desperate physical need that seems to be, I am learning, confined to youth.
Then my mind rambled to oblivion, the concept of oblivion, and whether the kids chase it anymore. They don’t smoke, I don’t think they drink much, I am not even sure they have sex? Maybe they do. Are the kids in New York just, like, cosplaying elder generations like we did when we smoked when we were young? Are they an anomaly, a sad vestigate of something unhealthy that will fall away from society like Spam and asbestos? Or are they keeping the light alive, the light of the need to lose yourself, to be lost in someone else, in something else?
There are two things I thought were universal when I was younger but think may have always been the habits of minorities: oral fixations and the desire for oblivion.
What would I be in my friendships without oblivion?. I have friendships that were not forged in the fires of oblivion, but… they are different, they are different.
Anyway, idle thoughts on the way to the airport.
I am going to New York, I am closing up the office in Tribeca. We don’t use it anymore. It has been the Timehop/Nimbus office for, mm, gonna say 11 years ish. I could dig into the files and look up the original lease but.. nah. It’s been a long time. It is filled with ephemera and memoribilia and really, really nice furniture that the liquidators tell me has no value at all. It is pretty crazy.
If you need a desk chair or a table or something, and are in the New York area, drop a line. We can work something out. I might post pictures. I don’t know. This is just trip one to get a handle on the situation: the actual move-out is in two weeks.
I brought a large suitcase and am gonna bring a bunch of stuff home. A lot of the Timehop memoribilia will get sent to the company that purchased Timehop from us, I think. Might take me a while to mail it. It is weird being here as the steward of this stuff, at the end of this office. I did not spend a lot of time in it and I did not spend a lot of time leading Timehop across it’s many year existence, just a short blip. But through circumstances, I’m the one to deal with the office. I have heard the call, I will answer the call, this is my task (half-assed throwback to that whole conversation about Tolkein speech and whatnot a few days ago).
We are listening to my giant 7,000+ song “All the Good” playlist, which is my ongoing project to make a playlist that captures every song I ever even midly liked. Currently it is “The Harshest Light” by Torres. I did make good progress on clearing out the “To Investigate” playlist yesterday. We are now down to 48 hours 30 minutes. A reduction of five hours over yesterday, very proud of that.
Whoops Torres is over and now it is playing the criminally under-appreciated Hair and Skin Trading Company hrm, come to think of it I suppose that is a pretty off-putting band name.
Here is a picture of some special Halloween flavors of KitKat. Also there is a new vanilla flavor. The cocoa shortage has really ushered in a golden-age of American KitKat flavors.
I am all burned up because I sold a laptop on eBay and the incompetent buyer is accusing me of fraud and selling a non-functioning unit. I installed the latest OS before I sold it to him and — I don’t know if you know this, but it is very hard to do a clean install on a new, modern Apple laptop. You can’t just pop in a disc anymore. You gotta do it all off the internet or make a signed USB stick, which is also fairly technical (I mean, you gotta go into the terminal, at least). This dude clearly did neither, tried to install an OS that is too new for this machine, the machine gave him the standard error that the installer was invaled, blamed the computer. Will hear nothing from me about how he should try a second installer, about how he should maybe try the internet install process. He thinks he knows stuff, and so it is my fault. I don’t know why, but I violated my cardinal rule about eBay which is just accept the return and don’t engage. But I was so annoyed.
And then eBay arbitrated the thing in found in his favor, which burns me up even more, because what kind of world is this where people can just buy shit they don’t know how to use. Ha ha this is America that is the entire hardware industry, the fitness industry, so many more industries. And why would I expect eBay to have some Apple expert review our transcript and find in my favor? Dude wants to return it, you return it. eBay needs buyers more than sellers.
It’s all very reasonable, but boy, oh boy, it just really gets my goat.
Speaking of goat getting, twice now in the last few weeks I have had a medical appointment where they made me wait for more than 15 minutes, so I just left. It was immensely satisfying, precisely because we never do it, because they usually have us by the balls, don’t they? We are only hurting ourselves when we refuse their abuse-by-forced-waiting. But I gotta tell you, it felt so good. Both times the people were just flabbergasted.
I want to make it some new rule in my life — fifteen minutes, that’s my cutoff — but both times there were extenuating circumstances. Both times were for non-life-threatening stuff. Both were with specialists that, if I am being honests, aren’t actually doing much for me (elbow sports doc and chiropractor). One was a fill-in doctor, so, you know, lesson learned, don’t go to the fill-indoctor. One was never late, so obviously something was going awry that day, hey, these things they happen. But a) man why can’t the receptionists tell you when it is going to be a wait oh right because they don’t want any confrontation, which, understandbale, people suck and b) if it is a one-off extenuating circumstance well she’ll probably be relieved one of her patients left, it will help her get back on track.
Also it should be noted that this is a circumstance of being in a geographic location where the medical system is mostly awesome, mostly on time, and there are a bajillion specialists all competing for your business, so you don’t have to take that shit. Also I should acknowledge my privilege that I have an insurance plan that does not require me to get a referral, and lets me choose my own specialist.
So given all of those factors, I think I’d be a fool to sit and wait. It just burns me up so much. Also! These people are usually so fast, and predictably fast, that I keep a schedule that does not allow for them to be that late. I got shit to do, man! I am a human adult!
Speaking of medical shit, Aetna called me over fifteen times, and sent my five letters to tell me they were rejecting my doctor’s prescription to Ozempic. What a world that a doctor can decide you need something — supported by science! — and insurance companies can just say “nah.” I love how they say ‘we only prescribe this for the following reasons” and it is just a random subset of all the things the FDA approves the drug for and what science says its good for. But they are all, quite conveniently and coincidentally, very rare! Hrm I wonder what their criteria were for making that list. Evil! Evil was the criteria.
F**k em all. They should only do that to Republicans or people who vote against nationalized health care har har har that was a joke I am friends with people who are Republicans. Just like Taylor Swift (deep cut based on last night’s drama: Britney (Mohmes, Taylor’s boyfriend’s brothers wife, not Spears, keep up people) is in for Trump, Taylor hugged Britney my god, traitor).
Watched the Apple Event yesterday it was.. pretty meh. I mean everything is a miracle of engineering, everything is beautiful and amazing but… it is all basically the same. They could have done a ton of shit to improve these AirPod Maxes that I am wearing right now that are literally digging a notch into my scalp, but, nah, they just upgraded the charging to USB-C. Why would you want lossless audio with your $500 headphones you ingrate. I am kind of excited about the new photo button on the iPhone 16 (shit is can drive now), since I think it is stupid that we are all forced to use glass rectangles all the time, and I want buttons, lots of buttons, so many buttons, I want a freakin keyboard on my phone, a phone that ideally folds up and out. Lol nope too bad. You get one more button and we are going to pretend it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Also, you want a smaller phone? Too bad, we made them all bigger.
Also I am so tired of these Apple keynotes. They moved them to pre-recorded for the pandemic, loved how easy it was and just have not gone back. And you can tell they haven’t even thought about the format: they still routinely show the entire Apple Campus as completely empty. This made sense during the pandemic but now it’s just weird it’s like Apple Security cleared the whole campus before Tim stepped foot on it and gestured his hands just so.
The hand gestures. It’s like a bad parody at this point.
Sleep Apnea detection is good fun fact YOU ALL HAVE SLEEP APNEA and you should all be using CPAP machines and you all have issues about it and I don’t nahnah nah I confine my issues to oral fixations and oblivion and waiting and for doctors and airplanes and and and. Anyway, CPAP machines are life changers and sleep apnea detection is going to manifestly make the world a better place as it tells 100 million Americans they have sleep apnea and exactly sixteen of them adopt the routine use of CPAP machines in their life, thanks to all the shitty comedians who constantly mock people who use them (what? CPAP issues? Meeeee?). Okay yeah, anyway, that is a good thing Apple did. But I already know I have sleep apnea so I don’t think I need a new watch until it continuously monitors cholesterol, blood pressure, or blood sugar on, like, Apple Watch series 20 with add-on Apple SkinTag.
I am super relieved my irrational need to buy every new iPhone did not extend to the Apple Watch. I finally bought one, around series six, and I feel zero need to update it. This is an amazing feeling, I finally get those people still sporting iPhone 10s and whatnot. It’s an amazing feeling. Maybe I will.. not buy the new phone?
Hahaha yeah right.
Shoegaze mix today. It is four minutes short but what do you want, I am at an airport and my battery is dying.
Okay well hopefully tomorrow I manage to write I am bad about this on trips. Hopefully I will even show you a few of the things you can come pick up from the office! Byeee.