Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1370

Reckoning with my vinyl collecting problem as I get three different emails about the new Mogwai, bitching about the Apple keynote and their inhuman sameyness.

Hey hey, good morning! How are you holding up? One week till election day. I am not doing super well with it? I had all these guests here for the last five, six days and that was a good distraction. And I realized after the Gillian Welch show that I didn’t think about the election for the entire time I was watching the show, and that was so great. I want to never think about it again. But, of course, I am thinking about it constantly.

Oh also someone posted a pretty amazing video from the Gillian Welch David Rawlings show, that did better than most at capturing a life experience, so hey, here is a video for you.

Oh cool some weird Youtube/Substack beef. Oh well. I think you can click through? if not, here it is.

The other thing I thought during that concert — or I guess, rather, what I did think about instead of the election — is that some concerts are all about re-living memories, and some are about making new memories. Both types are great, but obviously, these days, in the, shall we say, the Golden Hour of my life, the latter form of concert is more rare. Making new memories at a concert: a true gift.

This morning we are listening to the new Thurston Moore, Flow Critical Lucidity. I am on track two, it sounds like the mellow, grooving Thurston Moore so far, rather than the avant noise Thurston Moore. Solid vocals. Latetia Sadier does backing vocals on track 2. I like it.

You know, as I was driving home this morning from dropping Jane off at school, I was thinking about Spam, and email maintenance, and how I have been doing it for, you know, gawd, like 30 years? And I was thinking of all the “spam” that I allow through in my life — emails from venues, from bands, from a million different record stores. And how I should probably just, like, unsubscribe from them all. And how all those spam emails from record stores totally work on me, and I am buying way too many records, and I need to stop, and how I should probably just unsubscribe from them all.

And then just now! In the middle of that Thurston Moore paragraph, an email came in from the record label Temporary Residence informing me that the new Mogwai was available for pre-order. In two different versions: a 3LP box set, but also a 2LP set, the box set on green vinyl, the 2LP set on red vinyl, but also the 2LP set is a small edition than the 3LP set? So maybe I need both?

And I was sort of managing to resist it, but then another email came in, from Recordstore.co.uk, informing me of the new Mogwai box set, though from them you could get it signed. They also have a pretty nice clear vinyl edition. Unclear the edition size. Which is a whole thing with some artists and it is so annoying. Aside, props to labels like Dais records that list the edition size of every vinyl pressing.

My resistance was still standing, but then a third email came in, from The Sound of Vinyl, another online purveyor of vinyl. They have the clear vinyl and the box set, not the red, though they also have a black edition, for those of you who don’t like colored vinyl. I am not one of those people, as you have intuited from the photos in GMHHAY. I like the colored vinyl. You know, makes good content for your daily newsletter.

So, I dunno, man. I need to unsubscribe from all of these emails it is bad. I think there is probably no world where I don’t buy the new Mogwai on vinyl, but a) I don’t need the stress of figuring out which of the four (so far) editions to buy on vinyl, and b) there is a ton of shit that I buy because of these infernal emails that, in all honestly, I do not need.

Also it’s getting worse! Lately I have been buying whole disocgraphies or large chunks of them at once. In the last four months, I have bought entire or majority discographies of the Butthole Surfers, Sault (one LP is back ordered so I am waiting for it before I listen to all nine of them and that is going to be such a great day), American Football, the Ocean Blue.

Oh and Tsunami and Idaho but those are box sets they “don’t count.”

This is not healthy!

(Fun trick that Emma has, it is the nuclear option, I tried it for a while and it was not for me, but you might like it if you are in spam hell: filter out everything that has the word “unsubscribe’ on it to another email box. Works great. She is hard core about this.)

I mean yes, what other way is there to support an artist (I expect an email from Mogwai themselves in the next hour or two) besides buying their overpriced vinyl or paying for their show (Mogwai is not coming to NC this tour and I am so sad).

I shouldn’t even write this my wife is going to have words. Not that she is unaware of this problem of mine. For, like, five years she kept telling me to organize my office in a certain way to fit all the vinyl and I refused, and then, finally, five years later I “discovered” the best layout for the office and, of course, it was exactly what she had been encouraging the whole time.

Also she routinely asks “so how long till you run out of space" regarding the current vinyl storage setup and I always tell her “oh forever,” but she knows, she knows! It is only a matter of time until I run out of space again.

Apple just recommended “only a matter of time before.” “Until” is fine, isn’t it? isn’t it? Auto complete is going to make us all sound exactly the same.

Speaking of which I installed iOS 18.1 with “Apple Intelligence” last night and, you know, only like 12 hours with it so far, but I do not feel like it is more intelligent, I barely notice a difference.

I watched the keynote for the Apple Intelligence and new Macs announcement last night and it sucked so hard. A woman named after an allergy pill, in a red pantsuit, pronounced it “SILL-i-cunn” like they all do at Apple because it is a fucking cult and you cannot tell me that a single exec at Apple does not pronounce it “sill-i-CON,” which is a totally acceptable pronunciation. They are both in Merriam Webster! Enough!

Enough with the unnatural stances and fucked up arm movements!

They are all indoctrinated.

I was raving about this while I watched this with my brother-in-law and he said “She probably is an AI” and you know what? He’s right! The room that she’s standing in is rendered, rake. She does not speak like a human. She is programmed.

So depressing.

Also the new iMac sucks and not having a 27” iMac is a big fuck-you to creatives. Also they don’t have a black one come the fuck on.

Apple needs to spend more time fixing basic bugs in Notes.app and Preview.app and, I don’t know, maybe having the activity monitor show up where it is supposed to when you leaunch it. Stop indoctrinating their employees into drones. It’s so hilarious: they are doing an amazing job with diverse hires: so many women and POCs in their keynotes these days (Apple Silicon has been in the works for years and suddenly we have a brand new spokesperson for it that’s never been in an Apple keynote before but whatever). But what’s the point of hiring so diversely if you force them all to present as normcore, samey drones?

Breathe, breathe.

Before we are too past from the weekend, I would just like to pause and get a couple more errant thoughts down:

The part of the Ocean Blue show where they showed the swimming scene from Keislowski’s Blue the whole time, well, that was beautiful and made me mega emo. Man I love that movie, and man I get feels watching Keislowski still. A master. RIP.

Getting all ten of us to have a dinner together, even if it was just standing around a counter eating delivery, was a masterstroke of organization and I am deeply grateful we all got to do that.

I am glad people remembered to take photos.

So excited to get Jane back to school today. Yesterday was rough. So much teeth brushing resistance. It seems to be transcending “phase” we might have to try some new approaches here. BUT she did get some good play time with her cousins, and I even gave her the “you’re the big girl you have to help and share” speech and she totally took to it and started being caring with Lucas instead of bossing around or treating him like she and her friends do. It was very cute. I am glad they’re getting to spend time together.

Moody and quiet for you today, definitely a bit more country infused than usual but what can you do, that’s dem breaks. Lotta good country coming out. Jake Xerxes Fussell is coming to Cat’s Cradle soon, thinking of going. If you’ve ever seen him live, let me know how it was? I recently acquired JFDR’s album Museum and I love love love it. Gillian because of the recent show, of course. And I put that Thurston song on here for you I mentioned above. Oh and Lycia, been listening to a 3LP reissue of The Burning Circle and Dust and I have a deeper respect for them these days than I did back than, I thought they were a bit… derivative back then but now I love the purity of the very specific era of goth before the techno goth.

Until tomorrow, fine friends.