Good morning. Hello. How are you #1011
Yet another Walmart run, robotic key makers, Sol Price, Tim Apple and Texas and Twitter, Hot Guts Autumn, rejiggered reading habits, Jennifer Westin and PSP, Pink Eye and band tours.
Good morning, dear readers. Welcome, welcome. Good to see you. It is Tuesday, the Day of Meetings. They start at 10:30. I can do it. I can do it.
Tho housekeeping items: Somerville does have municipal recycling, yes. That was a typo. Somerville does not have municipal composting, which is a bummer. Composting is an interesting thing. We need no municipal support here in the boonies, because we can just make giant compost bins out of pallets in our yard. City Dwellers cannot. They create more food waste and have a harder time composting it. I have a friend who is super into composting — you should sign up for her newsletter. I mean, I am obviously super into composting too I just thought you should all sign up for Cass’s newsletter.
Item number 2: Yesterday was Sept 18th not 15th I apologize for the playlist mis-labeling. No one called me on that one, though, that was just my own guit talking.
Just back from yet another Walmart run because I have jock itch and it didn’t keep me up all night, but I did dream constantly about how I was scratching my balls the entire time and when I woke up there was a spot that was just burning. This is the kind of brave content you come here for, isn’t it? I bought a name-brand spray and a Walmart brand cream. Just went with the spray. It seems its main approach is to freeze your balls off, which, I mean, I guess. Fine. I don’t need them anymore anyway.
Walmart was playing “Heavy Metal Drummer” by Wilco and I swear recently they must have recalculated their individual-store demographic and reassigned my store from a rural, Chatham County store to a suburban Chapel Hill store or something, because the music has taken a step up in alternativeness of late.
I also used the automatic key maker in the entryway of Walmart – a robot will make key copies for you for $4 a key and that thing absolutely ruled I am 100% a convert I am never going to go to a moody store employee again to get a key made this is one place I’m 100% in support of robots taking our jobs. I had a hunch this is the case cuz, like, six months ago, I saw a dude using that machine and I asked him “hey does that thing work?” And he replied so enthusiastically — “this thing rules!” — that I’ve been looking for an excuse to get a key made ever since, so thank you, new Somerville apartment, for giving me an excuse finally. You may have given me jock itch but you fulfilled my dream of making keyts from a robot.
Last night I read a 130 page podcast transcript of the history of Costco, which is also the history of Walmart and Amazon, all stemming from an American retail genius named Sol Price, who was a saint among men, started a company called FedCo, got his lunch eaten by Walmart, where Sam Walton, Sol’s friend, blatantly ripped him off but married the model to decent capital resources and outscaled him. Sol lost FedMart in the fallout from a poorly chosen investment partner, got fired, rented new office space the next day and worked on his next project, the massively successful Price Club, which Sam Walton also ripped off, except this time several of Sol’s most trusted deputies, also started a Price Club clone in the Pacific Northwest, with Sam’s blessing. This place was called Costco, and eventually Costco was successful enough to acquire Sol and Price Club, and outscale Sam’s Club, and not lose to them. Along the way Jeff Bezos would grill Soll as well and modeled a ton of his processes after Sol’s innovations as well.
Anyway, gripping “transcript,” and honestly, they could take, oh, I don’t know, two hours, and turn the transcript into a book. But i guess they crank out one of these things every week or so, god knows how they do that, and honestly, I want to “read’ them all. I am violently opposed to listening to podcasts but I’m happy to read book length transcrips from them. Gonna read the Doug Demuro podcast next.
Also Walmart played “Easy Lover.”
I also bought Q-Tips.
Also “Ballad of a Homeschool Girl” is a briliant song name and so far, upon repeated close listens, the album tracks on Guts are as good as the singles. I am stunned that “All American Bitch” isn’t a single yet, and “Lacy” is just one of the craziest songs I’ve heard in a while lyrically, and the big part of “Making the Bed” reminds me of Snow Patrol and their most anthemic.
Out with the Taylor and in with the Oliva hot Guts autumn.
So a reporter asked Tim Cook basically (paraphrasing here) “if you’re so horny for the environment and you’re so, so gay, why aren’t you just as activist about Apple advertising on Twitter and doing business in Texas” and Tim just completely whiffed the question, didn’t really engage with it seriously, because, I mean, there is no good answer. Companies are like humans, sort of, in that we care about some issues more than others, I personally care about not living in a Fascist country much more than I care about some of Biden’s absolutely idiotic policies (ahem Covid). And I guess a company is the same way, but also… not? Apple under Tim took a stand in North Carolina with the bathroom bill but here they are giving money to Elon Musk and also making every exception in the world for him. Here they are operating a giant office and factory in Texas, here they are operating a giant office and factory in China. I absolutely could not be a public CEO, or if I were, I would be like Sol Price who by all accounts was a genius for coming up with business ideas but a terrible operator but also an absolutely stand-up saint of a man.
CEO: Faustin bargians, Sophies choices left and right. That’s pretty much the job.
I have re-jiggered my reading habits and I am going to clear out all of the articles I have emailed my Kindle, and then I am going to read articles before books from here on out. It will probably take me ten days to clear out the articles, but I think it’s worth it. I’ve only been adding an article or two every day, it’ll slow down my book consumption but the articles have mostly been worth it, and since I don’t fly much anymore I don’t have a space in my life for them. It’s been rewarding. I’ve read all of the New York Times’ series on water depletion and it is just majestic, I mean, they build the country’s only database of wells. When the Times is on, the Times is on.
We will just ignore the times they’re “off” for now.
Jennfier Westin, a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives from a battleground district in Virginia, has announced her retirement since she did not respond to the medication given to her for emerging Parkinson’s, which is a highly tell-tale sign, later confirmed, that she does not have Parkinson’s at all, but rather Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, a disease like Parkinson’s except it is faster, does not respond to any medication, has no known cure, and kills its victims in an average of seven years. In the case of my father, it took him in less than a year after his diagnosis, so I am deeply sympathetic to Jennifer Westin and her family. I suspect her healthcare is of a somewhat higher caliber than my fathers was, and this was caught somewhat more quickly, so I wish her as long a life as possible.
I miss my dad he was a good person. Like I said at his funeral: never afraid to say he loved me, never embarrassed to kiss a boy, his son.
PSP is a shit disease and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Jane got eye drops for her Pink Eye, and she seems to be responding to it. I mean, not that I’ve seen her. Oh shit gotta go take my covid test so I can go home today one sec. Okay that is going. Anyway, Emma’s all like “I dunno, I think maybe you shouldn’t come home, I got her illness and what’s the point of you getting it too” and haha the joke is on them, I didn’t get anyone sick from going to see Godflesh and Peter Gabriel but the Chatham County Schools got the rest of my family sick. That or Emma is secretly trying to divorce me. I shouldn’t say that one should not joke about divorce, or rather, only divorcees can joke about divorce. Anyway, joke’s on her because I once got an international, disesase-resistant form of Pink Eye on the 1996 Cindytalk tour where I suffered Pink Eye from Flint, Michigan (Alvin’s) to Seattle (Off Ramp) to all the way down the west coast to Florida (Sapphire Supper Club) and back up the east coast until I could find a doctor who would secretly import from Canada the only medicine known to fix this form of Pink Eye, and this said medicine was not available in the US. I clearly blame Flint and its water and its proximity to Canada for this variant. It sucked.
Also this is separate from the, mmm, gonna say 2002 ish Freezepop “Pink Eye Red Eye” tour, where *I* did not get Pink Eye, even as others did. Becuase I had previously had the international, disease-resistant Pink Eye. Which sucked.
No one on the tour touched my pillows, though.
Moody and quiet playlist today. All new except Leonard. I mean the Pumpkins is old but I never listened to Mellon Collie, that sellout.
Good news everyone my covid test was negative I am now three-and-a-half days out from Man Ray and Godflesh and the Middle East’s 4,800 CO2 levels I can go home now to get Pink Eye.