Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1038
A long dream, deep Kjartansson cut, schools could be cool about slow mornings but they aren't, family illnesses, new music, AI and artists estates, road ecology and deer
Good morning, friends. Hola. How are you? I am good. Anyone re-read Viktor Frankl recently? Does his “finding happiness in a concentration camp” spiel work with “finding happiness while atrocities are happining in the world” angst? Asking for a friend. Might be time for a re-read.
Supposed to have today off, but I forgot today is the day for our annual “security tabletop,” which is, apparently, basically D&D for getting hacked. I mean, I’m not sure. It’s the first annual. But apparently we all role play our actual roles and I do hope there are dice involved. Should be a good time. Playing the role of CEO means I get to arbitrarily make decisions that will fuck everything up for no reason. That’ll be just great. Also I already lived through this in reality once, six or seven years ago, and it was fucking horrible and traumatic and I spent about six days glued to my computer with a Zoom on while Emma brought my food to my computer so, you know, super fun to have an annual post-traumatic reminder of it.
Had a dream last night that Ben Palmer goaded me into being a stowaway on a luxury cruise liner named the Titanic 2. We slept on ice floats near the boat at night (there was much kit but we slept en plein air, the actual translation not the school of painting), which was kind of fun, actually. The boat stopped in Singapore where we went to a party at a club at the top of a skyscraper and Aubrey Sabala and Sam Valenti and Colin Nagy were there and the party was super fun, but in the dream Singapore had a 1AM curfew so we had to go back to the boat.
Next day there was show by the National in the main hall and Ben and I sat with his ex, which was awkward. I went to the bar and ordered Ben a Malort and Coke (I’m not aware of Ben ever having had Malort but who knows), and I got a Sapphire and Tonic. Ben’s ex ordered “something fabulous,” so I had the bartender make “something fabulous.” He asked me what else she liked and all my info was, like, thirty years old but I told him, trying to explain Terri’s Red Deaths at Man Ray in the process. While we were doing this, some super sophisticated guy came to the bar and nodded at a beige opaque metal jar on the bar and said “Ca Va?” And the bartender looked in and said “she’s not quite ready yet but I think we can work with it” and the suave man nodded and the bartender proceeded to make a cocktail involving several items I had absolutely no idea even existed, and I felt like a complete Philistine (loaded word these days maybe?).
So then I had to pay but I was a stowaway and did not have a room number so I asked Ben’s ex and she said no, but then I found Kevin Kearney and Micah and we were all very excited to run into each other and of course Kevin hooked me up and I Venmo’d him. Then he asked about my boat fling, which was, I suddenly knew, Marion Cotillard, who I had been seeing, apparently, though that part of the dream i didn’t actually experience, dammit. But I looked up and she was in the VIP balcony with Winona Ryder and Kate Moss, who were both wearing the outfits they were wearing when I saw them in the VIP balcony at the Primal Scream show on the XTRMNTR tour.
Then the National came on and asked for requests and I asked them to play “Sorrow” for six hours and they laughed and said “okay” and everyone was mad at me (deep Kjartansson cut there). Somewhere in there I saw my ex girlfriend the one who doesn’t talk to me and she gave me a warm, genuine smile, so that was nice. When it was over I wandered around and found my parents, who used to go on a lot more luxury cruises than I ever did. Then I felt dumb for bumming off of Kevin Kearney because I could have just worked something out with my dad. I was, obviously, very happy to see them. Then my dad and I wandered around and it was great and we ran into Carrie Hillard and my dad was happy to see her because my dad always used to sit there and wonder what was up when I would go out with Carrie and Vern and Rebecca every evening and I was not dating any of them and he always kind of missed them.
Then the dream ended and it was very cold in the house. I am turning into Mr. Rogers. I come inside, take off my coat and shoes and then immediately put on an indoor coat and shoes.
Sorry I just explained my dream for three paragraphs but fuck it sometimes you gotta just do that. I am fascinated that this dream hit on social groups in every place I ever live (there was a brief neighbor appearance at the National show so that counts), people spanning 40 years. That was nice. If the last dream I ever have is something like that, I will be happy.
PSA new Drop Nineteens album today. Very proud of them. Very excited. Can’t wait to see them in reunited form. Kinda want to go to a show in a city other than Boston. I mean, I’m going to the Boston show, don’t get me wrong, but would love to go in some other city so they are not swamped with old friends and I can chat with Paula and Steve been a very long time for both of them, and different decades from each other.
New Olivia Rodrigo today too, from the new Hunger Games movie. I would also like to chat with Olivia Rodrigo backstage in a minor US city but that seems substantially less likely.
Oh yeah and new Beatles. Look yeah its a pretty good song but Doug — shit, Doug you probably don’t know this but you are my creative executor — anyway, Doug, don’t let them use AI or ML on any of my art after I’m dead. Nada zip zilch, zero. Unless, you know, that’s the only way anyone will ever consumer it ever again or something, like books are gone and the only way you can read a book is by having a robot read it to you with color commentary or something. You can let them make a hologram of me at Coachella but it has to have a giant potbelly. K thanks.
My road ecology book is talking about deer now and it is so awesome. Also I am looking at a deer right now in my back yard. Deer synchronicity. Look at that crazy stat from the Kindle screenshot above (Facebook readers you are missing out consider subscribing!) Isn’t that crazy? There are so many deer! When cars first came round there was something like a hundred roadkill every mile, which is bonkers, but none of them were deer. Nowadays most roadkill is deer. DVCs (deer-vehicle collisions) kill 500 people a year. There is a DVC in New York state alone every eight minutes. Virginia loses a billion dollars a year in automotive damage just to DVCs. And these numbers are probably low: statistics say potentially only 1 in 10 DVCs are known to authorities. Deer are everywhere. Except Alaska we have MVCs and damn those are a lot more lethal for the humans. Freakin terrifying, MVCs.
I love deer so much but apparently they are very divisive. I mean I am a gardener and they eat all my shit but I still love them. Deer rule.
Look at this awesome sculpture Jane made I am just amazed. Am I proud papa or is it genuinely shockingly good for a six year old no idea but I think it rules. I told her I would put it on a shelf and she would forget about it and it would sit there for years and years and years until I died and she had to clean off the shelf and then she would see it again. Luckily my daughter does not yet understand morbid humor and took it with near apathetic equanimity.
Jane didn’t want to go to school again today and I realized last night that the whole thing is stupid. They have this whole system in the afternoon where you have a number in your car and they see the number know which kid with which it is associated and then let your particular kid out of the school to go into your particular car. My point here is that this is not how things used to be ten, twenty years ago. They have used new technology (I’m not sure what technology but there is clearly some sort of lookup and notification system) to respond to modern situations (in this case super-depressing ones with school shootings and parental paranoia).
But they don’t do any of this shit in the mornings. They totally could! I remember reading a book not too long ago, about race in America, and one thing that really stuck with me was one of the side effects of desegregation was that all these suburban schools kept getting mad at black kids for being late and one black mother was like “what is your problem you are just applying your white-ass culture of punctuality to a kid raised in a culture that does not care about that shit” and it totally stuck with me! It is absolutely, utterly unnecessary that schools have a stick up their butt about punctuality. They could open the school at, like, seven, and they could let you drop your kid off anywhere between, say, seven and 8:30 or even 9. It is all arbitrary and made up! And the activities in the morning could be flexible enough to allow this. They could rework the whole thing so that millions of parents do not needlessly get stressed every morning.
This morning I had to walk her in again and we ran into one of her classmates (only reason I managed to get her to go inside) and that classmate’s dad, whom I met last weekend at Jane’s party. And as we were walking back to the car we both commisserated at how hard it is to get them there on time. We all know this. Every parent has a problem with shoes or breakfast or teeth or getting in the car or out of the car and these fucking schools that we pay for are like “whatever man, we still worship at the altar of the kind of teachers that Pink Floyd sang about even though we pretend in other ways to be progressive. But our default is to make your life more difficult.”
Super cool.
Also I just got her report card and they refuse to say on it she is doing anything beyond her age which is totally weird? Last time they gave an impenetrable number. but when I finally found an interpreter online it confirmed what we thought, that she’s reading somewhere between a fourth and fifth grade level. But the report card refuses to give 4s, which means exceeding her grade, even though everyone knows it. And I mean, I am not a pressure-putting parent, I don’t care if she gets a 1, but it bugs TF out of me they are just… lying? It is super weird and does not make me feel comfortable at all.
Thank you for all your concern about Jane. After some back and forth with the doctor and pharmaicst, we have a special kid’s chewable version of her antibiotic coming today. Emma got one down last night after hours of effort, so hopefully the gap isnt too long. Doctor thinks it will be fine. Cough seems on the mend.
Emma, however, is feeling worse, we are not sure the antibiotic is working on her at all, which seems crazy it would work on one of them but not the other. She is super sick. If you are a friend of Emma’s please send her some well-wishing today, k, thanks.
W Hotel in a better, alternate universe playlist for you today. All new stuff. Oh! Yeah! New Difference Engine! I need to talk about that. Okay we’ll talk about that more on Monday. So exciting. And on yeah Moonshake and Her Space Holiday are old. Man that Her Space Holiday song. So good. Hottest fans in indie rock, Her Space Holiday.
Oh shit tabletop exercise is starting gotta go. Talk Monday!