Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1040
Sullivan tire, Lower Decks, parent teacher conferences, Youtuber as a living, some depressing politics stuff, Twilight Singers box set, the government fixed robocalls and no one noticed.
Well hello there, fine friend, you are looking just ducky today how goes it. I am okay, thanks. Up a little late today, it’s nice. Jane has today off. Parent teacher conferences. I have to leave for it in an hour, so this might be a little short today. Or I won’t finish it in time, and then it will go out late and I will feel like a failure. Probably should have gotten up earlier. But, you know, GMHHAY rules my life enough as it is. It is ridiculously difficult to make a daily newsletter of every topic under the sun, delivered to your inbox before 9:30 AM every day. Just absurd. I organize a monstrous amount of my life around it. Really makes you wonder.
Last night Emma and I put Jane to bed together and then watched one episode of TV – a magisterial finale of Star Trek Lower Decks which might be the greatest show ever made, just so freakin good. Puts all other trek in the 21st century to shame. Anyway, she went to bed early, I didn’t have to get up till 7:30 so I stayed up a little longer and caught up on my Youtube channels.
There was a guy who got 3 million views by making increasingly more complex LEGO builds that use used to sink increasingly more complex LEGO boats. It was a masterful piece of film, meticulously edited and shot, along with the amazing engineering behind the lego builds. The thing must have taken months, if not a year. As I was watching it I thought about how much of this dudes life he must have committed to making these Youtube videos. And how they truly were amazing pieces of art. But what a weird life. What a weird situation. I mean, at least 3MM Youtube views will net you some serious cash — maybe $50k. But that makes it even weirder. This may well be this dude’s job. I wonder how he explains his job to people: I make complicated LEGO contraptions and film them for Youtube. I mean of course he probably just says “I’m a Youtuber.” Or maybe he doesn’t! You never see his face! He could be completely anonymous for all I know.
Boy the Internet has facilitated some weird shit.
I did my weekly country flashcards yesterday, being Monday and all, and I did pretty good. I mixed up Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in a brain fart, and also mixed up Guinea and Ghana in another one, which was especially dumb since I got Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Guyana all correct. My mind was drifting. Anyway, it’s been… what? A year? Two? Since I started that mental exercise and I am happy that it’s still intact. I wonder how long I could go without doing the flashcards and still know where all the countries are. Months? Years? Will I ever forget where Slovenia, Malawi or Moldova are again? Yes, probably, right?
The ridiculously expensive Twilight Singers Box Set I ordered arrived yesterday and it is majestic, heavy, gorgeous. I am excited. It is, however, far too nice to play, and I gotta handle the thing with archival gloves so it is kind of… useless? It’s all white, which looks super cool but also utterly impractical. And the thing was shipped from England. But there is an inch-long rip on the edge of the box. So I gotta do that thing that I did with my Tindersticks box and ask One Little Indian if they will send me an extra box, which is always such a crap shoot. Will they comply? Will they even answer me? Am I being anal? Is it unreasonable to expect all your records to arrive unblemished from the mail? I don’t usually mind when it’s some $20 record but this thing cost a fortune. But man, it makes me feel so difficult. Then there are those people that order thousands of things online and return them all. I am not one of those people. I’ve returned maybe 50 things online in my life. Also they gotta ship this box all the way from England, oh, god, the carbon expenditure. I am a terrible person.
Hey are you in New England? Do you need new tires? Consider going to Sullivan Tire! The Sullivan family has just sold the Sullivan Tire chain to its employees, so now we have an other employee-owned company in America and that is very exciting. I am now stanning for Sullivan Tire. I used to go there when I lived in Allston but I did not particularly like it. But now! Yay Sullivan Tire.
Boy I sure do love employee-owned companies they really are just spiffing.
Oh hey have you noticed a decline in insane Robocalls in the last year? I have. Turns out the government finally did something about it and it (mostly) worked? Of course they exempted themselves, again, so you’re still gonna get a ton of political calls but by and large they have made a huge dent in the problem. Neat, huh? It’s very weird to me: a) that it took them so long, b) that they were able to do anything at all c) but when they finally decided to get around to doing something it actually went very quickly, and d) Biden — or really any other politician — did not take any credit for it, constantly, since it was a thing that annoyed almost every American and was routinely the butt of jokes about how the government can’t get anything done. And then they did get it done, and no one noticed or said anything and we all forgot about the issue, except we all kept our conviction that the government couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about even simple problems like robocalls, and we all kind of still believe that — I know I did — even though the problem went away cuz they fixed it. That is a weird little bundle of illogical human brain activity right there.
I guess it is time to say slightly more seriously that I am, obviously, in support of a ceasefire in Gaza and the whole thing is horrible and I want it to stop. Everything about it awful. The initial Hamas attacks are horrific. The civilian damage in Gaza is fucking terrible. The fact that the US Government is scared to call for a ceasefire, and rather are calling for a “pause” for some weird semantic games is just terrible. The fact that Isreal, today, is rightly pointing out all the carnage that the American war on terror caused as justification for their actions is utterly horrifying. The antisemitism is horrifying. The willful conflation of calls for a ceasefire and antisemitism is horrifying. The implication that calls for a ceasefire are ignoring the hostages are upsetting and, to my thinking, incorrect. We’ve seen terrorists give back hostages all the time. What we have not ever seen, at least not that I can think of in watching international affairs for almost four decades, is terrorist organizations giving back hostages while they are in an active shooting war. The invasion of Gaza seems almost certain to seal the fate of those hostages. A call for a ceasefire is, to me, a call for increasing the chance that those hostages live.
The impact its having on Jewish friends — from Zionists to Anti-Zionists (my Jewish friends seem about half and half) is horrifying. The fact that the Israelis are using American weapons and phosphorus to do this is horrifying. Do I understand the whole situation? No, of course not. Does anyone? No. Do I have opinions about a one-state, two-state, current-state solution? Of course. Will we have differences of opinions about this? Absolutely. But what I want is to be able to sit around a table at Tom and Jerry’s with my friends and talk about our differences of opinions about a solution in the middle east without acrimony, without accusations of antisemitism, and, most importantly, without a bunch of people — of any religion — dying while we are sitting around shooting the shit. That is what I want. Don’t @ me.
Ugh I have been avoiding talking about this even remotely concretely for weeks. And it does not seem a particularly great subject to wade into. There isn’t much benefit. But it is very hard to write this daily without mentioning the absolute horrors that are running through my head constantly because of this situation. Longtime readers know I do not handle large-scale human tragedies well — lol, like anyone can. I mean, I am still absolutely obsessed with the Ukraine War. I am still freaking out about Taiwan, about the spate of coups across Africa, about a million things. It is not pleasant. It is a paradox. I could “fix” it but what does it mean to “fix” yourself so that you do not feel horror at large scale, remote human suffering. I am not sure I want to be fixed. I also kind of think I probably already am fixed and my reactions are 100% correct. And, clearly, I can still function as a human being.
Anyway. The Virgin Prunes have finally remastered If I Die.. I Die and it is on Spotify finally in an extended form and we are just going to listen to that masterpiece instead until we go to Parent Teacher Conferences, where I will desperately want to know more about the lunatic energetic kid in class but will not be able to ask and they will not be able to tell me anything even though she is now a huge part of my daughter’s life and she talks about her all the time. C’est la vie.
All right quickie moody and quiet one here I gotta get going. Resorted to some old favorites. And there is a mellow new Kevin Drew album thats really great.
All right 10-4 good buddy over and out.