Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1074
Lots of corrections, Times suit, chores, Trump suits, Ikea run, Rebel Moon, the trees of Apple Maps, Mary Baker Eddy's telephone, apartment rationale
Good morning! 9:10 AM. Running late on the ‘ole GMHHAY this morning, apologies. Jane needed attention. We did my 750 words together. It was fun. She also informed me that she did not want her normal breakfast. So we had cheese and crackers and grapes. Not the worst breakfast for having been picked out by a six year old. Vacation is fun.
Some housekeeping items from previous editions this week:
I would like to apologize for saying the Deluxe Town Diner was in Arlington not Watertown. I do not know the difference between these places, I couldn’t even tell you where they were on a map, other than they’re both over there past Cambridge and Allston. I did not have a car when I lived here, these places were mostly academic. I did work for a season at a design firm out on the 77 bus, I think that was Arlington? It was a fun job, mostly for BBN Technologies (they actually put me on site at BBN for a month or so), mostly in Powerpoint, and the design company had a cool transparency printer where they printed Powerpoint slides onto transparencies and actual 35mm slides, back before you could just project your PPT presentations with a projector. Man Powerpoint really was an amazing app. I strongly encourage everyone to read the history of Powerpoint book, Sweating Bullets. Great book. Also one time Emma and I got a flat tire in Watertown. Oh and we rented the van for the Cindytalk tour in Watertown. And Annie and I saw.. um.. a Wim Wenders film in Arlington? Or was it something else? Anyway my knowledge of these things is still limited.
I would like to clarify that your piece of art does not have to be good to join the imaginary social network I was talking about. You just have to make one. It is a toll, not a roadblock.
I have been informed by a friend who had been reliably informed by an employee of the Christian Science Church, “back in the day” that there is a telephone in Mary Baker Eddy’s tomb so that she can make a call and get out when she is reincarnated. The Mary Baker Eddy library refutes this “rumor” and goes to gret lengths, doth protest too much you may say, to explain how the rumor arose, but I am going to choose to believe this anyway, because the whole damn world has lost its mind and believes in conspiracy theories so I may as well get in on the fun.
Ikea run was mostly painless. The Ikea in Stoughton has a joke of a Click and Collect, though. You gotta go inside. My order was 30 minutes late. I also had to pee, which meant that I was going inside anyway and once you go inside an Ikea, you are done for. Still I was in and out in… about an hour? Could be worse.
I am sad that Apple Maps took me some weird route there so I did not take the route I used to take all the time back when I worked by the Ikea. Didn’t recognize anything. But I did take the normal route back, so things started to look recognizeable from 1998 or so. The Wendy’s is gone. But everything else was mostly the same. And I drove the route home that I used to drive every day: Me, Jill and Kris all carpooling in my girlfriend’s car. Megan was so nice to let us use that car, that was really awesome of her. She is such a nice person. Still is, to this day. Anyway, the drive made me miss Jill. I still remember this one day the three of us were driving back from work and it was sunny out and we were listening to some great song and Jill just said “isn’t this great? Great music, great weather, good friends, the road? I am so happy right now” and she really just made us all so happy. Jill was so good at that. Gone from us too quickly. I still think about her all the time.
Anyway, Apple Maps draws trees, actual 3D trees, into its maps. Except they’re not actually where the real trees are. It is really weird. They’re sort of close but not the actual trees, I don’t really get why they do this. Also there is a serious cognitive dissonance of seeing this green, leafy, healthy trees on your map while in reallity the trees are all leafless and winterized. If you’re gonna try and make things look fake real, but it in a bunch of dead looking trees. Just so weird. Fake trees in our maps.
Emma and I then spent most of the day doing household setting-up chores. She organized cables for the projector and got her switch working. She built my KALLAX because we are a couple that knows Emma is better at building IKEA furniture than I am. Wait is IKEA actually capitalized all the time or am I just projecting LEGO onto it in some sort of pan-Scandanavian racism? [Double-checks.] No. In fact, IKEA is stylized in all caps, all the time. Guess I just absorbed that knowledge by osmosis. Anwyay, I built all eight drawers for the KALLAX and now it is in my bedroom here and now my bedroom is not cluttered with the bric-a-brack of an anti minimalist who “needs things” like some asshole. He needs multiple pairs of glasses and wrist and elbow braces and books and pictures and a computer and pens and… do minimalists have health problems I wonder?
All that’s left is I need to hang the two pieces of art and get the curtains sorted, but I am waiting on a curtain rod delivery, so that won’t be till tomorrow. I will get the art sorted today though, he said optimistically.
Watched Rebel Moon last night and man that movie is just so boringly tediously formulaic and absurd. Like.. it’s fine, it’s a sci fi film, there are worse ones, but somehow it manages to make you question even the most basic sci fi tropes because it does them all, and to excess. Why do so many expert fighters keep missing shots from ten feet away? Why do energy weapons make the same sounds being cocked as shotguns? Do they, like, add skeumorphic sounds to their weapons the way our phones make camera shutter clicks? Why in god’s name does Zack Snyder always use variable-speed fake cameras to change from “normal” speed to slow motion and pauses over and over? Like in Watchmen and 300 it sort of made sense because they were hommages to comic books so he would sort of “pause” the action on frames of film that resembled the comic book stills. But here it’s just made up! It is distracting and dumb. Why did I watch this film? What did I even expect. It basically delivered. It was exactly what I expected. Jokes on me. I could have watched May December or Saltburn or something but nope. I watched Rebel Moon and I am going to have to live with this.
The New York Times has sued OpenAI/ChatGPT for copyright violations and I am freakin here for it. The Times is dumb in a million ways and great in a million ways and absolutely horrific in a million ways but ten points to Gryff - er, the Times for this move. I regret to inform you that I have not yet read the suit but oh, I sure do intend to. Will report back.
Maine kicked Trump off their ballot, watched the Secretary of State on MSNBC last night and she laid out Maine election laws and made it clear she had no choice. Maine election laws strictly regulate her job and the timeline and the qualifications and Maine law did not allow for enough time for her to sit around and wait for the Supreme Court.
Our illustrious conservative justices have said time and time again that states have an absolute right to run their electoral systems as they see fit, but I suspect that whole body of jurisprudence will go out the window no problemo, just watch. They really are backed into a corner. There are respected legal scholars out there that insist that the Colorado ruling should be overturned, and I do respect their opinions, but the thing is their opinions are based on liberal orthodoxy and liberal interpretations of jurisprudence. Things like “well at one point they had an explicit mention of the presidency in the 13th amendment and then they took it out so clearly they do not intend for the amendment to apply to the presidency” and this is a very good point that me, as a liberal, would quite possibly agree with (though it’s worth noting they may have taken it out because it was self-evident). Because I believe in, you know, interpreting the constitution. But conservativre federalists pretend they don’t! They pretend that all that matters is what’s in the document.
And the document says “officer” and the constitution calls the presidency an “office” a bajillion times.
There are some smart people who also say that it would be absurd to let states decide who’s on their ballot for presidency because then states would do this all the time, kicking Biden off the ballot or Hillary or whomever. And we would have chaos. And I think they are right, mostly, but also! Conservatives don’t care about this! The constitution isn’t there to protect a two-party system and it has a perfectly serviceable protocol for if this were to happen: all the electors would go to DC and do their job as electors and if they couldn’t do it, the House of Representatives would do it for them. This is literally the thing Trump was relying on in his coup attempt. It’s all laid out in the constitution. Would it be insane? Sure, but that’s what they wrote! It is very clear! If you’re really a conservative federalist who only believes in the text of the constitution, this is by design a non-issue.
I don’t actually believe that these people are, you know, intellectually honest conservative federalists. I believe they are fascist-loving hypocrites. I have zero hope of them upholding the Colorado or Maine decisions. So this whole thing is a win-win for me. Either they blow my mind and do uphold them, or they do as expected and lay bare their utter hypocrisy and lies, further discrediting themselves. I mean, it’s not much, but it’s not nothing.
A friend asked what’s up with the Somerville apartment and I gotta answer him today in email so I may as well explain it to you guys too. AirBnbs are super expensive here. We spent a fortune last summer. Just an ungodly amount. And we love our friends and we love the park right next to their house. So when we were here last summer, we told them that if their tenants ever move out of their rental unit in their house, we would be interested. Those tenants had been there forever, like more than five years I think. And it was one of those roommate situations where if one roommate moves out the other just gets another roommate. So we did not expect this place to free up for maybe another three, four years.
But then, weirdly and shockingly to everyone, they moved out.
So we weren’t looking, but when it freed up, we knew it was the right move. Last year we stayed up here about a month, and like I said it was so expensive but it was also a giant pain because Airbnbs suck, one had mold and leaked and it’s super fun paying like a thousand dollars a night to house your family in leaking, moldy rooms. None of them were very good, they didn’t have woks or toilet seats or decent knives or whatever and you’re freakin traveling with a ton of stuff.
Also it was absolute luck we got one Airbnb, for half the visit, near our friends and the park. It was great staying in Salem the other half of the trip but it was also a pain to move. There are not that many Airbnbs in this part of Somerville suitable to our familial needs.
And we had a great time in Boston that summer so and we wanted to do it more often but then it gets even more expensive. And renting a place for a year is not cheaper, but when you add up the cost of Airbnbs for, like, six/seven weeks a year, you’re getting in the same ballpark.
So here we are. The end.
Also if you, my friend, ever need a place to stay in the Boston area, let me know and we can work something out. It’s not free, but it’s cheap AF for friends.
Gonna stay in today and do some more chores. Oh I do have to go to the hardware store and return a few things. My god I hate returns. They give me such anxiety. I always think they’re going to yell at me or something.
I guess this is the last entry of 2023. When I return next Monday it will be 2024. Like I’ve said before, I am a purist, so that means once the year is finally over I can do my various year-end wrap-ups. That will be fun.
I hope you have a lovely new year’s eve. Maybe if you’re in Boston, I might see you!
The IKEA drive was about 40 minutes each way, and I listened to my “All the Good” playlist on shuffle the whole way and it played so many good songs. So, for the last playlist of the year, here is my “Rick Goes to IKEA” Playlist. During the Patti Smith song, when she fully departs from Nirvana and starts reciting poetry, I got lost in a long road thought about why this Patti Smith cover works and a similar recent endeavor, that of Roger Waters ruining Dark Side of the Moon by spewing poetry over it most assuredly does not. It is it my differing opinions of Patti Smith and Roger Waters? Is it that it’s a cover of something he was previously involved in, thus bringing up connotations of petty bandmate erasure? I do not know, but I do know this Patti Smith cover rules. I have zero recollection whatsoever of ever having listened to this Cold Showers song, but it ruled, and that is the absolute brilliance of my music-listening system. Somewhere in the last seven years I heard that song in passing, liked it enough to star it, and here in 2023 I rediscover this great band. Just the best.
Happy new years, y’all. Talk soon.