Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1101
Parental fail, Taylor discourse, moving the hoop house, dragging grape vines, five-star hug systems
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am not great, thanks. Jane was in absolute resistance mode. Wouldn’t even talk to me, except to say “why.” Wouldn’t get dressed, wouldn’t let me dress her, refused to even use words for a good ten minutes. The whole thing was precisely engineered to rile me up. I had to leave the room. She started screaming. Woke up Emma, who of course perfectly calmed her down and I could hear Jane chattering away to her and I am so hurt and upset and I’m in this irrational K hole of resentment and anger at my daughter, and I will never, ever get what I need in the way of some sort of closure or apology, I will just have to bear the wound until I hopefully forget about it. Because I am a bad parent and can’t read minds, and it is my fault because I am not the one who’s six. It will be a miracle if it doesn’t ruin my whole day.
Look. I love Taylor, I really do. And I am a fan, I really am, inasmuch as a dude is allowed to be a fan, inasmuch as a 50 year old is allowed to be a fan, even though she has been doing this for seventeen years and I’ve been a fan for like thirteen of them and the new fan gatekeepers are, like, twenty. But I absolutely do not need another Taylor album this year, I didn’t even really want Reputation (Taylor’s Version) this year. I want to sit with the art that already exists, and, lord help me, let another woman artist have a little airtime.
I don’t need an fuck-the-rules album announcement at the Grammys. I watched a dude say something along these lines on the internet get absolutely reamed on Threads because he had the temerity to suggest Taylor maybe talk about someone other than herself in her speech, and everyone was like “OMG IT’S FOR THE FANS SHUT UP YOU’RE TERRIBLE.” It’s gotta be said, the fans are creeping me out, the whole thing is becoming a cult.
I have paid my forty-seven dollars and forty-eight cents for her new album. I will probably pay that much again at least once as she surprises us with new color variants or Target special editions. I will buy the stupid ViewMaster or whatever equivalent it is this time. But it is exhausting. Exhausting.
And now that I’ve said this I will be excommunicated from all of my Swiftie coms channels. That will be sad.
Kacey Musgraves has a new album coming out this year, by the way.
I really did have a great weekend. Fucking sucks that all the good feeling from it is gone and it is 7:47 AM. Woo.
But I will tell you about it anyway. Maybe I can recapture the satisfying exhaustion from a job well done.
Walmart was lovely, great old time. There was another black Lightning Lariat in the parking lot. It was cleaner than mine and did not have stickers on it for the Food Pantry, Ghostly and Wax Trax. It was parked in a handicap spot. I am seeing Lightnings everywhere now. Must not be selling well.
There is a new for-Easter-I-guess Lemon Crisp Kit Kat and that was very exciting. It tastes better than you would imagine.
There was a 4k UHD Blu Ray of Beetlejuice in the “archival” section which is mostly a primer for upcoming sequels, but that is fine. Gotta say, though, the thing has the trickiest copy protection I’ve ever seen on a UHD Blu Ray. Thing took an hour to mount, maybe six hours to rip. Actually, I don’t even know if the rip worked. Let’s check.
Nope.
Friday evening I went to Hillsboro via the back roads to pick up some Packout dollies and it was a lovely drive through the woods and was very therapeutic. Mighta been the best thing this weekend.
Except for the headlights. Whoever it was that got trolled on the internet last week for saying headlights are too bright these days was right. And it’s not just cuz I’m getting old. At one point, in the middle of an unending string of blinding lights (Weeknd shoutout) I saw a nice, dim pair of lights that were very clearly from an old car and I was pretty sure was a Plymouth and sure enough, once the car got into my headlights it was a 70’s Plymouth Valiant aka Dodge Dart with its nice, reasonable headlights the way got and nature intended.
Saturday morning I did a ton of chores around the office, some Viridian shit, kept Jane company as she played with her microscope, and I set up a new computer for her and 750 words and it was so cute and now she has her own desk in my office and she is into spending more time in here and it was great gosh remember when you got along with your daughter. What a time.
Oh also Jane learned how to scratch records so maybe she will be a turntablist. Oh god am I going to have to spend my 60’s in night clubs?
Sunday morning I spent it with Jane upstairs in the playroom and I let her have the TV to play her Lego Movie game while I used my poor ignored old travel work laptop to do some work.
But the exciting thing was that I dismantled the giant hoop house outside my office. Took both afternoons. Was a ridiculous amount of work: slowly, patiently untangling the grape vines from the netting. Hours of untangling. The root system on the grapes and the rose bush both went through their pots, into the ground, six- ten- foot root systems. Just insane. Then I had to separate the Birdies Beds containers from their soil and lift them out and over the soil pile. One of them was an extra-large Birdies Bed and it had metal bars running through the soil, so I couldn’t use the trick of prying the bottom up and just pulling it over the soil: I had to dig it out manually. Took an hour.
Then I had to bring everything to the other house. Getting the big grape vine to the other house was comical — thing dragged behind the truck something like twenty feet. Just dragged it down the road. Will it live? With so much abuse and no root system? Will the rose bush live, with 80% of its branches and 80% of its roots gone? No idea. But better to try than not, I suppose. I would hate to be set back 2 years on my grapes.
But that phase — the hardest phase — is done. I have five more Birdies Beds to dislodge and move, but they are the easy kind. That’ll be one afternoon. Then I got a neighbor with a tractor to help me move the dirt.
Then I gotta wash the things and re-fill them. Oof.
Man I wish I recapture that feeling of accomplishment.
Instead of this glorious feeling of parental failure.
Man I had so many good topics for today, too. Let’s try one on for size, see how it feels.
Jane and I developed a star rating for hugs: one star for both arms, one star if you lean in, one star if you squeeze, one star if you’re kind, one star if you’re gentle. We spent the weekend rating hugs and it was so, so cute. People are giving Taylor grief for not acknowledging or hugging Celine Dion when she presented her an award, and then other people are saying it was her moment, why should she acknowledge Celine, and also Celine is sick and can’t be hugged, but also here is a photo of Taylor hugging Celine back stage, because Taylor will hug Celine, just not when it’s her moment and if you can’t understand why that is good and right (“State of Grace” shoutout) then you are not a fan. And you should really get off the internet and touch grass and live your life so your kid can make you feel like a heel without uttering a single word my god herteenage years are going to be insane.
Okay yeah you know what? I’ll save these other topic bangers until I can present them in a more cheery light.
Today’s Media of the Day is this new track from Six Organs of Admittance, which is short, lovely, acoustic and melodic, man, Ben Chasny can do anything. Noise, rock, folk, psych, even a little pop here and there. Man of many talents.
Here’s to better days.
I reluctantly agree with you about Taylor. I know she's savvy enough to understand overexposure so I hope she realizes some of this herself. I always think of uber-successful authors like Stephen King, JK Rowling, or Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series), where if you line up their chronology of books you can see the moment when they got successful enough that they stopped listening to their editors and started churning out these TOMES. Yes, hardcore fans always want MORE MORE MORE, but those shouldn't be the only people you listen to.
That old Dodge Dart!! I loved that car.
i’m sad she didn’t announce rep tv. that’s what i really want. also i was in a buying queue for an hour to pre-order the new album and i had eras tour ticketmaster remembrances. i might need a self-moderated break…
conversely, i pre-ordered kacey’s record (which i hope comes out before taylor’s) with ease 😁