Good morning. Hello. How are you? #343
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I hope you’re doing okay. Me? I am good. I just got back from the weekly shopping trip, which has been reduced to its essence of just 30 minutes at Walmart. Which, I know, say what you want. But I can see and talk to the Walmart employees with mine own eyes and they like their jobs. And I only have to go to one place. Anyway. Good news for the subscribers here for Kit Kat content, because they did in fact have the lemon crisp Kit Kats, which is very exciting. I forgot to pick up an Apple Pie one, though. But I did get 2 birthday cake and a mint duo and a dark chocolate one, so I am feeling pretty good. I am very proud of how quickly I got in-n-out of that place, given all the weird things Emma added to the list that i had to find. Unlike Lowe’s Hardware — the other big box store I must suffer these days — Walmart doesn’t tell you in the app where a product is. Just whether or not they have it. Oh! But! Yesterday, Spotify decided to play for me, on random, Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Steven’s majestic Top Gun Anthem and I turned it up and was rocking out to it thoroughly enjoying myself until my lawyer called. And I never got around to finishing it up. BUT today, at the Walmart, I was over in their (really quite fantastic) “cheap electronics for old people” section by the photo processing station, where you can buy $5 cassette decks and $10 VCRs, picking up an actual clock for my mom, and right next to it was the vinyl section. Walmart, in the year 2021, has a vinyl section. It is pretty good too! Had Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey and a few other things I already have on vinyl. But one thing they had that I do not have on vinyl was a nice red vinyl edition of the Top Gun soundtrack. In 2021. At a Walmart. Madness. Of course, it’s the shorter version, unlike my 1986 CD, without the Memories, the other fantastic faltermeyer composition, but beggar’s can’t be choosers. So now I am listening to Steve Steven’s soaring guitar solo at 7:57 AM. Life could be worse.
I, for one, will not deny my intense anticipation for the sequel.
Programming note: No one commented one way or the other on whether I should do headers, or bold or something. I am still ridiculously torn about it. But you know what? For this one day, I am going to do some. Tel me if you like it.
Emma and I watched Nomadland and it was absolutely as good as everyone said it was. It was like… it was like someone telling you you’re not crazy when you’re starting to think you’re losing it. What a beautiful film, and relatively devoid of plot. Not devoid of stories, but devoid of plot. Just beautiful. Everyone was right and I should have watched it much sooner. Josh Bis was totally right, just like he was with Cold War. That guy has an amazing knack of absolutely picking out the best films of the year.
Good news everyone I got the pine needle shredding video done, a review of the Worx WG430. I spent $7 today to get a small trash can to fit under it. It should be great. I am excited.
No one watches these things. That’s okay. It’s there for the day someone has the inspiration to shred pine needles for their own mulch. Sometimes I like to create content just for the search engine results. Sometimes this works out. I wrote the Trek Economics essay because the Google search for “Economics of Star Trek” yielded no real results. And look at it now.
So I had a real weird egg experience yesterday (ha this bolding thing might be worth it just for bolding things like “I had a real weird egg experience.”). First up, two nights ago I was watching a very good New York Times Cooking YouTube about making a Caramel Cake (did I mention I watch a lot of YouTube?). It looks delicious:
But Millie Peartree casually says in it “I’m just gonna break this egg over here to make sure it’s not bad, because I’ve had a bad egg before and you don’t want that in your mix.” And I thought “well, yeah, sure, but I mean, how often does that happen? But Millie’s a pro. Do I need to start worrying about this? naaaaah.”
And then! Yesterday morning I am making breakfast for Jane and I get the waffles and veggie sausage in the oven to heat up and I light a burner and butter the pan and crack and egg in it and… it is bad! It’s like cloudy and milky with solids in it, looks almost poached or something. It was so weird! I’ve never seen anything like it. So I shrug it off and crack another one. And it was bad too! All four eggs left in the container were! Like.. what is up with that? My theory is that they were actually not bad, but just slightly cooked (maybe heat? Except… where?) But I didn’t take any chances. Also I felt bad because the rest of that dozen eggs had been used to make my mom’s hard boiled eggs for the week. I asked her about it and she said they were fine? So… like… the eggs were not bad? Or just those four were? In any case, I blame Millie Peartree.
And then after breakfast, out of the blue, Jane says “sorry about the bad eggs” like she’s an adult human. Creepy.
Also: a propos that paragraph two paragraphs back: what is up with the “no quotes from two people in a paragraph” rule. That rule is made to be broken, right? Like… sure, maybe not in dialog in a book or something, but with internal monologues and tv quotes and the like? I don’t know. I thought about breaking that paragraph up but it seemed wrong. It seemed like I was delaying getting to the point.
Oh man I forgot how good this Loverboy song is on the Top Gun soundtrack. This soundtrack is so good. It might be the second-best soundtrack ever.
Actually all this unexpected soundtrack talk is weird because I woke up this morning with Can’t “Last Night’s Sleep” in my head, which is from the best soundtrack ever, the Until The End of the World soundtrack. I think we all know this right? I mean. Wim Wenders convinced not one but two of the most influential rock bands ever to get back together just for his soundtrack. That is… impressive.
A thing I am getting tired of is this new(ish) tactic that Instagram advertisers do where they make an ad for Instagram Stories that has three or four frames of one image that then goes to their main image, in an effort to trick you and make you think you missed a piece of Instagram Story content and get you to click back and check it again, and check it, like, four times. I am not sure what they think they’re accomplishing with this other than annoying users. Also, wouldn’t this, like, increase their cost? Does Facebook count that as multiple views of an ad and thus charge for it? Eh, probably not actually. Well, it’s still annoying.
Regarding my work-related post on Monday, it looks like China has decided that they government is just going to make a workaround for Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency framework. Apple has been very clear that workarounds are not allowed. This is a framework of principles, they say, as much as actual technical details. No workarounds. This is good and I agree with it, for what it’s worth. But it seems like this could be setting up Apple and China for quite the showdown? Is Apple really going to block all of China’s Unicorn game companies? Tencent is huge. Is Apple really going to block a Chinese state-sponsored adtech company and… expect that it has no impact on their not-small retail presence in China? I feel like this could get very ugly very fast. Unless Apple just gives up. But that doesn’t seem very Apple (Apple Television aside). Or is it going to transpire that China gets to break all these rules but no one else? It’s early days but I have a sneaking suspicion this could be a big mess.
Oh hey final question: Californians: Where are you guys on this Newsom recall? Is this just a Republican hit job? I mean, seems like he bungled some stuff? But… a Recall? Are you into it? You guys so wacky.
Happy St. Patrick’s day. In honor of St. Patrick’s day, we’re gonna do a… ladies mix. I did think briefly about doing an Irish mix and subject everyone to the Virgin Prunes, but… well, the best Virgin Prunes isn’t on Spotify and where are you gonna go after that? Don’t answer that I know there are plenty of good Irish bands. Like the Dudley Corporation. Great guy, Dudley. And I am, like, a quarter Irish? An eighth? I mean, my mom’s name is Coghlan. Okay I will stop trying to justify it I just didn’t get around to it, okay? I am sorry. So we get ladies. God what a good mix. Old and new, ladies just making awesome rock and pop.
Okay I think that’s all I got. This feels a little short today but my notebook of topics is depleted (well, save for a few topics for which I am waiting for the right moment to unleash) and, you know, we wouldn’t want to be accused of writing about nothing. Quelle horreur. Also I got a stupid busy morning and I am distracted. Gotta go get Jane, PT is gonna be back at 10, company all hands meeting at 10. Wednesday is the only day my sacrosanct no-meetings-till-after-lunch is regularly violated. I don’t loce it, but. You know. One of a team. Sometimes you gotta make exceptions. I get back at them all by having Jane with me on the Google hangout. Jane is learning all of the Timehopper’s names it is cute.
Hope your Wednesday is Spiffing. Hrm. Youtube needs a clip from Room With a View of the line “George Emerson is Spiffing.” I will get on that.