Good morning. Hello. How are you? #363
Chuck Negron & Demi Lovato, hypertextuality, fambly, mysterious slippery floors, Manchin (again) and his stupid op-ed, variants, Fabergé eggs, Apple patenting recycling techniques.
Good morning. Hello! How are you? Doing okay? I am good this morning. Which is weird because yesterday was another very difficult day. But I have today off, which is nice. I was getting worried these letters to you were going to veer off into an insane depression spiral and everyone would be like “is he okay?” like I am currently thinking about Demi Lovato while listening to her new album. This album reminds me so much of Chuck Negron’s autobiography Three Dog Nightmare: a work of art written by an addict wanting so much to be an addict who is on the road to recovery, but it is not really clear that things are that okay yet. I am worried about you, Demi.
Three Dog Nightmare is amazing, by the way. Ot one point the dude literally buys all the heroin in LA and consumes it all. It is nuts.
Maybe Chuck and Demi should do a duet. That’d be something.
But I’m doing okay today. After all, look at this:
I realized the other day that not only is reading these posts on Facebook sad because you don’t get awesome photos like that, but also there are no links. Occasionally I get a comment, and I’m confused because the comment is telling me something I just said. But then I realize I didn’t really say it. I linked to it.
This is gonna be a problem if I ever turn these posts into a book. It’ll lose the meaning of those links. I guess I will live with that. hypertextuality, blah blah. I have been thinking about the book version of these again lately. Not because I expect it will sell or anything, but because it’ll “close the book,” so to speak, on this episode of my life, and lord knows we all want that. But I decided yesterday that the book needs to not just tidily wrap up. It needs to show this long slog for all its worth. If it is to accomplish anything, it needs to drive home how stupidly long this went on, long after the trill of quarantine is gone, Jack and Dianne.
Woke up yesterday and Jane was immediately difficult, got stuck in a “try again” loop on the very first thing we do in the day, which is walk to the window, open the blinds, and say hi to grammy’s house. And I was still pretty emotionally exhausted from the day before. And it was so hard to help her through it, I kept almost losing it, but I managed to stay patient and kind and while we did have a meltdown and immediately fell twenty minutes behind schedule on the worst day of the week for me to do so, we got back on track, and in the end I was only about 10 minutes late to my morning meeting. And I have to say, from that moment on, she was actually pretty good. Emma got the Johnson and Johnson shot yesterday (yay!) but she had a pretty bad reaction in the evening, so I was sitting downstairs watching an Ariana Grande video on YouTube and Emma texts “help.” I come upstairs and she’s in her old mommy chair in Jane’s room, shivering, and Jane is standing over her trying to make mommy happy. Clearly worried about her and distraught. It’s well past her bedtime at this point, so I get Emma in bed and add about six blankets to her — she doesn’t have a fever, but she is cold and shaking. I explain to Jane what “sick” is and explain that mommy will be better soon, but that Jane has to go to bed. I take her into the bedroom and do Daddy Bedtime routine with her, and she just does it all, completely okay with it all, and climbs into bed and falls asleep. She was great. And I’m not sure I could have handled it if she was throwing a tantrum while I was trying to take care of Emma. Thank you, Jane. Also, I will take the fits if it means my daughter has empathy. I want her to have empathy. Sure, my empathy is probably the source of half my misery in life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
There is this weird, newly slippery spot on our hardwood floor just outside my temporary bedroom. It was fine up until a day ago, none of us were slipping on it. Now we all are, Jane slipped and fell and hit her head. Emma and I can’t figure out WTF is going on. It is treacherous. We think maybe it has something to do with a change in humidity? It was fine! Just a couple days ago! Anyone have any insights into how to make a hardwood floor less slippery? Sanding it seems… extreme.
Good ‘ole Joe Manchin wrote a horrendously cynical op-ed in the Washington Post, pretending he is being reasonable about the filibuster, basically lying or being deceitful in every paragraph. Claiming the thing has been used for good without acknowledging its main use, the reason it exists in its current form, was for stalling civil rights. Like I said yesterday, I' don’t expect every American to have read Adam Jentleson’s Kill Switch, but at this point, I do expect every senator to have read the Cliff’s Notes: especially a senator pretending to care about the history of the Senate. Just. Fucking. Craven.
Then he goes on to lie that the founding fathers were at all in support of the filibuster — an outright lie and he knows it. Conveniently, I am currently reading Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders by Dennis C Rasmussen which is a fun book that talks about how much the founding fathers think that the constitution sucks and the country basically failed before they died. Here’s a fun quote from it:
A number of the compromises that the delegates forged left Washington dissatisfied, above all the Connecticut Compromise, according to which representation int he House of Representatives would be based on population while each state would be represented equally in the Senate. Like the other Virginia delegates, he regarded the latter half of the bargain as an ill-advised concession to the small states that would severely weaken the national character of the new government.
Yeah definitely sounds like a dude who wanted minority rule.
And then there’s the silliest part of all: acting like that the Senate is our whole lawmaking body and how whiplashed and disoriented we’d all be if there would be a bunch of law changes every time Senate control gets flipped — as if there aren’t two other branches of government that would also need to be taken over, and implicitly implying that when Americans send the same party to take over both houses and the presidency, they don’t really want actual laws to be change. It’s just complete bullshit in every way.
One thing I think is hilarious in this Op-Ed is that he starts it by pretending he’s a man of the people, and will only vote for things that he can go home and explain to his constituents easily. I say okay, then. Make this fucker vote against the infrastructure bill and democracy so he can go home and explain how he voted against thousands of jobs for West Virginians and voted against protecting their voting rights because of his regard for “senate procedure.”
Apple applied for a pair of patents for its techniques by which it uses recycled Aluminum in its laptops. It’s a pretty clever technique. Also, I learned the acronym UBCs: Used Beverage Cans. This is all pretty cool, but, I guess the question is: what is the environmental benefit of patenting a method for using UBCs in laptops? That does not seem like a healthy decision from an environmental point of view. It feels like Apple should, you know, maybe let that patent go. Or at least not enforce it. or something. Anyway, I have questions.
Did some reading up on the variants and I think I get it now, and I think it might be okay. It feels like we can beat them? Get enough people vaccinated quickly enough? Not without another surge, I suspect. Last dying breath. Last march of the Ents. Except the Ents are the bad guys. Oh wait, and the Ents lose. Wow that is a terrible metaphor. Whatever we only have forty minutes to finish this thing, move on. I guess that at the moment we don’t know for sure if the vaccine is definitely protecting us from them, but it probably is, so if we can get enough people vaccinated, we should be okay.
I read this article by a bunch of “experts” that was like “we’re getting better but these variants are no joke and we can’t give up now we need to stay vigilant and redouble our efforts” but even that article was too chicken to suggest that we should actually close back down. Literally no one wants to it feels like. If I were king of the world I would not be opening up the world until July ish, but I guess everyone’s just sick of it and worried about getting recalled or impeached or voted out for keeping things closed down so, squeaky wheel gets the grease I guess. So even though most of my favorite bars are opening up in New York, I think I am just going to stay put for another few months, which is exactly what I expected to happen back in March: the world will open up while I sit here playing it safe and getting FOMO. But I’ve had a year to prep for this FOMO, and I am ready. Bring it. Try and make me go anywhere. Besides, I have a drip irrigation system to install.
Speaking of gardening, gonna run to the store and buy all my new potting soil, since i used up all my old potting soil, and a full cubic yard of top soil and I haven’t even really planted much yet. I am excited. This weekend is going to be a gardening extravaganza.
Oh here’s a fun random thing. Longtime readers know I keep a Google Alert on Fabergé eggs. Little did I expect that that alert would go off about a new Fabergé egg, yes, weird and rare enough, but not only that, the new Fabergé egg is a dragon egg celebrating Game of Thrones. Yep. And it costs $2 million:
So I ask you: who on the planet is supposed to buy this other than George RR Martin? Is this some sort of cruel prank, part of a plan to separate that man from his money? It reminds me of that time an art student painted a portrait of me, unsolicited, from a selfie on Flickr than offered to sell it to me. Like… um… who else is going to buy it? Am I comfortable with anyone else owning it? I suppose GRRM might not care, but. Man. I’m glad I’m not stuck in his position with his millions of dollars and a sweet Fabergé egg tempting me. Though I suspect GRRM isn’t quite as obsessed with Fabergé eggs as I do. Maybe he can just let it go. Maybe the dude doesn’t even care. Stone cold Fabergé hater. Could be. You never know.
Today my mom and I are driving to Raleigh to another specialist. It is far and I am annoyed. I probably already told you this, huh. I have to take a whole day off of work for it, really, because it’s going to take so freakin long. Feel like this is a make-or-break moment, though. No light at the end of the tunnel yet but there could be.
Mix time! Shoegaze mix. Mostly more on the obscure side? Eh, maybe not Mogwai and War on Drugs, though both are sort of odd choices on a shoegaze mix, but they work. There are a bunch of My Bloody Valentine reissues coming out and I don’t actually think I own any of thoese albums (except MBV) on vinyl. I own the Soon 12” but I think that’s it. Do I want to own Loveless on vinyl? I confess I don’t actually listen to Loveless that often. Hrm. Maybe we should do that today. Though half the day is in the car with mom so not sure how that will work. We will work on that this week. Is Loveless as good an album as everyone says? It’s been so long. I wonder how it holds up. This is a lot of talk about a shoegaze band that is not on this shoegaze comp.
OK let’s go get Jane, do breakfast, then do our Quicken transactions and 750 Words while waiting for Janet, then run to the hardware store and buy a shit ton of dirt, then come home, scarf down a quick lunch and spend the rest of the day in the car. What fun. I hope you don’t have to spend the day in the car. Unless it’s some cool road trip across the western US. If you’re on a cool road trip, good for you. I can’t wait to go on a cool road trip. I have a whole list of places to take Jane on a road trip. It’s gonna rule. It also probably won’t be for a couple years. So, you know, lucky hypothetical, road-trippin’ you.
that tree has SPRUNG. it's gorgeous. also: i'm getting a vaccine today!