Good morning. Hello. How are you? #382
Resurrecting grape vines, State of the Union, James Carville, Anita Lane, Michael Collins, Spiritualized reissues,
Good morning, there, champ. Hello! How are you doing this fine fine morning? What is it today? Thursday? Oh cool. I got through the “busy” part of the week. That is nice. I swear. Yesterday was a 13-hour marathon. Pretty rough. I mean, yes, some of this is “self-inflicted” — like gardening or writing this email to you, my fine friend. And some of it is “family,” like doing breakfast and bedtime with Jane, or taking my mom to the dentist. But obligations are obligations and from about 6:45 AM till about 8:30 PM, I was fulfilling obligations. Except for lunch and the hour after I finished my dinner where the entire family is sitting around waiting for Jane to finish asking for “more things to eat.” That girl is an eating machine. And it’s always dinner. Like she barely ate her breakfast, barely ate her lunch, and then eats, like, three dinners? You’d think it’d be breakfast that was the meal that was big: at breakfast, she hasn’t eaten for more than twelve hours. At dinner, she ate, like, four hours earlier. It is a real mystery.
We have my mom’s last doctor’s appointment of her visit today — in two hours, actually. I actually set my alarm an hour early so I could get this letter out to you on time this morning, because I know people like things to be on a schedule. We did the dentist yesterday, it went surprisingly well! I just sat in the car and worked, but what was I going to do? Sit there next to the dentist chair? There are limits. Also I tried to make a dentist appointment, and they were like “you already have one for November and you came in last year” and, forgetfulness aside, yay me for being, like, a normal person who’s been to the dentist in the last decade.
Big news! One of the grape vines, that I thought had died, is finally showing signs of life. This is so exciting. I have, like, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 pots out there that just have dead branches sticking out of them, and it is super disconcerting and dispiriting. Rest of the garden is really starting to take off, but the overwintered and dormant stuff is stressing me out. But look! LIFE!
Man that really makes me happy.
We watched the State of the Union last night. Okay that’s not true at all. First, it wasn’t a “State of the Union,” because it was Biden’s first year, but whatever. It was a State of the Union. Second, we didn’t really watch it. We watched the first five or so minutes, fast forwarded, and watched the last ten. I kinda followed along on Twitter for the rest of it. It seemed… good? He did a good job, lots of good policies. I think Biden generally says what he has to say as president. But a lot of it is like fingernails on a chalk board to me, generally because I think we’re in an epic battle for the future of the world, we’re losing, and this is our last chance, and I know, rationally, that his job is to smoothly sell all of the big changes we need to make, and get people into them and excited about them, and hey, man, it’s no big deal, be cool, let’s just do these things. But it so radically underplays the actual stakes it stresses me the fuck out when I hear him talk. I saw some people on Twitter be, like, “isn’t it so nice to have a sane person running the country” as if that was the whole problem and everything is better now, and I’m like “no! we are on the brink! you can’t relax! We need to pass this shit, and we need to do it soon or we’re going to lose the mid-terms and there is a non-zero chance that if we lose the midterms the world is going to explode.” And this is, obviously, not a healthy way to think, but, you know. Prove me wrong.
Viscerally, against all calm, strategic logic, I really want to hear Biden scream: we’re on fire and shit is bad and there’s only a sliver of a chance to get it fixed, right now! And we’re going to miss it because of a bunch of assholes and the whole world has to suffer because of Joe Manchin’s ego and Mitch’s sociopathic greed.
People talk about how sane they feel when politicians tell it like it is, but this did not happen for me last night.
Then he’s all like “never bet against America,” and I’m like “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure that would be a pretty decent bet at this point.” Like… what are we gonna do? Pack the courts? Apparently not. Constitutional Convention? Bwahahaha it would get nothing done even if it didn’t get bombed. Pass an amendment? Yeah right.
James Carville went on one of his rants the other day, talking about how “woke” politics was going to kill the Democratic party and there are some points he’s right about, and there are some points he’s very wrong about, but whatever, generally I think debates about “woke” are playing into the hands of Republicans and should be ignored. But what irked me the most about his rant was this:
We won the White House against a world-historical buffoon. And we came within 42,000 votes of losing. We lost congressional seats. We didn’t pick up state legislatures. So let’s not have an argument about whether or not we’re off-key in our messaging.
And okay, this is technically correct, we did almost lose, but we also fucking won by seven million votes, in an election with the largest turnout in modern history against a fucking cult leader. Maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t the messaging. Maybe the problem is the ant-democratic structure of this supposedly great country. Maybe it’s actually useful to have your left flank finally pushing back and widening the overton window, instead of, oh, I don’t know, being afraid to say you’re an actual fucking liberal like they were in the Bill Clinton years. And Biden won by a larger margin than either of Bill Clinton’s victories.
It’s not hard to notice how much more Biden is getting done, has the potential to get done, than Bill Clinton or Obama. It’s not hard to notice we made some giant fucking mistakes in the past letting Republicans run out the clock and water down bills in bad faith that we are not making now.
Oh I love this one too:
Do you realize that climate is the only major social or political movement that I can think of that refuses to use emotion? Where’s the identifiable song? Where’s the bumper sticker? Where’s the slogan? Where’s the flag? Where’s the logo?
I guess the Green New Deal doesn’t exist. Fucking right here. Here’s your logo. On a shirt:
ANYWAY, I don’t know why I’m ranting about this. He had some good points — why does the democratic party get more shit for AOC than the Republicans do for Marjorie Taylor-Greene? That is madness.
It’s a peculiar time in American politics. Most Democrats understand the stakes, are doing all they can. They have some momentum to actually save the world. They are trying. They understand the stakes. But there’s also Joe Manchin who’s ego won’t let him be a team player or, you know, an actual good person. But in the big picture, there’s really not much more Dems can be doing right now. They were dealt a good hand, but not a great hand. And the stakes are near-infinite. Like bigger than FDR-days and his “you need me to actually save capitalism and democracy” schtick. Now it’s “you need me to actually save capitalism and democracy and the entire planet.” With 51 senators and a looming mid-term.
It’s too much to think about. I don’t know how people can function, honestly.
In other news, Jane had some really wise words yesterday: “Everyone loves to go pee.”
You’re not wrong, Jane. I made her a blanket dress last night and she just loved it.
Anita Lane died, that makes me sad. It also makes me sad that I sold my Anita Lane CD yesterday morning, before I realized she passed. The good thing is, though, when I was filling the order, I thought “oh wow Anita Lane I haven’t listened to this in a long time I miss her,” and then listened to Dirty Pearl, which is still great. But then I shipped it out. Luckily I ripped it, though. She really was a force of nature. Nick seems genuinely upset about it. He said in Red Right Hand files they spoke two months ago. I hope they worked their shit out. I’ve never really been okay with Nick being with any woman other than Anita Lane. Not that it’s any of my business. But in the 90’s, they were my Romeo and Juliet.
Weirdly, I actually ended up selling the Anita Lane CD twice yesterday. I think I sold a second copy so quickly after the first was shipped that Discogs’ scripts hadn’t plowed through and de-listed the first sold copy. I went and double-checked and I do not actually own a second copy. For a second, I was excited. If I did own a second copy, I could cancel the second order and still own a copy. But no luck. I still own the vinyl of Dirty Sings and the World’s a Girl, though.
Someday my life will be so not-busy that a Discogs order will Make My Day. It’ll be the only thing I have to do that day. I will pour over the CD, I will rip it, catalog it, listen to the entire album, read every liner note, go poke around on the internet and do some new research. Catch up with the band. See what they’ve been up to since I last listened to them. Write about them. I will make a day of it. It will be glorious.
Michael Collins died, too, and he was a childhood hero of mine. More than Neil Armstrong, really. I used to spend so much time thinking about him, so close to the moon, not going. That seemed even more heroic to me, somehow, as a kid. God, that sounds so… I don’t know. Lame. But I really was fascinated with Michael Collins. I can’t remember ever not knowing his name.
Watching season three of the Great British Baking Show this week, and every episode had a content warning on it in the upper left corner warning us that there was going to be gore. We couldn’t figure out what that was about. Some prankster making a commentary on meat? Probably a mistake, we figured. Then in last night’s episode there was a cut and so much blood. My god. That was gore. Insanity. So I guess the entire season got tagged with gore because of that one scene. Fascinating.
Also, just so you know, if you do some rough math that really cute girl in the opening credits is a teenager now, out there living their life.
There are baby birds living on our front porch in one of Emma’s fake topiary plants next to the front door. They are SO CUTE. I tried to take a picture but it was super bright out and I couldn’t see the screen so I couldn’t focus, so you get this blurry mess instead:
I will try again tomorrow.
Meep meep meep.
Today’s mix is a mix of metal and noise music. C’mon, give it a shot. You’re gonna love it. It’s so great. Really into this new band I discovered yesterday, Asunojokei. Check em out. Plus Emma Ruth Rundle and Thou, which is one of my favorite discoveries of the last year. Hey wait a minute I ordered two pieces of vinyl from them months ago and they haven’t shown up yet. God. Vinyl takes so long to arrive. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes it takes more than a year. I miss the old days, not gonna lie. Maybe I should just stop buying it.
In other rock and roll news, I think I mentioned this yesterday, but Spiritualized is re-issuing Pure Phase on vinyl. Of course I bought a copy (ignore that throwaway comment above) but more interestingly today, they have some fantastic merch for the release. Most notably, for this album — and Lazer Guided Melodies, which they reissued this month — they are reissuing the tour t-shirts from that album. I still have a lot of Spiritualized t-shirts, but my two favorite were worn out. I still own em but they’re basically falling apart. And one was from LGM and one was from Pure Phase. And I get to re-order them now. And it is so, so exciting.
Okay gotta get going. Take me mum to the audiologist and figure out how to make these thingybobs work with the pocket calculator phone doohickey. Then maybe I can actually get some “work product” done today instead of meetings. That would be amazing. I hope you have a lovely day! Eat a pice of candy for me! Tell me all about it!