Good morning. Hello. How are you? #398
Walmart, travel plans, visiting dogs, deep faking cheer moms, The Nevers, Ford Electric F150, Hertz, Lana Del Rey,
Good morning. Hello! How are you? Doing okay? Freaking out about anything? If you need someone to talk to about it, I’m here for you bud. I’m listening to Mary Margaret O’Hara. It is beautiful out. Look:
Beautiful.
Just got back from the morning grocery shopping. There really wasn’t much on the list this week, after the delivery from the evil Harris Teeter. Banana Peppers, but Walmart didn’t have those either. I settled for Anaheim peppers. Are Anaheim peppers hot? I don’t even know. Birdseed for Emma. Well, for the birds. Haha. For the birds. Haha. Dad joke day. Bean sprouts. Hard to find the bean sprouts around here without hoofing it to the Asian market in Durham. Actually, I feel an Asian market trip coming on. Maybe I’ll wait till there’s gas again. Still no gas at the combination — oh wait, that’s news. The combination Burger King / Post Office / Gas Station is no longer a Burger King. Now it’s a combination Taco Stand / Post Office / Gas Station. I gotta try that taco place soon. But yeah, anyway, still no gas! It’s been like a week! That is… mildly alarming? I mean, I don’t go anywhere but, like, nurses and doctors go places? And delivery drivers? I feel like this gas shortage is lasting longer than the last gas shortage we had?
God, I have to differentiate between gas shortages now. I suspect this won’t be the last apocolyptic thing I’ll have to differentiate before I die. I suspect before I die, at least once, I’ll say the words “wait which pandemic are you talking about?”
Anyway, Walmart. Feel like some of the department heads there are really wiffing it. Their garden center this year was basically non-existent. A pale shadow of their previous, pre-pandemic garden center. It’s like they didn’t even care. Which is weird because… Walmart cares about this stuff, and last year was, you know, the biggest year for gardening in, like, fifty years. Maybe it’s all supply chain stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised. They had no vegetable starts all year. I mean, I planted from seed but still. That’s never happened for them. I suspect it’s probably just this store, because I see all these happy gardeners on Youtube going to Walmart and their stores look STOCKED. It’s curious.
Also I love how gardening YouTubers totally go to Walmart and use Bonnie seedlings but try and hide it but if you know what to look for you can totally tell. Underneath all good cottagecore lies Walmart.
They had Minari on Blu Ray, but not on UHD 4K Blu Ray, which is shame. I want to cry at adorable grandmas and Korean herbs in ultra HD. The UHD is only $15 at Amazon, so… I guess that’s just what Walmart thinks of its Chatham County cineastes: we don’t need Minari on 4k discs.
What is hilarious is how many freakin’ disinfectant wipes Walmart has. Like, news flash, Clorox, you totally missed the boat on that one, disinfectant wipes are so 2020 and now we know this infernal pestilence does not travel by touch. So now you have wipes in forty million different size and flavor combinations. Where were you when we needed you, Clorox? I’ll tell you where you were, listening to your consultants about just-in-time delivery and zero-inventory and thinking it couldn’t happen here, despite every bit of evidence that it could, in fact, happen here. Besides, I have a stockpile of wipes now to last me till my death, which is a very reassuring feeling, let me tell you.
Okay I’ll stop talking about Walmart. That one guy who subscribes who is secretly a research analyst at a brokerage covering Walmart is satisfied now.
I booked my tickets to Fairbanks yesterday. So if you are an Alaskan reader, or a formerly Alaskan reader, I’ll be up there for a week this June, June 20-26. I wanted to be there for solstice, and my friend Derek said he’d be at the Big I on the 25th, so you know. Gotta go to the big I. Plus some of my best friends from the old days will be in town then, so that will be nice. And I finally get to meet my nephew! And say goodbye to my dad. Gonna be an emotional time.
God this means I’m going to need a haircut soon, aren’t I? I guess I’ll just text my stylist and be, like, “greetings from 2019 U up?” Like zero time has passed. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, actually. The front-line service workers that I haven’t seen in a year: bartenders, sure, but also, like, that amazing woman who works the front desk at my hotel in SoHo. She was union, a hotel lifer, the hotel is still open, I assume that even if she was furloughed for some measure, she’s probably still there? And she is probably gonna be so sick of having the same mind-numbing conversation about how it’s good to see you again and how have you been. I suppose I’m also going to need a pithy answer for that, too, huh? Properly recapping, not too detailed but not too vague.
Ugh going back to the real world is gonna be intense.
I worked on my new project all day yesterday. I mean, it’s not, like, a thing that requires active work, just sort of updating and checking in on throughout the day. I think it’s going well? It’s feeling a bit more intimate and personal than I anticipated, though, so I strongly suspect you’re never going to see it. But I’m glad it’s getting done.
The other big, wild news over here is that some dogs got out and came over and sniffed around my garden and actually walked up onto my porch and sniffed at my bok choi. I was standing there at the kitchen sink washing a dish and looked up and there was a giant beige dog on my porch. I went out and chased it off the porch and saw another one down in the garden. I shouted and they ran away, but they did not, like, run away. They saw Janet standing in her doorway and they ran over and tried to run into her house, which was kind of funny.
It turned out they were my neighbor’s dogs, and of course I should have known this, knowing my neighbor and knowing she had dogs, except, well, I am dog blind, and all dogs look the same.
So it turns out that cheerleader mom did not actually make a deepfake of one of her daughter’s cheer rivals. It’s still not clear exactly what’s up but it seems a good bet that Occam’s Razor is invokable here and, yeah, that cheer girl was — gasp — actually vaping. Oh god, the humanity, the horror. That girl was inhaling in a safe manner a mild stimulant roughly equivalent to caffeine that is almost certainly not going to harm her in any way. It should have been obvious, I suppose, considering that if you are going to make a deepfake to ruin someone’s life you might have them do something worse than, like, vape. Also the mom’s “main piece of computing hardware was an old iPhone 8.” I confess I mostly ignored that story when it happened, and I’m now realizing I mostly ignored it because it made no sense and the correct explanation had to be that someone, somewhere in the whole muddle of a mess, was dumb. That now seems to be the situation. I feel redeemed. What other stories can I ignore and pretend it’s because I’m smarter than everyone. Sign me up.
Jane climbed into the cat tree yesterday and posed for this pic so clearly I have to share it with you:
Important update: I would like to announce that I have changed my mind about Chemtrails over the Country Club and now think it is a fantastic album. It was just a slow burn. Not like the Kacey Musgraves song. Though, actually, kinda, a little bit? Moody and sensual. Anyway, I really like it now. That one song with that line about “down at the men in music business conference,” well, yeah, if that doesn’t perfectly capture a mood, I don’t know what does.
I should also say that I have been watching that HBO show The Nevers and it was very uneven and ill-paced and confusing but there was just enough to it to stick to it and man did it deliver in the last episode. Just stunning. My god I did not see any of that coming and it really delivered. The show’s a Joss Whedon joint and he is, of course, banned, but now it’s being show-run by Philippa Gosslett, who worked on some stuff I like, though she is a first time show-runner and this show could definitely use a steadying hand after its rocky launch. Even better though, the main writer is Jane Espenson, who has always been very good, so the show seems mostly out of Whedon’s hands going forward. Of course if he wants to write on it, I think that’s fine. You can take a writing asshole and just put them in a corner at home and they don’t have to deal with anyone else.
Oh Ford is announcing the all-electric F150 today, that is exciting. My friend has been working on it. I have a deposit down on a cyber truck, but… well… one needs to hedge their bets. And this thing seems really promising? And I don’t need a new automobile for a few years so the timing could work out just right. Plus Joe Biden likes it, and that guy is so cool:
Anyway, 9:30 PM ET they’re gonna do their announcement. Which is a… bit of a weird time? Like it’s going to interfere with my Bake Off.
But still. I want one. I need something that haul shit. I had to pay some dude to deliver me palettes like I was a plebe. I have succumbed to suburban living. You gotta haul shit. And rentals aren’t really an option. Some of that shit is dirty, like mulch, and some is literally shit, like compost and/or manure. I mean, sure, if there was Zipcar, with trucks, up at the plaza down the road, I would probably do that. But that is not the case. And I’m sick of burning gas. I know the actual environmental impact calculation is more complex than that, and it’s all about factoring in the manufacture of the new car, etc., and… look. Haven’t made any decisions yet, but my trusty Mazda 3 ain’t gonna last forever and, also, it’s an evil polluter.
Fucking climate dilemmas, man. In everything we do. There is no winning.
Speaking of cars there are zero rental cars available in Fairbanks this june because Hertz just pulled out of Fairbanks. I mean, I can’t blame them, they are all screwed because of financial shenanigans. Man, the government really fucked Hertz in the pandemic. The SEC not letting them do that IPO was bullshit, and in the end, it was proven to be bullshit. And now, thanks to them, I can’t get a car in Fairbanks this summer. Bastards.
Okay, both of those last things were a little too politically simplifying and that is not good so Ima gonna wrap it up here. Every issue is more complicated than it seems.
Let’s do a mix. It’s one from everyone’s favorite series, W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe. Man I want to go to this hotel so much. Why don’t hotel lobbies play better music? I don’t know, man. Also, god remember Her Space Holiday? They were so good. Also had the hottest fans in indie rock. Go to a Her Space Holiday show and everyone looked gorgeous.
Okay I am Audi 5000. God I can’t believe I just said that, sorry. Gotta go get Jane and do breakfast and water and… well, shit. You know. The same shit we do every day.
MISS YOU.
I am very annoyed with the Nevers. The last episode was great, yes. I actually turned it off in the first 10 minutes because I thought the DVR fucked up and recorded the wrong show.
last friday night, al and i had a couple of run-ins with weirdo strangers (one of whom was a bus driver who wouldn't open the door AT OUR STOP while he chatted us up), and boy am i not ready for *that*!
i wish someone would tell me the earth-gentlest way to live a fun, full life without going vegan and off the grid, but i suspect there's no such thing outside of my wishful thinking.
the deepfake mom thing is so stupid: OF COURSE those cheerleaders were drinking and smoking pot. do parents totally forget what high school was like the moment they have kids?!