Good morning. Hello. How are you? #404
It's Walmart day, so let me tell you how to buy a bag of mulch. Margaritaville PTSD. Confusion over Peter Murphy lyrics. Hose pots. Tabitha Soren. The misery of trying to be good in this world.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? Oooo we’re on edition number 404 here. Like a 404 error page. At Barbarian Group, our website had a large gallery of random 404 pages that the site would spit out at random. Each employee and intern was encouraged to make a new 404 page. I have a few collected on the Barbarian Group archive site itsgonnabeaweso.me, but not nearly enough. This one is one of my favorites:
Just back from Walmart, where I got to use my favorite Walmart trick, which is my efficient method for buying large bags of mulch or soil from the garden center. I’m not exactly clear how they expect you to buy these things. They’re all stacked up over against the edge of the lot by the highway, nowhere near the building, a door, or a cash register. They’re kinda near the garden center, but the garden center has no cash register. Are you supposed to load up ten giant bags of mulch, wheel them into the store? Is it like hardware stores where each clerk has a big lookup book of barcodes and you can say “I would like one bag of the large black mulch please” and they find the appropriate barcode in a binder and scan it? Unclear, and in any case, I use self-checkout. But my trick is to take a photo of the barcode with your phone, on your way into the store, scan the photo from your phone, and then pick up your giant bags on the way out. Works like a charm.
Speaking of the self checkout, the zen buddhist monk of a woman who usually works there, who is just the nicest woman in the world, was not there today and it was sad. And it’s like Walmart has accepted that this woman is the best amongst them, and no one else is qualified to take her place at the self checkout, so there was literally no one manning self checkout. She was dearly missed I hope she’s okay.
They were playing Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett today, too loudly, in the parking lot. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jimmy Buffett lately, actually. Well, not a lot, but I went through and listened to all his albums this year. And I’ve really liked that song A Pirate Looks at 40 thanks to the brilliant Beach Bum soundtrack. But I do not like the song Margaritaville, because every morning, for, like, two years, as I was driving into high school at 4:30 in the morning with my mother, no sunlight, twenty below outside, snow covering everything, that fucking song would play on the radio at the exact same time while we were in the car. Before it would be The Piña Colada Song. I also cannot stand that song.
Special programming note: Two days ago, in the subhead title of this email missive — at least, if you’re reading it on Substack and not Facebook — I said “this isn’t a particularly good edition” or something like that. And every day Substack emails me stats about the post and guess what? You guys listened! Well, at least a bunch of you did because that was the least-read post in ages, off by nearly 20%. I think that is pretty hilarious.
Question: Two days ago, I was sitting in my comfy chair watching YouTube DIY star April Wilkerson build a fireplace, and I was texting with someone, and they mentioned something I would be into and I wrote it down, but I clearly wrote it down wrong, and I don’t remember if it was a book, or a game, or a programming framework or what: Skyward’s End? Skyword End? I have been Googling various permutations and I can’t find anything. Is this ringing any bells to anyone? It’s messing with my ToDo list.
I’ve been obsessing the last twenty-four hours over the lyrics to Roll Call by Peter Murphy. I’ve always loved this song, and I’ve always liked the lyrics, which broadly seem to be about the tedium of going out and partying and how empty most of the people are out there in your night life and, you know, I can kind of bond with that. Or, rather, I could bond with it for a large chunk of my life. Though, paradoxically, I already loved the song before I got to that period of my life. When I finally started going out all the time, I thought, yep, this is just like those Roll Call lyrics by Peter Murphy. Probably. I don’t know. I don’t remember that part.
Anyway, there’s a line in the song that, some thirty-plus years later, I still cannot figure out. And yesterday I thought “ah ha! we have Google now! I will just Google it.” So I did. And the lyrics as listed on Google, in Genius, and elsewhere are clearly wrong. The line I am curious about is the one after the line “Except the words to a clashing rhyme…” I think it’s supposed to be “ill-calmed and out of sync,” and the typo all of the lyrics sites have — “I’ll calmed…” — supports that. But… what is “ill calmed?” Why does it show up nowhere else on the internet, aside from one Peter Murphy fan site that agrees with this interpretation? It’s just… weird.
Great song, though.
And I like the way once the song finishes, he’s like “yeah, let’s do that song again, except slower and longer.”
I’m really into hose pots now. Seriously. Screw those hand-cranking bullshit contraptions with wheels. They’re never made strong enough, the plastic buckles and breaks under the weight of a hose, they’re too low to the ground and you gotta stoop down to turn the crank, which sucks, and the crank itself is always made out of flimsy-ass plastic and it’s not long enough so you get no leverage. They are bullshit. I wonder if someone, somewhere, has bothered to disrupt the hose crank industry with some amazing, highly engineeered, tempered steel contraption that sells for, like, $500. Hrm, yes, it seems so. I mean, there are those pole mounted, or wall mounted, enclosed ones by Flomaster and the like, but those are ugly. And expensive.
But you know what’s awesome? Hose pots. A fuckin pot. With a hose in it. Cheap. Looks awesome. Sold.
Except, of course, you can buy really expensive hose pots which is just fantastic. God bless capitalist America. Look at this. Looks like some Restoration Hardware kinda bullshit:
U Jelly?
Michael Lewis has a new book about the pandemic and it looks kinda good though I am not sure I can pull off reading that. But I am thinking about it. That counts, right? Also I will never, ever, get over the fact that Michael Lewis is married to Tabitha Soren. She is the best. Have you seen Tabitha Soren’s photographs? They are marvelous. I once went to this thing at the Hynes Convention Center called College Fest. I’m still not clear on exactly what College Fest was, except it had bands and celebrity appeareances and… a college trade show floor? It was weird. But in any case, one year Tabitha Soren was one of the celebrities that appeared, and she signed autographed photos, and I still have one, framed on the wall in my SECRET ROOM. If you weren’t jealous of my hose pot, I am SURE you’re jealous of my Tabitha Soren autographed photo. She is so great. She is still so great.
Hrm I think that’s about all I got today. I am trying to snap out of my apocolyptic political mood, so I skipped watching MSNBC last night. That helped. I did make the mistake of looking at Twitter right before bed, though, and, god, that almost did me in. Kept me awake shaking in anger for a few minutes about the various voter suppression bills working their way through the state legislatures around the country, and Texas’ bonkers new blatantly unconstitutional abortion ban that lets me, a complete rando, sue someone if they decide to have an abortion. I’m still mad at Joe Manchin and increasingly mad at Stephen Breyer to go along with my anger toward Amy Covid Bash and Brett Kavanaugh (I really need some good derogatory name for him. Beer Brett Kavanaugh maybe?) But I am trying to swing back to being a happy and functional human being in my own home and life. I mean, I’ve been functional but this stuff has been getting me down a lot lately. Emma and I had some talks about it yesterday. That feeling of wanting to do more, but what is there even to do besides talk and vote and give money. We are not saviors. We’re just human beings. I still feel like, for me, the best approach is to use my skills at making money to make more money to give more money away, but god if that isn’t awful sounding and I can’t shake the feeling it’s not actually true.
But today the multi-day gloom that’s been hovering over me as all this stuff swirls in my head (and, god, you should see my 750 Words these past couple of days, they are nuts) has cooled a bit and I feel a bit more functional. This is probably partially because my work board meeting was successful and is now over, so I don’t have that hanging over my head. I have a full next couple of days at work but nothing I can’t handle. I had a good idea for a new dashboard at work I’m excited about. I had a really nice Jane bedtime last night, she was really quite pleasant and we had some good talks. My mom is headed off for a nice trip with old friends. In short, day-to-day life is going okay so I can, like, function again. That is good. But it never goes away.
I did not, however, get a grip on catching up on the playlists yesterday. I just listened to Olivia Rodrigo and the new Loney, Dear on repeat all day. This Ambient playlist, however, was very close to complete, so I have whipped it into shape for you today. It’s actually a pretty good one! If you are looking for something verrrry contemplative and still.
OKAY. Let’s go get Jane out of bed, feed her, baby sit for a while, write some more words, have lunch, then have a bunch of meetings. YEAH MEETINGS WOOO. Only two and a half hours of meetings today. I can handle that, right? I’m a grown-ass man. I used to do eight hours of meetings every day. I can handle it. I can handle it. I can handle it.
Oh that reminds me — on Monday I had a great talk with an old friend and she had sent out a Zoom link but as soon as she got on she was like “hey I know I sent out a Zoom link but I’m not turning my camera on I’ve gained 20 pounds and my hair looks like ass” and never have I felt more close to a friend. The depths of my thankfulness was profound.
May we all handle our meetings today.
I'm just here to represent the blatantly ant-hose pot lobby. I find them even less functional than a cheap, broken, plastic hose cart, seeming to exist mostly to collect leaves and other yard debris. I don't care how expensive they are, just end your hose-related distress and buy an Eley already. In the ten years for which their warrantied, you're guaranteed to break and replace enough other options to make up for the extra cost.
*This post was not paid for or influenced by the Eley corporation in any way, I just really like their hose reels.