Good morning. Hello. How are you? #414
Working through a rough mood, Trader Joe, Walmart mask abandonment, COVID startup whimper, back when I traveled to my 50th state, Cheesasaurus Rex t-shirts.
Good morning there. Hello! How are you? All doing well? I hope so. We had a nice rain last night that watered my plants, that was nice. Jane wasn’t too recalcitrant at bedtime, and there were some moments of true sublimity. Other than that, I was pretty emotionally raw yesterday. One of those days where you’re just unhappy about things. You’re wise enough to know there’s nothing to be done about it, but, god, do things suck today. Life going nowhere, etc. etc. It seems to have been sparked by going back to non-fiction. I’m reading this book about grocery stores that Liz Onstad recommended to me, and there is a very long, very fascinating section on the history of Joe and Trader Joe’s. What a brilliant man, as it turns out. Anyway, it’s not like I want to get into the grocery business — god no, what a shit business. One point five percent margins?? I’ll pass thanks. But reading something about his darkest days before the dawn, when his previous convenience store chain was about to go out of business. The vision quest he took to a beach in the Caribbean with a giant pile of books to think on his predicament. The inspiration that came. It was all just… very exciting.
Also, working on the Royal Caribbean account for a few years, you’d think I could remember how to spell Caribbean. But I will never be able to spell that word.
Anyway, my friend Kellianne suggested to me that it had some menstrual/astrological cause, and I suppose that’s as good of an explanation as any, because moments of existential ennui/dread/meaninglessness come at a fairly regular 28-day or so cycle, so we’ll just go with that. The trick is to keep breathing, etc. Not freak out. Steady as she goes. This is not the mood in which one should change anything about their life.
Which reminds me of one of my 90’s aphorisms: falling in love is like a headache. You just have to endure it till it passes. It does not mean you’re supposed to do anything. Maybe take some aspirin. It astonishes me how many people still can’t distinguish between the act of falling in love and the act of acting on it. God. If I acted on every time I’d fallen in love, I’d be a dead man.
Just got back from Walmart and that place is a bummer. There is a perfect inverted symmetry between the employees and the customers. Out of about 50 of each that i saw, a total of two employees were wearing masks and a total of three — a single family — of customers weren’t. I don’t know, man. I guess it’s…. fine. It does not feel fine. It is comically absurd to me that any part of my brain thought “oh hey maybe some good will come out of this and we’ll, like, pick up that cool Asian habit of normalized mask wearing.” Hahaha. Yeah right. Just like it was absurd to think our cool new outdoor spaces or to-go alcoholic beverage laws were going to stay. It’s like America just needs to rub its thumb in this.
All those startups that were rushing around doing COVID-19 shit really went nowhere, huh? We don’t really have any rapid home testing. There are no COVID passports. There aren’t any venues that are, like, requiring a COVID passport to enter. I guess you could count Moderna as a venture-backed startup, but it has been around for more than a decade. But, yeah. All that money, all those startups. Nothing to show for it. Kinda sad. Predictable, but sad. Lotta people spent a lot of time and money on those things.
One thing I think is funny is I have switched back, mostly, to my very comfortable Japanese Arax Pitta masks, which are just the best for comfort, but were not rated for COVID. But of course, they’re just great for allergies and containing spittle and being polite to other people. Rednex out there virtue signaling not wearing masks when clearly the kind thing to do is appear to wear a mask, even if it’s mostly useless. Ha.
I do think it’s interesting that right now mask wearing can be plausibly viewed as a perfect proxy for how many Americans care about being polite. Of course it’s not a perfect analog — you also have to be informed enough to understand the concepts of herd immunity and understand the plight of the immunocompromised, and grasp where we are with the situation and children. But it’s probably a decent proxy. And I think around here, at least, in the faux-polite south, we’re at around 50%? Ish? Which means, accounting for ignorance we’re probably a bit over 50%. So, hey. Maybe there’s some hope after all, I guess.
But not for Apple Pie Kit Kats, because there weren’t any, and I was sad. There were also exactly zero new HD Blu Ray discs, no Walmart-exclusive copies of Taylor Swift’s Evermore, no baby corn, no water chestnuts, no tomato cages, and honestly what is even the point of going to Walmart anymore, screw it.
Oh here’s a good one: On Joe Manchin’s website, there is still an interview with him and a policy platform where he supports ending the filibuster.
That guy sucks. Sucks sucks suckity sucks sucks.
While lying in bed last night, I was struck with a thought. I was thinking about “travel” in the “experience” sense and how I am mostly over it (probably a topic for another time). And then I was thinking about college and how everyone at BU was always going on about how they were going to Europe and why aren’t you going to Europe, Rick? I had already been to Europe twice, but whatever. But anyway, I remember vividly, my thinking at the time: I feel like it’s important for me to see and understand the country I live in first, so I don’t really think I’ll head back to Europe until I have seen every state in this country first. And I was lying in bed and thinking “huh, you know, back in college when you used to say that, you thought you were being pretentious, but give yourself a little bit of credit, that is actually pretty wise.” And then I was thinking about my various road trips across America and how I was 24 when I visited my fiftieth state.
And it just hit me:
North Carolina was the last state in the union I ever visited.
That comet was in the sky. We had just been pulled over in South Carolina where they told us that we were all going to jail unless we could pay the speeding ticket, in cash, right then. We actually had to haggle down on the amount of the speeding ticket, because the cop didn’t take credit cards. It was ridiculous. We were all fried. But that comet was insanely beautiful in the dark, rural, southern sky.
We crossed the border on I-77 and went to Tremont Music Hall in Charlotte. Gordon sang Kangaroo at soundcheck — the only time on tour she ever sang it. Come to think of it, I wonder if she ever performed it live. We might be some of the only people to ever have heard her sing it. Shallow weren’t on tour with us anymore, but they were passing through the Tremont Music Hall in a few days, and it was one of those green rooms with graffitti all over the wall, so I wrote a long letter to Julie in French on the wall because I was kind of a creepy dude back then. I lifted the notorious flight case all by myself. There’s a picture of it somewhere. Let me see if my filing technique is still unstoppable:
Ha ha! Took two minutes:
Anyway, I just realized that. Kinda crazy it didn’t occur to me earlier in living in North Carolina for six years: this was the last state I ever visited.
The other thing I was thinking about yesterday was my Cheesasaurus Rex t-shirt. Back in, well I guess it was 1993-1994, my roommate Mark and I collected enough box tops from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to send in and get Cheesasaurus Rex t-shirts. We were real into collecting enough box tops to send in for things. We had (I still have) a complete selection of the Little Debbie President cards. But the Cheesasaurus Rex t-shirts were the ne plus ultra.
Anyway, the shirt was too small for me even at the time, before I, you know, swelled. It was a little sad. But I kept it all these years.
And I was thinking last night, in bed “man, I love that shirt I wish I could fit into it I would wear it right now.”
But then I realized! Jane could wear it.
Oh man. I can’t believe it just occurred to me Jane could start wearing my old shirts. And some of them, she could even do it soon! That is exciting.
We locked down the date for a small service for my dad while I am in Alaska — June 24th. Well, my sister did, because she’s doing all the work. For which I am profoundly grateful. Anyway, it’ll have been 14 months since he passed by the time we have the service. I am ready to properly, emotionally, say goodbye. I’m ready for catharsis. The amount of time I’ve spent thinking “I need to go to that cemetery on Yankovic and have a good cry” has been… a lot. It will be very good to say goodbye properly.
And I get to Alaska on Father’s day. That… well, it’s a bummer I am leaving my daughter on Father’s day, but I’m doing it for dad. I guess that works.
Okay time to leave this mood behind today. Let’s do a mix. I’ve been doing a lot of work on these the last few days, trying a new approach. It’s been interesting. Adding a lot of songs, but they tend to be to the same few mix types. Still, it’s yielding some good results and I’m gonna stick with it for a while. Lotta bands and artists I’ve forgotten about that deserve a bit of time in my life. Some new stuff on this one, too. Well, three songs. Still, this is my favorite one in a while. I hope you enjoy it.
Wednesday, hump day, blah blah, etc. etc. You can do it. Insert motivational phrase here.
sorry about your MEWD (this is what i propose calling this brand of existential dread), and i hope it passes soon. sending <3
I had the Cheesasaurus Rex shirt too!