Good morning. Hello. How are you? #452
Good morning. Hello! How are you? I am doing okay! I don’t have a single meeting scheduled today, that is AMAZING. Thank you for all your kind words about yesterday’s post, was nice to hear from some old friends and such. Sometimes I think it’d be more fun to just write long posts about interesting events in the past, but I know there’s a significant contingent of you that is every bit as interested in my compost bin. Right? Right?
Programming note: Emily and Liz called me out. I do not pay $9 for my eggs. I pay $7.29. There is no sales tax on them. There is a delivery charge of $10, prorated across the entire grocery order adds about $0.36 to the order. I pay about $7.65 for my eggs. You caught me. I confess. Do what you will with me. Emma always says I exaggerate and I deny it but there may be something to this after all.
I didn’t tell you guys this but i committed a cardinal sin yesterday and skipped the 6:30 AM Wednesday routine of going to the recycling center and grocery store. I just didn’t feel like waking up. I feel so transgressive. I’m such a rebel. My god, you don’t even know. I am giddy with rebellious urges. Someone saddle me with some debt.
Yesterday after writing you guys I got Jane out of bed, brought her downstairs, and we were doing our Mr. Rodgers thing and going and getting my slippers. She was very excited about it. “Find slippers?” We go over to the slippers but suddenly, it’s like a switch has flipped in her brain. She says “put me down” and as soon as I do, she just starts bawling. “Jane’s not happy now. Jane’s sad.” She says. Out of the blue.
Her happiness was restored about two minutes later when she discovered that there was a pink water bottle at he breakfast tray.
Girl, I feel you.
I went to sleep last night after reading the passage in Genesis P-Orridge’s autobiography where they were close friends with Ian Curtis, and Ian’s call to Genesis the night of his suicide, Genesis’ frantic calls to Ian’s friends in Manchester, trying to get someone to take action, but also being wracked with guilt that they didn’t call the cops. It was hard to read. And now we’re reading about a topic that I’ve read, god, I don’t know, six books and autobiographies about? It’s so fascinating and fucked up the way so many different people can remember events differently. And on that note, I guess I’m in a bit of a rabbit hole because I bought Cosey Fanni Tutti’s autobiography as well, and plan on reading it next. I just. I don’t know. Genesis seems like a fantastic artist in the 70’s but he also seems like kind of a dick. One thing that really irks me about them — and I have experienced this with other “great” underground artists — is their easy, rapid ability to write off some other artist too mainstream, or wanting to sell out, or without talent. But at the same time, they’ll go on about how much they love Frank Sinatra or Barbara Streisand or some other manifestly mainstream artist. They’ll talk about how they want to completely destroy Rock and Roll or sculpture or something then talk about how great Little Richard was or something. It’s just. It bothers me. It also bothers me, greatly, when artists call other artists talentless. Genesis — who a few paragraphs later writes about how he is now finally bothering to learn how to competently play the bass guitar — calling Peter Hook — a man who influenced an entire generation of bass players – talentless is… well it’s problematic.
Also when Cosey breaks up with him it’s cool, they have three other girlfriends at the time, but they just wish she was being honest. But earlier they wrote about how they were and always have been a relentless serial monogamist.
We have mutual friends and I don’t want to be too mean about it or speak ill of the dead. It just. It calls for another perspective is all. Most books call for a second perspective. That is the brilliance of books and the complete failing of the Q-Anon “Do your own research” mantra — they don’t want you to read any books about a topic you’re researching. Just the internet. Certainly not two different original source materials.
Yesterday a group of friends and I were discussing a celebrity who shall remain unnamed, and how his ex girlfriend didn’t have very nice things to say about him. Not, like, the abusive level, just, not nice. And we were discussing how hard these things are to parse. One friend said something along the lines of “I am close friends with all my exes but I have zero doubt they have said some bad things about me through the years but they are also my close friends now and would say it to my face and also they say way more nice things about me.”
It also sucks because it feels like we have to parse these things, in order to be ethical consumers. I don’t love prying my nose into the love lives of celebrities — I really don’t care, I am not into celebrity gossip at all. But I do like to make sure I’m not supporting monsters. So, you know. Fine balance I guess.
On a related note, my excellent friend Holly over in London made it to Selfridge’s and bought a pillow and set of coasters from their Factory Records collection for me and I am so excited. She did not buy the £3,500 limited edition Bang and Olufsen speaker for me, though. Bummer. You may recall my excellent past essay on the topic of Factory Records merchandising and it not being a sell-out but the production of physical tokens of spirituality, holy artifacts, emotions made whole. I was particularly proud of that passage I should go find it and quote it directly but I won’t bother but it does remind me that Luke O’Neil has a really clever approach to the subheads on these Substacks — he pulls out one of the best lines of the piece and uses it as the subhead instead of a weird list of topics like I do. I might try that. Then I could go easily find that lovely passage.
OMG I just went and looked and it turns out I did use that great passage as the subhead. The one and only time I did that. I was on to something.
These are not commercial exploitations, these scented candles, coffee cups and plates. They are totems. They are spiritual tools for the transfiguration of pain.
I was telling some friend about my maternal grandfather the other day. He was a character. An author, a weirdo, chess master, pioneer, spy, etc. And I was trying to track down, on the internet, information about his most successful piece of literature, a short story that appeared in one of the national magazines, the Saturday Evening Post July, 1960, and I found this weird tweet by an artist who drew a picture of him? Kind of amazing. I have a copy of the original photograph this was drawn from. I kinda want to get in touch with this artist and see if I can buy the original.
Do you guys remember 17776? That crazy interactive short story about the future of humanity and football told through the conversations of three sentient satellites? It was so fantastic. Emma and I were talking about it yesterday. We were talking about the Centennial Lightbulb, and I was saying how I really learned about it from 17776. I had probably heard about it before, but it wasn’t until that story that I really filed it away properly in my brain. We were watching an episode of Mythbusters where they go visit the Centennial Lightbulb. I’ve added it to my roadtrip with Jane list. Hold out for just another couple years little lightbulb! (Best item on the road trip list? “Storm King or whatever.”) Apparently there is a sequel to 17776. Has anyone read it? It came out during that hell month right after election day where Trump was trying to rig the election. As opposed to, you know, the other five years he was trying to rig the election. That fuckin guy.
But we will not get into that today.
We will get into Daniel Hale, though. A descendent of Nathan Hale, known as the Second Snowden, the man who exposed America’s drone program, and the amount of collateral damage, aka the killing of innocents, that was happening under the program. He finally chose to speak out, to NY Magazine, a week before he was sentenced to five years in jail for being a whistleblower. I mean, of course, right? Because our enemies totally didn’t know we were blowing them up, and their children up. There is a passage in the NY Magazine article about, oh god, it’s so horrific. It’s been fucking me up for two days. And it was under the Obama administration.
One of my favorite actors, Martin Donovan, who featured so prominently in so many of Hal Hartley’s greatest films, as well as Tenet, Big Little Lies (which I have not seen), Inherent Vice, The DCEU and the MCU, Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady and Michael Almereyda’s Nadja, has really gone off the rails lately on Twitter. It is very sad. Dude is very upset about masks. I had to unfollow him yesterday. It made me sad.
And huh. Since then it seems he has made his Twitter private. Guess he got a lot of grief for it. Guess those sheeple were bent out of shape.
Hrm seems I have run out of time today. Woke up a bit late. Let’s do a mix.
This is a mix of music from 1999 becuase I’m still pissed at that Woodstock ‘99 documentary for implying that Linkin Park was the entirety of culture in 1999. And to be clear, this isn’t some “stuff people were listening to in 1999” kind of thing, this is confined to songs that were actually released, for their first time, in 1999. The reality was even more diverse and better since, you know, we didn’t stop listening to good stuff from the past.
Okay! Talk to you guys tomorrow! Hope you’re doing okay!