Good morning. Hello. How are you? #455
When I forget to put a subtitle on these, they put the whole first paragraph, and that is awkward.
Good morning! Hello. How are you? Doing okay? I am well, thanks. I accidentally left my AC on last night so it is chilly in here. Which doesn’t make any sense because the thing has a thermostat in it, so it should be the same temperature it always is, right? But it’s not. At least compared to the rest of the house, which is on central AC. I don’t know. It is confusing. I am listening to the new Billie Eilish for the fourth time — I listened to it three times yesterday. It is an oddly compelling, weird album. It is called “happier than ever” but only has one upbeat song, and that one is very angry. I think I would have enjoyed this if I were a still a moody teenager. I mean, I enjoy it now, don’t get me wrong, but that “irony” woulda been very compelling to me. Also in some ways, this album is like wokeism in recorded form, which is kind of interesting. But the main thing is just how different it is, stylistically, from her last album. I suppose she’s been teasing it through two, three years of a steady stream of singles. But wow. Big change.
Did you guys hear about how there might be no bacon in California soon? I am so excited about this. It is just amazing. Apparently Californians voted to only allow the sale of pork that conforms to a set of regulations insuring the (relatively) humane treatment of the animals, and only 4% of the pork in the US is produced this way, and California eats 15% of America’s pork, those crazy vegetarians. And they voted for this a couple years ago, so the pork producers could see it coming, but in the typical California style, they still haven’t published the final rules, so no one knows if they will be able to conform or not. They did this with their privacy law, CCPA, too. I think we got the final rule set in, December? For a January implementation? It was super cool. And, of course, rather than, you know, preparing for this, the pork industry has been suing to stop it, but they have been failing repeatedly so it is going to happen.
The most likely outcome, “experts say” is that the price of bacon will go up to over $6-7 a pound, to which I say yes bring it. I fucking love bacon so much but that shit ought to be insanely expensive. People are going to scream and holler when this law goes into effect, even though they passed it, and it is a good law. Living in the second-largest pork producing state, I doubt we’ll ever pass one of these laws. I’m jealous. Someday when this pandemic has passed, or at least my daughter has been able to get a vaccine, I’m gonna fly to California and buy myself a $15 bacon egg and cheese sandwich and I’m gonna be psyched about it.
God maybe it’s time to make some bagels again. I miss NY-style breakfast sandwiches so much. I am so sad Jubilee closed.
Then again, I’m supposed to be going on a diet. hahahahahahahahaha.
Finished my gardening video for the week:
The beans are doing so great in the new hoop house it is very exciting. And I have little soybeans and carrots popping up. And I severely trimmed back the old beans — that had been completely eaten by the deer at one point — and I think I might be able to save them. We are back.
Started watching Fast 9 yesterday, I guess that was a thing, but I mean. What is there to say? First off, I’m not done, secondly, it is just ridiculous. I feel like this franchise may have lost the plot around the time they jumped over a nuclear submarine but maybe that’s just me.
I think I might read the entirety of the infrastructure bill? Is that crazy? Read the budget once it was super satisfying. The bill is 2,000 pages but it goes quick. I’m almost getting excited about this bill, but holding off till it’s actually signed. It’s not enough, but it is substantial. Well, that’s my sense. I need to read it.
Hrm I’m having a bit of a writer’s block today, I did not add any topics to my GMHHAY Topics note — except for the one about bacon. Usually I have a few old backups there, but the topic list is empty. I should be proud of this — I’ve gotten a whole to-do list done! But, you know, like I said yesterday, when you live a repetitive life, doing the same thing every day, never leaving your house, never seeing people, it gets a bit tricky to write something new every day. In my 750 Words, often there’s a lot of “oh god, this is so hard today I’m going to die” and that sort of thing. And I often procrastinate, taking the entire day to write all 750 words, but I don’t have that kind of luxury with the GMHHAY posts — I gotta get this thing done by 9AM.
What else what else. Not much. I am reading the news, thinking about things, but my mood is… fine right at the moment, so I’m trying to, you know, surf. To skim the oily surface. To be a skipping rock. To stay informed, to dip in, to not put my head in the sand, but not let things overwhelm me and depress me. It really is crazy how much better I feel now that America has come round and realized the Delta Variant is a thing. Lately I’ve been kind of trying to sit with the idea that this is the future. That we are already living in apocalyptic times, we’re in a dystopian sci-fi movie and there is no out. That there is always going to be some crisis like the pandemic, or climate change, or anti-vaxxers, or Trump, and the lives we had are already gone, and we should maybe stop pretending. This feels sort of right, but it also feels fatalistic. It feels like we need to be doing two contradictory things at once: mentally preparing for a new world of perpetual crisis, suffering and decay, while also ramping up to fight it even more, even harder than ever.
Another thing that is challenging is knowing who to donate to during a non-election year. I mean, you know, I have my regular recurring donations to several orgs, but it kind of irks me I give so much more during election years. I wish there was some way to really evaluate the bang-for-buck of various orgs and charities.
Eh. Mayhaps we’ll just cut it a bit short today, come roaring back tomorrow. Stronger than ever. Here have a picture of a bunny.
Let’s do a drone mix today. Thank you to Ryan for reminding me about Calla a few months back. What a great band. Wayne Magruder, the drummer of Calla, used to be a friend of mine, back when he was in a fantastic band called Factor Press. I think I also messed that up due to my dysfunctionality or something. I can’t recall exactly but feel a lingering sense of guilt over it. Years later, in the early Calla years, I went to see them play at the Cooler (RIP) in the Lower East Side and I was too chicken to say hi. I wonder what happened to Wayne, he was a good dude. Gruff Rhys has an amazing live, home video for Light in the Attic records from early in the pandemic, where he does a song at a piano in his home with his two daughters and it is just the most adorable thing. And thank you to Mea for reminding me about I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, it was back in heavy rotation for a week or so thanks to you.
i feel you with acceptance of the end of the world as we know it smeared with hope for the future. balance, i suppose. ❤️ happy tuesday!