Good morning. Hello. How are you? #462
Factory DATs. Weird anti-dog-training Facebook cults and climate guilt, mostly. Oh and what if the Sandman turns out to be good?
Hey there! Good morning! Hello! How’s it going? What’s new? What day is it what’s going on here. Okay Thursday. Yeah I can deal with that. We have another Timehop recharge day tomorrow so today is like Friday. Pretty light meeting schedule, too. That suits me just fine. Bring it.
Finished watching DiG last night, the 2005 film chronicling the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. More or less worth the re-watch, despite the intolerable cringe at the behavior and antics of some of the subjects. I feel like the real star of the film is Joel, the BJM’s tamourine player. That guy has charisma, man. Joel and Matt Hollywood, the two other guys in the BJM, both have solo albums on Spotify. Listened to them yesterday. They’re not bad! They both sound like less insane versions of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Also I am listening to Miranda Lee Richards for the first time now thanks to that movie. I think I saw her live once but never really listened to her. I am enjoying her debut album, The Hereafter.
Switched gears after that and started Summer of Soul (Or When the Revolution Could not be Televised) but we haven’t finished that yet. But man. Nice change of pace.
Been chatting with Lisa, and she is making good progress on the Good Morning Hello How Are You book. At the moment, our plan is it will start at the beginning of the pandemic and go through my trip to Alaska and dad’s funeral. That seems like a good stopping point, whatever happened after that was definitely different. And if this delta variant persists we’ll have a volume 2 at some point, ha. The main challenge in the whole affair is that I wrote way, way more than can actually fit in a book, so substantial cuts will be needed. It will be a somewhat different beast than the original posts. The playlists will be gone, sadly (though of course they’re all on Spotify and I may work out some way to at least put links to them – maybe QR codes or something), as will a bunch of other text. But I like this, it will be tighter. It’s actually very freeing, when you’re writing, to know you have an editor. Even in these couple of days since she’s started working on it, I think “oh, this is dumb but whatever, I can always cut it in editing if this turns into a book.” Writing is so hard to get started sometimes, and it’s twice as hard to worry about it being good. Just start. Just start. Cut later.
Anyway, we’re a long way from actually having it ready to be a physical book, but I’ll keep you apprised. Back in the innocent days of 2020 a bunch of you kept saying “this should be a book!” so you’ll get your wish. And even if no one ever reads it, it means I accomplished something last year, which is already doing wonders for my self image.
I won an auction yesterday for the four DAT releases on Factory Records. These were not super cheap. BUT I used to own two of them, also sealed and unopened, back about six years ago when we moved here to Chapel Hill. But I was so broke from buying the house and the move, I had to sell them. When I first put all my CDs on Discogs I put those two DATS up for sale as well for some ungodly amount - actually I can look it up on Discogs it was $94.11. So, not that much, but it was a lot of money for me at that point. So, now that my financial house is back in order, it was a personal treat to buy them from this recent Factory Records auction. I bid on some other stuff, but I bid reasonably so of course I had no chance of winning, and also there’s not much Factory stuff i don’t already own.
Anyway, I am happy to have these back. I haven’t regretted most of the stuff I’ve ever sold, but this one I regretted.
So we have this mailing list here in Chatham County. It is great. It’s an email list, a bulletin board, like the old days, like the more innocent internet of yesteryearyore. But it’s also a good reminder that there was insanity and drama on the internet before Facebook and Trump. It wasn’t as bad, but it was still there. But this post, well, I don’t know if this could have happened in, like, 1990’s America. It was just too batshit. I am genuinely torn about writing about it — it is either a crazy, fantastical work of fiction from a deranged mind, or truly terrifying and not something you want to get involved with. I’m also torn about paraphrasing or just quoting the whole email here, but I think I will confine myself to paraphrasing.
So, basically. This guy wrote into the chatlist that he has to close his dog training business. He has to close his dog training business because he is losing his lease on his training facility. He’s losing his lease on his training facility because he’s been targeted by a radical Facebook group of rabid (pun intended) anti-dog training militants. Apparently what they did is they came to his facility, ostensibly to get a dog trained, and, while he was off running an errand and the dog trainer was looking away, they shot a dog full of barbituates, which eventually lead to its death. While the dog trainer was distracted by this, they ran over and opened all the kennel doors to the other dogs’ cages. They then got in their car, drove away, and called animal control to report that the facility was perpetuating animal cruelty.
Animal control came, and does not seem to have been duped by the situation. They had to perform an autopsy, but they realized the dog had been murdered. The trainer’s account of the situation seems to indicate everyone knew these people’s identities, and it is not clear how, so that’s one red flag in this whole tale. But apparently animal control said, well, these people were from out of state, there’s not much they can do. They were traveling nurses.
So, then, this anti-dog-training Facebook group seems to have taken to the tactics of the anti-vaxxers, leaving horrible reviews for this guy’s dog training facility everywhere, and calling and complaining to anyone who would listen. They found his landlord’s number and started harassing her, threatening her, accusing her of “renting to an animal abuser,” and freaking her out until she asked the trainer to leave.
He did give a name for the ringleader of this Facebook group, and some (very light, very depressing) Googling pretty rapidly turns up criminal complaints against this woman all around the country. So, even if this dude’s story is made up, there definitely seems to be some truth to the anti-dog-training Facebook group and their ringleader, leveraging anti-vax harassment techniques and fucking shit up for dog trainers everywhere.
Just lovely. What a world we live in.
The worst part is that no one has replied to him. Like. What is anyone supposed to say? Being targeted by lunatics like that is the new form of leprosy. No one wants to put their name to it, no one wants this level of abuse coming from these people. This man wrote this long cris de coeur into the ether and… no one said anything.
In much more pleasant news, there is a power washing simulator game. That sounds amazing. I can imagine playing this game and suddenly nothing else in the world matters. Playing it for years. This also makes me think I should maybe have Emma teach me how to use our actual power washer. But there’s nothing to power wash on our property as satisfying as this:
I was thinking last night about the Sandman TV show adaptation. It is still a thing! It is still happening! I’ve been following this for years. Shit, almost as long as I’ve loved the sandman. Rumors go back to the early 90’s. This incarnation of effort have been going on for eight years. Plus, of course, it seems established wisdom in the Sandman community — or, I guess, it did, like, ten years ago the last time I questioned or thought about this as anything other than fact — that it would be impossible to adapt The Sandman.
But something just occurred to me the other day: What if it’s good? What if it’s as good as Watchmen? What if it’s better? I am so completely steeled against the possibility of it being any good. I don’t want to be disappointed. But… what if I’m wrong? Like David S Goyer has written one or two not bad things, and the cast is pretty awesome: Jenna Coleman! Gwendolyn Christie! David Thewlis! Stephen Fry! Patton Oswalt!
This feeling of hope about this adaptation if very disorienting.
Scanned through the executive summary of the new IPCC climate report and and it was suitably terrifying. I am, as ever, freaked out. 2030. Man. I am sorry Jane. I will say, maybe the IPCC should consider, you know, putting the fucking temperatures in Fahrenheit as well if they’re, like, concerned about America. It’s actually very hard to Google how much a single degree of Celsius is in Fahrenheit (one point eight), because you just get the temperate difference of 1°C to F (thirty-three point eight). I mean, I am all for the metric system and not giving in to American imperialism and all that, but, like, maybe speak the language of the problem offenders? Maybe? Three degrees sounds bad. Five point eight degrees sounds worse. That’s actually a completely different thing than the “one or two degrees” most Americans have in their head.
Anyway. What is there to say. The world is dying, we’re killing it, and it was mostly our parents fault but we weren’t out there Greta-ing the situation we were obsessing over the internet and music and dating and whatever else instead of, like, trying to fix things. We were complacent. Our kids should probably judge us accordingly, scoff at our solar panels, LED bulbs and diligent recycling habits, don their berets and take up the mantle of those weirdo eco activists in Ministry of the Future.
I had so many good climate activism ideas. I never did any of them. Just wrote checks to appease my conscience. Saint Peter I don’t deserve to be let in.
Anyway. Changing the subject completely — because what else can you do when you spiral down an impotence and guilt K hole — here’s a mix I made of music of a very specific vibe and time. I heard a snipped of “Steal my Sunshine” the other day and it all just came flooding back to me, those circa 1997 alternative almost-hits. For the most part, this was not stuff I was actively listening to in 1997 — most of then were, at best, guilty pleasures, or songs I outright disliked at the time but have since come to realize were pretty good. Except that Bran Van 3000 song I have always loved that song. And “Boys Better,” of course. Oh and “Summertime,” always loved the Sundays. My first concert when I moved to Boston in 1990. They played “Here’s Where the Story Ends” twice because they didn’t have any other songs. I thought that might be normal for concerts.
All right! Have a lovely Thursday.
I love that Joel Gion record. I got it kind of randomly as I subscribed to the Beyond Beyond is Beyond vinyl club for a couple years. That label is intersting. There's a bit of cool space-rock and drone stuff and some stuff that's too much in jam band territory for me. But it's worth exploring them on Bandcamp.I think I remember digging The Myrrors, L'Eclair and Sundays and Cybele releases most, but there is a ton to explore on that label. And it's all weird and trippy.
scene: my first office job, at which i am surrounded by fellow youth. "tubthumping" is a company anthem. i hate the world. /the end
i'm terrified to read too much about the climate report. we took monday off to go to the beach (it was a gray, cold, windy beach day, but beats working, i guess), and on the ride there and back, they talked incessantly about the report and climate change in general. NPR: will governments find the will to do anything about climate change? me: obviously no. it all gives me a giant pit in my stomach.