Good morning. Hello. How are you? #499
Ministry, Facebook, Lisa & Costes in 2021, Andy, Nicholas & ZORT, Kurt Ralske coincidences, Whitehouse's REDUCE act, a usual smattering of Manchin and Sinema shade, the LGA Air Train is all but dead.
Good morning! Hello! How’s it going how are you? I am good, the morning light is a little bit less every day and that is sad, though. I used to wake up, come down here, and the sun would be streaming into the windows at 7AM. Now it’s still pretty dark. I forgot about this feeling, gives me sad vibes of Alaskan childhoods. One of these days, the daylight savings time bullshit will commence, and it will be dark when we finish dinner at 5:30, making it hard for us to do our daily walks, and that will be very, very sad. I have a treadmill this year, so I’m hoping it won’t be as physically damaging as last year, but it’ll still be an emotional bummer.
I did do some serious morning treadmilling. Just walking, but, like, power walking, 5% incline. I listened to the new Ministry album, Moral Hygiene and you know what? It’s pretty good! Man, that album is really mad about Trump. One could be forgiven for thinking that it was perhaps mistimed, releasing an album about how awful Trump is ten months into the Biden administration but, no matter how much most of us want to stick our heads in the sand about it, that bastard is going to run again. Moral Hygiene will be a relevant record for quite a while, I think.
I don’t think I’ll be able to handle another run. I’ll stay in my battleground state to vote, but if he wins I think I gotta get out.
But we won’t think about that today.
Facebook was down yesterday, and it was great I wish it never came back. Not much unique or interesting to say here, all of the jokes that were able to be made were made on Twitter. I do think it’s interesting how many people thought, not without reason, that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t coming back. I mean, I think we all mostly knew it was coming back, but there was definitely an air of “maybe they just gave up” that you don’t get from most outages. Also I was reading an article and it said “Facebook’s longest outage since a 24-hour outage in 2019” and, man, I do not have any recollection of that at all. It must have been awesome. Interestingly, that one was also caused by a “server configuration change.”
Speaking of Instagram, it’s got this new in-house carousel ad unit highlighting select “reels,” trying to get me to look at “reels,” which is a thing I don’t really know what it is or care about, and I definitely don’t care about it since every “reel” instagram suggests to me is a big-bootied woman in almost know clothes, dancing to a song I do not know. It is kind of terrifying and insane and I don’t understand why they show me this content but boy it sure makes it seem entirely plausible that Richard Blumenthal was on to something about signing up for Instagram as a teenage girl and instantly getting bombarded with thinspo.
(Fun fact: I partially owe my job @ Tumblr to me cold emailing David offering some insights on limiting thinspo. David was receptive. Because although Tumblr constantly suffered from a thinspo problem, we tried, constantly tried, to limit it.)
Real shame for you FB readers of GMHHAY, because man, yesterday’s issue was lit. Don’t you just want to subscribe to the email version so you never have to miss an issue, now that you realize how much better life without Facebook and Instagram is?
Yesterday on her Patreon, the only Patreon I subscribe to, Lisa Carver visited her first husband, Costes, aka Jean-Louis Garnick Philippe Costes in France. This probably means something to only a very, very small subset of people, but one of those people who would have gotten a kick out of it was my old friend Andy Shea, and it has made me miss him something fierce again. I find myself thinking often about how I want to text him about something, only to remember I can’t. I like how you have one friend who’s also into so some weird thing that you’re into, and you text that person about it all the time, it’s a good time, it’s nice to have a hook. My friend Nicholas and I text about ZORT trucks all the time. The guy who works at the gas-station-post-office-bodega-taco-shack (formerly the gas-station-post-office-bodega-burger-king) has a ZORT truck. I would post a photo of the ZORT truck here, now, but I can’t remember where I filed it, and I thought my filing technique was unstoppable. Oh wait I think I know. Okay, found one. Only took 20 seconds. My filing technique remains unblemished:
Anyway, ZORT is a pretty great American subculture. Nicholas and I love it. He’s very good about sending ZORT photos. If you have any ZORT photos, send em my way.
But back to the point here, with Andy, Costes and Lisa were one topic he found fascinating. He knew I knew Lisa, was scared to meet her, even though I told him she was just great and they would have gotten along just fine. That’s a shame. More than once — and one of these episodes is in the Andy book — Andy and I debated going to go see Costes perform, but we were always too chicken: Costes would call us bourgeois dilettantes of filth rather than actual filthy people and he would be 100% correct in that assessment. We were academically interested. Costes has still been making art these twenty years since Andy and I stopped paying attention. I mostly disavow this line of art in my life these days, but I still find it oddly compelling like a moth to a flame. Lisa recorded an hour-long interview with him that should be amazing and insane.
I wish I could text andy about it.
Another weird old art thing happened yesterday. Out of the blue, a vinyl copy of the Cathar’s Early Bells and Voices LP came for sale on Discogs, and only for $9. I’ve had a wantlist alert on this for a year or so, so this was very exciting. Cathars was another project of Kurt Ralske from Ultra Vivid Scene, who has mostly retired from music in the 21st century, save for an occasional rare appearance on sax on some free jazz records. Anyway, was excited to pick this up. And then! Like two hours later, I sold my CD copy of Ultra Vivid Scene’s She Screamed CD single, featuring my favorite UVS track, “Not in Love (Hit by a Truck).” What a coincidence! And I was, like, “do I chat with this buyer? Tell them about this weird coincidence? I mean, they’re not going to care,” but also, like, what fun is life if you don’t do this? This is representative of a larger problem I’ve had in life for ages: I just don’t say the thing, because, you know, what’s the point? I’ll meet some famous person, whose work I will be intimately familiar with and have all sorts of comments and questions, and I just won’t say anything. This does not seem productive I maybe need to stop it? But also famous people hate hearing the same insights and questions and maybe I’m not really that profound. I’m really torn. But also people don’t like to be talked to. But also, they do. I could spend my life trapped in this dumb loop. So, anyway, this time, low stakes! So I said, screw it, and sent a chatty note to this purchaser about Ultra Vivid Scene and Cathars. No answer. That is okay. I m still glad I did it.
Are you guys aware of the REDUCE act? It’s really cool. It is a part of the $3.5 trillion bill that’s making its way through congress. It was introduced by Sheldon Whitehouse and it would:
Establish an excise tax on virgin plastic resin. Plastic resin is the base material that makes up plastics. Manufacturers, producers, and importers of virgin plastic resins would pay $0.10 per pound in 2022, increasing gradually up to $0.20 per pound in 2024. This fee would apply to virgin plastic used to make single-use products, including plastic packaging, beverage containers, bags, and food service products. Exported virgin plastic resin and post-consumer recycled resin would be exempt.
Provide rebates for certain products. Companies that use virgin plastic to make medical products, containers or packaging for medicines, personal hygiene products, and any packaging used for the shipment of hazardous materials would not have to pay the fee and could qualify for a full rebate for any fees paid on the plastic they use for such products. Virgin plastic used to make non-single-use products would also qualify for this rebate.
Establish a Plastic Waste Reduction Fund. The bill would direct revenue from the virgin plastic fee into a Plastic Waste Reduction Fund. Funds would be available to carry out plastic waste reduction and recycling activities, including making improvements to recycling infrastructure; to carry out marine debris reduction, detection, monitoring, and cleanup activities; and to address environmental justice and pollution impacts from the production of plastic.
I’ve been waiting for a bill like this on the national level — one just passed in Maine and a few other states have them. It is exciting. Plastic is still an insane problem and unlike power generation or car exhaust, there is currently no solution looming on the horizon. I feel like it should make it through the bullshit that is Sinema and Manchin, since, you know, it is revenue positive, unless, you know, Sinema and Manchin don’t actually care about revenue but that would mean they are dishonest and maybe captured by special interests but no, that couldn’t be the case.
Also people on the internet have strong opinions about some protesters that followed Sinema into the bathroom when she ran away from them because that’s all she every does is run away from people she hasn’t held a town hall in years, she doesn’t answer her constituents letters or phone calls but she sure has plenty of fundraisers for rich people. I mean sure, yeah, following someone into the bathroom is maybe a little gauche but god, imagine if that is the thing in American politics you decide that is worth commenting on for a day. Jesus. Go visit Balthazer and get over your bathroom prissiness.
Fucking Sinema.
I will leave you today with some good news about the Air Train. Since yesterday, Governor Hochul has come out and requested that the PANYNJ (the Port Authority for you non-obsessives) come up with new alternatives to the ridonkadonk Air Train.
“I have asked the Port Authority to thoroughly examine mass transit solutions for reducing car traffic and increasing connectivitiy to LaGuardia Airport. We must ensure that our transportation projects are bold, visionary and serve the needs of New Yorkers. I remain committed to working expeditiously to rebuild our infrastructure for the 21st century and to create jobs — not just at LaGuardia, but at all of our airports and transit hubs across New York.”
This is so exciting. Yes, it’ll be years, and, you know what is going to happen? The NIMBYs will kill off, for a second time, the Astoria extension that is the obvious solution. But we can cross that bridge when we come to it. It can be done. It can be done. To infinity and beyond, thank you new awesome Gov. Hochul, and double thank you because somewhere, Cuomo is sitting in his cave hole all pissed off.
NB I don’t actually know if Gov. Hochul is awesome or not, but I am thankful for this.
Mix time! Country mix! I mean, you know, Americana mix. Or something. Genre name of country music removed from the horrible racist, ill-produced baggage of modern country music. Or something. I’m always sort of pushing the limits of what is country in these mixes but that’s okay, it needs to be done. Also I think I put two Sturgill songs on here, but that’s kind of the situation to be expected when someone puts out albums as quickly as Sturgill Simpson has been of late. That guy’s interesting. He kept getting further and further from country (wait did I already say this) until he sounded like ZZ Top and then he was like “LOL nope I’m gonna make country.” Unlike the women who emerged from country and went pop like Kacey and Taylor. Sturgill backed down. Or returned to his roots. I kinda think the most punk thing Taylor could do at this point is make her version of Cuttin Grass as her next album. Kacey can have one more pop album that’s fine. I enjoyed her SNL appearance.
Okay have a good Tuesday, my second-least favorite day of the week. I will talk to you guys tomorrow.
Rick, just want you to know I appreciate getting to read your ramble every (nearly every) day. It’s turned out to be a key piece of my pandemic coping. I feel your pain about wanting to text a friend you can’t anymore. I try to think of those moments as a way that we get to keep those friends with us, and smile at what we would have texted or told them,
but it’s such a sharp pain isn’t it? That’s the piece that spoke to me today but also very nice to learn about the plastic part of the infrastructure bill. I don’t know how you keep up on everything, but thanks for sharing the highlights it helps me keep up a little bit too.