Good morning. Hello. How are you? #528
Too much about Taylor Swift and an entirely unnecessary story.
Good morning. Happy Monday, god I hate Mondays amirite? Weekends are so much better than Mondays. I also deeply, profoundly miss the long periods of my life where I didn’t really notice it was Monday because I did not have a traditional, full-time job. Freelancing is so awesome. Except for the no health care part.
Programming note: I honestly have no idea how many of you have filled out this form for a holiday card yet. I should check with Emma, keeper of the form. Maybe you all have and I don’t need to keep reminding you! But just in case, here I am reminding you to fill out this lovely form to receive a lovely holiday card. Thank you.
Anyway, I’m listening to the new Susannah Hoffs album. I did not know Susanna Hoffs still made music, but I always loved her voice, and some algorithm somewhere recommended a song from this album to me last week: a duet with Aimee Mann. And they made a video for that song and the video uses all old, historical footage of Susanna and Aimee and wow I forgot about Aimee’s awesome 90’s haircut. Man I miss 90’s haircuts. Are they going to age like 60’s and 70’s haircuts? Or are they always just going to look awesome?
Anyway, pretty good weekend over here. I sucked up all the leaves on the lawn again for my leaf mould compost. I swear to god, by the time I was done going over the whole lawn the lawn was covered once again with leaves. It is a losing battle. Except the battle is to get a bin full of leaves, not keep the lawn clear, and that battle is winning. Very excited about my awesome compost. Not a lot of gardening otherwise. Harvested some lettuce, spinach, radishes and asian green onions for a salad, they were delicious. Snow peas are doing well. I should have planted some garlic but I think I missed my chance, alas. I am kind of half-assing the winter garden as I do all my re-arranging. But stuff is looking pretty good.
I got my podcast done, if that sort of thing is of interest to you. Topics include: Day 614, Booster Shot, Psychedelic Furs at Cat’s Cradle, Nicotine update, exercise, wegovy, booster shot, Jane, gardening, GMHHAY book, The Green Knight, Linda Ronstat Sound of my Voice, Black Widow, Free Guy, Dark Angel, Shang Chi, Smokey and the Bandit, Kalima, Angels and Airwaves, Saint Etienne, Pink Floyd, lana Del Rey, This Picture, Monsterland, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dead Can Dance, Goldfrapp, The War on Drugs, Flower Travelin Band, The The, Abba, Hanna Vu, Slipstream, ESP SUmmer, Snail Mail, Electric Prunes, Kuumba Toudie Heath, Kudsi Erguner & Suleyman Erguner, Caetano Veloso, Kannibal Komix, Cannons, Taylor Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version), Ted Lasso, SNL, Mythbusters, Foundation, What We Do In The Shadows, Schmiggadoon, What We Do in the Shadows (movie), Dune (2021), Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, No Time to Die, To Drink from the Wekll by Geeta N Kapur, Laserwriter II by Tamara Shopsin, The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow
I hid the post about Bill passing because Facebook had decided it was “quality content” and had obviously kept showing it to people over and over, so I was getting condolences from people all day every day and I did not need that in my life. Let another failing of the algorithm.
I went to the framing place to get our Mythbusters blueprint framed and my god that is going to be so expensive. The thing is 48x48, and it needs museum quality archival acrylic (the last time my artist friend Abby was here she gave me a stern talking-to about my choice of glass in various framed items around the house). I had done the recycling, stopped by Walmart to get more snow peas (and check if they had Red (Taylor’s Version), they did not, but they had, weirdly, a lot of new copies of Folklore). And I did all this, like, first thing in the morning Friday while Jane was at Grammy’s house, so I ended up getting to the framing place at 9:30 and, oops, it doesn’t open till 10AM, so I sat there in the dead mall for thirty minutes. Which was actually sort of nice!
I played a bunch of No Man’s Sky. I’ve pretty much nailed the whole “making units” thing, with my Stasis Device supply chain, and I have over 3 billion units now, so, you know, I’m done with that. Now I’m working on earning nanites. I did a few abandoned freighter runs and realized that you can shoot the appalling pustules, or whatever they’re called for living slime which can be refined into runaway mould which can be refined into Nanites and so can the tainted metal you get from those missions. All told each freighter mission is about 4,000 nanites which is not bad. But then I learned that the real best method is finding those runaway mold balls, penning them up, and harvesting them, because they will regenerate. I have found three of these in the game so far but I didn’t know they regenerated! So I did not mark them and save them. I am so bummed. So now I need to, like, go explore in the galaxy again instead of staying at home in my freighter and bases and now the game is just a metaphor for life because I like my comfy home and don’t want to go out thanks game for making me remember the stupid pandemic.
Other than that, yeah.. I don’t think I did much this weekend. Spent a lot of time listening to Red (Taylor’s Version). I have many thoughts:
First, the “All Too Well” ten-minute short film is pretty well done? Specifically, the part where they pause the music and have the argument is a very realistic argument that young people have where both people are not at fault but both people are not communicating super well. It is a remarkable work of nuance, open to interpretation. This is very interesting since, well, not a lot of Red and specifically “All too Well” is really open to self-critique. In the song, it is pretty clear the dude is at fault. But in the video, it’s more complex, she is acting crazy but he is not capable of reassuring and he escalates instead of providing the support she needs and also she’s not “acting crazy” because she is totally right that he was not paying enough attention to her and he took his hand away and these things have meaning even when we are trying to believe they don’t, or they are done on accident. But she did not handle it well, she assumed negative intent and did applied larger meaning to potentially accidental gestures or minor slights. This really makes me wonder! Is Taylor, underneath the massive marketing rollout for the breakup album for all time, tacitly saying that maybe the whole thing was not, in fact, Jake’s fault??Because, woah.
Second, I went through the credits for both albums and it seems that of the twenty or so people who worked on the OG Red, all but three have returned for their roles on Taylor’s version: Dan Huff, Nathan Chapman, and, most intriguingly, Max Martin. I really want to know what is up with this. All three did production, but other producers for Red returned for the effort. Max Martin, of course, is basically the most successful songwriter of all time and probably has other things to do, and Shellback, his right-hand man, makes many appearances on Red (Taylor’s Version) so, maybe that’s just a matter of delegation? In any case, I would watch a documentary about these three dudes and the decisions involved (either Taylor’s or theirs) in them not appearing on this record.
Third, the throwaway background line in “When You’re 22” that goes “Who’s Taylor Swift Anyway? ew.” It was a bit of a stretch of credulity the first time round but now it is absurdist. I am pleased they re-recorded it. I bet they were all having a bit of a giggle.
Fourth: My vinyl has still not come and this makes me sadz.
Finally, her SNL appearance was great. It was a bit weird that she showed the video while playing the song, I thought — has anyone ever done that? But… it also kind of worked? And the leaves, the snow, that weird black jumpsuit. All just great. Well done.
So I was getting ready to go out on my errands, and needed to, you know, drop the kids off at the pool. So I was sitting on the pot in the guest bathroom off of the kitchen doing my business and I had a wipe in my hand, and I I dropped it onto the floor to my right, between the toilet and the wall. And there’s only, like 5 inches of space there. And so I tried to, like, lean over and grab the wipe off of the floor, but there wasn’t enough space, so suddenly my shoulder is sort of stuck between the wall and the toilet. And it all happened in, like, two seconds, and I’m just sitting there, stuck, thinking “man. Life can just change. In a split second. Drop of a hat. One minute everything is normal, the next you’re stuck on the toilet with your arm stuck, wedged into a gap.”
Life is so precious. Every minute. Every hour. (Ahh Fishing.)
Speaking of toilets Emma got some weird smart toilet cleaner thing which is fine but the exciting part is I got to make this sweet custom icon for it on our Router’s device list:
Okay let’s do a mix. This is VERY HARD because all I’ve been doing is listening to Taylor Swift. I have a giant pile of new records sitting by the phonograph just waiting for you (Welcome to LP. It’s been waiting for you.) But it looks like I have this club mix just about ready, that is nice. So let’s dance! Oonz oontz! People really don’t do a lot of Oontz Oontz in their dance music anymore. It’s like they got self conscious of the joke or something. Weird.
All right. Talk soon. Hope you had a lovely weekend.
Consider leaving the leaves for your pollinators! Unless your HOA doesn't let you...
https://www.ashevillegreenworks.org/fall-leaves/leave-the-leaves-for-pollinators