Good morning. Hello. How are you? #572
Still made at Klinkenborg. Relentless Jane. Mastering coujntries with a dumb online quiz game.
Good morning. Hello, there. How are you? It’s Tuesday woooo yeah fuckin Tuesday shit yeah.
Thank you for all your input on the GMHHAY cover, numbers 2 and 3 seem to be the big winners. I sort of flip-flop between them. Number 3 is so cheesy, so optimistic, but to Josh’s point, the camera reflection does kind of save it. Number 2 is more austere, which… Yeah, I mean it depends on my mood each day. One thing I was thinking is that we (as in Emma and I, since she likes number 3 a lot, and her vote counts more than most owing to nuptial and designer factors) could save it from Christian-tract land by doing something kind of absurd with the type, so now I am leaning toward 3 with hilarious type, which kind of might work.
I am feeling okay this morning but I had kinda a bad afternoon and evening, chiefly owing to the intransigence and recalcitrance of my daughter, who was in her fifth-column-resistance mode and just wouldn’t do anything she needed to or supposed to and god some poet forever young friends of mine are already reading this sentence and thinking “she’s a child, does she need to do things? maybe just let her be young” and trust me you’re not thinking anything I wasn’t thinking yourself but when your daughter is sitting on the toilet, refusing to wipe, yelling at you because you’re holding four squares of toilet paper instead of two, well, all that goes out the window. It was just so relentless, harrowing, depressing. And it all started out after dinner with this new thing she does now where she insists just Mommy and Jane should go on the walk, not Daddy, we don’t want Daddy, we don’t love Daddy.
Look, I was very good. I was firm, but I was kind and patient, I did not raise my voice, I didn’t yell. It took a super human amount of effort but I did it. But god, god, it sucked.
And, of course, my endless headaches from my fused neck have been back this week something fierce. Even when I take six Advil I barely feel any relief, so, you know, why bother taking any. Actually this reminds me I have special medicine for when things get this bad and I always forget about it. Maybe I should take it today. Try something different.
It took most of the rest of the evening to recover. We were supposed to watch the last two episodes of Station Eleven but I was like “oh, no, I am not watching that grimdark nonsense.” It is really good, but, god, it’s too emotional, I was in no mood. Also, thank you to Katherine Elsasser for coining the word “grimdark,” used in a sentence “Oh so Station Eleven’s not just some grimdark prestige Television?” I will reserve judgement till the last episode but it kind of might be. Anyway, we watched SNL instead, which was mostly hilarious because of Will Forte and Kristen Wiig and I sure have missed her, but their Magruder qAnon parodies were, like, a year behind and I feel like they could have nailed those more. But their weird country singers who always use the words Toddler, Spaceship, and Jars of Beer was glorious.
Then I went to bed and I was like “oh shit, I still have to read more of this horrific book, Several Short Sentences about Writing,” and I almost just didn’t, I almost just curled up in a ball and moaned, but I had had a tiny wine and was feeling argumentative, so I hate read the book, making highlights basically every sentence and complaining about what he was saying. Made multiple highlight notes thast just said “fuck off.” I must admit, though, that I did find one little bit that I liked, where he said:
Offer your testimony About the character of existence at this moment.
And I’m like “well okay then, that’s what I do with GMHHAY every day so I am good here I don’t need this dumb book.”
I mean, look at this single fucking sentence, from a book where the author haughtily insists a) you should write short sentences, and b) you should really brush up on your grammar:
What the fuck is that? Why are you indenting four times in the middle of sentence? Why are you capitalizing? What is going on? What is this affectation? Nonsense.
I will also say something in that book kicked off a kind of interesting thought process between my skill at something and the level of sophistication of my fandom. He keeps going on about the rhythm of prose sentences, and I was like, “Yeah, well, I listen to Acid Mothers Temple and Kid Millions and shit so rhythm is whatever you want. I suppose ole Verlyn Klinkenborg probably does not have the most wide-ranging avant garde musical tastes.” And then: “Hrm, interesting. I’m a pretty good writer and my tastes in writing are very straightforward and pedestrian. But I’m a mediocre musican and my tastes in music are frontier-reaching. I wonder if there is some sort of correllation thing going on here, like when we know we’re better at something, we are more comfortable in the pedestrian.” Or something. And it’s probably why I hate this guy because he’s not helping me he’s just shaking my confidence in my writing and that is no fun.
Anyway, before all of that, I got a little work done, finished up this presentation I have for work tomorrow. And then I spent a bunch of time mastering the countries using these online quiz games. I had taken one a month or two ago and realized with chagrin that my knowledge of Eastern European countries, Poland and Ukraine aside, was for shit. Oh, the Baltics, I have always been very good at the Baltics for some reason. Anyway, was talking about the situation in the Ukraine with some friends in a Slack and was trying to figure out where the nearby American military presence was (answer: Bulgaria, Poland, Germany, carrier group in the Ionian sea), and I was like “man I don’t even know where Bulgaria is.” So I busted open this fantastic quiz and spent an hour doing it over and over (and over) until I mastered Europe once again, and could do the whole quiz in 1:05. And then I was like “well okay, I am on a roll here,” and started in on the African countries quiz. Took me quite a while to get that one consistently, but now I know every country in Africa. Then I did Asia, which I mostly knew, but I always have some problems with the former Soviet states since, you know, they weren’t on the map when I learned all this when I was a kid. And I just checked them all again, this morning, and I got 100% on all three. It took about five minutes. I figure I can carve out five minutes in my day to keep at these. Oh I did South America too but I already knew those. And I did Oceana but, I mean, when is anyone ever gonna give you shit for not being 100% sure which is Togo and which is Palau. Still, it’s kind of fun and takes like 20 seconds. Might keep at that one too.
Hrm my computer is telling me to update to Mac OS Monterey. Didn’t realize I was one OS behind. I’m impressed with myself, I usually dive right in. But I guess I’ve made it this far, why change now.
Let’s do a shoegaze mix today, been a while. Some new stuff, some old. Some in-between, like Black Belt Eagle Scout and Fauns. I could use a really good new shoegaze album today. Anyone know of a new shoegaze album today? Hook a friend up.
Okay I’m gonna go moan about my headaches for a while until I have to get Jane for breakfast. Please please please baby gods give me a happy Jane. I will sacrifice something to you just tell me what you want.
I am so into shoegaze again and there are a million great bands. Check out Glare, Broken Head and Vyva Melinkolya. A few years ago I would have written this new shoegaze off as derivative but now I just love any young folks getting those sounds out of their guitars.