Good morning. Hello. How are you? #598
Lover's not a bad record. The Ukrainians. Like the English indie band. Seedlings. Deutche Mark capitalization. A rambling bit about MSNBC.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? Holding up okay? Emotionally handling this war in a healthy, responsible manner? I give myself a B-/C+ on that front. I could definitely be better, but I could definitely be worse. I wonder how Taylor Swift is handling this war. I finally got my hands on a Target-exclusive copy of Lover that rapidly inflated in price quite unresonably and I’ve been trying to find a sub-$40 copy for a few years now and it just arrived yesterday and it is very pretty but it seems like a document from another time. Except for maybe this song about if she were a man, this war does seem amply dalted with toxic masculinity, after all. It was never my favorite Taylor album, better than Reputation, but I welcomed the Folkloreian Covid pivot. She was very adept at adapting to the times. I wonder if she will do it again.
My friend Adam also reminded me a couple days ago that one of my all-time favorite bands had a Ukranian side project. After their initial giant success in the UK, the Wedding Present did a Peel session composed entirely of Ukrainian folk songs. When Pete Solokwa, the Ukrainian hyperspeed-strumming guitarist of the Wedding Present departed, his new band was called The Ukranians (he really shoulda just called it Ukrainians) and I bought their first several releases, including Pisni Iz The Smiths an EP entirely composed of covers of The Smiths, sung in Ukrainian. Their last album was from 2018 entitled Summer in Lviv. It’s hard to explain how big the Wedding Present were in England in the 80’s when they pulled this gag, it really was a masterly act of media absurdity. But then it became serious. Solokwa kept this up for thirty years.
Not a lot of support for my theory that specific the names of specific systems of currency should be capitalized. Felix disagreed with me, even as he pointed out the absolutely absurd contradiction of the Deutschmark being capitalized but not the Euro. Actually, it’s Deutsche Mark, two words, even in English, and you capitalize the M. In English. Sure. Makes sense. The Germans also capitalized the names of their previous currencies, the Goldmark, the Reichsmark, the Papiermark, and the Rentenmark. Why “Gold” is in English and “papier” is in French, no idea, but I can only be expected to do so much early morning, pre-work Wikipedia-ing here. Felix accused me of being German, and it’s true I have some Alsatian and Prussian ancestry on my dad’s side and some German Pole ancestry on my mom’s side (regarding my great-great grandfather from a recent biography I read: he was an accomplished engineer, yet he still “died of starvation in a Polish forest”). And right at this moment, I am somewhat pleased with the Germans for their recent about-face on Nordstream2 and very rapid sending of 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine. The Germans definitely have things sorted on the capitalization of currencies front, I have to hand it to them.
I guess that convoy is just going to sit there. It’s so… god it’s like a plot device, and like I said, plots suck (not a lot of agreement on that theory either but that’s okay I am content to stand alone on that one). So many emotions about this war. The Ukrainians are heroes, it’s so phenomenal they’ve lasted a week, it’s so weird that this war has lasted enough to feel “normal,” even as there is a sense of impending doom that things are going to get a lot, lot worse. This vague but growing feeling that this is perhaps an unmitigated logistical debacle and the Russian army is about to completely fail from a combination of desertian and garbage equipment and maintenance. The sinking feeling that this is probably wishful thinking and their missiles and bombs seem to be working just fine. Or do they? How in god’s name do they not have air superiority yet? And if they don’t, how is that convoy still standing? And why is it still standing, or, sitting, and not moving? The helpless sense of not having any idea what’s going on.
I watched some actual news last night. It was Emma’s turn doing Jane’s bedtime, and during their bedtime I played a bit more of the absurdly challenging No Man’s Sky community challenge. I timed it to wrap up when she came down, assuming we were going to watch something, but she had some work to do and so I just threw MSNBC on to, you know, get a different view of this war because I am not an emotionally healthy person, and I wanted to see if the reason I am feeling this “boomerang theory” of media, where the internet is now getting worse for news coverage compared to peak perfect internet news era of, mm, imagonnasay 2006 or so, was because I wasn’t watching any TV coverage. And in some ways, yeah, it really helped. There was an absurdly insightful David Remnick interview, and another Alexander Vindeman interview. For some reason punditry in this situation works slightly better for me than internet op-ed punditry, which is very hard for me to read. I think because they’re being interviewed, so there’s at least a little pushback, or guidance, and they’re also on a timer so they can’t ramble. Additionally the video footage is just a lot more… visceral. I mean, I don’t know that I needed to feel the horror and suffering of this war more viscerally, I can’t say that was definitely an emotionally healthy thing to do, but on another level I think I needed it to feel that this is not some made up thing.
The ads are completely absurd, though, and it’s just the dumbest way to deliver news. Death and catastrophe! And now... Penis pills! Back when I read Reese Shonfeld’s (RIP) fantastic history of his (not Ted’s) founding of CNN, it was a huge part of the story—how brands generally speaking, don’t like to advertise against news, and historically networks had run news as a loss leader and as a form of lobbying with the FCC to, you know, keep their grubby hands off of them. You can also find a lot about this in Patrick Parson’s magisterial history of the cable industry, Blue Skies, as well as Fox’s Mirror Makers, a book who’s importance and utility really is growing by the decade. Anyway, CNN deftly navigated those problems, but MSNBC is facing a much more adversarial situation what with the (verrrrry) slow but inevitable demise of traditional TV advertising, and Fox facing the slow death of their audience on top of that. Jen Psaki is really just angling for a ticket on the Titanic here, with her post White House career plans I have no idea why she wants to do this, CNN, MSNBC, even Fox, it’s only a matter of time till the heavy salaries of their talent become unsustainable and they won’t be able to compete against… what. No idea. Substack I guess. Rachel is probably right to want to move on. They should probably just start a TikTok channel together. MSNBC has an important place in the world as, like, a Politico-on-TV for the beltway and honestly maybe they should, just, like, go B2B or something. Spin Chris Hayes’ podcast out into a separate entity like Ford is spinning out their electric vehicles and eventually the podcast empire will have a higher valuation than the cable network and Chris Hayes can buy the whole kit and kaboodle. I’m spinning media fantasy fiction here, but I suspect the truth will, in the end, be just as weird.
Yeah okay Lover is better than I remember it, I gotta admit. I miss Cornelia street too, Taylor. I miss drunkenly running into drunk Italians at 3AM on empty SoHo streets and making new friends and deciding you all need to go to Miladys right now. I am intentionally using Miladys in this example so it doesn’t make me yearn to immediately visit, since Milady’s is gone, and I could have used Toad Hall in the example but then I’d miss NYC too much. I will walk Cornelia street again, Taylor, in your honor.
I checked on my little seedlings in the garage yesterday morning (as I will again after I finish this) and there were the teeeniest of sprouts on maybe three or four of the sixty or so seedlings. It’s been… four days? I guess that’s not bad. It has been somewhat unexpectedly cold and I am not heating the garage this year, just using some tray heaters. The little thermometer above the seedlings says it’s mid 60’s, which is in their red-zone but definitely a little on the cold side. I also may have initially over-watered, but right now they’re in the butter zone (god I hate that term but I am lazy today), and it is going to be almost eighty today which is exciting and insane. Hold out till the weekend, dear weather, hold out.
Should I go see Deafhaven tonight? I bought the tickets ages ago. Numbers are waaay down here in Chatham County. Back down to 6% positivity rate, numbers back down to November numbers. Still feels… crazy. But I do like them. And Jane will be at Grammy’s. And I am super fascinated with their wholesale migration from metal to shoegaze, I wanna see how they mix old and new songs. But also… leaving the house. I am torn.
In exchange for my indecision, or maybe Deafhaven’s indecision on whether they want to be a metal band or Slowdive, here is a noise and metal playlist, which is a real good time if you are looking to feel cathartic or angry. Also it was the only one I had even close to ready, so, you know. Laziness. I still gotta do all my country flash cards before I go get Jane. And update my Quicken transactions. I really messed up on Asia yesterday, kept spacing it and clicking on Afghanistan when it asked for Iraq, which is really just such a great, clicheéd dumb American mistake. But I am trying to get through all the countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America and the Carribbean without thinking. Like just sort of absentmindedly doing it. Know exactly where everything is subconsciously. It is taking a while. Monday I got every country across all six maps without a single mistake, though. Progress.
Oh, also, I regret to inform everyone that the golden era of banana ripeness is over, and we are back to only having over- or under-ripe bananas in the house. It was a good run. Lasted almost a month. But it has come to an end.
Until tomorrow.
Here's a Deezer version of your playlist. Didn't have the last song though.
https://deezer.page.link/yV5MAf83Z6xSxpZh7
ps. I wish you did more of these heavy ones!
Also re: Euphoria maybe you'd get more into the 2nd season as the plot was pretty much nonexistent throughout ha