Good morning. Hello. How are you? #603
Sanctions, cancel culture, oh god this sounds too much like a Substack, a long story about the side effects of Icebreakers gum
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I’m all right! I’m listening to Saint Etienne’s Sound of Water, and reminiscing about all of those great shows on that tour that was a reall swell tour. I’m checking up on the war, and every day increasingly stunned that in less than two weeks this thing went from Blitzkerig to a Vietnam-level morass, and that “so little” changes each day. And of course saying “so little” is heartless military strategist-speak. The “so little” that happens each day is that a bunch of civilians, a bunch of kids die, so that is not really a status quo we want to settle in to. Horrifying.
It seems that the Brits sanctioned Roman Abramovich last night, one of the most visible Oligarchs, owner of the Chelsea Football Club. I guess this is… good? I guess it makes perfect sense that buying a ticket to a Chelsea football game should not be allowed, even as they seize the team? I gotta admit I am a little confused here. Are we positing these Oligarchs knew that Putin was going to invade? Or just that they’ve been helping him for decades? So they helped a bad man for decades and we did nothing, said nothing, but now that that bad man does something much worse, that they almost certainly didn’t know or want to happen, we take everything from them? I mean, I think we probably should have taken everything from them decades ago, but doing it now seems kind of… weird? Also I am no expert on the Oligarchs — at one point, decades ago I had most of the memorized and knew their rough bios, but boy, they sure have proliferated through the years — but I have to imagine that one or two of these people could have, you know, done something to hurt Putin in exchange for keeping some small amount of their old wealth? I mean, doesn’t this guy supposedly rely on the support of these people for his power, partly? I feel like a deal could have been offered. I mean, sure, go against Putin, lose everything. But you’re about to lose everything anyway, and maybe if you can put a dent in him we’ll give back enough to reture to Topeka or something. After all of this is through.
Though I guess who knows, maybe they are offering such a deal, and aren’t talking about it. I’ll just pretend that.
Any minute now, some people are going to arrive at my house to do some work and they are probably going to turn off my power, so forgive me if this ends abruptly. Read a very interesting chat between some friends about that article from that poor, poor woman who couldn’t say unpopular things without consequences, and it caused me to take a stab at writing down my unified theory of cancel culture, and it seems like it would be a good idea to have this written somewhere besides a Slack channel, so here you go:
1) Cancel culture is mostly a conservative plot but it's a good one because it clicks for a lot of people and has a grain of truth
2) If you take as a given that in America you've always been forbidden from Saying Certain Things, now is the best time in terms of the rightness of the things you can't say, and the minimal consequences from breaking the rules. It's not perfect but it's an improvement. No one is going to jail for these opinions anymore, and no one is losing their job forever because they are saying vaguely commie things like we should have health care. It’s not great right now, but it never has been, and it’s better.
3) There exists a relitigation paradox. Re-litigating certain things is bullshit and useless and not good. We do not currently need to re-litigate racism or fascism. And so most of the time someone “just asks questions” about those; it is stupid and a waste of time. And yet. Relitigating is often necessary to educate people and, here's the paradox, we can’t know at any given time when some past-settled thing DOES need re-litigating, without trying. Which is a service our youth often provide, though they are also often wrong.
Semi-relatedly, like a nutcase I watched an hour long “YouTube Essay” (it’s a thing these days, and god, I seem to be watching too many fo them) about “The Horrifying Panopticon of West Elm Caleb,” which is kind of a weird thing for me to watch because I had never heard of West Elm Caleb and didn’t particularly want to. But someone, womewhere, (alas, I can’t remember who) told me it was good, so I watched it. It’s an hour-long exploration of the trend of people on the internet piling on to private citizens and doxing them and generally ruining their lives for supposedly bad behavior. It is a pretty good summation of what is terrible about such situations. I am sad that such things need to be explained but it seems that they do. I’m glad I learned how bad internet pile-ons were back when the internet was still small, and the damage was limited.
Though I’m not sure how this woman can drink that much tea in one sitting, it must be not great for her digestive system.
Which leads me to the most horrifying topic transition in GMHHAY history, you should talk Rick, tell em about the gum.
Since I quit nicotine lozenges, I have been indulging my oral fixation with these sugarless mints, Icebreakers. Because I am a complete freak and have a constant, primal oral fixation that must be indulged at all times and cannot be satiated and I should really go to the Mad Russian or something about it (is that guy still alive? How old is he now anyway?) Emma suggested I give gum a try, since I used to like gum, and, to be blunt, the mints make you fart a lot. Like, a ton. So a few weeks ago I thought “yeah okay the world is starting up again I probably can’t be farting constantly everywhere I go anymore,” so I went to the store and I bought some gum. I had a vision of super strong cinnamon gum, which is actually very hard to find in sugarless form, and this old Trident peach gum I used to chew in a completely failed attempt to cover up my smoker’s breath. So I bought a large assortment of flavors. As a backup, and to aid the transition, I also bought, like, six packs of Icebreakers gum. This was probably not a great move, since the Icebreakers mints made me fart so much, but it seemed a safe backup. I liked the Icebreakers cinnamon flavor, and their pina colada, and figured at least it would aid the transition if I couldn’t find any other gum I liked.
But a few problems emerged. First off, the Icebreakers gum sucks. It tastes like ass. Every flavor. The cinnamon is, like, half as strong, at best compared to their mints, and way too sweet. Every flavor tastes weaker and worse than its hard mint analog. So I pretty rapidly gave up on the stuff and just set it aside. Luckily I found two gum flavors I like — Trident Tropical Twist, which is basically their old peach flavor renamed, and Extra Cinnamon, which is the strongest, least sweet sugarless Cinnamon I can find.
So, story ended, happy ending, now I chew gum instead of take a ton of Icebreakers mints. I still take some Icebreakers mints, but the transition has begun, the farts are lessening.
Except.
I had these five packs of the Icebreakers gum sitting there. And they’re big packs, too, like 30 pieces. And I am totally neurotic about wasting money, even if it’s $15 of gum, so I’m like “I will just chew up all this gum that tastes terrible so I don’t waste money.” Which is a bad enough idea, except it was even worse because the gum’s xylitol content seems to be substantially worse than the Icebreakers mints, and it doesn’t just make you fart, it gives you some of the most profoundly churning gastro-intestinal distress you will ever experience. I mean, it’s not painful, it’s just intense and relentless. And I kept up with this, willingly, for, like, a week! To get trough all that gum. That didn’t even taste good. So that I didn’t waste any money. A week of the runs to save a few bucks.
I am going to make the best Depression-era Granny of the 21st century I swear to god.
A very good old friend just signed up for GMHHAY yesterday, so this is the first one she is ever going to receive. I swear they’re not usually this… bodily.
Are we still doing Wordle every day? Are you? Are we all? Are we just talking about it less? Have you given up on Wordle? Sound off in the comments below.
Finally, PSA: There is a very good chance we manage to keep the house or the senate, the Republicans evil census rigging and gerrymandering did not fail completely, but it fell far short of their aspirations, and the fantastic Mark Ellis and others have done a good job relentlessly fighthing their efforts in court. Our profound victory in North Carolina, and our hypcritical routing in New York have almost completely offset their gains. They still have their sinister-plan of taking over election commissions everywhere, and we’ll see how well that works (reminder to consider donating to the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State) but things are… competitive. Please consider not mentally giving up, please consider helping where you can, and at the very least, can we keep the fatalism in check? Pretty please? That would be helpful! Thank you!
Oh my god I’m so behind, it’s already 8:30, the electric people are going to be here at any second. Okay, well, looks like I have vol 40 in the W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe series ready to roll. Please forgive the fact that Pete Wiggs and Saint Etienne are both on here. Though I guess if you don’t know who Pete Wiggs is you wouldn’t have known, and if you do, you probably wouldn’t have minded?
Okay! I made it! Talk to you guys tomorrow, hopefully I have power. Ta!
Still playing Wordle, though i forget some days, bc a text group i'm in collectively decided to not share daily scores anymore. Also i do Worldle at the same time