Good morning! Hello there, how are you, what is up. I am okay. I feel a little sick still from my weekly Wegovy shot, but nothing too bad. I am listening to The Teardrop Explodes’ Wilder, specifically “The Great Dominions,” which is a song I used to listen to an awful lot and then forgot about for a decade or two. Got me thinking about Julian Cope’s fantastic autobiography Head On. Might be due for a re-read. I still think about episodes from that book all the time: the two dudes from the Krautrock band that dropped off of their tour, bought castles in Spain next to each other and waged psychic war against each other. Keith Butters and I used to have an agreement that if we made ungodly amounts of money we would replicate this, buying castles next to each other and then pouring the remainder of our funds into R&D for water balloon trubuchets, launching water balloon assaults on each others castles. As far as I am concerned, I consider this agreement to be in effect to this day.
Then there was the part where Julian Cope loses his mind on the US tour, in San Francisco, when he is supplied with copious amounts of LSD by the Grateful Dead who inexlicably seem to be fans of The Teardrop Explodes; an affinity that makes very little sense if you just listen to “The Great Dominions” but makes a lot more sense when you take in the totality of Julian Cope,
Then there is the background presence of a teenage Courtney Love as she lives out her early Penny Lane groupie years with the Teardrops and Echo and the Bunnymen.
Speaking of Penny Lane, Sarah Polley was originally cast in that role, in Almost Famous and I cannot decide if the eventual recasting was a good thing or if she would have killed in the role. I suspect that in the end, this was the right thing.
This morning I have just learned that the Friends apartment belonged to Ross and Monica’s grandmother, and it was rent controlled, and this is why it was so ungodly huge. All this time I was in the camp of “that show is unrealistic they never could have afforded that apartment,” and I was wrong. Also it was the early 90’s I bet that apartment was so cheap relatively speaking, even if it weren’t rent controlled. LOL early 90’s rents.
Yesterday a 33 year old judge, literally a federal judge that is thirty-three years old, voided the federal travel mask mandate because she is an idiot child, judged unfit to serve by the American Bar Association. She was nominated and confirmed to the bench by a lame duck Trump, after he had lost the election. Quite reasonably, no Democrats voted for this. Thank you to Josh for this information, along with sourcing this gem of a tweet:
It’s been clear for a while that the Biden Administration does not have the stomach for continued enforcement of the travel mask requirement, and they are probably psyched that this happened so they can just blame the judges and not get a bunch of grief from people who like to be careful and/or polite, a declining constituency in America it seems. But he better fucking appeal anyway, on principle, because this is such a batshit, stupid decision that it cannot be allowed to stand. This aggression will not staaaaand maaaan.
Last night I watched THE BATMAN and first and foremost I feel compelled to warn you that this film is three hours long. Beyond that, every one who worked on this film is very talented, the acting is uniformly excellent, the score is great, the vfx are tastefully integrated and not too digital and Marvelized, and the cinemtography is grim AF but incredibly solid. All that being said I think I am just not in the mood to watch what are essentially Republican fever dreams of meticulously documented terrorism procedurals and untreated mental illness. I remember watching In the Line of Fire in 1993 because I liked John Malkovich in Dangerous Liasons, Of Mice and Men and The Sheltering Sky and that was back when I was youngish and I thought you could, like, trust actors to only be in good things. And I’m watching this film and I’m like “wait a minute this film is just a film entirely about trying to catch and stop a guy who just really wants to shoot the president for some reason? That’s the plot of this film? That’s all this guy really wants to do? The sum total of this dude’s motivation I want to take all of this immense natural talent and intelligence I have and I just really want to use it to shoot the president? Why would someone make a film like this?” I mean, I should have known better given the batshit films my father let me watch with him when I was a kid like The Wanderers and Sharkey’s Machine but this was the first time I willingly — albeit accidentally — went to a film like this on my own. I still don’t get it. Why is is this a thing. Oh man that crazy psychopath sure tricked you and all those cops and look at all those thousands of people — mostly homeless people — dead! Hahaha! He is so clever this is so entertaining! That’s the kind of meticulously planned senseless death I want in my films!” Big ole nope.
At least Se7en had those really awesome title graphics.
We had five hours of rain yesterday, maybe more. Rained all day it was great. My plants are so happy. And it stopped just in time for the evening walk and that was quite pleasant too.
OH also I got the gardening video done so here it is, look at all those seeds I planted!
It was daddy bed time last night and Jane was just so good and kind it really was quite nice. She texted mommy a lot and we played “under the covers” and “climb on daddy” and “daddy slide” and “ABC circles.” She made sure each of her plushie friends had an opportunity to play, left no one out. You can tell she considers these her “childhood” games and she plays them with a whiff of nostalgia now, which is pretty interesting. Then she went and read a book someone gave her about how to be kind, and read it out loud saying things like “when you want to be kind you can practice random acts of kindness” and I would chirp up whenever she said one that she was particularly good about. Just a pleasant Jane day all around, I gotta say. Here’s to many more.
Oh also on the walk not yesterday but a couple days ago, we saw the first bunnies of the season! Longtime readers of GMHHAY will see this as a harbinger of spring, the emergence of a new phase of GMHHAY where we document bunny sitings and man, you have been reading this for a long time, we’ve all been doing this a long time.
Friends of mine all over the country and state are getting COVID again (I don’t know why I am capitalizing it today). COVID is lasting forever. Everyone is getting COVID again, huh? Our stupid-ass state stopped doing daily metrics on their COVID dashboard, they only do them weekly now and when they DO finally post them, they’re like already five days old, so basically at any time now in the state of North Carolina the most up-to-date COVID stats we can get are about ten days old and someone in a democratic lead Health and Human Service department thinks that is a good thing and no one is going to get fired over it and I keep tweeting at them about how dumb it is but no one even answers. It really is ridiculous. So much for, you know, being informed and making your own decisions. That whole line was just something they said along the way, you always knew it, as soon as they could make their own decisions to be careless and cruel, they would then turn their attention to taking away your ability to make decisions to be careful and kind.
Farewell, sweet cherry blossoms.
In that Ed Yong piece I posted last week, there was an organization — I really need to go back and look up the name, but I’m not going to right now1. Their whole thing is to advocate for the implementation of memorials for covid victims. One thing they want to do is make the first Monday in March a holiday for COVID victims. Leaving aside my quibble that they ought to just move it into February both because that’s when the first American COVID death happened and February needs a fucking holiday, this is a fantastic idea2. Is there a single “memorial” in the US holiday schedule that memorializes more than One million deaths? The United States has a had about one point two million soldiers die in every war ever, across two hundred years. The “official” death count will cross a million in the next two weeks or so, but of course that number is low — a conservative estimate seems to be that the real number is about 40% higher, it’s probably a lot higher. So. We’re not even done yet and more Americans have died of COVID than American soldiers have died in every war ever, and the soldiers get two holidays. Okay.
Ugh I’m sorry I am doing it again. I will change the topic. I bought a bunch of buckets last week, Tarheel Blue from the new hardware store that opened in the space over by the Teet and my bank, where the old hardware store was before it moved into the new space by the Mexican restaurant and the McDonald’s. The buckets were five dollars each, which is a bit expensive for buckets, but that’s what I get for not buying more buckets when they were on special from Walmart for $2 a few weeks ago. Always buy more buckets. Anyway I am telling you all of this because I bought three buckets for exactly fifteen dollars. As in there was no sales tax charged on buckets. I asked the pimply teenager behind the counter “so buckets don’t have sales tax?” and he just shrugged and clearly this guy has never been responsible for quarterly sales tax filings because you gotta take that shit seriously or you end up in a mountain of penalties trust me I have learned the hard way do you know how fucking complex sales tax law is for SAAS companies in America right now it is absolutely insane. It is so insane we employ a company that is literally called Sales Tax Defense to make a new spreadsheet for us every quarter filling us in on all the changes to sales tax laws in every state regarding SAAS software. But clearly this kid DGAF about legal sales tax collection so I cannot be sure if buckets are actually taxable in NC until I buy more buckets. I will keep you apprised. But man, why on earth would buckets not be subject to sales tax? Then again, buckets are extraordinarily useful and versatile, so why not.
Speaking of Walmart they got a Hello Kitty license and make exactly two outfits for toddlers with Hello Kitty on them and they are both pretty ugly but I bought the tie die pink hoodie t-shirt and jogging shorts for Jane kinda against my better judgement, bit too girly, and who needs tie dyes in their house, but also you want to support Hello Kitty licenses in mainstream places and in any case, she freakin LOVES IT. She was very happy. Hello Kitty is like her crack. She doesn’t know what Paw Patrol is, she instructed me to turn Frozen off the one time I stupidly tried to make her watch it, but Hello Kitty? Put that right into my veins. We are pro indoctrinators.
Justa mix for today, I tried to give it a flow from synthy to guitar-y, you know. I’ms till really glad that that Loamlands album is back on Spotify this is now a Loamlands stan blog as the kids stay. I bought a cheap copy of the Wolfgang Press’ “A Girl Like You” 12-inch the other day I like that later period dancy Wolfgang Press. I mean I also like the sad bastard tortured goth Wolfgang Press too not gonna lie. Got some new stuff on here from Mattiel, Lucius, Hercules & Love Affair, The Wedding Present. And of course The Great Dominions, gotta start and end this with the same song.
All right I am off to update Quicken and do country flash cards have a lovely day.
Okay I looked it up they are called Marked by Covid.
Yes I know February has Washington’s Birthday and March has no federal holiday but February sucks more and honestly all of February should be a holiday.
"Republican fever dreams of meticulously documented terrorism procedurals and untreated mental illness" - This, so much. Said about the same thing to my friend who watched with me.