Good morning. Hello. How are you? #664
Dentists, gardens, salad bowls, politics, Tumblr in Timehop, Nick Cave shows, running away from beautiful actresses.
Good morning there, friend, how are you this fine Wednesday AM? I trust all is well. I have a dentist’s appointment at ten AM. I am running about twenty minutes behind schedule this morning, having overslept by 26 minutes, but making some of that up on a stunning Wordle performance. I am listening to the Ted K soundtrack by Blanck Mass. It is spooky soundtracky.
Man a lot of you really like Tears for Fears, and had interesting stories supporting my “Tears for Fears are really freakin’ popular” thesis. Thank you for that. One friend told me that “Break it Down Again” was a teen anthem for her and her friends, so I guess maybe it did make an impact in America enough that 16 year-olds like it now? I dunno. Still seems fishy. Emma made an effort to go to up to Baltimore to see them again at the Merriweather Post Pavillion, but unfortunately her Baltimore friend is busy that weekend. Which is this weekend. Man I wonder what Tears for Fears are doing right now. Oh they went to Michigan, Illinois and Indiana in between. Hard working band, Tears for Fears.
My garden is producing giant cucumbers already, and it is a stunning return to form with the cucumber planting after the failed efforts of the 2021 season. Definitely my most successful cucumber run that. That being said, they’ve grown so much I had to feee them from their netting, so they could trellis more, and now they are expost to the predations of critters and yesterday I came out and caught both a squirrel and a bunny milling about at the bottom of their Birdie’s Bed. I don’t THINK the bunnies can climb the walls of the Birdies Beds, but the squirrels sure can. I have a camera on them, but the alerts are still all messed up from my trip, so I need to re-set those to animals only and keep an eye on things. So far, so good, though. Between the cucumbers, the radishes, the onions, the broccoli and the lettuce I’ve been eating garden salads for lunch made mostly from actual garden vegetables and my good, they are so good, I am so happy. SALADS.
Also I got a big salad bowl. Well, no, that’s not quite accurate, I am now eating salad out of a mixing bowl. The salad itself isn’t much bigger, but the salad bowl is huge and it’s just so much easier, I used to mix them in a little bowl and spill, or use two bowls, which is extra work washing. Now I just eat it out of the big bowl. It feels transgressive. Big city liberal. Seinfeldian (though of course that was just a big salad not a big bowl). I’m such a deviant my god.
I’m back into the Trough of Disillusionment on the gun safety bill “framework” wending its way through the senate. It is all too easy to see the devil in the details, which is, of course, why people like Turtle Mitch are saying they would potentially suport it. Because it does not do much. It does nothing for the legality of assault rifles, it does nothing for the legality of high-capacity magazines. It pours tons more money into the Republican canard of “hardening our schools.” Most of the other things it does is enable regulation at the state level, and give them funds, if they want it, and there are at least ten states that explicitly forbid this sort of help from the feds, and it seems obvious that many states will not pass the regulations and laws that this money will support. It doesn’t, say, do what we did with highway funding when we were changing the drinking age to 21, witholding the federal funding until the states fall in line.
And, most importantly, it does absolutely nothing to put an end to the ridiculous and unconstitutional immunity given by congress to the gun manufacturers. This is the single most powerful thing we could do, and the law is so obviously illegal, and is (slowly) crumbling in the courts, but we are going to waste a decade, at best, waiting for the courts to kill it, and that’s making the huge leap of faith that our fundamentalist Supreme Court will even eventually strike it down. It needs to go at the congressional level, and this bill makes no progress.
Of course, none of this means it shouldn’t pass, but this is a pressure valve move by the Republicans, to take the issue and the anger off of the table for the mid-terms. And it will probably work, and people will probably go back to trying to not think about gun safety laws until the next time someone shoots up a school and succeeds somewhat more than usual.
A “fun” (fun in terms of morbid gallows humor) thing going on in Florida is the impending train wreck our make-it-up-as-you-go Supreme Court has made for itself with the suit brought by a Florida Synongogue against Florida’s new cruel abortion law, claiming that the law is illegal because it violates the religious freedom of Jews because Jewish law requires the procedure in some cases. In theory this ought to be exactly the sort of case that lays bare the contradictions inherent in the made-up bullshit philosophy of the current court, which claims simultaneously that states can pass any damn law they want about abortion but also religions can ignore any damn law that they want. But I suspect the answer is the same as it always is with this court: contradiction, whatever, we’ll just make some new shit up. In this case, I suspect the obvious resolution will be “Jews don’t count” because they are not fundamendalist christians and that is the only religion.
Just like abortion isn’t protected by the constitution because they don’t mention it explicitly in the constitution, but “real” bullets (as opposed to slugs) are protected, even though they’re not mentioned explicitly and weren’t even invented for another hundred years. Checks out.
Politics, sorry. I will stop. Is this dentist today gonna give me the ‘Rona? Will I get dentist cooties? I hope not. I’ve actually been to him once during the pandemic, it was fine, but that was back when everyone was careful. Will he wear a face shield? Will he get annoyed with me when I peek at my CO2 monitor? I hope not. I guess I could just walk out if shit gets weird. He seemed pretty cool last time, though. Lotta Simpsons jokes.
We are watching Stranger Things still, trying to get to episode 4 so I can see what this Kaste Bush hubub is all about, but I gotta tell you, it is hard. It is very, very hard to watch kids get bullied. I get so upset, so outraged. It kicks in all sorts of memories of past trauma. I want to scream at the TV set that it’s not realistic, but of course it is. It is fucking insane that kids can be that awful and evil to one another, but it is probably the most realistic thing about that show, because kids absolutely do that shit. I do not like watching it one bit, nope, no siree. Nor do I enjoy watching children get physically harmed. It’s all so horrible. I’m not sure I can make it two more episodes. Also there are seven different storylines going right now and it’s too damn much, even in a 70-minute episode, that’s ten minutes per storyline, which is just… not enough.
My Timehop (good ole Timehop, we love you so much, never change, oh, wait, that’s up to us, it won’t, I promise, but we did recently add Tumblr as a content source in Timehop and it has made the whole thing super fun again for me lately) recently reminded me that it was five years ago that I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Town Hall from the front row and it was just insanity and chaos and so hot and so great. I went alone, because my “date” fell through. After the show, I walked to the subway, took the ACE down to Canal, then walked over to Balthazar for dinner, but between the show, the walks and the subway, I was soaking wet and felt so, so gross. I sat at the bar, alone, for my burger and felt so embarrassed to be there.
The next thing that happened is that a famous, beautiful actress, who was twice as beautiful in real life, and a beautiful friend of hers sat down at the two seats next to me, the corner seats so they were facing me. She seemed a smidge tipsy, or at least just very happy and friendly. They turned to me and said “hi” with a large amount of enthusiasm.
And I just felt like a giant blob of sweat. And I panicked.
“Oh my god,” I said. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” They were too friendly, too beautuful, and I was too bloblike.
And I got up and moved to the other end of the bar.
That’s how suave I am.
Thank you, place of employment, for reminding me of this.
Ugh god I am so behind I have no time for a playlist. All right, well this shoegaze one was about half done. Here we go. Been listening to the early Ride EPs lately, forgot there are 3-4 b-sides that didnt’ make it onto the first album and god, they’re so good. And Underground Lovers, still obsessed with them. They got a good bandcamp these days. And gawd, what is up with Amusement Parks on Fire, they were so good, so good live, I wonder if they broke up, that would be sad.
All right, ta. Let’s go get our teeth checked out and see if my 50-year run of invincible teeth continues, or my luck is at an end. Tune in tomorrow.