All right all right all right. Good morning! Happy Monday! Hello! How are you? All well? Have a good weekend? Ready for the week? Lol. Issue number 699. Coming up on the big 7-0-0. That is crazy. Crazy.
The senate passed their Climate and Health bill, logically called the inflation something or other. I am very excited. I mean, there is some stupid shit in there — allowing for oil and gas leases in Cook Inlet in Alaska which is just some BS right there, some other stuff. But all in all it is… Amazing? I mean seriously just transformative and I am kind of shocked and blown away and feel a semblance of that excitement I felt back in January of 2021, aside from, you know, that whole insurrection-at-the-capitol thing. It really is something. I do take issue with all those people talking about how “Joe Biden is on a tear” or “Joe Biden is killing it,” though. I mean, has anyone seen one story about how Joe Biden swayed Manchin or did anything? We are not looking at an LBJ-massages-the-senate-to-pass-Civil-Rights situation here. The legislators did this. He’s just gonna sign it.
But still, very exciting, very exciting.
I did a bunch of gardening this weekend, which is impressive because all I wanted to do was read about Barry Goldwater and watch Westworld re-runs. Are they re-runs on streaming? I’m gonna call them re-runs. Hrm I just introduced three topics at once. Which is the appropriate one to start with I wonder. Eh, I’ll do the gardening.
The squirrels have been vanquished. The Japanese Beetles have been vanquished. Tomatoes are growing like crazy. Made another batch of marinara. Third try’s the charm, this batch meets with Emma’s approval, not too much rosemary or mysterious acidity. It is more red. Not, like, store-bought marinara red, but redder. Harvested a bunch more cucumbers. We are all sick of cucumbers. Do you need a cucumber? I’ll send one right over. Harvested some more shishito and banana peppers. Planted more shallots but ran out of seeds. Ordered more. Guess I’m succession planting shallots this year, which is a thing I always meant to do but don’t have the organizational prowess. The lettuce is almost ready for picking which means more fresh garden salads yay. The carrots and fennel are barely growing. I think I got a sprout from one of my gingers. The luffa are all hat no cattle, er, all leaves no gourds. The potatoes look read. The corn is growing quickly and I re-caged it much more securely than last time and used row cover. The grapes are growing grreat. Got little sprouts on my new flower beds. The basil is huge, overwhelming, giant. The watermelon has some watermelons, I think, but I can’t find them. I will track them down soon. Jane helped. It was cute. I made a video. With extra Jane this week:
I was supposed to do my podcast this weekend — it’s an every-other-weekend sort of affair — but I just couldn’t do it. I wasn’t in the mood to use my voice. I wonder if I will ever do it again.
I started reading the four-book series by Rick Perlstein about conservatism in America (should “conservatism” be capitalised? Eh, screw ‘em). I have mentioned this. I am really plowing through book one, almost done. I wish it was more… cerebral. It’s more of a blow-by-blow of the 1964 presidential election, which is definitely pretty interesting, but the parts about, like, AEI or Milton Freidman or the John Birch Society, I mean, they’re there, they’re robust, but they could be better. But nearing the end, the book really comes together. the death of the American consensus. As told through the Berklee protests, which really were immensely fascinating. It is a good read, I am happy. I will continue. Took some adjusting, but I am sucked in. Jane is in a mood where she insists I “play” with her at the dollhouse or at the Legos, but she doesn’t actually want me to do anything, she just wants me to be there, next to her, so I come over, lay down, she plays, I read about Barry Goldwater.
Lotta parallels to Trump. Goldwater was pretty hapless. Probably more hapless than Trump, and more idealistic, but also he never won the presidency so he never had a chance to wise up and become fully malevolent like Trump. The campaign trail bore a lot of similarities. Charged for admission at rallies, which were held in stadiums for the first time. The attendees would constantly threaten the press, attack them. “Good” Republicans of all stripes denounced him, worked for Johnson, tried to stop him, and failed, because of their disorganization and inability to rally behind a single candidate, be it Nixon (who hadn’t gone completely insane yet), Rockefeller, Romney or Scranton. Eisenhower was partially at fault because he stayed silent for way too long.
Man the Republican party sure likes to be taken over by weirdo fascists against its will with startling frequency.
And then I watched, god, I don’t know, eleven old episodes of Westworld? I am loving the new season and in a lot of ways you don’t really need to see the old ones to enjoy it, but the new season made me realize there was a lot I didn’t remember about it, and also, of course, the whole first season has some big twists at the end and I thought it would be interesting watching it knowing about the twists. And it was. It makes a lot more sense. There are still a few confusing things, but all in all, it was solid. I do think a lot of people would die randomly in Westworld from shit like disease and actual wild animals they thought were fake ones. Getting water from streams from their cantinas and things like that. Also there is definitely some fuzziness about the lethality of guns to the various parties that is never fully explained. But all in all way more plot holes than I thought there would be. The whole plot is catlyzed by Ford finally figuring out how to complete Arnold’s plans, after 30+ years of reasearch, and kicking things off with an update called The Reveries, which interact with latent Arnold code to start the cognition process. This is why things just start right now. Because Ford recently completed Arnold’s work. It took a long time. People think the Reveries were a bug at first, and then Bernard later thinks the Reveries were either written by Arnold or part of Arnold’s plot, but they weren’t. Arnold failed, Ford completed the work, and released it as the Reveries.
It was also kind of fun to see ties to the current season. The flies. So many flies in season one, I had forgotten about it. And Teddy’s first line to Dolores: “This is me trying to look chivalrous,” same in seasons one and four. I liked that.
I went to Harris Teeter for, like, six seconds on Sunday in the middle of the day. I didn’t do my Friday evening pizza run because we got pizza delivery from a different place I had been crazing, which means I didn’t go to the Lowe’s Foods and get cookies while waiting for them to make the pizza, and we were out of cookies so, you know, needed cookies. I had not been to a grocery store mid-day on the weekend in years. It was insane. Place was packed, no one wearing masks, acting like the world is just going on. Meanwhile hospitalization numbers in NC are back to Delta levels, positivity rate is well over 20% and the number of cases in the county is supremely elevated, and those are just the ones that are being counted, when most aren’t these days. No one cares. It really is something. It really is something.
I’ve spent a week now drying and grinding chili peppers into chili powder in the garage. Done about six batches in my six-tray dehydrator. Last batch is in now. I need to go re-set it actually. Take 24-36 hours each, with the humidity in the garage and the high water content. But we are almost done. We got about 3 gallons of chili powder. There are no squirrels right now but man, if I ever see them again, they’re gonna regret it. This shit is about twice the Scoville scale as cayenne pepper. Beware, squirrels.
Jane is a little bit better, but her new thing is that immediately upon seeing me in the morning she says “oh I wish it was Mommy. I like Mommy better.” Really does wonders for your ego, let me tell you. I mean, I’m glad you are learning to rank things and are in touch with your feelings that is good. I am not so glad that in terms of how much she loves things, I currently rank below her two stuffed Kitty twins and Brown Bear. She’s also learning to help cook breakfast, which is great, she is making a lot of progress, but she is so slow and breakfast is taking about 30 minutes longer now, which is just fine on the weekend but very stressful during the workweek. The big remaining obstacle is cracking an egg. Do I teach my daughter how to crack an egg yet? This seems like a recipe for disaster. Also one of these days I need to teach her some knife safety. I only think of it when she is actually holding a knife, and she does not want to hear about it at that point. So I need to remember some other time and then explain it all to her. Luckily all our knives are dull, except for my good cooking knife, which she cannot reach.
We did go on a walk recently where she took her little scooter and she was a very good listener as we gave her pointers on how to ride it and how to steer it. For a while there when you tried to teach her things, she just yelled at you. She wanted to figure it out herself. But she is taking input again, which is nice. I had been lulled into a habit of not teaching her as much but I think maybe now is the time to teach her more things.
Maybe she’ll like me more if I do lol.
All right here’s a mix of all new stuff except for two songs which are still pretty new. Oh and a Wolfgang Press track. It… kind of flows? I’m still getting to know these songs, bear with me. Very into this early Bowie demo of “I’m Afraid of Americans.” Into this new Working Men’s Club album. Into the new Mountain Goats more than most new Mountain Goats I swear to god that dude has been putting out an album am onth through the pandemic is so prolific it really is something. Sixth album of the pandemic is imminent. And I know nothing about this new Dais signing, High Vis, but both advance tracks have been awesome. Pretty excited about the full-length.
I hope your Monday isn’t too bad. If things get rough maybe just watch a couple odl episodes of Westworld.