Good morning. Hello. How are you? #722
The queen, Plex additions, friend visits, the Republican Eye of Sauron, the EY breakup.
Good morning! Hello, there. How are you? I am good, it is Friday, I just went to Walmart. Kinda disappointing run, not gonna lie. Only new 4k movie was Minions, ew. No new records. Still out of mung bean sprouts. No fancy new flavors of Kit Kats or Ice Breakers. American consumerism, man. I swear. Really not putting its best foot forward these days.
My neck still hurts. It sucks. I wish it would stop.
Well, the queen died. That is sad. Fun fact: the queen was so old that when she was born, Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now” was the number one hit in the land. Lotta people have a lot of opinions about the queen being dead, it’s pretty crazy. She was responsible for decolonization, she was responsible for colonization. Pretty sure Harold Macmillian and Winston Churchill n shit would still have been into overseeing an empire whether or not there was a queen. I find myself indifferent to monarchy, really. It is dumb but also not dumb. Human beings have absurdly long memories, that is one thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older. The past is never behind us. I think it’d be funny for the monarchy to disappear and a bunch of English republicans (does one capitalize “republican” in this sense? No, right?) discover it made absolutely no difference. I also think it’d be funny for the monarchy to lumber on, utterly pointless. Charles seems a dumb king he should just abdicate. His son probably should too. Skip down two generations, honestly, skip George too, just give it to Charlotte, that’s probably the best move here.
I do kinda find the critique “she sat atop a fortune taken from the black and brown people of the world” both a very clever construct and also undeniably true. She didn’t really grow that fortune, of course, at least not in the same way, though it’s undeniable she lived off of it and profited from it. It’s a clever critique. Hard to refute. Gives the accuser a profound sense of moral justification that negates the need for any humanizing or evaluation of the individual in question. Pins the sins of our ancestors on us, both fairly and unfairly. Those who stand accused probably think its unfair, but it’s not, really. Because we could always give it away and so many never do. Though, honestly, I wonder how long Elizabeth would have lasted as queen if she was like “I’m gonna give the royal fortune to the black and brown people of the world.” Though I guess well never find out. Unless we make Charlotte queen, amirite?
I also find it so interesting that people who are sad about a death and people who are happy about a death really cannot stand the other person at that time, and we all get very annoyed at them, and yet pick another death and we will both switch roles in a heartbeat and no one will find any hypocrasy or inconsistency about it. We lose rationality. Humans are absurd.
Her occupation aside, I kinda like the queen. I like that she’s super into corgis. I like that she had a pretty good work life balance, did a lot of silent quitting and whatnot. I like that she liked long walks. And I like old people, people who get really old. I’m sad Henry Kissenger outlasted her, how is that guy still alive. Ninety-nine.
I’m glad Jimmy Carter is still with us, even though his presidency is looking worse and worse as I slog through the last of these conservatism books, my god, it has all gotten so depressing. Everyone is clueless about stagflation, a tax revolt is going on, Reagan is just such a dumb dumb. I don’t even think this book is going to get to the Iran Contra affair, which is a bummer because at least then I would get to watch Reagan squirm as much as he’s making carter squirm now about stupid shit my god these people really had a field day with the Panama Canal Treaty negotiations. I mean, just ridiculous. On the other hand, I do like it when the conservatives train their eye of sauron on some ridiculously inconsequential issue — at least in the scheme of American politics, this one was obviously quite consequential to the Panamanians. Like we really shoulda let Dubya run with that random “animal human hybrid” comment in that one state of the union. When Republicans latch onto an issue like this we should just egg them on. Act all butthurt and aggreived about the Panama Canal Treaty or Animal Human Hybrids and pretend we’re very distracted and very upset by their shenanigans and their dirty tricks are just working so well, but really we’re play acting the whole time, keeping them occupied with a stupid issue that won’t, like, break the country, like the next issue they might stumble on purely through throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks.
My friend Nick is coming today and we are going to see Spiritualized at Cat’s Cradle tonight and I am very excited. The show is at 8:30 with no opener, so, so great for two old farts like us. We could be in bed before midnight! Fantastic, fantastic.
I put Depeche Mode 101 up on the Plex server. It is in HD. Depeche Mode kindly re-issued it on Blu Rau, thank you Depeche Mode. It also has an HD film of the rest of the songs they played at the Pasedena Rose Bowl that fateful night, including three songs not previously released anywhere, all in HD. It is lovely. Also added HD versions of Bertolucci’s Besieged, which Annie and I saw at the Toronto Film Festival, and wherein I first discovered Thandiwe Newton, Can You Ever Forgive Me, a real gem of late-career entry into Richard E Grant’s oeuvre, High on Crack Street, a documentary about junkies in Lowell from 1995, Caveman, the Ringo Starr flick from 1981, the only film that ever made me want to vomit, though to be fair, I was like eleven, Impromptu, the George Sand/Liszt biopic, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Dennis Hopper’sThe Last Movie, Ewan Macgregor’s inepxlicable adaptation of an Olympia press book Young Adam, the 4k remaster of My Science Project, the 1992 Fench film Un Coeur En Hiver, the Don Bluth animated masterpiece An American Tail, and the 1987 Ken Russell masterpice Gothic. Have at it. Good times.
Man I have spent too much money on Blu Rays this month I gotta get to listing these on eBay to feel less guilty about this.
My old work, the behemoth audit firm-slash-consultancy EY, aka Ernst & Young, is splitting up. The auditors and the consultants are going to go their separate ways. EY is one of the largest partnerships in the world, owned by a bunch of the senior workers, so this is somewhat complex. The audit partners are going to get a bunch of cash as the consulting arm breaks off, the consultant partners are going to get a ton of new shares in the new firm, both of which worth seven figures. The company has to convince enough of the partners from both sides that this is a good idea, but given that everyone is gonna get a big payout and honestly who cares what happens to EY after this, I’m sure it’ll pass.
When I worked at EY, I found myself constantly thinking “it sucks working at a partnership, it’s filled with these annoying feifdoms and these random dudes” (they were all dudes back then, well, except one, and my god, I loved her, she was the best, my first real mentor and man she loved mid-day cocktails. RIP) “and decisions are constantly irrational and these guys are all really dumb about a lot of stuff.” I also stupidly thought “I bet it’s so much better working at a public company where every decision is made rationally, because of the wisdom of the marketplace” hahahaha lol yeah. Well, that notion got rather quickly disabused when I finally worked at a public company. You can’t win, they both suck. I think now, if I were forced to go to one or the other, I’d go back to a partnership. At least the idiocy is multipolar, you can navigate to different power centers, and, theoretically at least, you can ascend to be a partner eventually. Moreso than you can hope to enter the C-Suite at a single company, anyway.
Also it’s funny because it was obvious thirty years ago that the audit and consulting side of these companies were at odds. Some problems are very intractable and take a really long time to fix.
Jane was very good yesterday, at least for me. Radical improvement from the day before. I think things are setting back into normal after Emma’s trip. That is nice. Now let’s find new ways to mess it up with my trip to New England, lol.
Pretty weak Release Radar this week. Half the artists on it I don’t even know who they are. I mean, I listen to a lot of new music but it’s weird that 40% of these supposed new songs from people I listen to are not artists I recognize. Also there’s an “Annie” song on here that is most definitely not Annie. And the same song appears twice. It’s all very suspect, I swear, Spotify feels more like a grift every year. Anyway, here’s a club mix, because apparently 90% of what came out new the last two weeks were remixes. People love remixes. Lotta people out there dancing in clubs I guess.
OK gotta go. Lots to do today! Have a lovely weekend. Sorry this is late, you know, Walmart and all that.
i'm pretty ambivalent about the monarchy. sure, i tune into the spectacle from time to time and am fascinated by all the rules, etc., but if it disappeared? meh, whatever. still, i was pretty affected by the queen's death. not only has she just always been there, but she's just three months older than my maternal grandmother, who's still kicking. it's kind of overwhelming to think about how much the world changed during their lifetime—so yeah, i cut them a little bit of slack. (unless there was actual racist behavior; other people's humanity is never negotiable.)
on a different note, i couldn't make out what went with what in that movie sentence and beg you to insert some semicolons.