Good morning. Hello. How are you? #770
Taylor, Ticketmaster, and plausible deniability as a service. An amazing Mimi tribute. Parkour classes for plushies. Jane said "Y'all." Redesigning the domestic American bathroom.
Good morning! Hello! Hi! Its Me! I’m the problem! I’m Ticketmaster! I’m a giant problem! But also Taylor really is the problem because she’s going to just let them actually charge seven hundred and fifty dollars for a single ticket to a pop concert like that is an acceptable thing to do in polite society! It is not! Never mind the one hundred and twelve dollar service charge on such a ticket. It’s just not! A 2-hour long family outing should not cost the should not cost the same amount as a used car! Ticketmaster should not get to charge a hundred and twelve dollars to keep someone in line for hours. I’m very excited that Biden and AOC and Ilhan Omar and Blumenthal are all ranting about Ticketmaster right now but just gonna throw out there that nothing was stopping Lina Kahn from focusing on Ticketmaster for the last two years instead of, lol, sinking ship Meta buying a VR exercise app. It’s been sitting there right in front of us, this monopoly, for years! Also Ticketmaster is totally earning their service charge for Taylor by taking the heat as being the one charging seven hundred and fifty dollars for a mediocre seat. That’s the service they’re really providing. Plausible deniability on artist price gouging as a service. PDAAS.
Anyway, got my tickets. I was obviously not going to pay seven hundred and fifty dollars per seat. I love Taylor but, a) boy, I love her a good bit less after yesterday, and b) she does not need that money! and c) I’ve already seen her and I just looked it up and I paid a lot less than that and those were for scalped tickets. In the end, I purchased the absolute least expensive seat, the very, very back row of the top bleachers at Gillette Stadium. It was $99 a ticket. It took me four hours for the privilege. I actually like the back row at arena concerts. We saw the 1989 tour from the back of an arena, though I admit I have never been to one this big. It’ll probably give me vertigo. But at least I won’t be paying $750 for it.
We got a dishwasher repairperson coming today so to all of you doomsayers who told us it would take weeks and our dishwasher was dead and we’d need a replacement and that would take months, let me just say… well, I’m not gonna tempt fate here because something could still go horribly wrong, so I will just say “thank you for your concern! You are a good friend!”
If you want to read the most heartbreaking thing you’ll read in days, here is Zak Sally’s tribute to Mimi Parker. Zak Sally was the original bass player, third member of Low, for the first ten years or so of the band, who met Alan and Zak when they were all kids. It is a tough read, but a beautiful one. I was in tears by the end of it.
Luckily, Jane was wrapped up in teaching a “basics of Parkour” course to six of her plush toys, so she didn’t notice.
Jane also started saying “Y’all” yesterday. Seems she picked it up from her new set of books, Ivy and Bean, that we got because one of you readers (thank you, Meghan) reccomended them as a replacement to Junie B Jones, who most unfortunately taught our daughter the word “dumb,” and she was then going around calling everything dumb. We sorted that, explained that it was best to use that word on things that werent people but. Honestly, they seem mostly harmless but let’s get her horizons broadened. Hence Ivy and Bean, and then all of the sudden Jane is teaching classes and using the word “Y’all,” which is pretty great. She just started last night. After the parkour class she told me she had a poop feeling but that she wasn’t going to go, started up on that whole thing again, and I said, “what if you teach your stuffies a class on how to poop” and she just loved it so the whole class adjourned to the bathroom and she said “all right y’all here’s how you poop.” Then we talked about “y’all” and how it means “you all” or “you guys” and then she gave it another shot and said “you y’all” which actually seems a pretty good construct, so I told her she could say that but really we just say “y’all” and then she got the hang of it. Then she asked if everyone can say “y’all” and I said yes, but mostly people from the south say “y’all,” do you know what the south is? Then we talked about maps and where she was born and how she is from the south and that was a real weird thing to say I don’t think of my daughter as being from the south but I guess she is. Huh.
Apparently last night or this morning or who knows when Elon sent out an email that said “the new Twitter is gonna be hardcore and if you want to work here click Yes here and if not you’ll get three months severence.” I mean, putting aside, you know, all of labor law and all the advances made by the labor movement in the last 200 years and the fact that California is one of the most protective states in the country about labor law, I guess this is… fine? Maybe the first fine thing he’s done. There are plenty of people there who wished they got laid off and will want to take this deal and then “Sokath! His eyes open!” to the rest of them. Except for the people on visas, who are getting utterly screwed and are basically like indentured servants but hey Elon didn’t write those horrible, horrible laws, the political party he supports did.
Trump is running for president and he did an announcement which is honestly sort of like when your car’s brakes have been cut and you’re racing toward a big cliff and you can’t stop and you pass a sign that says “cliff ahead you should stop” and you’re like “yeah, checks out, this is what’s happening, thank you for that illuminating bit of information”
Speaking of peeing all over everywhere, have you ever wondered about domestic bathrooms and toilets and mankind’s proclivity for pissing all over everything? I mean, okay, some of these problems are me-specific. I have an illness and it physically gives me a headache to bend over and while I try to overcome that to lift up the seat, it hurts, and so my subonscious just rebels. But I don’t think I’m particularly a worse aim than most men, and I don’t especially drink more than most men (he double-checks. The average number of alcoholic drinks per American is more than nine a week my god that is so much booze said the dude who used to drink that much per day).
Here are a few things I think should be standard in the American domestic bathroom:
The entire area around a toilet, floors and walls, should always be tiled. There should be no exposed sheetrock/wallboard to absorb errant pee.
There should be a foot pedal, like there is on trash cans, that lifts the seat up when you press down on it, and it plops back down when you lift your foot. I aplogize for using the word “plop” in a toilet context. But my god, this contraption should be everywhere and yet, as far as I can tell, the damn thing hasn’t been invented (there are a few medical, low-durability versions but it’s clear an adult male would break one of those in a week). This is insane and may well be the root of all mental illness in our society.
If we’re being honest, we really ought to have urinals in domestic bathrooms. If not full-on big ceramic jobbies, at least some modern domestic version, maybe designed by the Japanese, that’s really just a sort of 3-inch pipe hole sticking out of the wall that you kind of… well, almost like a Fleshlight but maybe a bit more roomy so you’re not touching the sides. Perhaps bell-shaped.
Anyway, sure, go ahead and give us shit but then when you get a chance, go out to the garden and do an experiment. Go to an outdoor hose spigot, have a friend turn the thing on some random amount, so you don’t know what the pressure is going to be. Hold a hose at waist level, and then go start trying to hit targets. It’s hard! The pressure is variable and unpredictable! And if that’s too easy for you, go do it after a drink or two! Or, you know, have a friend slowly turn the spigot off while maintaining your aim.
Hate the architectural norms of society, not the pee player.
Anyway those are my thoughts on Donald Trump running for president. It is absurd that human males that can’t even get their pee into a toilet bowl presume to run the world. Absolutely absurd. And then when they do start running the world that one of the things they do is not, you know, fixing it so they don’t pee on the walls all the time. I mean, good government starts at home.
Ambient volume for your chill listening pleasure today. Aside from Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, I didn’t know any of these artists six months ago. Enjoying this particular rabbit hole, lotta good modern ambient going on. Especially if you don’t Google the artists and look at their outfits. Lotta ambient musicians out there are bad dressers. Best not to know.
This feels like it should have been longer. I have much more to say! But I guess that’s for another day. Farewell. May all your favorite bands stay together.
i’m choosing to ignore the small fortune i paid for taylor swift tickets yesterday. i think the total cost was more than what i have paid for every concert ticket i have ever purchased. that’s absurd. but man i am going to be in hog heaven on 8/04 ♥️
Or you could sit to pee. I know a few guys who prefer it!