Good morning. Hello. How are you? #779
The Holiday Album by Gordonand Cilla. NC Voting Turnout. Moore County. Finding and getting over mental blocks as manifested through clock repair. Quick Kindle Scribe review.
Good morning. Hello, there. How are you? It is Tuesday. Taco Tuesday tonight, that is exciting. There are few things in life I’m committed to as Taco Tuesday.
RIP Kirstie Alley that is sad, you were greast as Saavik in The Wrath of Khan but I was always a little bummed you didn’t reprise the role in the sequels. But I forgive you. Is a quick and unexpected bout with cancer a good way to go? I mean, I guess it’s good that it was quick. A long run with cancer is not a good way to go, I think we can all agree upon that.
The holidays are upon us and I have a holiday tip for you: The Holiday Album, by Gordon and Cilla. Gordon Merrick is the alter ego of my friend Nick, and Cilla is the alter ego of Jessie, proprietor of Edge of Urge, a great North Carolina boutique if you are looking for some great holiday gifts (an Edge of Urge package arrived at our household just yesterday, in fact.)
Anyway, Gordon and Cilla recorded holiday songs together for… over a decade. Every holiday they would get together and record another song or two. One or two well-known classics, but mostly the more obscure gems of the holiday season. I am particularly fond of their cover of Saint Etienne’s “I don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You,” which is a deep cut even within Saint Etienn’s vast Christmas song oevre. A lesser act would have gone with the majestic “I was born on Christmas Day.”
Anyway, The Holiday Album is not on Streaming, but it is on Bandcamp. I don’t know if there’s gonna be another Bandcamp Friday any time soon, but stream it in the meantime, and buy it when one rolls around.
North Carolinian Millennials and Gen Z did not show up for the election, and black turnout was down 25% from the previous election. This is a giant bummer. North Carolina would turn blue if these people show up. Meanwhile the Supreme Court is arguing a case tomorrow about elections that originated in North Carolina and could basically destroy the concept of voting as we know it. Which would, you know, one would think mean that the court wouldn’t do such a crazy thing but who the fuck knows anymore. Yesterday’s arguments in the Colorado case about the made-up web designer who doesn’t want to serve the made-up gay customers she does not actually have was bonkers on so many levels. The Supreme Court is unhinged and it is depressing.
What a world, what a world. And then we have this power substation getting all shot up in Moore County, which is the next county south of us. There are so many counties in this state that in my head Moore was the one over by Fayatteville and I told Rex it was an hour and a half away but nope it’s like 30 minutes away, tops. That is crazy. The Governor is not calling it domestic terrorism yet, the sheriff looks like he’s going to keel over, I swear to god. This thing might kill him. A kooky right-winger said she knew why the outage happened, in relation to a drag show that was heavily protested. The sheriff went and talked to her and “prayed with her” and said she was not part of it. I mean, okay, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt but it seems utterly absurd to have mentioned, specifically, you “prayed with her” when the national media is paying attention, just setting off a bunch of warning bells. Why the DHS hasn’t taken over the case, I’ll never know, but then again, the DHS is mostly useless.
(Aside: That linked article about the DHS is really good, but has one giant, glaring omission that is really a mystery and an oversight: It neglects to mention that the formation of the DHS was one of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report, which gave the move a huge amount of momentum.)
(Speaking of momentum I was teaching Jane about momentum yesterday but then Emma mentioned I was really teaching about inertia. So.. I need to look up the difference. Is momentum just angular/directional inertia?)
I got my old clock from Jussi all fixed up, and it is now hanging up in my office. The clock mechanism I bought for it has a second hand, and makes a satisfying analogue click sound that has really brightened up the room, I really like it. It makes me happy, gives me a vague sense of nostalgia.
I really am sort of shocked with myself that it took me thirty years to get this thing fixed. Mental blocks are so fascinating. They just build up in your head, you don’t even know they’re happening, you accept them as reality. They can happen with small things like doubting your ability to replace a clock mechanism, and they can happen with big things, like your political beliefs ossifying and you finding new, progressive policy ideas stupid. I’m constantly trying to overcome these, and one thing I’ve noticed is that the amount of effort required to overcome one of these mental blocks is not especially correllated to it’s…. momentousness (moment?). Like it was much harder for me to grasp that I possessed the abilities to replace a clock mechanism than it was for me to grasp, say, reparations. That being said I don’t think the inverse is true: I suspect that the reasons a mental block is firmly-lodged maybe has, rather, to do with longevity. Or something less knowable, more mysterious and internal.
In any case, I can feel these mental blocks rumbling around in my subconscious. I know there are more there. They pass over my conscious thought fleetingly, and sometimes I am lucky, I an grab it, write it down so I won’t forget it, document it, bring it into the light, and analyze it and then, ultimately slay it. But they are like Coelecanths. They’re slippery, linger in the dark, and are difficult to catch. Our brains are filled with stupid, petty, scared little mental blocks that we’ve developed through the years and we can’t even consciously catch unless someone forces us to evaluate them, which is one reason, of course, that so much of politics is contentious; people do not want to be forced to examine their failings in the cold light of reality. \
Hot glue guns. Why am I scared of hot glue guns. It’s the stupidest thing. Ten year old kids can use them.
Here I am, some parent, going all Alfred on Jane when she falls, saying “why do we fall, so we can get back up,” and explaining to her in a kind, patient voice about how I know it’s scary to try a new thing but this is how we learn new things and I know she can do it and she will be so happy when she learns how to do it. And at the same time, I am often so, so scared to try new things. I am teaching her what I wish I understood as a child. Not that people didn’t constantly try and teach me this, of course, but maybe I was too stubborn to listen. And maybe it takes that selfsame stubborness to get through to a daughter who is every big as stubborn.
I got the new Kindle, the Kindle Scribe, which is a large-format Kindle for reading PDFs in full-screen and annotating and note taking. It is mostly excellent. Backlit, with a warm-to-cool control. The stylus and note taking feel is great. You can annotate PDFs with highlighter and notes and drawings and then send them back to yourself with one-click (okay, two). It’s great. I have such a backlock of PDFs to read it has been really satisfying to have an easy method to read them.
That being said, it has a few failings in the software. I thought it had these features, because most of its competitors (like the Remarkable 2 and the Boox Note) have them: you can pinch-and-zoom in a PDF, but you cannot leave yourself in that zoomed-in state and then turn the page, while keeping the zoom level, so you can’t, you know, trim off the margins of the PDF and make the text bigger. Similarly, some of these devices let you cut up the page into sections, then read the page section-by-section, to make the text much bigger on those academic PDFs that have two columns of microscopic text.
Most frustratingly, and stupidly, you cannot use the device in landscape mode, which is so, so dumb. I’m very annoyed with that.
Hopefully all of these things will get fixed with software updstes, but, then, rumors are the hardware division is the division at Amazon targeted for the most layoffs, so who knows.
Still, though, even with these limitations, it is definitely a pretty useful device. Medium reccomend.
And, finally, I’d just like to say that Jane was an absolute pleasure at Daddy Bedtime last night. Zero abuse hurled towards Daddy, and very kind, snuggly, and went to bed without a fuss. Thank you, Jane.
Justa mix today, mostly oldies. “2013” by Primal Scream came on yesterday while I was making lunch. What a phenomenal song. Masterpiece, really. And it’s got that part at the end where it has the multiple guitar solos going, and when it came out, that really reminded me of this track we did in Rockets, Martin Amis’ Teeth, which has, like, five guitar solos going at once that was, to put it mildly, very confusing to record. And then, of course, in my other band, Defective Frequency, I wrote a whole song about Bobbie Gillespie, Primal Scream, and the writing and recording of the song “2013,” about how it was a total masterpice but he fucked it all up by naming it with a year in the title, so no one wants to listen to it anymore, even though its a hot jam. But at least Bobby didn’t sell out. I gotta tell you, I know no one listens to “Hats Off to Bobby” but it really is one of my favorite accomplishments. Andy Shea loved it, at least. And it is a definite precursor to GMHHAY, where I just write what I want even if no one gets it, so I am thankful for that. Also, I got to work Yanis Varoufakis into a song and you can’t beat that.
So, yeah, two songs by my own bands today but I ain’t sorry.
Oh and “The Ballad of Daykitty” came on in the car the other day and my god, is there a song in the world that can just cheer you up more quickly than that? I think not. What a great tune.
Taco Tuesday!