Good morning! Hello, there. How’s tricks? I am tired. Tuesdays are hard. Seven meetings in a day is hard. I’m not gonna lie. But we get a lot done. I like that part a lot. We are getting a lot done at work.
Look I don’t know what to say about this school shooting stuff that I haven’t said before, that you haven’t said, that we all haven’t said a million times. Sometimes when things happen like that and I don’t write about it in here, it feels like the most luxurious privilege. No one is making me write about any single subject in here, and sometimes when the whole world is talking about something, it feels like the most rewarding thing in my life is that I can come here to GMHHAY and write about something else. Or perhaps it just feels like, dare I say it, self-care, to take a moment and remember that life is about more than ita tragedies. But sometimes when the whole world is writing about something and I choose to not write about it in here, it feels like putting my head in the sand.
Emma and I are still furiously debating whether or not to send Jane to school, and often when we talk about it, people are so curious why we’d think about home schooling. They usually have good ripostes to this reason or that, but the one reason they never really have a response to is the school shootings. “Oh, yeah, that. Yeah. Good point.” It feels like the utter failure of a country that people are sitting here thinking “yeah, I think maybe my kid should not go to school because I’d like for them to not get shot.” Three hundred and fifty thousand kids have been effected by school shootings in the United States and the number is increasing, rapidly. There are a billion things we panic about protecting our children from that have nothing like that level of danger. More kids die from school shootings than did from Fisher Price rock-n-plays before we banned them. Vast majorities across the political spectrum — ugh we know all this. It’s just fucking me up today. I just wish there was more we could do.
It’s heartbreaking and horrible and I haven’t said this in a while so I’ll say it again: just because I don’t write about something here doesn’t mean it isnt’ weighing on my mind heavily. GMHHAY is only a slice of life, it is not everything.
Fuckin guns. Right now, as this happens, the Republicans in the North Carolina legislature are trying to ram through a bill to make it easier to buy guns. The governor vetoed it, but the Republicans are going to override the veto, aided by one of those Democrats we all love that try to seem common sense and middle of the road and do so by, you know, eroding the exact values that Democrats care about most. Yipee.
I’ve run out of record crates again because I am a lunatic and I buy too many records and I keep needing more and more record crates to keep them in because I am a lunatic who gets headaches when he bends over so I insist on keeping all my records in crates at counter height so I can flip through the records like in a record store. Except then they all fill up and the records get too tightly packed so then I need to buy more record crates. Except the company who makes my record crate — Diskkeepers — stopped making them so ever since then it’s been a nightmare of trying to find new old stock, or used ones, but that’s impossible because nothing on them says Diskkeepers so people don’t really resell them.
Then I found this dude on Etsy in Oregon who was handmaking a crate that was indistinguishable from the Diskkeepers crate. I don’t know what was up with that. Was he actually hand making them or had he just stumbled upon a backstock of Diskkeepers crates. I swear they were utterly indistinguishable. So that was good for one batch, I got three from the guy, but he was super irresponsible and dodgy and it took like three months for him to fulfil. But I nagged him a bunch and then he finally said sorry and filled the order. But also they were stupidly expensive. I’m scared to go back and look but I think it was like more than $40 a crate. Just dumb. So now I’m running out of cratespace again and I go to Etsy and look up the guy and his store is turned off with the message of how he’s just trying to fill all his back orders. And there’s just a litany of complaints not dissimilar to mine that the dude took their money and they had to get refunded by Etsy. So I guess I lucked out that he chose to answer me and mail me crates. Anyway there’s a fascinating mystery there — why hasn’t Etsy shut this dude’s store down completely? Why does it get to just be paused? And I’m sure it’s all very interesting, but I need crates.
SO, now, it seems that my local big box hardware store, Lowe’s has an entirely similar crate for fifteen dollars. It’s not exactly the same — it has four slats on the side and bottom instead of three — but the dimensions are the same, it’s unfinished pine, and the solid front end and handle look the same, so, you know, I think it might work. Also what choice do I have? Someday my albums will cover the earth. I need crates.
But god. If they look slightly different… am I going to be able to get over that? Am I going to be able to ignore the minor differences? Or will it gnaw at me for the rest of my life.
Tune in next week.
Samia is a nepo baby but Twitter seems to be pretty chill about it. Is Samia Twitter’s favorite nepo baby? I think she might be their favorite nepo baby.
We danced to a lot of Samia last night at Daddy Jane Dance Party. Three Samia tracks including two from the new album, “Mad at Me,” which I have in my head all the time and “Honey,” which has a fairly disturbing video. Speaking of disturbing videos, I tried to get Jane into MGMT but man, that Kids video is not suitable for kids! She was very upset about that that was not good at all. We got over a bit with “Time to Pretend,” but I think the damage was done. Jane will not be an MGMT fan any time soon. She liked Sonic Youth though we did “Kool Thing” and “Teen Age Riot” and that went very well she really liked the kitty in the “Kool Thing” video which I swear I had never noticed before. We also did Flaming Lips “Do you Realize” which she enjoyed, and a live at Glastonbury performance of “Train” by Goldfrapp. Then back to her comfort zone which is increasingly Selena’s Astrodome performance she just loves it so much. And “Shake it Off” to wrap things up.
Her new thing is calling us back to the bedroom every twenty minutes or so for an hour as she goes to sleep. It is exhausting and frustrating and I hope it’s just a phase. But she has her big girl bed now so at least now we can lay down next to her instead of just crouch by the crib/bed thingy.
So that is nice.
I suppose I am cheating here with a seven-song mix, but it’s an hour and that’s what I do here, people: hour long mixes. The idea is that you can actually listen to them on the day I post them, not save them aside for when you have time to get through some three-hour mix or something. And what can I say, sometimes psych rock pieces are long. There is also some genre fuzziness on this one. Is this Maruja band, about whom I know absolutely nothing, psych? It doesn’t sound like it on first listen, but when I was rocking out to it and wanted to put it on a playlist, no other playlist seemed appropriate. Same with this Sirom band. So this is what you get. Sure starts out strong with “traditional” psych though. Who can complain about a new fifteen minute Bardo Pond song, hells yeah.
An other busy day today. Seven meetings again. God, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are exhausting. I just want to get back to the chill part of the week where I need to write nine separate new documents.