Good morning! Hello! How are you? I am okay. Would I say that I am no longer tired? Over this (possible) jetlag? No, I would not say that. In a perfect world I would go back to bed right now for, um, I’m gonna say four more hours. That would help. I am listening to the new Metallica in an effort at waking up. It’s better than it has any right to be. Did not see that coming.
Writer’s strike! Support your local television writers. I’m pro writer’s strike, naturally. Generally in support of all strikes and shutdowns. They are educational if nothing else. I feel like were I in negotation with the writers, my rapid anti-AI stance would be an asset. I’d be like “okay sure I promise we will never use AI in writing our tv shows. Now you give something to me.” Because using AI in writing TV shows is, at best, pointless and dumb and probably won’t work anyway. I remember the last writer’s strike being kind of fun, you know, for me not for the writers. We got that Dr. Horrible thing. It gave us all a chance to catch up on things. This time they’re predicting a shorter strike but who knows. World seems a fragile place these days. You don’t get the sense “they” are very good at predicting things these days. Things have a way of getting away from us these days.
Speaking of which, government shutdown! I actually think this is kind of inevitable right now. A storm’s a brewin’. Wait did PacWest go down yet? I haven’t checked the news this morning. Hold please. Okay, no, it hasn’t. Well that is good.
So. What do we have here. We have a bunch of banks slowly toppling one-by-one, for no good reason, nominally because of the type of debt on their books, even though the types of debt on their books is totally fucking fine and it is exactly the type of debt all the other banks have on their books. This is not good! SVB had — gasp, T-bills on their books quelle horreur. First Republic had a bunch of super-safe loans to rich people on their books. Terrible! PacWest, I mean, I don’t think they’re even pretending it has anything unique about its debt book this time they’re just like “another small bank that does business with tech companies, sort of, sometimes, not very much, but kill it! Burn the witch!” There isn’t even a bank run going on on PacWest right now! People just… seem to need to kill a bank off. Where does this lead? The government does nothing, they fucking let Chase buy First Republic which is just so fucking stupid and awful and everyone not just Elizabeth Warren should be ranting and raving about how Jamie Dimon is playing the government like a fiddle.
And here we are with the banks suddenly “not safe” — except the too big to fail ones with an explicit government guarantee — and soon we’ll have like four banks left, mortgages will leave banks completely and the charade of banks giving out loans will end, while everyone realizes their deposits aren’t safe and sends their moneys to T-Bills…. just as the government is about to shut down.
I mean this is all not good! It is moving slow, it is not definite, but the fact that a bunch of people can easily, plausibly see a non-zero chance of the entire economy collapsing? Not good! People — smart people — are repeatedly bringing up this possibility! I am starting to think that all of these people Uncle Joe put in charge of our economy are fools. We are in this situation and what does our Economy Kingpin do in response? Raise interest rates! Again! Jesus christ.
This is stupid.
Oh I forgot to tell you I have a list of things to rant about today.
The fed is stupid. Powell is an idiot. Letting Chase buy First Republic was catastrophic and idiotic.
This Bud Light shit is so stupid.
Twitter is so stupid.
Ron Desantis’ idiotic crusade against Disney is so stupid. What does he think this is going to accomplish? It’s simultaneously deeply satisfying and horrifically terrifying watching his presidential campaign implode before it gets off the ground. Because what the fuck is there a single viable Republican to take on Trump? Yet another horrible, slow moving train wreck in front of us that no one can do anything about. It is all so stupid.
Tucker Carlson texts. So stupid. Well, I guess kind of interesting. Because I am sorry but Tucker Carlson sending a perfectly formed, prose-written, paragraph text with only one random racist thing in it with a larger message of tolerance? That is absolutely not what got him fired from Fox. He could have read that text verbatim on the air two months ago and Fox would not have batted an eye. There have to be worse ones. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would leak this but Felix pointed out that it was probably a warning shot from Fox: go quietly into the night. You know we have much worse texts than this. Don’t make us escalate.
Reading the news, man. What does it get you. It makes you crazy! I am, at the moment, in one of those moods where I deeply respect my hippie friends who are like “yeah I don’t read the news there’s no point.” I just wish there was a single fucking thing any of us could do to, like, actually stop all of these stupid boomers from breaking everything.
My mom was going on about how she was deeply conflicted about Biden’s age and he’s just too old to run for president again and I am like “mom, you are 100% right but we are stuck with this and we have no choice so we must never speak of it.” The hubris on that fuckin guy. It really is too much. I get increasingly angry with him every day (Peter Feld sitting there with his arms folded saying “I told you so” right now). But I mean, we knew this. It was always the least bad of a bunch of shitty options.
Maybe he’ll win, promptly die, and Kamala will turn back into cool Kamala.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees are out and once again New Order and Joy Division were stiffed which is BS but Kate Bush got her due, which makes it clear that the best way to get nominated is to get your song in a popular TV show so New Order you need to get on that right away.
But George Michael and Kate Bush got inducted and the real question is: Will Kate Bush play her first show in the US since playing Season 1 of SNL in 1979 or something like that? I want Kate Bush to come and play a single show in the US in 2023 so badly. How badass would that be? And I hope she does it barefoot like the London shows. Please please please.
I have one fewer subscriber to GMHHAY this month. First time the number has ever gone down. So good news everyone, we have peaked. It’s all downhill from here. I admit this last week or so has been a bit iffy of quality on my GMHHAY’s. Will they ever be good again? Will we ever have a single GMHHAY where Emily Taylor give it the five-star GMHHAY award? These things are hard to predict. The future is difficult to see. But I maintain hope. I feel like tomorrow’s is gonna be really good.
Oh wait, while I’m scanning my list of topics of all the depressing ones, to purge them all into a single entry, so we can have a more chipper, pedestrianly domestic GMHHAY tomorrow…. couple more things:
Google AI senior engineer, AI legend, quits Google, says they’re being irresponsible with their AI efforts these days, because they got caught flat-footed by Chat GPT (which is garbage unless you’re a coder but we have to wait another year or so before everyone admits that). Anyway, he quit and said that he’s sorry for everything and AI might just break the world. Cool very cool, reassuring. I mean, I am sympathetic to this guy. I rememember the day I realized the internet was garbage and I was partly responsible for that garbage and I felt immense guilt, issued a public mea culpa, wrote a song about it, and have never forgiven myself. I feel bad for the guy. But jesus. Way to confirm my worst fears.
(As an aside, an advance reader has informed me that my aforementioned mea culpa appears in Ben Smith’s new book, causing at least one major internet figure to stop and take stock, so I guess that is good. Did some good maybe. Also now I gotta go buy his book. Which I will read after this absolutely glorious oral history of Fury Road I am reading my god what a movie.)
And, finally, I’ll just leave this here that the great plastic garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean is growing so much it is developing its own climate and ecosystem and shore birds are habitating there, thousands of miles from any actual shore. Awesome.
Okay I think that’s about it for the negativity spew. Fifty years old (for three more days) and I still can’t find balance between the good and the bad in life. I can find a pendulum, I have some confidence these days, at least, it’ll swing back the other way. But those people who hear news like this and take it all in with equinamity? I don’t know how they do it. I don’t even know if they’re right, I think they’re probably wrong, but also I’m so, so jealous of that ability.
Daddy Jane Dance Party, DJDP, has been back the last two nights and it’s been glorious. Jane is so obviously happy to see me after my absense and it’s just lovely and rewarding. Lotta Madonna, of course, but we got some interesting stuff in. “Steal My Sunshine” by Len, man they look like a bunch of hoodlums. “Don’t Change” by INXS jesus Michael Hutchence was gorgeous. Blondie “Heart of Glass” (Ditto about Debbie Harry), ZZ Top that was fun, a few Gorillaz tracks from Coachella those are hilarious Damon Albarn is such an old man his glasses are all the way down his face while he plays his little keyboard with this massive production around him. Living the dream. Jimmy Eat World “The Middle,” great song, had never seen its underwear-addled video before. Avalon Emerson, which Jane loved, Kylie Minogue, ditto. Weyes Blood, Dua Lipa, and of course Samia, Wet Leg, Robyn and Garbage.
For the “Sad Old Man” segment, Jane is mesmerized by the “Let it Flow” video by Spiritualized and I could not be happier. Just fantastic.
Got a W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate World mix for you today. All new. Veryinto this Avalon Emerson woman she is great. Re-TROS is a Chinese band, they do the end-credit music to Three-Body, which was in my head for like a week, and it turns out their album is pretty solid. I’m into the new M-83 but I’ve heard no one else mention it. I wonder if that’s me and my bubble or the zeitgeist as a whole. I hope the former, I’d be sad for them if it were the latter.
Thank you for bearing with me for this negativity purge. Tomorrow’s gonna be a great edition, I promise.
i'm choosing to think of the bird/garbage patch as a positive thing. like, at least this man-made island is now somewhat useful? (yes, i realize i'm reaching os hard, i might fall right off this metaphorical ladder.)
i do like it when you rant every once in a while, though.