Good morning. Hello. How are you? #918
Impenetrable politics, plumbers, electricians, the 1980's wiring of a Tennessee IRS office, MTG LOTR, people freakin love frunks.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? Sorry I’m late. Been a crazy morning. Jane’s over at Grammy’s, so I did the recycling and Walmart run this morning, dropped off the groceries and recycling bins at the house, seemingly forgot my phone there, grabbed a second monitor from the monitor storage area and came over to the new house to be here in time for the plumbers and electrician. I got here exactly four minutes before the plumbers got here, so then it’s lots of showing them where the old hot water heaters are, where the new ones are, where the sink goes, going ovee the new 20 amp outlet the electrician put in last week to plug in the Rennai tankless. Then the electrician gets here and we start going over all the stuff he’ll be doing today but then we realize neither one of us pulled a permit and if the plumbers are getting an inspection, they’re gonna notice the electrical work so then we had to go get a permit. and, man that guy talks a lot. If you have any questions about the electrical installations in the Tennessee IRS office in the 1980’s, I am your man. Over 1,000 flourescent fixtures in one room. Passed that inspection with flying colors, he did.
Two more people complimented me on my Lightning at Walmart this morning. What I have noticed is that about half of these compliments are from hardcore redneck dudes who love trucks and love F-150s in particular and are very well informed about the Lightning and seriously considering it, and half the people are people who are just utterly enamored with frunks. People fucking love frunks, don’t let the car blogs and car enthusiasts fool you. The public is gaga for frunks. And you know why? Because people love love love pulling through parking spaces so they don’t have to go into reverse. And the hardest thing about pulling through parking spaces it that your trunk is no longer easily accessible when you’re putting your groceries in it. Because your car is facing outward. But a frunk, naturally, solves this problem. People love that. They come up and talk to me about frunks and how they hate going into reverse. Men, women, all ages, races. It really is something. Frunks. America is one national ad campaign away from going completely gaga for Frunks. If Ford renamed the Mustang Mach-E the Frunkly and launched a national ad campaign, they would rocket to the number 1 car slit an America, mark my words. Frunks!
What else what else. I’m working with only one monitor right at the moment — one of my trusty decade-old Apple Thunderbolt monitors just developed a really bad hum. So I don’t have my trusty list of topics on the left. And I forgot my phone at the other house (I think, I hope), so I haven’t synched my photos from yesterday to Dropbox, so I don’t have the latest photos for your perusal. Things are really quite dire this morning.
Oh! Right! I went to a lunch yesterday with a person considering running for local office. And she’s just a normal person who is considering running for very basic, normal reasons like traffic control and drainoff mitigation. Just basic, normal, local issues stuff. But she is in the Triangle which means if she runs, like it or not, she will get sucked in to the absolutely bonkers, impenetrable politics of the region. I’ve written a little bit about the politics of Chapel Hill, for example, and how there are astroturfing campaigns and fake newspapers and Republicans pretending to be independents and it’s just absurd and insane and impenetrable, never mind state-level things like, oh, you know, party flip-flopping and corrupt house speakers and affairs and blackmail and all sorts of insane shit. And so when someone asked me to meet this person, I was wary, because I absoutely do not want to get sucked into that nonsense. But I did it as a favor.
It went fine. But I was sitting there at first, talking to this person, and trying to figure out if they were secretly one of these Republicans pretending to be independents, or if they were some mysterious cog in one of the mysterious machines. And I was very wary and didn’t really want to help. But then they started asking the most basic questions about how campaigns get funded and how to you register and I was like “oh, yeah, this is just an absolute normie.” And it was very… surprising? Because politics are so impenetrable in America now. First and obviously, we do ourselves no favors with considering everything to be on a left-right alignment, when that is totally not the case at the local level. Like in the Chapelboro area there seems to be this alliance between very Republican real estate developers and very liberal YIMBYs, who are in league against “normal” liberals who care about things like, oh, you know, flooding. Horseshoe theory on pretty much every topic. But even beyond that, there is definitely a new-ish-in-the-last-thirty-years-ish trend of politicians utterly denying what they actually believe in. Obama did this with gay marriage, and the Clintons did with health care and gay rights, but it is far, far more widespread on the conservative side, though they seem to be doing it less and less of late as they become convinced they are winning forever on issues like abortion and gun control. They’re not, they’re still fighthing a rear-guard action, but they’re certainly doing pretty well right at the moment.
But anyway, yeah, it’s just so exhausting trying to figure out what’s real, what people really believe, who is telling the truth. So much subterfuge in America in politics, in business, in the media (who owns this newspaper), in science (who funded this study?) It is a full-time job. When you know an issue inside and out, it’s not much of a problem. But dip your toes into something new? You’re on terra incognita and you’re gonna be lost for a good long while.
My friend Nick, damn him, got me into collecting the new Lord of the Rings Magic the Gathering cards. I have no idea how to play Magic the Gathering, but man I sure do like Lord of the Rings and these cards are very nice. The thing is, though, that the Magic people are doing this thing where one pack of a certain type — frustratingly, the type with the coolest-looking cards, the ones I want more of — includes a one of one “The One Ring” card that is worth like $2 million. Real Willy Wonka kinda thing. And yes it would be super fun to get the One Ring card, but the problem is is that until this One Ring card is found, the “Collector Booster Packs” wherein it might be found, are going for ridiculous amounts of money. Just insane. Like $250 over retail. And this thing just launched, and does not seem to be sold out. I don’t know much about this ecosystem but I know that if you go to the MTG site and try to buy something it sends you to Amazon, which seems to be their official retailer, and I know this thing isn’t sold out, but you can’t actually buy them there anymore, and you never could actually have bought them for retail. It really is something. It’s like if Lego could only be bought on eBay or from the back of a van. This does not, on first blush, seem like a super well-run company.
Should probably get out of this habit before I get too far in.
Got a rawwwwwwk playlist for you for this holiday weekend. Oh yeah, I’m off till Wednesday. Will I write over the weekend? Almost certainly not. Many chores to do. So may chores. They are gonna be just great. Very excited.
And I hope you have a lovely weekend as well! AMURCA!
when i read the topics list and saw MTG LOTR, my initial thought was Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lord of the Rings, WTF?! hahahah