Good morning. Hello. How are you? #925
Pretty stream of consciousness today, some gardening and what's up with seasoning cast iron and at least one good pun.
Good morning hello how are you what is up. Hello growers, greetings from the Southern coast of North Carolina where it is July 13th and 90 degrees. That is how The Millennial Gardener starts all of his YouTube videos. Distinct from James Prigioni, king of the back yard garden, who says “What’s going on growers it’s James Prigioni coming at you live from Jersey.” Millennial gardener is great because he’s in my growing zone and I can start things when he starts them. James is useful because I can start things a week or two after him and I’m good to go. Those southern ones like Epic Gardening and Next Level Gardening and Black Gumbo Southern Gardening, they’re all in warmer zones so I can’t really rely on them to remind me it’s time to plant something. They’re all pretty good, though. Oh and California Southern Gardening, I like his lilting Indian accent. Auxheart Gardening is good too, she’s in my zone, but her videos are more… journalistic. Kinda like my old gardening videos. Less straight-up instructional.
I don’t know why I started with that. I didn’t even get to watch any of my YouTube friends, my stories, last night because Jane did an hour+ long crying fit instead and man I was such a good dad, so patient, so kind, just helped her through it, even as I did so from a prostrate position on the floor. Eventually she stopped crying, it took so long, so long, and I said “do you want to lay on the floor with me and snuggle” and she said yes and came and snuggled and it was great and then we had a great evening of very quick teeth and jammies and lots of 80’s music during DJDP but yeah, 75 minutes of screaming, that’ll do something to you. Especially when I was already feeling kind of sick. Was it a bout of indigestion from eating entirely too much at dinner? Pings of a sickness Jane has brought home from the dirty, dirty outside world now that she is going to camp? Are we all going to catch something and die now? Probably.
She was really good for two days after camp, none of that “I had to be good all day so I’m gonna let loose on you” whatever-its-called behavior, but on day three? Wham bam thank you man. Let ‘er rip. Lemme give you guys the biggest fit since I was three.
Oof.
Semi-related, I never noticed how ACAB the video for “Cruel Summer” is by Bananarama. Those cute 80’s girls were downright criminal, f**k the po po, we’re stealing this Mack truck. As a kid I as far too distracted by their cuteness and big hair.
Hey question or you all — what’s the deal with seasoning cast iron? What am I missing? I don’t understand this, I never have. Is it secretly all bunk and we’re too scared to admit it? Am I just an unmitigated philistine unable to tell the taste difference between something cooked in un-seasoned cast iron and something cooked in seasoned cast iron? Is all my (not at all new) cast iron all already seasoned and I don’t know it? Do I have this right? We’re supposed to wash it after we use it, then re-apply more oil to it? Can I just not wash it? Half-ass the washing? I swear to god I am fifty-plus years old, I’ve owned cast iron shit for like thirty year now and known about seasoning cast iron for just about as long but none of it makes any god damn sense and I am still doing it wrong and I really need to sort this out so I can become a functioning human adult who knows things. If I’m not careful one of these days my daughter is going to say “hey what’s the deal with seasoning cast iron” and I’m not going to know the real answer and I’m going to bullshit some half-assed answer to her so I don’t look like an idiot, and I will perpetuate myths about cast iron and seasoning and this whole charade will continue for another generation.
Seriously I bet none of us need to be doing this at all. It’s all a lie, isn’t it? A lie perpetuated by Big Pig Iron.
Oh man that was a good joke. Big Pig. Great one hit wonder, or the best one hit wonder?
There’s just so much to learn in this life, constant fucking learning. Every day I’m like “download all this vital new information into my brain” and I fill it up with as much as I can from work or life and I feel great that I just learned some amazing new thing but I am still an empty vessel, the great Wendt, I still know nothing. I still don’t quite understand the difference between a completion bond and insurance other than bonds seem to have a slightly higher chance of paying out more. I don’t understand cast iron seasoning. I don’t understand half-normal patch bays. I don’t understand how to trim rose bushes. Or apple trees for that matter. I don’t understand, I don’t understand.
And it’s absolutely crazy to think how much shit I did not understand last decade, last year, last week. How much shit I did not understand before YouTube. I don’t understand how YouTube is still so good, seemingly the only property on the web that has not suffered from enshittification. Okay, neither has Tumblr I guess. Eh, Soundcloud is still pretty much the same. Has ads now. Sorry about that. Hm this is fun what other properties on the web haven’t been enshittified, what’s out there still being great. Wikipedia, still pretty great. 750 words. Substack, ironically, but I suppose there’s still time. Google Photos, though I suppose it falls into a subcategory of enshittification, enshittification by atrophy. Product has just been completely ignored for a decade. Though I suppose that’s better than not being ignored, if you’re a Google product.
Most of the old friends I sent weird emails to a week or two ago did not answer them. This is probably for the best. It is sad but for the best. A thing I think we do in our heads is we think of all of our old friends, and we think that we lost touch with them, but often they just sort of let us drift out of their lives. Your old friends that you’re not in touch with are not a monolithic block. Some would be absolutely thrilled to hear from you. Some absolutely don’t want to. This is a paradox because we really all should make efforts to stay in touch with old friends, but we need to understand that half of them or so are not going to write back. But half will! And then you’ll have an old friend back in your life. I guess I did not really learn anything from this exercise but I will move my eye of Sauron nostalgia eye toward other old friends and move on in my life I suppose. Humans are such goobers we are such a weird warm wet bag of neuroses and unfinished learning and hope and trauma and neediness and overwhelmedness is that a word.
Oh yeah and also another question about words do we capitalize philistine when referring to an unsophisticated rube I’ve been wondering that for like ten minutes and actually now that I’m thinking about it, “philistine” is a totally un-PC word isn’t it? Rube it is, then.
This is the part of the email where I tell you about Jane but I already did that so I guess instead I will just go.
Ta!
Moody and quiet playlist for you, all new stuff, except James, because I’m on a James kick right now. Oh I guess that Mountain Goats song is old too I just thought that album on vinyl my god there are so many Mountain Goats albums. Oh David Sylvian’s old too. That’s not very nice, Rick, I’m sure David Sylvian is still very handsome has anyone seen a recent photo of David Sylvian I bet he is aging very well. New Lloyd Cole! New old Bon Iver. Ish on both the new and the Bon Iver. New Drab Majesty with Rachel Goswell is awesome.
Tomorrow is Friday! Muy fantastico. Hasta mañana.
i replaced the driver’s side sun visor on my car last week all thanks to youtube. it wasn’t a difficult repair but had i not had a video to show me the steps i don’t think i would have attempted it. goddess bless youtube!
WARNING: unnecessary story about why i needed to replace the sun visor in the first place below...
i was driving to a friend’s house as the sun was setting and when i merged onto the 101 heading northwest, i desperately needed the visor, so i flipped it down and as i did the vanity mirror came flying off, hit my lap and landed in the footwell. this would have been startling no matter when it happened but during a merge made it almost a cardiac event. the vanity mirror lights are powered on when the visor is in the down position even if you don’t open the mirror so i had to stare at 2 small bare bulbs until my heading changed and i could raise the visor. what a treat!
“Humans are such goobers we are such a weird warm wet bag of neuroses and unfinished learning and hope and trauma and neediness and overwhelmedness is that a word.” That is a perfect sentence. Thank you.