Good morning. Hello. How are you? #380
Family, Gardening videos, The Oscars, Great British Baking Show, Funnybones, Apple, W Hotels, recreating XM First Wave,
Good morning! Hello! How are you? How’s it going? All right, then? Splendiferous. I am listening to this new single by CHVRCHES, “He Said She Said.” It seems slightly over-autotuned. I am still gobsmacked that the guy from Aerogramme is in CHVRCHES. What a late career renaissance. My age, too. Sigh.
Today is my sister’s birthday. Please join me in wishing her a lovely birthday. She’s up there in Fairbanks, with her toddler and her job and the brunt of taking care of our mom and it can be a lot. I am happy to have helped for a small while, and deeply thankful that she is there to help much more. I hope she gets a spa day today. I hope that she got the day off of work. But we’re parents of young kids, during a pandemic, holding down jobs. Who ever gets a whole day off anymore? Still, she deserves it.
And on that note, Mom is going back to Fairbanks this Saturday. She is much, much better than when she got here, and I’m deeply thankful that we’ve got everything diagnosed and treated and that nothing was fatal. She’s in good shape and if all goes well we should be looking at at least another decade of having mom around so, *clinks glass* cheers.
We watched the Oscars last night. Emma was so bummed. She recorded them for me, but apparently didn’t have any desire to watch them. We recently started the early seasons of Great British Baking Show. This was a giant oversight on our part. Like we watched all of the Paul and Prue seasons — like five seasons or something. We knew there were earlier ones but were like “nah what’s the point without Noel.” But of course Noel is great and all, but so is being blissfully comfortable and in an escapist pillow room during a pandemic. My mortification at having previously skipped seven seasons of this virtual bubble bath is tempered only by my ecstatic joy of having seven more seasons of this show to comfort us.
But back to the Oscars. I liked the different format in concept. But it was so weird. The lighting was terrible, the sound was awful. I don’t get it, man. This is, like, a hundred-million-dollar show. Super Bowl level. At the Super Bowl you can hear the quarterback grunt in a stadium of a hundred thousand. At the Oscars, you couldn’t hear a presenter (Zendaya was particularly quiet) speak in a room of a couple hundred. There was also something about the speeches that just made me fast forward them. I couldn’t bring myself to listen, even when I wanted to. Like I’m a giant Thomas Vinterberg fan and the dude won an Oscar. Crazy. But I could only get halfway through his speech.
But still. I enjoyed the whole thing. Somehow.
I finished my gardening recap video if you are looking for some nice YouTube content:
It’s another long one. They are too long. I should probably shorten them. I think they’ll get shorter now that I don’t have to do marathon potting sessions each week. I’m torn because they mostly exist as convenient historical records for myself, to show what I planted and when, etc. So I’m loathe to cut too much out. So I spend a bunch of time trimming, and editing, and tightening. Maybe it works. I don’t know.
As a bit of bonus content this week, I also made a video on how to make your own home-made squirrel repellant. I have a theory this is going to do pretty well as SEO-able content. The shredder videos are doing much better than my other videos, because people go to YouTube and search for these things, unlike long, kinda boring gardening vlogs. I mean we’re not talking about breakaway hits here, but the cardboard shredding one has gotten over 200 views now. So I feel like when I have one of these little tricks or tips that could be helpful, may as well make a little video about it, because YouTube is the best educational platform ever, albeit with a side of racism! Anyway, here’s this video as well. And I swear: the stuff really works!
I was reloading the watermelon-lime water into the wine fridge because I am a non-boozy bougie dude and I hit my knee funnybone against the fridge door. This was four days to you. I cannot describe to you the pain that still lingers from this incident. It is insane. It was barely a tap! Our bodies are rickety models held together by the weakest glue and we are all going to fall apart. Thank you, come again, have a nice day.
My god it hurts.
I’ve decided Jane is going to need a little toddler apron because those are ridiculously cute. She helps out in the kitchen a fair bit, and is ready to do more. The one problem here is that I never wear an apron when I’m cooking — except on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I mean what’s the point? I just go upstairs and change clothes when I’m done. But I want to see Jane in a cute toddler apron. But i don’t want to reinforce sexist stereotypes, so I’m going to have to wear one too I guess. A
Also I want to get her one of those little toddler-height growbox containers and a toddler watering can and trowel because that, too, is also going to be ridiculously cute. I know in my rational heart she will not use it for more than a week, but I suppose next summer she might be into it again. Also I could just use it as a container after this.
Both of these thoughts spring from the fact that Jane is finally getting bored. Our house is large, there’s a lot to do and a lot to keep you entertained, and she has done a marvelous job entertaining herself for these past fifteen (!) months of pandemic. But she seems to be hitting a limit. The last few days she has repeatedly asked Emma and I “More things to do?” I mean on the one hand this is ridiculous there are a million toys and a million interesting books but on the other hand it seems clear she is looking for new experiences and, after over a year more or less trapped on this property, she seems to be running out of them. Luckily it’s warm outside, so that’s a big new frontier for her, that helps. But still. Little tyke is yearning for adventure. God I wish this stupid kids COVID vaccine would come soon.
Also she’s become insanely ravenous and dinner is stretching past the two hour mark now and it’s really getting crazy. She must be having another growth spurt.
Apple released their ATT paradigm yesterday as part of the latest OS update, so we’re just sitting here, waiting for it to roll out and see what the damage is. God, wouldn’t it be awesome if it didn’t do anything? I would have to applaud them, then. Get the whole industry to change without losing a dollar. We shall see, we shall see. Meanwhile Apple is doing ads around the whole thing, where they sort-of pretend it’s just some apps that are doing bad things, but also paint all of advertising with the same negative brush: you really should buy all your apps, you know. So Apple can take a cut.
Grr. Five years I’ve worked to keep this beloved little app alive and free for those who love it. But we’re the bad guys. Okay.
Don’t worry. It’s gonna be okay. You’re gonna make it today. Here have a related video from my other, older YouTube account:
The synth-pop generation’s answer to Bobby McFerrin, I guess.
Today’s mix is another mix in the W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe series. I gotta tell you I’d take a regular, old, boring, normal, this-universe W Hotel lobby right now. That signature scent. Those soaring ceilings. The jabroni clientele. The hot servers, the slight adventure at finding where the check-in counter is. Yeah I could go for some $10 french fries with fake truffle oil and a diet coke right now. I want Jane with me, though. Man I can’t wait to travel with her.
BUT back to the topic at hand, here we have the latest in my job application to be their music programmer. I feel like I could probably handle this job on top of my other one. Oh speaking of which, I have this new project I’m going to undertake where I am going to recreate XM First Wave for the house. It will be free of Morrissey and Richard Blade, it will have an expanded playlist beyond the ten Depeche Mode and six new order and five Cure songs they play. But otherwise it will operate exactly the same: Emma can push a button on the wall-mounted, archaic, pre-internet home audio system in the house and it will just start playing. I’m not 100% sure how I’m going to accomplish this yet, but I have some ideas. It needs to work when the internet’s down so it won’t be streaming-based. I’m thinking an old Mac Mini and iTunes and auto-restart on power failure and whatnot, but I can’t figure out how to make iTunes just start playing. I’ll probably need to launch an AppleScript — er, sorry, Automator — script on launch. But I haven’t sorted that part just yet. Still, though. I am looking forward to it. Fine Time really should be in rotation on First Wave. And Prayers for Rain.
BUT back to the topic at hand (again), here’s the mix. Honey by Robyn came on the other day and I thought “god remember when Robyn blessed us with a new album and we were all, like ‘meh.'? What were we thinking?” Suddenly Honey sounds so good to me. It has been on heavy rotation of late. Also one of my favorite subversive DJ things to do is to sneak in a Mercury Rev song into a dance mix, and here we succeed again, thank you Fujiya and Miyagi. Man those guys were great I loved their slightly robotic live shows I should check in on them I wonder if they have new stuff. The last three songs on here are brand new, too, so stick around for some fresh cuts, yo.
Hope you guys are doing lovely. I’m gonna go water the downstairs plants and spray my squirrel repellant now. Ciao.
I bought Logan a tiny toddler apron covered in dinosaurs for his birthday last year and he loves it. Given, his mother wears an apron a lot when baking - and baking in his little kitchen is one of his favorite things to do, but still. it's unbelievably cute. Anyhow, I got it from this Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/SweetApronzNCupcakes?section_id=7727788 you COULD even get one that matches her teensy one and make a big deal out fo daddy-daughter matching... just sayin. xoxo, Jocelyn