8/22
the video for "lover" by taylor swift (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-BjZmE2gtdo), which, in its sickly sweet disposable plastic candy take on a small and warm and lovely song, is such a clear sign that while taylor can be a great songwriter and someone who can make interesting production choices, her visual style is stuck in this stilted prepubescence that not only doesn't add to the song, but actively takes away with it, versus someone like beyoncé, who makes the total art, the deep gestalt
living three hours behind where we used to live, which has such a strong effect on vibes of daily life that i'm still coming to terms with it, but i think i like it, i feel younger than i did in eastern standard time, and which means that we can, for example, be listening to the midnight release of the new taylor swift album at 9:36 PM as i write this
the album, which is pretty damn good so far on first listen, lot of bangers, lots of different kind of songs but also in a relatively cohesive feel, normally a taylor album has to grow on me but a lot of these songs so far i like on first listens, the energy is high, the aesthetic is playful and even when there's a repeated choice i think she can do better than (cheer captain shouts, so ironic considering "you belong with me"), there's something interest, a vocal treatment, a texture of electric guitar, i even don't mind those watery pulsey kicks that jack antonoff loves so much, the trop house jack johnson arpeggios, it feels like some of the more mature music she's made (sometimes with obvious signifiers of that like the lovely country rock of "lover", but other times in places where a choice is less on the nose, a moment of delicate (delicate))
had a good day at work today and look forward to the work i'm going to do tomorrow (and also that it's friday), asked a pointed question at our all hands meeting, figured out the broken code in a language i didn't know and that i and two other people hadn't been able to isolate was caused by the fact that the words "is not" were used in one line instead of "!=" and that made all the difference, also the bachelor franchise slack channel which is very pleasant and the haribo channel where we have been planning which candy we will each bring to our meetup at the company retreat in minneapolis in a few weeks
facetimed with my parents and listened to my mom's knausgaard story of cleaning out my grandfather's house and finding a luger in a coat pocket, a sawed off shotgun under some clothes in the closet, and, the coup de grace, in a cookie jar in the kitchen, a tiny pink handgun he had bought my late grandmother years ago, that my parents aren't dead and that i love them and they love me
this morning when i got out of bed i put my covers over miso and she laid there for a while under them
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