LIFESTYLE Newsletter Vol. 4 No. 5
Nick’s LIFESTYLE Newsletter Vol. 4 No. 5
This image embodies almost everything I love. Japan in the 70's & 80's and space.
THIS IS AN INTRODUCTION
Hello again everyone. It's been a few weeks. A hot few weeks where my lawn is turning into hay and I live inside my air conditioned cocoon. Exciting weeks full of LIVING IN THE FUTURE~! (more below)
- This is a minority opinion, but we watched The Happytime Murders a few weeks ago and it was one of the best movies I have seen. You probably won't like it, but I loved it. I love movies that treat the abnormal as normal, it reminds me of my own experience a bit, plus there is a 60 second scene of muppet ejaculation.
(Video - click to watch)
- Did everyone catch the Linda Linda's? That 10 year old girl banging the drums has more potential than 10 of me.
(Videos - click to watch)
- Melonie is done with Yakuza 0, so we are officially a 2 Yakuza family. We'll probably play the rest of them together. This could be fun or TERRIBLE. More updates later.
- LIFESTYLE alumni, iAmMoshow (LIFESTYLE Vol. 1 No. 3, item the second) was spotted in the trailer for the new Netflix show Cat People. Sometimes the LIFESTYLE bump takes time, but congrats iAmMoshow!
- THIS IS AMAZING. I'm glad I'm a saver or I would have done this in our backyard too - http://blog.beforemario.com/2021/04/meet-collectors-fabrice-heilig-update.html
- This was a super enlightening article about depression. It helped me have more simulated empathy and intellectual understanding: A few thoughts on depression
THIS IS THE END OF THE INTRODUCTION.
3 THINGS THIS WEEK.
ITEM THE FIRST:
THE GREEN STUFF: Exciting news over here at LIFESTYLE HQ. Unbeknownst to the company, the Lavely family has signed an EXCLUSIVE DEAL to only purchase Revol Greens for our salad mix. We go through a lot of salad and FUCK IS SALAD BORING, but not any more. Revol is a copy based in Owatonna that is farming like it is 2020 and not 1820. They have a huge greenhouse that captures rainwater and snowmelt and uses a ton of robotics and large water pools to grow lettuce without pesticides. It's fucking amazing to watch it in action:
Video - click to watch
The greens they make taste so crisp and fresh and don't go bad in a week like shitty Target salad mix (where the purple stuff RUINS EVERYTHING). If you liked the video above, they have a few others (including a classroom trip that shows it in more detail).
Even better, they have expanded over the past few months and are in a lot of Targets in the south suburbs now. It is a little bit more than other stuff, but SHOP LOCAL DUDES. I'm secretly hoping to score a tour someday.
ITEM THE SECOND:
FILL ER UP WITH WIND, BABY! So, I did something I swore I would not ever do again (and on a technicallity, I didn't), but I bought a NEW(ish) CAR.
My 13 year old Prius had seen some better days. It needed about $1000 of work put into it before winter and the main Hybris battery was down to about 58% SOC, so it was getting down there. I started looking at the Nissan Leaf because I have dreamt of an electric car for years. FRIEND OF THE LIFESTYLE, Derek, was gracious enough to give me a ride in his Chevy Spark, which is adorable, but was not big enough for my needs.
I started looking at used car websites, but decided to test drive a newish Leaf just to see if I liked it. It was...ok. Very overpriced for the range. Then I started seeing used Chevy Bolts. I ignored then because AMERICAN CARS??!?!? UGH. Then I started looking into it more and outside of Chevy dealers being idiots and not knowing what they are selling, it was getting good reviews. I saw a bunch of 2017-2018 models showing up for $17-$19k, but they were like 100+ miles away. In one of my searches a USED 2021 popped up in Inver Grove Toyota. I booked an appointment just to see if I would even like a Bolt. SPOILER ALERT - I DID.
I'll spare you all the details, but I am the owner of a used (with 309 miles) 2021 Chevy Bolt EV. It's super fun and I love driving around in it. It blows my mind how much tech has advanced in cars in the last 13 years and how much EV charging infrastructure is in place. In my first weekend of owning it, we took it down to New Ulm and they had a DC Fast Charger downtown to top me off. WHAT A WORLD.
Two very strange parts of this process though that just reeked of my white privlege.
1) When I showed up for the test drive, I met the sales guy and he took a photocopy of my drivers license and literally tossed the keys at me and told me to have fun. Didn't check insurance or want to ride along or give me any parameters on where I could go or how long I could be gone for. It was unsettling and weird. Now, obviously if there was an issue they have tracking on the car so they would find it and me, but compared to my first time at a car dealership when I was 20 and the salesman asked me if I had my mom's permission to buy a car, it was very different.
2) I returned later that night to the dealership to buy it with a personal check (because who the fuck uses checks anymore). I had not talked to my credit union or secured a loan. I was confident it would be no issue, but I had no pre-approval. It was about 9p when we got to financing and I just wrote a check for the purchase price. Everyone in that room knew I did not have enough money in my checking account to cover it, but they were going to hold cashing it until I had a loan and the money in the account.
I have a feeling if I was a 20 year old non-white person both of those experiences would have gone very differently.
Anyway, I highly recommend an EV. It is a blast to drive, has a ton of tech and saves the earth (mostly). I have not heard any good things about the dealership experience tho, so I am dreading having to take it in. Wait, outside of tires, my first scheduled maintenance in in 8 YEARS for the AC. HAHAHAHAHA!
ITEM THE THIRD:
THE PICKPOCKETS OF DEMOCRACY. This article was one of the better ones I've read in the past 5 years about how the right wing has been treating people like marks, allowing things like QAnon to flourish - How Conservatives Pick Democracy's Pocket. The linked video is amazing and highlights how overstimulation and distraction is a powerful tool. Sadly, Last concludes: “That’s the new mode of Republican political operation. It’s very effective. I’m not sure what the counter to it is.”
I also saw this, which again forces me to confront my northern ideas and stereotypes about the south.
People are on twitter throwing shade at Texas and Louisiana as if Texan republicans didn’t just file a federal lawsuit to throw out 127,000 votes – Texas (which could fit the entire UK in it 2.8 times need i remind you) also closed hundreds of polling sites, leaving one county with only two sites. TWO. Louisiana also ordered hundreds of polling places to close early ON ELECTION DAY.
i don’t want to hear people going “oobloobloo these boomers” and “oobloobloo the south” and “oobloobloo these hillbillies”
IT’S DIRECT VOTER SUPPRESSION.
so stop making jokes about sleeping when southerners need help during hurricanes because your middle class white ass was able to safely get in your subaru to drive to your local polling place on your lunchbreak meanwhile voters on their way to their polling places in north carolina were pepper-sprayed by police.
We have to stop thinking about Red States as places that are filled with redneck dipshits who keep these awful people in power.
We need to start thinking about Red States as Occupied by a gerrymandered, popularly unelected minority, who are oppressing the majority who live there.
It is always disheartening to see how many things are majority opinions (universal healthcare, access to abortion, restrictions on firearms in some cases, expanded voting rights) but are essentially blocked by a far right wing government that has changed the law to their advantage. Democrats better get on that voting rights bill or we are fucked for another generation.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (please mark "ok to print"):
None.
GRATITUDES:
While I love all my LIFESTYLE readers, two went ABOVE AND BEYOND this week. Everyone is probably well aware of the on-going rich white people problems of shortages of high-end video cards and Playstation 5's. I've been trying for months to get my hands on a Nvidia RTX3080 and a Playstation 5. I have an app on my phone that alerts me to stock status and I spring into action once a week or so trying to feverishly buy one of these things while not paying attention in a work meeting. Last week around 10:30a I got an alert about Best Buy having stock of PS5's and I jumped onto their website and tried to order one. After 5 mins of the usual disappointment, it flashed the familiar SOLD OUT message.
Soon, I got a text message from a FRIEND OF THE LIFESTYLE with a screenshot of a completed purchase of a PS5. WHICH THEY ALREADY OWN. They asked if I wanted it and graciously offered to pick it up from the store and bring it over. YES PLEASE BUDDY!
Now I have a PS5 thanks to the friendship that comes from the LIFESTYLE newsletter.
FAVORITE THING TO GO IN MY EARHOLES THIS WEEK:
Music knows no language boundaries! I was recently previewing some new 80's J-pop (or kayōkyoku for you super nerds) and the algorithm pushed this as a suggestion:
(video, click to view)
It is an English version of one of my favorite j-pop songs of all time (the original sounds like this). I was curious but prepared myself of PS5-level disappointment.
The English singer, Caitlin Myers, takes classic J-pop songs, localizes them (NOT TRANSLATES) and performs them. I often wonder if part of the reason I like the music is because I can't understand the lyrics so it eliminates part of my potential disappointment, but through this I can confirm that I just love this song. She's done a few other bangers like Stay With Me and Plastic Love. I knew just enough Japanese that I can see her localizations keep the original tone and intent of the original lyrics but update the phrasing and metaphor to something a native English speaker can vibe with.
I think one thing that hits me hearing all of it in English is how bittersweet all of this music is. These songs, which have all gone viral several times over the years, are all heart breaking lyrically.
This also works the other way. Caitlin teamed up with some other people to give us this:
(video, click to view)
Good music is good music. It doesn't matter if that vocal is in Japanese, English or the trumpet of Miles Davis.
What is some of your favorite non-English music?
THIS IS THE END OF THE NEWSLETTER
WE ARE DOING MUCH BETTER.
BECAUSE OF SCIENCE.
GOD IS GOING TO DO SOME HOUSECLEANING IN POCKETS OF THE COUNTRY. SHRUG.