Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1377
I’m switching to Buttondown to escape Substack and pondering uncomfortable truths about fascism and voters.
We held our noses too. A dearth of Fascism-fighting guides, too much about a band I don’t love.
Good morning. Hi. What is up. Hello. Notice anything different? I am trying to move off of Substack. That old friend of mine got me motivated to do something I had been meaning to do for a while. I started the process on Sunday. The election, of course, exacerbated things. Fuck ‘em all, etc. etc.
I am over on Buttondown because it most suits my ethos — seems like just a bunch of people with jobs doing things, no freaky “growth” mindset, no siliCON valley illness. We shall see, we shall see. It is paid, as in I pay for it. It is $9/month, $7 something if I commit to a year, which I am not ready to do yet. Kinda don’t like this font. Wonder if I can change it. It does not have a subhead, and so I don’t really know how things work with email subject lines and what I put in the Threads/Bluesky teaser. We shall see. Maybe I’ll do that thing that Luke does and choose a particularly well-written line from the email, context free, and use that as the teaser.
It took four days to move over to Buttondown because somehow my subscriber import broke Buttondown, but they had actual humans helping me within the first day, kind and helpful. So, yeah. Even though it was a rocky transition, the company proved itself quite nicely.
Watching all of these tech titans bend the knee and kiss Trump’s ass has motivated me more. It should motivate you! I have half a mind to stop posting this to Facebook completely. I might just do that. But first I gotta get off Threads. You can follow me over at Bluesky if you are addicted to my super-scintillating Threads content, such as:
@rickwebb • Texting my expat friends • Threads
Texting my expat friends
Aww shit, Buttondown doesn’t expland threads links into embeds. Alas. Let’s try again:
Anyway you’ll probably get two emails today because at some point, assuming this email goes out successfully, I will go over to Substack and email there that I am done there.
All right then. Holding up okay. Gin, edibles, a lot of sleep, a lot of time sitting on benches with my wife, talking, as we watch Jane play and dance and twirl. Someone already stole my Harris and Stein signs. Just gone. I was planning on letting that sign sit there for as long as other people left it there. Years, if possible. But it lasted a day.
I have had two revelations in these last 24 hours that you probably won’t particularly like, but I will share with you anyway:
We keep saying that it is inconceivable and horrific that these people overlooked everything terrible about Trump: what he does, what he says. And they therefore must be inveterate racist, sexist, xenophobic assholes. BUT, it has occurred to me that we were asked to overlook support of a fucking genocide, and we did, for the “greater good.” How different are any of we? This was a very uncomfortable revelation for me to have. Look, I do think some percentage, probably a not insubstantial one, of Trump’s voters are racist, sexist, xenophobic assholes. But it has occurred to me that all the things that we are astonished that they overlooked in him is not, in aggregate, worse than a fucking genocide. We got past that just fine. They got past a lot of shit and held their nose just like we did. Or some of them did. Abortion rights referendums are polling well everywhere, trans rights polls pretty fuckin well, a lot better than Kamala did. Some percentage of these voters are not terrible people. Maybe it’s only 5%. But that is enough to win. I do not like this revelation and you probably won’t either. Yet this revelation raises a lot of possibilities and questions that we are going to have to explore.
It also occurs to me that there are not enough handbooks about stopping fascists. We got Hannah Arendt, of course, but it’s mostly about fighting them once they’re in power. It occurs to me that there are a lot of problems here: first, the null set. A lot of fascists have been successfully fought off throughout the world (I think? I’d wager? I’d assume), but when you successfully cut a fascist off at the kneecaps (metaphorically, alas) before they win, well, everyone just says they weren’t a very effective fascist, they weren’t gonna succeed anyway: the tips and tricks used to stop that particular fascist aren’t documented in some “fascist stopping handbook,” that I desperately wish we had. This is not a course of action, per se, because I suspect we’re past that part where you can nip it in the bud. But it is still pretty sad it doesn’t exist. Will probably re-read Saint Hannah though.
(All well. Buttondown doesn’t support HEIC either. Why would it. More image conversion in my life. Maybe I should just suck it up and tell Dropbox to convert them all as it imports them. But HEIC is better! In theory. Gah.).
Did a lot of sleeping yesterday, and Tolkien reading. BUT I also did my job, got through my meetings, and I am immensely proud of that, it was not easy. It does not feel like it’s gonna be any easier today. I have insurance shit. So much insurance shit. Adtech insurance shit. Boat and RV Storage insurance shit. Swimming Pool Construction insurance shit. So much insurance. Not one of them will ever actually pay out if something goes wrong, the whole thing is a giant scam but hey ain’t that America.
Am I ready to turn back to normal Noble Pedestrian Domesticity topics? I mean, no, probably not, but a) what else are you gonna do? Keep whining? and b) that is the whole point. Charity begins at home, ambition kills (ambition kills.), focus on you and yours first, etc. etc.
I told that random aside about my love of Jim the booker in Orlando back in the 90’s and a good friend of mine, whom I had forgotten spent time there in a past life, wrote in to tell me that Jim had gotten caught up in that McDonald’s Monopoly fraud ring in the early oughts. IYKYK. That is crazy. Lost his amazing club, but apparently he has some venues again. Man. I did not see that one coming.
So now I feel bad even bringing it up. Dude did his time. He was a true patron to the arts and McDonald’s is the Sheriff of Nottingham, etc. etc.
Been listening to the Stones all week. It occurs to me I have never listened to most Stones albums my god they have so many albums. Had I done this in High School, when I did this with the Beatles, would I have had an appreciation for five straight albums of derivative blues? Maybe, maybe, I didn’t know much in high school (I don’t know much now either, I am the great Went, blank as a fart, etc etc). But right now it sure seems boring. The Stones seem boring. I have now listened to… twelve of these things. I am on Sticky Fingers now. It is… fine. I have, all told, starred maybe 10 songs from this exercise.
(Oh wait 11, I like this “You Gotta Move,” it’s kinda like Wait’s “Cold Water” and suddenly Keith Richards appearing on Bone Machine and Rain Dogs makes sense).
But oh the Wikipedia K holes I have been down. Brian Jones sired six kids: one remains unidentified. Someone out there is walking around and might be Brian Jones’ kid and have no idea. He had two kids with two different married women from two different one-night stands, both of whom decided to raise the kids with their husbands. He knocked up Nico, but she had an abortion. He was dating a woman, Keith Richards saw him beating her up, Keith took her away and she had nowhere to stay so she moved in with Keith and then he started dating her for several years while Brian remained in the band. There was a guy who was in the band but their manager said it didn’t look right, so they kicked him out and he… just kept playing with the band for thirty years.
(Also he refused to play in minor keys, and whenever a song in minor keys came along, he’d just walk off stage, so the Stones, who were loyal to this guy, had to tour with two keyboard players).
(Also this guy was their road manager and he fucking loved golf so on tours he would book them in resorts outside of town and on the nights before and after shows the Stones would want go party but they’d be stuck in BFE Ohio while this guy golfed and that is pretty hilarious).
But the longest K-Hole I went down was surrounding the house Brian Jones lived in when he drowned in the pool, which was the former home of AA Milne and was where all the Pooh books were written, the house being adjacent to the “enchanted forest.” There are statues at the house of Pooh so, you know, maybe a Pooh statue was looking over Brian Jones when he died. I spent so long ascertaining who owned the house now, and let me tell you, it was not easy. I had to comb through the entirety of the minutes of the non-profit that manages the forest, where in a single edition of their minutes they messed up and revealed the guy’s first name (his last name was pretty easy to find from the articles about the last time the house was sold).
This all took about five hours. I have his LinkedIn now. He is a banker. Don’t know if he lives in the house anymore, he recently took a new job in London. But it does not seem he has sold it, as I assume that it would make the news this time as much as it did when Brian bought it and when it was sold after his death. Popular house. Has a Wikipedia page. So does Keith Richards’ house, the one where he, Mick and Marianne were busted for drugs, but Keith still owns it. And an island in the Carribbean, but mostly he lives in Connecticut, because of course. I wonder if Lou Reed was his neighbor.
Is it fucked up writing this stuff? Should I just write about the hole in my heart from the events of the past week? I don’t think so. But I somehow need you all to remember in the coming weeks that just because I am writing about winterizing my little pump house that I am secretely still seething and mourning and plotting.
Listening to the Rolling Stones for three days straight, and the Cure for three days straight before that, has not yielded a lot of listenable playlists for you guys. I seem to be up a river without a playlist today. Hrm actually looks like I can quick finish up this Post Rock playlist because how can you not love a post rock song titled “Steed Bonnet” that is so good my god I need to finish my studio I need to make music again why the fuck am I insulating a pump house in order to make music again how the hell does that make any sense.
Wonder if Buttondown embeds Spotify playlists nicely. Shit I’m gonna have to get off of them too aren’t I, fucking whats-his-name and his last minute Trump endorsement. Don’t suppose there’s a moral streaming company out there fuck fuck fuck I just want to share music with friends, maaan.
Hrm yeah don’t love that embed we’ll keep going with the screenshots.
All right, well, I hope this worked? Talk to you tomorrow. Somehow. Somewhere.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.