Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1402
Fibre the material, the spelling, the band. Last Christmas. Green vs grey environmentalism. Writing down a single millisecond of thought.
Good morning. Hello. Hi. How are you? One week till Christmas, that is nice. I am ready to stop working now. How bout you? You doing this “avoid ‘Last Christmas’” thing? I do not understand this game. Why would you want to avoid “Last Christmas?” Hours after Thanksgiving dinner ended, when we were setting up the tree, the first thing I did — well, the second, after listening to all four five versions of “Do They know It’s Christmas?” was to listen to its competition for the 1984 Christmas #1, “Last Christmas.” It is a great song, George Michael is a phenomenal songwriter and performer and man am I glad to have seen him play live that one time. He did not, however, play “Last Christmas.” That would have been awesome. I especially love it when I hear “Last Christmas” in the middle of the year, not at Christmas time.
I apologize to all the people of a certain disposition for triggering you yesterday with that photo of those 4k UHD blu ray discs where the Flash Gordon disk was upside down. That is on me. I am sorry.
Also I just spelled “disk” two different ways in one sentence.
Oh this reminds me. I was reading the Wikipedia page about Fibre Channel, as you do, because I am still confused, exactly, what it is. Anyway, I did learn that originally Fibre Channel was only doable over fiber optic cable. But later they figured out how to this type of networking over copper, as well. So they changed the name from “Fiber Channel” to “Fibre Channel” to, like, not imply it only had to be over “fiber?” That seems real weird, but it is right there in its Wikipedia page. Which, yeah, take with a grain of salt but, to this day, unlike Chat GPT or Anthropic or whatever the hell, Wikipedia does still at least theoretically require actual sources and notations, and this little factoid has one, albeit a text document. So if you want to go track down Fibre Channel internals: Introduction to Storage Area Networks, published by IBM in 2016 and go to page 33, you can tell me if this is made up or not. It is probably made up. I read on Twitter there are no real facts anymore.
Anyway, I realized yesterday I often spell it “fibre” when talking about networking, and I realized this is because of the spelling of “fibre channel,” and me thinking that was, like, “the official” spelling. But now I am learning, specifically, “fibre channel” is spelled that way specifically to not designate fiber, so I guess I should get over my anglophilic tendencies and spell it “fiber.” Which sucks.
Also I spell it “fibre” as an hommage to the fantastic avant-garde musical outfit Fibre, who were adjacent to Rise Robots Rise. Like super adjacent. Like the exact same members. Given that Rise Robots Rise were on TVT records, I cannot help but wonder if the whole Fibre affair was a tactic to circumvent the financially dodgy label. Seems plausible. Both bands are, now, perhaps best known for the band member Mac Quayle, who now does soundtracks, most notably the amazing Mr. Robot soundtrack that did not get enough attention.
Anyway, saw Fibre at the Paradise in Boston in, mmmm, gonna say 1992. They started out as sort of Jawa-like cave gnomes, slowly inventing music, and progressed basically through the history of music. It was an absolutely phenomenal performance, I think about it constantly to this day. Bought the CD. It is pretty good but not as good as the performance.
They are not on Spotify. One of the many great 90’s acts still not on there. Rise Robots Rise are, though, including, I am learning, an album from ‘93 I don’t think I’ve ever heard. Special treat for 2025 Rick.
Hrm it seems I have nothing to write about today, but the good news is, after a good 20 years of practice, I have gotten pretty good at more-or-less accurately writing down a single, passing, flash of a thought that occurs within a millisecond in any human brain? Really marvelous machine, the brain. All of those words above to capture a millisecond of neurons firing. And! Even as that was happening, the brain was still just churning away, pondering a million other things. You can never capture everything a person is thinking, not even if you spent a year trying to capture a second.
We are listening this morning to the 2024 Mount Erie album, Night Palace. It is long. The good songs are phenomenal. I could do without a few of the antics, though. But Phil Elverum, who does not have an N in his last name, remains one of America’s most compelling musicians. We have 26 hours left in the “To Investigate” playlist for 2024 re-listens. Between you and me, I do not think we are going to get through that by the end-of-day tomorrow. That is a shame. I really need to bring you my best-music-of-2024 list, but it requires me to be done with this playlist first.
We’ll get there.
I am doing an interesting different format this year. Not sure if it is going to work or not, but it… well, you’ll see.
Maybe in January, like all good best-of lists. I mean, seriously, maaaaan. We do not need best-of-the-year lists in December, let alone November. Psychopaths.
Hrm, well, I could fall back on talking about TV (the Jackal should not get married, man) or Tolkien (Hurin deserves more of a dignified ending). I could cut it early. I could look at my list of notes, but honestly, they aren’t that great. Hrm. Maybe we should clean em out. Clean the pipes, so to speak. Okay then:
A while back I saw Chris Hayes reference someone else when talking about “Green Environmentalism” vs “Grey Environmentalism” in America and I thought it was really smart. Green environmentalism basically feels good and looks good, lots of trees and space, the sort of environmentalism we practice out here in the woods. But grey environmentalism is really where its at: the environmentalism of cities and density which are, by virtually all measure, better for the planet. It was really eye opening and I have been meaning for, oh, four months, to dig up who he was referencing and read more about it and then tell you guys or something. But I think that is never going to happen. But ‘green vs grey’ is stuck in my head as a rubric now and I think it’s clever so I should tell you. This Coulda Been a Think Piece™.
Spotify’s drag-and-drop has gotten insane and terrible. Every time I click over to the app, it thinks I am trying to drag a song from where it is, into the playlist it is already in and gives me an error and it is really annoying. Also it is stupid you can’t drag a whole album to a playlist.
I was going to brag about being on it with that new LLC registration FINCEN law, except the courts put an injunction on it and there is no deadline now. You should still do it, it is probably inevitable and also it feels like they will probably focus some additional enforcement efforts on those who don’t bother? But anyway, I did it in November, brag brag brag.
I wrote this really good sentence like three months ago that included the word “diminished” and after I was done, I was really proud of it, and made a note to tell you guys something along the lines of “not all GMHHAY’s are bangers, but, man, when I have a banger, and it is awesome, and we’re all feeling something, well, that is why I write. I should probably go track that sentence down.
(oh man this is really satisfying cleaning out this notebook)
I am really bad about ghosting people — not often, but i do it once a year, maybe? And every time I feel terrible about it. I should not do that. I should be more of an adult. Except I never have a reason. It just.. like the body suddenly rejects it or something. I don’t know. I am working through this. If you are a ghoster, or, even better, a former ghoster, please tell me your tale if you think it’ll help.
Quicken cannot, for the life of it, decide that “Patreon” goes under “subscriptions” in its sad, pretend-AI auto-categorization. Like seriously. what other category would “Patreon” go in besides subscriptions? Maybe entertainment? I could forgive them if they put it under entertainment, but they try and put it under the weirdest frickin things. This complaint deserves a screenshot, and I have been keeping this in the “GMHHAY Fodder” notebook for weeks awaiting the opportunity for said screenshot but it has not happened yet. Now I will just stick it in an issue, context free. But you, diligent regular reader, you will know exactly why its there.
We will close out with a Jane anecdote because she is just so cute and wacky. She is so into being early it’s insane. We were fourth in line. Got there at 7:16. School starts at 8. Also she’s really into doing my Wordle with me every morning now, though she really is burdened with the injustice that I’ve never gotten it in one, that seems very unfair to her. She went to the dentist yesterday and did not complain or scream, except a little bit during the cleaning, but who can blame her, the cleaning sucks, that device is creepy AF and the gritty stuff they use is terrifying.
Justa mix for you today. Got some country, got some goth, got some pop, got some punk, got some big dramatic rock and some heartbreakers and a little shoegaze. All over the map. I feel good about it. Where else are you gonna get a playlist with Charlie Par into Charli XCX? No algorithm’s gonna give you that. Unless it’s alphabetical har har. Oh shit Cold Cave right after it too.
As you were.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.