Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1413
Starting the GMHHAY Slack group, I am the mushroom delivery king.
Good morning, good morning. No one wanted to talk about TikTok eh? That is fine, I am okay with that. I don’t, as a rule, like talking about TikTok in any case.
We are going through an ambient patch right now, listening to a bunch of ambient artists that… well, I don’t remember how these got added to the “To Investigate” queue. We are listening to someone named Michael Grigoni, the album is “Mount Carmel.” Is he a made-up Spotify artist? A real one? We do not know. I suspect I will get suckered by this eventually. And those articles did say that it was the mellow, ambient-type genres wherein they released the most fake-artist music. If Michael Grigoni is fake, though, they have done a great jobn. He has a Discogs page. And oh! Look at this: “Composer and multi-instrumentalist who specializes in dobro, lap steel guitar, and pedal steel guitar. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in Durham, North Carolina.” Well that is exciting I wonder if he plays locally. He also has a website.Oh shit, he’s on Kranky, just did a show with one of the dudes from Pan·American (small dot, not a bullet, option-shift-9 on the Mac keyboard) and Windy & Carl in Brooklyn. Boy I would have liked to have seen that show. Well all right, Michael Grigoni. Legit.
So, I have made the Slack group. Come join it if you are an avid reader. Here is the link. Facebook readers, the link will be down in the comments. Wait, actually, I probably should’t just put the link in this post, since this email is archived on the public internet. Okay, then. Facebook readers, it will be in the comments, since that is locked, and email readers, just hit reply to this and I will send you the link.
Right now, it is just Emma and I in there.
To start, it only has two channels. One where I post the daily GMHHAY as an archive, and one where all the chat happens. A few of you had talked about how hilarious it would be if we were all in one big group text chat, and while this isn’t quite that, I figured it’s better than a ton of rooms we may or may not use. The chat has threads, unlike a text group, so it should, kind of, mimic the Facebook comments.
My process of Facebook deprecation is going to be basically that for the next… mm… two, three weeks ish, I continue as-is, with a comment in the FB comments saying that this whole thing is ending and you should subscribe to the email and the Slack if you like to continue. Then for a few more weeks, we’re going to post only the link to the email on Facebook, along with the comment to subscribe elsewhere.
Eventually, probably sometime in March, I’m going to just stop posting it to Facebook completely.
I know for the Facebook crowd it might kind of suck. And I will lose some of them, which sucks sucks sucks because I love you all and we’ll lose the serendipity of random old friends from the 80’s or 90’s dropping in on a post. There is a core group of GMHHAY readers on Facebook that have become friends precisely because of the quirks of Facebook and it is scary to mess with that.
This makes me really sad.
But also the dude sucks and is actively abetting an insurrectionist rapist. So, there’s that.
Why does Mark Zuckerberg have to suck so much.
Since I started this process, on top of everything else, he has announced layoffs of “low performers” (fun fact, half of this is a PR smokescreen for dismal financial performance since, you know, Zuck sucks), the end of DEI initiatives, and stated that it’s perfectly fine to call subgroups dirtbags and worse. Super cool, super cool.
Also… c’mon that dude is just so awful these days. yeah what the world needs is more machismo and gold chains what are you a 70’s Italian porn flick wannabe? NOPE. I mean, I like 70’s Italian Porn. But in the immortal words of Lloyd Bentsen, “You sir are no 70’s Italian Porn Flick.”
I had so much hope and optimism when Facebook started. I was so excited. I worked so hard to try and meet Mark before he left Boston. I worked hard to finagle an invitation in the college-only days, even though I am old and was out of college. The day they opened it to to a slightly wider world — where College-based Facebook users could add friends, I joined, thanks to my now-wife who was on Facebook thanks to her UF Alumni account. I don’t remember my exact user number anymore, and it is hard to find these days, but it’s in the low millions, like number 3 million, which is impressive since I was, you know, not in college. There are over a billion users now, which puts me in the oldest 0.003% of users. Shit, I’m old and its been nearly half my life. For some people, they’ve been on it their entire adult life!
The connections there feel irreplaceable. I think of the old classmates and friends that wrote me at the height of the pandemic, thanking me for GMHHAY. And I know I will never hear from any of them ever again after I leave and that makes me sad.
I can’t actually delete my Facebook account for work since it is inextricably linked to Nimbus’ Facebook Advertising Network integration, so, you know, I’d be screwing with the ad revenue of hundreds of apps. Not weird at all nope.
We are having this big reunion dance in Fairbanks this summer, and that is all being organized on Facebook, so I won’t be able to completely stop posting, either, alas. But I am not going to make it any easier on them.
Plus, of course, people gotta do promotion to, you know, make a living.
On the other hand, I am blessed that my mother and father never really used it much, so while I am stuck, as many people are, by the connections to old friends, at least it’s not barging in on my familial relationships.
Anyway, Slack is not great but its not Facebook and it won over Discord because its end game has been played out. Like… it’s done. Microsoft owns it, Slack’s basically gonna be dipped in amber at this point. Who knows what is in store for Discord. It still has an acquisition or an IPO in its future, or, god, maybe an implosion. Or a scandal. I want boring and unchanging at this point, so Slack wins. Also it’s already on my phone.
Those of you who currently use Slack, but only use a single Slack workspace are probably annoyed, because Slack is a place for work to you. And I hear you. But I use it daily for work, and it also hosts two of my most rewarding friend-groups, and I can assure you it works very well with both work and personal Slack groups. Take a little time to tweak the notifications and schedules and whatnot and bob’s your uncle.
ALSO, you know: this whole thing could be really awesome. One of my Slack groups is hands-down the most rewarding thing on the internet for me aside from you guys. I think a thing the Facebook readers aren’t realizing is that there is already a pretty great GMHHAY discourse going on outside of Facebook. Most of it is just emailed directly to me, some in the comments of the posts. Those readers are pretty excited for the added community that Slack will provide.
It’s also just occurring to me that you could, in theory, not subscribe to the email version of GMHHAY and just read it in Slack each morning, so, you know, no email clutter.
A quick story from Christmas vacation I forgot to tell you. One day, Abby, who runs one of the best restaurants in the Boston area, texted with a favor. They didn’t get their mushroom delivery so she asked if I could go pick up mushrooms for her. I said yes. I got to go to a place called THE Mushroom Shop. Why is the “the” all caps, you ask? Well, I don’t know. But on the other hand, how many mushroom stores have you seen in your life? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed clarity on which mushroom store to which someone was referring? No, no you have not. Buuuut, if you haaad been in that situation, it would probably have gone something like this:
“Hey can you pick me up some mushrooms at The Mushroom Shop?”
“Sure, which one?”
“What do you mean which one?”
“Which mushroom shop?”
“THE Mushroom Shop, silly.”
So I drove to this place and… it was a mushroom shop? But it also sold other stuff. The thing is, most of the other stuff it sold was smelly? Truffles, fermented stuff and fermentation supplies, herbs, oils.
I have never, in my life, smelled anything like THE Mushroom Shop.
Also it was packed. Just a little store, the size of a small corner bodega, and there were, like five people in there… browsing? Waiting for their mushroom orders? Unclear.
Anyway, I told them I was picking up an order of mushrooms for Abby and boy Abby must be a great mushroom purchaser because they were like yes sir right away sir. The woman behind the Mushroom Counter (capitalized, I have decided) went and got me two large boxes of mushrooms, so many more mushrooms than any of those mushroom plebes were considering buying.
I walked out of there thinking to myself: “I am the mushroom king. I am the mushroom delivery king.”
Last night Jane and I recreated the night before, and ended it the way it should have ended, with her not screaming and kicking when the fun ended, me not getting annoyed and angry and the incessant kicking. I said “time to stop watching Real Civil Engineer.” And she said “Okay! By Daddy! Love you!” It was great A+ on the roleplay do-overs.
In the car this morning during our Morning Car Hug (capitalized), she said “I love you so much I can’t even say.” And I almost balled. Also she let me brush her hair this morning without either saying no, or complaining about how it hurt.
So, you know, we grow together.
Like mushrooms.
Got a Post Rock playlist for you today. All new(ish). Wait, no, the Idaho isn’t new, is it? No, ‘tis not. Everything else. Still sad Godspeed cancelled sure would like to see them again.
Okay farewell, friend. Come join me in Slack. It’ll be lovely.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.
Where be Slack link? I am helpless 🤷♂️