Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1427
Italian medieval ducal wars, lady gaga, bonnie prince billy, tolkien, GRRM, the CIA and USAID, a drama with the HOA, razzlekhan, new mexican joint
Morning morning. Issue number 1427. Woo. We’re getting to issue numbers that sound like bona fide years. Wonder what happened in 1427 let’s look it up. Hrm. NOPE. Ever heard of Thomas de Ros 10th Baron de Ros, Archduke Sigismund of Austria or Zhengtong, Emperor of China? No? Well they were all born in 1427. How bout John IV, Duke of Brabant or famed English churchman Thomas la Warr, 5th Baron De La Warr? No? Okay then, be excited that in 1427, the Visconti of Milan’s fleet is destroyed by the Venetians on the Po River.
Except this AI-generated slop site I am using for these facts seems to be confusing the 1431 Battle on the Po with the 14527 Battle of Maclodio, which just goes to show you that you can’t trust anything on the internet. Except Wikipedia, ironically, which was the thing our parents kept telling us not to trust. But you can trust them now. Mostly. For now.
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I think I would watch a HBO Apple TV prestige drama about the Italian medieval ducal wars. I think I would enjoy that. Maybe they could add dragons.
You know, this Lady Gaga single sure seems a lot, structurally, like “Bad Romance,” but also it is kinda her best single in yonks? Since “Shallow,” but, shit, even that was seven years ago. Shallow’s a banger, though. I do not possess the literary chops to figure out how to keep a song title in quotes but also turn it into a possessive. You will have to forgive me about that.
Yeah, upon third listen, “Abracadabra” is kinda gettin to me. I can see this being played at Real Wild Child, my legendary Man Ray goth night for kids.
Oligarch SUV was not there this morning, right after I wrote to you guys about it. Maybe I blew their cover. I have more questions.
Man, this new “Boise, Idaho” song from Bonnie Prince Billy rules.
They’re coming for the CIA now, which, I guess checks out, since the USAID was riddled with CIA agents and we’re kicking them all out anyhow. CIA sucks, and is largely ineffective at most of its glamorous shit, but, like. We still kind of need intelligence? And these fuckin buyouts. So dumb. You know what? They’re ass dumb in the private business world too. Fuckin do the deed or shut up. Offering blanket buyouts is just admitting you’re too stupid to know your employees. And even if you have 10,000 or 100,000 employees, it’s just admitting you’re too stupid to put processes in place to evaluate them. Look how it turned out for Twitter. Also, no H1B hostages here.
God this all sucks.
That’s my secret cap, I’m always angry.
I wonder if the new Captain America movie is going to, like, spark a culture war since it’s called BRAVE NEW WORLD and was once called NEW WORLD ORDER and features a meglomaniacal evil president. Poor Bob Iger he did not imagine this shit when he stole his job back. Sucker. But then we have Fantastic Four and, yeah, maybe a return to form, but you know what? The MCU is boring now. Hahaha I am thinking of all my arty farty friends who knew it was always boring. And it was always boring but it was also a fascinating cultural phenomenon and an interesting new approach to the art/culture conundrum within the confines of the studio and cinema system. But all that’s dead and now it’s just an expensive TV show that takes longer than Game of Thrones did to produce a season.
Oh yeah there’s a new Game of Thrones show coming too. A lighthearted knight romp. Will we care, will we care, says the guy who is currently reading book seven of Tolkien(s)’s History of Middle Earth did you know that George RR Martin recently (ish) visited Tolkien’s grave?
Also he should just admit defeat and hand over Winds of Winter to Brandon Sanderson who could bang that shit out in a weekend you know he’s just waiting for the call.
Also what’s up with the new generation of Tolkien Estate family where is my fucking license for motion pictures based on the first age how have they not yet gotten a Baren and Luthien film off the ground, a Tolkien LLM or hired Brandon Sanderson (thus stealing him from GRRM) to write a proper, single, unified Fall of Gondolin? Really asleep at the wheel over there. Shit I ordered an official Middle Earth map in December and it’s still not here yet.
So big news, Razzlekhan is going to prison. I did not realize this as she has been making all these new videos with her ankle bracelet, I assumed she just got off with house arrest for her part in the largest theft ever (will, until this week and excepting capitalism and Elon). But no! she is actually going to prison! She just posted a farewell video on her channel and said she’d be back before you know it and in the meantime you can buy her merch (actually tempted?) and follow her cat on socials (ditto?).
Our neighborhood staged an HOA coup or we resigned or something last fall. Which was all fine and I was pretty tired of being the HOA treasurer after, like, four years. The new HOA decided after a… survey? Not really sure how that was legal but whatever… anyway they decided that we were going to cancel the landscapers who mow the sides of the road. About 2/3 of our houses have lawns that go right to the road, so of course they don’t need the mowing, and the other third have houses back in the woods, where the strip of grass at the side of the road is, a) not something they’ve ever thought about and b) arguably barely even theirs, given that our road is a public road, and easements and whatnot. Not like we can build there or do anything with it.
So, in our case, our main house, where Emma is in charge of the landscaping, big yard in the front, we already pay pros to do it. No biggie.
But Chore House presents a special problem. It is one of those houses in the wood. I do not have a mower. I do not want to pay someone a bunch of money to mow it because the house is basically breakeven at the moment with the rent from the Esteemed Neurodivergent Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapist Ladies (ENAPST). So I am pretty bummed.
Also there is the fact that the HOA just sort of announced this policy, which they can do, I suppose, because they control the purse, so they can stop paying the current landscapers.
But they did not change the HOA charter, which would require a vote, so although they said that we’re all responsible for our own lawns now, they didn’t actually change the HOA rules, so I don’t technically, actually have to do anything?
I am also virulently anti-lawn and I am not allowed to exhibit this bias at home but I am allowed to at Chore House and I have commensurately ripped all the other lawns out over there. I left that one because someone else was dealing with it.
But, of course, I do have professional tenants and they presumably want the entry to look good?
But of course one could presumably make it look good without grass. Could they? Somehow?
But, of course, I am lazy.
Also there is the complication that it is the first house in the neighborhood.
I have been mulling over this new development for, like, four months now, in which time I’ve done nothing about it. And that was fine because it was winter and the grass was not growing. But yesterday was 71 degrees. I am running out of time.
SO. It seems I have a few options:
I could do nothing. This is very tempting. But I suspect people would get upset and I only like upsetting actual evil people not normal people with whom I happen to disagree. I am not looking to demonize.
I could hire a landscape firm. This fucking sucks and I hate it and is super expensive and would break the budget of the place
I could bribe a kid but I have been reliably informed kids don’t do this kind of work anymore in these parts.
I could buy a mower and do it myself. Which has three sub-options. I could maybe get into one of these sub-options:
I could buy a riding mower fulfilling dreams from my childhood when I mowed all the lawns in my neighborhood. This seems overkill, and also there are some steep parts that I am sort of undecided about and will probably let them turn back into woods but maybe not?
I could buy a push mower, maybe a posh one that pushes itself, so I could get the steps in.
I could buy a robot mower. I don’t know if you’ve been following the robot mower movement but it is a thing and seems kind of fun and awesome. EXCEPT this easement lawn is far from the house, down a winding driveway, so I’d have to, like, get power to down there, build a little mower hut or something (which could potentially involve it’s own HOA complications) and, of course, the thing would be susceptible to theft because it would be mostly unattended. I could slap a Unifi camera onto the situation, but still that would just, like, capture the theft, not prevent it.
I have been in a state of idecision about this for a long time. Indecision defaults to doing nothing, which is very tempting but I fear upsetting the neighbors, especially given that this house “sets the tone” for the neighborhood, though who knows, maybe they want to go all prepper Grey Man and try and convince people there’s not a nice neighborhood back there, nothing to steal here, move along.
Took Jane to a new Mexican place last night, and aside from her complaing to the hostess that the place smelled (she was not wrong! It smelled weirdly like a lime-based signature scent which is extraordinarily posh and brand-ish and corporate for our little town) she handled the change quite nicely and ate a ton. I had a giant gourmet version of a Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme and it was delicious. They had a lot of weird dishes. I don’t mean weird like huitlacoche or actual Mexican food. I mean weird, like, made-up. Like Mexican corn cut up and served like ribs, where you had to pick up little pieces and suck the corn off the cob slivers. Inventive.
Then we went home and Jane helped me with a great new project I am undertaking, really one of the best things I ever did, I hope it will be mentioned at my funeral. But we can’t really talk about that till September.
Then we watched some Real Civil Engineer, her favorite youtube channel, and watched the guy design traffic in video games. It is insane how much she likes people working on traffic solutions in video games. Heartening.
We’re gonna need people to patiently clean up this mess, after all.
What do we have ready for a playlist this morning. Ah, yes, a nice country playlist, capped by a track the great new Bonnie Prince Billy country album. Been working on this one a while. Love the new (well, four months now) Charlie Parr. Oh god I put Shaboozey on this sorry. But not sorry. It is a great song, especially in situ with some great modern liberal woke country.
Stay safe out there.
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