Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1441
Hackman, Buy Nothing Day, Wesley Willis' book, Passport application, Piano guy, building permit,
Good morning! My god, I am tired. Jane is tired. But we are both very excited for the weekend. Jane does not like getting up at 6:45 anymore. Have I rubbed off on her? Has she realized it’s all just a sham? Who can say.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Hit reply on this email and ask me for an invite!
Reader Allison writes in to say she listens to a daily news summery called 1440, and it is so-titled because “The printing press was invented around the year 1440.” So I probably should have mentioned it yesterday. But that “around” in there kept it from being listed on the wikipedia page for 1440, since it is not exact. But now you know.
Had this totally disturbing dream last night (sorry, man, Readers Suzy and Emily say they like the dream reporting so here we are) where Rocky, Michelle (pool partners) and I had to go on an errand. We were in the Boston area, and we had to walk from Cambridge to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton to get some source code. But we got tired so we stopped for the night and slept at Sean and Jussi’s old apartment on… mmm… gonna say Cambridge St? Washington St? Don’t remember the name of that street. Anyway, I had texted Emma I’d be home “after dinner” but then forgot to text her we were staying the night at S&Js, so when I woke up I had 400 panicked texts from her. I called her, and she was divorcing me and told me the police were coming for me. Not a pleasant way to wake up! I am sorry, wife! Michelle needed her source code! She tried to take the blame to Emma, but Emma was not having it.
Whew. Stressful!
Listening to the “To Investigate” playlist today, trying to clear it out a bit. It is 71 hours long. It is ridiculous. I gotta wrangle this thing under control. Right now we’re listening to a new track from shoegaze band Bdrmm, that sounds like Pygmalian-era Slowdive. Well, maybe the In Mind Remixes single. I like it. It will be on the latest Shoegaze playlist, which will not be today, probably, because it only has 40 minutes of music on it. But then again, who knows what can happen in 45 minutes when I’m done with this entry. Anything is possible.
Important news for Wesley Willis fans. Only the second one I’ve seen listed on eBay in 5-6 years:
We went yesterday to the post office and applied for Jane’s new passport. I was worried cuz, you know, Post Office. But it was a remarkably pleasant experience, the woman wasn’t, like, effusively kind or anything but she was efficient, competent and polite, and used words and even cracked a joke with us about “going postal” which was kind of funny. Emma and I had to raise our hands and solemnly swear that Jane was our kid. Felt very official. So now the whole family has applied for passports again. Very exciting. Maybe we’ll even go somewhere hahaha. There was a poster at the post office with the Eiffel Tower in it and Jane asked about it and I asked if she wanted to go to France and she said no. So that’s off the list.
Also yesterday, in an apparent glutton for punishment for interaction with government services, I started the process for applying for a builder’s permit for the Chore House studio construction. This will be a journey. It is not my primary residence, so they are extra strict, which, fine. I need a GC to oversee the project, which, fine, our company here has a GC license. But I have to apply for one large building permit, including the plumbing, electrical and mechanical, and list the subs and their license numbers. Which I do not know and will not know for, like… a year? We are going slow here. And I can’t just list myself because it is not my primary residence. So I gotta convince some of the subs I am talking to to let me put their permit numbers on the application, and then change them at a later date whooo fun I’m sure they’re gonna wanna do that.
And the county is using this third-party software to handle the whole thing, it’s almost impossible to talk to a human, my god there is a whole class of people (ahem Elon Musk) who make it their life to grift off of the government with shoddy software and technical services.
Although! I do have to say that the United States Digital Service has done a fairly solid job with the online passport application portal. A few weird quirks, like it insists on the slashes when you enter dates but rejects you if you put the dashes in on the phone numbers. And it’s got that NC bug that 50% of sites have where if you type “NC” into a dropdown, it defaults to Nebraska. But all in all, decent!
It will, of course, probably be offline by next week at this rate.
And the final brilliant new outside contact I made was with ALLEN THE PIANO GUY. I had this brilliant idea that I would find a local piano mover and get input and consultation in advance about the feasibility of getting a baby grand up into the studio, so that once the time comes, I can just buy it and then call the dude and have him move it and I don’t have to do a giant ringomorale while at some old lady’s house or something.
So I googled “Piano Movers in Chapel Hill” and sifted through the ten to twenty absolute junk posts at the top of Google, and their shitty-ass Gemini AI, finally gettin’ down to the good stuff, a broken-ass website for a local dude with no email listed and explicitly says LAND LINE next to the phone number. Yeah that’s the good stuff, that’s the quotidian vintage, that’s real maaan. And he delivered. Love him. Sent him photos of my serpentine, miserable stairway and he is not completely scared off. Still suspect in the end the thing will be craning in the window, but so far, Allen the Piano Guy is optimistic. Very excited about Allen the Piano Guy.
Running into an issue where my new Plex Server will not fully back up to my Unifi Nas, named BackDatNASUp. For some reason it says that it does not have enough room but a) it does? and b) the file limit is set to unlimited? I think I am going to have to, gasp, make a support ticket and boy I am not a fan of that. BUT I did get the WebblesNAS, my other Unifi NAS Pro, to completely back up to BackDatNASUp, so, pending the successful completion of this Plex Backup, that means we can finally cancel our Backblaze account, $500 a month saved thank you very much. Then I will wait a year or so until the savings catches up to the amount of money I spent on the two NASes, all the hard drives, and the fiber cable running between both houses. BUT a) no more monthly bill, and b) savings in the long term! One more bill I don’t have to pay when I am old and retired.
Rewatched Enemy of the State last night, mostly holds up. All the surveillance state stuff is just normcore now everyone knows it, you forget how it was probably a surprise or fantastical-seeming to most viewers at the time. Forgot Viola Davis is in it. She does not have a lot to do with that part. They cleverly make the wife politically astute, but other than that she is kind of an idiot and annoying and Viola Davis deserved better. Forgot Lisa Bonet was in it. And Jack Black. But Hackman was great, of course. Will probably watch its (supposed) prequel tonight, The Conversation, one of my top ten favorite movies. Coppola, man. Made some gems, made some turds.
The circumstances around Hackman’s death have gotten murkier, and that is sad. I’ma gonna not engage until there are some real answers.
Excited for the weekend. Gonna get some answers on my oven range vent and a malandering HVAC register that is in the wrong place. Not going to buy anything today but our dinner from our local pizza place, in cash, as the Boycott-organizers-that-be suggest. Apple tells me “Malandering” is not a word. Nick Cave in his best phase, his Henry’s Dream phase, tells me otherwise. I choose to believe Nick over Apple. At least 90’s Nick over 2020s Apple. But, then, would probably believe 90’s Apple over 2020s Nick. Interesting.
It is occurring to me that paying a credit card bill might construe buying something. It is payday today (payday on a Friday, just like that 80’s song that was a hit before I had paydays) and I usually pay the bill on Friday. But fuck it. I will wait till Monday. I CAN DO IT YES I CAN.
Moody and quiet for you today. Mostly new but I threw three oldies on just now to round it out. Forgot about this Mark Lanegan PJ Harvey duet it rules. Threw an old Breeders song on since I am now listening to the newish Kim Deal solo record. And “Ashes of American Flags” cuz it came on the other day and really took me back: ATMs, Diet Coke, American Spirits, that pretty much summed up my life in the mid-90s I guess. Thank you to all the GMHHAY Slack members encouraging me to give Jackson Browne a listen, wife beating aside. And I cannot convey to you how great the new Efterklang is if you ever listened to them and thought “they are almost good,” well, now they have transcended that and nearly every track on the new album is straight-up brilliant.
Have a lovely weekend don’t let the allergies or chronic pain that is America wear you down.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.