Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1458
Fascism days, FACS, the most luminous Tolkein writing, Boston trip, chore overload anxiety, an emotional gymnastics class
Good morning. Hi hello how are you? Holding up in this dawning era of fascism? Are you even aware? So many people are not even aware. Super fun sounding like a crazy person. But here they are just plucking people off the streets of Somerville, in goon outfits, no uniforms, and shipping people off to undisclosed black ops sites, when the person was 100% legal, did nothing wrong, and the entire thing was motivated by animus against a fucking milquetoast college newspaper editorial advocating, you know, humanity.
Or the continued lying from everyone in the entire administration, relentless purjury and ad hoc bullshit about the Signal scandal. I have a friend who did like two minutes of research on the subject and said “eh, the government allows Signal on phones and even pre-installs it” and I’m like look I don’t want to sound like Luke Skywalker in the (underrated) Last Jedi here, but amazing. Every word you just said was wrong. This is not a dude who gets his news from Fox News either. It is disturbing and insane how well relentless, shameless, non-stop lying works in our media landscape.
Or how the New York Times still can’t write a fucking headline. How law firms are rightfully poaching from the chicken law firm that conceded to a bullshit EO and literally bribed Trump instead. They are picking off employees because the employees are disgusted with the law firm’s behavior. But the Times goes ahead and characterizes it as the law firms siding with Trump, “taking advantage” of the EO. No they are taking advantage of management cowardice. Still some good journalists there but honestly they probably oughtta shut the whole thing down at this point.
OK I will stop.
Couple updates for you:
One, Nicholas would like you to know that his playlist yesterday is his sauna playlist, not his spa playlist. Important distinction and I apologize for the misinformation.
Two, Jane’s schools’ anarcho-utopian, ad hoc student-item delivery service did not fail, and Aurora the Stuffy Kitty was successfully delivered to Jane in her classroom, and it successfully returned home from school with her. We can all rest easy.
We are listening today to FACS, another post-punk, can’t-sing-the-lyrics band, I assume from some industrial town from England. Oh yes this leads to another update. On my rant the other day about these sort of bands, I called them post-rock but Annie pointed out that is incorrect. They are post-punk. Album is named Wish Defense, which is a great name.
Their Discogs page informs me that they are in fact from Chicago, not England. And their name comes from the Factory Records catalog number system. At one point I owned every Factory Records catalog item a normal human could own. Which means I did not own the lawsuit, the cat, the bar, the night club or the record contract lucite binders of which only four existed. But I had everything else, including the autographed William Wegman Blue Monday flip book and the New Order puzzle and the paper-craft Hacienda and a piece of the Haçienda dance floor.Actually I still have almost all of it. Sold some of the CDs but still have the rest.
Heading to Boston tomorrow very early in the morning. So if you have any fun shows or Man Ray nights or, you know, protests against fascism, let me know about em.
Much to do in the meantime so I am pretty overwhelmed today. Gotta write this, gotta write my monthly letter to Jane that I write on the anniversary of her birthday every month that is going to make a lovely book for her someday. Gotta write tomorrow’s GMHHAY, which is a boring single-topic one I have been jotting notes about for some time. Or not, I don’t know, maybe I won’t write one tomorrow. I will be in the car the whole time after all. Gotta do pool company work and storage unit work and, you know, a fair amount of work for my actual day job. Gotta take the trash and recycling to the collection center because who wants to have a bunch of trash at your house when you come home from a trip. Gotta water the seedlings. Gotta pack. Take my drug.
Oh god I am stressed I hate it when I have too much to do it is not a thing I handle well anymore. I mean, I am functionally very good at it — I can list-make and prioritize and plow — but emotionally I just do not like it anymore. I like a discrete, comprehensible amount of stuff to do in a single day so I can do it with intention and quality. Once I’m done with a day like today I generally feel great, very proud of myself. But I just feel a ball of anxiety through the entire day. Like I am forgetting something important or won’t get it all done. Or, what is actually usually the case, some curveball comes up and messes up your intricate plans for getting everything done. It is 8:13 AM and I have already been thrown one curveball today, that I had to sort out with a partner and banker. God knows what else will go wrong.
But once its all done, oh, the relief. Better than any drug.
Last night I stayed up a bit too late finishing the Severance finale (mostly delivered, satisfying ending, season a bit scattered but they landed it), so I only got about 15 minutes to read my nightly Tolkien.
But while I read, buried in an early draft of the Annals of Aman, in Volume 10 of History of Middle-Earth some of the most moving, hard core, emotionally resonant, absolutely luminous writing that I have ever read from Tolkien. You know how he has those moments that hit home in Lord of the Rings, like that bit about the people who are actually in the great stories, or that part where Gandalf talks about how of course people in trying times never want to be in trying times? Well those are mostly absent from The Silmarillion, Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales and History of Middle-Earth, because Tolkien really wrote in layers, and the emotional polish layer is the last layer he writes, once he gets all the plot and lore and action down. So I haven’t actually read one of these emotional passages in ages: not through this entire reading of his entire legendarium, actually. I mean, the Hobbit, I guess, has a couple, but I read that last October, and I am not re-reading the final Lord of the Rings books until the end of all this.
Anyway, just insanely moving, just absolutely gut wrenching text.
But the crazy thing is: he took this text out of The Silmarillion! He changed the plot and made it more convoluted, less gut wrenching, less moving. I cannot fathom why! I was too tired to get to the end of this section of the Annals of Aman and turn to Christopher Tolkien’s analysis of the section, so I don’t yet know why he took it out (though will presumably learn tonight) but I cannot fathom a good reason.
Anyway it really fucked me up. Or maybe I was just emotional. Lotta Fascism and moms dying going on.
Jane did her first session in her new gymnastics class yesterday. Graduated from the young kids free-for-all to a more hands on “intro to gymnastics” session for kids 7-12, though they all looked closer to seven. She said she liked it and I complimented her on her perseverence for learning to jump on the springboard and reach the high uneven bar after failing a few times and she snapped at me and said no. I am calling her short, she doesn’t want to be short. It was kinda sad! She is not exceptionally shorter than the other kids, though she is young and a little short for her age. It will probably be fine but it was the first time she ever expressed any displeasure over any aspect of her body and it made me sad. Girl does not need her daddy’s body dysmorphia complex. We got over it but I fear it is a sign of things to come.
BUT she did get back on that springboard and eventually grab that uneven bar and I was super proud of her. Why do we fall young master Wayne? So we can get back up, etc etc.
Justa mix for you today. Mostly new. Ted Lucas is old, but new to me. Real People are old but it just popped into my head the other day. Hadn’t thought of that one-hit wonder since the 90’s. Oh and Cutting Crew but we talked about that yesterday. Everything else is new. Man I listen to so much music I can’t even remember what most of these bands are about. But I liked them at one point and maybe you will to.
Have a lovely weekend if I don’t talk to you tomorrow.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.