Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1467
Economic and political dread, pillow update, cherry blossoms, Stereolab, Craig Finn, it's my wife's birthday, Jane's transition back to school is rough.
Good morning. Hello. Hi. How are you? Hope you’re holding up okay. I had a rough night, rough sleep. Trying to fall asleep, absolutely overwhelmed with dread: dread for this country, for how all this is going to turn out, how perilously close we are to collapse, how we could all end up in poverty. Super cool, super fun.
Eventually passed out and had this horrid dream I was stuck in some corporate hotel-slash-convention center, and I had to meet Donald Trump because some bastard had told him I was “clever” and “needed to meet him” to find me a place in his administration. And I absolutely did not stand up to him at all, I just sort of acted like an idiot in the interview so he would get bored of me, ignore me, not hire me. But a couple old Barbarians were working for him now and they kept telling him I was so smart and they really needed me in his administration. Fucking horrible.
This follows closely on another terrible dream I had a few nights ago where he showed up at Man Ray to scare all the gay and trans people and freaks: to let them know that he was watching them. And everyone were all supposed to talk to talk to him and bend the knee and kiss the ring ring and I ran and hid in the bathroom so I did not have to talk to him. All bravery.
I’d like to think I’d stand up to him, maybe kick him in the balls or something if I had to meet him, but, man. I got a family. Dude is sitting here actively planning to disappear US citizens and bragging about it. And no one is stopping him.
Feels pretty close to the end.
Anyway.
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Happy Birthday to my amazing wife. She is great. I hope she has a great birthday. I got her a thing. It is a nice thing. But it is not a surprise, because she asked for it. So maybe I should have done more. I probably should have done more. It would be cool as we age if there was some universal language about how much you want to think about your birthday and everyone knew. I do want to think about my birthday this year, fwiw.
Went to Facebook yesterday I do not go to Facebook very often these days. And holy shit. Why would anyone who is old ever go to Facebook it is just a litany of condolences. I log in and get a bunch of messages of condolence from people who are just learning about my mom’s death. And then I see the three, four, friends or acquaintances or friends-of-friends or family-members-of-friends that have died and I offer my condolences to them. It was, like, 20 minutes just talking and thinking about death. Hrm maybe, come to think of it, it’s like some sort of ritual, some sort of new religion. I log in once a month or quarter to “Death Book” and perform the rites, the rituals to remind myself of mortality and the preciousness of life or something.
God I do not want to die. Fifty-two years old and I am not an iota more progressed on this topic than I was when I was 12. Only now I can’t reassure myself that it is a long way off and I don’t need to think about it yet.
Google search “foods that are bad for your heart.” Oh my god I am so fucked.
You were all very interested in my pillow problem, hot topic on the GMHHAY slack yesterday. We must carry on and all that. Even people in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany could, occasionally, find moments of happiness, and that is a form of resistance, I suppose.
Emma went to the mall yesterday, found a pillow at Marshall’s she thought worked well, matched mine. Only the sample pillow and the actual pillow she got are very different and the sample pillow is all wrong. It is too thick, twice as thick. It is… how do I put this? It is slippery when you rub your fingers together with the pillow between them. And your fingers don’t touch. This is what I want: if you make the okay sign and put the pillow between your thumb and index finger, I want a) the two fingers to touch, not enough stuffing inside the pillow to keep your fingers from touching and b) I want the stuffing to be not slippery. Maybe a little bit of friction.
We took the case (and the interior, hypoallergenic case) off my pillow and looked at it and it turns out it is not 30 years old, it is maybe 20? It’s from Linens and Things. It was a “hotel medium” with real goose down. It cost $80 back then, so it would probably be, like, $200 now or something.
This is not going well.
But Emma thinks she can solve this problem, at Macy’s (several people in GMHHAY Slack also recommended Macy’s). But she needs me there. So, gawd. I guess I might go to Macy’s? That seems… insane. Though I did love department stores as a kid they really were pretty great. Lamont’s and Penny’s in Fairbanks, AK. Though my friend got her toe mangled in the escalator at Penny’s. Of we had a Nordstrom, too. Except they closed it when they got posh.
Oh and Emma stopped into Forever 21, which is apparently going bankrupt? I did not know this. Retail, man. Rough. Anyway they were having a going-out-of-business sale. And two things Jane has recently loved are the Game of Life and Hello Kitty. And there was a Hello Kitty version of the Game of Life for sale, so Emma bought it for her.
And the sales clerk said: “You are literally the only person ever to have bought this.”
Another thing that is not going well is that the cherry blossom tree in my yard mostly bloomed while we were in Boston, second year in a row, and I am very sad. It was in full bloom when we got home, very pretty, but that night we had a pretty violent storm and it lost almost all of its blooms. And I was too tired and lazy on Sunday from the all-night drive to take a picture before the storm. So here is a sad photo from after the storm.
We are listening to the new Craig Finn solo album. It is called Always Been. Craig is the lead singer of The Hold Steady. He makes solo albums. The first one was good, the second one was okay, I might be forgetting a third one, this one is better than the others. I like it. I like the Hold Stead better. “Southtown Girls” came on randomly the other day and boy did it make me miss them, did it make me miss being in a crowd of sad old dudes shaking our fists in the air, on the verge of tears, all singing the same song together. Those were some cathartic times.
Did you know it’s flooding in Kentucky? The Buffalo Trace distillery is completely fucked, and my friend Welfy’s life is completely fucked and back when we were a country that cared about itself, this would be on the front pages everywhere but nah, bro, we got memes to pop.
I just searched the NYT home page for “Flood” and just so you know the Kentucky floods are not on there. But I learned it’s also flooding in the Congo, and dozens have died in that flood too, so, hey, you know. It’s like that “game of questions” card game we used to play in high school and there was that one card about choosing who would die: 1 family member, 2 friends, 10 people in your town, 100 in your country or 1,000 in a foreign country. Man I did not like that question nope nosiree.
There is a new Stereolab album, and upcoming tour, and that is all pretty exciting. But I am here to report a related bit of news: that yesterday in the car, Jane informed me that Simple Headphone Mind by Stereolab and Nurse With Wound was a “great song” that she “liked very much.” She also informed me today she liked talking about death so I think maybe we got a little goth on our hands. But then again, I asked her if she was goth and she said “no I just think death is funny” so maybe not.
She has been pretty rough the last 24 hours, not loving this transition back to school. She is talking about “chopping you in half” and being unkind and telling us she wishes one of us wasn’t her parent again. This did not happen at all during spring break she was basically an angel. One day back at school and it’s this shit again. Makes me want to take her out. But I guess I will leave her in for the next few weeks until we hit total societal collapse because she may as well see friends for another couple days before the end. Or who knows maybe the tariff war will end before I finish this sentence. No one knows, the whole world is hostage to one lunatic dude and no one is doing anything about it. Super cool.
Here is a post rock playlist for you. Was pretty into the new Caustic Resin, and listened to this War Room album recently and quite liked it, ditto Only Ever. Didn’t know anything about either of them, still don’t. More Circus Trees, because they rule. Mogwai because they are playing Boston on Friday and I am sad I am not going I really could use a Mogwai show in my life right now.
Sorry I am kinda morose today. Maybe the tariff war will end today hey it could happen, right? And my economic life will no longer be in shambles. This is not a good time in my life for a trade war. I am exposed. Not, like, White Lotus exposed, but unpleasantly so. I would like it to go away.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.