Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1479
Mom sadness, GMHHAY theme song, more shoegaze obscurities, A Walmart trip, a recycling center trip, man imagine if every dude in America obsessed over grocery runs and recycling instead of Rome and Joe Rogan and people's genitals we'd be so much better off.
Good morning, hello, etc. How are you? I am… sad? I guess I am a little sad today. Jane and I got into an argument last night, though we have made up and taken lessons from it. My right desktop photo is a photo of Craig and I at the workbench at the Rockets loft on Braintree street in 1998 or so and my god, I miss that loft, I miss Allston, I miss that hair, I miss that band. You can never go back.
I would not use pegboard anymore, though. Wall Control at a minimum. I wonder who made that miter saw. Looks like a Bosch. Hopefully Craig remembers. Or Craig’s silhouette.
Last night I was stewing in the intense misery that is modern life, reading Bluesky and learning about all the atrocities perpetuated on the citizenry in the last 24 hours, more of the constitution out the window, etc. Just really stewing in it. And I vowed I would get here this morning and write it all out, just an absolute litany of depression and misery. And it occurred to me I often think this in the evening: tomorrow’s GMHHAY is gonna be a doozy of Hell Worldian proportions.
But then daylight comes round and I think to myself: you don’t need to do that. Who is that helping. It’s a new day. Move on.
And so I spare you.
We are listening to another obscure shoegaze band today, this one is called Blueshift Signal, album is called Silhouette. Gotta give these guys props: they have put out a whole album, and it is long. Well over an hour. Old school. Lotta these new Shoegaze bands, while mining the old school shoegaze sound, employ more modern music release and promotion tactics and put out mainly singles and EPs for the algorithm. Most plays any song on this album has gotten is 16k, which, hey, better than my old shoegaze band, not a single song has broken the 2k threshold yet to even have a play count listed on Spotify.
Another thing I respect this band for, though, is they haven’t gone all in on all this Spotify cruft: the little animated gifs or movie loops or whatever that you can upload along with your song, and Spotify foists upon the listener’s bandwidth by popping out a little side box in the app and shoving them down your thoat, no matter how many times you close the sidebar it reopens enshittification what. I am deeply respectful of any band that doesn’t bother with that shit and boy is it few and far between these days.
Of course, this album is from 2017 maybe they uploaded it then and have never come back to Spotify. Solid.
Hey big news, GMHHAY has a… theme song now? Music inspired by the book? Something like that. Nick has released one of his ambient tracks today, and it is titled after your favorite pedantic newsletter about noble domesticity:
Take that Nobel-Prize-winning Paul Krugman. No one want to make a theme song for your newsletter. Probably cuz it’s on Nazi Substack.
Just back from Walmart, real depressing shit over there. No music, so the distraction-free hours are still going, that is nice. But my god, they are just out of so many things. And, what with Trump’s schitzopathic, malevolent approach to the economy, things are just going to get worse. Still out of Turkey Chomps. Something is going on there. Out of stock everywhere.
We will look back, from the ruins of our civilization, upon Turkey Chomps as the pinnacle of modern civilization. Where does the turkey come from? Is it imported? Who knows. Why would you flavor Turkey like pepperoni? Who knows. Humans know that processed meat causes cancer, right? Yes, we do. None of this makes any sense. Well, it makes sense if you are a typical body dysmorphic American male who is hungry all the god damned time and insecure about their weight, fussy know-it-all voice from the future so just leave us alone.
In addition to the usual, though, Walmart was out of the following: Natural Organic Smooth Peanut Butter (not uncommon but they had been good about it lately), 65 gallon Hefty (or any brand really) bin liners (been out of these for about three weeks now), Rose’s Lime Juice (about a month), no Bok Choi seeds okay that was a long shot. And no Nature’s Own Whole Grain bread. Not the overpriced half-load Life sub-brand, not the whole wheat but the whole grain, which they usually have just not there. JESUS.
I am not ready for another shortage epidemic.
Schitzopathic is a great word. I wonder if its problematic. To sociopaths, amirite?
Been re-watching Twin Peaks. Worked my way through the (really pretty solid still) first season. Started the second season. It is not bad but not amazing by the standards of modern TV. But things are okay through the big reveal about Bob, that episode is still fantastic, still very good. My memory said that episode was directed by David Lynch, but it was not. My memory said that epiosde (S2E09) was the best one, and it is still the best one.
But then it started to go south with all these dumb sub-plots like James and that stupid family and Cooper being “on trial” and I just did not have time for that shit. I watched S2E10 and then just skipped fourteen episodes to the second-to-last, and watched the last two. Second-to-last episode is not bad, but my god, the David-Lynch-directed finale is just terrible. This isn’t really, I don’t think, shade on Lynch, it’s just, the format of TV in those days. Every single plotline ends in a cliffhanger. I remember at the time there was all this reporting about the tensions between Frost and Lynch and the tensions between them and the network and it wasn’t clear if it was gonna get renewed or not and, man, they just went for it: all cliffhanger. Leo Johnson? Just left tied up underneath a box of venomous spiders absolutely no resolution whatsoever. They outright dared the network to cancel them. Well they did. And then! Dude gets a movie and doesn’t even resolve the cliffhangers, just does a prequel. Which is a very good movie but does not particularly add anything to the story (except Duchovny, of course).
So then I moved on to S3 aka Twin Peaks: The Return aka Twin Peaks (2017) and my god. It is so much better. TV lets you do so much more these days. Just a phenomenal show. I mean, I am not very far into my re-watch, but already I love it so much. I like it more than when it came out, because when it came out I was annoyed with all these non-Peaksy plotlines like New York and North Dakota but now I love all that shit because I know where it lands.
Also the “I will see you in 25 years” thing is so impressive. I hadn’t watched OG Peaks in yonks prior to S3’s debut so I didn’t really remember that line. But it all works so well. It is amazing he managed to get the show produced and released at exactly the 25 year-mark. Real testament to Lynch and/or Frost’s organizational skills.
My packages have started arriving at home. Oh, right, yeah, by the way that is probably why I’m sad this morning. I mean usually I can overcome the evening’s dread and have a relatively productive, mm, gonna say 5 hours or so in the morning before the Fear comes in again. But this mormning, sitting in the garage, were the first two of the packages I mailed myself from my mom’s house while cleaning it out: a painting of Denali that’s been in our family forever and the St George statue I have told you about. Good news: it didn’t break. So I guess maybe I can slay that demon. But now I am looking at a week or two of, like, unpacking all these boxes and I am not sure I want to do it? Might just hide them all over in a nook of Chore House or something. TBD.
I do owe you a picture of St George, though, so maybe I will brave opening that one box.
OH. I have one more story for you. I went to the collection center yesterday to drop off the recycling. Lately, gonna say the last month or so, they have this inspector dude at the recycling center. Like, the recycling dumpster has a compacting ability, and while it is compacting/compacted, the entire dumpster has this sort-of lid over it. You can still throw things into the dumpster, but the lid enables the side effect that all your stuff that you just dumped is laying there, splayed out, inspectable by anyone.
I never liked this, because, you know, my garbage my business. But for all the years that dumpster’s been there, mostly the attendents just hit the compact button when it’s getting full, making more room in the dumpster, and they wander off.
But now they got this guy and, I dunno if it’s, like, policy or enthusiasm, but he inspects. He makes use of the dumpster compacting controls and always leavs the dumpster in “inspect” mode, and he actually looks at all your recycling, and he uses one of those grabber tools to rifle through it and look at things and it is hella disconcerting, I do not like it at all.
Now, look, I admit, part of the reason I do not like it is because I do occasionally throw in certain plastic pieces I know they do not want. I do this for a few reasons:
1) I know exactly what happens to these plastic pieces when I dump them and it is fine and they get recycled. I went to the stinkin MRF and confirmed this so don’t at me.
2) The county insists on these rule-of-thumb recycling instructions saying things like “no to-go containers” that, in reality, they do not actually mean. They care about plastic type. But they don’t want to confuse the populace. So they resort to heuristics. So I am not technically breaking the rules when I throw a strawberry carton in there made of the offending plastic, because they choose to do this weird thing with their instructions and, though this strawberry carton is made of the same PET as “to go containers,” it is not a “to go container.” So nah nah nah not breaking the rules.
But the guy there, he is not following the printed instructions to the citizenry, the dude is trying to pull out PET, the offending plastic. Which can be recycled. But impacts their payout from the recycling center, which I do not care about I care about recycling. But he is pulling PET. Even though it is not explicitly banned by the county.
Look what I’m saying is the whole thing is a mess and this guy makes me super nervous.
And so I was dumping my recycling yesterday and there he was, and the lid was closed, and I knew he was going to inspect my recycling and I was super not into it.
And sure enough. Dude seemed to let a PET or two go, but he zoned in on these paper packing pads from Hello Fresh. And he pulled them. And I was like “they’re paper!” And he was like “not inside” and the dude ripped them open to show the styrofoam inside.
Now, lotta things going on here:
first, wtf Hello Fresh, those used to be paper inside, you still have a big RECYCLABLE label on them and they’re fucking styrofoam inside? Or is it water-soluble? Now I gotta test it, find that out, and tear them apart every week, giant pain and I am annoyed. Shame on you Hello Fresh.
Second, all my worst fears were realized and it is absolutely psychotic they the county or this guy personally is going to this level of inspection.
But third and most surprisingly, the guy was super nice, and we both ended up nerding out about Hello Fresh and the composition of their packing pads and I absolutely cannot help but admire this man’s ecological enthusiasm now.
And I think I want to be his friend.
You never know, man. You never know.
A W Hotel in a Better, Alternate Universe mix for you today. I was about 5 minutes short so I added a Sault song from, fun fact, the first WHIABAU mix ever, back like five years ago. I also added The Slur Song because it just came on in my “To Investigate” re-listen and it cracks me up. It’s offensive, though, I suppose, so I put it at the end and you can just turn the mix off by then if you want.
Okay well it is Friday. I am going to do so much gardening and attic work I am excited. Wish I could do that shit all day every day. Alas, reality.
Have a lovely weekend, see you Monday.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.
Hey! I think Bueshift Signal are actually an older band from Rhode Island. I got confused when you were talking about them being a new band, because I remembered hearing that name a long long time ago, so I looked them up, and they were active from around '89 into the 90's.
Hrm I wonder if I learned about them from you at some point!