Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1525
BBB Disgust, sleep frustrations, little tableaus of domestic humor, American Football's live album, failed gas line repairs, Taco Bell gender surprises
Good morning, good morning. Man I am so tired. Man I slept so late. Man I could not fall asleep. Didn’t even really obsess over AI much. Maybe like 15 minutes of my two hours of sleeplessness. This sucks. I wish it would end. Boo hoo.
What the world needs, I think, is a device that knows when you fall asleep — should be doable, what with Apple Watches and sleep trackers and everything — then adds X number of hours to the time, the amount of sleep you need, and sets the alarm accordingly. I finally fell asleep, probably, around 2. My alarm should have adjusted to, like, I dunno. 9:30. This, obviously, only works in very specific circumstances: most of the time we have to wake up when we have to wake up, regardless of when we fall asleep. Maybe you can put a limit on it or something, I don’t know. Hrm I guess I could just do this myself, huh? Change my alarm to 9:30, which is when I actually have to wake up, this summer, for work. Instead of keeping it at 7:30, which is really just aspirational, and snoozing for 90 minutes.
Oh hey it’s the end of the week that is exciting. Tomorrow I get to go back to my attic cave and work on flooring. Never ending, thankless, but so, so peaceful.
Gas repair people came by yesterday. Learned a few things, raised a few questions. Couldn’t repair the gas line. Apparently gas lines are proprietary and they had to order the correct fittings? Not like PVC, apparently. Seems suss. And the gas lines did not go where I thought they went. It is all very mysterious. I think they go to the rental unit in the basement, but i have no idea why you’d run gas from the crawl space under the house, up to the attic, and then all the way back down to the basement right next to the crawl space. Seems wasteful. But maybe I’m wrong. And it’s not worth changing. What works, works, I guess. I mean, they don’t work right now because, you know, I cut it with a Sawzall, but they did work, they will work again, you know what I mean.
So I guess we are passing this budget, huh. Any minute now, apparently. That is a real bummer. Got a little optimistic at around midnight, thought maybe it wasn’t going to work out. Pretty shitty thing to wake up to. Really is amazing. No one wants it, no one who voted for it likes it. It should not be, but it is still really amazing to me that someone who is morally opposed to something, could hold out for hours, days, weeks, months and talk about how terrible it is could then just randomly change their mind at 3 in the morning based on nothing written down, just some vague assurances. Also seems like a pretty clear failing on Elon’s political prowess that he couldn’t give these people what they needed to stand firm.
There is so much shitty in this bill, but the 10x funding for ICE to build actual concentration camps is just the most horrifying, terrible thing. ICE will be one of the three largest police forces on the planet. Fucking insane. They are so horrible and scary now, they are obviously going to get so much worse. I cannot fucking fathom it. I cannot fucking fathom anyone besides Stephen Miller even wants this. Sickening and horrifying and we’re all just going to become a nation of people hiding in our houses because no one is going to be safe from this. No one.
Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!
We are listening this morning to American Football. The new Live album, called, like all of their albums, American Football, this one’s title helpfully appended with “(Live in Los Angeles).” Given this band’s predilliction for minimalist names, and given this is their only live album so far, I feel like they could have just named this album American Football (live). Yes, were they ever to have another live album, they would have a conundrum, but how much of a conundrum is this coming from a band with four albums titled American Football. Obviously the second American Football live album should also be called American Football (live). This should not even be controversial. Rare miss from this otherwise rock-solid band.
I will say, though, something is missing from the majestic, minimal, atmospheric, near-magical production values of their studio albums on this live album. They sound, dare I say it, human on this record.
Last night after gymnastics we decided to let Jane choose where to eat dinner and she chose… Taco Bell. It was right across the street, the car was facing Taco Bell when we made this offer, this was perhaps not wise. Also she has only recently discovered Taco Bell and thinks its great. While Jane was in school, Emma and I had instituted “terrible lunch day” where one day a week we would go out to a fast food lunch, and Taco Bell was in the rotation along with Cookout, NC’s true fast-food pride, screw you Bojangles with your too-rapid growth and flipping PE ownership (jk we still love Bojangles). Jane got a bean burrito and that cheesy wrap thing I mean, it was like $4 to feed our kid so, you know, silver lining.
Interestingly, the last three times we have been to this Taco Bell, the clientele has been majority female. I mean, to be clear there are never more than seven or eight people in the place, but every time? Majority female. Mayhaps relatedly, my sister loved Taco Bell.
Every time it’s been, like, one girl with her boyfriend, and then a pack of three or four very healthy looking young women, presenting as a subset of a college sports team, maybe gymnastics or something. I’d say nursing but they don’t look world-wise and weary enough. These people have obviously not seen too many butt holes in their lives.
Hrm maybe I shouldn’t have brought butt holes up while discussing Taco Bell.
Last night after we watched a Poker Face and a Parks and Recreation I ambled off to bed like I do. I used to wait for Emma to also get up from her chair and follow me upstairs to say good night — she likes to say good night in the bedroom not downstairs. But she is much slower to get up than I, and since I still have to do teeth and pills and wash my face and change into clean night underwear and all that (I am a princess), there is time for her to wander up before I’m ready to absorb myself in my book.
So while I do all that she sits on the couch downstairs still looking at her phone.
And last night, she texted me while sitting down there, mere minutes after I saw her.
It made me think back to the beginning of AIM, and the beginning of WiFi and how magical yet funny and weird those technologies were when we first got them. I remember the first time I brought a laptop out onto the porch of my hosue and checked my emails from outside and it just felt so magical. I remember the first time I texted or IM’d a person in the same room with me and we both thought it was funny but could not decide if it was… useful or sad? Now, of course, both of these things happen dozens of times a day. But it took me back for a minute. Back when a new technology was exciting and felt immediately useful. Thrilling.
Ah to be young and in Paris and in love.
I sat on the bed and opened up her text, a kinda funny Instagram link. So it transpired that as Emma was walking into the room to say good night, I was looking at the Instagram link.
Emma does not love it when I ignore her for texts. I mean who does, amirite?
But it was certainly fun to ignore her for a moment for a text from her.
Ha ha ha what a great story I’m a regular Jonathan Franzen over here.
I forgot to tell you when I was talking about Jane and her dentist appointment the other day. The dentist appointment was at 2:30. Get it? Get it? Tooth Hurty. Jane was very excited about that, as it has been one of her favorite jokes lately. She also has started to floss a bit. At age seven. I mean. That’s impressive, isn’t it? Please don’t tell me if your kid started flossing at five. Gawd. Kids. Comparing when they learn to do a thing. Stress ride. Do not get on.
Looks like we have a playlist ready today, thank you American Football. Here is a shoegaze playlist for you. Mostly new stuff, except for Comet, whom I talked about a few weeks ago — great band I saw like 30 years ago that partially evolved into Simple Machines. Man, Comet were so good live. New Steve Queralt (from Ride) album is just awesome I love it so much. New DIIV is… interesting? Curious to hear the album. Tremours great as always.
Gonna take the holiday off so I will talk to you monday and regale you with tales of Walmart runs and attic studio renovations.
—
Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.