Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1529
Trying to think of when companies got better. Natalie and Ethan and bad books and time. Jane's secret mission today. Scanner and Biosphere and KSUA. Trump accounts jealousy. Sympathy in horror.
Good morning, friends. Hello. Hi. How are you? Welcome to the thrilling fifteen hundred and twenty-ninth edition of the famed daily newsletter, Good Morning. Hello. How Are You? We had a good response to yesterday’s edition. Lotta people living a life of background outrage and terror. Nice to feel understood.
I think often of those ethnographic studies of “normal citizens” in the Nazi era and “what they were thinking” and “were they all Nazis” and some intrepid researcher will go and dig up the journals of, like, German shopkeepers in the 1930’s to get a glipse into the thinking of those who lived during the rise of fascism. My memory is hazy — been a while since I read my Shirer or even my Tooze. But my recollection is, yeah, most of them were secretly fascists.
Well, future historian. Read away. Maybe join the Slack (you can do that in the future, right? Join some past historical Slack? Maybe sorta like in The Peripheral?) and you will see that no, no. We are not into it at all. We are maybe aghast at our cowardice to some extent, or paralyzed mayhaps by the strategems employed to contain us. But we are not psyched about it, we think its bad and we wish it would go away.
Another congressman got turned away at an ICE facility — there is a law explicitly requiring ICE to allow for unannounced inspections by congress. They break this law every day now, without any consequences.
Simultaneously Schumer, realizing he’ll probably get primaried and lose if he pulls that acquiescing shit again, is actually considering shutting down the government as part of these rescissions votes. He will not. He is a chicken and a turd and also a holocaust enabler (feel free to check his social calendar this week). But if he were to, I would support it, and I would support it specifically with the sole aim of removing ICE’s recent monstrous budget increase and an agreement that everyone who has violated these laws pleads. To the state governments in the states in which it happened. Not to the Feds. Is that a legal thing? Eh, no, probably not but hey when you’re making deals, you’re making deals.
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We are listening this morning to the 1996 debut, self-titled album by Gas, the low-fi chill (in the Orbian sense, not the, say, KLF sense) album from DJ and Kompakt records founder Wolfgang Voigt. When I posted that dive into my Discogs a couple days ago, my friend Suzy was inspired to do the same and found she had a valuable copy of this album, and I hadn’t thought of Voight, Komakt or Gas in, like, 20+ years so it inspired me to re-listen to it. Semi-relatedly, there is a new Biosphere album out this month and it is really good.
Semi-relatedly, one time I was in line at the ill-named Mount McKinley Savings Bank in Fairbanks, Alaska, the one on the west side in the Fred Meyer parking lot. They used to give away free keychains with Flowers on them and we, as ravers, were very into them. And it had been my bank since I was a child, I can still smell the pages in the actual physical paper account book they used to give you my god I loved that thing.
While banking, I heard these two dudes in line talking behind me about how they had heard this cool shit on the radio the night before: an ambient electronica project made primarily out of police scanner recordings. They were referring to, as you well know (he says in his Galaxy Quest Justin Long voice) the 1994 Scanner aka Robin Rimboad album Mass Observation. I am just learning now the recording also included Jim O’Rourke, whom we mentioned yesterday in these hallowed pages, and Robert Hampson (not his real name I was told by someone “in the know” in the 90s) of Loop fame.
This bit about the police recordings may be apocryphal, though these dudes in line behind me at the bank didn’t know that, because they had heard it on the radio.
And they had heard it from me.
It was such a great feeling! Being a DJ and the Music Director at this station and getting these dudes to listen to scanner.
I saw some people saying on Reddit yesterday that KSUA broadened their horizons and opened their minds to good music, back in the 90’s, and boy did that make me feel good. I took some screenshots to brag to you, but my filing system has let me down and I have lost them.
Also this entire story hinged upon a transition from Biosphere to Scanner which, I am realizing, is not a logical jump. Except maybe in my head.
I am very pissed off about these “Trump Accounts” for kids because they are such a perfectly great policy and they basically stole it (mostly) from the left and rebranded it and my god it is going to be amazing for every kid and I am just pissed even though its great. One silver lining of these days is that Trump is occasionally doing a socialist thing, sorta the opiate for the masses, or just stupidity. This is a great example. Every kid will get $1,000 at birth and it will go into an index fund (we can debate where it should be invested and whether this is a long-term end run around social security but whatever) and — this part is rad — their parents can’t touch it and they can’t touch it till they’re 18 and then they can withdrawl it without a penalty for things like starting a business, buying a house, medical stuff, or going to school.
I am unclear whether they can withdrawl it with penalty for other things. I hope not because then we’ll have hilarious scenes like in Trainspotting where druggie kids try to convince some panel that they really are starting a new business and that will be some great entertainment I will watch that reality show with horror yet with amusement, feeling guilty the whole time.
It’s an awesome policy and I am so so jealous and pissed. Luckily suddenly the Republicans are suddenly absolute shit at selling their stuff. I don’t quite understand why they aren’t shouting about this from the rooftops. Some of them maybe because they know it’s socialism and some of them maybe because they know the larger BBB bill is shit. But hidden in that shit bill is this one good policy, sorta like a version of Bush helping a lot with AIDS in Africa, but turned up to 11. Stopped clock shit. But still. So good.
Hey question: I was trying to think of companies that one day, suddenly, actually got a lot better. I could only come up with two examples:
1) Dominoes when they made their pizza “good.” I never had “old” Dominoes even once but my wife assures me it was absolute shit and current Dominoes is, at least, palletable, so I believe it.
2) When Subway freaked out about Quiznos and within, like, a day put a toaster in every store and started putting their cheese in that cool “tesselated” pattern.
Can you think of any other time, ever, that a giant corporation actually improved measurably? Is it a coincidence both examples we can think of are fast food?
Inquiring minds want to know. Drop a line if you have an idea, we will discuss in future editions.
Also yesterday randomly a cover of Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” came on my stereo when the whole fam was in the car. It was by Ednaswap, but that’s not relevant. Good cover, though. But it made me think of Natalie, and how she dated Ethan Hawke, and how he wrote that novel about their relationship, The Hottest State and how, god help me, I read it. I wonder what Ethan thinks of it now. I thought it was good at the time and would tell people this because it was fun to confuse my arty friends with this irony. But also, god, I read, ironically, so much shit back then. The Nicoel Richie novel, The Truth about Diamonds. The Jenna Jameson autobiography.
Why did I read this stuff? Why??
I can only chalk it up to youth, and that sense that you had all the time in the world, so it was okay to read garbage books because you were going to read an infinite number of books.
Nowadays I’m like “50 a year if I’m lucky, 20 years left if I’m lucky, I get 200 more books at best I gotta make em count.”
Jane did not have an issue at camp yesterday, great mood, lovely to be around all around. A camp counsellor (leader? I dunno. Worker? She is a teenager) told Emma that “Jane is my favorite.” I asked Jane if that was the counselor (gotta pick one we’ll go with that) that said hi to her when we walked in yesterday.
Yes, said Jane.
What was her name, I asked.
I don’t know. Said Jane.
So this morning I gave her a secret mission to find out this counsellor’s name. I told her that it was totally okay to not remember a person’s name and that the secret was when you go ask them “what was your name again?” you are basically saying “hey I realized you are interesting” and people like that. And it’s always better to do it than wait.
So now Jane has a secret mission. She did not seem too enthused.
The girl was at the door again today, again excited to see Jane. After I signed her in and Jane ran off, I asked her her name.
Are you the one who told my wife Jane’s your favorite? I asked.
Yes, she said.
Hi what’s your name? I asked. She told me. I told her mine.
Isn’t Jane great? I said
She is! She said, enthusiastic and beaming.
So. You know. A+ parenting. Give me an award.
We have a noise and metal playlist for you today and it is so good. Lots great new stuff. Sadly, the best new metal album is the new split album between Abriction and Sadness, my god, it rules. But it is, at least as of yesterday, only on Bandcamp. Who can blame them. So I compensated with a different Sadness tune. Not as good but still awesome. We also have Bell Witch, which rules, thank you Nick. Lotta new Flenser stuff: new Agriculture and Uniform and Uboa it’s like all those bands are on the same moon cycle. That Boris tune came on this morning as I was leaving jane’s camp and I felt so cool being that cool older dad driving in a suburb listening to metal really what I envisioned for my life, let me tell you.
Well hey. It’s Thursday. Almost through this week. We’re gonna make it. Probably. This one at least.
Go out and get em cowboy.
PS: I told those kids in line that I was the DJ who they were listening to. They were very jock-ish. I looked like a freak. They were not pleased I interrupted them, not pleased about any of it and I probably ruined the whole thing and shoulda kept my trap shut.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.