Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1532
Jane's robot chess teacher, Supreme Court bullshit, coffee is weird, It's an older code but it checks out, Keith Flint in awkward social situations. Wet Leg Plastic Mermaids guilt.
Morning. Up and at em. Raining. So much rain lately. I like it. Except when I have to be in it. Wore my holey fake crocs this morning, because I was too lazy to put shoes on. My feet are now wet. I regret that.
Tried a different approach to the stupid parking situation at Jane’s camp. Mostly failed. Had promise, but in the end, no go.
Went to the grocery store. Saw many people filing out with giant trays of milky, chocolatey beverages, highly dense in calories from the Starbucks. Coffee shops are so weird. Like it is weird that in this day and age these people who would otherwise not be caught dead doing anything unhealthy in their Patagonias and high-tech exercise wear routinely consume a day’s worth of calories in one drink. It is weird to me this is somehow a social norm when in actuality it’s kinda like people getting four milkshakes to go at 8 AM or, like, grabbing a six-pack of beer to go at 8 AM.
Meanwhile I’m over here with my organic, all natural, zero-calorie, stevia-sweetened cola and I’m the weird one.
Also had a long thought-think about how apples are mostly organic now, around here anyway, and wondering if that is just a cynical profit-play, a reflection of the demand in the area, or some larger economic forces at work actually doing what we all hoped, bringing the price of organics down to reasonable levels. I cannot know the answer because I have no idea what two pounds of non-organic gala apples cost in other regions. If you are a GMHHAY reader in, like, Iowa, let me know k thanks.
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We are listening to the new Wet Leg this morning, Moisturizer. I am somewhat irked that the local record store, who closed my local branch and is now only a semi-local record store, took four days past the release date to send this to me. But I waited for my vinyl to come before giving it a first listen. And guess what? Almost every song on the album is better than the two they released in advance. Pokemon? Great song. Mangetout? Ditto. I had low hopes for this album from the advance singles and a slight suspicion Rhian might be going crazy, but I retract both of these concerns. This is a banging album, and everyone’s allowed to be blonde at least once in their life. Encouraged, even, even in the face of it being ill-advised.
Also having a slight moral dilemma about how much I love and listen to the band of her supposed douchebag ex, the one whom “Ur Mom” is about, whom I learned about because of Wet Leg. Band is great, I like them a lot. I can hear a bit of his doucheyness in his lyrics, but in the absence of any concrete shittiness (Rhian has stayed mostly vague), I will assume his shittiness is the normal, within-bounds-for-artists types. Also the two of them made some awesome music together. I mean look at this amazing live track of them all doing some Björk-like shit in a London coffee shop, this is the jam:
I swear I watch that video like once a month.
The Supreme Court just let Trump gut the Dept of Education. It is a bullshit ruling, but more bullshit than necessary because, once again, they did it without a single word of explanation. So no one knows how to interpret the thing. Which is, of course, the point. Because:
1) When Biden tried to just, you know, forgive some loans at Education, they shot him down. So, you know, your management of a department is absolute unless you want to influence policy. Makes no sense.
2) I would say that this could be interpreted as useful for the left in the sense that one day we will have a president again (maybe) and they could, it is now clear, disappear all of ICE with the stroke of a pen which will be useful for us. But hahaha who are we kidding. They would never let a Dem president do anything with this ruling. And everyone knows it. And they decided that rather than actually writing down any contorted pseudo-logic, they would just decree it. Because there is no logic, even pseudo-logic that would make this ruling legal and not some equivalent by a Democratic president against ICE. So best to just not explain it at all. You 100% know this was part of their thinking.
So, you know, in short, fuck those guys. Again. We shoulda packed the courts, fuck every dem who held a majority in all three branches that didn’t do it.
It seems what’s happening here, and Dems still don’t get it, is that one party decided that they were just going to actually go for it instead of “play the game.” Like actually enact the policies they talk about instead of just dicking around. And the Dems are just, like, still playing a game. It is fucking ridiculous and they should all be fired.
The Dem ruling class debates away about whether we should talk about policy or Trump, and miss the fact that they keep talking about talking and not doing.
Anyway.
Do you think it has ever transpired that Keith Flint, sometime vocalist for the UK rave act The Prodigy, is in some awkward conversation at a cocktail party where someone is saying “no, no, seriously, I think I know you.”
And he’s like, “no, you don’t know me,” but feeling kind of uncomfortable because, you know, he’s not exactly famous, and he doesn’t want to explain he’s famous, etc.
And the other person is like “no, seriously, where would I know you from are you an actor or something?” And they just won’t let it drop…
So eventually he just has to say “I am the fire starter. Twisted fire starter.”
Just to clear things up, you know.
Or maybe occasionally to a hotel check-in clerk or to a representative of his bank on the phone.
Emma and I were watching the Prodigy’s performance at Glastonbury, and it made me remember I used to have opinions about this band. I saw them — twice! — before Firestarter and all that jazz. Back with “Everybody in the Place” and “Charly.” And then they got big and had two bangin, amazing hits with “Firestarter” and “Smack my Bitch Up” and, well, I just could not. I was absolutely against this development. I protested it very strongly. Refused to ever see them again.
And yet “Firestarter” and “Smack my Bitch Up” are manifestly better bangers than “Charly” and “Everybody in the Place.”
I think I had some mostly coherent theory about violence in music and culture and all that, explaining why I was so disdainful of so many bands in the 90s, and I don’t think it was wrong, per se, but also wow “Smack My Bitch Up” did not turn out to be the problem.
Unless Stephen Miller was a secret Prodigy fan.
Shit I wonder what kind of music Stephen Miller listened to in high school. Should probably ban all those bands for good measure.
Speaking of deep thoughts have we ever talked about “it’s an older code but it checks out” in Star Wars? Shit I might be repeating myself here. But anyway when I was a kid I thought that was the dumbest line: codes work or they don’t work. But then when I grew up and some IT dude gave me my first hardware key with an ever-changing six-digit code on the tiny lcd screen (still magic. still voodoo after all these years. Still not quite sure how they work), I suddenly understood. So now, every morning I check the bank account for work, and I have to type in my code from my RSA hardware key, and some days the code is disappearing, you know how they have those little countdowns. And I know I should wait for the next code, but I am in a rush so I type in the old code. It is about 50-50 whether I make it logged in at this point. Some mornings, I’m too slow. I gotta start all over, refresh the website, wait for the new code.
But some mornings, I make it logged in just under the wire, just before the code expires.
And every morning when that happens, I say:
“It’s an older code but it checks out.”
I should be that guy for halloween some year and just only say that one line to everyone.
Oh speaking of which another great halloween idea I had is that weird bassist for Dire Straits in their Money For Nothing period when he was wearing a red trenchcoat, played a headless bass, and had big white round glasses. Very iconic. Every Gen Xer would remember him even though they haven’t thought of him in decades. And literally no one else would have any idea who he is.
Eh. Will workshop it. There’s something there.
Here is a photo, a self-portrait, I took in 1996 of myself going to work in the Hancock tower to Ernst & Young. Please enjoy. Man I miss that hair.
This morning as I prepped her lunch and snack, Jane sat at the dining nook table with her toast and did her DuoLingo. She is learning chess. So she sits there tapping at her phone and the robot says things like “my queen is in peril, you have an opportunity to checkmate,” or “use your bishop and knight in tandem” or “I taught you well.” And it is vaguely disconcerting because it feels a bit like I’m in the opening scenes of an 80’s sci fi novel and that the robots teaching her have actual intelligence, which, when I was a kid would all have seemed awesome but now makes me vaguely incomfortable. I am mostly okay with Duolingo’s low-level AI, of the ML and self-learning types instead of the power-and-water-guzzling, IP-stealing LLM types, but of course I am not sure of the tech behind Duolingo, because no one can be sure of anything anymore and of course Duolingo like everyone is running around trying to say that they are super smart about AI, really, really, please bump up our valuation. And, well, surprise. The whole thing bummed me out.
Even though she was really cute. And is learning chess at seven and will probably be able to beat me soon because I hate chess.
Sometimes I think I think too much.
Got a goth playlist for you today, my heart, my heart, once a goth always a goth oh the pain, the misery. Though I guess I haven’t posted a goth playlist since April so, you know. I guess I’m just a part-time goth these days. Let’s see… Didn’t love the new Cure remix album but had a couple gems on it. Mentioned the Matt Jencik/Midwife album yesterday. Talked about late-period Shriekback a few months back. Dais records recently re-issued the Cindytalk album Camouflage Heart, so that was exciting. Love this Eiko Ishibashi that I just learned about yesterday. Anja Huwe from Xmal Deutschland has been pretty active anew of late and I find it all pretty solid. There is, as ever, a new Pink Dots album, that guy just keeps going what an amazing career.
All right talk to you tomorrow fine feathered friends.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.