Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1533
Space-age construction helmets, more about Keith Flint, Bamboo U, the need for certain German words, an awesome video about ASOIF.
Hello. Hi. Good morning to everyone but the NC DOT, who are doing construction work at the entrance to my neighborhood, doing it badly, doing it inconsiderately, and unnecessarily. Super awesome, absolutely no recourse. Not like they’re gonna listen to my state rep when the state legislature is 66% Republican and my rep is a Democrat. NC is one of the few states with the state DOT being in charge of all road construction, rather than giving any authority or input to the counties. So, you know, that is awesome. They’re an absolute catastrophe of an organization, you coudln’t get an appointment to get a RealID for months, maybe a year in advance of the law going into effect. Just… no appointments, didn’t care. They have outsourced plates to corporate America, but of course in the worst possible way: not like you or I could start a license plate office that had actual service. No no no, it’s all franchises and licenses and cronyism. Yay Republicans.
Important caveats to yesterday’s musings on Keith Flint, vocalist of The Prodigy. Turns out that he is the former vocalist of The Prodigy, because he is dead. Which is very sad. It seems that… he was hung but there was insufficient evidence for a suicide ruling? And he had a bunch of drugs in his body. But it was probably a suicide. I don’t know, man. That is all very sad. I feel bad making that very funny joke now, though it was very funny and I guarantee you it (probably) happened to him at least once in his life. Also his Wikipedia page has this incredible tidbit:
In 2014, he bought and renovated the Leather Bottle pub in Pleshey, Essex, and became a popular landlord.Flint kept a jar in which customers were required to put a pound if they made a "Firestarter" joke as he lit the pub's fire. He ended his connection with the pub without explanation in 2017.
At this recent Glastonbury gig, the band paid tribute to Flint on stage, and did not play Firestarter, out of respect for him. Respect.
Man I am sad about Keith Flint now.
Also it only occurred to me late yesterday, after writing about Keith Flint, that his last name was Flint. Firestarter. Flint. Get it? Ugh.
In other “previous GMHHAY edition” news, I would like to apologize for the double-posting of the same image in yesterday’s edition. I cannot convey to you how utterly off-the-cuff every edition of GMHHAY is. I didn’t even notice until the helpful Slack community pointed it out (thank you, Ingo!)
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 to Gorilla Toss this morning. I saw their name in a few headlines yesterday and I have this one starred track by them that I love love love. It is called “Zum Herz” and is co-credited to Neu! But I don’t know if it’s an actual collaboration or an hommage or something. But in any case, it rocks. I discovered it through the Neu! side. But upon seeing their name a bunch yesterday, new music, I figured I would check them out, Gorilla Toss. They are okay. They are not as pulsing and driving and droning and throbbing as this awesome track with Neu! But still.. not bad.
I am in a big hurry today — next few weeks are potentially going to be pretty intense at work, which is a shame since its summer but what can you do — so I am going to cheat a bit and show you a few links that have popped up in my internet life these last couple of days.
First, I would like to present to you this monumental work of scholarly research projecting out the probable page count of the next George RR Martin Game of Thrones ASOIF book. The thumb and context would lead you to believe this was a thrown together haphazard guess but oh, no no, my friend. This is legit. This dude brings it. I don’t even care that much about Game of Thrones. I am mildly academically interested in the cultural controversy around the stalled production of the next book. I do not think (gasp, heresy) the ending of the HBO show was that bad. I think it could have used about 30 more minutes to shore up its final outcome and game winner but it was mostly fine. BUT THIS VIDEO. Yes, man. This is what the internet can still do for us when it is humming along in quality oughts style:
Semi-relatedly, not a link. I got depressed yesterday, mid-day, I guess you could call it more angry or outraged, since it was mostly politics-related, but it felt like depression. And I wrote to some friends on a group chat:
I’m depressed today. I feel like there should be a website you can go to and hit the “i’m depressed” button, it asks why, you get, like 200 words, and it’s just a nice stream of reasons why people are depressed in the world. Old school. Pure.
These days, a site like that would get overrun with trolls, be used as a dropbox for assorted intelligence operatives, and be consumed with AI bots telling outragious, Reddit-drama-bait stories that just weren’t true.
But back in the day, man. You could make a nice simple site like that and it would mostly work.
Semi-relatedly, courtesy of Kevin McGuire in the WITI Slack, behold the absolutely heartbreaking and moving comments that have aggregated around this Aphex Twin Youtube video:
I guess Youtube is the only good corner of the internet left — props to Google for mostly cleaning up the Nazism. Though, honestly, grading on a curve here. If I were grading fair, I’d give em a C-, but at least they tried.
Next up we have this absolutely moving video from a place I had never heard of, that I am now obsessed with, Bamboo U. My god, this place is amazing. I want to go there so bad. Although this video makes me realize that to work on an architectural scale with Bamboo you need a community and friends and stuff and that is not really my approach to construction and if I went there I would probably bawl my eyes out every time someone handed me a stick of Bamboo. But let’s put all that aside. This place rules.
I watch this channel because it is two hot Ozzie ladies who live in the middle of the jungle (Tasmania, I think) and learn arts and crafts and care for the land and raise goats and ducks and it is the greatest thing. The greatest thing about Youtube is all the hot ladies doing hardcore crafts and trades. If you are going to watch a construction channel or a hardcore automotive repair channel why not watch hot ladies. But she has never done a video like this before, at least not in the year or so I’ve been watching. Mostly she tools around her farm with her sister and her goat. Not she is going to Bamboo U and it rules.
Bamboo U, man.
Bamboo rules.
I want to plant it everywhere. We all know how that would go, it’s a mess, but also... it’s so awesome.
Next we have this cool helmet that I want. I wear glasses, so safety goggles suck. Zenni and other places sell prescription safety goggles, but they do not make my prescription. I can get close, ish, like within 2 diopters, but it’s not perfect. I have some but I have to choose between close and far strengths, switching goggles as needed, because they do not make progressive ones.
Additionally, I need to be wearing: a) an air filter, b) hearing protection (at least I should) and c) ideally, as I work in the eaves at least, head protection: I have a few bad bumps on my head now.
So imagine my thrill when I discovered for only $600 you can get all of these in one, with active, powered air ventilation, and you get to look like Daft Punk.
Behold the Microclimate Air 3:
It is unclear to me why all the models on their website are not wearing all black leather. Nor is it clear to me why they do not sell a black tinted face dome. I can work with these things.
I want this thing so bad. SO BAD.
It has been a good long while since I have had capitalistic product cravings but here we are.
Finally, I leave you with a couple thoughts about German words:
There needs to be a German word for that feeling when you are looking at a big pile of stuff and need to pick it up and you are trying to work out in your brain how to arrange it all in your hands so you can pick it all up, but at the same time your hands just do it, perfectly, while your brain is still trying to figure it out.
There also needs to be a German word for situations where there needs to be a German word for it.
There is, it turns out, a German word for the rebellious phase Jane is going through, the “middle childhood, where they reflexively refuse everything before they even think about it. Emma alerted me to this today.
It is called Wackelzahnpubertät. Wobbly-tooth puberty.
This is my life these days.
Here have a Moody & Quiet playlist I just finished up by adding 13 minutes of oldies too. Been thinking about the Verve cuz of Richard Ashcroft’s appearance as the opener for the Oasis shows. New Samia is growing on me. This L&R track came on last week and it took me straight back to eleventh grade oh my god. Oh a big Sade kick as you know these days. Mr Somewhere takes me back to 1991 I miss that girl. Alas.
Okay. Might miss tomorrow’s entry. Don’t freak out. I didn’t die.
If I miss Friday, though. You can worry.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.