Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1544
More Marx, more Walmart, which actually sounds like a great essay but unfortunately in this case they are unrelated topics.
Hi hi hi! Hello. Happy Friday. Still covid-free. Just three more days of testing woo woo. Bout of insomnia last night debating that posh recording studio, think I’m gonna pass. Could make it work but suddenly, in a rush of manic insomnia, what I would much rather do with that kind of cash became crystal clear and, well, that studio is not my dream. I am having too much fun making my own.
Man I am so ready to be out of the woods (are we out of the woods are we out of the woods) with this covid thing. We are entering the moment of truth. Tomorrow is six days negative and last time I rebounded to positive on day six. It’s been weird testing negative every day and knowing, academically, it doesn’t really mean anything yet.
Buttondown cut off my farewell message at the end of yesterday’s edition, sorry about that. I hit “refresh” to post it, it was hanging, and boom, no farewell. And I did not notice until I received the edition in my inbox. I want you to know it was a very heartfelt farewell. I really meant it yesterday.
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We are so close to clearing out this To Investigate playlist, and I think we should take a moment and be proud of this accomplishment. This beast was seventy-hours long at the beginning of last week. Now it is one hour, 42 minutes. And I don’t have any meetings today.
Of course the new To Investigate playlist is 22 hours long. But that is not so bad. We will deal with that when we get back from Boston.
We’re giving the new Wet Leg at third (fourth?) listen. Keep finding nice little gems of songs in the album cuts. Into this “Jennifer’s Body” song today. Oh wait, sorry “jennifer’s body.” No caps. People fuck with caps so much these days. I blame Spotify did I already tell you about this theory? I probably already told you about this theory.
Just back from Walmart. All very exciting. They did not have cable pull cable. They did not have bamboo flossing sticks. Still no Turkey Chomps but I am going to try this Archer brand. I do not have high hopes. They did not have the Sydney Sweeney bathwater soap who are we kidding they were never going to have it. Good enough for Dr Squatch’s Star Wars partnership, Walmart, but Sydney? She is A-list. A-list eugenicist, amirite?
Reduced stimulus hours and no Walmart radio and you know what? I’m gonna say it, I miss Walmart radio.
Also I noticed a sign when I was going in that said “serving Chapel Hill since 2013” and I realized that was only two years before we moved here and I cannot imagine life here without that Walmart they must have been psyched when it opened. Except the grocery and hardware stores.
But the real tragedy of the Walmart is that they have decimated their Zevia section. For a while they had two Zevia sections. Now, one is gone and the other is only half as big. They only had, like, three flavors, dead-end ones, very obviously the whole section is dying. I am so sad. Please, Zevia, do not leave me I do not know what I will do without you.
I did buy a couple night lights, though. That is very exciting. I am tired of peeing in the dark in the middle of the night and who are we kidding, I am a man in his 50’s. This is going to happen more and more.
So, been reading my Marx and wouldn’t you know it that guy loves totally oblique in jokes and asides and samples and call-outs as much as I do. And this really-very-good translator dilligently puts a footnote on each one of them and explains each pun and joke and man I am here for it. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if someday GMHHAY was as widely read as Capital (which means not at all, har har, but talked about a lot) and some editor took the time to annotate all of the jokes? “You see, this is a reference to the 88th episode of Seinfeld, aired in 1994, whose plot revolves around Elaine’s desire for a big salad. By the time of Webb’s writing, in 2025, this was already an outdated and profoundly unfunny joke.” That would just be the best.
That big salad episode really stuck with me.
Anyway, he (Paul Reitter, the translator, I have to look his name up every time but it will eventually stick) also does these like four-page long footnotes around, well, helpfully translating Marx’s muddled economic thinking, explaining to us how it lines up with the assorted mainstream orthodox theories. Dude is a metallist, man. It’s one of his big failings in the actual economic theory part. Metallism was incorrect. We don’t need that gold, it turns out. We can just make money up. You can see him almost getting there, but boy does he disapprove of such things. He is probably turning over in his grave.
Everyone says his actual nuts and bolts of his economic theory isn’t the good part and I gotta get through part one of volume one before I can get to “the good stuff.” I am close. Ten more pages.
Some of his theory, well, who could have predicted the absurdity of meme stocks and vibes and flash crashes and Jane Street. But some of it is obviously wrong even at the moment of conception. He spends way too much time trying to shoehorn labor into commodities with verry dubious results in term of How Things Actually Work™ but of course he has to, cuz, Marx! Labor! And you can see him wrestling with things like inflation, debasement, etc. but not quite getting there. Though mad props for him for taking a monetarist, macroeconomic approach to the whole thing and not going on about theory of the firm like it means something beyond the firm. But the dude basically eschews the concept of supply and demand. I mean, he just comes up with a totally different explanation that essentially denies prices go up with supply constructs for external reasons it is very weird.
I can see why my economics teachers only had me read a chapter here or there, primarily from parts beyond part one.
Still, though. Dude is not an idiot and I look forward to Part 2.
(“Pokemon” might be the stand-out track on this Wet Leg album).
Jane anecdote we end with a Jane anecdote do I have one today? I miss her. I was in quarantine for a week and this week I am working while she is in camp and I haven’t had a good long day off with her in like three weeks and I am very excited for tomorrow for us to putter around together and I am even excited to spend 12 hours with her in a car on Sunday, playing dumb car games. That will be nice.
Oh heck yeah we have a Smooooth playlist for you today. It is only the 11th one in the six years or so of GMHHAY (gawd) but man, I think it might be my favorite playlist genre. Lay your lover down by the fire. Put this playlist on. Hrm. Maybe not a fire in this heat. I dunno. Maybe a spa. Spas are smooth.
Have a lovely weekend! If all goes well, fingers crossed, I will be covid-free and in Boston Somerville next time we talk.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.