Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1549
A smidge more Apple ranting, kitty election updates, the deadly seriousness of children's games, Game of Thrones season 3, playing hooky
Good morning good morning. It’s Friday. It’s Sunday. Gonna play hooky and go see my friend in Salem today. That will be great.
Jane and I are just back from the Ukrainian place Dunkin’, cuz the Ukrainian place was closed. We were both sad, but, hey, saved like $12 on our breakfast. Public Service Announcement: the Dunkin in the slowly gentrifying Magoun Square no longer carries diet soda of any kind. It’s like they want you to drink coffee.
We planed “avoid the crack” the whole way there. We carried a small squishy Hello Kitty I bought for Jane at H Mart last week. The Squishy Hello Kitty (we are capitalizing now, that is its name henceforth) became a token of leadership: whomever held Squishy Hello Kitty was the leader, they had to walk in front, and set the pace. We remembered to stay on the right all the time, so people could pass us. Except for the period Jane said it wasn’t fair, and she wanted to walk side-by-side and hold my hand. That was lovely.
We walked by the spec house being built down the street and it is so lovely and I want it and I almost talked to the builder again to ask him what he was asking, when it would be done, etc. It would obviously be better to do the deal while still under construction so you could have a say in the finishings, the paint, etc. And I obviously do not have the money. I mean, you know. I probably have the net worth (though who knows, this area is gentrifying fast), but I definitely do not have the cash.
Three of our friends here have covid, two of them with kids that are Jane’s Boston playmates. We won’t get to see any of them. How sad. Well I guess I could. I have immunity now, right? Man I do not even know how this works anymore, the misinformation in America is really doing its job.
I have updates on the kitty election. First, I met the mayor kitty. Sean pointed them out to me. They are a very cute kitty and wear a bow tie and it is very hard to consider voting for another kitty now that I have seen this kitty in person.
Here is the link for voting. There is some lore here (This is my first use of “lore” in the new kid-internetian vein but I approve of this usage). One kitty candidate put a QR code on her sign, but then she promptly died, so the owner transitioned the QR code into the voting link. They are too sad about their cat so they have stepped away and are letting other volunteers grow the ballot as new kitties enter. There is a veterinary clinic involved now, very well-meaning, I am sure: offering the mayor winner $1,000. Which is lovely and kind but also kinda depressing and explains the explosion of candidates: my god, what cat owner could not use $1,000 of services.
But oh boy look at all those cute-ass kitty names. I am amenable to the name Korben Dallas for a kitty.
It is indeed a ranked choice election. I mean, it has the hallmarks of it: they are asking for your 1st, 2nd, all the way through 9th place. It is a Google Sheet. Do Google sheets support the math on ranked-choice voting? Tallying this thing is going to be a bitch.
Anyway, voting ends September 12, so I will take my time and carefully consider each cat’s policies. I do want to laser-pointer my way to the future, but compulsory naps is a very compelling policy.
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Listening to the new Laura Jane Grace album who somehow managed to self-cancel the day the album came out, so that is pretty unfortunate all around. And it involved her wife/band member so, you know. Tour was canceled even before the venues could cancel it. Pretty good record, though. Laura strikes me as a person who still has a lot of shit to work through.
I had updates for you about something else what was it. Oh, never mind. I had a headfantasy that we ran into the jogging branch snipper and interviewed him, but none of that actually happened, alas.
Man every morning Apple has closed my notes.app for some reason and I have to re-open it. No explanation, no error notice. This fuckin company.
Went on an extended rant on Threads, of all places, yesterday about Apple. No real pushback but in scrolling the socials there does seem to be a depressingly large number of people who seem to be saying “yes if I were already a billionaire I would bow down to Trump in the most sycophantic way possible, literally handing him a 24-carat “special boy” plaque while he says the Epstein files are fake.” (This is exactly what happened). Okay buddy.
You can concoct a story where Apple the entity kowtows — they shouldn’t, but they might have to eventually — but Tim does not have to do it. There is no need for the money, and no scenario where his legacy is burnished by this act. It is very clear history would judge him the better CEO for resisting this or resigning under protest. It’s not even close.
And yet.
They’ve been pissing me off in ways this and that for a good while now but god. This one is just the worst. Well, no. The worst so far. Soon they’ll sign some AI contract to offer check-in services at death camps or something.
I might have to turn into an open source goon and use a fucking Linux laptop. Haven’t looked into the quality of GUIs in Linux in oh, a decade, but who wants to bet against them being exactly as meh as they used to be.
Hey do you guys know the knuckle month trick? Where you tap on your knuckles and the gaps between your knuckles while going “January, February..” etc. to figure out how many days are in a month? I used that to Emma yesterday and she had not heard of it. I thought it was well-known? Is it not?
Sean has joined my Game of Thrones re-watch. Man season 3 is just so good. We’ve watched 3 episodes now and they are all bangers. Beric Dondarrian and his flaming sword? Jamie talking about the mad king? Jamie losing his hand? Robb’s intractable knot of Karstark’s betrayal? Denarys’ acquisition of the unsullied? Just all so good. So good.
Sean pointed out I don’t have to read all the books, and I can basically stop after book 3, or even book 1 if I wanted. This option literally never occurred to me before. I’m the kind of OCD dude that once he starts a series of books he has to read them all. I am still reading each new edition of Anaïs Nin’s unexpurgated diaries and have been doing this for… 34 years now. It is a very heavy decision to start a long series. May as well be talking about adopting a cat or getting married. Starting Marx felt like signing the contract on a 30-year mortgage. All of Capital is, really, if you’re being thorough, like 8,000 pages.
But I suppose I could just… not.
When we were walking to Dunkin’, playing the avoid the crack game, I asked Jane what happens if we step on a crack.
“The World breaks,” she said.
“I think someone already stepped on a crack,” I said.
“Hrm maybe that is too… what’s the word?”
“Extreme.”
“Yes maybe that’s too extreme. Let’s not break the world.”
Deal.
A thing I have realized is that when I am in some existential horror headspace because of ICE or Gaza and I’m lost in an obsessive loop about the exact mechanics with which I would dispatch with Thomas, Alito, Kavenaugh and Barret (we’ll leave Gorsuch for some reason) in my first week in office, and Jane wants to play some game, it has occurred to me I can just say yes, and just play the game, because it will not actually interfere with my dread, and my dread will not interfere with playing the game. Because the deadly seriousness in which I am figuring out exacty how to instruct the Corps of Engineers in order to most rapidly get Alligator Alcatraz dismantled is the exact same level of seriousness she expects me to bring to the game. I do not, in fact, need to look enthusiastic and happy while holding Squishy Hello Kitty: she expects and appreciates a level seriousness commensurate with the game’s importance to her.
And I can provide that.
Club mix for you. Not my finest work. Usually the clubby songs that come up in my normal perusal have a more… well, you know. “Electronica” feel to em. This is a more party club. A club on Landsdowne vs, like, Central Square, to use Boston-in-the-90’s parlance.
Have a great weekend. Seems unlikely I will be going to Walmart this weekend. But hey never say never.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.