Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1567
Seeing Bonny Light Horseman, Love Spirals Downwards vinyl re-issue, Fast food ordering kiosks, Jane injury, the joy of physical HVAC controls in your car
Good morning good morning. Happy Friday. Emma took Jane to school this morning. Got to sleep in an hour. Slept terribly. Bad dreams. Dreams of fascism, but I can’t remember the details. Lotta tossing and turning. Probably because I didn’t pee before I went to sleep. You know those times you’re sooooo tired and you’re not sure you have to pee anyway and maybe this one time you can just go to sleep without peeing?
Yeah. Go pee.
I need a hoodie. I want an incredibly soft, thin hoodie. Just so thin and light and soft. Every hoody I buy is scratchy and thick. I want a wisp of a hoodie. If you have hoodie recommendations, I would appreciate them k thanks.
That passage I wrote yesterday about the ensured enshittification of any product that the tech world might invent and release was… that should be a whole essay. Could even be a nice polemic of a short book, a la Bullshit Jobs or The End of Policing but a man can’t be bothered. Too run down these days. Getting another project off the ground? Daunting.
Also a friend pointed out in the GMHHAY Slack that I left out that within months there would be 1,000 Chinese knock-offs on Amazon and you wouldn’t even be able to find the original product. But it wouldn’t matter anyway because the original would be as crappy as the knock-offs.
We went to see a rock and roll band last night. Bands are so great. The thing about bands is a) you can pretend they are all friends, and that they all get along great, and b) you can pretend none of them are assholes or have bad politics. They are just a buncha friends, gettin’ along, being good people. That’s what bands are, right? Right?
The band in question was called Bonny Light Horseman. I arrived at this band a few years back thanks to a mutual friend, Conrad, and my appreciation of the solo material of the lady member of the band, Anaïs Mitchell. I was dimly aware that the band was a bit of a super group and other members of the band had done other things. But… I did not know this band was big? I thought the show was in the small room at Cat’s Cradle. I thought there would be maybe a hundred people.
Reader, there were about 600 people there. Apparently one of the gentlemen in this band has worked extensively with both Bob Weir and Taylor Swift so, you know, not two large, obsessive fan bases or anything. People were singing along to every word. People sure like Bonny Light Horseman. That makes me happy. They are a great band. They are like Bread mixed with Okkervill River or something. With a lady. Solid stuff.
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We are listening to Love Spirals Downwards this morning, a 90’s goth shoegaze band on the Projekt label. It is their fourth album, 1998’s Flux, recently released on vinyl for the first time. It is the first of any of LSD’s (get it?) five albums ever to be released on vinyl. The 90’s were a dark time for vinyl. But Projekt has a pretty solid re-issue campaign going on these days for their lost 90’s masterpieces. I am optimistic that 1992’s Idyls will get a vinyl release one of these days, that’s the LSD album for me. My friend Mike was friends with them back in the day. There really was not a lot of goth shoegaze going on. They deserve a lot more credit, Love Spirals Downwards.
Somewhere I have a photo of them and Mike I took on our road trip where Mike visited them, but my photo sorting system is letting me down with photos from 1994 ish this morning, so you will have to content yourself with this photo of the new vinyl I took this morning:
Yesterday I made three trips to Carrboro. Went to see Bonny Light Horseman, as we have previously discussed. Took a morning trip to a local garden store to try and find seed potatoes but they did not have any people really do not want me to plant potatoes right now but it is is not too late in the season, I swear, and I was gonna do it in a greenhouse, come on man.
And Emma and I tried to go to Wendy’s yesterday because I drove by it when I was going to the garden store and we usually do one crappy lunch together a week and so I nominated Wendy’s week. I have not been to that Wendy’s since 2022. It was baaad. I mean, the building is nice, but we stood there for ten minutes while a harried manager lady focused on Uber orders and keeping the drive through moving. She was the only one up front, barking orders, and she never even acknowledged the humans in the store once. Not once. This growing line of people just standing there, no acknowledgement whatsoever. I mean it was crazy! We might have kept waiting if she could even glance at the line and say sorry or “be with you in a moment” or… something but… nothing.
The reason I am telling you this, though. You know these situations, where you start think about just leaving and going somewhere else, because you are starving, but you know that in reality, any attempt to go somewhere else will take even longer. And you feel so stuck. And whether you crack and try and go somewhere else or wait, you feel screwed. There is no good decision.
WELL. We left. And we drove five minutes to a McDonald’s, which I am not a fan of at lunch, but, you know, I got us into this mess so I let Emma decide. Five minutes there, ordered in seconds at the electronic kiosk, and the food came in five minutes. I timed it with a stopwatch.
Given that in the 10+ minutes we were in the Wendy’s, they did not serve a single meal to any human in the store, I am 90% confident we actually got our food quicker by leaving. I don’t think this has ever happened before.
Just so nice to know you actually made the right decision.
Also, the kiosks! Taco Bell has them, McDonald’s has them. Wendy’s did not. I used to hate them. Thought they were stealing jobs. I would stand there and wait for someone to help me personally. But I think… I think I may have been wrong about the kiosks? They are much quicker, you can get your order entered far more accurately, and for most service employees, the part of the job dealing with the customers is the worst part. And in some world where we have full employment and everyone who wants a job can get one, people probably don’t want that job anyway? It feels wrong, but… Man. This A/B test with Wendy’s and McDonald’s was pretty compelling.
On the other hand, the Wendy’s on I-95 at Maryland House has kiosks, and that Wendy’s is by far the slowest restaurant in the rest stop. Kiosks do not seem to help Wendy’s.
Hrm.
Updates on the Chevy Trailblazer rental: There ARE some things that are nice about it, I should be fair. The CarPlay comes on in seconds, whereas in my Lightning, it takes upwards of a minute for the CarPlay to launch, sometimes it doesn’t launch at all. This is very impressive. And having physical HVAC controls is amazing oh my god I don’t realize how much I missed it. They are so great. Just a massive unnecessary cognitive load removed from your brain while operating heavy machinery. This should be the law.
Jane Jane Jane what can I say about Jane. She had peeling skin on her hand and she tried to peel it all off so now she has this 1/2” square scuff that looks like roadburn and she hates it and it’s in a place that is very hard to keep a band-aid stuck to, we have tried several types, and it is giving her so much anxiety. It’s Friday, so Emma did mornings, and went back to bed, so I don’t know how that went, but last night was just awful, so much crying and anxiety and screaming. And we had a show and a babysitter coming. It all worked out in the end, but… yeah. Lesson learned, I guess. Don’t pull that thread skin.
Before that, though, Jane and I had a great time, spinning and playing and hugging and a really nice evening and she was not being a pill and gosh when she’s good she really is wonderful.
I drank it up while I could. I am a cute kid cuddle vampire.
Got a “W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe” playlist for you today, volume number 95, comin’ at you hot. Very into this new Christian Loffler piece. Discovered there was a lost Mr Mister album I did not know about, recorded in the 90s but not released for like 20 years. It is… fine. Put some Love Spirals Downwards on here from today’s “We are Listening To” album. Oh shit there are two Saint Etienne songs, I just noticed. Oh well. Sorry.
Have a lovely weekend. I have given myself till Monday to see if Disney reverses its Kimmel decision before I cancel my account so I guess if there’s anything on Disney+ I should watch before Monday, let me know.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.