Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1572
I can type again yay! Depressing news roundup, Wegovy logistics, bandages off, new music Friday.
Good morning good morning good morning. Hello. Hi. I slept in. Emma took Jane to school. It was awesome. I slept so long. I slept so long I am tired and somewhat delirious. Hopefully the caffeine kicks in.
Today is Friday and I got to take my bandages off of my two hand surgery spots. Boy those stitches are black and terrifying. But things feel pretty good. Nothing too painful. There is still some anesthesia tingling at the tip of the middle finger, the one on which they operated. It is making typing a little weird, but it is all much better than with the bandages on. I am mostly functional now. And, blessedly, there is not a lot of pain, which is… shocking? But I am not going to complain. All seems well.
With my hand, anyway. The world? Not so much. Jesus.
In some good news, I have now officially returned to the weight I was before our trip to Boston. How did I gain ten pounds in Boston when I walked like 15,000 steps every day. Oh right it is the booze and bagels.
Semi-relatedly. I know it’s Friday but I went to Walmart yesterday not today. I am transferring my Wegovy prescription to them Walmart my awesome, amazing local pharmacy cannot get Semiglutide in any form over 2mg. I am not betraying them, they told me to transfer it. So I stopped by Walmart and checked if the prescription came in and it did and everyone is very nice at their pharmacy. My mother-in-law uses them and she swears by them so I have high hopes on expanding my Walmart saga to this exciting new chapter, will keep you apprised. I am keeping all of my other prescriptions at the local pharmacy because they are awesome in several absurdist ways, from the 6’+ goth girl in Diamanda Galas shirts to their obsession with the grey area in North Carolina’s THC laws, to their ice cream bar.
Fingers crossed the insurance approval, which I only have on the Wegovy, not Ozempic, transfers.
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It is new music Friday so I am listening to my Release Radar on Spotify, because I am a hypocrite and sill pay Spotify so that fucker can go invest in military drone companies or whatever. I mean, from a “supporting artists” point of view, my conscience is clear. But I am not in love with what this fucker supports with my money I really need to do something about it but the Apple Music interface is so bad and they suck too these days. Ugh. I need a more coherent pov here.
Anyway at the moment I’m listening to a track from the new Husker Du live remaster, which sounds better than most of the Husker Du live stuff out there but I would not say it sounds good from a recording point of view. From a performance point of view, though, it is fire. Man I wish I could have seen Husker Du. Broke up before I got out of Alaska. One of my first shows in Boston was Bob Mould on Black Sheets of Rain and to this day it remains one of the loudest shows I ever went to. Also many years later saw Bob do a songs of Husker Du set that was pretty awesome. Saw Grant Hart at TTs once. But I would have liked to see the whole band.
There is a new Nation of Language today too that is exciting. And Jeff Tweedy I will give that chance. You never know. First advance single was all right.
Somehow there is a new Michael Hurley, RIP, and my friend Conrad tells me there is a new Kate Bush B-Sides album today. Very exciting for me since I have fervently believed for 30+ years that “Under the Ivy” is her best song fight me.
Man how can all the news be so bad. I mean, yay on the Kimmel reversal. But also we already knew this. We already knew that the only thing to do with this ketchup is to stand up to him. And they still idiotically tried something else first. Jesus.
I just made up “ketchup” as a derogative. I am into it.
But. Like. Eh, let’s just do a lightning round of complaining about the events of the past week and get it over with.
Okay, Comey is a tool, and yay for the jury for refusing to indict on one of the three counts, but come the fuck on.
Never mind Trump literally accidentally posted a DM instructing the AG to go after his enemies, the very thing Nixon got impeached for, and it didn’t even make the front page of any major paper. I checked. I walk by them all in the morning when I stop at the grocery store. Never made the front page. Insane.
TikTok’s forced sale is going through, which, despite a lot of the woke online left being against, I have been broadly in support of, academically, but of course as soon as Trump came into office you knew the whole thing was going to turn into crony capitalism, and so it has. And the details are still obscured, the mechanics of the deal may well be illegal, and the value is basically outright theft. Saying the US portion of TikTok is worth $14 billion is fucking insane. Theft.
Nvidia invested in Intel and then OpenAI, continuing their weird habit of investing in every AI company, and the whole thing is obviously becoming a circle jerk of round-tripping of revenue and even some people on Wall Street are starting to complain about it, so that is nice. But come the fuck on. Jensen you are supposed to be buying our nation’s media outlets, not more AI companies. The point is to diversify. Go buy CNBC or whatever that newco streaming NBC spinoff is gonna be called.
Bunch of stupid new tariffs this morning on, checks notes, bathroom vanities, hookay, really big trucks and prescription drugs. Well hey that seems humane and kind.
God I don’t want to write about this stuff am I giving up are we all giving up? Is AOC gonna run for president? I don’t even know who should run. Will we make it that long?
Ugh. Stop doom spiraling thing of something else.
Finished my Game of Thrones re-watch this week.I re-watched it because I wanted to se if a) the bad season ruined the rest, and b) the bad season was really that bad The verdict? Seasons 1-3 maybe even 4 are amazing, 4-7 are really good but more reliant on spectacle but still pretty solid. Not ruined at all. Seven was substantially better than I remembered.
Season eight is not, as a whole, as bad as you remember, but the chief gripe is broadly right: Dany’s heel turn is unearned. To be clear, upon re-watch, there is plenty of foreshadowing that Dany might turn to a tyrant, all the way back to Season one, but when it actually happens, it is very poorly done and unearned. Yes she is pissed about Missandei’s beheading, but she had already agreed, during her grief about Missandei, that if the bells were rung, the city would be spared. And they do absolutely nothing to explain the change of decision, they literally just do a slow zoom of her sitting on her dragon for maybe five seconds and then boom that’s it, she’s now a genocidal maniac. You can be the best actor in the world and that is not enough to work with.
Most of the rest of the season is fine. I mean, people teleport everywhere, and Grey Worm is just a giant bummer by the end, god, that guy was served poorly. Oh right and Varys they really fucked him over that was a stupid-ass plot. But The Long Night is an amazing episode, and I, for one, have no problem with the subversion of the hero’s journey and giving the Night King’s death to Arya. I think, in fact, it kind of works, because in actuality it shows that the Night King’s chief weakness is his lack of understanding of family, loyalty, initiative, humanity. Theoretically.
I have no problem with Bran on the throne (sorry spoilers) but that last big council meeting is pretty dumb. Letting Sansa take the North (god I still hate Sansa) is so unrealistic as if Asha Greyjoy or Dorne would be like “yeah that’s fine, you go free and we’ll just stay part of the kingdom.” It just would not happen.
Do I believe they rushed things? Yes, absolutely. Did they do it for their Star Wars gig? Eh, who knows. It is clear everything needs more space, more time, but… did they even have the capacity to fill it out in a meaningful way? I suspect without the original text, that it would all just be filler.
And I suspect that exact problem in reverse is what is taking GRRM so long with the book: everything feels like filler now.
Jane has been up and down this week we had a couple real rough days. One day she was trying to kick me a bunch while throwing a fit on my lap and I grabbed her legs and held them firmly so she couldn’t kick me and she pulled a soccer feint and immediately started saying “ow ow how could you hurt me” and of course I loosened my grip and she started trying to kick me again. And when she had calmed down enough to go back upstairs and do teeth and jammies and hang out with Mommy, who was suffering a migraine, she promptly reported to Mommy that I hurt her, so, you know, that girl would sell me out to the cops in a hot second. Reassuring.
BUT I did finally find a way to get her talk about her school days. She tells me a sentence and I have to guess if it’s true or a lie. And it worked! She’s finally talking about her day much more. I am very pleased with this invention.
OK here is part one of my five-part (maybe six) review of 1991, the greatest year ever. This is the shoegazey one. Why did I do this. I don’t know. Will I do other years? Probably not. Maybe. It’s actually kind of a pain because you either have to follow the rules or not. Like “when” a song comes out is malleable — advance singles the year before an album came out, third singles coming out the year after an album came out, etc. I am not doing that nonsense. It has to be when the album came out. Mostly. So this one has no Ride, for example, because they were between albums, even though that awesome Kaleidoscope ep came out with all the live tracks. The whole exercise becomes too trainspotty, or you ignore the rules and then you’re just making an “early 90s” mix, and that’s a whole different can of worms.
But I did it for 1991, so here is part one:
Boy good to be writing again. I missed you guys. Have a lovely weekend. See you Monday. I wish I could say I will have tales of studio work for you, but I’m not sure my hand will let me.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.