Good morning good morning hi hello. How’s it going? We good? We are good. We watched the Marc Maron documentary last night, Are We Good? It was very good. It was very sad. I feel a lot of affinity for Marc. I mean, dude loves his Zevia, Are We Good? is positively riddled with Zevia. Seems to prefer the ginger ale. Discerning man, Marc.

Annie lived Zevia too. Miss her.

Emma and I were talking about it and we realized that even though Marc is a perpetual curmudgeon and that must be exhausting to date, he has advantage over dating me: when he gets depressed, he can still make you laugh.

When I get bouts of depression, I do not make Emma laugh.

Weird Marc never tried antidepressants. I like my antidepressants. It is awesome to not randomly, accidentally descend into the paralyzing depths of despair. No one needs that.

The coworkers have headed home, they all left yesterday, I think two of the three of them had fight delays. One of them it was his wedding anniversary and he really wanted to get home and last I heard his plane was two hours delayed and I feel bad. I am sorry Marc!

We did take this nice picture in my greenhouse before they left though:

We also stopped by the Boat and RV storage facility, Red’s Storage, that we are building. It was supposed to launch in three weeks, but ICE fucked us, surprise surprise. We don’t even know how. It’s all sub-contractors of sub-contractors, turtles all the way down. We just know that there used to be, like, 30 people on the site each day, now there are, like, five.

Amurica.

School’s starting two hours late today. We were supposed to get a big storm last night, two inches of snow. I was very excited. Reader, we did not get two inches of snow . We did not get any snow. It is not particularly colder out there than any other day this week, there is no frost, no rain. We did not need to start school late.

And this has rejiggered my whole schedule today, and I am sorry to tell you that I have not yet made it to Walmart this morning, so I can’t write about Walmart today. I know you are sad.

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 an artist this morning called Austra, album is called Chin Up Buttercup, no idea where I heard about this or why it is in my To Investigate playlist but it is great. Etherial electronica/dance/synthpop with a lovely female voice and I am quite into it. All yes right. It got a good Pitchfork review. I still check Pitchfork every month or so, what can I say I am old. And hey look it is on Bandcamp. Nice orange colored-vinyl pressing. Well. That is tempting. But, you know, my relationship with this artist is only about 20 minutes old. I feel like I need to get to know her a little better. I might regret not buying it, though. What if she slowly evolves into one of my favorite artists and this record sells out and I have to spend a mint in, like, ten months to acquire it. Isn’t it really, if we’re thinking about it, actually the more financially responsible thing to do to purchase it right now? Especially on Bandcamp Friday where the artist gets even more of the revenue, right? Right?

It’s Bandcamp friday so in honor of Annie I have purchased two Circus Trees records and a Ranges record, two post-rock bands she and Bill introduced me too. If anyone knows any other Bandcamp grabs for today let me know. I missed the Acid Mothers Temple limited edition record, I feel bad.

BUT. I did successfully get this:

Did I pay too much for it? Well, yes, but no. It is the second-most I have paid for a record in my life. But it is also about $500 less than the first two one-of-a-kind pieces in this series went for.

I swear this isn’t really just a newsletter about music.

Though, shit. The next topic in my topic scratch pad notebook is my Spotify Wrapped. Which was bullshit. Two problems with Spotify Wrapped, one unique to me, one universal:

1) If you go to an album page, then add the album to a playlist, say, a playlist of albums to listen to. Spotify Wrapped does not call that listening to an album. It only counts albums that you listen to by pressing play on the album page. This totally fucks up my reporting.

2) Because I listen to most of my music in Apple Music and not Spotify, the data in Spotify Wrapped is inaccurate and heavily biased toward recent music, since I use Spotify almost exclusively to listen to new music.

It thus transpires that in Apple music my most-listened-to artists are The Microphones, Spiritualized, Low, Pink Floyd, Abriction, Mogwai, in that order. Which seems accurate. Whereas in Spotify, it was Michal Hurley, Saint Etienne, Taylor Swift, New Order, and For Those I love. Which, I mean, not wrong I guess? But also not right.

As I was falling asleep two nights ago, I thought of this coworker I had in, like, mmm, 1997? When I worked at the recording studio/CD manufacturing company? He was an illustrator of fantasy art. Just loved drawing dragons n shit. And he really wanted to make it as one. Like as a living or with renown, you know? And his art was good, it was awesome dragons and knights and shit. But it seemed inconceivable to me that one could succeed in that? But, you know, as I was falling asleep Wednesday it occurred to me that culture and commerce’s relationship with Nerddom and fantasy has really evolved in these last 30 years and hey who knows? Maybe he could make it.

So I jotted a night-note down to check in on him.

And, reader. Dude has made illustrations for Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, all these other big-time Fantasy properties, goes to cons and signs cards and shit and… fuck, man. That is awesome. There is some good in the world.

Warms me hart, it does.

I have gotten a new mouse. I have abandoned the Apple trackpad after a decade or so. I did this because my right middle finger, the one I got surgery on, is still healing and it is getting sore because when you use a trackpad, you are constantly keeping your fingers raised, whereas with a mouse you rest them on it. At least theoretically. I am still trying to overcome the muscle memory and get my finger to rest.

The mouse is awesome, though. Marques Brownlee told me on Youtube that it was “dope tech” so I got it and… it pretty much is! You can do a lot of things with it. I am especially fond of the back button. I am into it. New mouse. Rick Recommended™.

Jane was kinda a pill at Girl Scouts last night. They went and got a lesson on Democracy from Carrboro’s mayor and fireman, actually Chapel Hill I think. And they all liked the firemen (lol) but did not care about our lady mayor and her talk about terms. Apparently Chapel Hill’s mayor only serves for two years? Hassle. Anyway Emma was exhausted from the outing so I did all of bedtime instead of the usual split but Jane kinda knew she was in the doghouse so she was real nice to me. We spent most of the evening drawing a graph of passenger capacity, by year, of America’s top four airlines. I do not know why we did this. This is what she wanted to do with her evening. Our daughter is a weird one. But there is curiously no data on Delta in 2020 or 2021 on the Wikipedia page, so it proved to be a nice lesson on data extrapolation, and modifying your guess based on subsequent additional data. Lovely night, if not very weird.

Next week we have her regional science fair and the commemoration from the county commission on her art piece. Which is crazy. She is eight. Too many awards already. I am nervous.

But those of you had asked for the art piece that won, and here it is above.

Oh shit it just occurred to me I still gotta make Jane’s lunch before we leave in 17 minutes. WHOOPS. Looks like this isn’t going out for another hour. SORRY.

Shit you know what maybe I’ll just wrap it up. Here have my Indie Rock Christmas playlist. It’s a big one. Eighteen hours. Throw a party.

Have a lovely weekend!