Good morning, friends. Hello. Hi. How are you? Filled with anxiety and dread and righteous anger? I can’t imagine you’re not. What other way is there to be these days.

Sorry I am late. My phone’s alarm didn’t go off, for the third day in a row. There are too many goddamn settings on an Android phone I can’t figure out why my alarm isn’t making any noise. I use a backup alarm on my old iPhone when it matters. Ringing Android endorsement, huh? But today did not matter. It is a “remote learning” day at Jane’s school, so we did not have to drive there. Which is good because my truck is all fucked up. Things fall apart, as David Tibet used to say. He probably still does. He was right, so right. I can’t figure out how to make the alarm go off and I can’t figure out how to make the text messages from making a deafining alternate beep when I am driving. And it’s not just me, my wife can’t figure it out either and she is a lifelong Android user.

Still love the screen, though.

I am not one of you who thinks we are on the precipice of civil war. I do believe the shooting of Alex Pretti was despicable and obviously criminal. I am, even now, in awe of the rapidity and breathtaking shamelessness of the laws our government has said about him. I spent some time on X and I do also believe that this is a new level of outrage against the Trump administration, and this shooting, along with the others, is breaking through in a way that other events have not. It is deeply disturbing to me that Pretti having a gun has brought in a whole new cohort of “concerned citizens,” but I guess I’ll take it. Even though, I mean, fuck, I’m still not convinced that Pretti even had a gun, and, despite all my better instincts, I have watched too many fucking videos of this event.

I say I do not believe we are on the precipice of a civil war because I think what is going to happen is that the administration is going to sell out the shooter. I think that Trump is going senile, sure, but he’s not there yet and the dude has excellent political instincts. I think that Stephen Miller is hellbent on bringing America to a state of civil war and that he has explicitly told these agents that they can shoot people. But I also think Trump knows his hold on things is tenuous, and I think he is just like a five-year-old button pusher and boundary tester, and I think he can probably tell he’s pushed the boundary as far as he can this time. The verbiage that is coming out of the mouths of the “concerned” Republicans is all in the manner of “needs to be investigated,” which is code for “sell out the ICE agent, call him a bad apple, let the anger die down and keep doing what you’re doing.”

But of course I could be wrong.

And I do not say this as someone who is “sanguine” about this whole thing, pretending to be a “level head” who cannot envision things getting worse. I envision things continuing to get worse. I just envision them to slowly get worse, by increments.

Cheery huh.

Not particularly in the mood today to browbeat myself that I am not doing enough about all this. I am trying. I am donating. I am looking at people who are “being brave” by “taking a stand” and “finally saying something” and wondering how the hell someone could have gone this long without saying anything. I am donating. I said that twice, but, you know, gotta cling to it and gotta do it. And, of course, while it was nothing like this, ICE has already been to our town, taken people in our community and I am doing what I can here.

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We are listening to the new Foetus record today, Halt. Discogs tells me this is Foetus’ 18th record across 46 years. One record every three years for decades. Of course Jim Thirwell, the only consistent member of Foetus for this whole period, has other projects: soundtrack composer (I particularly like his Venture Bros) work, orchestral composer (I got to see his Manorexia orchestra once and it was awesome). Been a big fan since the late 80’s. Bought this record directly from him. It came with a bunch of stickers and a t-shirt. Big FOETUS t-shirt. I might be embarrassed to wear this around here in rural North Carolina were I not rapidly running out of fucks to give thanks to our political situation.

The storm has passed us by and it was not quite a nothing burger but pretty close. North Chathamites are nothing if not good community members and liberals so everyone stayed off the roads, but honestly, they were fine. Well, for Alaskan me. I drove from one house to the other in the morning, drove back in the evening, and I was the only car to have driven in our neighborhood all day. My neighbors are so responsible.

I have now got these tubs of water and I think I’m just gonna use it to flush toilets for the next week so I don’t waste any money. DEPRESSION GRANNY.

On Friday, my strike-supporting day off, I organized our IT rack in the box room. It is very pretty but it’s not quite done yet. I took a picture of it for you but I’m gonna wait another week till I get it perfect. I have become one of those people obsessing over the neatness of their cables and whatnot. It is an utterly pointless hobby.

Before the storm, on Saturday Jane and I went back to Ultimate Comics in Cary for more Girl Scout cookie sales and it was so fun my god I love selling girl scout cookies. We sold so many cookies. We also have upcoming booths at the Hardware store and the grocery store so that will be fun. It’s also a lot more fun this year now that I know most of the parents. GIRL SCOUT COOKIES. But some here!

But mostly I worked in the attic on the studio all weekend and big news. I finally accomplished something I have been dreading and plotting for like six months. I got the entire giant HVAC unit lifted up, removed the cinder blocks underneath it, so I could remove the drip pan underneath it, so I could put the six layers of subfloor underneath it. It involved me buying like $500 of construction jacks, which hurt a lot and I am not happy about it, but it was a lot less than it would have cost to pay someone to do it, and I suspect I will need at least some of those construction jacks when the time comes to start hanging heavy soundproof doors in, oh, two years. I don’t know where to store them all, though. I was gonna put em in a bin on my bin storage shelf outside but it occurs to me the humidity may make them cranky.

But I digress. The HVAC unit is now sitting on three 2×4s, each held up by 4×4s or construction jacks, with plenty of room beneath them to get the floor installed.

I did not take a picture of this for you. I should have. I am sorry.

I got two layers of the floor done underneath. Four more to go.

The whole plan worked remarkably well, six months of thinking paid off. There was one unexpected wrinkle, though. There is a single iron pipe fitting sticking out of the bottom of the HVAC unit that will protrude into the new, raised floor (the new floor will be higher, but the HVAC unit will be, in the end, at the same, old height). The irony is the pipe fitting isn’t even necessary, it’s very clear the gas guy only had a T-joint when he needed an L joint to get the gas into the unit, so the other spur of the T just shoots needlessly straight down. I could pay a gas guy to fix it, maybe, but… well, I think my plan will be to work. Even if it does involve a little metal fabrication.

School’s closed today, will probably be closed tomorrow. It’s a hassle having Jane here, who has never had a “remote learning” day but now she is supposed to be doing assignments today and I can’t get her to do them and I have work and it is all a bit stressful but what are you gonna do. We worked out a deal that she could play Cities:Skylines for an hour then she would do one of her assignments.

Will it work? Tune in tomorrow.

W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe playlist for you today. No one listens to these now that I switched to Apple Music, huh. Well. I mean, that tracks. No one reads this now that I left Facebook. I KID. You guys are the best. I love you all.

Until tomorrow, friends.