Good morning good morning. Wow behind schedule again. Great way to start the day. Sleeping in rules, though. Yay snow days. Sorry. “Remote learning” days. Will Jane remotely learn today? Or will she resist it all day again? We will see, we will see.

I would like to go on record saying that even though I solved it, today’s Wordle was bullshit. Not a real word.

Oh and hey reminder can you buy some girl scout cookies please? They are delicious. Adventurefuls are underrated. And Trefoils, oh, man, the glorious simplicity of a Trefoil. Can’t go wrong.

Yesterday was my friend Annie’s birthday, the first since we lost her to cancer late last year. I still miss her every day. It has not been easy. Our friendship wove through almost every aspect of my life. At least once a day a moment goes by that I know only Annie would understand what I am thinking.

Went viral on the internet again last night. Second time in a month. Fucking hate it. Made worse because I accidentally did it on Threads instead of Bluesky, just wasn’t paying attention to which platform I was reading. I was ranting about Tim Cook, because that guy sucks. A man is executed by the government and a day later he goes to the White House to watch a fucking movie and hang out with the president and Brett fucking Ratner. I mean how disgusting can you get? Not even Zuck or Elon was stupid enough to show up to that premiere.

I made the comment that it always bugged me that Tim Cook wasn’t a Mac lifer, that he came from IBM and Compaq, and even when Steve announced him as his replacement CEO it bugged me. Obviously it is a non-normal opinion to believe that being a Mac user for, oh, 28 years, isn’t enough time to really, truly understand the platform or deserve to be CEO. What can I say. Apple is a different company to me than almost every other company. It’s mattered to me since I was, like, 10 years old. I was like fucking Bella and Resnemée imprinting on that company, man. I wanted to believe it was different. For a long time, I did believe it was different. Maybe it even was.

Fuck yeah Twilight reference.

One thing I've always hated about Tim Cook is that the dude hasn't even been using Macs that long. Dude joined in 98 and he was at IBM and Compaq before that. Never even deserved the job.

One thing I've always hated about Tim Cook is that the dude hasn't even been using Macs that long. Dude joined in 98 and he was at IBM and Compaq before that. Never even deserved the job.

I never wanted Apple to be the biggest company in the world. Broadly speaking, the last 20 years of Apple have been unfortunate. Apple Silicon rules, of course, so I guess you can’t separate that out. And I do (er, did) like having a phone that was integrated into the OS. Though now that I’ve switched to Android, I coulda lived without it, honestly. But the misadventures in China, the outsourced manufacturing, the trillion dollar valuation, the compromises with the fascist regime? All of it sucks, all of it is Tim Cook. China was a faustian bargain at best, it’s horrible drawbacks predictable even the day Steve handed him the reigns.

All these fucking people bet that bringing capitalism to China would bring Democracy they were all fucking wrong about it, they broke the world, and not one of them takes a shred of responsibility for it.

Meanwhile I played a bit part in the internet breaking the world and I’m like I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

100% Tim.Cook thinks he's a victim. He thinks he's doing what must be done to help Apple, thinks it's his lot to take the heat by sucking up. Same as he did with China. Wrong on both counts.

100% Tim.Cook thinks he's a victim. He thinks he's doing what must be done to help Apple, thinks it's his lot to take the heat by sucking up. Same as he did with China. Wrong on both counts.

As for the other recent events in our national march toward misery and fascism, well, seems to be aligning with my predictions. Trump is sending moderate fascist Honan to Minnesota and pulling out cosplay fascist Bovino. Calls for an investigation into the shooting grow from the right. Rand Paul is subpoening Kristi Noem and the rest. I would be surprised if she gets shitcanned, she is the ultimate dedicated toadie and she was doing what was expected of her, shamelessly and brazenly lying to the Fox news gullible. I still think in the end the head that rolls will the shooters when it should of course also be Miller’s and Noem’s. It is a smart tactical play on Trump’s part. And if he pulls out of Minnesota, our smart tactical play would be to press our advantage, attack when they’re on the retreat and push for Noem and Miller’s resignation, but the people of Minnesota would get some well-deserved rest and the duty would fall on the rest of us, and so far, well, are the rest of us as committed as Minnesotans are? TBD.

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We are listening to the Austra album again this morning. It’s the fourth listen. What can I say, I really like it. I have kept it at the top of my “To Investigate” queue all year, and when we finish up with the queue I go back to the beginning and listen to it again. Every time I find another brilliant track on it. Right now I am listening to the last track, “Messiah” and it is giving me chills. I could hear a choral version, a post-rock version. This song is universal. It’s borderline “Hallelujah” level. Damn.

Or maybe I’m just freaking out.

I have a major, important, vital update on the Waffle House griddle situation. You may recall from late last year that Waffle House replaced all their waffle griddles with new ones, and the new ones imprinted the Waffle House logo into the waffles. That was nice, but the employees of Waffle House were having a hard time making good waffles with the new griddles, they were over-toasting them on one or both sides. The last time we went last year in, mmm, gonna say early November, they were getting better, but still had at least one overly toasted side to the waffle.

I had been hankering for Waffle House for a few weeks and I did that mean thing where I mentioned it in front of Jane so she would be on my side and insist we go to Waffle House and override Emma’s vote, who really wanted to go to Al’s. It was a low blow. Can’t do that too often in relationships, but, you know, we’d been to Al’s twice since my Waffle House hankerin’ started.

ANYWAY, we got there and you are never going to believe this but they have switched back to the old griddles. No more logo. I cannot even fathom all that must have happened for this to happen. Nationwide Waffle House outrage, some sort of actual defect in the new belogoed griddles that could not be compensated for with additional training? My god, it’s just so hard to imagine. And they still had the old griddles??? Or did they have to buy them again? And if they did, did they even know what the fault was in the logo-laden ones? What if the new ones also had that fault? Like some deep profound secret of waffle griddle manufacturing was lost at the Wells restaurant equipment company when some 70 year old griddle technician retired. Or were all the old griddles just piling up in a warehouse and they had to dig them out again like when the military has to dig out analog code machines after an EMP or something?

And what happened to the new griddles? They’re not on eBay? Are they nursing a desire to bring them back?

I have so many questions. If we still had a media apparatus in this country I would hope that someone really tried to get to the bottom of this. Where is that woman that wrote that amazing Bucatini story during the pandemic? Huh! Still at New York magazine! Impressive! Color me a Rachel Handler stan.

Working my way through the Oscars movies I’d not yet seen and I made the tragic mistake of watching Die My Love back-to-back with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and I think I am pretty much done with movies about women going crazy from parenting, thanks. Emma said someone described If I Had Legs… as “Uncut Gems for moms,” and that about sums it up. My god. Too much. I was squirming. I was ill. Both of them. Amazing actresses, too much. I get it. These are serious issues. It is important to show them, I guess, though I can’t see how two movies about the medical establishment completely failing to help these women in any way helps other women, but maybe that’s just me.

I would like to go back to my favorite genre, movies about wealth inequality, preferably with a sci-fi bent. The new Running Man remake was terrible but also kind of awesome but also just so badly edited. Crammed a lot of ideas in, gave em all two seconds, major plot shifts in milliseconds. It was bad but somehow I feel like it being longer would have helped. There was a lot to like. I am torn. Bugonia was fantastic I have zero complaints. Everyone says they could see the ending coming but no one saw the closet thing happening that really threw me. And the last bit (the last last bit, the montage) was amazing. Just amazing.

Hard for me to imagine watching Marty Supreme, assuming it’s as manically cut as Uncut Gems, plus I just read this story (thank you Rex) about why the Safdie brothers broke up and, um, I think I am a bit disturbed by Josh, the brother who directed Marty Supreme now. I do like Timmy, though. A dilemma.

That leaves Secret Agent and Train Dreams, both of which I have in Plex, and Hamnet, which I do not, but Mea tells me I will love because she and I both loved Cold War. Oh and F1 but I don’t care about that film and fuck Tim Cook. And Sentimental Value which I know nothing about. But i do love Stellan Skarsgård. Oh and I hear good things about Ethan in Blue Moon and I like Ethan. I like that novel he wrote.

Jane slept in this morning. I made her breakfast, assuming she was upstairs gaming. Went up there and she was still asleep. “I like sleeping in. Time goes faster when you’re asleep. When you are waiting, it is faster to sleep.” Wise words. I told her about “breakfast in bed” and tried to have her have a luxurious morning with breakfast in bed but she said she would get crumbs in her bed and did not want that, so she would be taking her breakfast in the play room. So very responsible. Also her friend came over to play yesterday and for the first time, they did not fight. Before they played they made a plan on how to not fight and it worked. Very impressive.

Post Rock playlist today. Peter wrote in to say he knows I might have lost some listeners, but he appreciates the change to Apple for music. That’s good. I feel kinda dumb doing it now that Tim Cook is going to fucking advance screenings of Melania for crying out loud. I bookended this playlist, first and last track, with oldies, while the rest of it is new. Well, to me. I think that particular Ranges album is old. I like this new Viagra Boys album. Very varied.

All right stay safe out there. And ICE isn’t out of Minnesota yet, so let’s continue to stand with Minnesota, mmkay?

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