Good morning hello hi howdy. Sorry I’m late. I am gonna be so late. Late school start, which messes up my whole morning, which messes up my whole day. Look I do not like getting up at the crack of dawn on “normal” school days, but I sure do like my solo mornings once I’m up and have dropped Jane off at school. As it is now, work meetings are about to start, and I have no idea when I will actually finish this.

I am in a delicate state these last few days. Got a record in the mail, brand new, and it had a four-inch split in the seam of the jacket and I swear I almost cried. Was out and about in the world this morning and the fumes from the exhaust of automobiles almost made me puke. I used to be this way with perfume, back in the 90’s when I was a temp and I was stuck in small cubicles with pre-computer graphic design ladies. Paste-up ladies. I mean, I respect, deeply, pre-computer graphic design ladies but boy did they wear a lot of perfume.

I cannot fathom how we as a country pump out gobs of tons of poison fumes from millions of individual points dispersed everywhere. It is so disgusting. It’s gross in cities, it’s gross in the country. My name is not Rick anymore it’s Julianne-Moore’s-Character-in-Safe and I am gonna move out to the desert to get away from car fumes. Except that won’t work because all those lunatics out there running their beat-up old diesel Fords. Same with Alaska. Except the desert has sun and they could —

God I’m sorry I’ll stop.

Went to the grocery store and I dunno if it’s hangover from our two recent storms or neurotic Super Bowl prep but they were sold out of about everything and it sucked and it was crowded and so were the streets because I was two hours behind my normal schedule because of late school start. I had to buy broccoli florets in a plastic bag like a goddamn college kid.

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!

I am listening to the new Trauma Ray EP today, entitled Carnival. It is awesome. It is not out till February 20. But Dais Records shipped it early, which is awesome. But it has a four-inch rip in the seam at the top which is not. Also I love how Trauma Ray is straight-up shoegaze, of the pummeling sonic MBV variant, sure, but they have this total Metal Logo. It’s a thing shoegaze bands do to not seem to wimpy, huh? Us 90’s shoegazers always got called wimpy. Pretty clever defense mechanism.

Hey tell me what this sticker means. It says BDS. Given the geographical, automotive and additional-sticker context, I am pretty sure this F-150 is not a supporter of the Israeli boycott, but hey who knows.

I could obviously look this up on Google but Google is enshittified, and I could ask AI but I don’t do that because it’s immoral but YOU could do it, sort of like those people who press elevator buttons for Orthodox Jews on Friday amirite? Plus if YOU did it, and told me what the sticker was, you would be putting your human imprimatur on the answer, which would make it 1000x more trustworthy.

Plus I know like 50 of you GMHHAY readers secretly love doing online research. I wonder how that passion is going in the age of AI. Making better? Worse? More fun? Less fun? Chime in, let us know.

It’s probably some dumb skate brand or something isn’t it.

(my god I did not know how to spell “imprimateur” that took me like six tries).

No dig on skate brands.

Tony Hawk is in the Epstein Files btw.

That’s gonna be my new thing. Bumming people out by telling them their heroes are in the Epstein Files. I mean truthfully, not as a joke. Gillian Anderson is not in the Epstein Files, Emma, don’t worry.

“Not in the Epstein Files” is gonna be the new lowest common denominator in public life. Tim Cook? Pissed at the dude, but not in the Epstein Files. Taco Bell? Not in the Epstein files.

I read more of them last night, no major new revelations, think I got the general horrific gist. Checked the front pages of a bunch of newspapers as I was walking out of the grocery store this morning, like you do. My god the paper version of the WSJ is thin these days. Anyway no Epstein Files on the cover of any of them. Also have you noticed the increasingly vast discrepancy between the NY Times online “front page” and the print one? Like they’re serving two different audiences. Online the Times has a whole Epstein minisite, analysis, files, the whole works. On the front page? Nada.

We are all assuming, of course, that Trump’s name was redacted from being any sender or recipient of emails, but then again how much does Trump email. And whether through redaction or ludditism, this is what’s saving him. Since he is mentioned 38 bazillion times, none of it is first-person from him at the moment, so no 100% smoking gun. Which is frustrating. Because if you read enough, it becomes very fucking clear that he was deeply involved. But you have to read a ton, be a total freak and then you look like a conspiracy freak. In a perfect world, the “analysis” section of something, like, oh, I don’t know, the fucking paper of record would be a deep analysis of the files as a whole with an eye toward our president, which would be very damning. But nah, the Times needs to print another editorial about trans kids or some shit instead.

It’s crazy how much we still don’t know about the dude still. Like I cannot say I would love to read a comprehensive biography of Epstein but also it’s weird no reputable journalist has tried to write one? It’s weird we still don’t know where his money is coming from.

Another weird thing: every photo with him holding a young woman? He is wrapped around them like a freakin eight-year-old cuddling with his mommy. Always in this awkward hugging position. Kinda weird. Kinda creepy. I mean, cute if I did it, or you did it, but we are not pedos.

Ugh sorry. I am trying to move on in my life here. Since the whole rest of the world is. Gotta get back to freaking out about Minneapolis and Trump stealing the next election.

And Measles! North Carolina has made a measles dashboard hello welcome to hell. And unlike its COVID dashboard, it’s updated twice a week! Two weeks ago we had 14 cases and they were all out in the western part of the state, three in the Charlotte area. Last week a new case popped up four counties away in Nash County, in north central NC. Let’s refesh and check it out this week!

Whew. No new cases.

Fuckin RFK.

Jane has been good again the last few days. She even brushed her teeth without complaining this morning. In two days — ugh another day I’ll probably late with GMHHAY TBD – we have to take her to the dentist where they are going to put her under with general anesthesia and take care of a bunch of cavities in her baby teeth that are baby teeth but she’s still expected to have them for, like, three, four more years, so we gotta get ‘em fixed and my god she hates the dentist on a normal day and I am so scared because GA is terrifying, but also maybe hilarious? And we have to give her some anti-anxiety meds an hour before we take her in which also might be funny? Maybe I’ll get an America’s Funniest Home Video out of it or something but still I AM SCARED.

Even though I, personally, love GA, huff it into me like I am Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet amirite?

Shoegaze playlist for you today, got a new Trauma Ray song on it so you could hear that. Oh god I only have five minutes till my meeting I can’t believe I might get this done before lunch. Better go. Thank you Bill, I think, for she’s green they are pretty great.

Talk to you tomorrow. Ugh that one might be late too I gotta take my truck in to get fixed GAWD can’t I just have one normal day I miss boredom.

Stand with Minnesota.

Buy Girl Scout cookies.

Those two things are not related.