Good morning good morning boy howdy. Hello. How are you? Enjoying life during wartime? Enjoying plastics while they last? Good, good. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Jane went to school this morning, fist time in two weeks. She is probably sick. I am probably infecting the whole school with that horrible virus that’s been going around up north. Forgive me, mother, I have sinned. I said this to myself in the drop-off line as she got out of the car. I realized I like it: saying “forgive me” to a fictional benevolent deity. I tried “father” first, it felt wrong. “Mother” does too, but slightly less so. Might try “padre” next time.

I was talking to Ashley and Emma in Boston and I verbalized something that’s been always true for me: even though I am basically an atheist, I still always envision myself at the Pearly Gates at death. Like exactly like a cartoon: Clouds, a lectern, an angel with a clipboard. I blame George Burns for all of it. Or cartoons. I also always picture a nice debrief section where I can ask any questions and I get to ask not just things like “who shot JFK” but also shit like “how many times did I fart.” Unknowable shit. The deep, the profound, the ineffable. None of it is gonna happen, of course, but I love to fantasize about it.

Just returned from the grocery store. There was no sale on Zevia. My new defense against the talkative old man at the register is to be even more talkative. Started talking about my trip to Boston, shut him right down, he wandered off and talked to another customer.

I have provisionally selected Quaker Bars as my new breakfast bar. Quaker is a great storied company, but sadly owned by Pepsi. And the bar was too chocolatey, didn’t make me feel penitent enough. Do they make granola bars with rhubarb in them? Thorns?

While gone on our trip, a package came in: enough deodorant to get me to roughly the age of 65, assuming Emma doesn’t steal too many. They have stopped making it in America, I had to import that shit from Canada. I didn’t want to go whole hog unless I was getting some weird Canadian variant but everything looks (and smells) okay, so I’m gonna order another 16 sticks which should get me past the average lifespan of an American male. One less thing to worry about. I am beset with product cancellations as I age, capitalism really goes to creative lengths to make you feel obsolete: no more deodorant for you, no more 1 mg nicotine lozenges, no more preferred flavor of Turkey Chomps. It was all downhill when Nabisco cancelled Twigs in the 90’s. My god I miss Twigs.

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We are listening today to my favorite solo female black metal shoegaze band, Abriction, my god I love them so much. Forbidden Bounds, on vinyl, lucky to get it, it’s like 250 copies, sold out on her Bandcamp in like 2 seconds and I lucked out getting one of the copies idealistic bands send to independent record stores. It’s always a crap-shoot ordering from some store in Topeka or something, I have had to do it twice lately, once for this and once for the June of ‘44 live LP. Both times it arrived. Whew.

They are touring. No idea how. Will it be solo with backing tracks? A full band oh god that would be amazing.

And hey another day where you get a colored vinyl photo to match the music.

Two more records arrived in the mail yesterday. They will trickle in for months. But I didn’t buy anymore. I haven’t bought a record in seven days. Someone give me a chip.

Speaking of being out of touch and marching toward obsolescence, this was a banger tweet and I can’t believe it didn’t get a single like:

I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.

Last night as I was falling asleep I was reading about a possible Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia’s main chemical processing facility. Might have happened, might not. No way to know. We don’t have news anymore. Maybe we’ll run out of plastics, maybe not.

But, you know, I do more or less believe the Iranians when they say if Drumpy Poo starts bombing their power plants, they will start bombing energy infrastructure and desalinization pants. 8PM tonight ET is the current deadline, if he doesn’t move it again. I thought to myself, laying in bed wishing I could sleep, “boy howdy if Iran isn’t gonna take the deal, and they plan on hitting those desalinization plants in Israel, would make sense to do it tonight. Why0 wait for that orange dummy’s deadline? And if they do that, shit, Israel is gonna lose it and shit I could wake up to a Nuke having gone off.”

So, I mean, yes, I was spiraling. But also yes, it is increasingly realistic. We are pulling the modern world at the seams. It is terrifying.

Also I am pretty convinced we lost this war already. I mean, I am a Gen X defeatist depressive, so this is probably my default position, but I am trying to compensate for it, and I see no way out. I started thinking in my head about what could stop this war and, really, at this point, I think there is only one deal that’ll do the trick.

And so I started neurotically crafting that deal in my head in bed, hoping to personally save the world or something. The only question is do we end up there before or after utter devastation, global ruin, nukes? Will Trump do it quick to bounce back in the midterms or will we have to wait till It Happens, or until congress gets its balls back?

But in the end, I think the deal is pretty clear. So I sketched it all out, like I do with AI religions and compulsory compensation schemes and plots to buy Meetup and plans for getting a second entrance into the studio. Eventually I have to get out of bed and write it all down, because I won’t be able to sleep until I do. Not neurodivergent at all what are you talking about.

So, then, my outline for the (mostly) inevitable Iranian peace deal:

• We pick a number. Will it be as high as $1 trillion? Possibly maybe. Maybe half. Maybe a trillion. Doesn’t really matter, for reasons. Make it big to get the Iranians to sign on. Call it a trill. Reparations.

• Iran keeps control of the strait. They charge what they want. They keep charging until they get their trillion and rebuild their country. Then the straits re-open for free to everyone. Only a few caveats:

  • They cannot do favorites: all countries pay the same rate.

  • They cannot klepto the money. It has to go to the rebuilding of their country, and there are payments to everyone who lost a family member. There will be some independent auditing.

  • Military spending is fine but it is fixed to a percentage of GDP and replacement costs of what they lost.

  • (There are 30,000 tankers through the strait each year. At a $1,000,000 toll each, this would add rougly $10 to a barrel of oil, and it would take roughly 33 years to pay off $1 trillion in reparations. The reason I say it doesn’t really matter is I suspect we’ll be dead or mostly off oil by the time this number is hit. Call it $2 trillion. Whatever.)

• All financial sanctions against Iran are lifted

• Iran still cannot pursue a nuclear bomb and they will let the inspectors return.

• We make Israel stop their aggression, we insist on a binding peace treaty between Israel and Iran or we stop funding them.

• Israels pull out of Gaza, West Bank and Lebanon. This is of course a sticker. If this is an agreement between America and Iran only, we agree this will be our default position and we will use all our pressure to make this happen, including pulling funding and military aid.

• We will support peacekeeping in Gaza and the West Bank

• Iran will stop aiding all proxies including Hezbollah

• There will be no payments for reparations from Iran to Middle Eastern countries. America will take this on with those countries.

There you go. I suppose it is also likely Trump will continue in his stupid-ass bombing, though I don’t think that will open the Strait. He will need to use troops, lots of troops, and I think he worries that’s the end for him, but he also pretty thinks he’s unstoppable so I guess it’s not completely out of the picture. He is old he may well roll the dice. Then thousands of Americans will die, and the Strait will stay closed, and he’ll lose the mid-terms even worse. And in the end I suspect the deal still needs to look like the one above.

God I don’t know why I am doing this. You don’t want to read it, I don’t want to think about it, and I abandoned my “public thinker” post years ago before I hubristically believed I could apply my internet and advertising expertise to geopolitics.

Still, were I an internet gambling addict, I’d put money on this being where we end up.

I would like to thank Nick Cave for writing something about AI that didn’t make me completely disappointed in him, perhaps there’s hope for old farts yet. What a relief.

Yesterday while Jane was home, she developed a comprehensive “Jane Credit” system, made me a Jane Credit card, set up accounts for me and Emma and made a FAQ page and individual account pages. It was all very robust. I do not know where this came from. Feels too fully formed to have sprung entirely from her mind. Maybe one of her friends in Boston did something like this. But I love it. I spent a Jane Credit on a hug and then got a Jane Credit for giving her popcorn. It was the best.

She is in denial about her illness, but Emma thinks she’s got it too and made an appt for the Minute Clinic today so if she tests positive for strep, we’ll pull Jane I guess. I dunno, man. She was just so excited to go to school and I felt so bad even talking about her staying home so I pulled the “you are responsible enough to decide for yourself” routine and… well… she isn’t, I guess. Ha.

Every local parent reading this is gonna be so pissed at me.

Morning drive playlist, Apple Music’s shuffle did a good job easing me back into my 7AM drives to school. What parent doesn’t want to listen to early Coil in the school drop-off line. Lol if you had told me back when I first discovered Horse Rotovator that this is what I would be doing while listening to Coil at the age of 53… I was gonna be a druid or some shit. Jesus.

So much more I wanted to write to you about today. And I have the time. And the energy. But… I should stop. This is long enough. I will save my rants about Anaïs and money and malfeasant arborists and whatnot for another day. Tomorrow, in fact.

Until then.