Good morning good morning. Howdy ho. Welcome to Friday well that is pleasant.

Let’s do some LOCAL UPDATES today, little scenes for little people from Suburbian, so perfectly captured in the mainstream press as a bunch of angry rednecks and wine moms.

Just back from Walmart this morning. Reduced sensory stimuli hours, no music.

My god, the place is crawling with employee-shoppers for deliveries and pick-ups. I shit you not there were probably more than 50, shit maybe a hundred, crawling the store. Everywhere I went. It was me, maybe three other civilians, and dozens of employee shoppers with their giant multi-level carts. Lumbering through the store, never stopping at blind corners. Curious.

They seem to be ending the vinyl section at Walmart, it was completely empty save for the end cap. I am obviously a bit sad about this but in like 10 years I have only purchased maybe 5-6 records from Walmart, so, you know. I am part of the problem. I will live.

I must confess to you that I have an overwhelming urge to try Diet Sam’s Cola. I bet it is toxically delicious. Just amazing. Maybe even more chemical than Diet Coke. I wonder who bottles/cans it.

I am relieved to inform you that the Zevia is back, they have moved it back to the Soda aisle from the water aisle, which is reassuring. It is $7.48 for an 8-pack. It occurred to me there might be some willfully complexifying math here and shit, maybe Zevia isn’t actually cheaper at Walmart than the Teet. Let’s check. OK never mind it is $7.89 for six cans at the Teet. Much better deal. basically two cans. But can’t compare to when the Teet puts it on sale: $4.99 per six-pack, or $0.83 a can. This is even cheaper than a 24-pack on Amazon with Subscribe ‘n’ Save. Crazy. My Zevia-sale-hunting is validated.

I am a man and I love a good grocery deal.

Got to check-out and the super-smart, possibly on-the-spectrum dude was working the self-check out. This guy is way too smart to be working as a cashier at Walmart. I have written about him before. Needs to work on his bedside manner, though. There are now two registers reserved for “Spark Drivers,” whatever that is. There is just a printed sign above them saying this, so if you wanted, you could just ignore the sign. So Smart Guy is standing in front of them like a nightclub bouncer. “Next Register” he grunts if you go near them.

I have visions of talking to him one day, telling him he is too smart to work here, why don’t you come work for me, son. But, you know. He’s probably too smart for AdTech or Pool Construction or Boat and RV Storage or graphomania as well.

But also, I’m wondering if there is a correllation between the insane number of employee-shoppers today and these new “Spark Shoppers” lanes, and also there were like six cars at the grocery pick-up today, which used to never get used. Is all of this related? Is Spark something owned by Walmart? I mean if they were Instacart drivers they wouldn’t be wearing Walmart vests, would they? Shit, actually, who knows, this is 21st century America where inter-brand deals are like a religion.

So then I’m wondering, shit, maybe I should talk to this too-smart guy about it. Does he sit here and wonder about such phenomena? Is it macroeconomic? A new business initiative? This guy might know.

But I left him alone. Law of the suburban land is NIMBY, so the New York Times tells me.

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Yesterday we finished listening to all the vinyl that arrived at the house while I was gone. I am all caught up. Which means I can indulge in New Music Friday, there is a lot to catch up. I am listening to the new Gnod, Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol. 1). I love this band. They are a dirty, drony psych band from Manchester. Buncha Salford lads. Been around almost 20 years. Wildly underrated. Can meets Spacemen 3 meets Lungfish or something. Always a good day when there is a new Gnod record.

But I did not buy it, I am listening on streaming, so I cannot align the “today we’re listening to” GMHHAY segment with the “colored vinyl photo” segment today. So instead you get the last record I listened to, a new 7” single of “Bad Indian” by the hilarious, wonderful indigenous punk band Dead Pioneers, out now on pink vinyl on Alternative Tentacles, home of the punk.

There's a woman once who asked me what Indian name was
I said, "It’s Gregg"
And she was so disappointed, she was like
“No! No! It has to be Red Eagle or Two Rivers”

The new Circle K that we have been watching be built for months is now open and I am a proud new member of their loyalty program, so that I could get three bottles for the price of two of two different Baja Blast Zero Sugar MtDew variants and I am telling you right now you cannot get that shit in New York City. Also they had eight icee flavors, all actually working because the store was less than a day old. Will I ever set foot in there again? TBD.

We had another Girl Scout meeting over at Chore House yesterday and Emma asked me to come because Jane was a holy terror at the last one and she had a premonition Jane would be a holy terror at this one too. She was basically correct. But we’ll get to that.

Most of the time I sat outside on the patio with some other dads. One dad — probably my favorite, he owns like 30 acres nearby and his house is the most Fairbanks house I have seen in the eastern United States, it is a freakin Octagon. Anyway he is a public interest lawyer working on immigration, and the topic of AI came up. He talked about how he and a colleague had “programmed” some AI to help them file Habeas petitions against ICE for every person detained.

I have to admit, dear reader, that that seemed like a pretty good use of AI. I am slightly irked by this. But probably not as much as ICE.

Another dad and I jibed about how people at Oracle are losing their jobs to AI and look how great it’s been for Oracle’s stock. Not. Lol. I don’t know what he does for a living, he’s a quiet one, but seems very kind I like a kind dude.

Oh my god this Gnod album is so good.

Emma had a mostly decent birthday, I think. Here. Have a photo of the birthday spread she woke up to. It is missing the Ice Cream cake which was in the freezer.

Now, look. You may not want a 60v Dewalt brushless blower, oh-so-quiet, with 750 CFM, which also comes with a shiny new 60v 4AH battery, but I assure you this is a brilliant gift for my wife and she was suitably pleased. No she does not particularly like roses but they are really cute and I do like them. And she loves Bojangles biscuits so that was nice. And look at that nice piece of art from Jane here have a closer look:

She got to go to lunch with a friend, pick our dinner place. Everything was pretty swell. Except for Jane’s multiple meltdowns.

TO WHIT:

1) I read that Afrika Bambaataa died and it made me sad. (DISCLAIMER: I did not learn about all the horrible stuff until later that night. Alas.) But “Word Destruction” had a huge impact on me as a kid. And I wanted to listen to it in the car on the way home. Close readers of GMHHAY will recall a similar story set-up not too long ago when Neil Sedaka passed. And Jane reacted the exact same way. She absolutely did not want to listen to World Destruction in the car and started screaming at me.

(Side note I raised my voice and asked her why she was behaving this way and, for the first time ever as a parent, she actually stopped yelling. I am doing my best to not take away the wrong lessons from this).

2) At Girl Scouts they endeavored to teach the kids about rules and fairness in games. But they did this by the adults first playing a game that wasn’t fair. The idea was to then talk about their feelings about it, and teach them a bit about rules and fairness, then go back outside and play a game with rules and fairness and show how it was much more fun. They did not warn them in advance of this. Jane did not handle this well at all. She freaked out and got very upset about the unfairness of it all, collapsed crying, talked about how no one liked her it was real heartbreaking. And I didn’t know it was part of a lesson, either. I was outside comforting her while they were all learning the lesson inside. On the one hand I feel like this was a predictable outcome, but on the other, all the other kids handled it so maybe not. I also feel like Jane probably already knows that fairness is good and felt very betrayed by a grown-up in authority leading a manifestly unfair game.

3) Before that incident and once she got over it, she was acting like an absolute lunatic all through Girl Scouts and at bedtime. Nothing too out of the ordinary for her but this is the second Girl Scouts this has happened at. I think having Girl Scouts at Chore House makes her feel like it’s in her “home” and she does not put her school brain to work but rather her home “we’re a bunch of kids playing” brain.

4) She fell asleep in seconds at bedtime, which is rare for her. Normally takes 30-60 minutes.

SO on the drive this morning, I went through each of these issues with her one-by-one, in an understanding way. Man I was so good. Top-notch parenting this was some Dr Becky shit going on.

I asked her about Afrikaa and said I noticed it with Neil Sedaka too and that I realized maybe she didn’t want to hear music from someone who just died. And she was so relieved and said yes, that was it, it makes her sad when people die and she doesn’t want to dwell on it. I said that makes sense and I won’t do that to her anymore but sometimes we honor people by listening to their great works.

I told her it made sense to me that she felt betrayed by a grown-up leading an unfair game and she already knew the lesson that rules are good but some other kids didn’t know that yet and maybe the leader didn’t do it the best way but it is a good lesson to learn, don’t you think? And she felt relieved about that too.

And I told her how fast she went to sleep and how Emma has heard her coughing and how she is probably getting enough sleep and it is very hard for kids to always tell when they’re tired because acting manic seems like it shouldn’t be because of sleepiness but that it can be and she seemed to appreciate that too and man I am feeling like a great dad today.

Let’s just ignore the part where I raised my voice in the car okay?

Got a post-rock playlist for you today, all very big and epic and sweeping and noisy. Good stuff. New Mono album in a couple months, that is exciting. I listened to four Ranges albums yesterday. Very into this Baulta band don’t know anything about them yet. Need to investigate.

All right have a lovely weekend. I am gonna do some gardening today, once I finish computer chores. Took the day off. All very exciting.