Good morning good morning. Beautiful sunny day in North Carolina. The road from Jane’s school to the main road is one of those beautiful farm roads where the trees make a tunnel. And it is exactly aligned with the axis of the sunrise, so every morning I get to drive through this gorgeous tree tunnel with the sun streaming through and, while it is hard to see, it sure is beautiful.

There are a bunch of signs along the road now. Someone bought the land. They are going to develop it. I should probably make sure they’re going to leave the tree tunnel. Do some local activism. I have time, right?

Oh god I have so much to write about today. Do I use it all today? Blow my wad (money metaphor not ejaculative get your head out of the gutter) in one day? It’ll be too long, and I may not have anything for tomorrow if I do that. I should save some. Will I hold some back?

Reader, I will not.

We’re going for it.

First: haven’t been falling asleep well lately. I mean, I am still a pro at falling asleep, but it has been taking 30-40 minutes instead of the usual 5. I am lucky, I know this. I don’t particularly panic through this period but it is weird it has been so consistent this last week. One reason is THE PAIN. Here is my big epiphany:

My neck is fucked (fused due to Klippel Fiel). My sinuses are fucked. Both of these require my head to be in a very specific position to fall asleep without any pain or sinus pressure.

But the thing is: they require my head to be in different places. My neck needs one thing, my sinuses need another, and they fight. Every night.

It fucking sucks.

I mean, it sucks in the context of a coddled, rich, middle-aged white dude’s life, but it is still pain, constant pain, twice over.

Which brings us to:

Luke O’Neil was one one of his Tweetskeet rants and I couldn’t follow it because he quote tweets and argues and goes on in a million directions and you open the app and boom there it all is. You’ve dropped into the middle of a bar with two people ranting at each other and you have no idea what’s going on. And you just wanna talk about New Order.

(As an aside I was wondering if, in the 20+ years we have been acquaintances, I have ever seen Luke while I am sober. This is on me, not him).

But I picked up his main gist, which was… kind of reveletory? He said, basically, that the left needs to reject the idea that anyone should suffer needlessly. Stop saying it’s about selling out one group or another. What if… what if no one suffered?

And I can’t stop thinking about it.

What if the platform for the left was just: End all unwanted suffering?

(Gotta put the unwanted in there otherwise you get a bunch of James T Kirkian dudebros saying “I need my pain.”)

So simple, so… true.

What if no one had to suffer.

Party platform. Boom.

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We are listening to the new Kathrym Mohr album. Out tomorrow, on the amazing Flenser label. Entitled Carve. It is great so far. I do not typically go in for a single human with a single electric guitar but this one I am making an exception for. The album sounds like the sonic swirl of My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher without the rest of the band, and vocals reminiscent of Liz Phair. No other instrumentation. I mean, come on. How can you turn away from a description like that?

Also you get a matching vinyl photo today.

It occurred to me this morning that my trip to Boston at the end of the month to see a bunch of rock bands is actually a Trip Exploring Five Facets of Male Suffering (TEFFMS). To whit:

• Afghan Whigs: Masculinity

• Mercury Rev: Magic

• Wu Lyf: Catharsis

• LCD Soundsystem: Wry bemusement

• Hold Steady: Tragic Heroism

I am gonna be a mess that week I think.

Local news roundup:

Disney has announced additional information about the 4,000-home development they will be making about 10 minutes south of here. It will have a maker-space. It will have a commons based on Peter Pan. It will have a 5-bedroom Disney Cottage you can rent for friends to stay at. Honestly it looks amazing, Disney aside. I have been saying for a decade or more that America needs to re-think the retirement community around something other than golf and this is a great step forward. We are one step closer to my dream of a Rock and Roll Retirement Community. Imagine a maker space in your neighborhood. Great idea. Kinda inspiring for Chore House, actually.

Speaking of which the Bride has arrived and the Bridesmaids arrive today and I have capitalized both of those words for some reason. I am excited to give up Chore House to neighborhood needs for the second time. I love that place being part of the community, what with this and the Girl Scouts meetings and the Neurodivergent-Affirming Pediatric Speech Therapist and OT. Makes it worth it to not be able to do chores over there this weekend.

Apex, the peak of good living, next town over from us, is banning datacenters (for a year). Good for them. Semi-relatedly I have recently learned about this amazing tool for examining America’s grid, datacenters, battery backups, power plants, solar installations, etc. Open Grid Works. It is amazing.

Charges were dropped against a man in Raleigh who stabbed six people in self-defense. Clearly this man needs an entire film franchise developed around him.

Raleigh has instituted the first level of water restrictions around this drought. You can only water your lawn at night. Hotels gotta do the whole placard about towel washing things. Restaurants only serve tap water to those who ask. Hasn’t come to my county yet, but… I expect it will in the next day or two? Maybe. Bit more purple out here than downtown Raleigh but this drought ain’t lettin’ up soon.

The woman who has been taking our order at the pizza place for a decade, who has literally known Jane since she was born, has disappeared and been replaced by a new, younger woman and I don’t know whether to panic or ask them what happened to her or just roll with it. BUT I will say that since the pandemic I have been tipping them an extraordinary amount. Like I was tipping like $20 during the pandemic because I was so thankful they were open and then when the pandemic ended it seemed so petty to go back down and tip less for them doing the same amount of work, so I just… kept at it. BUT now that she has left, AND last week they put in one of those Toast register thingies, so… good news. I get to tip less again now.

Which is good because that Massive Attack/Tom Waits 12” was announced for pre-order. Of it, Tom says “"One day many years ago, I accepted an invitation from Massive Attack to collaborate. Their long release delay never worried me. Today, as in all of mankind's yesterdays, guarantees this type of song will never go out of style. Man's folly of fiascos is a feast for the flies.” Exciting.

It is eco vinyl in 3 random colors so I bought two and that cost a bunch of money and also the fuckin Bats need new homes and I gotta pay a bunch of money for bat houses again. I love bats but they should pay for their own homes. So I guess I’m spending money again. It was good while it lasted. Not spending money rules. I am going to try again today.

I have started going to the other grocery store because Trump Jeep lady bums me out and Chatty Old Cash Register man requires more of me than I can deliver at 7:30 AM. I feel like a coward for doing this but it is pretty awesome.

Went there this morning because… well… okay. We last left off on the topic of Grapes when I had the epiphany that you don’t need to buy the biggest bag of grapes at the store. Surprise GMHHAY hit topic, that one. Several of you wrote in to say you had that epiphany too, or thanked me for sharing it. Weird. You never know what’s gonna strike a chord here at GMHHAY.

SO, kinda keeping with that, last time I bought grapes, as per new uszhe, I bought the bag with the least volume in it. BUT there has been this whole parallel thing going on, where I have been buying increasingly gigantic grapes. I was trying to buy organic for a long time, but the three grocers near me all stopped selling organic grapes. So now I’m going the other direction, toward bioengineered behemoths: the largest grapes science can give me.

For a while, this worked great, and the bigger grapes were so delicious. Of course a part of this was their non-organic-nature, but it was working just great. The bigger the sweeter.

But I took it too far this week. Seriously. These grapes take me three bites to eat. And I got a big ole dirty mouth. You can imagine how an eight-year-old girl would react to this. She is not impressed by these grapes. She is not eating them. So we’re going through this charade where I put them in her lunch box, they come home untouched, and I put them straight into the compost.

There is such a thing as too big of a grape.

So I think we are at an end here with giant grapes. Bought new grapes today. Still the smallest bag, but the grapes are normal-sized again.

Oh shit this Katherine Morh record has a song with common Loon samples and a gong. My god I love common loons. Got an amazing pen and ink drawing of one in the bar area by the kitchen. I’ll take a picture for you. Tomorrow.

There has been a new poll and Steyer seems to have been the chief beneficiary of Swalwell’s implosion commupance. I know he’s a billionare but I really do like his book Drawdown. I mean he’s not the author, just the editor and funder and one of the forces behind it. But it is a seriously amazing book. I wonder if he escheews it in this new world where caring about the climate is passé. I hope not. It was inspirational to me. I suggest you check it out. And thank you, Jenna, for telling me about it years ago. Shit I need to text Jenna.

Which leads me to my last topic of the day, before the Jane segment: I am fucked with nostalgia right now. I am thinking of old friends and lovers and dead friends and I am constantly fighting the urge to text people from my past and say all the things that are in my head and I know that’s an annoying and cliche’d thing for middle-aged men to do so I am not doing it but my god I wish I lived in a world where people stayed in touch and texted real shit to each other. I hate I am going to die without having talked truth with all these people from my past. People I haven’t thought of in years. People who probably never think of me. I still think of that kid in Minneapolis who walked around a mall mocking me and then I smashed his head against a bench when he wasn’t expecting it. I wish I hadn’t done that. I still think of every ex, every time I fucked something up because I was young and stupid and I feel like I have unfinished business with, like, two hundred people in this world and now they are dying off and the whole thing is fucking me up real bad and I am ready for this phase to pass please.

Except also I don’t have any meetings today and maybe I’ll just spend the day texting people out of the blue.

Jane has been amazing these last few days. Cough is gone. No tantrums. Telling us stories about her days at school. Being kind. It’s just phenomenal. It w

ill end, I’m sure, but my god, what a week for Jane. She told a story about how one friend at school was mean to another friend at school and she went to that be-meaned friend and said “I still like you you are my friend.”

FUCK YES EMPATHY.

End all needless suffering.

Ambient playlist for you today.

Whew okay that was a lot. You’re not gonna get through it but that’s okay my head is better for it. And the bolding helps. Tik Tok of writing, man. Swipe ahead to the next topic if gigantor grapes annoy you amirite?

Also I remembered I have BIG NEWS for tomorrow so I think we did the right thing here.

Over and out.