Good morning good morning. I am so tired. Oh my god I am so tired. Oh my god. Oh my god. Had another “manic thinking” night, couldn’t let a thought process go, had to get up, and write shit down. Work-related this time. Let’s go look at it. Oh god oh my god.

Four perfectly formatted, bulleted pages, 1,500 words. Well okay. At least it doesn’t read like complete insanity in the cold light of morning.

PSA I messed up the issue number yesterday. I called it #1726. Same as Wednesday. It was issue #1727. I have corrected it on the online version. Sorry about that.

Thank you for all your birthday wishes, I feel loved. I love a day where people from your entire life text you at once and you become mildly stressed to rekindle contact with people you don’t speak to enough, but have to do it all at once it is super fun. Also keen on being reminded of my inevitable mortality. I do like taking the day off, though, I like to add a little specialness to it. I have not always taken the day off, but I’ve given myself this little indulgence as I’ve gotten older. I had a few real bad birthday work days and… not a fan. Like cmon man yes I am working on my birthday but it’s still my birthday.

Not this shit again.

Took the day off, wrote about Refugia, to the usual muted response I get when I do that sort of thing but that is fine I am not trying to be a public intellectual here or anything. Paid some construction workers. Went to Walmart and Recycling and Shake Shack with Emma.

Walmart’s garden center is in full bloom. They didn’t have any organic butter, no one has any organic butter. (Semi-relatedly, this taste-test from Wirecutter on assorted butters was more interesting than it had any right to be). Am I weirdo for trying to keep my butter organic? Everyone buys organic milk why not organic butter? Why don’t we have a country for refugees. Life is full of mysteries.

They have definitely completely gotten rid of the vinyl at Walmart. I am sorta sad about that. Think they might be getting rid of the DVDs and BluRays too. What a world, what a world.

Through this whole morning run of destinations, Emma was in the queue on her phone for Olivia Rodrigo tickets. She entered the queue at position number 67,000 or so.

The arena has a capacity of 20,000.

Olivia is playing two nights.

Assuming the demand was the same for both shows, and assuming a 2-ticket average demand (though it is almost certainly larger), Olivia would need to add an addition 10-12 shows to fulfill the demand for the Carolinas.

Needless to say, we did not get tickets.

It was probably wise of Olivia to play it safe and do arena shows instead of stadiums. The venues Olivia is playing are about 1/3 the size of the venues from the Eras tour. But the demand is vastly outstripping supply, she did not leave enough blank dates in her schedule to add more shows, and a lotta people are gonna be real sad.

While we were at Shake Shack, I overheard some girls say “it’s over, it’s sold out,” as they were sitting there looking at their phones. Bereft. Same boat as us.

At that moment, were still at position 30,000 or so in the Ticketmaster queue.

Also Ticketmaster clearly referred our home to Cloudflare as a possible bot farm so for the last 48 hours I have had to fill out hundreds of CAPTCHAs on every god damn site in the world. All because I am a normal human being trying to buy a ticket to a concert in the normal manner. Super cool.

Shake Shack is trying to BBQ, by the way. I think I could be into it if they had pulled pork but they’re just doing ribs. The Mac n Cheese is okay but it’s the same cheese sauce as the cheese fries which is weird.

There are no hush puppies.

Oh, Carolina.

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Listening to the new Broken Social Scene this morning. It is called Remember the Humans and it has all that giant BSS sound with like 200 instruments going at once and giant anthemic vocals. I am only on track three, but so far no perfect pop tune like Anthems or Lover’s Spit or even Water in Hell from the vastly underrated Forgiveness Rock Records, which might be their best, just like Heaven is Forever is the best Hold Steady album and Honey’s Dead is the best Chain album. I totally stan mid-career albums from dude rock bands I guess.

Other than those lovely errands with my wife, I spent most of yesterday mounting a 15” deep, 36” wide shelf six feet up on a wall so I could do this. BEHOLD:

Like I said before, some men might constantly think of the Roman Empire all the time, but some constantly think of the Space Dock scene in Star Trek The Motion Picture.

It’s right at the bottom of the stairs as I come down to the basement for work in the morning. Can’t put the thing on the timer, but every morning I can tap the button and turn it on as I walk to my office. And I did this morning for the first time and yeah, man. yeah. It felt good. Did it alleviate the horrors of war, fascism, genocide? Nah. But you can feel that little dent it made.

Even if it was 0.5% of an alleviation, you can fuckin feel it.

Let me ask you this: Have you noticed an increase in the number of variably pronounced words in the world? I am noticing more and more that people permanently differ on pronunciations of things like band names and even brands.

For example: Not too long ago, the gardening company Vego, who makes a lot of great raised beds, did one of those influencer days. You know the ones, where they invite a bunch of YouTubers to their offices and wine and dine them and show them products and give them interviews and whatnot. And I watch a lot of gardening Youtube. And amongst the several YouTubers whom I watched that went to the Influencer Day or are sponsored with free beds by Vego, even these people pronounce the brand name differently.

Some pronounce it “Vee-Go,” which is how I thought it had been pronounced for months prior to this event.

But several people at the event pronounced it “vedge-oh.”

And no one seems to mind.

This is not the only time I have seen this.

What the hell! Where is our 90’s-oughts obsession with brand consistency! What is this social media age doing to our brains! MORAL PANIC.

I think I need to collect some more examples. Maintain a list. Start a database. Maybe a single-serving website. You know, delve in like you would in 2005 or so.

My god I miss single-serving websites. I mean they’re still out there. So are blogs. So are utopians. So are saints.

Didn’t see much of Jane yesterday, she had Girl Scouts and Emma handled that, and it was my birthday so I slept in and Emma did drop-off. She did gift me a 3D-printed poop emoji, though, so that is nice. The card attached said I HAVE TO POOP DO YOU HAVE TO POOP. Meant a lot to me.

We are doing her field trip this morning. It’s at a museum or something I don’t know. I took the day off to help Emma chaperone because the last one was a catastrophe. It is possible my help will be refused, because I didn’t bother going through the background check. But, I mean, I’m just gong to a public place to help keep an eye on my own daughter that’s okay, right?

We shall see, we shall see.

Playlist of all new stuff for you. Hot jamz, cool new singles, you know, get the shit the algorithm is foisting on you right here. or on me. Let’s all live in other people’s algorithms. I do not know how Charli keeps making so much music it really is a lot. This is the best so far of the new Ladytron. I am optimistic. New Muna seems a good time too. So-so on the new Father John Misty he woulda given me real pre-order dilemma angst were I not on a vinyl-buying moratorium. Actually I think I own vinyl from, let me count: nine of these bands. I will probably by the Ladytron. I bought the BSS sight unseen. Don’t think I’ll buy any of the rest.

I AM RECOVERING.

Have a lovely weekend. Wish me luck in this field trip adventure. And CHORES.