Good morning good morning. Nearly choked on a small bit of Turkey Chomps just now. Seems like it would be a fitting way for me to go.

Had another flying-to-Paris dream last night. I was working in an office (shudder) and me and Megan Peck both happened to be going to the same wedding, some mutual friend of ours. We were both taking a week off. I was going with some new girlfriend. The boss was one of those high-powered corporate ladies, kinda like my boss at Ernst & Young in 1996 whom I loved and died of cancer a couple years later. She took Megan under her wing and hated me, which kinda sucked. I would then proceed to rib her for her favoritism in that Gen-X/Bostonian joshing/messing-with-you/fucking-with-you/giving-you-shit kinda way that we would do to each other that was super mean and annoying and I still haven’t completely rid myself of it. It did not go over well. My career prospects were very limited. Best to skedaddle to gay Paree stat.

Just back from the grocery store, bought myself some low sodium soy sauce as part of this god damned high blood pressure journey. Made the terrible mistake of looking at the nutrition labels for my regular soy sauce and the new, lower sodium version. Holy hell. My regular soy sauce gives me 41% of my sodium intake in one serving. Upon returning home, I went to the kitchen, got out a measuring cup, and dumped as much soy sauce into it as I put into my daily stir fry. Doing the math, it calculates out to about 120% of my daily recommended sodium intake, right there. Jesus H Murphy. Prior to this, I have been using significantly less soy sauce, probably about one serving. BUT STILL. With “reduced sodium” soy sauce, I would be getting about 50% of my daily sodium intake, using the old amount, and about about 15% of the regular. Can I make that work? Will it still taste okay? We shall see, we shall see. We will do this at the expense of now consuming some “sodium benzoate,” found in the low sodium variety. Is this bad? It is probably bad.

I’m happy I did this, there have been many volume-related questions I have around things like this. Most notably: how much is one piss? I have for years been meaning to piss into a measuring cup. I mean, I don’t know. Is one piss a pint? A quart? A gallon? No clue. Do you know? Is my piss bigger than yours? Wanna have a piss comparison?

Eh. Moving on.

Car stuff:

Gotta respect people who own Subarus that are sedans or sports cars instead of the normal Alaska Girl wagon. I especially love Subaru sports car enthusiasts. What a weird-ass car to get into.

The state of NC is going to drop emissions testing from its annual inspections, which, cool, I guess. I thought at first this was some Trump thing, but no. Just normal republican assholery. Though apparently they say they can hit their emissions targets without them? Maybe, maybe. My jury is still out.

What is really getting my goat, though, is the whole window tinting situation. You know that Seinfeld episode with the “do not duplicate” label on keys and half the people knowing where to get those duplicated and the other half not knowing? That is the situation in this state, writ large, with window tinting. Front window dark tinting is illegal in this state but everyone but me fucking does it and it drives me mad. They all go to some inspection place other than the one I go to, get passed anyway, and drive around with illegal tinting, and the cops do nothing (as they should, because cops), while I follow the law like some schlub. Window tinting laws are bullshit anti-liberal nonsense anyway just get rid of the law stop penalizing idiot law abiders like yours truly.

G Wagon lady is gone gone gone. Haven’t seen her in the pickup line all year, but also I drive by her house all thew time, no G Wagon lady. Did they move? Decide they couldn’t afford a G Wagon? No idea. Inquiring ambivalent G Wagon enthusiasts want to know.

Every morning, at the exact same time and spot on US highway 15-501, I pass this amazingly kitted-out Sprinter, converted to a camper. It is driving southbound, every morning, same time. That thing is nice. But who drives around and commutes in a kitted out Sprinter? All very confusing.

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We’re listening to the Flying Saucer Attack / Jessica Bailiff record from 2003. They made a band for this. It is called Clear Horizon. Album is self-titled. I bought it last October, upon learning about it. Listening to it again because I am listening to a bunch of vinyl because Apple Music shit the bed and stopped playing music, the one thing it really ought to do. Bit the bullet and did an OS update yesterday. We’ll see if that helped. But I listened to a bunch of vinyl yesterday and it was very rewarding so I am going to do it again today. This album is awesome. Ambient space rock droney with David from FSA singing occasionally. I think I knew Jessica Bailiff at some point. Am I imagining that? I might be imagining that.

Bought tickets for the Tricky and Tear Garden shows. No idea how I am going to go to either one of them. We will see, we will see.

Politics stuff:

This gerrymandering, gutting of the voting rights act, return of Jim Crow shit is fucking horrible, absolutely catastrophic, foreseen but not foreseen at this speed. I was so, so optimistic we would take the house in the mid-terms but now.. fuck. I mean, there’s still a chance. Before I would have put the odds at 90-10 we take the house, now I think they’re maybe 55-45. There’s still a decent chance Trump stays so unpopular that the cracking of districts and spreading of the republican vote to dilute minorities will not surmount the tidal wave of unpopularity of Republicans, but, fuck. If we don’t take the house in the mid-terms, that is bad bad bad.

(This is not to diminish in any way the horror that this represents in basic equity and justice as one party methodically unwinds the plain intent of several amendments to the constitution, the intent of which was perfectly-well documented. It is funny how these “originalists” pretend Amendments don’t really count as part of the constitution).

I realized I cannot even fathom the ‘28 election. It is heartening to see a little pep in Jeffries’s step and say things along the lines of “we are going to beat their asses and make them miserable” about the fascists, but he is targeting 28. I mean. What else can he do. At this point we might get a single additional seat out of Maryland in 26. But yeah. An election in 2028? It’s unfathomable at the moment. Wait lemme clarify. It’s not unfathomable we have an election: I cannot predict, at all, under what circumstances that election will be.

All the more maddening because people were fucking telling Democrats for years that the Supreme Court was a problem and no one did a god damn thing about it. Looking at you, RBG.

The silver lining, I suppose, oh so thin, is that the Senate is far more up for the taking than anyone predicted in 2026. For years everyone said a senate majority for dems was unreachable in ‘26, and friend: it is so, so reachable.

But still. Republicans in congress aren’t completely paralyzed and inept and they are doing a half-decent job, with the help of Fetterman, of saving Trump despite himself with a bunch of tricks up their sleeve like pausing the gas tax, reconciliation 3.0, and some bullshit with crypto.

I hate to admit this, people of all stripes slag on him, but Mike Johnson is getting shit done. in the immortal words of (movie) Èomer, The white (grand) wizard is cunning.

Hopefully their optimism about their gerrymandering reduces their urgency to get anything done and then their optimism proves misplaced.

Shit, man, even Report of the Week is losing hope.

My wife is awesome, though. Emma is, contrary to her entire personality, going camping this weekend with Jane and the girl scouts. Dudes are not really allowed on this trip, but in any case, I got friends coming to town this weekend oh, so sad, daddy can’t go camping, one of his primary childhood trauma triggers. It would be one of yours too if you camped for two weeks straight on a frozen lake bed.

AND: she taught herself screen printing and made a bunch of t-shirts for the girl scout troop and they are very cute and she is going to make me a black goth one in XXL and I am going to wear it to Man Ray or something.

This is good because the last three band t-shirts I have purchased are not black and I am starting to worry when I come across the random goth person in the Triangle, they will not know that, I, too, a 54 year-old suburban parent, am goth AF. We saw some goths and parked next to them the other day and the Walmart and they had no idea how black my soul truly is. I looked like I might be coaching a youth baseball team or something, it was so humiliating.

Relatedly, Goth Girl is gone from the Pharmacy, which is very sad. I suppose she was on some sort of residency. I mean. It’s sad, but at least I no longer have to stress about what to wear to pick up my blood pressure medication for fear of me wearing a Chewbacca shirt while she’s wearing that sick-ass Diamanda Galas shirt, that was bleak.

Important question: What is a fajita? What makes a fajita a fajita? How are you supposed to eat a fajita? Emma and I shared a plate (is that what you call it? A plate? no, right?) of fajitas at the mexican restaurant the other day. They were served on a skillet, like you do, which I guess is part of what makes a fajita a fajita, right? But it was… well, it was a simulacra. They were clearly not cooked on the cast iron, the chicken fajita strips had no sear marks, no blackening at all.

Part of me wanted to complain about this, but it grows more complex. The restaurant is a local-ish/regional chain of Margaritas-n-Mexican-American sort of fare, kinda like tex-mex if we are talking assorted strains of Mexican American. In that case, the fajitas — mostly an American concoction — should indeed have some blackening.

But in reality, this being North Carolina, the place is exclusively employed by actual Latinos instead of blonde texan prom queens, and, thusly, the chicken is cooked in a far more mexican manner.

So… you know. Felt weird telling Mexicans how to cook…. Mexican food?

From Wikipedia:

Fajita is a Tex-Mex or Tejano diminutive term for little strips of meat cut from the beef skirt, the most common cut used to make fajitas. The word fajita is not known to have appeared in print until 1971, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. (The word faja is Spanish for "strip", or "belt", from the Latin fascia, "band".)

ALSO: are you supposed to wrap them in a tortilla? Do you have to? Yes, right? Is it still a fajita if you eat it like a salad?

I don’t even know, man. I am trapped in a liberal/progressive version of that Star Trek episode where the robots self-implode because of logic traps. WHAT EVEN IS A FAJITA.

Jane got a chain letter from a friend. Bull. Shit. Thank god she is not super into filling it out. She is mildly worried about offending the friend who sent it to her. I suggested we just go buy a bunch of packs of stickers (this chain letter is using stickers, not dollars) and mail em to her friend and be done with it. It is fascinating watching her little brain go through all the consequences, facets, and particularities of the chain letter. She applied a phenomenal amount of processing power into making her decision.

But in the end, she dropped it. She will not be mailing out the chain letter.

I am a proud papa.

Seems dumb to give you an Apple playlist while a) Apple music won’t even play on my Apple computer and b) Tim Cook is busy off in China fluffing both Trump and Xi simultaneously. So instead enjoy this sick-ass recent performance of Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin doing their Stygian Bough thing on KEXP man it is so good.

Righty-O. Have a jolly good day. Off you pop. Pip pip.