Good morning. Good morning. Hello. Howdy. It is Thursday. Woo. Week has been a doozy. Just back from the grocery store. The gymnastics coach lady that I see every morning that may be a Trumper was in the lot again. I see this woman everywhere. I pay this woman because she owns the gym my daughter goes to for gymnastics. She was walking right towards me. I KNOW she knows I am a client. I was ready to say hi. She just looked away. COME ON MAN I GIVE YOU MONEY.

Picked up some Ovengold turkey, always a fan of mysterious companies of whom you don’t even know is the CEO. Trying to get off the Chomps, too much sodium, always craving protein deep in the pit of my stomach, almonds usually do the trick but sometimes I just need meat. Chicken, made at home, is ideal but who has that time. Ovengold is only marginally better than chomps. Both are suffering from… cured meats issues? I guess? Cured meats are bad, Europe has decided. Which is hilarious since Europe sicked that shit on america. But, man. What is curing, what is a cured meat? Do we even know? What is the state of this science? Is a salted turkey curing? Is ham curing? Is any meat not cured? Are there shades of risk here? What about “these nitrate-free deli meats where they use celery and shit? A mirage? Can anyone in the world tell me without using an AI or me reading a sheaf of research papers who can you even trust anymore.

I mean this article seems trustworthy enough: It’s all cured, always has been space meme. Oh also all processed meats, not just cured. But who knows, man, maybe MAHA built an entire fake university and spent a billion dollars on SEO to send me that article I mean weirder things have happened these days. What even IS UT MD Anderson?

I kid I kid.

Do I?

I kid.

Living in the modern world.

Got another one of those people who subscribed for a few days then unsibscribed. This happens to about 90% of my new subscribers. They can’t handle the verbose pedantry maaaan. So I took the initiative this time and I re-worded the “about this newsletter” verbiage, that had been previously the same for all 1700+ issues. It now reads:

GMHHAY has its fans and they are enthusiastic. Maybe you’ll end up one of them! BUT:

This way-too-frequent email is about pretty much nothing. Or everything. And not in a fun, Robin Sloan sort of way. Not in a brain candy, “one interesting thing a day” way. Chaotically. Verbosely. Tangentially. Mostly unedited. Seriously, it's like 1-2k words, five days a week. Be warned. 

You might be here because you just read something good or smart about something you know or care about. This is almost certainly not going to happen again for at least a month. 90% of new subscribers leave in a week. It’s too much for them. They call it “boring.” They call it “unfocused.” And, my friend, that is the point. Punditry is a path toward destruction. Ambition is a mirage. Rejoice in the mundane.

Some gardening, some tech, a lot more politics than you expect or want, some advertising but mostly chores and long boring posts about dreams or Walmart.

Might kill that last paragraph. Workshopping. Haven’t changed the thing in seven years and then I changed it like ten times yesterday.

Join the GMHHAY slack! Reply to this email and ask for an invite if you’re a human who likes chatting with other humans about topics such as these within!

Listening to the new Squirrel Bait reissues today. Currently on the self-titled EP, will be moving on to Skag Heaven after this. They are great. Was I snob about Squirrel Bait “back in the day” because I preferred the more moody, properly depressed, sad-ass work of Grubbs’ and Walford’s later period (Breeders aside)? Yes, yes I was. This shit is great what was I thinking. Not all music has to be slow and moody, Rick.

Speaking of slow and moody the world is ready for a Mojave 3 reunion, Rachel and Neil take what you did with the apotheosistic, revelatory Slowdive reunion and do it all over again. Do a tour, then make a new Mojave 3 album that is as good as, if not better, than anything the band did in their heyday. I mean you are already Rock Legends for pulling off one of the greatest reunions ever. Why not do it twice? I mean the first album recently got a very limited edition re-issue by (perplexingly) Rough Trade (and not 4AD, why?) and everyone was pissed it was so limited and 4AD (perplexingly not Rough Trade) promised this was just the beginning with “more to come” but come on man it’s been a couple months now. The world needs more Mojave 3.

Have seen both bands a ton, but she show that remains with me was Neil solo acoustic at Lili’s in Somerville sometime in the 90s. On top of being a shoegaze legend and an absurdly huge Big Star fan, Neil is fucking amazing solo live. Just amazing. Maybe one of the best solo acoustic shows I have ever seen. Jesus.

So I stopped by Chore House yesterday and picked up my junior high school yearbooks. It has been bugging me for a couple weeks now that I can barely remember anything about junior high, can’t remember any of my friends, even though I am (pretty sure) most of my friends from elementary school went to my junior high. The mystery was gnawing at me. Decided the yearbooks could be the solution. Been dragging those things around for 40 years, never looked at them once until yesterday.

Don’t let anyone let you throw anything away ever. Tell them of this tale.

So… somewhat underwhelming. Went about as I expected. Had a bunch of friends, mostly nerds, some cool kids still. Junior high was when I went from popular kid to nerd, so I seem to have basically changed friend groups. Most of my elementary school friends are listed in the photos as classmates, but few of them signed my yearbook, even though the thing has a ton of signatures. I guess I just became uncool? Checks out. I looked at the names of the signatures and, amazingly, my 8th grade self took the time to label each yearbook signing, so even if some kid signed in an illegible signature, I knew who it was. I mean COME ON that is some solid future planning. I’d peruse the book and signatures, see someone and be like “oh yeah they were my friend” or “oh yeah I had a crush on her” or whatever but none of it really, like, triggered any memories with the person.

In the end, kinda a dead-end I guess. Though pretty fun for the fashions and whatnot. I will be sprinkling some photos from the foray into GMHHAY for the next few days I suspect.

Yesterday was Jane’s “Celebration of Learning” at school, and I almost missed it because I had a bunch of interviews added to my calendar and I do not usually have meetings at that time so I did not block it out whoops. But I pulled it off, so Jane got to have a DADDY SURPRISE. She loved it. My god those kids are so into doing weird presentations for their parents. Last year it was fossils. This year pollinators, which is, of course, right up my alley. It was super cute and I filmed it all and loved every second of it.

Afterward there was a side show of every kid in the class: a picture of them as a baby, a picture of them now, and a picture of them as a family. School had been nagging us for these pictures but you know what? Schools kinda know what they’re doing. Those kids fucking LOVED it. Watched the slide show like ten times all the way through. Patted each other on the back and hugged each other when their slide came up. Unreal.

Can’t show you too many pictures of all this because, you know, other people’s kids. But I will try and show a few.

Driving to school this morning, Jane told me that bands with a boy and a girl singer were fine, so Mojave 3, Now Now, Patrick Watson and Charlotte Cardin, and Cogotronics International all passed muster with her this morning. Then we came upon “Panic” by the Smiths, and we skipped it. Jane learned to skip Morrissey songs and Smith songs on the radio by the time she was two but we hadnt talked about it in a while. She asked me why and I tried to explain xenophobia to her. Easy enough. Then we got into the whole thing of what art do you consume and is it okay to consume art made by bad people and of course talked about Harry Potter which, luckily, kids her age do not give a fuck about thank god. It was fun.

We did our Duolingo together in the car, the Spanish and Yiddish mixing with the duclet sounds of non-problematic Everything but the Girl. She asked me to tell her the story again of Robert Levon Been and his dad and BRMC covering The Call and I was happy to but also thought maybe I am taking this indie rock education a bit too far lol. Jane seems fascinated with cover versions in general, so the concept of a son covering his dad is very exciting to her I guess.

God wait till I tell her about Hank III.

Let’s do a live playlist today, been a while. There’s a complicated joke in here involving Calla, Denton Texas and Mother Sky that no one besides me, Annie and the members of the band would get alas. And COMET. Oh god. COMET. They were so good. Someone asked on the socials yesterday “name a band you got into from them being the opener” and I could think of a bajillion but I forgot about COMET. Get they ruled. And I have put the live version of that BRMC The Call tune on here for you. Man I am glad I got to see the Call at least once.

Shit was gonna write about Mike Masnick’s new column about internet architecture and fascism but this is already getting too long for today, I guess. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.