Good morning from Chore House, where it is a cool, frosty 64 degrees. I froze the house overnight in advance of us draining the lineset on the HVAC today, possibly the hottest day of the year. The HVAC is now off, the temperature’s risin’, as Galaxie 500 would say. Wait was that a cover? No, I don’t think so. Oh god I am so neurotic I gotta go double-check. No. Not a cover.

So now we see how good the insulation is in this house, as we hope and pray we don’t all broil in the 4-5 hours that this procedure will take.

Spent last night in a fitful attempt at falling asleep, componsing a long, maudlin entry for you guys about my life. About the competing, contradictory forces that push it through time. About how I view myself as blessed, lucky, almost impervious to misfortune, even as I lie there half paralyzed by grief over loss. I could make a litany of my misfortunes but it’s not fooling me or anyone else. Blessed, blessed I am.

But also about my deep, deep sense of justice and fairness, about how I will never feel at home in a world with so much misfortune and cruelty. About how fucking simple it would be to make a world of kindness and fairness if only a percentage of the world weren’t outright malevolent. How my life is nearly perfect, but how sad I am, I always am, because others suffer. How much I want to have stuff, to have money. How I am simultaneously selfish for me and mine, but also completely consumed with injustice and unfairness.

Memories passed through me. Did they shape me? Or was my sense of justice already there and that’s why I remember these scenes?

Stuffing envelopes for Nilo Kopenen’s campaign at the age of ten – a DSA candidate who won a seat in Alaska in 1982! DSA! Alaska! Sitting in a campaign booth at the State Fair for Glenn Olds when I was 14. Driving down College Road with a girlfriend as she pointed out the house where her abuser lived, realizing I had heard similar things from half the women I knew, it dawning on me just how many women had suffered abuse in this world. Key Club in high school and all the charity work we did.

An incredibly surreal group called “Natural Helpers” in my high school, that brought people from all cliques in the school together for a weekend gathering to learn skills to help peers, while also serving as an incredibly awkward but cathartic kumbaya between the jocks and wavers and stoners and preps, Breakfast Club style. Some of them still read this! Thank you, Ann. You made a difference with that.

An awkward youthful sexual encounter between two people who loved each other very much, but that did not work because one of them did not yet know she was gay. My mortification when I realized what we had just done. The guilt that lasts to this day.

The bullies in my bible camp. The bullies in my high school. The bullies as bosses. My god so many broken bullies in the world.

It could never happen, it will never happen, but I still have a dream. I suspect I am not alone in this dream: if I knew that it would actually happen, if I knew it wasn’t a grift, if I knew it would be fair, I would give up almost everything I have if it meant everyone in the world would be safe, healthy, fed, secure, housed, and cared for. I would do it in a heartbeat. Put me in a shack with a good bed and HVAC (cmon Europe do it) and a community arts center and workshop and one of each type of keyboard and a good doctor and good food and give the same thing to everyone else and take away everything else I have. God. What a deal, what a deal for the world.

Tried to watch this new show on Apple TV last night that had Titania whats-her-name in it. Wait that is shitty. Look it up, Rick. Maslaney. Tatiania Maslany. -ian not ian. Apple spell check does not know her name. If I signed on to star in an Apple TV series, a point in my contract would be MacOS and iOS need to know how to spell my name.

Anyway it was precisely engineered to push all my buttons. It had the divorce trope and lawyers trope and harried single-parent trope and evil boss trope and sex-work-is-bad trope and put children in peril and made every authority figure incompetent and it was a murder mystery that right off the bat told you it was going to cheat and fuck with you and not try and be realistic and there was cruelty everywhere and the “funny” sidekick characters were just mean and I just… god I swear to god I almost had a heart attack. had to stop it after fifteen minutes, go to my room, check my blood pressure. My face was flush with absolute horror that people want to see such cruelty on the television.

God I could spend a year in therapy over those fifteen minutes. If I could find a therapist.

Some good news this morning. Maybe. I think. I have been donating to a charity in LA called Run2Rescue for a couple years now after reading a long expose article about the sex trafficking on Figueroa street and the lone cops trying to stop it and the one-woman charity that tries and tries, against all hope, in the face of repeated failure, to get these girls off the street. I told you guys about the article when it came out. It was in the Times and was masterful and deserves a Pulitzer and it’s part of why I still support the Times even though they suck. Actually, let’s see if the journalist(s) who wrote it still work there. OK. She does. Good.

Anyhow, just shy of a year after that article came out, the Feds announced today a major crackdown on the trafficking operations on Figueroa street. The same journalist, Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, got to write the Times article about the arrests today. I bet she feels pretty good today.

Of course, in this world, who knows how real this crackdown is. Who knows if this the real DOJ or the new fake DOJ. Who knows if there is any real commitment to seeing it through. Depressing reality, that. So I just wrote to my contact at Run2Rescue this morning asking her how legit this was. How impactful.

I will keep you apprised.

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!

We’re listening to the new Social Distortion again this morning. I really love this album. It sounds just like a Social Distortion album. I am enamored with their consistency across generations. I remember when “Bad Luck” came out and I first heard Social D and it sort of seemed like a joke? Almost like the Ramones? Just so pure, no-nonsense, lets-do-some-rock. I went to a signing of theirs at Newbury Comics in, eh, 1992 maybe? Let’s see if I can find the photo hold please.

Alas, nope. But in the process I did find this photo of Ride at Newbury Comics in 1992 and well I do declare, I do believe that is GMHHAY reader and drummer extraordinaire Todd Demma in the photo? Years before we met? Wow wow.

Anyway. Social D. They rule. How old are they now. Man. This shit is real. Bruce should have them open every show ever. Mike Ness is 64. Not bad! Born in MA. Good for him.

Shit maybe I’ll get a Social D tattoo even though I listen to them maybe thrice a decade.

Also this cover of “Wicked Game” is perfect.

Our landlord in Boston is raising our rent. They tried to do it last year and I sort of called them on their avarice, wan excuses and zero notice, and they held back. This year they are trying again, but with proper notice, and only a 10% increase instead of the previous out-of-the-blue 20%.

This is not a thing I would do. They are parents of our friends. They have plenty of money. Their costs have not gone up. Their kid wants us, and not someone else, in the apartment, because we are the perfect neighbors because we are not there. This action is exactly against everything in my moral code and offends me deeply. I would never do this. And I say that because right now I am a landlord and I am not doing it. Because it offends me.

And yet. It is, of course, completely reasonable from a capitalistic point of view. Most people wouldn’t even think twice before doing it when they are landlords. They live in a capitalistic society and this is just what you’re supposed to do. The cost of everything is going up, seize the moment, raise prices yourself. Get yours. Shit. Most rental activists who are tenants right now would do this.

I wonder about you, the person reading this. I suspect there are people in both camps. “Eh,” perhaps you’re thinking, “this is the world we live in, get over it.”

And others are thinking “yeah, that sucks, I would never do it.”

You are both right. You are both right!

Can I afford it? Yes. Will I pay it? Yes. But it is absolutely bonkers how much this sort of thing paralyzes me. Last time, upon the advice of my wife, we did absolutely nothing. Didn’t even answer the email. And it worked!

But I do not think we could do that this time.

I could just tell them: okay. Sullenly, no snide comment, and then start paying it.

Or I could say something sassy and cutting to them and then start paying it anyway. And this is very tempting. I am very good at this. We all love making cutting remarks to bad people. We all love that rush of moral justification.

But what’s the point of causing all that drama.

Even writing this is potentially causing drama, though I’m pretty sure they do not read GMHHAY.

I think a lot about the judgements we make inside of ourselves that we should not ever externalize publicly. Little ones, big ones. Little ones like saying a certain actor has bad eyebrows, or poetry is bullshit. The internet compounds this shit so bad. That actor or poet will see your shit, it will hurt them. Your opinions are yours! They are justified! But we do not need to put every one of them out into the world, we do not need to comment on everything.

Most of us know this, of course. But, god. Bad Internet people (very intentional capitalization there). They’ve lost their minds. They feel like they have to comment on everything. And this is coming from someone who writes 3 million words a year! But have I said anything about the World Cup? Have I said anything about the Knicks? Okay I did say one small thing about the Knicks. I shouldn’t have. I am not perfect. I am rambling. I’ll hone this point eventually. Just workshopping here.

Sometimes you can see a thing and think “yeah that’s stupid” and keep it to yourself. The more the better. Probably.

Jane and I mis-timed the HVAC people horribly. We were late for breakfast, so we came and sat in the driveway at Chore Hosue at 8:50. HVAC people were supposed to get here at 9AM. They weren’t here at 9:15 so we left. Got back at 9:45 and they were here. Shoulda just gone straight to breakfast.

The old Vietnam Vet Agent Orange guy talked to us again this morning. Jane hid under the table but she had a mischievous smile. She did answer his questions. But she made him wait like 15 seconds each time for the answer. It was very awkward. That guy is lonely. I should invite him to sit down and tell a story sometime.

She’s been doing 750 Words with me every morning again lately. I am very happy I’ll have those documents for later in life. I have very much enjoyed this month of her in my office with me in the morning, her on my work calls. Her camps start next week after the holiday, so this period has ended. Time continues flying.

No playlist ready today which is real sad because I keep adding songs and think I have one done but nope. So I guess you can enjoy this awesome Social D cover of Wicked Game. It rules.

OK I gotta go show this HVAC tech how to make a baffle box.